White Dog Fell from the Sky

42



Itumeleng had already finished for the day, and Alice called no one. She’d spoken the words once to C.T., and she couldn’t speak them again. When she fell into bed that night, White Dog followed and sat in the doorway of a house she’d never before entered. At some point, Alice woke in the dark to find a moist snout on her arm. And then a fist to the throat when she remembered. She turned on a small lamp and made her way to the bathroom. The moon shone through the windows, and she turned on no more lights. As she came into the bathroom, she caught a glimpse of something in the mirror. Not herself. The afterimage of something. She looked more closely, but the mirror was empty.

She walked back through the darkened living room into the bedroom and lay down. White Dog, unsure of her welcome, climbed onto the bed one foot at a time, slowly, keeping herself as flat as possible. “It’s okay,” Alice said, smoothing her neck. Her voice was strange to her. Everything was filled with strangeness, the air as though quivering, the stars as though singing backward songs, their light flowing back into their own immensity.

In the morning, Itumeleng came into the kitchen and Alice told her. She called Will and Greta after that, and had hardly put down the phone when Greta was there beside her. “Oh, poppet.” She put her arms around her. “I’m so very sorry. You’d found someone to love, to love with everything in you, the rarest thing …”

“Please don’t,” she said. “If I start crying, I’ll never stop.”

“Those beasts were desperate for water, I suppose.”

“Ian was cutting the fence.”

“You knew this?”

She nodded. “He couldn’t bear it … their thirst.”

“I only want to say one thing, which may make you cry. Will and I were wrong about him.”

“I know.”

“What can I do?”

“I’m not sure. Take me to work this morning when you get the kids off to school? I need to retrieve his Land Rover. It’s at the ministry. His friend Roger brought it down.”

“Where’s your truck?”

“Also there. C.T. drove me home yesterday.”

“Do you want me to bring your truck home for you? I can leave ours for Will. I dropped him off this morning.”

“If you would.” She dug Ian’s keys out of her purse. “I’m going to Maun.” She’d only just realized it.

“When are you going?”

“Today.”

“You wouldn’t be better off waiting?”

“I have to go.” She pictured Ian buried somewhere in that vast land south of Maun, sand blowing sideways, covering up all traces of where he lay. Her ears rang with a crazy urgency. She imagined her hands, digging.

“Shall I come with you?”

“Thank you, no. I’ll take White Dog to keep me company.”

“Shall I feed the cats for you?”

“There’s only one cat now. Horse went missing again. I’ll ask Itumeleng.”

There was no earthly point to it, she knew. But she packed a bag for herself, dog food for White Dog, talked to Itumeleng, and left from the ministry after Greta dropped her and White Dog off. The cars and trucks on the north-south road pushed her to drive faster than she wanted to. A percussive rhythm between the wheels and the road corrugations intensified, and the Land Rover slid sideways as she fought with the wheel and brought it back into line. White Dog’s nose inched out the window as she grew more confident. A slow-moving hornbill passed in front of the windshield.

Inside his Land Rover, Ian was everywhere. The leather case for his sunglasses. A gauge for checking tire pressure. A can opener. His long-sleeved bush shirt. A cap, darkened from sweat. On the floor, a rumpled copy of Botswana Notes and Records, a couple of water bottles, a discarded paper bag. In the far back, a large container of water, canned goods, the two tents he’d put up on the Ntwetwe Pan, a rock he’d picked up from there. His notebooks.

North of Mochudi, she got stuck behind a bush drag. She saw it from a distance, like a beast on the horizon. Underneath that crazy cathedral-high swirl of dust, there would be a lone man, with a kerchief over his mouth and nose, bouncing along on a tractor that pulled a mountain of thorn bushes weighted down with old tires. When Ian had taken her to the train in Francistown, they’d gotten held up behind a similar bush drag. An old man was driving the tractor. His hair was white, his back and shoulders lean. Ian had called him “a one-man commotion.” He liked that word, commotion. He’d used it when he’d told her about knocking down Mrs. Cratchley’s flower beds as a kid. Her eyes filled to hear the sound of his words in her ear. She suddenly wished to die on this road. The thought shocked her. She could feel the desire already risen inside her like an exotic flower blooming in dust. She turned the wheel and pulled out into that brown cloud to pass the bush drag, more than half expecting to meet someone head on. Something like disappointment passed through her as she pulled back safely in front of the tractor. And then anger at herself. Kill yourself, but don’t take other people with you. Or an innocent dog either, for that matter.

White Dog sat straight up on the seat. For a moment, Alice envied her ability to live in an eternal today. But no, that wasn’t true. Why else would she have sat for weeks at the end of the driveway? She thought, I’d sit at the end of the driveway too if it would bring him back. Her eyes swam again, and the road disappeared. She pulled off onto a small track. Where are you? she asked into the dusty air. Her belly hurt from crying. White Dog thrust her nose under her elbow and pushed up, and she reached out and patted the top of her head. It felt as though part of her had gone with him, some chasm yawning between the here and the beyond. She looked out onto the landscape with its parched grass and flat-topped acacias with their thirsty gray green leaves. A single cloud floated in the sky. She thought of a Bushman story she’d once read about how the wind takes away our footsteps when we die. And then she thought about what Ngwaga had said about Ian. He could blow anywhere now. Maybe some part of him was still on Earth. Maybe he’d gone elsewhere. Maybe he’d just returned to matter, spent, nothing more than that.

But I’m alive, she thought. You’ve left me here. Her mother had run after a dead man all those years, wearing away a deep gully of grief under her feet. She shuddered. There was no point driving to Maun. She sat a moment longer, turned the Land Rover around, and headed back the way she’d come. She was clear-eyed now. Where there’d been tears was now emptiness.

She pulled in the driveway and shut off the engine. Itumeleng greeted her, brought her a cup of tea, and understood that she wanted to be left alone. Alice went out into the garden and sat on the rock by the huge aloes, where she’d seen Isaac sitting. It was quiet and wild and the aloes with their big fleshy gray green spikes bulged with living moisture they’d gathered and stored to carry them through the dry seasons. Out of their centers, crazy stalks of orange flowers rose to a height of twelve or fifteen feet.

She heard something behind her, turned, and saw White Dog sitting at the base of the rock. And when Alice got up to return to the house, she trailed her, taking up her position outside the door.