White Dog Fell From the Sky (23 page)

Ralph whimpered and snarled. Alice hurled
several more stones, picked up a stick and brandished it. The pack didn’t seem to
realize how puny she was, and they turned tail and ran.

Ralph held up a quivering paw. She picked
him up and felt his heart beating in the tiny cave of his ribs. He shook all over and
buried his nose in her neck. She felt something like love for him then, her disdain
swept away by the force of his desire to just be happy and safe. She walked back up the
road, imagining Ralph’s fleas climbing into her hair, roistering about under her
shirt, and delivered him back to Estelle, the owner of the hotel.

She headed back out to the veranda and
descended the steps to the river where she’d intended to go in the first place.
She imagined Ian standing on the veranda looking out, but when she turned to look, it
was empty. And then something odd stirred in her, unbidden, a feeling like what a river
might experience if it were a sentient being: the willingness to erase what’s gone
before, to find a channel through.

They were to leave at seven, but
Shakespeare and Sam hadn’t turned up, not by seven, not by seven thirty.

They were down to two vehicles. One Land Rover
would stay in Maun to get its radiator repaired, and they’d cram into the other
two. They were all there waiting, except Alice.

“I’ll be down by the
river,” Ian told Will. He went inside and got a cup of coffee, really wanting a
shot of whiskey, and went out the door to the porch and stood near where he’d seen
her last night. She wasn’t there, of course. The coffee was bad. Probably warmed
over from yesterday.

A pair of fish eagles called back and forth
to each other:
weeeee-ah,
shrill, repetitive. He felt a sense of doom, and of
his own shoddiness. He had another sip of coffee and watched a turquoise kingfisher. He
should have left Maun last night. He thought about what he’d do when he reached
Nata. Find or borrow some heavy-duty bolt cutters. Outfit himself for two or three weeks
away, spend a night in Nata, and be off the next day. He’d drive to the Kuke
fence, see if he could cut through that blasted wire, and head for Sepopa and the
Tsodilo Hills a few days later. He wanted to get a paper out, which meant finishing the
mapping in the hills he’d contracted to do through the grant. The plan gave him
little pleasure this morning, and he tossed the remains of the coffee off the porch.

It occurred to him that double-decker buses
were roaring down roads in London at this moment, people crowded on streets,
greengrocers arranging apples, lions in repose at Trafalgar Square, the Tube with its
arteries and veins underneath it all. It might as well be the moon. He suddenly longed
for it: life whizzing by, none of it anything to do with him. Too many people knew him
here, knew his business. Where do you go to get away? The Gaborone mall? The Tip Top
Bazaar, the South Ring Butchery? A movie theater with its films run through the
gristmill of South Africa’s enlightened censors? He felt constricted, wanted to
shout and pound his chest like a mountain gorilla.

His heart sped even before he saw her come
around the corner. “Morning,” he croaked. “There’s a malachite
kingfisher out there.”

“I don’t care if it’s a
flying moose,” she said, turning on her heel.

“Please don’t go. I’m
sorry about last night.”

Her eyes flashed. “You might have been
describing a cow heading
for the Meat Commission. I thought you were a
different sort of man. If I’d known that’s how you felt, I wouldn’t
have wasted a minute with you.”

“That’s not how I feel. Roger
wanted to know what you looked like.”

“And how would Roger even know I
existed if Roger hadn’t been told?”

“He wouldn’t have. You were on
my mind.”

Something crossed her face, swiftly replaced
by rage. Her voice shook. “You said it like an auctioneer. ‘The
woman’s American, recently divorced.’
The woman.
As though you
don’t even know me. Gray hair. Already over the hill. Oh, nice body. But big
bones. A lady wrestler. Or maybe an orangutan. And then your old boy laughter.
You
and Roger, whoever the hell that was, yucking it up at my expense. You’re a royal
prick, you know that?”

She’d already turned to leave when he
said, “I know that. Worse than that. I’m an insensitive lout, a cad, a
muttonhead, a piss poor specimen of a man, a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave. If I
were a dog, I’d have me put down.”

