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[u][b]Late July: Sidamo[/b][/u]
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The wet season was over, and Sidamo bloomed green. Humid forests clung to the rolling mountains of southern Ethiopia, table-top ambas partially obscured by haze in the distance, appearing like apparitions from a fairy tale land. Floyd Switzer thought it was damned foolish to build highways in this landscape. Damned expensive at least. Perhaps he was just feeling a smidgen guilty about bringing modernity to a place like this. And perhaps, somewhere deeper in his mind, he thought highways were the darkest form of modernity.

"Here." Floyd said, looking down from the tailgate at Betty Lou. She wasn't the begging type, but she always made sure to be there when food was on offer. Floyd threw a cube of stewed goat to her and she inhaled it. "You've had enough" he reproved her, but she looked up at him with sad eyes and guilted him into throwing her another.

"Schweinhund! Hosenscheisser!" August Ibel shouted in his native German. His face went plum red, but Floyd had known the man long enough to know he enjoyed rage. He was the Foreman, and an Ostafrikan, a heavily tanned white man with buzz-cut grey hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. He yelled at a pair of native African workers who'd stopped their work to stare into the wall of forest clinging to the hillside. The men went back to work. August went to Floyd's truck, wiping the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his threadbare white long-sleeve shirt.

"They say they hear growling." August said, "Growling! Imagine that! In Africa! You think they would know this is nature since they live so close to it." Floyd said nothing. After a pause, August continued. "You have the shell shock, jah?" 

"I've heard it called that."

"Well then you'll want to put your petticoats in your ears, those rocks are going to blow." August said, grinning sourly, looking up to where the African workers were fleeing the blast site. Floyd pulled a pair of rubber ear-plugs from the front pocket of his overalls and put them in. Several seconds went by he heard his own heartbeat echoing inside his skull. The explosion came to him as shaking and a dull punching sound. He flinched, paused as the sound faded to memory, and slowly unplugged his ears, breathing heavily.

"...that's why I have this." Floyd was surprised to see August had produced a long double-barreled shotgun.

"What is that for?"

"Whatever beasts are in these woods! These guns are brutal in the killing, but they are quite good. I know your Americans, you used them in your war, jah? Very brutal." he shook his head like he were reproving Floyd for it, "But animals? They don't have souls. No dishonor in using such an uncivilized weapon. I'd recommend it! Hah!" 

Floyd got up, grabbing a bundle of small flags from the truck bed. These flags were essentially just sticks with pieces of colored canvas dangling from them. He walked up to where a pair of Africans were standing with surveying equipment and went to work. Betty Lou followed, eyeing the Africans suspiciously, growling in the back of her throat as she passed them. Together, they studied the hillside changed slightly by the day's efforts, using the flags to mark what would be done the next day. The road was coming together, albeit slowly, located in the middle of nowhere. They'd started the highway project in Sidamo, connected to Addis Ababa by only the old gravel War Road, slowing the process down. The rainy season had been especially brutal in this regard. Rain washed out parts of the war road on a regular basis, delaying the flow of supplies, the laying of fresh blacktop slowing down to an inch-by-inch crawl. 

August watched the native workers clear the blast site, standing alone of a bare tuft of ground besieged by the highland wind. He paced back and forth, moving slowly toward where Floyd worked as if he was being pulled so slightly in his motions by gravity, if gravitational pull was given out by his fellow white men. 

"You are American, jah?" August asked. Floyd knew he knew the answer, it'd came up only minutes ago, but he resigned himself to the plea for conversation. "Yes." he said.

"You hear about the Imperial decree about Americans?"

"Yep." Floyd had heard it. He wasn't disturbed. After all, he had no interest in leaving.

"You know the story of Theodore the Second?" 

Floyd sniffed. He drove a flag into the ground where he'd been gestured to do so. "Maybe? I haven't paid attention to history."

August's face lit up. "Well, you see, two hundred years ago Muslim warlords overran the old Abyssinian Empire, and they entered a tribal period... a sort of warring states era. All the Rases were at war with the Muslim warlords, and they at war with each other. Then, a hundred years ago or so, a Christian warlord named Theodore came to power and united all the tribes and brought Abyssinia back together. He brought in European advisors and teachers to improve Ethiopia. So the Europeans brought new guns and ideas, but Theodore wanted more guns then they gave him. He wanted cannons. So he started writing letters to the monarchs of Europe, worried what would happen if his enemies received better weapons than him. He became paranoid, starting locking up the families of anybody he thought may be his enemy. Soon the entire country hated him, so he became more desperate for European weapons. He asked his European advisors to build him cannons. When they said they could not, he locked them in prison along with the Ethiopian nobles, and he tried to ransom them to the European monarchies in exchange for better weapons. You can see now how this is like the boy Emperor Sahle, jah?"

