Running Wild

by Bristow, David;

  In Africa it is said that when two bull elephants fight it is the ground that gets trampled. It was not elephants that trampled the ground here, but hailstones the size of vegetable ivory that started hammering down.

  Sometimes after a big thunderstorm like this one Sean would find the body of a dead animal, an antelope usually or very occasionally a zebra, that had been caught out in the open and presumably struck by lightning. Once he found one of his trails horses, a grey gelding, lying cold beneath the skeleton of a fire-shattered gum tree. The horse showed no outward signs of injury. He wrote “lightning” on the form he’d had to submit to reserve owner Ratty Michaels even though that was only his best guess.

  Perhaps Zulu had vague memories of events that had led to his being here. And now, here, upon this bank and shoal of time, listless and having never really settled back into domesticated life, would he have thought of jumping the life to come?

  The high tableland of Rhodes Heights was reminiscent of Bergsig farm where thunderstorms punctuated the summer days and frost crunched underfoot and snow dusted the highest ridges in winter. By complete contrast to Limpopo Valley, here Zulu was the only stallion among a herd of mares and a few inconsequential geldings. The horses of Rhodes Heights were never stabled but were free to run in a large field lined on two sides by tall eucalyptus trees.

  In the first few months here, while not out on the trail, Zulu was busy bullying the geldings. At the same time he had his hands full paying attention to the several mares. Zulu had been brought in to add some feisty Boereperd spirit and inject endurance into the lighter American Quarterhorse bloodline.

  In all, six foals would carry Zulu’s genome into the future. But his heart always seemed to be elsewhere. Whenever he sensed zebras in the vicinity Zulu would run frenetically up and down the fence line calling to them.

  The problem was that the zebras wanted nothing to do with him and would quickly move off, which only drove him into a deeper state of agitation. Zulu was a superb jumper and every now and then he would clear the fence and go in pursuit of them, but they always spurned his advances. Sometimes he would be gone overnight. Then Sean would know to get on a horse or his mountain bike and head for the high ground.

  “Sometimes I would find him around the escarpment edge where the grass was ankle high and there was a 360-degree view.”

  If there were no zebras around, Zulu would just stand out in the open staring at jackals snooping in crevices or baboons clambering over the rocks. The only time Sean ever saw the elusive mountain leopards, which he knew from their spoor roamed the property, was when he’d find Zulu up on the high ground staring one down.

  Once back in camp the black stallion would stand next to the fence, seemingly disinterested in the other horses, just staring out into the distance: “Like a lover waiting for their sweetheart to return from war or something … Oh Danny boy, the pipes the pipes are calling, from glen to glen …” Sean’s rich voice carried across the green hills.

  Out on the trail Zulu would perk up and be as spirited as ever, cantering for kilometres if asked. However, if he came across zebra droppings he would stop and paw and sniff and get agitated all over. If he actually spied zebras he’d be off after them, which is why Sean would not let any client ride him.

  “When that happened my heart would race because I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold him back. In the beginning, at any rate,” Sean remembered.

  After a while though, he seemed to lose even some of that enthusiasm. The reserve manager put it down to ageing. But Zulu was only 15 years old so really just middle-aged for a horse. That was not the problem at all. The sandy substrate at Mashatu had suited his condition, but running on the extremely rocky terrain of Rhodes Heights aggravated his box hoof, much like an untreated ingrown toenail will become inflamed. Only someone who has had one knows how painful it can be.

  Walking was okay, but when running Zulu started landing that foot toe-first, causing the hoof to chip and the frog to recede, thereby placing increasing stress on his front right coffin joint. Trimming the hoof to compensate for this would have helped, but Sean was not that horse savvy.

  While the horse had bush smarts aplenty in the savanna, the montane grasslands were another bowl of salad greens entirely. Heading towards spring, the first rains had teased out fresh new grass and delicate yellow daisy-like flowers of the grasshopper bush Senecio latifolius. Superficially they were similar to the devil thorn flowers of Mashatu, and on one of his forays out Zulu munched contentedly on them.