“Good. Now leave me alone.” He
thought a hint of a smile had flitted over her lips. Her footsteps departed, and he
watched her climb into the Land Rover. A male voice from around the side of the building
asked, “Where is he?”

“Back there,” she said, as
though she were talking about a warthog.

“Ian?” Will called. “Bus
is leaving. You’re in the Land Rover.” The gods were laughing, he thought,
when they left the last seat next to her in front. Even though he jammed himself over by
the door so no part of him was touching her, the road had worsened, and he kept being
thrown onto her. Shakespeare drove, and Arthur Haddock and C.T. occupied the backseat.
The day was hot and airless, and they ate dust from the vehicle traveling in front of
them.

This cockamamie trip: a group of white men
and a woman, most of them from outside the country, ushered about by Batswana drivers
and cooks. A ship of fools. Mostly well-meaning fools, but lunkheads all the same,
himself included. He knew it from the start, before he’d agreed.
He’d had work to do, pressing on him. It puzzled him what had driven him to say
yes. You come to trust these instincts, but in this case, beyond stupid.

As they passed north of the Ntwetwe Pan, he
thought of her face as they’d crossed. On an impulse, he dug into his shirt
pocket, brought out a small pad of paper and a pencil, and wrote.
You said
you’d like to camp on the Ntwetwe Pan and wake up there someday. Will you come
with me?

He slid it across his lap toward her.

Her eyes took in the words, and she grabbed
the pencil.
You must be mad
.

He took the pencil … 
about
you.
It sounded like a schmaltzy Valentine card.
Please forgive my
stupidity. Stay with me tonight in Nata.

Who do you think I am?
She sat for
a while with the pad in her lap, her hands covering it, then passed it back.

We can drive to the Pan tomorrow, camp overnight, head for the veterinary fence and
make it right this time, and then, if you agree, I’d like to show you the
Tsodilo Hills. Come with me. You can have your own tent.

She sat for a long time looking through the
windshield. A guinea fowl flew up into a cluster of
mopane
scrub. She breathed
in, held her breath, finally let it out.

You smoke. You’re crazy. I
don’t forgive you.
She dropped the pad under the seat.

He picked it up.
Please,
he
wrote.

One Motswana was black, the other white.
They passed him off at the border in shackles. Not lingering, Isaac noticed. You
don’t hand a black man over to the white South African Security Police without a
twinge of something that makes you want to put the wretch behind you as soon as you can,
bury him in road dust before he’ll disturb your dreams at night.

“Get in,” the two South Africans
said in Afrikaans. They chained him to an iron ring riveted to the floor of the van,
rolled up the windows, slammed the doors, laughed with the border guard for a bit while
the sun baked Isaac senseless inside the van. When they returned, the meatier of the two
began cussing him out. Isaac understood every second or third word, enough to know that
they believed he was pocketing money from both sides of the border, all set up to be a
rich black bastard, a right clever chap, well we’ll see who’s clever
now.

He tasted the malice, felt it swimming
through his blood like a leach looking for a place to lay its mouth hooks. The shaking
began in his belly and radiated out to his legs and feet, out to his hands.

The men got in, the van rolled south.

It didn’t take long to understand.
They want to break your mind—and your heart if they can get at it. But your body is the
only thing within their power to shatter. The only thing, unless you go ahead and give
them the rest.

He pictured himself on the train platform,
groveling.
Please, baas, please help, I beg of you.
Down on his knees, holding
the conductor’s pant cuff.
That’s where most people go.
And by god, he wouldn’t go there again. Not if they poured acid in his eyes.

He thought a moment. It was all very well to
say what he would do and what he would not do. Now he was sitting in the back of a van,
safe for the moment, the veldt stretching out on all sides. But where he was going was
another country altogether, a country that ate souls. All at once, he believed that he
would not survive. He saw them throwing his broken body out a tenth-story window. He saw
the fabric of his shirt flutter in the wind, his head flopped to one side, his legs
splayed. He could not see himself land, only his body in midair. He thought of Nthusi,
how he’d once wanted to walk on air, high, like the Flying Wallendas. He thought
of the shoes he would never buy his brother. He saw his money in the office of the chief
of police. It had been lying on his desk in a pouch when he’d left. The man had
not looked dishonest, but where would that money go now? If it had been less, he
wondered if they would have let him go. The extra sixty rand given to him in kindness
might be the root of his misfortune now. No, stupidity, his own, was the root.

