Seven Second Safari

Tracey Locke Word count: 1,439

The sky unfurled in a blue tapestry of nothingness. Fuschia bougainvillea climbed the stucco wall, swelled over the top of the twenty foot high enclosure and dropped behind the wall into the service alley where the help came and went. In and out. Up and down staircases leading nowhere. Others leading somewhere. Loose flower petals fluttered in the Beverly Glen breeze and dropped silently onto the pool—parachuting ballerinas taking their final bow.

From my prone position beside the pool, the scent of honeysuckle mingled with chlorine and I lowered my face into the pool for a drink.

My master, Dean F. Alton, one of the brightest minds to graduate from Stanford University law school in 1952, sat slumped on the bench where he had been propped between the pool and the tennis court. The sunlight lent a lemon hue to his Irish potato face, his nose veiny and mottled, both products of country club “bellying up.” Dean’s long white hair was jammed under a visor with an embroidered, “McEvoy and Alton Law Firm” on the brim—his magnanimous and generous nature apparent by having his name listed second, despite having been the reigning lion of entertainment law in Hollywood for the last fifty years. 

The pool cabana offered refuge from the searing heat. I padded over to cool off, Dean easily within my range of vision and smell. The outline of my tufted hair along the ridge of my spine and tucked tail cast long shadows on the imported bluestone surrounding the turquoise pool.  

My great-grandfather, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, was plucked out of Kenya in the 1950’s by Dean on one of his many big game safari trips. Our breed was prized for fending off leopards and baboons, and giving big game hunters time to sight in their rifles. My inborn knowledge of how to navigate African environments and outwit its deadly predators made me a valuable companion. Dean and I had been on more then thirty hunting trips together, crossing Africa by bush plane with various guides, rifles and enough cocktails to sink the dark continent.

In the interim we lived, waiting to go back.

Our last hunt three years ago ended badly. 

We had left our guide Crawford, who looked to be no more than seventeen in the Rover while we tracked Cape Buffalo on foot. I tread easily beside Dean as we had so many times before—rifle slung over his left shoulder, his right hand skimming the top of my head as it swung forward and back with his long strides—a perfect pendulum of nature.

That day the wind had not blown as usual from the east, but rather had circled back and thrown our scent toward a small band of elephants as they came south to the river to drink. One of the bulls gave a trumpeted warning. Crawford, 250 yards away, yelled for us to get into the Rover, but Dean stood curiously still, the disconnect between brain and body already begun. I sprinted toward the bull hopeful my barks would throw him off track and give Dean time to either sight his rifle or run. As the distance between our charges shortened, the oxygen in the air disappeared as if the elevation had shifted from sea level to Everest in a few seconds. My lungs were on fire. My barks grew fainter. I turned, trying to lure the bull, but he was intent on Dean. In fear, I looked back. Dean wobbled in the African dusk, a hollow banyan ready to fall. His rifle hung at his side. At the sound of the Rover’s gunned motor and continuous horn, Dean snapped out of his stupor. His once steady strides had turned into stuttering skids. He tripped. I heard the crack of bone as he fell. Crawford still 100 yards away, miraculously dropped the angry elephant and it skidded to a halt, dead, twenty feet from us. 

In the back of the Rover I nuzzled under Dean’s chin, sweat and Vermouth mingled with a new smell. Fear. We both knew it was our last trip.

# # #

Today’s tennis pro stood beside Dean, her pert ponytail longer than her skirt. Her peppiness was not contagious. 

“Do you want to try and hit a few?” She sounded as if she already knew the answer.

Dean moved his racquet from one hand to another, perhaps volleying an invisible tennis ball with a photo of her ass on it. He continued shifting the racquet in silence.

“How about standing up, get some blood circulating in those legs of yours." 

More of a command than a cajole. Now I knew the answer.

“No!” Dean threw his racquet to the ground. “Who the hell are you anyway?” His agitation grew. “Get away from me.”

Our daily routine had started badly from the first knock at the bedroom door this morning. Anne, the head nurse had woken us early. I lay on the carpet and listened to hundreds of lawn sprinklers hissing like rattle snakes in the pre-dawn. Before Dean had propped himself up, Anne thrust medicine and a glass of water into his hands with the explanation that he must take these pills exactly twelve hours from his last. Anne had been with us for many years. Often she was the only one who could calm Dean. In his hurry to help with child-like obedience, he dropped the glass on the floor. He started to cry.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” 

Anne stood frozen, caught off guard by his tears. No amount of cutting edge drugs would bring back his complex intellect or his compelling conversations. I missed our nightly walks—both of us urinating on the neighbor’s gardens.

“Dean’s sobs quieted.

“Ruger?” he said. “Here boy.”

I padded over with a hopeful heart.

“Ruger, where are you?”

I pressed my side into the bed. His hand lifted and searched in vain for me in the gray light. After a few moments his hand fell back onto the bed where he began petting it. “Good boy, Ruger, that’s a good boy.” He repeated the mantra over and over, his hand brushing the soft comforter. This was a new occurrence, mistaking it, for me.

Golden girl pivoted on her heel and walked to the court, miffed her winsome instructions had been ignored.

I lay waiting.

Dean, confused, but never without manners, sat patiently like a child again for the second time this morning and waited for someone to tell him what to do next: eat, shit, stand, sit. His day was choreographed, with no expense spared to keep him busy and unaware he was losing his mind.

I felt the vibration a full second before Dean heard it. The quiet rumble of the serving machine, an inhalation really, before the lime green tennis ball was ejected onto the backboard. The sound became two syllables, a “Ba-Boom,” as the first ball landed. Dean flinched in slow motion, his auditory neurons unable to connect or track an unidentifiable sound, like a bat void of elocution. The second ball shot out precisely seven seconds after the last. Dean had no time to recover. He attempted to stand, perhaps run for cover, an instinct from years of hunting. Now he was the prey, a gun fired in the recesses of his mind. He stumbled. His visor fell to the ground before he did. 

As I shot out of the cabana, I smelled human urine. I got to him before the next ball fired. Golden girl looked around helplessly, half in sympathy, half hoping no one noticed Dean on his hands and knees.  

I stood beside my master, our shoulders touching. He sighed deeply at my touch. He lifted his head. I saw a flare of anger and self disgust in his eyes.

“Ruger.” 

I waited. 

“I’m here. It’s me, Dean.”  He patted himself.

The joy of recognition passed between us on an invisible frayed tightrope, his eyes as blue and clear as the overhead Hollywood sky. 

“I’m here. The one who loves you.”

He attempted to place one foot on the ground. Golden girl was right behind him holding out a helpful hand.

He dropped his head as if it were too heavy. A bloom drooping in the heat.

Dean whispered. “Can’t anyone see me?”

I went in for the kill, biting through the larynx the way Dean reveled in—perched in a Rover a world away from here, the long golden light of the Savannah falling on ancient rituals. I drug him to the shade of the bougainvillea. The metronome of the ball machine continued to serve.