  When Sean found him he was stumbling around like a village drunk, legs splayed and head all wobbly. From his time working on sheep farms he recognised it as Molteno straining disease, elsewhere known as the horse staggers. The plants contain high levels of hepatotoxic alkaloids that induce chronic liver poisoning. Zulu ate so much that even after the immediate effects of the poison had worn off, his liver was so damaged he became emaciated.

  Sean took a long drive to the agricultural depot in Lydenburg to buy a special food supplement (mostly cereal grains and fish meal). The season passed and Zulu regained condition but did not regain his enthusiasm for running or being ridden at all. By this time the box hoof had developed a hairline crack and become inflamed.

  There had been much suffering and death during those dry times, and yet it had been the only time – other than the time when he had been a pampered foal – when he was really vital and free.

  Any morning after a rainstorm always felt fresh and renewed, the world washed clean of dust and sin. The days started with the tremulous, clarinet descant of laughing doves. That always seems to motivate the brassier Cape turtledoves, which soon drowned out the smaller birds with their strident reveille. Missionary doves, Sean called them, “because they insist everyone must ‘work harder, work harder’. You can’t sneak in an extra hour’s kip without feeling guilty.”

  After an electric storm Sean could expect Zulu to be gone. So he would rise early and ride off across the veld in search of the enigmatic black horse. Sometimes he’d get caught out in a storm himself if Zulu had wandered far enough. The horse was usually easy to spot from a distance, like a cutout silhouette.

  When mountaineers die on high storm-beaten mountains, it is a comforting platitude for the surviving family and friends to say they died doing the thing they loved. If it is a soldier, it is best to tell family they died quickly, a bullet through the head rather than from a gangrenous wound or, worse, by friendly fire. A hero, hopefully.

  The barrage from above became so intense, the hail balls so stinging, Zulu stood with his rump to the wind, long strands of his tail flicking against his black legs, his head dropped, eyes closed. Like any weathered foot solider he knew how to endure. Hailstones bounced off his back and water streamed off his forelock, running in rivulets down his long face and clinging to his eyelashes like diamonds that he blinked away.

  Every time lightning flashed overhead the light was so intense, even with his eyes closed Zulu would anticipate the imminent crash of thunder. The brighter the flash, the closer it was and the sooner the thunder would explode and reverberate over the hillscape and off the sides of the gorges. The air was thick with the sharp scents of ozone.

  He would not so much have seen as felt the first flashes of pure energy that hit the ground. The force of the blast knocked Zulu off his hooves, one hitting a rock with such force it cracked open the keratin band. A trickle of pus escaped. He knew instively that he should high-tail off the high ridge, but his right front hoof was in agony and all he could do was hobble lamely.

  Like a bullet to the head Zulu did not see, feel or hear the lightning bolt that hit him. There would be no humiliating township cart, no butcher’s block or gun behind the head for him. But there was no one there to witness it, no one to tell the white lie to his kin that he died doing the thing he loved, that he was a heroic horse, one that had lived a life fuller than just about any other, and that he’d died wild and proud.

  When Sean found him ther
e were no marks visible. He rode back to the camp and called the vet. The man would not be able to make it out to the farm for several days.

  “He could have reared up, maybe in fright,” said the medic. “I’ve seen it before, neck breaks and you cannot see a thing unless you do a full post-mortem.”

  Sean raced back on his bike to where Zulu lay. He tried to perform an external examination as best he could. Nothing appeared to be broken.

  He rode back to the compound and called again.

  “What about lightning?” asked the concerned ranger.

  “Could be that, but you’d have to go in to see.” The horse doctor gave him instructions without any hint of emotion. “If the fatty tissue beneath the skin has a liquefied texture and is yellowy-brown in colour it means it’s been fried.”

  Back up on the hill, Sean recalled why he’d given up animal sciences at college and switched to veld management. In the first biology prac they’d had to dissect a platanna, a particularly slimy species of African frog. It had so upset him when he’d jabbed the slippery amphibian’s heart over and over with his scalpel – and still it kept on beating.

