White Dog Fell From the Sky (43 page)

He stood.

“Get over here,” the driver
said. The thick-necked man tied his hands behind his back and put a canvas bag over his
head. It smelled of dust and the unpleasant sweetness of nitrogen fertilizer. They led
him a short way from the road and told him to kneel. He felt the muzzle of the gun
pressed to the side of his head and shut his eyes under the darkness of the bag.

He stopped breathing and waited.

Instead of an explosion, he heard laughter.
They left him kneeling
while they laughed and laughed. He heard them
slapping their thighs, imagined them elbowing each other, their necks swollen with
laughter. The driver ripped off the bag and untied his hands.
Hahahaha
,
guffawed the large-necked man. The man couldn’t get hold of himself. He took a
piss behind a shrub and came back, still laughing.

“Let’s get moving,” said
the driver, finished with the joke.

Isaac climbed back into the car. The
fat-necked man chuckled and muttered to himself: “… like a scared bloody rock
rabbit.”

Dully, he understood that what they’d
done was as cruel as anything a man can do to another man, but he knew it only through a
great numbness, as though his rage was unhinged from his heart, perched on a hillside.
He was neither relieved to be alive nor wishing to be dead. An Earth he had once loved
floated before him like an inert picture of an Earth. He looked out the window and saw
nothing.

He closed his eyes as the car moved. The
road became more rutted and bumpy. He heard traffic passing, large trucks and a few
cars, but he didn’t open his eyes until the car slowed. Instinctively, he hunkered
down low in the seat. In front of them was a large metal gate, and on either side of it,
barbed wire stretching as far as the eye could see. Inside, an ugly concrete building
stood like a stockade on a narrow stretch of ground. Beyond it lay another gate and more
barbed wire. He’d not heard of a prison north of Zeerust. Something woke in him.
He’d fight with everything he had before they got him in there, die before they
put him in another rathole.

“End of the road,” said the
driver, opening the rear door.

“I’m not going in
there.”

“Where do you think you’re going
then?”

“Kill me first.”

A man in uniform came to the window and
looked in on Isaac. He seemed shocked at what he saw. A conversation took place between
him and the driver. A woman was standing beyond the stockade-type building, at least he
thought it was a woman. Her dress was blue. It moved slightly in the breeze.

She’d seen the car from a long way
down the road. Something about it made her pay attention. It was black, low slung. It
pulled up to the gate, and the shorter of the two border guards let it through.

Two white men got out wearing uniforms. The
border guard bent down and looked into the backseat of the car. Someone was back there,
but the sun glared through the windshield and she couldn’t make out a face. One of
the two men in uniform, the thicker one, passed some papers to the shorter guard. The
border guard studied them. He passed the papers to the other guard, who looked them
over. The shorter guard turned in Alice’s direction. She might have been a tree,
or a goat, by the way he gestured toward her.

She froze, and her stomach flipped over. She
walked toward them. One of the men in uniform opened the backdoor of the black car. A
figure got out, a black man. He stood, swaying slightly. She came closer. It
wasn’t Isaac’s face or his body she recognized, both altered beyond
recognition, but some shred of dignity.

“My god,” she whispered,
“what have they done to you?”

A light entered his eyes briefly and went
out. She couldn’t tell if he knew who she was. She wanted to take his hand, but
she thought there must be a rule against it.

“Is this the man?” said the
taller of the two border guards. His face said,
How could anyone want him?

“Yes. Isaac Muthethe.”

“He’s free to go,” said
the border guard.

“Now?” she asked.

“Take him,” the thick-necked one
from the black car said. “That’s what he said.”

Leering at her, his companion asked,
“So where’s your husband?”

She ignored him. “Isaac, my truck is
over there.” She turned away, and Isaac stumbled after her, barely able to walk.
She felt the back of her neck crawl, thinking of their eyes watching. She opened the
passenger’s side for Isaac, and he ducked his head. She saw his body shake with
the effort of getting in. Her throat constricted, her vision swam. She got into the
driver’s side and drove toward the other gate. The truck filled with an
unspeakable smell.

