White Dog Fell From the Sky (18 page)

“I didn’t come just for
lions.”

“What did you come for
then?”

She turned toward him. “I’ve
loved everything about being with you today. Even the worst of it.”

They drove back toward camp slowly, taking a
detour to try to find the man he’d been looking for the other night. He pulled off
the track and headed overland across scrub savannah. They bounced along as the light
slanted into gold. She didn’t see the group of grass huts until they were nearly
on top of them, built in a loose circle near a water hole. Two women sat outside, one
with a baby at the breast. Several children played near a small fire. She recognized
Ngwaga’s name as Ian greeted the group in a language of clicks and pops.

“They say he’s coming back
soon,” he told Alice. An old woman joined the group and looked at them curiously.
Her small breasts hung flat on her chest. Her eyes were small, intelligent,
distant-looking. One of the younger women offered them a cup of tea and biltong. The tea
tasted like ashes, like red dust and sun.

She looked at Ian, squatting companionably
near the three women. He wasn’t handsome in any conventional sense, but his eyes
were extremely blue. Blue enough to disarm, to take up space of their own. She guessed
he was somewhere between ten and fifteen years older than she was. She hadn’t
bothered to ask. He offered cigarettes to the group, and they smoked together
companionably as the color seeped slowly out of the sky. Ngwaga finally returned with a
skin bag slung
over one shoulder and embraced Ian. He was a
healthy-looking man with a small white scraggle of a beard, deep horizontal lines
running across his forehead, and a ready laugh. When he went to shake Alice’s
hand, he held out just his fingers, warm and leathery. They set out in the Land Rover,
the three of them sitting side by side, making their way slowly over darkening scrub,
back to the main track. At one point, Ngwaga pointed to her and laughed, nudged her leg
with his skinny thigh.

“What did he say?” she asked
Ian.

He didn’t answer her.

“Tell me.”

“That my woman has long legs like an
ostrich.”

She laughed. “Big feet like one
too.” She let the “my woman” go.

She had no idea how Ian found his way. It
was night when they returned, with the others already eating dinner around the fire.
“Any food left?” Ian asked.

“Goat stew,” said Shakespeare.
“Plenty left.” He’d returned with the replacement fuel line.

She sat on the other side of the fire from
Ngwaga and Ian, who passed a bottle of wine between them. The darkness took up all the
space around them. The moon was a curved palm low in the sky. Alice couldn’t take
her eyes off Ngwaga. He sat in a circle of firelight, disturbing nothing, in harmony
with fire, night, stars. He spoke with his hands, his tongue clicking as he formed
words. He filled a small pipe with tobacco and lit it. When he’d had a few puffs,
he turned to Ian and spoke for a while. When he’d finished, Ian nodded, grew
quiet, and stared into the flames. A few minutes later, Ian crossed to the other side of
the fire and sat down next to Alice.

“Okay?” she asked.

He nodded. “You?”

“Yes, what was he saying just
now?”

“A story his grandfather had told him.
About how the wind used to be a man. But then Wind no longer walked as he used to do, he
no longer slept with his wife. He flew about. ‘That is how the wind
behaves,’ he said. ‘It flies about. It goes from place to place to place,
always
moving, never standing still. You are a man like that. A man
who is part wind.’”

“Do you think that’s
true?”

“Yes.”

“Does it worry you?”

“To be so entirely
transparent?”

“I mean the wind part.”

“I’ve never been otherwise. But
I guess it serves as a warning.”

“For me? I already knew it.”

Across the fire, Sam said, “Ngwaga
wants to know what happens to the spacemen who walk on the moon when the moon becomes
smaller.”

“What do you think happens?” Ian
asked him.

“They must only take trips to the moon
when the moon is full,” Ian translated. “They must hurry to accomplish their
work. And as it grows smaller, they must run to the side without the bite out of it. And
when it’s time to come back, they wait until the moon is setting, and then they
jump to the Earth.”

“You’re not going to let him
keep thinking that,” said C.T.

“Why not?” asked Ian. “Why
shouldn’t he think that?”

“Because it’s wrong.”

