White Dog Fell From the Sky (34 page)

She heard a few people stirring, cracking
kindling; cooking fires came to life.

Others came and sat near his body. No one
spoke. They felt the wind heave itself against their living bodies, saw it stir the dead
man’s hair and fold over the collar of his shirt.

The old woman, Xixae, let go of his hand.
She asked whether they
should bury him as one of their own, or drive
his body to Maun. Dixhao, her brother’s son, had found Ian’s Land Rover
along the fence line. Some of the people said they must take him to Maun, or there would
be trouble. Some said no, it would be better to bury him here.

The old woman thought of her daughter whose
life had been lost. She remembered digging her grave, how the earth was difficult to
turn over. She’d thought back then that she too would die. And now she was an old
woman, and this man, like her daughter, was gone. One cannot know why things happen as
they do. “He must be buried here,” she said. “He is a white man, but
he is a San white man.”

The others agreed. And they decided that
Nxuka’s husband, Rraditshipi, who knew driving, would take the vehicle to Maun.
And Nxuka, who had four years of school and knew a little Setswana (and even a small
amount of English) would try to find some person who might know this man. Her baby was
not coming until the following moon, and she would go with her husband. Xixae searched
Ian’s pockets and handed the keys to Nxuka’s husband and the wallet to
Nxuka.

Later that morning, they wrapped Ian in a
wildebeest skin and buried him near a shepherd tree. The tree was misshapen, blasted
from wind and sand. Its bark was pale gray with white patches, pitted and folded in
places, the lower branches heavily grazed.

That afternoon, the small group of San moved
camp so that no one would accidentally walk over the grave. They moved west, in the
direction of Tsao, carrying everything on their backs. The only signature of their
presence was the brief, lingering footprints, and the two sticks that Xixae placed in
the ground so that her husband, who was out tracking a wounded steenbok, would know in
which direction they had gone.

To the north, the flood plains of the
Okavango were beginning to fill with water and spread south like great fingers of life.
Months before, the rains had fallen in Angola. Water had flooded the Benguela Plateau
and flowed southeast across the Caprivi Strip, poured through the Popa Falls rapids, and
crossed into Botswana at Mohembo. Now, it gradually traveled south over the flood
plains. It would take several more months
for the 11 trillion liters
of water to cover the delta and still more months to find its way around islands of
papyrus, through wandering channels and on to Maun.

The herd of buffalo that had thundered
through the cut fence was halfway to the open channels of the Okavango. Some of the
weakest among them had perished. The grass was parched and sparse. But the others kept
on, oblivious to everything but the promise of green grass and water.

Nxuka and Rraditshipi slept next to the Land
Rover that night, folded together on the ground near the front tires. The windows of the
vehicle were open, and the vinyl of the seats, cooling from the day’s heat, gave
off a strange smell. Nxuka’s dreams were uneasy, and her baby stirred in her
belly. Near midnight, one small foot pushed outward with such vigor that if Nxuka had
woken and looked down in the moonlight, she could have seen a tiny heel and five
toes.

The next morning, Nxuka found a stash of
tobacco in the glove compartment. They rolled a cigarette each, smoked it, and sat in
the morning light while the birds woke. On the floor of the Land Rover, they found a
copy of the
Rand Daily Mail.
They could not read the words, but there were
pictures of a white man shaking the hand of another white man, and on another page, a
white man running with a soccer ball. “Only white men in this paper,” Nxuka
said, clicking the words with tongue and lips.

She climbed into the passenger seat, her
husband turned the key in the ignition, and they started down the track. It was rough
and pitted, and Nxuka held her arms under her belly to shield the baby. Several hours
later, where a small track joined a larger one, her water broke, and she went into
labor.

By the time they reached Maun, Rraditshipi
was driving fast, erratically; the emergency brake, which he’d forgotten to
release, was smoking. Nxuka had believed it would be another moon before the baby would
come. The thought of a hospital frightened her, but it frightened her more to think of
her husband delivering their child on the
seat of the Land Rover,
which smelled farther from sweet grass and wind than anything she had ever smelled.