“
Dumela, rra,
” she
said, greeting the guard on the Botswana side for the second time that day. She held out
the papers for him to check once more. He peered in at Isaac and flinched. “
Go
siame, mma,
” he said, waving her through.

The gate lifted, and they headed up the
dusty road toward Lobatse. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Isaac sitting stiffly,
one hand clasped over the other. His hands were thin, so thin they seemed hollowed out,
his thumbs swollen and dark purple.

“
A o batla metsi?
” she
asked, pointing to the jug of water.

“
Ee, mma,
” he said, but
he didn’t reach for it, as though they’d stripped him of volition. She drove
north until she spotted a small turnoff. “Please,” she said, reaching for
the water and handing it to him.

He uncapped the jug and poured water from
above so his lips never touched the mouth of the container. He drank deeply, with his
eyes closed. He looked shattered, the bones of his face skeletal. She handed him half a
cheese sandwich and took the other half. The cheese had melted in the heat and lay
limply inside the bread. He took the sandwich carefully, ate a bite slowly and ate the
rest quickly.

“White Dog is dead, yes?” he
said, his words barely audible.

“No, she’s alive. She waited for
you. Also, Moses and Lulu are with me now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your brother and sister. You sent a
letter to your mother, do you remember?”

“They’ve come?”

“Your mother didn’t know
you’d been deported. I met them at the train station. They sleep in the room where
you were sleeping.”

“In Naledi?”

“No, no. At my house.”

“At your house,” he
repeated.

“They are going to school now.”
It was like talking to a thick curtain with a man behind it. “Lulu and Moses came
to Gaborone by train. Hendrik Pretorius arranged it.”

“Hendrik Pretorius?”

“He is the one who got you released
from prison.”

“Are we going to see him
now?”

“We’re going to Gaborone.
You’re back in Botswana now.”

“And my mother? Is she
alive?”

“Yes.”

“And my father?”

“I don’t know.”

“And Nthusi?”

She stopped. “Your brother?”

“Yes.”

“I heard from Hendrik that your
brother died in the mines. There was a collapse. It happened several months ago.
I’m very sorry.”

She glanced at him. He’d closed his
eyes. In his face, it seemed she could map the world’s history of sorrow. He
coughed again, a sound that seemed to pull up everything in him.

“Isaac,” she said,
“I’m going to be taking you to the hospital.”

“Yes,” he said. She’d
expected an argument. They drove a short distance, and he said, “Please,
mma,
I need to get out.”

She found a place to stop, and he opened the
door. “Do you need help?” He didn’t answer, and she averted her eyes
while he staggered behind a bush.

When he returned, he said, “I’m
sorry,
mma.
I’ve caused so much trouble.” She waved his words away
and started up the truck. “While you were away,” he said, “I made a
very bad mistake.” It seemed to hurt him to speak.

“Don’t worry, you can tell me
later.”

“I need to tell you now. I hid the money
under a stone for my family back home. I was staying in the house with my friend and his
wife and baby and some others. My friend, Amen, and his comrades were with the ANC. I
wasn’t working for the ANC, only staying there. I came to Botswana wanting peace.
Perhaps this was selfish of me, but I only wanted peace.” A large truck passed
them going in the same direction, kicking up a storm of dust. She slowed, straining to
see through the windshield.

“They attacked Amen’s house. His
wife died. The baby lived. I don’t know whether Amen is alive or dead. I wanted
the money under the stone to send back home, the money you gave me together with what I
had saved. I thought they would bulldoze the house. I went like a thief while the guard
was sleeping. He woke and took me to the police. The chief of police said I was a double
agent and deported me.

“Another thing I must tell you,”
he said. “Amen sold your bicycle without my permission. He needed the money. I was
very angry, but the bicycle is gone. When I’m able to work again, I’ll pay
you back a little bit this month, a little bit next month, until I have paid for it
all.”

“Please, don’t worry. All you
need to think about is getting back on your feet. No one can harm you now. Do you
understand? They’ve given you political asylum here. You’re a legal
resident.”