"I guess."

"Queen Victoria wouldn't have that. She sent an expedition to save their imprisoned countrymen. They came thinking it would be like a war, that they would have to fight their way into the interior, but when the British arrived they found the entire country hated Theodore, so the Abyssinians just guided the British to the mountain castle where the mad Emperor was hold up, helped carry their baggage and everything. And..." August tittered, "They brought the guns. Only, not to give over of course."

"Don't think it'll be like all that." Floyd replied. He watched worried as Betty Lou went up the hill, nose to the ground.

"I hope not. The British won of course. Theodore had to commit suicide."

Floyd was no longer paying attention to German. He put his hands to his mouth and yelled. "Betty Lou! Get down here!" His voice was harsh, causing some of the Ethiopians to stare at him, watching him for his intentions.

"There are things in those woods." the German laughed. "But do not worry. I have this." He patted his gun.

The sun went below the wood-line and the air cooled down. Worked came to an end. Women from the village brought fresh bread and vegetables for their men. Floyd watched the women, wearing homespun dresses, feet bare and caked in mud, hair wrapped in turbans and scarfs. There had been a time when Floyd though of finding a woman and settling down, living like a normal man. Seeing the simple relationships play out between the Ethiopians, the men smiling as they saw their wives or sister or whoever it was who brought food for them, reminded Floyd of what he was missing. His heart felt the pang of that loss. But nothing could be done. He was detached now, an observer in this world, not a participant. This fact, something he accepted as simply as he accepted gravity or Newton's laws, soothed the feeling of loss. He reached down and rubbed behind Betty Lou's ear.

Most of the men went home with their women, but some of the younger men stayed behind, camping near the freshly laid black top in spite of, or maybe because of, its acrid stink of tar and modernity. August and Floyd had their own tents away from the Africans, where they sat on folding canvas chairs with crates for tables. The two men opened cans of tinned meat, eating it with some of the bread given to them by the Africans. August shared a bottle of wine. The insect song of late afternoon serenaded them as they ate. August took an unmarked glass jar of white liquid. It looked like pus, and Floyd watched as August took some and spread it on his bread. It was strange, like watching a man spread jam on a steak. 

"You want some?" August asked.

"What is it?"

"Hippopotami lard." he said, "It's sweet. A bush delicacy. I lived on it when I was in the [i]Schutztruppe[/i]."

"No thanks." Floyd replied, looking to his own meal. The two men enjoyed a few moments of quiet. The silence seemed to itch at the German, because he soon again broke it.

"The Abyssinians are too friendly to the Communists, nein? The Commandant would have cleared BEA of their communists if the Abyssinians were not protecting them."

"I don't know much about the politics." Floyd gave a piece of gelatin covered beef to Betty Lou, who's wide eyes followed his every move as sharply as a sniper following his victim. 

"They are children. I think that is the problem. They are men of course too, these negroes I mean. Real men. If you pit a single negro against a single white man, especially a European white man, in any game of manly skill, I will bet on the success of the negro. Every time. But as a society? Huh. They don't have that quite yet. There isn't the chivalric tradition. They didn't go through the history. That is how they are children."

"Abyssinia?"

"Abysinnia has the tradition. This is true. This is a real country I think. But the other negro countries are not advanced enough yet. They are still foolish. That's why they like communism."

"I've never been to Europe, I cannot make the comparison." Floyd wasn't looking up at the German anymore. He scratched behind Betty-Lou's ears. 

"Europe is shit. The countries are too advanced, no longer make men. You go to Europe and the manliest men you'll meet are old soldiers who think hunting partridges in the forest park is a sport. In a few decades, they'll say reading a newspaper is sport! They have no country any more. Look at this. In front of us. You can't get this in Europe so easy! There, this would be polluted by many perfect little roads and manicured little inns, and industrial parks, and railroads crisscrossing and shit and shit and shit!. No, there is no real country in Europe. It's all in Africa, and the Americas. I know your people still have country. They still have men, no? Men like your Theodore Roosevelt? The white men of Europe are wasted. The true white man lives in Africa and America now. And... uh, the name of that place... Australia. There too."

"So America and Australia are the only civilizations?"

"And [i]Ostafrika[/i] of course. And Rhodesia." The German raised his wooden cup. "To America."

