Henry The Honey Badger: Back from the Dead

By Themistocles Jacks

It's the end of the season of rain in the tiny African republic of Malinda. Henry has spent most of the season with his people creature friends at Elspeth Christiaan's remote shamba in the wild bush country of the Northern District. But Henry is getting antsy. And as everyone knows, it's not good when a honey badger gets antsy. Henry feels that he's losing his edge and heads out to the wild bush for a dose of danger. And he finds it.

The land is flooded, and the widespread presence of crocodiles makes travel a problem — especially to the Reserve of the Ancients where only the naked Forest People may go. Of course, not being subject to people creature laws and treaties, elephants may go there, too. Technically, poachers may not, but they pay no attention to laws. However, they don't count on being discovered by a Long Range Reconnaissance Honey Badger, and Henry catches them in the act. Things get violent and Henry gets shot by a poacher with a heavy rifle. But Henry has friends who go after the poachers, and things get very violent.

Henry isn't the only one on the move. Patti the Stewardess returns to Malinda. A remarkable eccentric, an engineer and physician, Patti arrives just in time to operate on Henry and save his life.

Meanwhile, the megayacht Sun King, on a spy mission to track Australian submarines is another setting for treachery and mayhem and murder.

But all is not lost, and as so often happens in Malinda, there is a healthy dose of courage, honesty, repentance, mercy and romance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781667883960

Book preview

Chapter 1

Henry was getting antsy. And as everybody knows, it’s not good when a honey badger gets antsy.

He had spent the season of rain hanging around the Heifer Boma, Elspeth Christiaan’s remote shamba in the wild bush country of the Northern District of Malinda. Much of the land was flooded. Crocodiles appeared in unlikely places, and only the foolish would wander about until the waters receded. And Henry was not foolish. But he was getting antsy.

Henry had plenty of company at the Heifer Boma. Three female people creatures, from three different generations lived there: Elspeth Christiaan, Marea Thembekile and Cassandra Hurt. Henry considered them his friends, and he enjoyed their company, but he was still getting antsy.

Soon, the waters would recede and the sun would turn the moist land a dazzling green. The plains game would drop their newborn to feast on the tender young grass. Then, the predators would gather to feast on the tender young flesh. And then, the safari season would begin. But that was still more than a month away and there was much to do in preparation.

*****

Cassandra Hurt was the youngest of the three women at the Heifer Boma. She was principal violist for the Maatlamotse Symphony Orchestra. Madam Riley had asked her to be part of a string quartet she was forming to play at weddings and other fancy occasions. Madam Riley was a small, trim woman, but as they say at the Old Royal Malinda Boxing Club, she punched well above her weight. She was first violin of the symphony and exercised tremendous influence over the conductor and the orchestra. She was also Major Riley’s mother, so of course, Cassandra had little choice but to say yes.

It was clear to anyone with eyes there was a smoldering romance growing between Cassandra and Major Riley. Marea, at age 61, and Elspeth, 30 years older, both widows, found this delightful. It brought back memories of their own courtships and marriages. But they noticed that lately, as Major Riley visited Cassandra more frequently, Henry disappeared into the bush after greeting the major. This puzzled the two women.

Elspeth said, Henry, why do you disappear whenever the major appears?

Marea said, Henry, you wouldn’t be jealous, would you? Do you have a romantic crush on Cassandra?

Henry shuddered. A romantic crush? That’s gross! She’s a people creature. I’m a honey badger, not a pervert.

Elspeth said, Why do you run off into the bush when the major arrives? Don’t you think that’s rude?

Henry said, Rude? No way! I’m being polite! See, there are these things we honey badgers call pheromones. And when those two get near each other, the place reeks of pheromones. I don’t know how you people creatures can miss it. I leave just to give them a little privacy in case they start mating.

Chapter 2

A half a world away in Texas Hill Country, there had been very little rain and the land was parched and cracked. The price of hay and alfalfa had soared, ranchers were selling off their stock, and the deer found very little browse. A fine coat of dust covered the large hangar and three Airstream travel trailers at Willyville Aerodrome, the home of Patti the Stewardess.

Patti was an oddball. She grew up dirt poor, her parents sharecropping cotton in the dry Texas Panhandle. But Patti was smart. Really smart. She went off to study engineering at the University of Texas at age 15 and graduated first in her class three years later. She took a year off to travel through Europe, then went to medical school. She was commissioned in the US Air Force and served as a doctor and flight surgeon. And there, she met the love of her life. But that had been a long time ago when her name was Patricia Craddock.

