Shooting Butterflies (27 page)

A
bakkie
load of people arrived from the TTL to help, having seen the orange light in the sky and the smoke that rose up into the darkness. They came armed with hessian sacks and a 44-gallon drum of water on the back of their
bakkie
to help fight the fire. Old Widow Crosby had been gone two years already, but memories ran deep, and many still remembered her help during the droughts, and her support of the people within the boundary of the TTL.

They gathered in a close group when they saw that nothing could be done for the barn, and murmurs could be heard as people watched the last of the barn burn black.

‘Moeketsi, take my
bakkie
and turn off the irrigation pump, there is no more we can do here,' Jamison said eventually. He dreaded having to call the owners and tell them that there had been a fire. They still didn't live on the property, allowing him to manage both what was left of the tobacco fields, and the newer safari reserve.

But things were changing.

They were after a higher income than the fledgling safari camp could raise from tourism alone, and had expressed an interest to venture into big game hunting.

Jamison had expressed his dismay.

But they were unmoving.

For the first time in ten years, Jamison felt uneasy. He was now keeping his eye out for another manager's job. He didn't want to be
manager of a hunting safari, that had never been his intention or Widow Crosby's when they set up Amarose.

But in his heart he knew that his reluctance to stay was about more than simply the hunting safaris. He couldn't shake the thought that Buffel was a hunter, and he might now visit the ranch looking for trophies. He had managed to stay hidden from Buffel for so long. He had flown under the radar, and he had found a life worth living. He didn't want to put his life on hold once more, and especially not now he had Ebony, and a baby coming.

He looked at the black charcoal and twisted metal roofing that remained of the shed and thought of the tobacco crop destroyed, that was now just ash. Embers still glowed in the dark, but the majority of the fire had subsided. Its fuel depleted, the fire was fast losing its life, and would soon be totally out.

Maidza came and stood next to him.

‘What happened?' Jamison asked, his voice thick from the smoke he had breathed in.

‘I don't know, Jamison. I swear it,' he said. ‘You were with me last night, we checked this shed together, and the fire was good. I stoked the fire at one o'clock. There were no leaves on the flume pipe.'

‘Maidza, tell me honestly. Did you go to sleep?'

‘No, Jamison, I was awake. I heard a noise, like a baboon barking, behind the shed, and I went to see what it was, but when I got back, I saw the orange glowing under the shed door, and then I could see that there was a fire.'

‘Did you find the
gudo
?' Jamison asked, alarmed.

‘No, there was nothing there.'

‘Did you see anyone running away when you returned?' Jamison asked. In the ten years he had been on the farm, they had never had a barn fire. He was careful with the fires, he checked the barns about four times during the day, and he scheduled mature men to stoke the fire during the night. Everyone knew that the vents in the bottom of the barn picked up the heat from the fires lit in the furnace, and they took the hot air from the flume pipes up to the vent
in the top of the roof so that the moisture in the barn was removed. The heat dried the leaves, not lit them on fire, unless there was an accident or an untidy shed where the leaves were allowed to fall onto the flume pipes and stay there. Their farm was run neatly and with pride by all the men and women who worked there. They were still on a profit share basis for now.

Jamison shook his head, trying to dislodge an uneasy feeling that they were being watched, just as his
bakkie
returned.

‘Moeketsi, did you see any footprints of a baboon in the water around the pump?' Jamison asked.

‘No. Not that I noticed,' Moeketsi said. But he had a look on his face, that of a tracker now wanting to look again.

‘I tell you, it sounded like a baboon, Jamison,' Maidza said.

‘First light, we meet back here, we fan out and look for spoor from this baboon. I want to make sure that he's a wild one and not a human. This shed shouldn't have gone up in flames.' He looked all around in a circle. ‘It makes no sense. Oh no—' he said as he saw an orange glow in the sky, from the direction of the safari camp. ‘Ebony!' he said. ‘Quickly, everyone in the
bakkies.
Fire at the safari camp.'

His heart raced. He knew that it wasn't a coincidence.

They had controlled the embers from the barn fire as best they could, and they had put out spot fires around when they saw them happening. The spot fires were few, the grass was green, the bottom leaves from the tobacco field closest had only just been harvested, so there wasn't lots of dry foliage around. The men from the TTL had spread out with their sacks and made sure that there was no fires on the outskirts of the tobacco field in the bush. The fire in the safari camp couldn't possibly be related.

Unless both had been deliberately lit.

He gunned the engine just as someone tapped on the roof that they were ready to go on the back. He raced as fast as he dared along the dirt road that ran down the centre of the tobacco and past the irrigation pump. He turned at the bottom onto the main road that lead through to the game reserve. The game guard on duty at the gate was nowhere to be seen, and both the gates were open.

Jamison's heart sank. He was unarmed, having run out into the night to fight a fire, not deal with wildlife.

He stopped his
bakkie.

Moeketsi jumped off the back, and after the TTL
bakkie
had followed them through, he closed the outside gate, then the inside one, all the time cautiously looking around for lion. Jamison pushed towards the camp, leaving Moeketsi to jump onto the back of the already crowded TTL
bakkie.

Jamison rounded the last bend in the road, and the scene in front of him was a nightmare. Thankfully, the main camp was untouched, but tourists were milling about, many had cameras and were running in the direction of the glow that came from the where his own house was tucked into the back of the camp.

His house.

‘Hold on there, Eb, I'm coming,' he said quietly.

He drove through the main camp, and headed towards his home.

He could see pieces of his furniture on the lawn area outside his house, the lounge suite, the dining room table, some things from the kitchen, Eb's prized chef mixer, and a toaster. His game guards were hurrying in and out carrying the furniture, trying to shift it as quickly as they could, pulling his personal possessions from the clutches of the fire, trying to save as much as they could.

