White Dog Fell from the Sky

27



After Will returned to Gaborone, he drove to Alice’s house. The first thing he noticed was White Dog just inside the gate, lying half upright, half on her side, barely able to lift her head. He thought he’d seen this dog with Isaac, and it gave him a bad feeling, hair-sticking-up-on-the-back-of-his-neck bad. He returned to his house, picked up a cricket bat and an open can of dog food from the refrigerator. He didn’t tell Greta why he was making a second trip, or what he was taking with him.

The dog was in the same place when he came back. Will parked his truck just inside the gate, held out his hand and called. “Here, girl.” She was too weak to rise.

Greta had said there’d been a short rain since he’d been away, and the evidence was still here—a bowl half filled with water, branches down from the wind, a bucket under a tree with water in the bottom, a drowned mouse floating. He tipped out the water, threw the mouse into the underbrush, and upended the dog food into the bowl. “Good girl,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.” Her nose twitched with the smell of meat, and she tried to get up. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ll just set it down here for you.” He brought it close and placed it in front of her. She leaned forward and ate, sitting with her paws flat on the ground. Will crouched nearby and watched her. She was scoured down to bone, hunger pouches under her eyes. It tore his heart to see.

The light was fading, and he wished it had been morning. He didn’t want to face what he thought he might be facing, as dark was beginning to push down from the sky. “I’ll be back,” he said to the dog.

He grabbed the bat and carried it toward the house. “Koko?” he said at the door. “Anybody home?” He wasn’t a fretful, fearful man, but it took a gathering of courage to make himself enter. “Isaac?” he called. “Isaac! Are you there?” When he’d met him that once, he’d thought him a decent, reliable sort. Not one to go clattering off. He felt the cold creeps traveling along his spine as he entered the kitchen and found the spoiled porridge on the big wooden table, as though someone had left in haste. Something rubbed against his leg, and he jumped a foot sideways. “Christ!” Mr. Magoo swished through his legs, doing a figure eight in and out. “You’ve taken twenty years off me! Where’s the other one?”

He went into the spare bedroom near the outside door and found Isaac’s bed unmade, his few clothes in a pile on a chair. His shoes weren’t there. The house was darkening, and he made a quick tour through it, heart pounding, finding nothing amiss, before he returned to the kitchen. Magoo trailed him, and he opened a tin of sardines and tipped the whole thing into a bowl. The cat ate in a frenzy. A bag of cat food was ripped open, its contents gone. The milk in the refrigerator was sour, but he filled another bowl with water and left it on the floor, with the door open to the outside.

He carried out another bowl of canned food, along with a bucket of water, to where White Dog sat. When she’d finished the second bowl of food, she lapped a little water and lay down again on her side with a small groan. “Do you want to come with me?” he asked. The tip of her tail lifted and fell. He thought of his five young savages at home. “On second thought, you’ll be better off here. Best not to eat any more tonight. Your stomach won’t handle it. I’ll be by with more in the morning … You’re waiting for him, aren’t you. For Isaac.”

At the sound of his name she lifted her head. She watched Will open the door to his truck and get in. Through the rearview mirror, he saw her following him with her eyes until he was out of sight.

Will returned the following morning and found White Dog sitting in the same place where she’d been lying before. The water beside her was nearly gone. He gave her two cans of food and more water, and she stood to eat, her tail wagging softly. When she’d finished, he said, “I’m going to see if I can find Isaac. In the meantime, I’ll be by every day. You’ll stay here, all right?”

He fed Mr. Magoo and went through the house again for signs of anything out of order. Among Isaac’s things was a letter postmarked from South Africa, but he didn’t feel right checking the contents. Out in the garden, he found the lettuces pretty well dead. The tomatoes had hung on, along with some low plants, still alive. He touched the skin of a tiny pepper and placed his finger on his tongue. Hot. He turned on the hose and gave them all water, then returned home and talked to Greta.

They agreed he should stop in at the police station on the way to work, see Roland, one of Greta’s countrymen who worked there. Not the sharpest tool in the shed but decent enough. Will was out the door when he thought he should try to ring up a wildlife assistant in Sepopa to see if he could get a message to Alice. He came back in, and his youngest son rushed him and grabbed his knees. Will hobbled over to the phone and placed the call, but it didn’t go through. Just as well. There was nothing she could do from there. Leave her in peace. He threw his son up in the air, caught him, set him down outside the kitchen door, and was off.

It turned out that Roland was in Francistown helping to orient three new officers and wouldn’t be back for a week. Will asked a middle-aged officer at the front desk if he could see the deputy chief. “His mother is ill, rra. He has gone to Mochudi.”

“Do you know when he’ll return?”

“No, rra, I have not been told.”

“Is there someone else I can speak with? It concerns a missing person.”

“You can speak with me, rra. I am the officer on duty.” M. Molosi, his nametag said, pinned to a well-nourished chest. Will told him the story. When he was finished, M. Molosi said, “This is quite common, rra, for a gardener to disappear. Perhaps he was dissatisfied with the madam.”

“That was not the case,” said Will, who wanted to tell him he’d been in the country for twenty years and didn’t need to be told the kind of thing that made gardeners disappear. “He left all of his personal effects, as well as his dog. He was very devoted to his dog and would not have left her behind.”

“I see, rra. Then perhaps it was a matter of thinking that she was eating more than he could afford. He might have left her with a sad heart. There have been cases like this.”

“This is true,” said Will, mastering his impatience. “But why would he have left everything else behind, including a clean shirt and a clean pair of pants? Not only that, he left mabele on the table, untouched.”

This made an impression. “Where is the house?”

“In the Old Village.”

“When I am free, you will take me there.”

They agreed that M. Molosi would call him at work when another officer could relieve him.

Later, Will accompanied him to Alice’s house, showed him through it room by room, introduced Isaac’s dog, but he could find no explanation for the disappearance. When he learned that Isaac had been put in charge while madam was away, he hypothesized that he might have fled with something valuable, but this would not explain the porridge.