Patti had always loved medicine. She considered being a doctor an ancient and sacred calling. But times had changed. Medicine had changed. Physicians were being taught to palpate iPads instead of patients. And Patti the Stewardess was getting antsy.

*****

On the Big Island of Hawaii, a beautiful girl in a sarong the colors of the sea and the sky took refuge from a rain shower under a pop-up at the farmer’s market in Waimea. A woman stood behind a table with a stack of flyers and asked her to sign a petition. She pointed to a map that had a piece of coastline outlined in red and said, That land has just come up for sale, and a developer wants to buy it and build a big resort. We want to stop that. Will you sign our petition?

Leilani Moana said, Why do you want to stop it?

The woman said, Ordinary people have used this beach for generations. So many times, the developers promise we will have beach access, but it’s often limited to a tiny section of the beach with very little parking nearby.

Leilani studied the map. She felt tears coming. The beach was where she and Tommy had made their private vows before he departed in his tiny sailboat, Aukai, on an ill-fated voyage to Tahiti. The beach was where they first made love, and where the baby growing in her womb was conceived. She thought, I couldn’t save Tommy, but maybe I can save our beach.

Indifferent to the rain, she walked to Tommy’s old truck and placed a WhatsApp call to a man in Zurich.

*****

On a tiny island almost a thousand miles to the south, a naked man was building a boat with what he had been able to recover from the wreckage of the Aukai after the small craft had been destroyed by a tremendous explosion in mid-ocean near the Equator. At the time of the explosion, the sea had been flat, and he had rowed his small rubber dinghy some distance away in order to take photographs of the Aukai. It saved his life.

He knew a great deal about building boats, but always had used modern power tools. He had a Japanese bayonet he found in the cave he slept in, but it was too precious to use on rough work. Instead, he used stone, shell, and wooden tools that he fashioned himself. He was very disciplined, but the work was painstaking and proceeded very slowly.

*****

In the waters off Indonesia, there was very little discipline aboard the megayacht Sun King. The captain was drunk. When the ship’s owner, Mr. Oug, died, he was duct-taped into his electric wheelchair and stowed in the ship’s commercial freezer, boxes of premium Alaskan king crab legs stacked on his frozen lap.

Mr. Oug had been born in poverty, and in his very long life, through cunning, hard work, and a steadfast belief in the market potential of vice, had become one of the richest men in the world. But old things need a lot of maintenance, and Mr. Oug employed the services of two specially trained nurses, Kiki and Tiki, with whom he had become acquainted in a brothel in Bangkok. He was a good judge of people. Both girls were good natured and did, in fact, take very good care of him. If Kiki and Tiki had good hearts, Mr. Oug did not. He had three bovine heart valves that were still ticking, years beyond their expected useful life. Kiki and Tiki were careful with his diet, and insisted he get some exercise daily. Mr. Oug agreed, but was adamant that his sole exercise routine was what might be politely called, intimate physical therapy. Kiki and Tiki called it, making boom boom.

But sometimes, people overdo their exercise routines, and one day, despite his nurses’ admonitions, Mr. Oug made too much boom boom. Kiki and Tiki did not want to go back to the brothel in Bangkok, and the captain did not want to work on a dry ship. And so, Mr. Oug was stored in the freezer to remain preserved, and wheeled out for brief public appearances when the ship was in port.

Freed from their medical duties, Kiki and Tiki spent their days sunbathing nude and frolicking in the ship’s pool, greatly increasing the captain’s beer intake and testosterone output. The beautiful, young waitress in the abbreviated livery of a naughty French maid sometimes joined Kiki and Tiki in the pool, but meals still had to be served and it was her duty to serve them. Her name was Miss Li, and she had other, more secret duties, as well.

Chapter 3

Patti the Stewardess would soon be free from her medical duties. Her hospital had been acquired by a conglomerate, and the latest HR directives meant her experience, excellent record and board certifications were no longer considered sufficient. Additional training was mandatory. Patti attended the first hour of it and considered it to be nonsense and a waste of time. Ms. Alberta Gessler, MSW, the new hospital director, told Patti, in no uncertain terms, that if she wished to remain a hospital employee, she must complete the training and write a 1,000 word essay on what she learned and how she intends to use that knowledge to become a more compassionate, respectful, empathetic, impactful health care provider. Patti decided that she didn’t wish to remain a hospital employee.

