My sandals scuff the dirt.
Each footstep a cloud of white dust, hanging in the air, then settling back on the track.
A walk at dawn. Already hot. Looking for game. An intruder.
The cicadas stop.
A flick at the waterhole. A tail twitches; a warthog kneels to drink. A tusked, solitary pig, oblivious to my movement.
He is too busy drinking, surviving the heat.
No sound. Perhaps danger.
Another flick in the tall grass. Watching.
Animal prints wander to the dry pan, faded from the night. Cicadas begin again, keening, piercing the air. Safe. No danger.
The early sun glances through the haze under the Msasa trees. Pods crack beneath my feet, and with their snap comes silence again, as though the bush is waiting.
Rays, like Jesus’ light, fan over the elephant grass, sweeping down to cracked earth, brown and crusted like old chocolate.
Water.
Life.
I crouch in the dry grass. Alone. Watching. The hide blends with the bush; only my smell might betray me.
Patience.
Wild game does not want to be seen. Broken branches crouch where an elephant tore through for sweetness. For life.
In the dust, ridged patterns show where a snake heard me, felt me, crossed before me. Silence breaks to the thudding of woodpeckers, the raucous cry of Go Away birds.
The sun presses down. The Msasa leaves droop like tired washing on a line.
No life around. That I can see.
Cicadas sing loudly, too loudly, safe in sound; stopping for danger. They spend most of their lives underground, then emerge, shed and like Icarus, take flight above their birth-soil. Beating tymbals until they find a mate, then die.
Some say these beetles foretell the rain; others that they are the dead reaching for the living. White Zimbabweans prefer sightings of animals to omens of death.
Like tourists, we wait.
The air smells of dry dust, musty and thick, carrying hints of hyena, wild dog, sometimes cat. Today, there is only the jagged shadow of heat, and me, watching. But there are others. The bush is never dead.
Elephant grass, yellow-grey, the colour of lions, towers high, hiding giants and killers alike. It thatches village roofs, shading those who wait for the cool before venturing into the bush to hunt and kill their meals at the waterhole.
A flick across the pan. Tawny. The air hollows, as if the warthog and I are the only watchers.
But we are not.
Cicadas begin again, vibrating like heat waves above the water. The warthog stays on his knees. Time stretches thin as the sun drains life from the bush. Safe.
The silence breaks with the crackle of grass sharp enough to cut skin. The sun blazes. The warthog remains, tail stiff like a triumphant flagpole.
Whispers in the grass.
A flick. Brown muscles slide, then pause, another watching. A crackle of leaves.
The killer is here. I stare at the warthog, willing him to turn, to move. He stays. Oblivious, intent on water to live.
Then — like khaki mercury — the lion attacks. White dust explodes. In slow motion, the warthog is flung skyward. Strangled by teeth, thrown like a rag. He twitches once. Twice. Then dragged away to feed.
The waterhole is empty again. The dust settles. Life is gone.
Like an intruder.
Then slowly, then loudly, the cicadas sing.
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Image: Remixed Jr Korpa Unsplash