The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

  Frank could not decipher the look on her face. It was not shock, not pleasure. Surprise, but not a huge surprise.

  She looked past his shoulder to where the guard was waiting. She lifted her hand, palm forward, and moved it back and forth. An okay sign. Then she beckoned Frank to come with her.

  In a patch of shade beside the tent wall was a bench made of two stumps overlaid with a barnboard. She sat and left room for Frank, who also sat and felt suddenly frozen with unease. Instead of looking at Alma, he studied her firepit, its neat ring of smallish stones. Blackened wire twisted around itself to make a screen. Poor woman’s braai.

  Still not looking at Alma, Frank gazed at her in his head. He had expected her to be much thinner, with a caved-in face. Too much work, too little food; not enough promise of better things to come. But Alma was ample, softer and thicker than when he had held her in the barn’s deep shadows.

  Now he did turn and look at her. She was staring away. Her profile looked strange, either a view of her he’d never had or the face of a stranger. Her hair was tied up into an old woman’s knot, but the front strands were loose around her face. She was burned deep reddish-brown. Several new freckles had risen. Her expression was passive, almost insultingly so. His arrival did not seem to mean much to her.

  “I went back to your farm. Saw it was burned. Isaiah was still there sleeping in the smokehouse. He told me you were in the Middelburg camp. You and your mother.”

  She nodded, as if to verify that the story was true so far.

  “I was starving so I had to get back with the army. But I’m not a soldier anymore. I just look after a soldier’s horses. I haven’t shot at any Boers since I met you, even though some killed Young Sam. You remember Young Sam?”

  She pushed out her lips and drew them back. An unattractive expression that could mean skepticism or that it did not matter to her if Young Sam was alive or dead.

  Then Frank felt stupid. He was speaking English to a girl who neither spoke nor understood it. He had forgotten. After a while of silence, he said, “You don’t understand me at all, do you, Alma?”

  “Ya, I do,” she said.

  “You speak English?”

  “Ya, in the camps, they teach me.”

  She looked at him and smiled briefly. It caused a grateful stir in his starved heart.

  “I came to the Middelburg camp in January. At night. I snuck up to the wire. A boy came out and I asked him to get you. A woman came and I thought it was you. But it was your mother. She called the guards. They chased me off.”

  She reached over and put a hand on the arm that Frank was waving, the one that was helping him talk.

  “My mother is dead,” she said.

  She waited awhile before she said more.

  “Fever. Typhus.” She pointed out the west side of the cage, to a line of crosses and some humps of newly dug earth.

  Another silence, broken by flies that buzzed at their faces. Frank thought of what he could say. He said she looked good, healthy.

  She smiled at the compliment. Eager suddenly, she said to him, “I am going to have a baby.”

  Her excitement had put a smile on Franks face before he knew what she would say. He felt the smile become brittle and fall away. Because he saw how happy her news made her, he tried to act as if she had told him something else.

  He could not say anything because he was imagining terrible things. Some man catching her in the dark by the latrine. A brutal guard. A Boer gone crazy.

  It showed on his face, and she shook her head.

  “No, no,” she said. “Sometimes the guards here take us out. Girls like me. Buy us something to eat. Something to drink. One of the boys brought us food. Even jam for our bread. When my mother was so sick, he brought her real German brandy.”

  She smoothed her faded dress tight over her stomach so the rise would show.

  “The guard who helped us, he is the father.”

  Frank looked at her shape. He remembered the time in the meat-cutting shed when she had pulled her dress tight to show him her slender body.

  “Do you love him?”

  A bit of the old fire entered her eyes. The skin across her cheekbones tightened. Anger at how stupid he was.

  “I don’t love you either,” she said.

  She smoothed her dress over her belly again. Said, “I love him” Meaning whoever lived in her belly. “When my son grows up, I hope he will kill soldiers like you. Soldiers like his father.”

  She patted Franks arm again to get his attention away from all of the things that were crashing inside him.

  “I must go. You must go. He’s jealous.” She nodded sharply in the direction of the Tommy guard.