“
Ee, mma
.” He coughed
again, a terrible sound, and grew quiet. She drove more slowly than usual, as though he
could break if she hit too many potholes. She gripped the steering wheel as another dust
storm arose from a passing vehicle. She glanced up at the hot blue sky and hoped the men
who’d done this would suffer the flames of hell for all eternity.

The Sister who’d months ago refused
Isaac entrance was the first person to meet them at the front doors of Princess Marina
Hospital. Her mouth pursed when she saw him, and her nose twitched with distaste. Alice
explained that Isaac had been in a South African prison and needed immediate care. The
Sister looked him up and down quickly and said, “All right then, come.”

Alice started to follow them, but the nurse
turned to her and said, “You must go now, madam. You will return
tomorrow.”

“I won’t get in the way, I
promise.”

“Madam, it is not possible.”

Alice touched Isaac’s hand and
murmured something he couldn’t understand. It startled him. It was the first kind
touch he’d felt in longer than he could remember. He watched her turn and leave,
then followed the Sister down the hallway. Halfway to the ward, he collapsed. He
couldn’t recall how he’d ended up on the floor, only that things had gone
dark.

The Sister put him in an isolation room with
green walls and a small, high window. Another Sister came and offered him water. He
drank a little and fell back onto the pillow. One moment he shivered, and the next
moment he was on fire. “Forty point two degrees Celsius,” he heard the nurse
say.

“Typhoid,” he thought dully.
Every joint in his body ached. His head was a large bass drum that some maniac was
pounding. The first Sister returned. He began to shake uncontrollably. Her pale lips
reminded him of Number Four.

“Have you been in a place where hygiene
might have been compromised?” she asked.

He laughed bleakly. “An … an
understatement.”

“We will begin treating you with
antibiotics, and then see what else.”

“An invasion of the mesenteric lymph
nodes. Chloromycetin?”

She covered her surprise. “Yes,
that’s the antibiotic of choice. Who are you?”

“An undesirable.” He
didn’t want to give her any information.

She put a cold hand on his forehead. The
Hand of Death.

“Ah!” He pulled away.

“Tomorrow we will move you to the
ward. Tonight you will stay here. You must have a bath. You’re filthy.” She
went away. When the other Sister returned, she urged him to drink more water. She bathed
his head and neck and arms in cool water and made him swallow the first dose of the
antibiotic. He recognized the beginnings of a feverish terror he’d had several
times as a child. His head seemed to grow large and hard, and the room slowly revolved.
He fought the horror. And then it erupted like lava flowing down a hillside, fiery,
engulfing. He tried to get out.

The lights of the room flickered and went
dark. When the generator kicked in, the light was duller. He had no idea whether it was
day or night, or what country he was in.

Across town, the lights gave notice before
they finally went out. Moses and Lulu were in the bathtub. The last of the bird songs
were gone from the air. Lulu had wet a washcloth and laid it over her tummy. Moses
pushed a plastic truck up the sides of the tub and down,
brmm brmmming
underwater and then up and out again. The lights flicked off, then on for thirty
seconds, then off for good.

The sky had the smallest remnants of light
in it, enough for Alice to find her way to the kitchen, where she felt with her hands
across the big wooden table to the kerosene lamp. The glass sides of the lamp were slick
with spilled kerosene, and the fragile shade clattered lightly against its restraining
metal cup as she pulled it toward her. The matchbox should have been next to the lamp,
but it wasn’t. She felt her way
into the living room, pawed
along the mantel, and found the box. All was quiet in the bathroom. A small stab of
worry crossed her mind, and then she heard a splash. She made her way back toward the
lamp, and at the kitchen threshold, slid the matchbox open and took out a match. She
heard laughter, the darkness full of children.

Lulu laughed again. Her voice was strange
for a child’s. Deep, gravelly, like sand thrown against a windowpane. Alice struck
the match, and the kitchen sprang to life. She lifted the lamp chimney, lit the wick,
and adjusted the flame, dark at its center, bright at the edges.