By Jack Roland Costello
The mornings in South Africa began in darkness. Cold air clung to our jackets as the Land Cruiser jolted to life, headlights cutting through mist that hovered above the veld. Dawn’s first pale light revealed acacia silhouettes and long grass bowing in the breeze. Each morning meant rattling across rough tracks, eyes scanning the bush for the Big Five, the guide’s radio crackling with distant chatter. It felt as though the land itself was holding its breath, waiting to show us what it had chosen for the day.
On the first morning we found the rhino. He stood off to the side of the track, massive and solitary, his hide carrying the dull sheen of sickness. The guide spoke softly, explaining that the game wardens had treated him, and that he was on the mend. There was something ancient about him, horn curved forward like a scythe, eyes dim but enduring. I remember thinking that he looked indestructible, a living relic, a monument carved from stone.
Two days later, the monument had fallen. We came upon him again, but this time his body was stretched out in the grass, lifeless. A pride of lions surrounded the corpse. One male lifted his head as we approached, his golden mane darkened at the chin with drying blood. His jaw was crimson, as though he had been baptized in violence. Females lounged nearby, their bellies swollen with meat, the scene as casual as a Sunday picnic. The air stank of iron from the blood and decay. It was nature in its purest, most unsentimental form: one life’s end feeding another’s continuation.
Way of the Savage
The sight was grotesque, but also beautiful in an odd way. The lions licked themselves clean under the rising sun, the rhino’s husk already half-claimed by insects. This was the story no guidebook ever prepares you for, the kind of truth the bush tells in its own language.
By midday, the savagery of the bush gave way to a different kind of wager. My grandfather and I would sit outside in the shade, the heat thick on our shoulders, and play matches. We’d hold out our fists across the table, knuckles white, the dry sticks shifting faintly inside. The first guess always mattered most. Much could be learned from it, the hesitation in a voice, the too-quick call, the way a man revealed more than he intended. Each round was a contest of nerve and instinct. When you called it right, you won. When you didn’t, the loss was sharp and undeniable.
We gambled with rands, coins and bills passing back and forth with each guess. The coins rang dully against the wood; the bills fluttered in the breeze. Sweat ran down our backs while cicadas droned in the trees, the game’s rhythm taking on a gravity that far outweighed the pocket change on the table.
Lions at the Table
When the talk turned to Krugerrands, the game felt heavier. Those coins weren’t tokens, they were lifeboats. In the final years of apartheid, when violence spilled into the streets, my grandfather and grandmother wrapped them in sheets of newspaper and mailed them out of the country. Three to a package, that was the golden number. Anymore, and the weight raised suspicion. His brother had tried once, too ambitious, and the shipment was confiscated. But my grandfather, patient and deliberate, sent them piece by piece until there was enough to start a new life.
Decades later, the Krugerrands were long gone, sold to buy that life, the one his family still carries. The wager of his life had already been played, and he had won. As we sat in the shade gambling with pocket change, I realized he had once played a game far more dangerous than matches, and the odds had not been in his favor. He didn’t slay his lions; he outran them. While chaos fed on others, he slipped through its teeth.
That was what struck me most: the days mirrored each other. In the mornings, lions feasted without hesitation. In the afternoons, I watched a man who had escaped his own lions, political upheaval, mob violence, the collapse of a nation, gamble lightly with his grandson. Both scenes carried the same undercurrent: survival demanded risk, and the line between ruin and endurance was always thin.
On the last evening, as the bush faded into twilight and cicadas sang, I thought back to the rhino’s heavy body sprawled in the grass. The lions’ blood-soaked jaws haunted me, but not with horror, with recognition. Life strips away illusions. Whether in the veld or at a table with a handful of matches, everything is wagered on the thin line between loss and survival.
Postscript
When I turned 21, I was given a Krugerrand on a pendant. It isn’t just gold; it is proof of a wager once made. My grandfather smuggled coins out of South Africa the way we played matches, three to a package, each shipment a closed fist, hoping the guess went his way. My grandfather played carefully, and he won. That gamble bought his family a future, and my place in it.
When I feel the coin against my chest, I think of lions with their jaws red in the grass. They wagered with teeth. He wagered with gold wrapped in paper. Both knew survival demanded risk. Because he won, I carry the coin now, its weight a reminder that every life is balanced on chances taken. In the end, the lions, the matches, and the coin were all the same game, survival by wager, with everything on the line.
