Ivory Ghosts

Ivory Ghosts Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Ivory Ghosts Read Online Free PDF
Author: Caitlin O'Connell
buffalo.
    A tall, wiry man with sandy hair marched stiffly into the office. At first glance he looked like a haggard old man, wearing the same ministry uniform as the woman, only untucked and disheveled. But my second glance caught me off guard, as I fought back the urge to stare at this old man trapped in a younger man’s handsome body. He couldn’t have been more than early forties, tops.
    “Morning, Draadie!” he announced theatrically. “Get me 63131.” His accent said English South African, and the tension between the Afrikaner and the Englishman was clear.
    “Lines are down,” Draadie happily reported, picking up her sticky breakfast that I now realized was a
koeksuster
and taking another bite. The thought of eating this Afrikaans breakfast favorite—an extremely sweet and greasy doughnut—at this hour made my stomach hurt.
    “Oh, Jesus!” The man’s shoulders fell. “Not again.” He groaned and collapsed against the door to the private office next to the reception area where I was still sitting, waiting to be presented.
    Draadie pointed her Afrikaans doughnut toward me. “This woman says she has an appointment with you.”
    I stood up.
    The man winced at the woman, waiting for a further explanation.
    Draadie shrugged, dropping her pastry and licking her fingers again.
    The apparent Mr. Baggs turned to me and attempted to skewer me with his dark eyes. But it didn’t quite work, and I got the sense that he knew it. What I saw in front of me was a disturbingly good-looking man beneath the curmudgeonly act—his large vulnerable eyes lost in a sea of anguish.
    I fumbled an introduction. “Hello, I’m Catherine Sohon.” I held out my hand.
    Baggs jumped slightly, as if my hand were some kind of trap that would ensnare him.
    I immediately regretted wearing shorts as he diverted his eyes to my bare knees. Feeling naked, I held my backpack awkwardly against my thighs, sliding it down farther to cover my kneecaps with the hope of breaking his stare.
    When he looked back up at my face, I realized that it might have been safer to have him looking at my knees. What I had mistaken for a lewd expression, which I was used to and could fend off, was more an expression of genuine surprise.
    He stiffened back up and reached for my hand, holding it limply away from his body, forcing a vast chasm between us. “Jon Baggs,” he said officiously.
    “I’m the pilot from WIA, sent up to help with the elephant census.”
    He looked at me dubiously and nodded for me to proceed into his office. He signaled for me to sit in any of an assortment of half-broken chairs in front of his institutional-sized wooden desk.
    As Baggs sat down, time seemed to stand still for both of us. I saw one hand gripping the other, as if he were struggling to hide behind the persona he was trying to conjure in order to intimidate me. He glared at me, while I tried to placate his irritation with calm, which seemed to make things worse.
    Wasps paraded in and out of waterlogged, torn ceiling boards. A large faded map of the region fell away from the far wall. Piles of evidence collected dust in the corner—rotting leopard skins, a crocodile skull, a tattered Florsheim dress shoe, a handmade rifle leaning next to three small elephant tusks.
    Unnerved by the silent treatment, I proceeded. “Did you not get the package?”
    I was met with a blank stare.
    “The one that WIA sent up? My clearance and, I believe, some new elephant mortality forms that need to be submitted to the IUCN.”
    Baggs pulled at his shorts in frustration. He turned his head, trying not to look at me directly, and began pounding a pencil tip on his desk, annoyed. “With no cellphone reception and the landlines down, oh and the mail train derailed, communications are a bit slow in the Caprivi.”
    “I have an extra copy of the forms.” I dug into my backpack, dodging the ivory trade report, and pulled out a folder of forms.
    As I placed the folder on the desk, Baggs slammed a
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