White Dog Fell from the Sky

39



Before the sun rose, the old woman beside him opened her eyes and turned to him. His eyes were open, looking upward toward the dimming stars. She tried to close his eyes with her fingers, but he was no longer warm. She sat down next to him and took his hand. It felt as though she and this man now spoke the same language, when before she could not understand him. Like all creatures on Earth, his footprints would be erased by wind. We live like birds, her mind whispered. The birds move from one tree to the next, building nests. This is how we live. The wind erases our footprints as we move, season by season. And then one day, we are no longer alive on Earth, and our footsteps are gone forever. The land is our blood, the clouds our hair.

The fire was out beside her, only gray ash remaining. She sat up and stuck her feet straight out in front of her. She looked into his face, which had become peaceful. She did not wish the others to wake. She would like to keep him company for the whole of the day and into the following night as he journeyed away. A small cloud appeared above the horizon where the rising sun was shining upward. The cloud became lit inside and the edges turned gold and then bronze. As the sun rose, the cloud disappeared.

She heard a few people stirring, cracking kindling; cooking fires came to life.

Others came and sat near his body. No one spoke. They felt the wind heave itself against their living bodies, saw it stir the dead man’s hair and fold over the collar of his shirt.

The old woman, Xixae, let go of his hand. She asked whether they should bury him as one of their own, or drive his body to Maun. Dixhao, her brother’s son, had found Ian’s Land Rover along the fence line. Some of the people said they must take him to Maun, or there would be trouble. Some said no, it would be better to bury him here.

The old woman thought of her daughter whose life had been lost. She remembered digging her grave, how the earth was difficult to turn over. She’d thought back then that she too would die. And now she was an old woman, and this man, like her daughter, was gone. One cannot know why things happen as they do. “He must be buried here,” she said. “He is a white man, but he is a San white man.”

The others agreed. And they decided that Nxuka’s husband, Rraditshipi, who knew driving, would take the vehicle to Maun. And Nxuka, who had four years of school and knew a little Setswana (and even a small amount of English) would try to find some person who might know this man. Her baby was not coming until the following moon, and she would go with her husband. Xixae searched Ian’s pockets and handed the keys to Nxuka’s husband and the wallet to Nxuka.

Later that morning, they wrapped Ian in a wildebeest skin and buried him near a shepherd tree. The tree was misshapen, blasted from wind and sand. Its bark was pale gray with white patches, pitted and folded in places, the lower branches heavily grazed.

That afternoon, the small group of San moved camp so that no one would accidentally walk over the grave. They moved west, in the direction of Tsao, carrying everything on their backs. The only signature of their presence was the brief, lingering footprints, and the two sticks that Xixae placed in the ground so that her husband, who was out tracking a wounded steenbok, would know in which direction they had gone.

To the north, the flood plains of the Okavango were beginning to fill with water and spread south like great fingers of life. Months before, the rains had fallen in Angola. Water had flooded the Benguela Plateau and flowed southeast across the Caprivi Strip, poured through the Popa Falls rapids, and crossed into Botswana at Mohembo. Now, it gradually traveled south over the flood plains. It would take several more months for the 11 trillion liters of water to cover the delta and still more months to find its way around islands of papyrus, through wandering channels and on to Maun.

The herd of buffalo that had thundered through the cut fence was halfway to the open channels of the Okavango. Some of the weakest among them had perished. The grass was parched and sparse. But the others kept on, oblivious to everything but the promise of green grass and water.