White Dog Fell from the Sky

20



The two of them left early the following morning, conspiratorially, slipping out before the others had left their tents. She knew there’d be talk, speculation about whether they’d shared a tent, but she didn’t care. The baobab trees were bathed in saffron light as the mist rose off the great plain to their east. The engine of the Land Rover was loud, alien in that bird-filled air. Ian started up with the headlights off and then flicked them on after they’d left the campsite. One beam was crooked and shone drunkenly into the scrubby limbs of trees as the vehicle labored through the sand. She’d raided the cook’s tent before they left, and she offered Ian coffee from a thermos. He waved the cup away. “Have to pay attention or we’ll turn turtle.”

She poured some for herself and took a sip.

“So, we got away,” he said.

“I feel a little guilty.”

“Do you often feel that then?”

“No more than the next person … Well, maybe a bit more.”

As a guinea fowl raced across the track, Ian’s foot came off the accelerator for a moment and went back on. “Why did your marriage come to grief?” he asked. “You don’t need to say if you’d rather not.”

“Lawrence lied to me about an affair. We could have withstood that, but then he kept lying. There was something dishonest at the core of us. He was … is an economist. It seemed that’s all he could talk about.”

“What did you like about him?”

She looked out the window onto the tawny grass, tufted around red earth, the occasional termite tower rising like a stalagmite. She thought of a time when she and Lawrence had done angel stands together in the grass, he lying on his back with his feet in the air, she balanced on his feet, flying through the night.

“Underneath it all, he has a kind nature. Not courage, but kindness. He’s not just in this country for himself, but because he wants to help. He believes he’s making things better.”

“Do you?”

“Probably not. But I’d say the same for what I’m doing. I appreciate that it matters to him. But it’s good that it’s over. I see that now. I felt half dead around him.”

“I’ve felt that kind of dead,” Ian said, glancing at her. “It’s preferable to be all the way dead.”

“I don’t want to be any kind of dead.”

“What do you want for yourself then?” he asked.

She watched the track, and him out of the corner of her eye. His head was large, his hair dark with streaks of gray. One side of his tortoiseshell glasses was mended with duct tape. Lawless eyebrows strayed down over brown eyes. He was a bear of a man, with large hands. He was beginning to sag here and there—the lower part of his face toward jowls, the skin over his eyes meeting his eyelids in their downward journey.

“What do I want for myself?” She searched out the black specks on the horizon, trying to make out the animals. “A life that’s large, not small.”

“With someone or without?” He was watching the animals too.

“It depends.”

He waited for her to say more.

There were hundreds in the herd, maybe thousands, moving relentlessly forward. “I think they’re wildebeest,” she said. They were driving along a rise, with the plain stretched beneath them. The herd formed and re-formed, darkening the drought-swept ground. Their heads were down, tails dangling, wind weariness in their bodies.

“Poor bastards,” he said. “They don’t know what’s ahead of them.”

She pictured the fingers of the Okavango Delta reaching into the dusty plain. You could almost smell it, miles away. There’s a way around that fence, she thought, at the same time she knew there wasn’t.

When she was a girl, her mother had taken her to places on weekends. An aquarium one Saturday, the Cincinnati zoo the next. A shark tank in the center of the aquarium had extra thick glass you could press your cheek against. It felt cool, and when you turned your head, it was as though you were underwater. She remembered her mother screaming as a shark came up on the other side of the glass and nosed the place where her cheek was.

What she remembered most about those outings, though, was her mother’s melancholy—the collapse of a world, her daughter a single thread connecting her to what went before. A young ape in the zoo held a banana in one hand and sat close to the bars looking out. Kids came up and screamed. “Hey! Hey!” Alice stood in front of him a long time waiting for him to look in her direction. Their eyes met straight on. Then he lowered his head, peeled the banana delicately, carefully, and dropped the peel at his feet. With a single motion, he popped the whole thing into his mouth and swung away, up into the limbs of a fake tree. He dazzled her, that beautiful young ape. She’d seen the wild in him, the great forests, and for a moment she lived there too.

It was like that now.

Ian turned up a smaller track, headed northwest. The herd was to their right now, and they could see the first animals about a half kilometer from the fence. He stopped and fished a pair of binoculars out of his knapsack, then started up the vehicle again. His face looked suddenly hard. He was no longer driving in an ambling, relaxed way. She felt a kind of terror overtake her.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“I don’t want to involve you, but there’s something I need to do.”

