Richard Dik-Dik: Chapter 1
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Of all the ways to die, Richard Dik-Dik prayed for a poacher. But not just any poacher: He dreamt of being shot squarely between the eyes by a true titan of industry, the kind of man who makes billions in asbestos brake linings or fracking fluid.
A death like this, Richard thought, would be noble. He wouldn’t have to wake with his neck in the mouth of a jackal, or be pulled apart in a tug-of-war between two ravenous baboons. He wouldn’t go mad from drought, or asphyxiate on volcanic ash from Nabro. One quick, painless shot, then a first-class flight back to Montana or Mexico City to be stuffed and mounted — what more could a young dik-dik ask for?
But Richard didn’t know yet that dying was forever, or that poachers use snares. At two months old, he didn’t know that he could aspire for more than a clean shot and a handsome mount. He was a dik-dik, after all, and this was the brush land of Africa: you eat, you run, and you hide from things.
So Richard ate, he ran, and he hid — from pythons, from leopards, from caracals and hyenas. He hid from giant eagles and wild dogs, from cheetahs and lions and crocodiles and genets and those asshole monitor lizards that ate his grandpa a few weeks after he was born. His grandmother had just finished her morning bowel movement, and grandpa was busy making a small poop on top of hers to mask her scent, a dik-dik custom.
“When you really love a woman, you’ll do that, too,” his mother said, gesturing her chin toward grandpa, still crouched over his dung pile. “But everything in time, Richard.” She paused, tallying something quietly to herself. “You still have 172 days until your dad chases you off our territory,” she deduced. “And then eight or nine more days to find the perfect partner.”
It sounded callous, but it wasn’t meant to be. It was literal and precise, and that was everything for dik-diks. The day he was born, his mom and dad blessed him with the most sacred verse of their species: May you run fast and die faster. They recited it together in unison quietly over Richard, his legs wobbly and eyes still adjusting to the faint haze of tsetse flies in the morning sun. Humans pray for long and prosperous lives. Dik-diks pray for mercy. His parents wasted no time filling Richard’s head with the bleak lessons that would follow him everywhere: Always run in a jagged line. Danger is outmaneuvered, but never escaped. If there is a wolf behind you, another wolf lies ahead.
Richard wished his mom would chase him off, not his dad. At least she would send him off with a mouthful of num-num berries, or let him stay an extra night or two on the edge of the territory. She wouldn’t charge at him, either, or puff her chest in a senseless display of male aggression. But that’s not the way of dik-diks, nor of humans. It’s a timeworn tradition: Mothers chase off daughters, and fathers chase off sons.
A chill spread across Richard’s insides, the kind of panicked cold that comes when you are forced to grow toward your fears. Most dik-diks just accept that life is short, and childhood even shorter, so why worry? Yet Richard worried habitually, day and night: about leaving his mother, and whether he would ever see her again; about the best kinds of shrubbery to hide in, and the perfect height of grass; and about the complex laws of land prospecting, and whether it was safer to settle on eight acres, or eighty-three. He had just begun to worry about mating, and the perplexing mechanics of it all, when he heard his grandmother’s unmistakable cry.
“Holy Mother Thrice Admirable!” she yelled from somewhere nearby in the thicket. She wasn’t actually Catholic, but was a big fan of the pamphlets they scattered around the nearby villages. Reading material was scarce in the animal kingdom, and the Catholic Missionaries were prolific.
Grandpa chuckled. “She does love her a good Jesus booklet,” he mumbled, having finished his bowel movement and moved on to cowering beneath a small rock ledge, chewing a succulent pile of shoots he had gathered before sunrise. It never occurred to him that she was trying to warn him, her celestial proclamations not actually devotions of faith, but fear.
In hindsight, she should have sounded a warning whistle. It’s what dik-diks are named for: an airy, deflated warning cry, like blowing a wooden train whistle with one too many holes in it. It’s the sound of a dollar store tea kettle, or of a young girl with braces playing a piccolo for the first time. The whistle comes from the nose, not the mouth, all hot air and loosely puckered nostril.
