Stones for My Father (6 page)

“We thought you’d been eaten by lions,” said Danie.

“Or arrested by the khakis,” said Andries.

As they peered out at us from beneath the canvas, their eyes, ringed with dark circles, were as piercing and defensive as those of a couple of cornered foxes.

“Well, we weren’t,” I snapped, wishing that they wouldn’t stare so. Only then did I realize how ragged I must have looked. “We ate buck meat last night.”

“You didn’t.”

“We did!” Gert caught my eye just in time: he must have realized that if he said any more I would let him have it.

“Gert and I found it near the river. Lions got it,” I said.

There was no time to discuss this any further, as Oom Sarel began to usher us toward the wagons. “There are leopards about these parts, and they hunt at night,” he told us. “They’ll take you for a warthog, and then you’ll be sorry.”

This made Gert laugh. Just a few weeks earlier, when we had been wandering through the bush near our house, my brother had stopped dead in his tracks and pointed at the pair of yellow eyes staring at us through the undergrowth. The protruding snout, heavy jowls, and curved tusks were caked in mud. Stiff bristles rose from erect, pointed ears and spine; the rest of its body was covered in thick, black fur that shimmered in the late afternoon sun. The warthog’s brawny shoulders looked as powerful as a horse’s hindquarters, and its breath escaped in
parallel gusts from its nostrils in hot, swirling bursts. Our voices must have startled the beast, which had come to drink at the stream, and it let out something between a belch and a groan before crashing off into a thicket with its wiry, black tail flung high in the air. To my shame, I had screamed — a noise that frightened Gert even more than the creature with the yellow eyes — before realizing that the warthog was even more scared than we were. We had laughed about it all the way home.

“From now on, we stay in the
laager
,” said Lindiwe. “See how the wagons make a circle, Gertie? You must not leave the circle.”

“Why, Lindiwe?”

“To stay safe.”

“What if we need to fetch water?” I asked.

“There’s more than enough water here already,” said Oom Sarel proudly. “The Van Zyls and the Cronjes brought two barrels. There’s no need for anyone to go any farther than those thornbushes.” He must have mistaken my look of horror for stunned relief, as he pulled one sinewy arm around my shoulders and smiled, chucking me gently under the chin. “You’ll be well looked after from now on, Corlie Roux. There’s four of us men here in the
laager
, so no need for the womenfolk to fret. Go help your ma with that little brother of yours. There’s a good girl.”

From what I could tell, the four men Oom Sarel had mentioned were all at least as old as he. It shouldn’t have come as any surprise — no local man under the age
of sixty would be caught dead cowering in the bush with women and children — but it didn’t make me feel any safer. To be the only girl in a
laager
of men and boys: now that would have been a great accomplishment. But to be just one of many girls and women, who had no choice but to defer to their elders, was simply humiliating.

Besides Tant Minna and my cousins, the other families were from farms on the other side of Amersfoort. They watched us silently from between fluttering canvas curtains, no doubt judging how much we’d eat into their rations. Would there be enough to feed our family and Lindiwe’s? And for how long?

I wandered up to my mother, who was still chattering excitedly with Tant Minna and another woman who I recognized as the local midwife.

“Ma, I need to pee,” I said. “Can I go to the bushes?”

My mother looked at me distractedly. “Do you need to ask me before doing anything, Corlie?” she snapped. Then she turned back to the other women to ask how long the meat had been drying in the wind, and how many loaves of ash bread they could bake in the communal fire.

It was precisely the permission I had been hoping for.

We’d not been in the
laager
for half an hour, and already I was feeling suffocated by the swarm of half-starved children, the exhausted mothers slapping at
mosquitoes, and the feeble old men bossing everyone about. Tant Minna’s wagon may have been bigger than ours, but beneath the heavy canvas shell it looked crowded and stuffy, and as dark as a snake hole. If this was where I’d have to sleep — entangled with my brothers and cousins and our mothers, while Lindiwe and Sipho camped in the open air — I could at least make the most of my solitude while it was still light.

The coppice of thornbushes was just a stone’s throw from the edge of the forest. As usual, no one was paying me any notice: the men were too busy marshaling Sipho and Lindiwe into chores, while the women fussed over the blisters on Gert’s feet.

Oom Sarel had said that the river was nearby, so I decided to take the opportunity to give my hair a freshwater dousing. I didn’t much fancy sharing a bath in the big iron tub with all the other children, where we’d almost certainly be roughly scrubbed by my mother or Tant Minna before being bundled back into the same dirty clothes.
For once
, I thought,
I might impress Ma by turning up freshly washed and combed all on my own
.

The forest was really a sprawling ebony grove. Smooth, slender tree trunks stretched to the sky, forming a quivering canopy of leaves through which sunlight filtered to the forest floor, dappling the ground in greens and golds. Soon enough I came upon the river, which was narrower and shallower than at the point where Gert and I had gone fishing the day before. Kneeling, I cupped my hands in the water and splashed my face
and neck. It wasn’t as cold as I had hoped it might be; the sun had warmed the riverbed, so it felt more like tepid bathwater. Still, I doused my hair and felt better for it. Something about washing away a week’s accumulated grime immediately strengthened my resolve. The world began to look good again.

I decided to continue walking a little farther. There had been rain the previous night, which meant that the ground was strewed with snails. They had come out to gorge themselves on sweet, damp mulch — but the rain had ended suddenly and now they were stranded, like so many tiny shipwrecks. The woods were silent except for the skeletal clattering of leaves through crisp, still air, and the occasional twittering of invisible birds. Farther ahead, a fallen tree blocked my path; its roots had been torn from the ground and towered, glistening and exposed, in the air. I clambered over it and landed with a bump on the other side.

