White Dog Fell from the Sky

23



Alice’s trip was over. She was next to the window, looking out. Her frustration was electric, like the spikes of an aloe. As the group scrambled for vehicles, Ian found his way into the middle seat of the Chevy beside her. A small part of him was amused, but the larger part wanted to be driving her wherever she wanted to go.

As Sam climbed into the driver’s seat and the truck got under way, Ian said to her, “I thought you were going to throw a wobbler back there.”

“I don’t know what a wobbler is.” Her voice was curt.

“I thought you might deck Haddock.”

“He’s just a frightened old has-been.”

He looked at her. “You feel sorry for him?”

“Imagine living your whole life like that. It would be like living a prison sentence. Did you see his shoes? They’re so slippery, he can hardly walk.”

“Like a vulture with no toes,” said Sam.

It came out of the blue. Ian pictured those lappet-faced vultures with their raw, featherless necks, huge bills, and gimlet eyes. Alice started laughing and couldn’t stop. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“A vulture,” said Sam again.

“Oh god, Sam, stop,” she said, fighting for air. She settled down, but then she started up again.

“Are you okay?” Ian asked.

“No, I can’t stop.”

His asking seemed to sober her up enough to speak. She grabbed his hand furtively and said, “I had a roommate once. She had the loudest laugh in the world. We were in a bar one time. I said something she thought was funny, and her head went back and she stopped breathing. I’d never seen anyone do anything like that before. I thought she was choking. She opened her mouth, and this explosion came out. And then on the intake, she snorted almost as loud. I was young. So mortified, I thought I’d just crawl out the door.”

“I knew someone who sneezed like that. The first AHH! was like a scream. And then she said Choo.”

“Was she a romantic interest?”

Her question startled him. “Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I was bonkers over her. But we had huge rows. We were sloshed a lot of the time. When I stopped drinking, which wasn’t for long back then, I saw the light.”

“Her sneeze stopped being so cute?”

“It never really was cute.” He wasn’t thinking about that woman. He needed to say something. They’d soon be in Maun. The next day, they’d be in Nata. She’d be going back to Gaborone. He’d pick up his Land Rover and drive back the way they’d just come, up to the Tsodilo Hills. Don’t go, he wanted to say. Come with me. But he’d be a right bastard to put that proposition to her, especially with her not knowing his whole story.

The road was rough, and Ian’s head bounced against the roof of the truck. The convoy got stuck in the sand twice on the way to Maun. The radiator of the Land Rover needed filling up a dozen times before they returned, but it held until the vehicle was able to limp into town.

The group stayed that night at Crocodile Camp on the banks of the Thamalakane River, and everyone but Arthur Haddock gathered on the veranda, drinking bad beer, watching the river turn into a ribbon of blackness. The hippo voices sounded like the bellow of a huge cow. Before the dark swallowed everything, there were their two enormous heads, their eyes and rounded ears and great wide-spaced nostrils just above the water in the shadows of the bank, followed by their hulking broad backs.

Will asked Alice, “Are you glad you came?”

“God, yes.”

“Do you think we accomplished anything?”

“I don’t know. People can surprise you.” Ian watched her. When she wasn’t saying everything she felt, he noticed she pushed her tongue into her right cheek, which created an almost imperceptible bulge, like a bubble of tiny words straining to get out.

“Arthur’s not the only bloke in the Ministry of Agriculture.”

“But he was the one who came, unfortunately.”

“You know,” said Will, “someday, after millions of animals have piled up against fences, someone’s going to say the fences didn’t do any good, and they’ll come down. The bloody ignorance, it staggers one. You wonder how the human race got this far.”

A sudden hissing expulsion of air from the river surprised him. Crocodiles. No one else seemed to have heard it. Ian felt sadness sweep over him, partly at Will’s words, partly at what felt suddenly like the waste of his own life. Somehow, things had become fractured. He looked at Alice, thought of the freshness of her laughter, her anger, her grief, how they seemed to pour straight out of some living cauldron in her.

