Golden Boy by Tara Sullivan

the worst seat, but I’m glad to be far away from that man and his predatory smile, even if it does mean sitting on pieces of a dead animal.
    We drive out over the plains through the long dusk. Though the others chat, I keep quiet. Asu and Mother are up with Alasiri and, after he went to sit with Alasiri at dinner, I don’t want to talk to Chui, either. So I fold myself into my long clothes and stare up at the bright stars beginning to dot the Serengeti sky above me and wish away the hours until we can leave this man and his wretched ivory behind.
    We drive mostly north, bumping over wild grassland and dried creek beds. As Chui and I shiver in the open Jeep, vast stretches of the Serengeti whip past us. We drive out of our way twice on our trip to Mwanza. The first time, just as it’s darkening into night, we pass a village and Alasiri pulls over to the side of the road and tells us to wait in the car while he goes into a stand of trees. He’s gone for an uncomfortable amount of time, and then returns with four men who tell Chui and me to get out. When we do, they unload the long, curved ivory from the Jeep before letting us climb in again with our bags. As we climb back in I see one man hand Alasiri a thick roll of money. I have no idea how much it is, but Chui whispers to me that it’s in dollars, not Tanzanian shillings. This puts me over the edge.
    â€œIt’s always about money with you, isn’t it?” I hiss at him. I cross my arms and glare out of the moving car.
    â€œWhat?” says Chui, caught off guard.
    â€œYou think Alasiri is so great just because he makes all this money. But really, he’s only getting money because he’s breaking the law.”
    â€œWhat do you know about money?” Chui’s getting angry now, too. “You just sit around at home, relaxing in the shade, playing with the goats. You have no idea how hard Enzi and I work on the coffee plantation. You wouldn’t know anything about money. You’ve never earned a shilling in your whole life.”
    I’m furious at him for having a point. He’s right. No one would ever pay me to do anything, so instead of having odd jobs to help with the bills like most boys my age, I’ve had to stay home and do house chores. And only chores in the shade, at that. My guilt makes me even angrier.
    â€œSo that makes it all okay, then? It’s okay to kill an elephant and take bits from it and leave all the meat to rot? And now we’re sneaking around in the dark, hiding from the rangers. There’s no way that what he’s doing is legal. He should probably be in jail, and you
like
him.”
    Chui fixes me with a cold look of pure disdain.
    â€œDo you know how much money he just got for a few hours’ worth of work? Do you?” His voice is low and intense. He leans down to put his face closer to mine. “That was enough money to pay off all of our debts. To keep the farm. With two of those tusks I could have fixed the house for Mother, bought a second farm for Enzi to live on with that pretty girlfriend of his that none of you know about, given Asu enough to finish secondary school or get married, and still had enough left over to feed your worthless self. Or”—his eyes are big now, seeing all the things he could have had—“we could have left the farm and moved to Arusha and all lived there comfortably. Instead, here we are, stuffed into someone else’s car, with no home and no money, heading toward the charity of some relative I’ve never met.”
    There is a pause where Chui waits to see if I’ll say anything. I don’t. He leans away from me and stretches out on the packs.
    â€œNdiyo,”
he says, “to not be here right now and have all of that, I’m okay with killing one animal. To not be poor . . . yes, I would do what he does.”
    We sit there for a while in a prickly silence, each of us on our different sides of