It was mad being out here with a man she hardly knew, the nearest person too far to reach on foot even if she’d known where she was.

“I’m going to try to cut the fence,” he said quietly. “I could go to prison for it. You could go as my accomplice. If you want, I’ll leave you here under a tree and come back for you.”

It only took a second to say, “I’m coming too.”

They drew closer, still unable to see the wire but close enough to see the posts stretching endlessly in either direction. The first animals in the herd were already close to the fence. It was too late, she thought, even as she scrambled out of the Land Rover and Ian rummaged among the tools in the back.

He found a screwdriver, a claw hammer, a pair of vice grips, a wrench, a funnel for oil, nothing useful. He grabbed the vice grips and hammer, and they ran to the right of the area where the animals were headed. When they reached the fence, he held the wire with the vice grips and twisted the claw of the hammer around the wire, then rocked it back and forth. “Stand back in case it snaps.”

The wire was thick, and the tools were useless.

He tried again. And then he tried digging around a post with a rock and the hammer, but the dirt was cement hard. The first of the wildebeest arrived at the barrier about two to three hundred meters away. Others followed. Some of the first were pushed into the fence and fell. Alice turned away. Ian watched for a few moments and turned and slammed the hammer into a fence post. It flew out of his hand, and he left it there and stalked back to the Land Rover. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. “Bloody f*cking hell …” She picked up the hammer and followed him.

She was surprised to find him in the driver’s seat with tears running down his cheeks. She climbed in, and he put the vehicle in gear and drove away. They headed toward Moremi Game Reserve, their mood somber. “It’s people like that cold fish,” he said, “responsible for that. What has he ever learned in Milwaukee about this world? He’s frightened of anything he doesn’t understand. Did you hear him last night?”

“Yes, I heard him. God knows how much money he’ll be in charge of dispensing.”

“Or how he’ll use it. If he saw what we just saw …”

“It wouldn’t make any difference,” she said. “He’d find a way to justify it.”

They drove along for a while without talking.

“We’re about ten kilometers away from the park,” he said. “There’ll be mosquitoes. You’re on chloroquine, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” What did he think she was, an idiot?

In the park, they saw more wildebeest, waterbuck with their tawny skin and white rumps, hundreds of impala, red lechwe, zebra, giraffe browsing on trees, a family of warthogs, a saddlebilled stork. In the late afternoon, a double rainbow spread over a wide plain of yellow grass, where a small herd of sable antelope was grazing, their white cheeks and chins giving their faces a kind of delicacy, their ringed horns swept back in great curves. She thought this was the most devastatingly beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

He stood close to her, quiet, looking out. “No lions today,” he said finally.

“I didn’t come just for lions.”

“What did you come for then?”

She turned toward him. “I’ve loved everything about being with you today. Even the worst of it.”

They drove back toward camp slowly, taking a detour to try to find the man he’d been looking for the other night. He pulled off the track and headed overland across scrub savannah. They bounced along as the light slanted into gold. She didn’t see the group of grass huts until they were nearly on top of them, built in a loose circle near a water hole. Two women sat outside, one with a baby at the breast. Several children played near a small fire. She recognized Ngwaga’s name as Ian greeted the group in a language of clicks and pops.

“They say he’s coming back soon,” he told Alice. An old woman joined the group and looked at them curiously. Her small breasts hung flat on her chest. Her eyes were small, intelligent, distant-looking. One of the younger women offered them a cup of tea and biltong. The tea tasted like ashes, like red dust and sun.

She looked at Ian, squatting companionably near the three women. He wasn’t handsome in any conventional sense, but his eyes were extremely blue. Blue enough to disarm, to take up space of their own. She guessed he was somewhere between ten and fifteen years older than she was. She hadn’t bothered to ask. He offered cigarettes to the group, and they smoked together companionably as the color seeped slowly out of the sky. Ngwaga finally returned with a skin bag slung over one shoulder and embraced Ian. He was a healthy-looking man with a small white scraggle of a beard, deep horizontal lines running across his forehead, and a ready laugh. When he went to shake Alice’s hand, he held out just his fingers, warm and leathery. They set out in the Land Rover, the three of them sitting side by side, making their way slowly over darkening scrub, back to the main track. At one point, Ngwaga pointed to her and laughed, nudged her leg with his skinny thigh.

