White Dog Fell From the Sky (47 page)
Read White Dog Fell From the Sky Online
Authors: Eleanor Morse
Some core thing in him was still intact, he
knew, capable of ghosted
feeling. He could feel fear, a sign that his
body wanted to live. And he felt something akin to love, for Moses and Lulu and
Tshepiso, for his mother and father, for Hendrik and Hester Pretorius, for White Dog,
and for Alice too. So he was not dead, he thought, only diminished by something that had
severed feeling from the rest of him. He had not yet cleared away the debris. He was at
the numbness stage: severed nerves without bridges. But perhaps this wasn’t the
end. Perhaps there would be something more.
He limped along. What was it that made life?
A future, something stretching before you. Moses had built his little car in such a way
that it rattled along in front of him as he steered it. He, Isaac, had no car rattling
in front of him. His car was behind him.
He remembered his mother long ago telling
him about the oceans on Earth. She’d said that the waters were so big, you
couldn’t see to the land on the other side. The waters, she’d heard, had
threads that connected to the moon. When the moon was full, the tides were high. She
didn’t know where the water came from and went back to. It was a mystery. He
remembered her face as she’d talked, lit up with something larger than herself.
He’d lost the thread between himself and this mystery. Call it God, call it the
tides or the moon, he couldn’t feel the wonder of things. Even more than the loss
of a future, this emptiness pained him beyond measure.
There was something else he felt, almost but
not quite lost. By the end, he didn’t care whether they took his life or not, but
he wouldn’t let them have the memory of the people he loved. Those people were in
him still, some of them dead, most of them still alive. He remembered the crested barbet
falling down the chimney, his feathers blackened with soot, rescued from the jaws of the
cat. It had stood on the curtain rod, so shocked it couldn’t move. He’d put
it in his hand and taken it outside, and it had stood a moment before flying to the high
branch of the tree where its mate waited. There were those on the branch waiting for
him.
The sun had reached its peak several hours
earlier and was traveling down the sky. His shoulder throbbed, and his leg, but he
wanted to keep going now until he reached his destination. Another third of a
kilometer, then around the corner where the store stood, then down
the road a short distance and another corner, and he would see the house. He
wasn’t thinking now, just moving ahead in a kind of trance. He passed down the
next stretch of road without seeing and came around the last corner. The first thing he
noticed was the tent in the garden, standing by the flat rock where he’d gone to
read the letter from his mother.
As he limped toward the house, he made out
three figures on the stoop, two black heads and a furry white one between them, like a
black-and white-photograph. White Dog lifted her nose. All at once, she clambered to her
feet and let out a sound halfway between a cry and a howl. She was running, Lulu and
Moses behind, a streak of white, paws on his chest. The children were in his arms now,
laughing. And then he saw Alice come out of the house, wearing the same blue dress that
had been part of a strange dream, blowing in the wind at the border.
Heartfelt thanks to my early readers, Rhonda
Berg, Nicole d’Entremont, Jeanne Hayman, Kate Kennedy, Robin Lippincott, Nomakhosi
Mntuyedwa, Sena Jeter Naslund, Catherine Seager, Susan Williams, and Alisa Wolf, whose
honesty and encouragement have made this book what it is.
My gratefulness to Andrew Seager for
introducing me to a country that will live in me forever. And to Keletso Ragabane, who
welcomed me when I knew nothing.
My love and gratitude to friends who have
been like family, and family treasured beyond words: Susan Allen, Edith Allison, Casey
Doldissen, Kate Kennedy, Namdol Kalsang, Alan Morse, Dean Morse, Philip Morse, Louise
Packness, Alan Seager, Catherine Seager, Xavier Simcock, and Elizabeth Young.
To my agent, the amazing and indefatigable
Jane Gelfman; to my editor at Penguin (USA), the incomparable Kathryn Court; and to my
editor at Penguin (UK), Juliet Annan, my deepest thanks.
To Carla Bolte, interior designer; Beth
Caspar, copy editor; Maddie Philips, production manager; and Jim Tierney, jacket
designer, this book is better and more beautiful for your abundant talents. To Tara
Singh, assistant editor at Penguin, and Cathy Gleason at Gelfman Schneider Literary
Agents, I thank you for your kind and knowledgeable help.
Many thanks to the staff, students, and
faculty members at Spalding University’s brief residency master of fine arts in
writing program, a lively, vigorous, and life-affirming community of writers.
Thank you to Priscilla Webster and Rose Ann
Walsh at the Peaks Island library for procuring so many fine books. And to the following
writers whose research, artwork, and eloquence have deepened my understanding of the
long-term effects of torture and of the remarkable culture of the !Kung San people: Paul
Augustinus,
Botswana: A Brush with the Wild;
David Coulson and Alec Campbell,
African Rock Art;
James Denbow and Phenyo Thebe,
Culture and Customs of
Botswana;
Nicholas England,
Music Among the Ju/’hoansi and Related
Peoples of Namibia, Botswana and Angola;
Peter Johnson and Anthony Bannister,
Okavango;
Willemien Le Roux and Alison White,
Voices of the San;
Richard Katz,
Boiling Energy: Community Healing Among the Kalahari Kung;
Bradford Keeney,
Kalahari Bushmen Healers;
Peter Matthiessen,
The Tree
Where Man Was Born;
Leanh Nguyen, “The Question of Survival: The Death of
Desire and the Weight of Life”; Pippa Skotnes,
Claim to the Country: The
Archive of Lucy Lloyd and Wilhelm Bleek.
Finally, I am grateful to the community of
Peaks Island and to its artists, writers, musicians, and oddballs whose presence, along
with the birds and ever-changing sky and sea, has been a daily source of inspiration,
joy, and nourishment.
Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of
Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for
something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to
popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks – the same choice faced every day by
the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane’s
disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led
him to found a company – and change the world.
We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for
intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on
it’
Sir Allen Lane, 1902–1970, founder of Penguin
Books
The quality paperback had arrived – and not just in bookshops. Lane was adamant
that his Penguins should appear in chain stores and tobacconists, and should cost no
more than a packet of cigarettes.
Reading habits (and cigarette prices) have changed since 1935, but Penguin still
believes in publishing the best books for everybody to enjoy. We still believe that
good design costs no more than bad design, and we still believe that quality books
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prize-winning literary fiction or a celebrity autobiography, political tour de force
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or a piece of pure escapism – you can bet that it represents the very best that the
genre has to offer.
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First published in the United States of America
by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2013
First published in
Great Britain by Fig Tree 2013
Copyright © Eleanor Morse, 2013
The moral right of the author has been
asserted
Excerpt from ‘The Layers’ from
The Collected Poems
by Stanley Kunitz. Copyright © 1978 by Stanley
Kunitz.
Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Cover: Dog © Corbis, Landscape © Alamy
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-241-96259-6