Patti checked her hair and makeup, and satisfied, picked up her purse and locked the Airstream’s door behind her. There was a thin coat of dust on her Ford F-150’s windshield, and she drove to the side of the hangar, uncoiled a hose and washed the windshield off. She looked in the hangar at her airplane, the Texas Belle, a beautifully restored Twin Beech that left the factory in Wichita, Kansas in 1948. Officially, it belonged to her and Steve, but after the accident, she had never been able to bring herself to change the registration.

Patti climbed into her truck, buckled her seatbelt, and set off for her final day at the hospital.

*****

Henry looked up at the clearing skies and decided to set off for the wilder parts of the wild bush country. He put on his GoPro camera head mount and checked the compass he wore on his left foreleg. He was a member of Ghost Force and the first and only Long Range Reconnaissance Honey Badger. He knew well that things could happen that need documenting, and Henry was serious about his duty.

As everyone knows, honey badgers are extraordinarily ferocious. But few people realize that when honey badgers are among friends, they are very respectful. And thus, because Elspeth was the eldest of the women and the owner of the shamba, Henry approached her and said, Mma, thank you for letting me stay here, but I think I’m losing my edge and need a dose of danger.

Elspeth said, I take it you’re going off by yourself.

He said, Yes, like White Fang, I feel the call of the wild.

Cassandra said, We’ll miss you, Henry.

Henry said, Of course you will. You three are dullards, and I’m the life of the party. He clapped his paws and laughed at his own joke.

Marea said, Yes, you are. But you should be careful out there. The waters haven’t fully receded and there are likely crocodiles in unlikely places.

Henry said, I know, mma. And with a little luck, maybe they’ll eat all the hyenas. But there will also be fish and a lot of river creatures that I can’t get any other time of the year. We honey badgers call them ‘seasonal delicacies.’

He turned to Cassandra and said, Thank you for all the music, mma. I’ve composed a farewell aria I’d like to perform and dedicate to you.

Cassandra said, Thank you, Henry. I’m honored. And I’d love to hear it.

Henry stood on his hind legs and cleared his throat, which as everyone knows, sounds like a dump truck with a bad starter motor. Then, he tilted his head back and sang.

"Oh, give me a home where I hunt and I roam,

And the meerkats try vainly to hide,

Where honey from bees is found in the trees,

  And hyenas commit suicide."

The three women applauded. Henry bowed and flexed his muscles like a body builder, showing off the tattoo on his belly.

Your bones will break

Before my jaws

Elspeth said, Bravo, Henry! Your belly fur is getting a bit long. We can still read your tattoo, but you might want to go see Verity Olabumba and get it trimmed.

Henry said, I plan to do that, mma, as soon as I get my honey badger groove back.

None of the women were surprised. As everyone knows, Verity Olabumba is the kindest women in Nyati, maybe even in all of Africa. But not everyone knows that she was also the very first people creature Henry befriended. And for honey badgers, the first one is always special.

But bad things can happen to good honey badgers, and Henry never made it to see Verity.

*****

Patti the Stewardess sat in a chair next to the hospital bed and the ancient woman lying in it. A nurse came in. Are you alright, doctor? You’ve been here for two days.

Patti smiled. I’m fine. I went home a few hours ago, took a shower and changed my clothes. Thank you for asking.

The nurse said, Does she have any family?

Patti looked around the room. I don’t see any here. You might want to check the closet.

The nurse said, Are you all she has?

Patti said, Apparently so. And she thought, And she’s all I have. She’s my last patient.

The nurse looked at the old woman and shook her head.

Patti nodded. The nurse smoothed the old woman’s covers and left.

Patti remembered when she was a young doctor and the nurses wore crisp white dresses. Doctors wore white lab coats. She remembered the pride she felt when she received her white lab coat in med school. It made it easy for patients and families to know who they were talking to. Now, they all wear scrubs, and it’s hard to tell if the man in the cheap pajamas is the surgeon or the cafeteria cook. But there were still a few dinosaurs. Patti the Stewardess didn’t wear pajamas, to bed or to work. She wore a dress and a white lab coat.

Except for her time in the Air Force, Patti always wore the same simple dress she had been sewing for herself since she went off to college. It was based on a stewardess uniform she saw in a magazine ad. She liked the looks of it and decided that’s what she would wear. It was, in effect, her uniform. She sewed several, and wore one every day at the University of Texas. Fortunately, she was an engineering student and not expected to dress fashionably. After graduation, she went on a backpacking trip through Europe. This was a time long before cellphones and instant communications, and her ten-year old sister Mollie, the baby of the family, had been buried for two weeks before Patti learned of her death. She cut her trip short, and on the flight home from Rome, she decided to become a doctor.

