Hold My Hand I'm Dying

by John Gordon Davis

  Mahoney opened the throttle and screamed after him. Samson pulled him over the gunnel. He slapped the man between the shoulder blades as he coughed and spluttered. Mahoney had the boat out of the channel.

  The man finished coughing and looked up, very wet. Mahoney passed him the brandy bottle.

  ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’

  The man took a long pull from the bottle then belched.

  ‘No, he smiled wetly. ‘Jefferson. Jake Jefferson.’

  ‘Jake Jefferson …’

  The man was coughing.

  ‘Welcome aboard. What were you doing in the Zambezi Valley?’

  ‘Oh,’ said the policeman, ‘just hanging around.’

  It was late in the afternoon before they saw another boat. It was the Northern Rhodesia District Officer’s, and he was very glad to see them. He’d been having one hell of a time.

  Chapter Nine

  Brown water pulling, thatch roof-tops straining, poking through like upturned sieves, water smacking in door frames like it does against jetties, mud walls crumbling, firewood floating, carcasses drifting, cowdung bobbing. Silence, the silence of rain falling and the brown muck rising, rising, ssh-ssh, smack slop plop. A suitcase, an old cardboard suitcase, the hiding place of a lifetime’s possessions, an old suitcase sodden, disintegrating, half-drowned, floating by. What treasures it once stored, what frightening journeys it had seen to the white men’s cities. All gone, abandoned, floating for a while downstream. Chickens floating by, chickens everywhere, feathers sodden and their heads lolling downwards, water in their wings. Poor birds who had scattered and squawked up on to familiar perches, fled into familiar huts and tried for the rafters. Dogs, quite a few skinny dogs and puppies who had swum around bewilderedly and tried to make it back against the water to familiar ground. And cattle and goats, sodden and drowned. All drowned in Nyamayimini. And still the rain fell and the water climbed. Leisurely, but confidently and maliciously.

  Mahoney leaned over the side of the boat and grabbed a dead chicken and threw it into the boat. It fell with a plop among a heap of dead chickens. Then he steered the boat among the trees for the water-logged shoreline. Samson jumped out and held the boat while the old woman and children climbed out. They were wet and cold and shivering and they had lost all their property. He had plucked them from trees and roof-tops and islands.

  ‘These too.’ He picked up a chicken by the leg and flung it on to the bank. It plopped on to the shore dead and wet. ‘Eat them. It will be a long time before the Government can get food to you.’

  The old woman bent and picked up the chicken.

  ‘Bwana, how will we make the fire to cook them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mahoney snapped. He threw out more chickens. ‘The Government is very clever but it cannot make wet wood to be dry nor foolish people to be wise. You should have harkened when you were warned of the flood.’

  He was wet and cold and tired and angry. He had not slept for thirty-six hours. Nor had he eaten all day. He looked at the old woman and the children shivering on the bank and appealing to him for dry wood. He felt anger, not pity.

  ‘Where are your menfolk?’ he shouted. ‘Why is it that you are alone in danger?’

  They stared at him dumbly. The children moved to the old lady and one put out a hand and held her rags.

  ‘Old gentlewoman, where are your menfolk?’ he shouted.

  The old lady hung her head. ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘They ran with the women and children and they told me to run also. But I was caring for the goats and the cattle and I stayed to try to let them out of their kraals. But the water came too quickly for me.’

  She bent her old body and picked up a dead hen. The neck hung down limp and she lifted up the head and examined it.

  ‘This is the hen of my son,’ she said quietly, ‘and it was a fine hen. It made many chickens and it looked after them well. Even now she was sitting on ten eggs by Gwatadza’s big rooster.’

  She dropped the chicken. It fell in a sodden heap and rolled over, its neck twisted back. She stood bent and wet and shivering in the rain. The water ran off her old black head and down her creased toothless face.

  Her thin legs stood precariously on the slippery bank, trembling, and she clutched her wet rags around her. Mahoney was sorry he had spoken harshly.

