I thought having my kappie pulled down would hide it. He noticed but didn’t seem surprised or even bothered. Shouldn’t he be bothered? I reached to shake his hand, with a note cupped inside the palm in the way he’d shown me.
“You should have seen the lice I used to get in my leg wraps. . . . If we camped in one place too long, our kits would be crawling with them. . . . Had to boil the clothes of most of the regiment.”
“But did you have to cut off all your hair?”
“Many of the men did . . . all the time. . . . It grows back. It looks fine already.”
I asked about his work.
“Extra duties.”
“Why?
“Punishment.”
“For what?”
“They wanted to remind me they don’t care for my attitude.”
“That was all?”
“I think they’ve been watching me,” he said.
Praise God, that means they’re watching us both.
“I was already on probation.”
Praise God, so am I.
“Your probation?”
“From when I was in the field . . . things . . .”
“What things?”
“Too many questions.”
I stopped, amazed by my restraint.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m just knackered.”
“Better than bald,” I said.
“No . . . truly . . . you can hardly tell.”
He looked more than tired.
“You don’t like it here, either, do you?” I said.
“Better than being under fire, but at least that’s . . . what? Manly, I suppose. Marching in the heat . . . being together after a battle. But here, it’s different.”
“Worse?”
“Different.”
“Your friends?”
“Don’t have many.”
“I don’t, either,” I said.
“Two of a kind, then?”
“We both have short hair,” I said. “What about the other Tommies?”
“Don’t always care for their ways,” he said. “Things they do, things they say . . . who they are.”
He closed his mouth tight, signaling the end of my questions on that topic, too. He backed up a few steps, turned, and walked . . . the first time I could recall that he ended a conversation. Trouble in the field? Things he’d done? I went over each thing he said as I walked back to the tent; I would prepare proper questions before our next meeting. I worried that if he was being watched, it might disrupt his contact with Tante Hannah.
Having buried myself in a hole or hidden underwater for almost two weeks, I was surprised how tired I was, just walking a short distance. I wanted to end the day with the best use of time: cuddling with Cee-Cee, reading to her from the book, or making up more stories of my own that would make her happy. I did not care what Mevrou Huiseveldt or anybody else said: there was magic, or maybe it was muti, in that little girl’s laugh. I’d spent too much time walking, too much time with Maples, too much time with the Van Zyls, too much time concentrating on books, too much time hiding in my own shell . . . and too little with Cee-Cee.
“Come here, lammetjie,” I said. “Let’s curl up and read some more of the Master Davy book.”
She came close and shook her head.
“Too tired,” she said.
Dear Tante Hannah,
Thank you for the news about Vader and Schalk. I have been so worried about them, and Oupa, too, of course. You would not recognize me. I had to have my hair cut off. Lice decided I looked like a nice home. I was worried about my appearance, but since I’ve been shorn, I’ve seen a number of others in camp with the same style. Willem and Cee-Cee are fine. Tante, I worry we’re under a special watch. I don’t know what Oom Sarel does with the British, but do you think you could find out why they seem to be watching us? Love you and hope to see you soon.
Your Lettie
Sleep provided escape, too, although it was often so shallow it allowed neither clear dreams nor rational thought, like trying to study the stars through layers of clouds. But it was an excuse to put off chores and dealing with others until morning, or until the sounds of whistles brought me to wakefulness.
I assumed it was just the echo of a dream, then, or Mevrou Huiseveldt’s snoring or foul winds, when I thought again of the lions roaring that night on the veld. The canvas of the tent quivered and then compressed like the head of a native’s drum, except we were inside the drum. And then cannon fire landed so close it could only be the men coming to free us. The explosion of a shell thrust darkness from the tent. From the flash came the smell of sparks, not powder. It was lightning. The canvas took on an erratic pulse as the muscles of a storm flexed and recoiled and flexed harder.
“Get up, Lettie,” Moeder called, loudly enough to awaken everyone in the tent. “Loosen the tent ropes . . . not all the way, just give them slack so the water runs off.”
I ran out in my bedclothes, slipping with the first step outside, my arms up to the elbows in mud. I couldn’t stay upright or regain traction, so I crawled around the picket of tent stakes, creating slack with the slip knots. I worked my way from windward to lee . . . until my wet night skirt twisted around my ankles, forming a hobble that pulled me down face-first. Relaxed lines would keep the storm from pulling up the stakes and taking it all away. But it left the tent pole unstable.
“Lettie,” Moeder called from the middle of the tent. I could barely hear her over the whining ropes and clapping canvas. A lightning strike froze her image, like the flash from the photographer. I could see her arms raised, leaning into the pole. Willem knelt at the base of the pole while the Huiseveldts huddled on their bed and screamed. I shed my outer bedclothes, which had become a sodden anchor.
“Did I loosen too much?”
“No . . . but we have to hold the pole.”
Above the clamoring storm rose shouts from the Van Zyls.
“Ma?”
“Ja . . . go.”
The path across the row was a flowing stream. Amid the howls of straining tent ropes, I leaned into the wind to make progress. But mud pulled at me, sucking a shoe from my foot, and when I broke free, I fell forward. The wind had pulled out several of the Van Zyls’ tent stakes and collapsed the windward side, so that I could not find the flap. I gave up and slid on my stomach beneath the tent wall, greasing my bedclothes tight to my body.
“The pole . . . I can’t hold . . .”
The sick children groaned in the darkness, throats so constricted they struggled to scream.
“I’ve got it. . . . Tend the children.”
With no purchase, my bare foot slid, leaving me on all fours, clinging to the pole. If it came down, the tent would become a sail and carry everything off. The floor of the tent was nearly as wet as the rows outside. I pulled myself hand over hand on the pole. I turned my feet at angles and dug in. I leaned into the wind; I could not fall again.
The children quieted as their grandmother gathered them on the drier side of the tent. They sat huddled, shivering with sickness under mud-caked blankets, listening to the storm and screams from outside. The pole slipped and struck my shoulder; my upraised hands had gone numb with lack of blood. I leaned against the pressure of the pole, holding it lower for a time, hugging it to my chest.