Three hours later, their baby was born, the
first San baby delivered at the Maun General Hospital in seven years. The baby was
premature and weighed less than four pounds. His head was hardly bigger than an apple;
his eyes were calm and wise. A nurse asked Nxuka what the name should be. Nxuka could
see that the nurse didn’t believe her baby would survive and hardly cared to name
it. She reached for Ian’s wallet on the bedside table, and asked the nurse to read
the name to her. “Ian Thorne Henry,” the nurse said, and Nxuka told her,
“That is the baby’s name.” She believed that this name,
IanThorneHenry, would protect her child. Two people with the same name would not die
within days of each other.

All day, a procession of nurses came to see
the Bushman baby. Whenever one of them asked the name, Nxuka gave her the wallet and
said, “This is his name.” One young nurse in training, a Seventh-Day
Adventist from Iowa City, came on night duty, and asked, “Where did you get this
wallet?”

“He is late,” said Nxuka.

She looked at Nxuka more closely. “Did
you steal this man’s wallet?”

“He is late,” repeated Nxuka,
more loudly. Her baby sucked weakly at her breast.

“You’d better give me that
wallet.”

Nxuka put it between her legs and began to
cry. “I want Rraditshipi.”

The young nurse went to fetch the night
charge nurse. “We have a theft on our hands.”

Nurse Mooletse entered the room and put her
hand on the tiny baby’s head. “He is drinking your milk well?”

“Yes,” said Nxuka.

“He’s a beautiful
boy.”

“She has a wallet that doesn’t
belong to her.”

“What is the baby’s
name?”

“IanThorneHenry,” said Nxuka,
passing her the wallet.

“Where did you get this?”

“That man is late.”

“I see.”

“The buffalo step on him. We carry him
to our camp but he is too sick.”

“Where did you bury him?”

“At old camp. Then we move to a new
camp.”

“I understand.”

“His Land Rover is there.” She
pointed out the window. “Rraditshipi is finding someone to give.”

“Your husband doesn’t need to
worry about the vehicle. Tell him to bring me the keys. I’ll look for someone who
knew this man.” She took fifty rand out of the wallet. “This is for your
baby. And do not wrap him in blankets. It is too hot, understand?” She stroked the
small head once more and left.

She came back a moment later. “How
will you and your husband get home?”

“We are used to walking. Sometimes we
will find a lift.”

The following night, her only night off,
Nurse Mooletse made her way to the hotel in Maun and found a Britisher who knew a man
named Roger who knew Ian Henry. The bartender said Roger was at Crocodile Camp, a
twelve-kilometer drive from Maun. “Tell him he must come to the hotel in Maun
immediately,” she told him. And no, she could not talk about this matter over the
telephone. She sat on a chair on the porch waiting, while all around her, men drank
whiskey and beer. The moon was an odd color. When she looked back at it a couple of
minutes later, it had changed shape.

In the Old Village, Alice sat at a
sprawling dinner table with Will and Greta. Will had made chicken curry, and the table
was littered with bits of rice, a few chicken bones, napkins stained with curry sauce.
The kids had been sent to bed for the night. But they kept popping up, running into the
room. One was thirsty. Another thought he heard a monster under the bed. Greta went to
their room. “If I hear one more peep out of any of you,” she said,
“you
will
see a monster, and it won’t
be pretty.
Now shut your eyes and go to sleep. We’re going outdoors.” She came back,
grabbed a bottle of wine, and headed for the patio. She handed the bottle to Will and
went back inside for a small packet she had stashed in a drawer.

“Black Magic African,” she said
to Alice. The contents of the plastic bag looked like rotted black leaf.

She passed it over to Alice for a sniff.
“Where’d you come by this?”

“Will got it off someone at
work.”

They climbed a cinder-block wall that
separated their garden from the neighbors’ and dangled their legs while Will
rolled a thin joint. The weed produced thick white smoke and turned out to be ruinously
strong, slightly harsh at the back of the throat, with a deep, satisfying taste. It
wasn’t long before they were howling with laughter. At some point Alice looked at
the moon and said, “Look at that. It’s a different shape.”

“Get out,” Will said.

“No really. There’s a bite out
of it.”