  They stood and, before they moved back into sunlight, she reached her hand and pushed it under the drape of greasy hair, onto the skin of his neck.

  “Don’t be so sorry, Frank.”

  Then the Tommy guard was strutting beside him, marching him to the gate, his face dark with fury. Frank had Alma’s consolation inside him. He almost said, “Don’t be so sorry, Tommy.”

  Then he was out of the cage, outside the dying world of its inhabitants. He was a thing dangerously free.

  Belfast/Pretoria

  On the back trail, Frank threaded through the bush, avoiding anything that represented people. Smoke, gunfire, squealing axles, barking dogs. Boer, British, African, it made no difference to him. Even the vultures circling over the bush veldt. He didn’t want to see what was rending or being rent.

  His rifle was across the saddle in front of him, his hand around the stock, his finger curled inside the trigger guard. Dunny’s brisk walk, metronome to the passing day. Day four of Charlie Ross’s ultimatum, and he was moving in a direction and at a pace that might possibly get him there in time. But he had not decided anything yet, except to seek things that distracted him from the pain in his chest. He did not aspire to fill the emptiness, for that was too big a project. Rather, he hoped to leave it undisturbed, like a locked room never explained to company.

  When Dunny showed hesitation in her left rear leg, and stood on the other three while resting, Frank brought her back to the rail line quickly and went to the nearest station. It was Belfast, and he talked to the soldier in charge with a new and firm certainty that got them aboard a train. At Middelburg, he closed his eyes so as not to see the concentration camp. When he opened them again, the train was on a long curve wrapped in a stutter of telegraph poles.

  Between Middelburg and Pretoria, there was a holdup while army engineers patched around fresh sabotage, the dynamite-triggering device having been used to good effect again. An enraged Tommy stood in the aisle of Frank’s car and described how the dynamite had blown under a car full of British soldiers. They were drinking to celebrate the expiry of their time in Africa.

  While he waited for the train to move, day six and much of seven passed. He let Dunny off the train and felt everything in her leg: hock, cannon, fetlock, pastern, frog. Asked her, “This one? This one?” The sensitive spot was in the pastern, and it was merely sore. Not poked by a branch, not cut by a wire, not abscessed, not even swollen enough to see with the eye. A sensitivity without cause, or solution.

  In addition to the tender on the engine, the train had an extra water wagon. On the side of the latter was a tap from which Frank filled a bucket. He let Dunny drink half, then dribbled the rest over the troubled leg.

  In Pretoria, day eight, there was no southbound train. He led Dunny to Pretoria’s jail, since jails generally had nice trees and grass around them. She seemed to want to go further, so they visited Paul Kruger’s house, where the Jacaranda bushes were winter bare and a Union Jack billowed on a pole beside Oom Paul’s veranda. In his tilted mental state, Frank thought he saw Sam Steele inside the house. He looked again, and the window was empty.

  Frank led Dunny to the big tree, the one in front of the Dutch church. He took off the mare’s bridle so she could crop grass without a bit in her mouth, then sat with his back to the sc
aly trunk.

  Likely, he had led Dunny here so he could remember the other time. When he had insisted to Ovide that they wait in the tree’s shade in case Jeff Davis came by. When Lionel Brooke had appeared instead. When Ovide and Young Sam were still alive and Alma Kleff did not exist for him yet.

  There was a quality to this looking back that Frank recognized by its vagueness and distance. It was how old men try to lay claim to the past.

  “Did that happen? Did it happen to me?”

  That night, Frank and Dunny slept in the park across from Melrose House. They returned to the rail station next morning, just as the trains were being made up for the day. Day nine. He was well past Ross’s deadline: a deserter once again.

  His letters were stale-dated and losing their power, but he wrung from them one more permission to ride. Approaching Joburg, the iron stacks of the Rand were smoking. Governor Milner had told the newspapers that the most important thing about this stage of the war was to make safe zones around Pretoria and Johannesburg, so that commerce could resume.

