The men all wore the same clothes as they had the day they left, and they were cloaked in filth. Vader released Moeder and tossed his hat to the hovering Willem, who replaced his own with our father’s and could hardly see from beneath the brim. When Vader reached down to lift Cecelia, his jacket stretched tight across his back. He looked strong. Lean, but well. War suited him.
He reached me, then, and lifted me as he had when I was smaller. It was something he had not done in several years. He smelled of leather and dried sweat and things I couldn’t know.
“Missed you, Pa,” I said, sorry then to be placed back on my own feet and have to occupy any space that wasn’t in his arms.
“Have you been good for your mother?”
Ja.
Schalk applied a hug, the first I could recall that was not accompanied by teasing or wrestling. His neck and throat were sunburned, but his face was still pale where it had been sheltered by the protective brim of his hat. I expected him to look older, even though it had been only a few months, but he was like the same boy straining to grow whiskers. He smelled of campfire and tobacco.
“You smell,” I said.
“And you’ve grown.”
“No.”
“Then I’ve gotten shorter . . . must be from all that ducking behind rocks.” He pulled his shoulders up toward his ears like a frightened tortoise.
Oupa tapped me on the shoulder, and when I turned, he scooped me up with one arm under my knees and another behind my back. He rubbed his whiskers on my cheek, and I squealed. He would be disappointed if I did not.
“Did you see Taurus, the Bull?” Oupa asked me. “It was so bright.”
“And the Seven Sisters at his shoulder,” I said. “Almost like they were riding him.”
“Almost,” Oupa said with another whisker rub before putting me down and moving to Moeder.
“Too many oat heads scattered in the field. . . . You waited too long to harvest,” he said. “They fall off if they’re overripe.”
Moeder turned toward Bina, but she was helping Tuma offsaddle the horses.
“Gideon, welcome back to our home,” Moeder said.
“Thought we’d be back sooner,” he said. “They called an armistice for Dingaan’s Day.”
“Blessings to God,” she said. “We’ll celebrate the covenant together.”
“I thought you’d have killed all the Tommies by now, Oupa,” Willem said, carrying his grandfather’s rifle, the ammunition belts slung over his shoulders now dragging on the stairs.
“We’re trying . . . would have if it were up to your father. If it goes long enough, he’ll be an officer,” Oupa said. “And all the time we thought he was just a farmer.”
If this goes long enough? Moeder and I looked at Vader. He smiled at his father’s comments, as if a longer war appealed to him.
“Tell us,” Willem begged.
“Nothing to tell,” Vader said. “That’s Oupa talking. . . . He and Oom Sarel can tell you all about it.”
“Sarel go straight home?” Moeder asked. Vader tipped his head in that direction.
“You seem well,” he said to her.
“Are you eating enough?” she asked him.
“Enough to keep us going,” he said. “Don’t have much time for it. Some of the men say our greatest strength as an army is that we starve well.”
Moeder spent the afternoon cooking mutton and cakes. Bina helped, too, and the fields were allowed to rest. As soon as Moeder pulled the table netting off the meal, Vader and Schalk attacked the food.
“Wait. . . . Give thanks.” Gideon spread both arms over the table.
His grace was shorter than was customary, and the men set upon the food with the fervor of those who had been long denied. I held back, watching, fixing the memory—home again, together.
Having dragged bread over his plate in small circles to soak up the meat juices, Oupa Gideon lit his pipe and pushed back his chair to begin telling stories. I helped clear the table and clean but was eager to hear his experiences. Different weapons had their own sounds as Oupa brought the war to our parlor: the boo-ahhh of the big naval guns (arms flailing upward from the blast), the dat-dat-dat of the Maxims. When he told of shooting at Tommies, he held his left arm crooked and sighted in an invisible rifle, punctuating the story with a dok sound and a recoil of his shoulder.
“God and the Mauser,” Oupa said. “That’s how we will prevail. Two things the Brits don’t have.”
Willem wanted to hear Schalk’s version of their efforts, but Schalk disappointed him, telling only how well his horse, Kroon, handled the days of riding without water or rest, and how much better suited he was to their needs than the giant, slow chargers the Tommies rode. He made it sound as if the horses were doing the fighting.
“It’s like they’re trying to chase a leopard with an ox,” Schalk said. “It’s almost unfair.”
Most of Oupa’s stories furthered common themes: the British were poorly disciplined and inadequately prepared, and their leaders were completely dof. In his stories, our men were never harmed, only Tommies.
After our meal, Vader brought his boots into the kitchen to repair a few holes where the soles met the uppers. He held one up and put his fingers through the gap and wiggled them at me.
“How has Miss Aletta behaved?” he asked Moeder so that I could hear.
“She is helping with the chores when she can get away from her reading and studies,” she said. “Her mind works so hard you can watch it from the outside.”
“I know that look,” Vader said. “Sometimes a dozen questions and then silence.” He mocked me with a look of wide, blank eyes.
“I don’t look like that . . .”
Moeder gave me the same look with a slight head tilt.
“She’s been taking care our lammetjie,” she said. “A good little helper with her little sister.”
Vader reached over to Cecelia and ran his fingers over the tight, white curls that had caused me to start calling her “our little lamb.”
“Willem?”
“Willem is a boy . . . practicing to be you. Always testing me. Sometimes with his mouth, sometimes just with his eyes.”
“Cee-Cee?”
“Lettie’s little girl . . . always repeating the things she hears from her all day. She has God’s spirit.”
“The farm?”
“Keeping to the schedule. . . . The plowshare broke and it cost three shillings to get fixed and sharpened, and a half a day waiting for it,” she said. “The apricots are fat and almost ready. We’ll put them up for when you come home next time.”
“Pumpkins and potatoes to plant soon,” he said.
“Lettie . . . write that down, would you?”
“And watch for sheep lice,” Vader added.
Another note.
“We may be back before you need to do any of this,” my father said.