Halfway to Johannesburg, they stopped at a
roadside café. The men got out. This time they left a window partway open and
locked the doors. He watched them as they leaned against the side wall of a dirty
cinderblock building, boisterous as rugby players, eating two large sandwiches, slabs of
red meat flapping at the edges of white bread. They returned with a paper cup of water
and gave it to Isaac. He would not ask for food, as hungry as he was. To ask would be to
go down on his knees holding the pant cuff.

When they reached Nata late that morning,
Alice told her boss that she’d like a week’s leave. She reminded him that
she had two weeks’ vacation coming to her, none of which she’d taken.
“I’m sorry for the short notice,” she told him. “It’s just
that I’m already up here, and Ian has offered to take me to the Tsodilo
Hills.” She told him she’d write a summary of the trip they’d just
taken and have it for him the day she returned.

C.T. looked at her. “There’s
something you may not know about him,” he said.

Something cold went through her. She’d
worked with C.T. for two years, and she’d never heard him say anything remotely
like this. “I don’t mean you’re in physical danger. I
mean … well, it’s none of my business really. But hadn’t you
better come back with us?”

“I’d like to stay.”

“How will you get back?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Righto. What about the position
paper?”

“It’s three quarters done.
I’ll finish it without fail by the end of the month.”

“Anything else I need to
know?”

“I can try to call you midweek if
I’m anywhere near a phone.”

“No bother.”

“C.T.? Thank you. And thank you for
the privilege of this trip.”

He told her to take care of herself and
moved toward the vehicles. She found Will, explained that she was going to the Tsodilo
Hills with
Ian, and asked if he’d mind stopping by her place to
check on things and let Isaac know she’d be another week.

His eyebrows went up. “You know what
you’re about, lass?”

“Will, please.”

He smiled. “But you’ve not asked
my opinion, have you?” He scuffed one foot across the dirt as though rubbing
something out. “He’s fifteen years your senior.”

“Maybe not that many.”

“Close to, anyway.”

“I’ll call my neighbor if
you’d rather not go by my place.”

“That’s not what I’m
fussing about.”

“I know, Will.”

“Of course I can check your
place.”

“Thanks so much.” She gave him a
hug.

“And if you’re not back in a
fortnight, I’ll send out a search party.”

“Say hi to Greta and the kids for
me?”

She didn’t want to be seen as she
removed her things from the back of the Land Rover. Something about it felt ungainly,
vaguely humiliating, as though she’d agreed to go off with the first man
who’d ever asked her anywhere. Tears weren’t far beneath the surface, and
just under them lurked a faint nausea. If she hadn’t already told C.T. and Will,
she’d be tempted to change her mind. She found Sam, Motsumi, Shakespeare, and Ole
Olsen, and said good-bye. To Arthur Haddock, she waved as he was getting back into the
Land Rover. He looked puzzled, then she saw C.T. say something to him. Arthur
didn’t look at her after that, as though she’d fallen from the face of the
Earth, where the bad women go.

As she stood beside the road, raising one
arm, she felt an impulse to run after them. Old Faithful, the truck, drove in front,
with the Land Rover behind, carrying Sam, Arthur, C.T., and Will. She’d become
fond of them all, even poor old Arthur Haddock with his little fusses and fears and
ridiculous shoes. She watched until they took the turn in the road, and then saw their
dust rising into the air, and then there was nothing.

Standing in the street alone, the sun felt
too bright, the sky too large. She felt that old deep pull toward dark and safety. C.T.
and Will seemed
to have been saying similar things: you don’t
know what you’re doing, or what men are capable of. It was insulting, but she
recognized some possible truth there.

She saw Ian at a distance, recognized his
easy gait, half bear, half antelope. “You stayed!” he cried.