  ‘Stay well, grandmother,’ he said. ‘Take the children over this hill. Some distance to the west you will find other people and soon the lorries of the Government will come there. They will help you and give you medicine. Take also the chickens.’

  The old woman raised her hand. ‘Stay well, younger father,’ she said.

  Samson shoved off. When they were fifty yards out Mahoney looked back. The old woman was slowly climbing the rocky slopes with the children straggled about her.

  It was much later when the boat came to Sixpence’s kraal upon the hill. And still it was raining.

  The rain fell in curtains, straight down. All the firewood was gone, the ground outside the hut was mud that sucked at the feet, water and the urine and the faeces of the animals. The people huddled in the sleeping hut of Sixpence at the very top of the hill, and in the sleeping hut of the senior wife a little lower down the slope. Already the water had crept into the doorways of all the kitchen huts of all three wives and the pots and utensils had been moved to the top of the hill. They lay in the open in a heap and the rain ran down the thatch of the huts and fell in a screen to the ground. The goats stood around the walls of the huts under the eaves bleating, and shivering and the last season’s kids ducked their heads under the bellies of their mothers. The nanny goat with her broken leg lay down under the eaves. The three head of cattle stood still in the rain with their heads hanging down to keep the rain out of their eyes, and sometimes they stamped their feet and lifted their heads and sniffed the air and lowed. The people were subdued in the two remaining huts, huddled damp and steamy together. The men shook their heads in worry and wonder and told of what they had seen. The children were quiet in wide-eyed agitation at their elders’ conversation. A baby cried at its wet discomfort and its mother gave it her long breast to suck. They watched the rain and the water through the doorway.

  ‘Look!’ a man’s arm pointing out the door.

  The people craned their necks forward and looked. Another crocodile squirming brown across the brown water. It nosed its way slowly through the floating flotsam, just its nostrils and forehead and yellow reptile eyes poking above the water, the ridge of its spiny back and the powerful swish of its tail.

  ‘Ayeeeh!’ a woman cried softly. ‘Today we are dying in this place.’

  Sixpence stood alone in the thick rain between the huts. He bent and picked up a stone and threw it at the crocodile.

  ‘Go away, vile one!’

  The crocodile lashed around startled, then it turned away and paddled round the island. The old man threw another stone. It landed near the beast but it did not hurry. It knew that it alone was not in trouble. It disappeared from Sixpence’s view round the half-drowned kitchen hut of the third wife. It nosed its way through the doorway and looked around, then it turned and swam out again.

  Sixpence scowled into the rain. His old shirt and trousers were sodden and he was hungry, but he thought of none of these things. He could see the water rising, swirling inch by inch up his hill. He saw his huts go, one by one, the huts of his junior wife, he could measure the rise of the water against familiar marks on the walls. There was the water lapping around the grinding stone outside the kitchen of his third wife. Together he and his new young wife had gone down to the river and selected the stone and they had carried it between them up the hill to her huts. It was a good stone, an ideal stone with already a natural depression in it for grinding the com for porridge with a smaller stone. Everybody had admired the stone, and now there was the river rising up over it again. And now it was right over the stone and it was running into her cooking hut. He could note these things. But his mind did not really dwell on t
hat. His mind dwelt on wonder, angry astonishment. The water was rising, surely, but it was unthinkable that it would not stop in time. This hill was his home and here his ancestral spirits lived with him.

  All day Sixpence stood alone in the rain and watched the water rising all the time. Then it crept up to the yard outside the doorway of the sleeping hut of his senior wife. The people in the hut watched it with ahs and mutters and then they crept out of the hut back into the rain. And they stood under the eaves of Sixpence’s hut with the goats and some of them just stood with him in the rain. They saw the crocodile again and the men threw stones at it but it did not go far away. It coursed around in the muddy rising water, out of range. Still it rained and the water rose up. There came two more crocodiles and the men threw more stones and the women began to lament and the children cry. But they did not go far away, and the water came in the doorway of the sleeping hut of the senior wife and it covered its hard cowdung floor, and it ran round the sides of the hut and up the slope. The cattle sniffed the wet air and took some steps backwards, facing the water and they stretched out their necks and mooed. Then night fell, inky black and thick and wet, and the sounds settled down to the lap of the water and the intermittent cries of the children, and the mutter of the men in the black rain. But later there came another dreadful sound.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Ah! What is that?’