That was when I heard the mewing.

An ebony forest on the edge of beyond is no place for a cat. The next time I heard the cry, I headed in the direction of the noise, scanning the undergrowth for any sign of movement. I must have scared it then, because it fell silent. Just as I had decided to retrace my steps, it mewed again.

This time, I saw it.

The monkey was curled up in the crook of a low branch. Cradling its head in hairless fingers, it moaned softly. From its long tail and tiny, dark face, I could tell
it was a vervet. Its downy coat was mostly gray, except for a brilliant white patch on its stomach. Its ears were still too large for its round little head, and it hadn’t quite grown into its claws. There was no sign of its mother.

I took another step toward the monkey. Two wide, brown eyes peered down at me defensively, trying to decide if I presented a threat. Something had happened here, I was sure of it. A hyena attack was the most likely explanation — why else would this tiny creature be here all alone, without the protection of mother and pack?

I lowered my gaze and slowly knelt near the base of the tree. I tried to steady my breathing, thinking that by somehow sinking into the background I might avoid scaring the animal away.

We sat like that for several minutes, until I finally dared to steal a look up at the low branch. The monkey had disappeared, and for an instant my heart sank. Then I heard a scrabbling sound immediately behind me, and I swung around, terrified that perhaps the hyenas had returned. Only it wasn’t a hyena behind me: it was the little vervet.

Crouched and suspicious, it seemed to waver between curiosity and caution. Slowly, very slowly, I stretched out one hand and rested it, palm up, on the ground between us, clicking my tongue softly in encouragement.

The vervet considered its position, looking from my outstretched hand to my face and back to my hand again, before scuttling toward me. It paused, swaying on bowlegged haunches, eyes wide and alert, bobbing
its diminutive head, before craning forward to sniff at my fingers. Its delicate whiskers tickled my palm, and I tried not to flinch. After a while, the monkey stopped, considered me again, and finally drew closer. I froze, pretending that I was a statue, as the vervet proceeded to inspect the contents of my father’s coat pockets. First, the left: here a piece from a dry mealie rusk, which it nibbled at apprehensively before greedily licking the whole thing over. When it began to tear into the wet crust, I realized just how ravenous it must have been. Its hunger was even greater than its fear.

The other pocket was empty, but it was so deep that the vervet tumbled headfirst into it before scrambling to right itself. Emboldened, it returned to investigate further — no doubt smelling the traces of the buck meat I had carried home the previous night. When at last the search proved fruitless, the vervet poked its head out of the pocket with a perturbed expression. It was all I could manage not to burst out laughing at its affronted scowl.

“I don’t have any food with me,” I said, keeping my voice low. “But I could get you something to eat from the
laager
. Would you like that?”

The little vervet only gazed up at me in silent contemplation, gripping the hem of my father’s coat with claws so tightly clenched that I couldn’t imagine it would ever let go.

“
V
ermin!”

I cradled the monkey in the pocket of my father’s coat while trying not to drop any of the mealie corn that I clutched in one fist. My mother’s shrieks pursued us from the wagon into the center of the
laager
.

“Dogs are one thing, my girl, but monkeys are wild animals that grow teeth and have tempers that could kill a boy Hansie’s size. I won’t have it in the wagon.”

“But his mother —”

“His mother left him to the hyenas. If you had an ounce of sense in your head, you’d take him back to where you found him and let the Good Lord’s will be done.” Ma steeled her jaw, peering down at me like an Old Testament prophet. “There’s no use interfering with nature, Corlie Roux.”

“I can feed him and keep him warm. He’s not dangerous. Look how tiny he is —”

“You can take him back to the forest, or you can give it to Lindiwe to kill for the medicine man.”

The
nganga:
he would use my little monkey to bring the rains, or to feed his villagers’ poor empty stomachs. As if he, too, knew what my mother was suggesting, the vervet froze in my pocket. I was sure that I could feel his miniature heart drumming through the coat.

“I won’t let her give it to the
nganga!
”

“Please yourself — but get rid of it. I don’t care how.”

Gert followed me to the thornbushes, where I gently tipped the mealie corn into the pocket where my monkey had curled himself into a tiny ball.

“Ma will kill you when she finds out you stole from the mealie sack,” said Gert.

“I don’t care.”

“Can I see it?”

I held the pocket open for my brother to peer inside. The vervet had already devoured most of the corn, greedily cracking each kernel between its teeth. My brother grinned.

“You know, Corlie,” he started. “Ma only said you couldn’t keep it
in
the wagon.”

I looked at him. “What are you talking about?”

“The jockey box is empty. I looked.”

The jockey box was a small wooden crate that hung off the back of the wagon. Usually it was used to carry
extra supplies, but Tant Minna considered that an invitation to thieves and curious children.

“We could pad it out with straw and take turns feeding it. Ma won’t suspect a thing.” He had a point: as far as Ma was concerned, neither Gert nor Hansie could do wrong. I was the one who had to be watched. Since Pa’s death, it seemed the boys had become that much more precious to her. Because they were precious to me, too, I suppose I forgave her.

“What if he makes a noise?” I asked.

“We’ll take him out during the day — you can say that you’re going back to the forest to look for him. We’ll leave him with lots of food at night.”

We both considered the monkey, which was backing out of the pocket so that his spindly tail shot up straight in the air. He began to chatter busily, tugging at the buttons on my father’s coat as if they were playthings.

“What will you call him?” asked my brother.

“Monkeys don’t have names. He’s just that, an
apie
.”

“Hello,
apie. Hoe gaan dit?
” Gert gently stroked the back of its head, provoking the vervet to twist around and grasp my brother’s finger with tiny paws. “
Ag
, you’re strong!”