White Dog Fell from the Sky

38



Xixae and her niece, Nxuka, were out early, searching for mongongos. The young woman was pregnant with her first child. Occasionally, she touched her belly as she walked. The morning was fresh, and mist rose from the dried grasses as the sun climbed away from the horizon. As they walked, Nxuka told a story. The old woman’s laughter floated through the air. They were not in a hurry. Their bags were empty, but they had all day.

They stopped to dig a Herero cucumber, taking part and leaving a portion to bear fruit for the next season. They walked on, and Xixae led them to a place where she remembered a few berries of n/ang might still be hanging, but the bush was empty. The sky was deep blue and the air still. They saw three duiker in the distance. Across the sky was a thin blue cloud, high up, like someone had run a stick across the sky. It was the sort of odd, unnatural cloud that the great flashing birds leave when they fly high. Xixae wondered how these birds had come into the world. A person who often smoked dagga told her that men flew inside the glittering birds, but she thought the man’s brain had grown confused. She too liked dagga every now and then, but lately, her chest was filled with coughing and she did not feel like smoking.

The old woman took note of a small puff of dust in the direction of the fence, thinking it strange that there should be this disturbance without wind. She imagined it might have been caused by a bush squirrel, or a guinea fowl. She watched, and there it was again. Perhaps it was an animal or bird that could be taken easily. Nxuka had not eaten meat in many days, and the baby would be crying for it. She pointed, but Nxuka had not seen what she’d seen.

As they walked toward the fence, there was no further sign of anything. In the dust at their feet were the tracks of many buffalo. Their spoor was several hours old, perhaps as much as a day. They had been running. In the dry season, she had seen buffalo, wildebeest, zebra, giraffe piled up at the fence, vultures feasting. But these buffalo did not seem to have been stopped by the fence, and there were no vultures in the sky. She considered that perhaps they had been buffalo spirits, who had passed through the earthly fence without hindrance. And perhaps it was the heel of one of the spirits that had thrown up the two puffs of dust. Perhaps they were telling her that her time had come.

She told Nxuka to wait under a small tree while she walked toward the fence. As she drew closer, she saw a heap of dusty blue and gray on the ground. Near it was a tool of some sort. She crept toward the heap on the ground and saw it was a man. He was lying on his back, his eyes closed, the sun beating on his face. One of his legs was bent at an odd angle. By the shallow rising and falling of his chest, she saw that he was alive. She looked into his face and realized that she had seen this man before. He had visited their campfire once, the only white man she’d ever heard speaking their language.

All around him, the strands of the fence were cut. She saw now. He had let the beasts through to water, and they had broken his body. She called to Nxuka. The young woman lifted the man’s head and wet his lips with water. When he tasted it, his eyes opened. He groaned a little when they set his head down on the ground. The old woman said she would stay with him to shield his head from the sun while her brother’s daughter went for help.

In his dream, there were two women, a young one with a belly as round as a melon, and an old grandmother whose skin had fallen into a thousand wrinkles. The old woman stood between him and the sun. She stood and stood like a tree.

He heard the knight’s voice speaking. My life has been a futile pursuit, a wandering. In his dream, the old woman changed into Alice. He wanted to tell her something lingering at the outer reaches of his mind, dark, the way a shadow falls on the edge of a roof. He wanted to tell her … He tried to shift his hip. He imagined a hyena already there, tearing at his flesh. He was impaled on the pain, unable to move. His mind lifted a moment. He needed to tell her …

Xixae bent over to listen to his words, but she couldn’t understand. In her heart, she did not believe this man who lay on the ground could be helped. He was too badly broken. Komtsa Xau, however, was a great healer, his mind made of lightning.

The sun was hot on her head. She sat on her heels to rest, moving closer to the man to give him shade. Her feet were planted wide, the space between her toes filled with fine dust. With both hands, she held a staff in front of her for balance.

When she closed her eyes and half drowsed, she heard the voice of her grandmother telling her a story she’d told long ago. When the sun was at its zenith, she heard the others coming, and then she saw them: her brother’s daughter with her husband, Rraditshipi, and Komtsa Xau, the healer.

The old woman moved out of the way, and Komtsa Xau knelt down at the man’s side. He laid his hands on his chest and closed his eyes, listening. When he opened his eyes, he said they must carry the man back to camp with them. They had brought poles and a kaross with them, and they laid the man on the kaross. When they carried him over rough ground, he groaned and lost consciousness.

Back at their campfire, they moistened his forehead with water and rubbed his body with herbs. The old woman made a broth from the skin of a francolin and spooned the liquid into his mouth, but he could not swallow. That night, they laid him by a campfire they’d built.

The women sang low, voices breaking like wind. Their hands clapped in a complicated rhythm, bodies swaying against each other, faces lit with fire. The sound floated into the night, intermingled with other night sounds: of hyenas, slow snakes moving across sand. The coals of the fire glowed; sparks leaped upward.

A few men tied rattles to their ankles and began to dance in a circle around the fire, slow at first, then heating up. The women’s voices grew more urgent. Sweat poured from the dancer’s bodies. Komtsa’s legs went weak, and he fell down. He crawled to the white man. He saw where the bones were shattered, where the blood had become obstructed. The man’s breath was unsteady. He noted the broken man’s spirit, how it fluttered and couldn’t make up its mind between this world and the next. He laid himself alongside the man’s body, pressing the heat of his healing into him. He told the ancestors that this man still had work to do on Earth. They did not reply to him. He left them and returned to the man, trying again to press his healing into his heart and broken places.

Afterward, Komtsa lay motionless beside the fire, cold and spent. His brother’s son could not revive him for a long time. He rubbed and rubbed his skin to warm him.

Ian smelled ash and smoke. There was intention in the hands against his chest, and great heat, pushing him toward life. Let me be, his mind said, but his throat was closed. He felt warmth the entire length of him, and something like hope. He heard his father’s voice. In front of his eyes was the sparkle of a lake without shores. Birds drank. Animals gathered. It was a time before humans. For a moment, the pain left him. When it returned, he cried out, but his throat made no sound. He drifted on that lake, in and out of consciousness. The moon was close to full, the stars dimmed around its brightness. He’d never seen it so bright. It dropped down, closer. His chest rasped; his breathing was shallow and filled with pain. They brought karosses and banked the fire to keep him warm, and then all was still.

His hands and feet grew colder. He shivered uncontrollably. By morning, he was gone.