“What did he say?” she asked Ian.

He didn’t answer her.

“Tell me.”

“That my woman has long legs like an ostrich.”

She laughed. “Big feet like one too.” She let the “my woman” go.

She had no idea how Ian found his way. It was night when they returned, with the others already eating dinner around the fire. “Any food left?” Ian asked.

“Goat stew,” said Shakespeare. “Plenty left.” He’d returned with the replacement fuel line.

She sat on the other side of the fire from Ngwaga and Ian, who passed a bottle of wine between them. The darkness took up all the space around them. The moon was a curved palm low in the sky. Alice couldn’t take her eyes off Ngwaga. He sat in a circle of firelight, disturbing nothing, in harmony with fire, night, stars. He spoke with his hands, his tongue clicking as he formed words. He filled a small pipe with tobacco and lit it. When he’d had a few puffs, he turned to Ian and spoke for a while. When he’d finished, Ian nodded, grew quiet, and stared into the flames. A few minutes later, Ian crossed to the other side of the fire and sat down next to Alice.

“Okay?” she asked.

He nodded. “You?”

“Yes, what was he saying just now?”

“A story his grandfather had told him. About how the wind used to be a man. But then Wind no longer walked as he used to do, he no longer slept with his wife. He flew about. ‘That is how the wind behaves,’ he said. ‘It flies about. It goes from place to place to place, always moving, never standing still. You are a man like that. A man who is part wind.’”

“Do you think that’s true?”

“Yes.”

“Does it worry you?”

“To be so entirely transparent?”

“I mean the wind part.”

“I’ve never been otherwise. But I guess it serves as a warning.”

“For me? I already knew it.”

Across the fire, Sam said, “Ngwaga wants to know what happens to the spacemen who walk on the moon when the moon becomes smaller.”

“What do you think happens?” Ian asked him.

“They must only take trips to the moon when the moon is full,” Ian translated. “They must hurry to accomplish their work. And as it grows smaller, they must run to the side without the bite out of it. And when it’s time to come back, they wait until the moon is setting, and then they jump to the Earth.”

“You’re not going to let him keep thinking that,” said C.T.

“Why not?” asked Ian. “Why shouldn’t he think that?”

“Because it’s wrong.”

“You explain it then,” said Ian. “Alice and I were just going anyway.”

It was not gracefully or graciously done. And part of her didn’t like that he’d spoken for her. She excused herself, said good night, and left the light of the fire. She found Ian standing in the shadows, halfway to the tents.

“You’re a bit of a hothead, aren’t you.”

“That was boorish of me,” he said. “But I had to get away from that prick.”

“My boss?”

“Why, do you like him?”

“I don’t dislike him.”

“He’s a conventionally minded little man. He ought to be adding columns of figures instead of the job he’s doing. Why shouldn’t people believe what they want to believe about the moon?”

He peered at her in the darkness. “Are you happy?”

“Why do you ask?”

He pulled her toward him and kissed her. His mouth was soft and tasted of wine. Something in her head said, This man is a rapscallion.

She expected he’d ask to come to her tent. She had no answer for him, but she knew there was no will left in her. As though hearing this, he said, “We don’t have to hurry. We have all the time in the world.”

Do we? she wanted to ask.

“Don’t you feel that?” he asked.

“No.” She felt hot now, feverish. She took off the light jacket she was wearing and threw it over her arm. She began to cry softly.

“Shall I come to you tonight then?”

She began to shake. “No.” Something had grown too full in her to be held. She could love this man, given half a chance, and it scared her silly and shattered her with happiness. She could hardly see him in that light. He moved closer and drew her body to his. She cried harder.

“What?”

“Don’t worry,” she said.

“What?”

“I’ve been pent up.” She stopped abruptly and wiped her nose on her sleeve like a child. She hated to cry.

“You’ve been living like a Hartford housewife.”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“I didn’t say it was. But it wasn’t in your nature.”

She squeezed his arm with both hands.

“I’m too old for you,” he said.

“What difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference. Think about it.”

“I have.”

