Problems with People by David Guterson Read Free Book Online

“All’s well that ends well,” except, first, she wanted to know about his last name, Ghemawat, which, she said, she’d seen on the rental agreement—and which she now mispronounced. Was that her fault? Why set her straight? Why do anything? The whole thing was impossible. “From India,” he explained—meaning the name, not him, but certainly his answer could be taken to mean him—even though he’d been born three-quarters of a mile from where they stood right now and had never lived anywhere else, just Seattle. “Indian,” he told the fair-skinned Lydia Williams,without knowing exactly what that meant about himself, or to what extent it was true, and feeling it was something he couldn’t explain anyway, nor did he want to explain it. Besides, it was time to let this tenant live her life, time to leave so she could get on with her Saturday. It would be wrong of him to stay another minute. Sure, he owned the place, but what difference did that make? The two of them had no more business together. “I’m going to get out of your way now,” he said. “Thank you,” answered Lydia Williams.

Pilanesberg
    They turned onto the R510. Every town they passed through had plentiful “rubbish,” as his sister called it—barbed-wire compounds, and slovenly industry. His sister was a nerve-racking driver, not because she wasn’t careful but because she was too careful, forcing other travelers to use the oncoming lane to make high-speed passes. They were on a road with no shoulders and crazy truckers; the “veldt”—another of his sister’s terms—looked increasingly dramatic as they got farther from Johannesburg. Twice his sister stopped to use restrooms. Twice she took pills. Her hands trembled on the steering wheel.
    They reached Pilanesberg—the Manyane Gate. She’d made a reservation at the Golden Leopard for a thatched-roof chalet that looked, to him, from the outside, better suited to the Lake District, but with a private patio and a barbecue on a stanchion that his sister called a
braai
. Inside, their quarters were air-conditioned. He was still jet-lagged; she was “away from death,” as she put it, and wanted, for now, to take inthe peace and do nothing, not go anywhere, not move, just rest. Besides, there would be better animal viewing as dusk approached—near dusk was when the animals came out. And so, settled in wicker chairs, they lingered in the cool chalet, talking about his photography and her cancer, and what he wanted to know, given that it was summer in South Africa and therefore hot outside: was the wig uncomfortable? It was okay with him if she took it off.
    She took it off. Her skull was pitted. She’d packed her “boot” with food in coolers and bags—fruit, crackers, nuts, carrots, pomegranate juice, bread, a roasted chicken—all for him, because she couldn’t eat anything. Around three, she looked at her watch and said that she was excited about animal viewing, though at Pilanesberg the chances of a Big Five experience—lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, and buffalo—were not as good as at Kruger. The ever-promising thing about Pilanesberg, she told him, was that it was transitional, somewhere in between dry and wet and thus eclectic in flora and fauna; further, because it was close to Johannesburg, it had been aggressively managed, and stocked via a program of translocation called Operation Genesis. Should they go take a look now? Maybe it was time to go. Especially if he wanted to take pictures; the light was good.
    They went. The guard in uniform at Manyane Gate waved them through and, almost immediately, after rounding a bend, they saw zebras on a hillside. Not long after it was wildebeest, then rhinos at a mudhole, then a hardworking dung beetle in the road, small, pushing a big ball of dung. He took a photo of the dung beetle and thanked his sister for bringinghim here. His sister, in the manner of a tour guide, told him that, for all of Pilanesberg’s glories, it had