Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
Max
The last place in the world Ash wanted to be was sitting next to me in a game vehicle and she was making this very clear with her body language. Leaning as far away as possible, she was practically hanging over the edge of the vehicle. But here we were. I could tell how embarrassed she was about last night; she hadn’t looked at me all day. It was written across her face, not to mention present in that tight, unnecessary throat - clearing she did from time to time, along with her constant fiddling with a loose piece of thread sticking up from her shorts.
I’d opened my mouth about ten times to say something, but closed it each time, since I had no idea what to actually say to her, or what to say about what had happened—or hadn’t happened—last night. I think the “ hadn’t happened ” was at the root of all this awkwardness if I knew Ash like I thought I did. But I couldn’t exactly tell her that pulling away from her had been one of the hardest things I’d ever done, and if circumstances had been different, if there had been no African Dreams, that I would not have pulled away and she would not have stood a chance. Her clothes would’ve been lying on the floor and I would have buried my face between her legs and made her come so hard she would have seen stars. But I wasn’t sure that level of detail would be helpful at this moment.
“Is this the watering hole you were talking about?” Bongani turned and asked Ash, pointing at the small dam in the distance. She checked a picture on her phone and then looked back up.
“Yes, that’s it. The one with the baobab tree.” The sun was setting and it was obvious why she wanted to see this place—it would make an amazing shot. Then she waved her phone around in the air and looked at it from various angles.
“I don’t have signal either,” I said, holding my phone up at her to confirm.
“The storm took out the cell-phone towers and also knocked out radio comms,” Bongani added.
Ash grabbed her camera and then jumped off the vehicle.
“Can we go closer?” she asked. “It would be better for the shot.”
Bongani nodded and started driving again, while Ash walked alongside the moving vehicle. Bongani drove slowly. The rain had turned the terrain into a thick, quicksand-like sludge.
“Oh my God!” Ash screamed through a wet, squelching sound, and I turned to see her leg sinking into a puddle of mud. She waved her arms around frantically, and without thinking, I jumped off the back of the vehicle and fought my way through the thick mud to reach her.
“Shit.” I grabbed on to a handful of grass to stop myself from going in any deeper. I’d watched too many TV shows as a child where people had been sucked to their deaths in quicksand.
“Grab my arm,” I instructed, using the tuft of grass to pull myself out of the knee-high sludge.
She gave my arm the filthiest look, as if it stank. “I’m perfectly fine. I can get myself out of here, thanks.”
“I know, I just thought I would help.”
“You’ve helped enough, Max.” She rolled her eyes at me. “I am perfectly fine. There is no need to be jumping off vehicles to rescue me and running to my tent in the rain—I can rescue myself.”
She seemed very determined, so I turned round and pulled myself out of the muddy puddle and back onto hard soil using the tuft of grass as an anchor. My legs were covered in mud from my knees down and it was pointless trying to wipe them. This was the kind of dirt that needed to be hosed off.
I stood back and watched Ash as she tried to pull her leg out of the mud and take a step. But each time she tried to pull it out, she seemed to topple to the left and had to put it down again.
“For fuck’s sake!” she moaned loudly, and tried again. “And no, I still don’t want your help!”
“I wasn’t going to offer again,” I called as she struggled in a particularly soft bit.
“Good, because I am not some bloody damsel in distress you can run around rescuing, Max!”
“I’ve never thought of you as a damsel,” I said.
“I also could have gotten that thorn out of my foot myself, just saying.”
“I’m sure you could have,” I agreed, even though I knew there was no way she would have been able to yank that massive thorn out herself—God, no one would’ve been able to do that. But I knew what she was doing right now, so I let her. She’d made herself vulnerable last night and I had “rejected” her, and now she was simply trying to take back some of her power, so I’d let her. I’d stand here all night and wait for her to climb out of the mud if it made her feel a little better about what had happened last night. Anything to make sure she was okay.
I looked over my shoulder and vaguely registered that the vehicle looked as if it had also gotten stuck in the mud. But that wasn’t my focus right now, my focus was watching Ash as she struggled through the thigh-high mud until she eventually managed to climb onto solid ground. She collapsed, out of breath and totally covered in mud. I turned my attention back to the vehicle now and finally registered the seriousness of the situation as I watched Bongani walking around the vehicle thoughtfully.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to get out of this ourselves. I’m going to have to call for help,” he said as I walked towards him. He began trying to radio out, but like he’d said before, the storm had knocked out the communication and a bad feeling sank into the pit of my stomach. I pulled out my phone and looked at the screen—still no bars.
“Do you have any reception yet?” I asked Ash, who was now bent over at the waist. She looked at her phone and shook her head.
“I also don’t have cell reception,” Bongani said, and a strange group silence descended in which we all took stock of our current predicament.
“We need some sticks to put under the wheels for traction—only way we’ll stand a chance of getting out of this mud,” Bongani announced.
“We need sticks,” I called over to Ash. We all looked around. Where the hell were we going to get sticks from? We were in the middle of the bloody Kalahari Desert, on a salt pan, no trees except for that distant baobab. But baobab trees are protected so breaking any branches was out of the question. Our only hope lay in the possibility that maybe it had shed some branches that were now conveniently on the ground.
Bongani pulled his rifle onto his shoulder and called for us to start walking towards the tree. The sun was setting quickly now and I could make out the shape of a herd of wildebeest walking towards the watering hole.
Bongani declared the obvious. “Animals are coming out.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Ash said, catching up to me with her ridiculous brown legs and face. It was the most she’d said to me all day, so I tried to set her mind at ease.
“This guy is a pro. He knows what he’s doing,” I reassured her.
“I don’t know. This feels like we’re kind of . . . stranded.” I could hear a quiver of panic in her voice. I turned, stopping her abruptly. Our eyes met for a second, before she very deliberately looked away.
“Why don’t you get out your camera and do your work while we’re doing this, but stay close to us. That should distract you.”
She nodded. “Good idea.” I almost melted at that, the first vaguely friendly words she’d given me all day. And I was also filled with the satisfaction I was able to help her, even if it was in a small way.