The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

  It would be perfect if Mrs. Kleff had yoked her ox to her ox cart and left for town, and if no other family were present. He imagined walking in with only Alma there. They would go to her bedroom. She would hug him, and kiss him. They would lie down, take off their clothes, and complete what they had begun those other times. Maybe a day spent like that would fire up an idea of what to do after the war. Or maybe it would fire up a baby—a being with the power to cut through Mrs. Kleff’s hatred.

  Whatever would happen, Frank was now affected by the nearness of it. Something rose in him at every squelching step, came lifting off his knees and went sailing up through the rain. Joy.

  Frank was close now but still could not see the farm. The cloud skimming along the ground blocked the view. When he came to the first leafed-out tree, he knew he was at the kopje’s base. At the top of the wet climb, he crossed to the far edge and still could see nothing; just the tops of the blue gums and a flannel fog. A sudden impatience took him, and he knew it was beyond him to wait here for the weather to change. Whether he would find Alma or her mother, or the furious, murderous father, he was headed there right now.

  He climbed down through the fog, and the first thing he came to was the outhouse. It had a fan of black up the side, something he hadn’t noticed before. He took a few more steps and the barn appeared, skeins of mist looped through a black armature of beams. He could see the full length of the manger rail, for the walls were gone. Now he could smell it too: the char and scorched resin.

  Frank ran for the house. Because the corrugated metal roof was still there between the gables, he thought for a second that the house had been saved. But then he saw there was nothing underneath. The iron stove stood alone in the kitchen, covered in blackened boards and clinkers. He could see through to the veldt on the other side. He wanted to go in but stopped himself, aware of all the weight hanging.

  When he turned, he saw that two small buildings remained: the cutting room and the smokehouse. The thatch roof was gone but the walls were standing. A tail of grey wisped from the smokehouse chimney.

  Frank wrenched open the smokehouse door. Between him and the smoker was a broad shape under a blackened oil sheet. Rain was pattering there. He reached for it, and the sheet flung back. He was looking into the twin holes of a shotgun. The blue-black eyes of old Isaiah were behind the sites. Beside Isaiah, Jimmy Whitford was twisted around, looking at him with mild interest.

  “Room for one more,” said Jim and slid over. Isaiah lowered the gun and moved the other way.

  Frank stepped in between them and sat on the warm, dry ground. For a time he could do nothing but stare at the source of heat. The door to the smoker was open and fire licked in the brickwork core. They had taken out the racks and laid a fire on the bottom.

  “Good boots,” Jim said, tapping one. “You been to the hospital, then?”

  “Kroonstad. How do you know that?”

  Jim shrugged. “Your clothes are clean. You stink of bug powder.” He shrugged again.

  Frank turned to the other man. “What happened here, Isaiah?”

  Isaiah shook his white head. “What you see, boss. Burned him down.”

  “The British?”

  Isaiah laughed, meaning, Frank supposed, that the Boers would not burn their own farm.

  “Where’s Alma?”

  Jimmy took over. “I asked him before. He says they caught the women and put them in a wagon. Took Little Alma and Tia too. Left Isaiah.”

  “So where is she?”

  “Camp.”

  Frank did not ask which one because he thought it must be Irene.

  “That was six days ago,” said Jim. “Only been here a day. Me.”

  “How come you’re here at all?”

  “Waiting on you.”

  There was a silence. Frank thought of how he would get to Irene. He’d try to get on the train tomorrow. Jimmy was lost in some other thought.

  “I didn’t wake up till it was too late,” he said. He meant the night the Boers came to the rock cave. “I was by some bush. I had to roll into it fast and didn’t get my guns. I went up top but they had you already. They had the horses.”

  Jimmy slid more dead sticks into the smoker, jammed at the coals in anger. They came brighter.

  “They took my guns and my mare. I followed to the river and crossed it, but I couldn’t find the track on the rocks. Had to wait. Took all day to find that grave.”

  Jim went silent again. He touched the fringe of the bullet hole on Frank’s shirt. The stain was fainter after the hospital laundry.