Will squinted toward it. “It
hasn’t changed.”

“I swear it has.”

They talked about the cosmos for a while,
feeling grand, wise, happy. “Look, there it goes again,” she said.

Greta peered up. “She’s
right.”

“What’s happening?” Alice
was laughing now, with a touch of fear licking around the edges.

“I don’t know.”
Will’s hand waved vaguely in front of his face. “One of those primitive
things.”

Greta and Alice nearly fell off the wall. It
was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.

“Wait,” said Greta.
“It’s a whatchamacallit. An eclipse. We’re in the middle of an eclipse
of the moon. If we were on the moon where the bite’s out of it, we would have
fallen through space.”

The news from Nurse Mooletse brought Roger
to his knees. That night, he set out for Gaborone in Ian’s Land Rover, feeling
that what he had to tell couldn’t be told any way but eye to eye. He thought the
woman’s name was Alice. He was pretty sure Ian had said she worked in Local
Government and Lands.

Never had he felt such sudden grief and
strangeness. To steady himself, he’d had another beer before leaving, and now he
didn’t trust his mind or his eyes. The sand was deep, and he hadn’t passed
another vehicle since leaving the outskirts of Maun. He remembered the last night
he’d seen Ian, how his friend had been in such dreadful love, his mind dashing in
circles, his heart jumping the track, burdened with the force of its commotion.

He’d met a guy on his last trip to
Nata who’d said Ian had borrowed a bolt cutter to cut sections of agricultural
fencing. It was a daft thing to do, but it didn’t surprise him. Ian would have
landed in jail if he’d been caught, and the chances were good of that. But jail at
least would have saved him ending up under the sands of the Kalahari.

He couldn’t believe he was gone. But
here were the four wheels of Ian’s vehicle under him and the rattling roof cage
above him and Ian’s wallet beside him. The nurse said they’d buried him
somewhere in the Kalahari. Not many died as Ian had, but few saw the world as he did,
either. He passed through Bushman Pits with a long, dark stretch of road in front of
him. What worried him were animals crossing. By the time you saw their eyes in the
headlights, it was already too late. He
figured if he didn’t
fall asleep and flip the vehicle, he could be in Francistown by eight or nine in the
morning. Another five or six hours to Gaborone driving full speed. He wanted to reach
her before she left work.

He made it to Francistown for a quick
breakfast and coffee, added petrol to the tank, and started down the road toward
Gaborone, 430 kilometers of hard driving ahead. Seruli, then Dikabi, and on to Palapye.
The sleepless night was catching up with him. In Palapye, he stopped for another coffee
and set off again. North of Mahalapye, he remembered the one-lane bridge over the river
and pulled off the road for a quick nap. Punch drunk, he couldn’t trust himself to
get the fucking wheels onto the center of that bridge. He felt sad and sick and soul
weary when he woke. He got out of the Land Rover, peed into a bush, and drove on. The
dust from the few cars and trucks he passed could be seen a long way off, and the blur
of their passing remained with him long after they’d gone. By the time he reached
the Dew Drop Inn, he couldn’t drive any longer. He pulled into the parking lot,
took another twenty-minute nap, and went on, promising himself no more stops until he
arrived at the Ministry of Local Government and Lands. Probably three hours away. He
finally pulled in at half past three. It took him less than fifteen minutes to find out
where she was. Someone pointed the way to her office, but he stopped, having to face how
he’d tell her.

He found a men’s room, splashed water
on his face, and dried his face with the front of his shirt. He lingered in the hallway
near her office and heard her voice speaking with someone on the phone. It occurred to
him that she would never again in her life be clear of what he was about to say. He
walked past her office and looked in. He recognized her immediately, the curly hair,
partly gray, big bones. He didn’t see the blue gray eyes until she put down the
phone and looked up. She recognized him, and he saw in the what-the-hell look she gave
him, that she remembered where she’d last seen him.

“I’ve got to tell you
something,” he said.

She froze, as though she already knew.

And then, “You’re lying! Get
out.”

“Hold on. You’ll want to know.
It happened the day before
yesterday. Or maybe on Sunday. They buried
him in the Kalahari, near the Kuke fence.”