Chapter 4

It was mid-morning in Waimea. Business was not exactly booming, and the lawyer was organizing his file cabinets when the phone rang.

Aloha, Law office.

Good morning, sir. This is Hans Huber calling.

The lawyer brightened. Good morning, Hans. How are things in Zurich?

Spring is very beautiful here. You should come visit on holiday sometime.

The lawyer said, I would love to, but work is too busy.

That wasn’t true, but it’s never a good idea to tell clients that you’re treading water.

Hans Huber said, I hope you can find some time to help me with a project.

The lawyer said, I will always find time to help you, sir.

Hans said, Good! The project I have should produce a sizeable fee for you, but payment will be on the condition of absolute confidentiality. No one else in your firm, not even your wife, must know the identity of the client. Before we proceed any further, I will need you to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

The lawyer said, That should not be a problem. Email me an NDA. I’ll read it, and if I agree, sign it and send it back.

Hans Huber said, I have just sent it. Please call me back with your decision.

*****

Narcissa Dikeledi Kajembe Dzerzhinsky de Moi Oug was still in Singapore, nursing and magnifying her grievances, which were legion. Over the years, she had accumulated many names by marriage and fraud, and had never given the matter much thought. A name was simply a brand, and when a brand lost its luster, she got a new one.

But the circumstances of her recent marriage to Mr. Oug infuriated her. His nurses, Kiki and Tiki were beautiful and barely older than her own daughter, now wasting her life in a hut on Hawaii, mooning over that nothing sailor boy whose boat she had paid the thin man to have blown up at sea. But Narcissa was still breathtakingly beautiful and understood the weaknesses of men on a visceral level. Mr. Oug had wanted her, and she convinced him that to have her, he had to marry her. And give her a wedding gift of 100 million dollars.

He had agreed and signed the prenup. Their wedding was a two minute affair held aboard the Sun King. The nuptial night was much longer and involved Kiki, Tiki, a mysterious potion they called Dragon Phoenix, and much boom boom.

When Narcissa awoke the next afternoon, Mr. Oug was gone. Kiki and Tiki were gone. The Sun King was gone. And most importantly to Narcissa, the prenup, marriage certificate, and 100 million dollars were gone.

Chapter 5

The old woman’s shallow breathing had stopped. Patti the Stewardess removed the stethoscope from her ears and checked the woman’s pupils. She glanced at her watch, and pronounced the woman dead at 6:17 AM Central Daylight Saving Time.

Patti stayed with her until the undertaker arrived a little after 7:30. Then, she drove back to her Airstream trailer at the end of the runway, took a long shower, set the alarm for 3:00, and went to bed.

She dreamed that she was lying on an operating table surrounded by people in fast food uniforms. A woman in a Chick-fil-A uniform asked her, How do you feel?

Patti said, I feel fine. What am I in here for?

The woman said, For surgery.

Patti said, What kind of surgery?

The woman shrugged. I don’t exactly know. I’m just the anesthesiologist. Better ask the surgeon. She pointed to a tall man in a Burger King uniform."

Patti called to him, What kind of surgery am I having?

He opened his hands and said cheerfully, Whatever kind you want. At Burger King, you can have it your way.

A nurse in a McDonald’s uniform held up an enormous syringe. Can I supersize this for you?

Colonel Sanders appeared in his white suit, He held up a cane in his right hand and a gall bladder in his left. He smiled and said, It’s finger lickin’ good!

The surgeon selected a Ginsu knife from a surgical tray and held it over her. Just as he was about to make the incision, her alarm went off.

*****

The lawyer gasped and tried to process what the man from Zurich had just said.

Hans, could you repeat that?

Hans Huber said, Of course. My client and yours, Mrs. Leilani Moana, wants to buy the property on the coast.

The lawyer said, That is a rather valuable and expensive piece of real estate. A developer is already negotiating for its purchase.

Hans said, Is there any binding contract?

No, not yet. They are haggling over price and trying to obtain concessions from the state.

The man from Zurich said, Then there shouldn’t be any problem with her buying it.

The lawyer said, No, not if she can secure financing.

She wishes to pay cash.

The lawyer said, Cash? The asking price of the property is twenty three million dollars.

The man from Zurich said, That is not a problem.

The lawyer took a deep breath and said, What do you want me to do?

"We have already established a charitable foundation here in