The Poisonwood Bible
Page 123
As the ring burned smaller we suddenly caught sight of its other side, the red-orange tongues and black ash closing in. The looming shapes of animals bunched up inside: antelopes, bushbucks, broad-headed warthogs with warthog children running behind them. A troop of baboons ran with arched tails flying as they zigzagged, not yet understanding their entrapment. Thousands of insects beat the air to a pulpy soup of animal panic. Birds hit the wall of fire and lit like bottle rockets. When it seemed there was no more air, no more hope, the animals began to run out through the fire into the open, where spears and arrows waited. The antelopes did not leap gracefully as I imagined they would; they wheeled like spooked horses around the inside of the circle, then suddenly veered out as if by accident or blindness. Seeing their companions shot in the neck with arrows, they heeled in panic, sometimes turning back to the flames but mostly running straight on, straight toward people and death. A small spotted antelope fell down very near me and presented me with the strange, singular gift of its death. I watched its heaving sides slowly come to rest, as if it had finally caught its breath. Dark blood leaked from its delicate black mouth onto the charred ground.
For every animal struck down, there rose an equal and opposite cry of human jubilation. Our hungry wishbone cracked and ran slick with marrow. Women knelt with their knives to skin the meat, even before the hooves stopped beating the ground in panic. Of the large animals who came through the fire—bushbuck, warthog, antelope— few escaped. Others would not come out and so they burned: small flame-feathered birds, the churning insects, and a few female baboons who had managed against all odds to carry their pregnancies through the drought. With their bellies underslung with precious clinging babies, they loped behind the heavy-maned males, who would try to save themselves, but on reaching the curtain of flame where the others passed through, they drew up short. Crouched low. Understanding no choice but to burn with their children.
The curtain of heat divided the will to survive from survival itself. I could have fallen trembling on the ground but stood and watched instead, watched Kilanga’s children shout and dance each time they found the scorched, angular bodies of a mother baboon and baby seared together. On account of these deaths, Kilanga’s gleeful children would live through another season. The bantu who watched from above would have seen a black festival of life and death indistinguishable one from the other against the black-scorched ground.
As that day would turn out, my sister Rachel became (briefly) a vegetarian. My sisters Ruth May and Leah: forager and hunter. I became something else. On the day of the hunt I came to know in the slick center of my bones this one thing: all animals kill to survive, and we are animals.The lion kills the baboon; the baboon kills fat grasshoppers. The elephant tears up living trees, dragging their precious roots from the dirt they love. The hungry antelope’s shadow passes over the startled grass. And we, even if we had no meat or even grass to gnaw, still boil our water to kill the invisible creatures that would like to kill us first. And swallow quinine pills. The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.
Leah
I KILLED MY FIRST GAME, a beautiful tawny beast with curved horns j and a black diagonal stripe across his flank: a young male impala. He was completely bewildered by the fire, too young to have any good strategy for danger, but old enough to need to put on a show. He ran pell-mell, snorting like a playground bully till he was one of the last of his kind left inside the circle. I knew he’d soon come through.The way his hooves tore at the ground was so desperate, and his family already gone. I crouched near Nelson, watching. Nelson had taken down two bushbucks, one after the other, and signaled to me that he was going to claim his arrows. The impala he was leaving to me. I followed it with my eye as Nelson had taught me to do, looking for the path of its hopes. Suddenly I saw exactly where it would break through the fire. He would come straight toward me and veer to my right, where his mother had gone. Even a playground bully will want his mother in the bitter end. I held my breath to stop my arms from trembling. I had the hunger and thirst of a famine all to myself, smoke in my burning eyes, and no strength left. I prayed to Jesus to help me, then to any other god who would listen. Help me keep my left arm straight and my right pulled back and my arrow tight against the gutstring ready to sing and fly. One, he came and dodged... two, he came closer... three, he broke his gait, paused... four!
He leaped sideways away from me, all four legs drawn together in midair for half a second, and then he ran on. Only when I saw the spray of brown blood did I understand I’d hit him. My own heart plunged and burst against my ears. I have killed an animal larger than myself!
For every animal struck down, there rose an equal and opposite cry of human jubilation. Our hungry wishbone cracked and ran slick with marrow. Women knelt with their knives to skin the meat, even before the hooves stopped beating the ground in panic. Of the large animals who came through the fire—bushbuck, warthog, antelope— few escaped. Others would not come out and so they burned: small flame-feathered birds, the churning insects, and a few female baboons who had managed against all odds to carry their pregnancies through the drought. With their bellies underslung with precious clinging babies, they loped behind the heavy-maned males, who would try to save themselves, but on reaching the curtain of flame where the others passed through, they drew up short. Crouched low. Understanding no choice but to burn with their children.
The curtain of heat divided the will to survive from survival itself. I could have fallen trembling on the ground but stood and watched instead, watched Kilanga’s children shout and dance each time they found the scorched, angular bodies of a mother baboon and baby seared together. On account of these deaths, Kilanga’s gleeful children would live through another season. The bantu who watched from above would have seen a black festival of life and death indistinguishable one from the other against the black-scorched ground.
As that day would turn out, my sister Rachel became (briefly) a vegetarian. My sisters Ruth May and Leah: forager and hunter. I became something else. On the day of the hunt I came to know in the slick center of my bones this one thing: all animals kill to survive, and we are animals.The lion kills the baboon; the baboon kills fat grasshoppers. The elephant tears up living trees, dragging their precious roots from the dirt they love. The hungry antelope’s shadow passes over the startled grass. And we, even if we had no meat or even grass to gnaw, still boil our water to kill the invisible creatures that would like to kill us first. And swallow quinine pills. The death of something living is the price of our own survival, and we pay it again and again. We have no choice. It is the one solemn promise every life on earth is born and bound to keep.
Leah
I KILLED MY FIRST GAME, a beautiful tawny beast with curved horns j and a black diagonal stripe across his flank: a young male impala. He was completely bewildered by the fire, too young to have any good strategy for danger, but old enough to need to put on a show. He ran pell-mell, snorting like a playground bully till he was one of the last of his kind left inside the circle. I knew he’d soon come through.The way his hooves tore at the ground was so desperate, and his family already gone. I crouched near Nelson, watching. Nelson had taken down two bushbucks, one after the other, and signaled to me that he was going to claim his arrows. The impala he was leaving to me. I followed it with my eye as Nelson had taught me to do, looking for the path of its hopes. Suddenly I saw exactly where it would break through the fire. He would come straight toward me and veer to my right, where his mother had gone. Even a playground bully will want his mother in the bitter end. I held my breath to stop my arms from trembling. I had the hunger and thirst of a famine all to myself, smoke in my burning eyes, and no strength left. I prayed to Jesus to help me, then to any other god who would listen. Help me keep my left arm straight and my right pulled back and my arrow tight against the gutstring ready to sing and fly. One, he came and dodged... two, he came closer... three, he broke his gait, paused... four!
He leaped sideways away from me, all four legs drawn together in midair for half a second, and then he ran on. Only when I saw the spray of brown blood did I understand I’d hit him. My own heart plunged and burst against my ears. I have killed an animal larger than myself!
