The Ugly Duckling (Excerpt)

Adopted

"My mom was a farm girl from somewhere in the South of Lesotho. Half starved, she came here one day with me on her back. Tannie (aunt) Lizzy, being a good softhearted woman, let her move into one of the empty farm shacks, made sure she had food, and that I had nappies and stuff.

"Mom helped out on the farm for a while, and things were good. The day after I turned three, Martha, tannie Lizzy's housekeeper, found me screaming my head off outside the shack. Mom had just up and left somewhere between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning."

"Seriously?" the idea of a mother abandoning her child shocked me to my core.

"Tannie Lizzy and Martha cleaned me up, let me move into Martha's chalet, and raised me between them." He fetched his glass and returned. "A couple of days after I turned twelve, social services found out about me. Two ladies came to take me away to some weeshuis in Joburg. A foster home? Uncle Bertus came out with his shotgun and told them to get off his property. They returned with the police and almost had him arrested, but the Captain knew the family and talked to the lady.

***

"Giel, kyk daai wors man, you burning the stuff," Thabisho called out, and the scrawny redhead almost fell over his feet, knocking the plastic water container over on his way to save the sausages.

"Ag weet jy, daai kind. That boy, I don't know when he'll stop daydreaming and do his job. I guess I shouldn't be short with him. His mother works in the gift shop but is more concerned with her boyfriend than her son."

A smirk touched his lips.

"With the amount of kak Barry I got into, him daydreaming should be the least of my worries. Uncle Barry pulled us over his knee more than once and gave us a taste of his plat hand."

The motion he made with his hand needed no translation, and I already picked up that kak was shit but way ruder. Trust me to learn the swear words first.

"Isn't beating a child against the law in South Africa?" I asked, concerned.

"Oh, we deserved it and grew up believing that sparing the rod spoils the child. I will not raise my kids like wild dogs one day."

Did he imagine Eva as the mother of his children?

"Barry's sister's kids grew up in the city. If oom Bertus still lived, he'd have grabbed them and orientated them right quick. Jeanette hates it when Karen visits. Her little 'lovies' can do no wrong, and her husband has no backbone. Barry calls him window dressing, pretty to look at but useless.

"One of the kids teased Atlas with a burning stick the other day, and my soul died in me as he turned on them. Thank God he somehow recognized they were little humans, like the ones that saved him and feed him and just knocked the kid over. Still nearly scrambled his brain even though he didn't bare his talons.

"There's a reason we don't allow children; this is a place for work retreats, not a kindergarten. Of course, she wanted us to destroy him and called the police. Luckily, the policeman's father's also a farmer. The officer told her she should not have left her children unsupervised on a game farm and threatened to call child services. The kid was fine, just a little humbled."

"What happened to Atlas' foot, and was he always tame?" I asked.

"When he came to us, he was about six weeks old and had stepped in a slagyster... a trap set by poachers. The poor little bugger must have been caught for days, and Barry thought he couldn't pull him through. The cub was weak, and the infection had spread, but we fought for him."

As if the lion heard we were talking about him, he dragged the remains of his bone closer to Thabisho's chair, biting through the bone with chilling efficiency to get at the marrow as he lay on his stomach.

"Saving him was an expensive labor of love, and although we pulled him through, we couldn't release him back into the real wild. He wouldn't have been able to defend himself against other male lions or hyenas, so he stayed.

"The idea was to keep him as wild as possible, but he made friends with Toby, and the Warthog kept breaking open the cage and letting the lion out until we gave up."

"And Toby?"

"Martha found Toby in her vegetable patch about fifteen years ago, just skin and bone, and around four weeks old. Trembling, wild as hell, and so damned sad looking. It took us two hours to catch him, and we only succeeded because he was so tired. Still nipped Barry so hard on the finger that I heard the bone crunch, and he almost dropped the little shit.

"Although we don't know how he got here or where he came from, Aunt Lizzy got him healthy. We tried to put him back in the wild a few times, but he likes people and doesn't get along with other Warthogs, as his scars prove. He just came home like a cat, destroying every fence in his way."

"And he can sometimes be a bit of a nuisance, but oddly, when Atlas came, he adopted the lion, and that was that. Pumba found his Lion King," he laughed, and so did we.

"These are not the only animals that stayed," I remarked.

"No. People know we rehabilitate wildlife, and they bring hurt or sick animals to us. Usually, we can put them back in the wild, but sometimes, it isn't possible."

Getting to his feet, he chucked some more wood into the central fire, the sparks shooting up into the heavens.

"Others, like the meerkats near the kitchen, were pets. People don't realize that wild animals are wild, and they kind of remain that way.

"That is why we warn people not to approach them without supervision. Those bloody little meerkats have bitten more than one guest or at least nipped. Bubba, the monkey we had here for a couple of years, had to be re-homed because he ripped people's earrings out."

A pot clattered to the ground, and he frowned.

"Excuse me; I need to check on that braaivleis before Giel ruins it."

"This place has so many stories," I marveled, settling my empty mug beside my camping chair.

"Any place has stories if you take the time to discover them."

Dean was halfway to his feet to fetch another drink, but Thabisho had already spotted him playing with the empty and arrived beer in hand.

"Here you go, enjoy," he said, cracking the top and offering the sweating bottle to Dean, who nodded and took it even as Thabisho hurried back to the barbecue.

"It must be amazing living in a place like this."

I lived in the city my entire life and thought I would be a little lost in the wilds of Africa, but I loved it.

"There's a darker side to this beautiful land, too," Dean warned, and something in his tone made me uneasy.

"There's a darker side to any place humans call home," I reminded.

"True."

I loved sitting out here beside him, and the only reason Druscilla was not clinging to his side like a tick was the lion happily licking the last bit of marrow from his bone.

The woman didn't like animals, and they didn't like her. Even Jeanette's old ginger cat spat at Druscilla earlier that morning. The actress tried to step over it where it was sunning itself in the dining room doorway, and it just went apeshit like she was the devil incarnate or something.

The entire time she hadn't been out on any game drives, never left the lodge, and apart from going horse riding with Dean the previous day, she hadn't been near anything animal.

It surprised me that she could ride, considering her attitude, and although Dean had invited me along, I'd never been on a horse, and it wouldn't be a pretty picture, so I declined. When she saddled the horse herself and patted it on the nose, it left me confused. Sometimes Druscilla seemed like two different people.

Eva returned for the cup, and I handed it to her.

"Dankie." The word sounded awkward and wrong on my tongue but lit up her face. A simple thank you on my part communicated my effort to learn more. She spoke Tswana, Afrikaans, and English with equal ease, and most South Africans were multilingual.

"Ke a leboga. Dankie, Thank you," she prodded like a language teacher, and although I butchered it, she approved.