He stood up, holding half a bottle of beer, and left the circle, muttering something about needing to go have a piss. He felt her eyes on him, felt them burrow into the curve of his lower back, almost as though she’d laid a hand there.

He needed to get away from her. A point of no return would soon be reached. He wasn’t far from it now. You’re on a river. You hear the sound of a waterfall in your ears. You haven’t navigated this particular river before, but you’ve navigated others like it. You’re paddling along at the same rate as the river, hardly noticing how fast the trees are whizzing by, when the earth suddenly drops away and the water rushes down into boiling mayhem, leaving no time for regrets, second thoughts, resolutions.

There was something ancient about her large, generous face. Her eyes looked right at you. They weren’t drifty like the eyes of most people, looking vaguely in your direction, glancing off. They saw you; it was like looking into the sea on a cloudy day: gray, blue, green. They were wide-set, her mouth also wide, easy with its shy smile. Her face had a calmness in it, the kind you see in wild animals who have no predators. Her hair was almost always a mess. He liked this. And he liked that it was already almost entirely gray, as though some older wisdom had outpaced her age. It was curly with a kind of wild abandon, and he often had to stop his hand, wanting to tuck it behind an ear, out of her eyes. In the heat of the day, she pinned it up, but not successfully. It often fell down.

He was too old for her. Down the road, it would be miserable for her to be saddled with an old codger shuffling about in bedroom slippers needing his tea, when she was still in the prime of life. Fifteen years is almost a generation. And age aside, he wasn’t exactly the catch of a lifetime. He’d pretty much lost whatever looks he had. His grant awards were hit or miss. When necessity called, he taught. When he didn’t have to, he wandered about in the hills, discovering what he could. He’d be hard pressed to say where home was, or even that it mattered. That had been a problem with any woman who’d ever wanted him in her life. It would be a problem again.

He felt protective of her. She was a bit of a mug. He needed to get the hell out. Crack of dawn tomorrow. Give her a wide berth tonight. Say a quick good-bye when they reached Nata: it’s been dandy, see you someday. Get over whatever hit him, get back to work. Head for the hills. Literally. He hadn’t been with a woman in a while. That was part of the problem. A man needs a woman. But Alice didn’t need him making a shambles of her life.

As he circled around the side of the lodge, he heard the eerie call of a Pel’s fishing owl, the song rising and falling, falling some more. He stood still, not breathing. It reminded him of departing souls. And then he thought, not wanting the thought, of the thousands of animals hung up on fences, perishing for water. Last night, he’d woken himself, crying out in his sleep. He couldn’t remember the dream, but he remembered the feel of it. Something important. Running across an empty tundra, arriving too late.

He went around to the road, away from the river, and sat on a stone. He imagined an impala arriving at a water hole, its slenderness mirrored in the surface, spreading its front legs wide before drinking. One animal. You could look at it forever. Something like wonder was what had first drawn him to rock paintings. As a boy, while sitting in the cold pews of a church (out of which he’d bolted the day he was old enough to outrun his mother), he’d seen people going through the motions of awe. A silver chalice lifted at an altar. A passionless hymn. It was fine for those who were there, he supposed, but for him, it was beyond bearing.

Ancient Bushmen pounded hematite for red paint, bound it with blood serum, shaped quills, feathers, or bones for brushes, and found the stillness in themselves to capture life as they’d felt it. You could see it in the paintings: they’d watched, they’d listened, they’d understood their own place in the universe, no greater and no lesser than the animals they painted. You could feel in these paintings how time whirled through them, how the infinite opened before them when they knocked at its door, spilling out its terrible glories.

Any fool would be happy poking around in the hills, he thought, making copies of paintings in a notebook, trying to puzzle out the lives behind the images. But only a handful of San people were now left in Botswana, whose very existence was threatened by these cursed fences. He imagined returning to the place he’d first gone with Alice, carrying proper tools this time, cutting the fence section by section. It wasn’t something he wanted to do. You’re not born to pull down things other men have erected. Nor did he look forward to the rotting carcasses he’d find on the boundary. But you know when something feels right by the way it sweeps through you. It’s no longer an idea but something that inhabits you.