  It came again, a stifled snorting, cut off in a splash and gurgle, then a great thrashing splashing in the blackness. Then another splash and the terrified bellow of the cow. Then splashing again and the bellow was cut off in the water into a snort. Then only the muffled noises of bodies straggling in the water then desultory lapping sounds again. The people knew through the darkness what it was, they could see nothing beyond the lengths of their arms and they scrambled closer together and tried to push into the doorway of the hut, trampling and pushing each other.

  ‘Crocodile—crocodile!’ and the children began to scream and the men to shout.

  Only the old man Sixpence did not scramble in the blackness. He stood under the eaves with his spear raised to his shoulder in the blackness. The tears ran down his face with the rain.

  ‘My cow!’ he wept softly. ‘My cow, oh vile one, vile one.’

  And in the dawn the water was six feet from the doorway of the sleeping hut.

  ‘It looks like Noah’s Ark,’ Mahoney said aloud.

  It did look like Noah’s Ark through the rain, the hut standing on a tiny strip of ground, with the people and the goats standing round the hut and crowding at the doorway. You could not see the escarpment beyond the hut atop the water.

  He turned the throttle up and headed straight for the island. The people were shouting and clapping their hands.

  ‘Crocs!’ Mahoney whispered. The beasts swam away from his wash. The bastards!’ He felt for his .22. ‘Dammit! Why didn’t I bring the three-oh-three?’ Still the twenty-two would sting them. He felt for his box of cartridges under the seat. ‘Dammit,’ he cursed again. ‘You fool, you big bloody fool!’ The cardboard box was soggy in wash in the bottom of the boat, the cardboard falling apart. ‘Dammit and they’ve been there all night!’

  He opened the magazine on the gun. Empty. Just one up the spout. ‘You tit! You tit-tit-tit!’

  He steered the boat angrily around the rooftop of the cooking hut of the second wife. He snapped the throttle down and the boat swept silently up to the island and grounded on the muddy slope. Willing hands grabbed her. He jumped ashore.

  ‘Women and children first,’ he shouted in bad Tonga. ‘All women and children come here.’

  The women and children huddled in the rain.

  ‘You mother, sit there, you mother over here, you girl of marriageable age sit next to this person. No more adults this journey. Now the children—’

  The boat could hold six, nine at a push, low in the water.

  ‘Whose property is this? It can be held in the hands.’

  ‘It is the property of the third wife of Sixpence,’ a man said.

  ‘Sixpence?’ Mahoney looked around the black faces in the rain. ‘Where is this old man?’

  ‘He is here, Bwana.’

  ‘Where?’

  The senior wife led him around the side of the hut. The old man stood under the eaves with the goats, his back against the wall and his feet stuck out into the water. He was looking aloofly out over the water.

  ‘Old man!’

  Sixpence turned his head to his master and nodded. He put his hands together and clapped them quietly.

  ‘You are welcome in my kraal, Mambo. I am ashamed I have not fire and food for the Mambo.’

  ‘My heart is glad to see you, old man. But come now. I am taking the people to a safe place. I will return shortly for you and your wives and the other people. You must help them to be ready.’

  Sixpence nodded. ‘Next year the crops will be very good,’ he said, ‘for the river will have deposited much rich soil in the garden. But my two cows are eaten by the crocodiles.’

  ‘Old man, I go now. We will talk about the crops tonight in a safe place, you and I, and we will make a plan. But make speed now.’

  He looked at the old man. The old man just looked ahead into the rain. ‘Sixpence!’ But the old man did not move. Mahoney turned and sloshed round the side of the hut.