  “I had to take the rocks off to know it was Sam. Shoulda never let Brooke bring him. Shoulda never let Brooke have that fire.”

  Jimmy stopped and stared into the cherry heart of the smoker.

  “Did the bald one shoot Sam?” he asked after a while.

  “That Boer’s name is Von Roster. He gave the order. Two others did it.”

  “I followed the wrong track. Saw how everyone got off their horse. How they shot Sam. The grave. I thought everyone rode away then, so I followed the horses. Missed your foot track.”

  Jimmy flung back the sheet. He stood and told Frank to come. They walked to the barn and started around the shell of it. Frank saw the edge of the round corral and that it had not burned. Then he saw the ridgling circling inside. He reached through the poles, and the pintos teeth bared.

  “He figures he’s mine now.” Whitford came beside Frank, reached through, and scratched the ridgling along his throat latch. “I was on that trail north. I kept getting farther behind. Then along comes the ridgling. All skinned up on the front legs. All he had on him was this old halter. He let me ride but wouldn’t go north. That’s how I figured you must be south somewhere.”

  “You found Brooke and Kettle after that?”

  “A British patrol caught me. I told them I was a Native tracker looking for two English civilians. White beard. Monocle. They said someone like that came to Springhaan’s Nek and went to the hospital in Bloom.

  “So I rode over there and found Lionel. Bastard wouldn’t talk. I told him I dug out Young Sam so I knew. Still wouldn’t talk. I grabbed his big old English nose.” Jimmy showed how with his fingers. “Twisted his nose hard. Told him he had no damn reason to sull on me. Woke him up. He said Alice was gone. Said he wanted to go home.”

  “He told you about me.”

  “He told me to look after you. Told me you were with the Basutos, and there was a debt owing on a horse. I figured you’d either be dead by now or here, so I came here.”

  “How’d you know I’d come here?”

  Whitford clamped his mouth shut. Some questions were too stupid to answer.

  The clouds broke up as night came on. The smokehouse was still the driest place and they slept there again. Through the little square of night sky, they could see stars. The insects were chanting.

  They slept the night through and were awakened by the sun’s heat already building inside the smokehouse walls. They were hungry and Frank learned that the British had burned not just the buildings but the Kleffs’ garden and mealie crop. They had taken all the animals.

  Isaiah led them three hundred yards into the veldt. He pulled up a thick mat of prairie, exposing a wooden door. The pit house beneath was shallow and maybe ten feet in circumference. There were two heavy bags of root vegetables and a couple of rounds of smoked sausage, wrapped in oil cloth, hung from the roof.

  Isaiah yanked a stick out of one dirt wall. He started to dig with it until an edge of white canvas showed. He exposed more, then pulled it out and gave it to Jimmy. Jim unwrapped enough to see the blue-black of a Mauser’s barrel. In the hole was a wooden box of ammunition. Isaiah dug deeper and handed out a canvas-bagged Mauser pistol and rounds.

  Back inside the smokehouse, they stoked the smoker and baked some beets and carrots. It tasted mushy and sweet. Bellies full, Isaiah and Jimmy lay down on the sun-dappled grass with their hats over their faces.

  Frank could not stand the
ir complacency. He decided he would go and wondered only whether to tell them or simply do it.

  Jimmy rolled over and looked him in the face. The black bead eyes were not as calm as they had been.

  “Isaiah followed.”

  “Followed what?”

  “Followed the Kleffs.”

  “To Irene?”

  “To Middelburg. New camp there. We’ll go in an hour.”

  Isaiah stayed on the farm. The understanding was that they would return tonight or tomorrow. Jimmy left him the rifle and the box of shells, though he did not want them. Jimmy said he did not want them either. He wanted only the pistol, which he could hide when he entered the town.

  Jimmy boosted Frank onto the ridgling’s bare back and gave him the few strings that were left of the pintos trampled halter rope. The pinto danced but stopped when Jimmy talked to him in Crow. Frank reached his arm down to help Whitford up, but Jimmy did not take it.

  “Ridgling’s not strong. I’ll walk.”