“
You
explain it then,”
said Ian. “Alice and I were just going anyway.”

It was not gracefully or graciously done.
And part of her didn’t like that he’d spoken for her. She excused herself,
said good night, and left the light of the fire. She found Ian standing in the shadows,
halfway to the tents.

“You’re a bit of a hothead,
aren’t you.”

“That was boorish of me,” he
said. “But I had to get away from that prick.”

“My boss?”

“Why, do you like him?”

“I don’t dislike him.”

“He’s a conventionally minded
little man. He ought to be adding columns of figures instead of the job he’s
doing. Why shouldn’t people believe what they want to believe about the
moon?”

He peered at her in the darkness. “Are
you happy?”

“Why do you ask?”

He pulled her toward him and kissed her. His
mouth was soft and tasted of wine. Something in her head said, This man is a
rapscallion.

She expected he’d ask to come to her
tent. She had no answer for him, but she knew there was no will left in her. As though
hearing this, he said, “We don’t have to hurry. We have all the time in the
world.”

Do we? she wanted to ask.

“Don’t you feel that?” he
asked.

“No.” She felt hot now,
feverish. She took off the light jacket she was wearing and threw it over her arm. She
began to cry softly.

“Shall I come to you tonight
then?”

She began to shake. “No.”
Something had grown too full in her to be held. She could love this man, given half a
chance, and it scared her silly and shattered her with happiness. She could hardly see
him in that light. He moved closer and drew her body to his. She cried harder.

“What?”

“Don’t worry,” she
said.

“What?”

“I’ve been pent up.” She
stopped abruptly and wiped her nose on her sleeve like a child. She hated to cry.

“You’ve been living like a
Hartford housewife.”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“I didn’t say it was. But it
wasn’t in your nature.”

She squeezed his arm with both hands.

“I’m too old for you,” he
said.

“What difference does it
make?”

“It makes a difference. Think about
it.”

“I have.”

“You don’t know who I
am.”

“I know enough.”

“What do you know?”

“You’re uncivilized.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve been watching
you.”

“And I you.”

“And what have you seen?”

He paused. “You’re bright and
brave, and you’ve been hurt. Your best time is early morning.”

She laughed. “Your best time is when
the moon rises.”

They stood side by side, her head against
the top of his arm.

“Well good night then,” she
said.

“You’re going?”

“Yes.” But then she
didn’t. They went back to the campfire and found no one there. Ian kicked up the
ashes with his boot and threw on a couple of hunks of wood. A shooting star flared
across the edge of her vision, and then she wasn’t sure whether it was a star or a
spark from the fire rising into the darkness. And there was the moon over the top of the
low trees, shining with all its distant mountains and valleys. She looked at him out of
the corner of her eye and saw a shaggy head, dark against the light of the fire.

“What are you thinking?” he
asked.

“That you look like a beast in this
light.”

“Friendly or savage?”

“Midway.”

The fire hit a pocket of air inside a log
and exploded.

Over the following two days the group met
with Bushmen leaders outside of Maun, and with a group of ranchers, all of whom managed
large herds of cattle. One of Alice’s jobs was documenting conversations with
groups whose positions felt irreconcilable. Arthur Haddock was immovable. He’d
return to Gaborone and talk with his wife of forty-five years about the primitive men
he’d met who were still running after wild animals with bows and arrows.

The roads were very bad: deep sand, deeper
ruts, rocks jutting up unpredictably here and there. One or another vehicle got stuck
and had to be dug out. On the way to Sehitwa, the truck had a flat, then a shock
absorber on one of the Land Rovers went. The temperature gauge on the second Land Rover
began climbing, and after changing the tire on the truck, it spiked up to the danger
zone. The three
vehicles stopped. “The gauge is bad,” said
Shakespeare optimistically. He put his hand companionably on the hood. He filled up the
radiator, and they started out again. The gauge stayed in the red zone. They stopped
again. “Could be a leak somewhere,” said Will.

“I say we turn around,” said
Haddock.

“We’ve got two more
vehicles,” Alice said. “Why would we turn around?”