He stood up, as though tonight was already too late. He thought he’d go find her, then he thought he’d leave it, then he thought he’d walk along the road and think a bit. He’d settled on a walk and was half a kilometer down the road when a battered Toyota pickup stopped. The dust settled, and a man got out. His gait was familiar. All at once, Ian recognized Roger, an old friend he’d met on his first trip to Botswana. It was Roger who’d taken him up to the Tsodilo Hills for the first time.

“Imagine meeting you here!” Roger yelled. Ian thumped him on the back. It had been a couple of years since he’d seen him. Although Ian wasn’t a small man himself, Roger was half a head taller, a huge, slow-moving ox, deliberate in every way. His parents were Rhodesian. He’d grown up in Maun, one of four brothers, and was the only one still left in Botswana.

“Where are you coming from?” asked Ian.

“Ghanzi. Had to see a fur trader.”

“Shaw?”

Roger nodded. “And you?”

“I’ve been on a trip,” said Ian. “Not alone. We got as far as Sehitwa, a little beyond.”

“Who were you with?”

“A guy from agriculture sliding around in city shoes, another guy from Ministry of Local Government and Lands, Will, the wildlife chap—you know him—a woman working on San policy, a few others.”

“What were you doing with that lot? Here, jump in.” He opened the passenger door, and Ian climbed in.

“Glorified sightseeing. The idea was to talk to people, try to understand the needs of all parties, and come up with a reasonable land-use policy, something that won’t screw wildlife and the San.”

“Good luck with that.” He drove up the road and stopped in front of Crocodile Camp.

“I’ve got a favor to ask,” Ian said. “You wouldn’t be heading toward Nata by any chance?”

“I’m leaving in an hour or so. Just have to grab a bite to eat and fill up with petrol.”

“I’d like to hitch a ride.”

“No problem. You want dinner first?”

“I’ve eaten.”

“About that woman you mentioned. Is she spoken for?”

“God’s sake, Roger. You never quit.”

“What does she look like?” They got out of the truck and went up the steps onto the porch. They lingered there a moment, looking in the direction of the truck cooling in the evening shadows.

“Let up, would you?” He felt disloyal going on, but he did. “The woman’s American, recently divorced. Alice is her name. She works in Local Government and Lands with C.T. what’s his name. She’s prematurely gray, nice body. Big bones. Not your type though. You go for the slim, frail sort.”

Roger laughed.

Something made Ian turn, and his eyes went hollow. Alice was standing there. And then she was gone.

“Bloody hell,” he said.

“You’re right,” said Roger. “Not my type.”

“Put a sock in it, man.”

“It’s her you’re running from, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer. But then he said, “You know, forget about Nata. I need to stay the night in Maun after all, head to Nata with the rest of them in the morning.”

Roger laughed. “They’ll do that to you—you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.”

F*ck you, he wanted to say. But it was his own damn fault. “See you before long, old man. Maybe when I get to Nata, if you’re still about.”

He stumbled away toward his room, no idea how to make it better. Splashed water on his face and dried it with a towel. Changed his shirt, as though he were starting the day again, then looked in the mirror with a hard eye and said, “You stupid cock up.” He turned on his heel without saying another word to that sorry bastard in the mirror and headed down the steps.

He saw her from a distance, sitting with Will on the porch overlooking the river. Neither was speaking, just watching the night. If he joined them, she’d find the earliest opportunity to escape, and that would be that. He waited in the shadows of the building. And waited some more. He’d already made up his mind to clear out, and as those silly nits were fond of saying, God had provided. She’d never want to see him again. As it should be.

But still he waited. As his legs cramped, he treated the pain as a form of penance. His mind chattered. He wanted it to be still a moment, but his thoughts scooted out from beneath him. Something dark flew overhead. He’d never particularly liked Maun, as beautiful as the river was. Depressing expatriate community. A lot of heavy drinkers. Wives in various stages of desperation. People went bonkers in places like this.

Alice stood up just then. Will got to his feet too, waited until she’d gone a few steps, and sat down again, his feet propped back up on the railing.