  Instead, Jimmy ran, clicking his mouth so the ridgling matched his pace. It was a jog-trot that he seemed able to keep up forever. After an hour, he stopped and panted a little. He straightened and signalled Frank down, then replaced him on the horse. He touched up the ridgling to the same trot and Frank jogged along.

  At a slender creek, they stopped to drink. Frank crawled to it and put his head in. Underwater, it came to him that this was the creek he had escaped along when he deserted.

  Jimmy resumed running after the creek. He kept on until they could see Middelburg’s smoke. Frank got down and they talked about what would happen next.

  “Need a story,” Jimmy said.

  Frank said he had the one about a knock on the head and amnesia. He did not know if it would work without a uniform.

  “Can you talk like Lionel?”

  Frank abruptly heard Young Sam’s voice in his head. Imitating that as much as Brooke, he said, “De Wet is the key.”

  “More like Kettle?”

  “Bloody men. Bloody tyrants”

  Jimmy nodded. That was the one. He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a waterproof dispatch bag; opened it and removed a square of folded paper. Frank could see the pebbles of the embossed stamp and knew it was Brooke’s letter of introduction from the English newspaper.

  “The only thing the Boers left in our camp.”

  “I can barely write” said Frank.

  “Nobody’s going to ask you to.”

  They went on, Frank riding and Jimmy on foot. Jimmy made some suggestions as they went. Things Frank should say. He should say they had been caught by the Boers. That the Boers had taken their saddles, bridles, and horses. They only had this horse because it was so mean the Boers did not want it.

  Then a British outpost stood by the trail, and there was a shout to halt and state their business.

  “Lionel Brooke! British journalist!” Frank yelled. They went in with their hands high and soon Frank was digging out the letter.

  “Who’s he?” the Australian corporal asked. He had finished reading the letter and was staring at Jimmy.

  “Indian tracker.”

  “Christ. Where’d you get one of those?”

  “Canada.”

  “Don’t suppose he’s got papers.”

  Frank was about to say no when Jimmy pulled something out of the canvas bag in his shirt. The sheet was old and yellow; had plenty of ink stamps and a flourishy signature. The young Aussie read it.

  “So you’re a U.S. Cavalry scout,” the Aussie said, impressed.

  Then Frank explained about being robbed by the Boers.

  “Bastards!” said the Aussie and spat on the ground. He gave back their papers and nodded them through.

  It was suppertime and Jimmy said they should find a place to eat. But he could see that Frank was not willing to wait. In his Brooke and Kettle voice, Frank asked a couple of British soldiers for directions to the camp. They pointed to the west side of town. After the last Boer houses, there was an open place where a dribbling creek divided two low hills. Down below, the creek pooled in a swampy bottom, and the camp was on the swamp’s eastern edge: a hundred or so tents on a beaten slope. Some Boer women and kids were looking out through the fence, and a few more kids were up to their knees in the swamp trying to catch something in a can.

  Frank looked at the women, but in their shabby bonnets and dresses, they all looked the same. On the hill beyond the swamp, Frank saw fresh mounds of earth. The camp, barely started, had produced some dead.

  “You want to ask?” said Jimmy.

  “Isaiah was sure they came here, right?”

  “He saw them go in.”

  “Then, no. Not now.”

  Back on Middelburg’s main street, a Boer family had erected a tent and called it a restaurant. Behind was a braai, a brickwork box with an iron grill where they cooked meat over coals. In the tent were benches and tables, and Frank and Jimmy sat at one. They asked what kind of meat it was, and the Boer woman led them to the braai where, sadly, there was only mutton on the grill.

  When the food came, Frank and Jimmy concentrated on their eating. Afterwards, Jimmy wiped grease off his chops with a dirty cloth. Another eater had left a newspaper. Jimmy jumped up and fetched it, laid it open before Frank.

  “You’re a reporter,” he said, in case Frank had forgotten.

  After a couple of minutes, Jimmy asked, “So what’s it say?”

  “Reading’s not as easy as you think,” Frank said.