"To [i]Ostafrika[/i]." Floyd mimicked. He felt out of place toasting, but when in Rome...

They went into their canvas tents to sleep. Floyd slept with Betty Lou, while August brought in his shotgun, promising that he would be ready for whatever had been scaring the natives. It took a long time for Floyd to sleep. That was normal for him since the war. There was something unnatural about the darkness anymore, a feeling that it hid enemy operatives, or that any unfamiliar sound was the bombers coming back to repeat the massacre in Denver. How strange it was he dreamt evil dreams of things his own side did during the war. That was the way of the thing. What kept him up wasn't the politics after all. It was the creative bloodshed, the horrible industrial efficiency of it all. Sometimes he didn't feel like a man, but like a single stalk of grain, standing alone, open for anything to mow him down.

When he did sleep, it wasn't satisfying. His dreams were red and filled with bad memories. He relived the death of comrades over and over again every night. He knew they would only truly die when he did, and he resigned himself to that truth. But it was when the sound of bombs returned, when his head echoed with explosions that'd went silent decades earlier, that was when he woke up. He repeated this process several times a night. Every night. And he would do this forever. When the dreams were too much, he shot up, clothes soaked, the air around him humid and stifling except for the breeze through the open tent flap. He didn't weep. This was normal. Beside breathing heavy, Floyd did nothing but stare into the darkness, feeling alone, and feeling like this was the way it was supposed to be.

It took him a moment to realize Betty Lou was gone. He crawled out of the tent and into night-time Africa.

The wilderness was dark. There was no electricity for dozens of miles, and the only thing to light the night were the stars and the moon. He put on his boots, wearing only them and his long underwear. "Betty Lou!" he yelled. His voice was hoarse from sleep. He stumbled to the back of the truck and felt for a flashlight. The light flickered on. In the wild dark, the beam was strong and well defined, a thin strip of daylight in the middle of an endless nowhere. 

"Betty Lou!" 

He marched toward the forest, the light hitting the wall of deep green and stopping dead, hiding who knows what. Enemy patrols? He put that ridiculous thought of his mind. 

He heard barking. His uncertain march became a gallop. Plants slapped him as he pushed his way past.

"Betty Lou!" 

He heard her again, barking, growling, then a blood-curdling whine. She was crying. He heard something else. It was a monster sound, the slobbering growl associated with any man-eating creature in the dark. He held tight to his flash-light and ran forward.

"Betty Lou!" 

He crashed through the underbrush into a clearing. His bare arms and face stung, and he was breathing heavy. Something out of sight growled, and the sound made all his hairs stand on end. The beam of light hit where red blood stained the muddy ground. Floyd's heart jumped into his throat, then sank down like the sun. Betty Lou lay motionless in that puddle, her fur caked in blood. He started to run to her, but the growl became a violent feline roar. His light shot upward, where he saw a leopard posed in a tree, mouth wide open, pink tongue and bloody fangs bared for him to see. He froze in spot and watched in horror as the cat hopped down, standing over Betty Lou's body, moving slowly toward the unarmed man. Its spotted fur was vivid, almost bright in the beam of the flashlight.

The natives had known something was here. He hadn't seen them camping when he came out to look for Betty Lou. They'd sensed the danger and went home, because they knew better. Floyd held his flashlight like a club. The big cat sounded like an idling motorcycle as it stalked toward him.

The forest exploded all at once. Floyd didn't have time to see what had happened. He fell to his belly instinctively, his ears ringing, images of fire and blood flashing through his mind like a slideshow project possessed by death. His hands crawled over the back of his head, checking for blood, pushing his face into the mud.

"Scheizkerl!" he heard a familiar voice. The cat growled again, but their was a second explosion. A shot! The old German was laughing.

Floyd pushed himself up and plucked his flashlight from the mud. The first thing he saw was the corpse of the leopard, its face blown apart as if it'd been caught by an airplane's propeller. He swept the light to where Betty Lou was, and saw the shirtless German crouching over the dog.

"Your hound's alive." he pronounced, "And a hunting hound too! Look what a prize I just bagged!"

"Alive!" Floyd said. He was aware of his heart beating again.

"It took a beating, but I've seen dogs be dealt worse by badgers and live to howl about it. We'll have to be careful moving her."

Floyd was over her. Her wounds were ugly bleeding gashes, hard to tell how deep they were. But she was breathing. She was breathing, and she was softly whimpering. "It did a number on you, girl." he said to her, running his fingers through the fur between her ears. "But you got it. Look over. You got it."