It turned out it wasn’t in him to run her down. It wasn’t right. He’d scare her out here in the dark for one thing. For another, she’d know he’d been watching. So he left it and went to his room and thrashed under mosquito netting until the night was used up and its scraps had smudged into dark shadows under his eyes. By morning, he looked and felt like hell.

Alice was up early, still furious with him—the insolence of the man. She felt humiliated, angry with herself for being taken in. She stood on the veranda of the old hotel, trembling with something more than anger, something more vulnerable that she’d just as soon not admit to herself. The morning breeze came off the river. She’d intended to head down there, but the hotel owner’s little toy terrier had latched on to her, his front paws wrapped around one of her ankles, pumping away, his ears slapping against his eyes with his violent exertions. She shook her leg. “Get away, Ralph.”

She’d always been susceptible to fleas and had noticed the night before that welts appeared on her ankles when Ralph was near. She dragged her canine ball and chain forward, and when she got to the stairs, she thought of bumping him down, but he became satiated and let go. Still, he trailed her with his self-involved little snout. How did people ever love an animal like this?

“Go home, Ralph,” she said. “I’m going to the river. There are crocodiles down there who love little dogs.” His whole back end wagged. She headed instead for the road, hoping he’d peel off and cling to someone else. The wooden steps creaked, and Ralph trotted in front of her, his scraggly tail held high.

Nothing seemed to move or breathe. Her feet raised small clouds of dust as she walked away from the hotel toward town. She had no destination, but her feet walked faster, as though she did. He, that man, was back there somewhere, feeling what she hoped was remorse, but perhaps that was too much to ask for.

Ralph suddenly took off into the undergrowth. “Ralph!” she called.

“Ralph! Come here, damn it.”

She heard him crashing around, breaking twigs. For a small animal, he made a huge racket. And then the sound of his high-pitched terror. She beat her way down a narrow footpath and found a pack of feral dogs surrounding him. “Get away!” she yelled running toward the pack, waving her arms. She picked up a couple of stones and hurled them. One of them found its mark on the flank of a dog that looked more like a hyena. It slunk off, but it turned and began creeping back.

Ralph whimpered and snarled. Alice hurled several more stones, picked up a stick and brandished it. The pack didn’t seem to realize how puny she was, and they turned tail and ran.

Ralph held up a quivering paw. She picked him up and felt his heart beating in the tiny cave of his ribs. He shook all over and buried his nose in her neck. She felt something like love for him then, her disdain swept away by the force of his desire to just be happy and safe. She walked back up the road, imagining Ralph’s fleas climbing into her hair, roistering about under her shirt, and delivered him back to Estelle, the owner of the hotel.

She headed back out to the veranda and descended the steps to the river where she’d intended to go in the first place. She imagined Ian standing on the veranda looking out, but when she turned to look, it was empty. And then something odd stirred in her, unbidden, a feeling like what a river might experience if it were a sentient being: the willingness to erase what’s gone before, to find a channel through.

They were to leave at seven, but Shakespeare and Sam hadn’t turned up, not by seven, not by seven thirty.

They were down to two vehicles. One Land Rover would stay in Maun to get its radiator repaired, and they’d cram into the other two. They were all there waiting, except Alice.

“I’ll be down by the river,” Ian told Will. He went inside and got a cup of coffee, really wanting a shot of whiskey, and went out the door to the porch and stood near where he’d seen her last night. She wasn’t there, of course. The coffee was bad. Probably warmed over from yesterday.

A pair of fish eagles called back and forth to each other: weeeee-ah, shrill, repetitive. He felt a sense of doom, and of his own shoddiness. He had another sip of coffee and watched a turquoise kingfisher. He should have left Maun last night. He thought about what he’d do when he reached Nata. Find or borrow some heavy-duty bolt cutters. Outfit himself for two or three weeks away, spend a night in Nata, and be off the next day. He’d drive to the Kuke fence, see if he could cut through that blasted wire, and head for Sepopa and the Tsodilo Hills a few days later. He wanted to get a paper out, which meant finishing the mapping in the hills he’d contracted to do through the grant. The plan gave him little pleasure this morning, and he tossed the remains of the coffee off the porch.