  “Other fella?” Jimmy said, meaning the one who’d left the paper. “He didn’t lean over and put his face close like that. He picked it up.” Jimmy mimed how it was done.

  Frank ignored him and read more. “Sounds like the Boers won some battles.”

  “De Wet?”

  “De La Rey.”

  Frank read more.

  “Kitchener’s got some new plan.”

  “Do what?”

  “Something about hustling and driving the Boers. Doesn’t say more.”

  “Strathconas?”

  “Nothing.”

  Frank wanted to go back to thinking about Alma in the camp, but first he considered Jimmy. Given that things had happened the way they had, it seemed to Frank that Jimmy shouldn’t be here. He wondered why he wasn’t with Lionel, helping his boss get home.

  “You said you came here looking for me. You never said why.”

  “I did say. I said Lionel told me to look after you.”

  Jimmy’s face froze. He had been looking over Frank’s shoulder, but now he stared at his wiped-clean plate. He kicked Frank’s boot. Turning slightly, Frank saw black shapes against the brightness of the tent door.

  “Good day, sir,” said one. Frank turned and looked. Blue tunics. Military police. The speaker was English.

  “Same to you, corporal,” said Frank.

  “Can we see your papers?”

  Frank dug out Brooke’s letter. Handed it over. The corporal showed it to the other man, a big frowning brute with his nose on crooked.

  “This isn’t what we had in mind,” said the corporal, shaking the fragile page. “How about some actual identification?”

  “Problem, corporal. I’ve been captive. Boers took my clothing and my British papers. Took my horse. That letter is all I have.”

  “And where did that happen? The Boers?”

  “Basuto side of the Caledon River.”

  The police corporal pointed at Frank’s chest. “Looks like they not only robbed you but shot you to death.” The brute beside him barked a laugh.

  “They took my clothes and gave me these.”

  “Funny the Boers would leave you good boots.”

  “They stole my boots and gave me old scraps of leather. When I was in hospital at Kroonstad, the army gave me these.”

  “That’s an odd accent.”

  “I’ve lived a lot of places.”

  “Ahh.”

  “How joo get here?” said the tough one.

  “After
Kroonstad? Army put me on a train to Pretoria.”

  “Why Middelburg?”

  “You have a new camp here? For Boer women and children?”

  “You planning to write about that, then?” asked the corporal.

  “Might. There’s interest in the camps back home.”

  “Hope you won’t be a screamer.”

  “A what?”

  “Screaming about how bad it is. We’re only getting under way.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  The talker turned to Jimmy.

  “And who’s this handsome gentleman?”

  Jim had his cavalry papers ready and handed them across.

  “I hired this Native tracker to be my scout,” said Frank.

  Finally, the two policemen looked at each other and the rougher one shrugged. The corporal said, “If you’re looking for a story, there’s a party tonight for local soldiers. Town hall on the main square. The off-duty guards from the camp’ll be there. Maybe do an interview.”

  Frank thanked him for the information.

  Frank and Jimmy walked back to where the ridgling was tied to a hitching rail. When they stopped, Frank felt drained. Out of sight behind the pinto, he let his face show how frightened he’d been. Jimmy clapped him on the back; said it was a test of fire and he’d done well.

  Jimmy untied the ridgling, who was looking backwards, studying passing horses.

  “Why don’t you?” Jimmy asked.

  “What?”

  “That party.”

  “Why?”

  “Find out if the Strathconas are around.”

  Frank didn’t care much about finding the Strathconas, but the party did attract him. The mention of off-duty camp guards. He could act the reporter and quiz them about the health of the women and children. Maybe set things up so he could go for a tour tomorrow.

  A couple of farmers’ carts were pulled up at a feed store behind drowsy oxen. Bulky sons carried bags of seed and flour and flopped them in the box. A black boy with a hard-used brush offered to groom the ridgling.

  Two white women in bonnets and dresses looked down at some bright fruit on a blanket and some little things carved from wood. An African woman with her head wrapped in something like a towel sat on the blanket’s corner watching with a hopeful smile.