White Dog Fell from the Sky

24



One Motswana was black, the other white. They passed him off at the border in shackles. Not lingering, Isaac noticed. You don’t hand a black man over to the white South African Security Police without a twinge of something that makes you want to put the wretch behind you as soon as you can, bury him in road dust before he’ll disturb your dreams at night.

“Get in,” the two South Africans said in Afrikaans. They chained him to an iron ring riveted to the floor of the van, rolled up the windows, slammed the doors, laughed with the border guard for a bit while the sun baked Isaac senseless inside the van. When they returned, the meatier of the two began cussing him out. Isaac understood every second or third word, enough to know that they believed he was pocketing money from both sides of the border, all set up to be a rich black bastard, a right clever chap, well we’ll see who’s clever now.

He tasted the malice, felt it swimming through his blood like a leach looking for a place to lay its mouth hooks. The shaking began in his belly and radiated out to his legs and feet, out to his hands.

The men got in, the van rolled south.

It didn’t take long to understand. They want to break your mind—and your heart if they can get at it. But your body is the only thing within their power to shatter. The only thing, unless you go ahead and give them the rest.

He pictured himself on the train platform, groveling. Please, baas, please help, I beg of you. Down on his knees, holding the conductor’s pant cuff. That’s where most people go. And by god, he wouldn’t go there again. Not if they poured acid in his eyes.

He thought a moment. It was all very well to say what he would do and what he would not do. Now he was sitting in the back of a van, safe for the moment, the veldt stretching out on all sides. But where he was going was another country altogether, a country that ate souls. All at once, he believed that he would not survive. He saw them throwing his broken body out a tenth-story window. He saw the fabric of his shirt flutter in the wind, his head flopped to one side, his legs splayed. He could not see himself land, only his body in midair. He thought of Nthusi, how he’d once wanted to walk on air, high, like the Flying Wallendas. He thought of the shoes he would never buy his brother. He saw his money in the office of the chief of police. It had been lying on his desk in a pouch when he’d left. The man had not looked dishonest, but where would that money go now? If it had been less, he wondered if they would have let him go. The extra sixty rand given to him in kindness might be the root of his misfortune now. No, stupidity, his own, was the root.

Halfway to Johannesburg, they stopped at a roadside café. The men got out. This time they left a window partway open and locked the doors. He watched them as they leaned against the side wall of a dirty cinderblock building, boisterous as rugby players, eating two large sandwiches, slabs of red meat flapping at the edges of white bread. They returned with a paper cup of water and gave it to Isaac. He would not ask for food, as hungry as he was. To ask would be to go down on his knees holding the pant cuff.