Two men had the garden hose switched onto full, and they attempted to spray the burning thatch. As much water as they put on the roof, it was never going to be enough to stop the fire, but they didn't give up, hoping perhaps it might just maybe slow it.

‘Ebony!' he called as he stopped the
bakkie
and jumped out at the same time. ‘Eb!'

He could see the back end of the house was already well alight, the fire's grip on the thatch making billows of white smoke rise into the sky.

‘Ebony!' he called again, running towards the house.

‘She's over there,' Felix said as he quickly set down the television set. He motioned with his head, and Jamison looked over to where Felix had indicated.

‘Go, I got it this end,' Felix said.

Ebony lay on the grass, Joss kneeling next to her. Jamison couldn't run fast enough.

‘Eb, I'm here,' Jamison called as he ran, and soon he skidded down next to her. ‘Are you okay?'

She held her hand up to him, and he took it. Her other hand lay possessively on her stomach. ‘I'm sore, Jamison, but I'm alive. When the fire started I couldn't get out the room. I tried to push the door, but something was blocking it. I tried to climb out the window instead, but I couldn't get it open. I had to break the French windows, the glass panels with the chair, and then I had to break a hole in the timber frames. But climbing out, it was too high and I slipped, and hit my stomach on the windowsill. I got out though—I got out.'

Jamison put his hand over hers resting on her stomach, and he could see her wince.

Joss interrupted. ‘Felix and I were doing a perimeter check. We saw the fire. We thought that Ebony was still inside. But when we got to the bedroom, an old kist was blocking the door.'

‘Inside the house?' Jamison asked.

‘Someone had blocked her inside the bedroom,' Joss said. ‘But we heard her screaming still, and we went through the door and out the window after her. She was still too close to the fire, and she has breathed in lots of smoke.'

Jamison looked at his wife properly for the first time. She was dressed in her night gown, but it was torn, and she had lost the sash that closed it somewhere. He could see the ugly purple bruising across her stomach, and he quickly closed her gown as best he could. She would hate to know that she was indecently dressed.

She wore no shoes, and her legs were bloody. She had taken the skin off her shins and her knees, and there was dirt in the wounds. She still held her stomach with the hand that he didn't hold, and he could tell that pain had just ripped into her as her body tensed. She gripped his hand tightly.

‘My stomach hurts. It hurts to breathe,' she said, and tears ran freely down from her eyes, into her hair.

Jamison's heart broke.

‘Eb, I will get you to a hospital, you need help, but you are going to be okay. You have to be okay!' He squeezed her hand back. ‘Joss, go call the ambulance.'

‘Bennett went to the office already, they are on their way.'

He held onto Ebony's hand, stroking his thumb gently against her skin. Reassuring her he was there.

Deep down inside, this was his fault.

Because of him, she was hurt.

It could only be Buffel who had attempted to kill him, and hurt Ebony instead. Even though he hadn't talked, he had kept to the code.

But he had no proof. He'd had no call from his cousin to warn him of Buffel's extended absence either. Not that their warning system was infallible. Gibson often accompanied Buffel to places, but they had thought that as long as he travelled with him, they could know that he wasn't looking for Shilo.

The first fire had probably been a decoy for the workers, and Buffel hadn't counted on him getting out of his house to organise the fire fighting. Buffel had gone in to his house, and instead of trapping Shilo in his house to burn to death, it was his pregnant Ebony who had been trapped.

But Ebony was strong. She was a farm worker. She wasn't a town princess who was afraid to break a fingernail. She had found a way to save herself despite the fire, and she had got out.

He heard Felix commanding, ‘That's it, everyone stay outside.'

He looked at his home.

Felix was right, in the short time since he had arrived, it had become unsafe for anyone to go inside anymore. Everything that they hadn't got out needed to stay. It would simply burn. He was suddenly aware of the heat that came from the house. The whole roof was now on fire, and the flames played tag through the windows. The noise of the fire as it celebrated its victory in consuming the house was loud and triumphant as the level of the flames rose for a moment.

The game guards were watching for embers, and the TTL
bakkie
men were once again putting out any embers that landed with their wet sacks.

Jamison realised that in his hurry to get to Ebony, he had not instructed everyone on what to do, but somehow they had all managed to find a way to help, to work together, to be a team, even without his instructions.

The thatch on the roof slid down, off the steep pitched rafters, and suddenly the house looked like it was ringed in fire. Its black skeleton poked out from the top as if a pyre was burning.

The heat continued to push those with the hose further away from it, and the men with the bags were still unable to get in close enough to fight the real fire, as the inferno that burnt the house was still too new.

‘Go, sort out your farm,' Ebony said. ‘Joss can stay with me, then when the fire is out, we can go to the hospital together.'

‘No, Eb, there is nothing more I can do there.' He kissed and gently hugged his wife. ‘It can just burn out now.'

Together they surveying the fire from a safe distance,

Frazzled embers rained down on them, but Jamison brushed them aside. Black and grey ash streaked their clothes.

‘It is mostly gone. They saved what they could,' Ebony said as she looked at the pitiful pile of their possessions.

‘Posessions don't matter, Eb. I'm just thankful that they went in after you. You are the most precious item in that house, and nothing else really matters in this fire, except for you.'

Ebony reached up and put her hand against Jamison's cheek. He put his hand overs hers and moved it to where his heart beat in his chest.

In silence they watched the fire, as the last of the flames turned to smouldering embers, and as the sky turned from black to grey then brilliant red and orange as the sun rose, and with the smoke particles in the air, the stunning day began for the rest of Africa.

‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning,' Jamison commented.