By Caleb McClain
The tracks from the impala crossed over each other five or six times where it had doubled back on its trail, with droplets of blood found in no discernible pattern. Our trackers conversed among themselves in their local tongue, completely confused and trying to sort out the mess I had made with my less-than-lethal shot. I’m not proud of it, but I had shot the ram on the run; he was hit hard but refused to go down without a fight. We were now a mile down the trail, with no end in sight.
“Let’s just back up and let them make sense of this,” my PH instructed.
Against my wishes, I carefully avoided any tracks as I moved out of the way and sat in the shade of some scrub brush. I watched the two trackers—a scrawny man named Phillipe and a pot-bellied man the size of a doorframe named Manasseh—carefully decipher the inscrutable clues in the sand, leapfrogging around each other as they navigated the tangled knot of the ram’s trail. It was intriguing to watch them work. I hadn’t actively had the trackers out before, as we had an apprentice PH in that role, so I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing a tracker read the cues of the veld as if it were a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. One would stay back as a marker for the most recent confirmed sign while the other took a few steps, occasionally pointing at the ground or in the logical direction the impala might have gone. That’s when I noticed it.
Trackers at Work
That man only has a thumb on his right hand. I bet it’s a hell of a story. He probably got tangled up with a wounded cat on the track and lost his hand defending himself. That man’s big enough to kill a cat with his bare hands—he probably fought it off while it was gnawing on him. I bet that’s what happened.
After they sorted out the giant mess I had created, we broke for a quick lunch, assuming the ram would lay down to rest while we ate. I knew the ram would be dead by sundown, and we would get him in the salt soon, so I felt no worry or unease about the circumstances. Still, the question of how Manasseh lost his hand burned inside me until I couldn’t hold it any longer.
I put down my sandwich and looked across the dining table at my PH. “All right, I have to ask: What happened to Manasseh’s hand? Was it a cat attack or something?”
Love Hurts
My PH laughed. “Well, you see, despite his appearance, Manasseh is a ladies’ man. One night, he was with one of his girlfriends when her husband came home. When the husband caught them, he ran to the porch and grabbed his machete.” My PH began miming, acting as both Manasseh and the husband. “As the man swung the blade, Manasseh threw his hand up and caught the blade across the palm, slicing through it.”
“You’re full of it. No way.”
“It’s true. Want to hear the best part?” I nodded in response. “They’re still dating.”
The story wasn’t the harrowing tale of man-eaters I had expected, but it taught me a valuable lesson: the band Nazareth was right when they sang, “Love hurts, love mars.”