Will lay down in the sand and wriggled
underneath the Land Rover. He came back out. “The radiator’s taken one too
many rocks.” He had a short conference with Shakespeare and Sam, who rummaged
around in a tin box and brought out a container of pepper. They let the radiator cool
down, then Shakespeare removed the radiator cap, measured out a couple of teaspoons of
pepper into the palm of his hand, and threw in the grains.

They let it sit for a quarter of an hour so
that the grains could settle and plug the hole, brewed tea by the side of the road, and
started up the vehicles again. The gauge went down and stayed down for an hour or so,
but then began climbing again. They arrived in Sehitwa close to nightfall, and Sam went
looking for a mechanic. It turned out the only one around was away for the week up near
the Caprivi Strip. “We can stay here and wait for the guy to get back,” said
Will, “we can take a chance and go on, or we can limp back to Maun. I’d say
we go back. There are too few vehicles on the road if we get into trouble. The good Land
Rover can follow the other.”

“Trip’s over,” Haddock
said, with something close to satisfaction.

“Trip’s not over,” said
Alice. “That leaves one vehicle.” She’d wanted to get to the Tsodilo
Hills ever since coming to Botswana. She’d seen pictures of San paintings on red
rocks, the strokes of their ancient brushes capturing mystery. She could picture the
lonely hills, the overhanging cliffs that protected the paintings. She knew Ian had been
there dozens of times, had copied each panel of drawings into a notebook, had studied
them stroke by stroke.

“It’s probably best to call it a
day,” said her boss.

She looked at the Chevy truck, its willing
snout, its sturdy wheels sitting in the sand, and thought it could get her there. The
moment
felt like a microcosm of her whole life—near misses, giving up
too soon. It made her want to scream, standing there in the heat, eyes stinging with
tears she had no intention of shedding.

“Don’t mind me,” she said.
“I’m going off to pee. Avert your eyes.” She walked behind the truck,
pulled down her pants and squatted. A small dribble was all there was. She pulled up her
pants and stayed behind the bed of the truck and whispered,
Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck!
She was wrong about the tears, which came without her bidding. She’d understood
through Ngwaga that the !Kung San were still living forces, their world existing beyond
the comprehension of people like her. She felt she’d been close to perceiving that
mysterious, incomprehensible world, that she would have touched it beyond Nokaneng and
Gomare, in the hills rising from the plains.

Isaac went to the small grocery store in the
Old Village to buy bread one morning, and read the news on the front page of the
paper.

South African security forces attacked
two houses in a poor neighborhood of Botswana’s capital, Gaborone, early
today, killing seven people and wounding three. A car with South African
registration plates was seen in the neighborhood of one of the houses shortly before
gunfire interrupted the predawn quiet.

According to government officials,
two men were killed by gunfire at one site, while at the other site, two men, two
women, and a child lost their lives. The incursion touched off fears of a renewal of
cross-border attacks by South African forces against African National Congress
guerrillas. The Botswana government has deplored the attacks against its citizens
and called upon the United Nations for condemnation.

The couple who ran the store were South
African, talking to a white customer when he came in. “They used
loudspeakers,” the wife said, “and told people to stay in their houses. The
South Africans had no choice really. They have to take care of this violent fringe
before they kill any more innocent people.”

The white customer said, “What about
the two women and the child?”

“Those women were connected to the ANC.
They were connected. The child couldn’t be helped.”

Isaac bought a paper and went outside. A
dove sat in a tree on the corner, singing her song. He didn’t buy bread. He would
never buy from those people again. He intended to read the rest of the story, but he
knew in his knees, in his gut what had happened and where it had happened. White Dog
followed him, her tail low. Isaac took her back to the house, gave her food and a bowl
of water, told her to stay, and walked up the road toward town. He was not sure, but he
remembered that Amen was going to teach a training course in Angola. He had not spoken
ten words to him since they’d fought. Unless Kagiso was visiting her family,
she’d have been there last night. Ontibile had been next to her, lying on the mat
on her back with her arms outstretched and her mouth open, dreaming the dreams of a
child.