Kalahari Read Online Free PDF Page A

were a dozen of him. That time, it had worked. But out here? There wasn’t enough ground cover for that kind of approach. If they saw him . . . I swallowed the thought, but it stuck in my mind like a splinter under a fingernail. Once I’d have shared his reckless heroism, even begged to come along.
    But that was before Mom.
    I carried the dishes past Sam and to the small folding table I had set up by the grill. Sam grabbed the towel on the table and began to dry the dishes, handing them to me so I could stack them in a crate.
    “He’s brave,” Sam said. “I’ll give him that.”
    “A brave idiot,” I muttered.
    Sam’s lips twitched. He rolled up his sleeve in order to reach into the bucket of water for the clean plates, revealing a muscular arm dusted with fine blond hairs. His hands were large, his fingers long—ideal rugby hands, Dad would have said. I realized I was staring a bit long and jerked my gaze away. I reached up to tuck a stray wisp of hair behind my ear, and Sam’s eyes followed the gesture.
    “Nice tattoos,” he said. “What do they mean?”
    I paused, a plate in my hand, to look at my arm. “This one I got last year. It’s for Bangladesh, where I lived from the time I was three until I was eight.” The stylized Bengal tiger stalked over my left shoulder, teeth bared and claws extended. I tapped the skin behind my left ear, where a spiral was inked in black. “This is a Maori symbol from New Zealand. My dad’s country. It’s called
koru
and stands for new beginnings.”
    “And your mom?”
    “She’s from North Carolina. This one is her.” I turned over my left wrist; on the delicate skin, still pink around the edges from the recent inking, was a simple black bee. “She loved bees.” Loved them to death, as it had turned out.
    He nodded, looking very serious, then pulled up his sleeve farther to reveal a yellow star inked on the inside of his arm. “That’s for Adam, my older brother,” he said softly, his eyes going distant, and then suddenly he yanked the sleeve down again and grinned. “So when are we going to see lions?” His tone was light and casual. I suspected he was trying to distract me from Dad, and though it wasn’t really working, I appreciated the effort he was making.
    “Tomorrow, maybe. There’s a pride not far from here.” I said, my eyes lingering on his arm. I tore them away and dried the last pan. Somewhere out in the bush, an eagle owl let out its first piercing whistle of the night. The nocturnal Kalahari was beginning to wake, and still there was no sign of Dad. “I’m going to try Dad again. I’m sure everything’s fine,” I added.
    He didn’t look convinced, and I felt his stare on my back as I hurried to my tent.

THREE
    I unclipped the radio from my belt loop and pulled on a ratty gray sweater that used to be my mom’s, covering the tattoos Sam had been so interested in. Then, sitting cross-legged on my narrow little bed, I gripped the radio with both hands and pressed it to my forehead, drawing a deep breath. Visions danced through my mind, memories from the day Theo and I had found Mom with her neck broken and her head dented in from crashing the Land Rover into an umbrella thorn acacia. She’d been missing for a week before that, but when we finally did find her, she’d been dead for only a few hours, her skin swollen with beestings. In my fevered imagination, I saw Dad posed exactly the same way, his skin cold and his eyes open, unseeing, the way hers had been when I’d lifted her head from the steering wheel.
    My fingers shaking, I pressed the talk button.
    “Dad. Dad, come in. Theo, are you there? Hello? Anyone?”
    No answer.
    I tried Henrico next, getting no reply, and went back to searching for Dad.
    “Dad, please.
Please.
Where are you? Pick up the damn radio!” Heat flared through me, and I hurled the radio at the side of the tent, where it bounced off the taut canvas and fell to the floor. Then I sat with my head cradled in