  After hours of shunting and sitting, Frank was headed south again. The train dipped into the shallow valley of the Vaal and crossed the bridge near Viljeon’s Drift. Beyond it, Frank was one of several who wanted to stop at Wolvehoek Station, to connect with the train for Heilbron. The army station master at Wolvehoek told them the Heilbron train was out of service. It might come tomorrow.

  A hundred yards out in the veldt, Frank let Dunny look for grass. The winter veldt was poor, worse still around the station. As he watched the mare, he wondered if he should ride, if the journey from here to Heilbron would worsen the pain in her pastern or make her fully lame. He was two days past Ross’s ultimatum, and it seemed unlikely that one day less or more would make much difference.

  By late afternoon, the day that had begun in frost felt truly warm, and through the dusty haze of it Frank saw a horse stagger out of the veldt, its balance so gone it walked sideways.

  When the horse came closer, Frank went to look. Through the coating of dirt, he thought the horse might be a charcoal. Its belly was sucked up gaunt. You could count its ribs, or probably rattle down them with a stick. But Frank also saw that the gelding had good feet, no wounds, and was not wet with sweat or frothing at the mouth. It might be a good horse, just in terrible need of feed and water.

  From the tank at the station, Frank filled a green bucket. The bucket’s staves were loose and it leaked over his feet as he crossed to the horse. He called Dunny so she could have her say about the gelding. She seemed more disinterested than disgusted. Frank let the grey drink, then let him eat a bit from Dunny’s oat bag. He fed and watered him in small helpings, watching to see if the clouds would recede from his eyes. In two hours, the horse was clearer and pretending to have energy, like a man applying for a job.

  After Frank swapped his saddle onto the geldings scarred back, the horse stood still and allowed Frank to take the stirrup. Dunny insisted on leading, and he let her go in just a halter. She picked her way along beside the rails, free and bemused, as Frank rode the gelding behind her.

  Heilbron

  Frank rode in around sunset of day ten. He was still on the gelding, though the horse was exhausted and mostly asleep. Frank let Dunny lead them into camp, because he wanted to see how long it would take her to find The Blue. In less than a minute, the two horses stood glued to one another, and The Blue gave the charcoal gelding a warning look that, tired as he was, the horse did not ignore. Frank had trouble holding the gelding, so determined was he to get away to a safe distance.

  Jeff heard the ruckus near his horse and came out. He held the gelding while Frank stripped off the saddle. Under the blanket was a square of deep wet. Frank appreciated the horse for sticking it out, for the chance it had offered Dunny.

  Frank explained the gelding to Jeff by pointing out the sore spot on Dunny’s pastern. He said Alma had not been at Middelburg, but at Barberton. The rest was conveyed by the look on his face.

  Jeff might have warned Frank about Charlie Ross’s mood if there’d been time, but Charlie came too quickly: his firebox full, his steam up.

  “I was told you were a goddamn deserter, Adams. Just as well I gave you the chance to prove it. I musta been crazy to offer you the honour of being a Howard’s Scout. I suppose I did so out of respect for your father.”

  The quickness and ferocity with which Charlie got on Frank suggested he’d been waiting and practising, perhaps even looking forward to it. He dipped into his bag of invective and called Frank a “yellow belly,” “an undeserving sonofabitch,” “a third cousin to a poisoned pup”—and a “sheep’s dag,” whatever that was.

  Jeff let Charlie run down like a cheap alarm clock. Then he asked Frank if he still had the letter he’d given him, and could he see it? It had become delicate from overuse, and Jeff unfolded it carefully under Charlie’s nose. Jeff said Charlie should read it before he called Frank too many more things. Jeff struck matches until Charlie had finished.

  “What the hell’s the difference? I gave him a week and it’s three days past.”

  “It was my idea,” said Jeff, pretending contrition. “I wanted Frank to find this girl, Alma Kleff, and ask her some questions. I’d heard she was in Middelburg. But she turned out to be in Barberton. If you ask me, Frank did well to make that trip in ten days.”

  “Who is this damn girl, anyway? Boer, by the sound of it.”

  “She is Boer.”

  “What’s so special, then?”