“You don’t know who I am.”

“I know enough.”

“What do you know?”

“You’re uncivilized.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve been watching you.”

“And I you.”

“And what have you seen?”

He paused. “You’re bright and brave, and you’ve been hurt. Your best time is early morning.”

She laughed. “Your best time is when the moon rises.”

They stood side by side, her head against the top of his arm.

“Well good night then,” she said.

“You’re going?”

“Yes.” But then she didn’t. They went back to the campfire and found no one there. Ian kicked up the ashes with his boot and threw on a couple of hunks of wood. A shooting star flared across the edge of her vision, and then she wasn’t sure whether it was a star or a spark from the fire rising into the darkness. And there was the moon over the top of the low trees, shining with all its distant mountains and valleys. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and saw a shaggy head, dark against the light of the fire.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

“That you look like a beast in this light.”

“Friendly or savage?”

“Midway.”

The fire hit a pocket of air inside a log and exploded.

Over the following two days the group met with Bushmen leaders outside of Maun, and with a group of ranchers, all of whom managed large herds of cattle. One of Alice’s jobs was documenting conversations with groups whose positions felt irreconcilable. Arthur Haddock was immovable. He’d return to Gaborone and talk with his wife of forty-five years about the primitive men he’d met who were still running after wild animals with bows and arrows.

The roads were very bad: deep sand, deeper ruts, rocks jutting up unpredictably here and there. One or another vehicle got stuck and had to be dug out. On the way to Sehitwa, the truck had a flat, then a shock absorber on one of the Land Rovers went. The temperature gauge on the second Land Rover began climbing, and after changing the tire on the truck, it spiked up to the danger zone. The three vehicles stopped. “The gauge is bad,” said Shakespeare optimistically. He put his hand companionably on the hood. He filled up the radiator, and they started out again. The gauge stayed in the red zone. They stopped again. “Could be a leak somewhere,” said Will.

“I say we turn around,” said Haddock.

“We’ve got two more vehicles,” Alice said. “Why would we turn around?”

Will lay down in the sand and wriggled underneath the Land Rover. He came back out. “The radiator’s taken one too many rocks.” He had a short conference with Shakespeare and Sam, who rummaged around in a tin box and brought out a container of pepper. They let the radiator cool down, then Shakespeare removed the radiator cap, measured out a couple of teaspoons of pepper into the palm of his hand, and threw in the grains.

They let it sit for a quarter of an hour so that the grains could settle and plug the hole, brewed tea by the side of the road, and started up the vehicles again. The gauge went down and stayed down for an hour or so, but then began climbing again. They arrived in Sehitwa close to nightfall, and Sam went looking for a mechanic. It turned out the only one around was away for the week up near the Caprivi Strip. “We can stay here and wait for the guy to get back,” said Will, “we can take a chance and go on, or we can limp back to Maun. I’d say we go back. There are too few vehicles on the road if we get into trouble. The good Land Rover can follow the other.”

“Trip’s over,” Haddock said, with something close to satisfaction.

“Trip’s not over,” said Alice. “That leaves one vehicle.” She’d wanted to get to the Tsodilo Hills ever since coming to Botswana. She’d seen pictures of San paintings on red rocks, the strokes of their ancient brushes capturing mystery. She could picture the lonely hills, the overhanging cliffs that protected the paintings. She knew Ian had been there dozens of times, had copied each panel of drawings into a notebook, had studied them stroke by stroke.

“It’s probably best to call it a day,” said her boss.

She looked at the Chevy truck, its willing snout, its sturdy wheels sitting in the sand, and thought it could get her there. The moment felt like a microcosm of her whole life—near misses, giving up too soon. It made her want to scream, standing there in the heat, eyes stinging with tears she had no intention of shedding.

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m going off to pee. Avert your eyes.” She walked behind the truck, pulled down her pants and squatted. A small dribble was all there was. She pulled up her pants and stayed behind the bed of the truck and whispered, F*ck! F*ckf*ckf*ck! She was wrong about the tears, which came without her bidding. She’d understood through Ngwaga that the !Kung San were still living forces, their world existing beyond the comprehension of people like her. She felt she’d been close to perceiving that mysterious, incomprehensible world, that she would have touched it beyond Nokaneng and Gomare, in the hills rising from the plains.