It occurred to him that double-decker buses were roaring down roads in London at this moment, people crowded on streets, greengrocers arranging apples, lions in repose at Trafalgar Square, the Tube with its arteries and veins underneath it all. It might as well be the moon. He suddenly longed for it: life whizzing by, none of it anything to do with him. Too many people knew him here, knew his business. Where do you go to get away? The Gaborone mall? The Tip Top Bazaar, the South Ring Butchery? A movie theater with its films run through the gristmill of South Africa’s enlightened censors? He felt constricted, wanted to shout and pound his chest like a mountain gorilla.

His heart sped even before he saw her come around the corner. “Morning,” he croaked. “There’s a malachite kingfisher out there.”

“I don’t care if it’s a flying moose,” she said, turning on her heel.

“Please don’t go. I’m sorry about last night.”

Her eyes flashed. “You might have been describing a cow heading for the Meat Commission. I thought you were a different sort of man. If I’d known that’s how you felt, I wouldn’t have wasted a minute with you.”

“That’s not how I feel. Roger wanted to know what you looked like.”

“And how would Roger even know I existed if Roger hadn’t been told?”

“He wouldn’t have. You were on my mind.”

Something crossed her face, swiftly replaced by rage. Her voice shook. “You said it like an auctioneer. ‘The woman’s American, recently divorced.’ The woman. As though you don’t even know me. Gray hair. Already over the hill. Oh, nice body. But big bones. A lady wrestler. Or maybe an orangutan. And then your old boy laughter. You and Roger, whoever the hell that was, yucking it up at my expense. You’re a royal prick, you know that?”

She’d already turned to leave when he said, “I know that. Worse than that. I’m an insensitive lout, a cad, a muttonhead, a piss poor specimen of a man, a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave. If I were a dog, I’d have me put down.”

“Good. Now leave me alone.” He thought a hint of a smile had flitted over her lips. Her footsteps departed, and he watched her climb into the Land Rover. A male voice from around the side of the building asked, “Where is he?”

“Back there,” she said, as though she were talking about a warthog.

“Ian?” Will called. “Bus is leaving. You’re in the Land Rover.” The gods were laughing, he thought, when they left the last seat next to her in front. Even though he jammed himself over by the door so no part of him was touching her, the road had worsened, and he kept being thrown onto her. Shakespeare drove, and Arthur Haddock and C.T. occupied the backseat. The day was hot and airless, and they ate dust from the vehicle traveling in front of them.

This cockamamie trip: a group of white men and a woman, most of them from outside the country, ushered about by Batswana drivers and cooks. A ship of fools. Mostly well-meaning fools, but lunkheads all the same, himself included. He knew it from the start, before he’d agreed. He’d had work to do, pressing on him. It puzzled him what had driven him to say yes. You come to trust these instincts, but in this case, beyond stupid.

As they passed north of the Ntwetwe Pan, he thought of her face as they’d crossed. On an impulse, he dug into his shirt pocket, brought out a small pad of paper and a pencil, and wrote. You said you’d like to camp on the Ntwetwe Pan and wake up there someday. Will you come with me?

He slid it across his lap toward her.

Her eyes took in the words, and she grabbed the pencil. You must be mad.

He took the pencil … about you. It sounded like a schmaltzy Valentine card. Please forgive my stupidity. Stay with me tonight in Nata.

Who do you think I am? She sat for a while with the pad in her lap, her hands covering it, then passed it back.

We can drive to the Pan tomorrow, camp overnight, head for the veterinary fence and make it right this time, and then, if you agree, I’d like to show you the Tsodilo Hills. Come with me. You can have your own tent.

She sat for a long time looking through the windshield. A guinea fowl flew up into a cluster of mopane scrub. She breathed in, held her breath, finally let it out.

You smoke. You’re crazy. I don’t forgive you. She dropped the pad under the seat.

He picked it up. Please, he wrote.