  “Before her family was burned out and sent to the camps, they had some foreigners living with them. Canadians and Brits. I heard they were cattle-duffing. Since General Kitchener’s so mad lately about the amount of cattle-duffing going on, I thought Frank could take a few days and find out if this Alma knew about that. I thought if we could catch some civilian rustlers, it might keep Kitchener off our backs for a while.”

  A set of weather changes blew over Charlie Ross’s face.

  “Well, did he find her? Did she know anything?”

  Jeff refused to answer. He butted his head in Frank’s direction, meaning it was Frank’s story, and he should tell it.

  Charlie hated to look at Frank but finally did. “Well?”

  “I found her at Barberton,” said Frank.

  “I know that.”

  “She’d learned some English, so we could talk. She didn’t know anything about the cattle stealing. They just came, paid for their keep, and left.”

  Jeff studied Charlie. “It’s not Frank’s fault I sent him on a goose chase. He was just doing what he was told.”

  “The hell he was! I told him to be back in seven days!”

  “But, that’s the thing, Charlie. Is Adams my flunky or your soldier? Seems to me he’s more my flunky. So when he gets two orders, and they’re in each other’s way, I’m not surprised he obeys me.”

  Jeff said good night and left them.

  “I’m not happy,” Charlie said. His tone was more complaining now than angry. “We been sitting in this shithole for a week. Colonel Rimington ain’t here. Nobody knows where he is. I don’t care for that. I like fighting. I like doing business. I do not like sitting in one goddamn spot waiting. Not for any man.”

  “Captain Ross?”

  “What?”

  “I would like to be a Canadian Scout. I’ll swear the oath. I’d be proud to wear the feather.”

  “What the goddamn hell? Why now and not before?”

  “Things are clearer now.”

  “Bullshit they are! You ain’t getting sergeant’s rank or pay, if that’s what you’re after.”

  “Not expecting it, sir.”

  “You desert me again, I’ll see you’re shot. I’ll shoot you myself.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Thanks me for saying I’ll shoot him. You’re a crazy bastard, just like they say.”

  Heilbron/Kroonstad/Lindley

  Colonel Rimington was a whippet-thin English cavalryman; young for forty-three. Bef
ore the war, he had been a special officer in charge of scouts in Natal. When the war began, he rose until his Rimington’s Guides were said to be the best scouting unit in Roberts’ army.

  Rimington’s popularity continued into the reign of Lord Kitchener. Colonels Benson and Rimington were Kitchener’s favourite masters of the “tiger spring.” First, your intelligence officer located a rebel laager. Then you marched all night and pounced at dawn. It was very successful, and the Boers had been slow to get the hang of it. Maybe they could not believe the British would go to such self-punitive extents to trap them.

  Rimington was late at Heilbron because he’d been involved in many drives lately. An aspect of Kitchener’s system (intensified hustling of the Boers in winter) was that little police work went on. As a result, towns had to be captured over and over again. In early June, Rimington was with Knox and Plumer as they reconquered Piet Retief. From there, Rimington had gone to Utrecht and operated along the Pongola. He had resupplied at the depot the Canadian Scouts had built.

  Most recently, he had been at Vrede, where a push had sent numerous Boers into his waiting arms. Finally, he had skirmished his way back to Heilbron.

  After all of his public complaining, Charlie Ross felt it a matter of pride to complain directly to Rimington. He didn’t care to have his time wasted, he said. But Rimington knew Ross’s weaknesses. He told him about the fabulous amount of loot he had secured at Vrede and how much more the two of them were likely to collect together in this colony. Given Ross’s love of plunder, it was like a nanny telling a child about Ali Baba’s Cave.

  Flattery also worked on Charlie, so Rimington told him how important he was to Lord Kitchener’s plan: the fast-moving bands of scouts, living off their saddlebags, a match for the Boer bitter-enders. As Kitchener’s big drives ground and sifted along, men like Charlie would be fighting in the oldest ways of mounted combat; finishing the war in a pure and dignified manner.

  By then, Charlie was grinning.