Grandma Dik-Dik didn’t whistle, though. Instead, she yelled out for the Blessed Mother, Queen of Heaven and the Star of the Sea. She wailed one last time for Our Lady of Guidance, Mary the Mother of Sorrows, and She Who Knows the Way. It was a losing proposition from the start. When you need help, it’s best to cry for help. Crying for God, in the brush lands of Africa, is just crying.
The White-bellied Go-away bird had just returned to the acacia tree, her belly full of termites and seeds and the rotting morsels of fruit she once regurgitated for her children at each of thirty-six meals a day. The kids had been real assholes to her, and she didn’t miss them.
Or maybe they hadn’t, and she did. She was growing senile now, and it was hard to sort through all the conflicting versions of her own life story. She thought she remembered that she hated being a mother, all the incessant protecting and feeding and teaching and needing. She also remembered loving it, too — the sense of purpose, the pride, even the weariness and sorrow.
She felt a small flutter overcome her tiny bird heart, and she knew this must mean the latter was the truth: her children had loved her, and she them, and in her final months and days they were together in spirit. But she also suspected it could just be an arrhythmia, or a trifle of gas from eating too many acacia pods.
Even in her final months, her mohawk was still perfectly coiffed, a vibrant blue-gray with tips like blackberry wine. She was dignified and beautiful, still a great protector of the brush lands. She watched the three monitor lizards approach from a safe distance, thoroughly repulsed by the brashness and vulgarity of their death march. It began as a bloated and crass clomping that didn’t bode well for surprising anyone, much less devouring them. With each step, though, the lizards skulked into a more sinister mode of transport, quieting their steps and quickening the pace. They paused every now and again to smell the air with their forked tongues, then disappeared into the sun-scorched thicket. Like all great threats, they were either painfully obvious or completely invisible. It was entirely up to you.
The White-bellied Go-Away bird didn’t need to watch their every move to know who they were hunting. That much she knew all along. The tired old grandpa dik-dik, like many mammals in their golden years, had given up entirely on discretion and decorum. Ragged and weary from years of running and hiding, he had slipped into complete carelessness. He stopped waiting until after dark to forage for food. He began chewing with great volume and gusto. And he had taken to limping lately, the ligaments in his knees wrecked from years of mild overpronation. To the surrounding populace, grandpa dik-dik was a free meal. In no time, he would find a taker.
Yet the old bird admired him, even saw a bit of herself in him. Go-away birds, like dik-diks, are watchers, also named for the calls they sound at the earliest hint of danger. For that alone she owed him the courtesy of her warning. She cleared her throat and stiffened her posture, fully aware that this could be her final act of altruism. “Gwa, gwa,” she called. “Gway, Go-wayeer!”
It wasn’t much use. Grandma Dik-Dik’s impassioned liturgy was all anyone could hear, a frantic recitation of every name for the Blessed Virgin she had ever read. Mary, Full of Grace, Mother of God and Queen of Heaven. Santa Maria. Nuestra Señora de los Milagros.
The monitor lizards kept marching, two of them splitting course to flank the unsuspecting grandpa from either side. The third prepared to pounce from above, dropping directly into Grandpa Dik-Dik’s morning hideout and sealing off his only path of escape.
“Gwa, Gwa, GWA,” the Go-Away bird called louder. “Gway, GWAY! Go-wayeer, go-wayeer!”
“Baaa, screw it,” she resigned, overcome by the same scratchy throat and general sense of malaise a human might take a lozenge for, or a hot tea with honey, or a shot of bourbon and a menthol. The Go-Away bird deflated her chest and retracted back into her nest, turning her head away from the inevitable. She should rest, she thought: The insects had woken her before four o’clock, their chorus of erratic clicks and chirps calling her to breakfast far too early. She didn’t need to watch another death. She needed to find one of her very own.
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Read Chapter 2 here: https://medium.com/@joshuamerritt/richard-dik-dik-chapter-2-1c13ce4e60eb