  He knelt down, took out his Leatherman from the pouch on his belt and opened the lethal blade. It slipped through the skin much more easily than he’d expected, slicing deeply into the flesh. Blood spurted out and sprayed over him. Sean fell backwards and retched.

  It was a bright sunny Sunday morning in September 2005 when Sean called Ratty Michaels with the news.

  “He never seemed to fit in here. Not with the other horses or with the zebras. I think it would have been best to have left him with the zebras at Mashatu.” Zulu just could not help himself, Sean reckoned. Couldn’t contain the wildness in himself.

  Sean reminded his boss how eventually he’d had to separate him from the mares to prevent Zulu from harassing them. The old man snorted then put down the phone.

  “Younger generation has all gone soft I tell you,” he said to his wife. “Can’t control a good horse and cannot look a man in the eye and tell it straight.”

  She nodded conspiratorially.

  After that stressful conversation, Sean was dreading the next one even more: having to call Limpopo Valley with the news. He procrastinated while things moved on at Rhodes Heights until it slid off his “things to do” list. Until.

  “I want my horse back, again,” said Karl.

  “Sorry, I meant to call you, I’ve been hectically busy …”

  “We’ve all been busy, Sean. Always are. What’s up this time?”

  In his usual taciturn way Sean explained: “Zulu’s dead …”

  On the other end Karl was silent.

  “Last week … found his body on the summit of Mount Sabie … after a big storm. There were no marks on his body, nothing. There was nothing broken and I couldn’t find any other injuries.”

  “What did the vet say?”

  “Not much, said it might have been lightning. But I don’t know. Anyway, he couldn’t make it out to check so I left him up there for the jackals and vultures.”

  After a numb silence Karl said: “It sounds like such a lonely place to die.”

  “What isn’t my friend, what isn’t?”

  Postscript – Hard Truths

  AFTER RUFF HAD PACKED HIS BAGS and said goodbye to the Limpopo Valley circus, Harvey took over running the horse business. When he left a year later, Ratty asked Karl and Juliette if they would be interested in managing the business. Ratty did not consider them competent, but then capable people were not exactly knocking down the stable doors. They would do as a stopgap solution.

  “No,” replied Karl. He and Juliette had talked it over.

  “What do you mean?” demanded Ratty who was not accustomed to being denied.

  “No, thank you? But we would like to make you an offer to buy the business.”

  For their wedding present, Juliette’s well-to-do parents had given them a substantial dowry and placed it in the more than capable hands of Cheetem & Phibbs private equity managers based at Sligo, north-west Ireland. Riding the wave of the Irish tiger economy. When translated from punts into pula, that small fortune became a fortune large enough to buy a struggling safari outfit in Africa. Karl, who had studied reserve management, churned the numbers through various spreadsheet permutations and had worked out from where the money had been coming and where it had all gone.

  What the hotel industry calls “leakage” had been rampant at Limpopo Valley: cash flow was not monitored; purchases were made erratically; budgeting had been by a thumb-suck. Mainly though, their prices had not been increased for the previous five years. Karl and Juliette had checked the cost of horse as well as ordinary safaris and found there was a 20 to 30 per cent margin to push. They had consulted with a firm of accountants in Johannesburg to check the numbers.

  They made Ratty an offer that was well below what they thought they could get away with. It was well above what Ratty had been able to squeeze from the business.

  “Pah! Bloody young fools,” Ratty laughed to his ever-complicit consort. “Think they can spin gold from horse manure. And hoodwink an old horse like me!”

  How they laughed and smirked.

  The new owners dropped “valley” from the name of the business for the less ponderous Limpopo Horse Safaris. While Karl was clearing out Harvey’s desk he came across an old notepad. On the top leaf was written a name, phone number and a short message: “Call about Zulu”.

  He had no idea who Melodie Theron was but called the number anyway.

  “Hello, Melodie?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m calling from Mashatu, Limpopo Horse Safaris.”

