The Last Rhino
Parts One & Two
Part 1
This is South Africa, Zimbabwe, and the town of Bulawayo. A place where you screw up your eyes, your shirt sticks to your back, the cattle are thin, and it hasn’t rained for eight months. There is nothing to do in Bulawayo except pray for your life, copulate, and drink yourself thirsty.
Fletcher Christianson is a different kind of man. People, not friends, for he has none, could quickly like him. But he’s never been the kind of man to be relied upon. Whatever anyone knew about Fletcher Christianson, they didn’t know enough. Whatever they thought he was doing, he was doing something else. There is a streak running through Fletch Christianson that every man should fear, and should any individual be unfortunate enough to light the fuse, well, it’s going to blow up in that individual’s face, a red flare of rage so that no sane person would wish to stand in proximity.
After leaving the military, where he served as a helicopter pilot, he worked for the U.S. government under the Clinton administration in Rwanda. His mission was to survey and send evidence on reports of genocide carried out by Hutu soldiers against the Tutsi tribe families. That was many years ago. For the last four years, he worked for Greenpeace, scouting for Japanese whaling ships and signalling their whereabouts to protest vessels who would want to interfere with their illegal whaling activities.
Yesterday, Fletch Christianson boarded a flight from London to Harare International Airport. At two in the afternoon, he boarded a bus bound for Bulawayo, watching young African males pick their noses and spit through the glassless windows.
The bus’s capacity, displayed on a sign, is thirty-two seated passengers. All seats were occupied when the bus set off, with twelve standing. This number increased as Fletch observed the driver honking his horn in every village the bus passed through, jamming in ever more passengers, seating them four to a double seat on each other’s laps. What made him madder still was that the passengers didn’t mind, many leaning out the windows, shouting their encouragement for others to join in the crush.
Part 2
Fletch had read about the international ban on the trade of killing or maiming rhinos for their horn, how it has created a skyrocketing demand on the black market in the last four years, leading to poaching gangs descending on Central and South Africa — home to most of the world’s black rhinos. Despite the threat of long prison sentences, the rhino continues to be slaughtered for their valuable horns.
Fletch picked up his canvas bag, a remnant of his time spent in the military, threw it over his shoulder, and looked for a taxi to take him to the address he’d been given over the phone.
Gabriel Kruger, the Chief Park Ranger, moved uncomfortably in the dust-caked swivel chair as Fletch entered and took a chair that looked like it would collapse under his weight.
“I don’t like it, I don’t like you,” Gabriel said. “Since our government passed the ‘shoot to kill’ policy to prevent the killing of our black rhinos, I’m concerned that trigger-happy mercenaries will flood in, hunt down and kill the men hunting rhinos. It isn’t justice, even if they say it is. It’s a shame, that’s all. The lawyers for human rights will have a fucking holiday on this one,” Gabriel said. “Tell me, Mr…” Gabriel looks down at a letter in his hand, “Christianson. Have you come here with the sole purpose of killing young men?”
Fletch liked the idea that there had been no formal introduction. The man got straight to the bones. “I’ve been hired by the government to protect rhinos. If, in the course of doing that, a poacher is killed, then so be it.”
Gabriel didn’t believe him for a moment. “Let me tell you about Africa, Mr. Christianson.
“Fletcher Christianson, my friends call me Fletch,” he interrupted.
“Fletcher Christianson, know this about Africa. It’s fucking heartbreak, the heartbreak of Africa. There’s a change of civilization, progress, partnership…of Africa dying. Yes, dying. Africa. My Africa is dying, take the Zimbabwe valley, that magnificent violent valley. It’s dying. It’s going to be drowned by progress. We will lose the hot soil and the feel and smell of the valley and all the animals: the lion, the rhino, the elephant and the impala. All will be lost to progress and civilization. No more lions roaring, no more trumpeting of the elephant, no more rhino calves suckling off their mothers. No more stamp of hooves, clouds of dust, and no more smell of dung. That’s why it’s sad. Progress. That’s why Africa is dying,” Gabriel said.
Fletch listened. He would swear he heard Gabriel's voice breaking. It was true. By the time Fletch left the Chief’s office, he had formed a different opinion about Gabriel, the great big South African sod was a sentimentalist. It could have been the whisky, but there was no denying Gabriel’s feeling for Africa, Zimbabwe, the beasts, the African natives, the stupidly hot soil, and the cotton bushes crying out for the rains to come.
Fletch recognized the gut inside a person who has lived his life being more than familiar with his surroundings. This is Gabriel Kruger, who understands his part in the violent savanna.
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