  The young woman was then approaching her mid-twenties. “Ye-es?”

  “I found a note here. It just says to call you about Zulu.”

  “Where are Ruff and Harvey?” Melodie asked.

  “They’re gone. I, me and my wife, have taken over the business.”

  “Well, have you found him?” she tried to sound calm but she had started to shake and had to sit down.

  “Well, yes, and no.”

  “What does that mean?” Her heart raced.

  “Umm, the yes part is a long story, but the no part is that he is dead.”

  There was a long silence.

  Karl continued: “He was found dead at Rhodes Heights … up on the Mpumalanga escarpment. We had to send him there to stud when he developed colic here. I was told he was probably struck by lightning but I’ve never found out what really happened.”

  Another long silence.

  “He was special to me,” Karl offered by way of bridging the distance.

  “He was special to me too,” said the young woman. “Very special,” and sobbed.

  Around 10 years later, Karl and Juliette sold the business to a couple who, like them, had met and married while running horse safaris in the Waterberg, on the ranch next door to Double M named Wild Horizons. Ruff and Lucy married and went off to Zimbabwe to run horse safaris in the Zambezi Valley where, giving them the benefit of doubt, they still do happily.

  When the All Africa Games were held in Johannesburg in 2016, the horse events were staged at Kyalami Ranch close to where Ruff’s first wife, Lois, still lived and ran Riding for the Disabled. She also managed the South African disabled eventing team. Ruff and Blewitt were representing Zimbabwe and Juliette and Little Joe were there carrying the Botswanan flag. They were all sitting together in the competitors’ tent, sipping beers and generally trying not to open any old war wounds. Excepting for Ruff.

  “Hey Karl, whatever happened to that moffie horse of yours?” asked the ever-tactful cowboy.

  Even as Lois was sucking in her breath Juliette lashed out with her riding crop. She had been fiddling with the leather keeper, the tip in her left hand and the handle in her right. Ruff was sitting to her left and the bone-hard handle (called the mushroom) smacked him on the upper lip. The lip split, blood gushed and the shards of a shattered tooth went flying.

/>   A somewhat older, not evidently much wiser, but noticeably heavier Ruff came second in the Masters show-jumping event. When he went to collect his cup it was through a swollen and stitched lip that he slurred: “Shank you.”

  “Had a fight with a horse did you?” asked the tiny judge, the legendary and famously fierce South African show-jumping legend Gonda Betrix.

  “You could shay zhat ma’am,” he grimaced.

  Everyone who has ever had a special dog, or cat, or horse has learned two harsh but essential truths: that every living thing must die, and that most owners outlive their pets (unless it is a tortoise). It is never easy, but it is right that children see their parents buried and not the other way around. In the grand design dust will return to dust and in its place will come new life. While Zulu’s flesh and blood went to feed baby jackals and vulture chicks, blow-fly larvae and bacteria, the great gyre of life was busy turning.

  In the paddock at Rhodes Heights six frisky foals frolicked, getting in the way of their mothers’ legs and generally making everyone feel flushed with the generosity of life. There were four colts and two fillies which Sean had named in ironic deference, the boys to soap opera characters and the girls from movies he would rather not admit to having watched and liked: Eric, a short but sturdy bay with white flecks on his neck; Thorne, a dark bay with white socks on his spindly back legs; Ridge, a chestnut with one sock on his left hind leg and a comical demeanour; Nick, a shy grey with a white blaze on his nose; Taylor, a chestnut with a white star on her face; and Brooke, also a chestnut, with a small white splotch on her face.

  When someone pointed out the case of mistaken identity from International Velvet, he commented: “Well, it’s a better name for a horse than Tatum.”

  Ratty Michaels was sure he could turn a quick profit selling the yearlings to Karl and Juliette. They no longer had much of a turnover in horses and so did not need them or even have the space. But someone else did. Far away, in northern Botswana, a young horseman fresh out from England was looking for safari horses. He had been drawn to Africa by some inexplicable force and found his Garden of Eden in the Okavango Delta.