  ‘Who is the senior wife of the old man?’ he shouted. ‘You, old mother? Then gather his property and be ready when I return. And urge the old man to make haste. Stay well.’

  He splashed down through the water to the boat. ‘Samson, stay behind and help the people. If the crocodiles come, beat the water with sticks.’

  The water had risen almost to the doorstep when the boat returned. The second wife had put a dam of sticks and mud across the doorway. The women were in the hut and the men stood outside to beat the water. Sixpence still stood at his place under the eaves with his spear and the nanny goat. The goat had climbed to its feet, for the water had reached its lying place. It stood on three legs and bleated and sniffed the air.

  Mahoney looked around quickly as he beached the boat and jumped into the water. No crocodiles. The water was up to his knees.

  ‘Is every person ready? Let every person come here quickly. Quickly old mother! Pass me your belongings.’

  He slung her blankets into the boat. They milled around the boat, the water over their ankles.

  ‘Sit here! No here! Samson, show the people where to sit. You, woman, in here—’

  He pushed and bundled them into the boat. They sat huddled in their places in the boat clutching their small belongings, the rain teeming down on them.

  He counted. Six adults, plus himself and Samson and the old man.

  ‘Where is this old man?’ Mahoney splashed round the hut.

  ‘I am here, Mambo.’

  He stood under the eaves with his spear and the nanny goat. The water pushed up over the little dam across the doorway and trickled into the dark hut.

  ‘Come now! The boat is ready and we are waiting for you!’

  The old man looked away. ‘Go then, Mambo.’

  ‘For Chrissake!’ Mahoney took a step towards him and the old man stepped back.

  ‘Do you wish me to hit you, old man?’

  ‘The Mambo cannot hit me in my own kraal.’

  ‘It is your kraal no longer,’ Mahoney shouted. He knew it was the wrong thing to say. ‘It belongs to the river now. And to the crocodiles who will eat your body!’

  He jumped at the old man and grabbed his thin arm. The old man jerked it away and stepped back.

  ‘Fool!’

  Mahoney lunged again. The old man stepped backwards into the water. Mahoney caught the arm with both hands. They were up to their knees in the water. The old man’s free arm jerked up. He held the spear poised at Mahoney.

  ‘I do not wish to injure Mambo. Let him let me stay in peace.’

  From the other side of the hut came Samson’s shout.

  ‘Crocodile, Nk
osi!’ and loud shouts of the men to chase it away.

  Mahoney let go the arm and waded up to the eaves of the hut. There the water was well over his ankles.

  ‘Come out of the water, you idiot!’

  The old man stood, the water eddying round his knees.

  ‘Samson!’ Mahoney shouted angrily. ‘Pull the boat round here.’

  ‘Yebo, Nkosi.’

  Samson pulled the boat load of people round the hut. ‘Three crocodiles other side, Nkosi.’

  ‘Women!’ Mahoney shouted. ‘Speak to your husband! Tell him to come with us!’ The wives began to weep.

  ‘Come, husband. The water and the crocodiles will eat you.’

  The old man did not look at them. He just shook his head and said Ah! in disgust.

  ‘Get me the gun,’ Mahoney snapped. He took it and pointed it at the old man.

  ‘Do not shoot him!’ the senior wife screamed. Sixpence looked at Mahoney steadily.

  ‘If you do not come, old man,’ Mahoney shouted, ‘I will injure you. I will shoot the hand which raised the spear at the Queen’s Representative.’

  Sixpence stood his ground. He moved the spear up and down his shoulder.

  ‘Kill me then, Mambo,’ he said angrily, ‘but I will not come.’

  Mahoney sighted down the barrel at the moving hand. He was trembling with a sick anger. He did not want to shoot at the old man. He did not even think that he would be accurate. He wanted to cry for the old man.

  ‘Crocodile!’ the women screamed.

  And snaking through the water giving the hut a wide berth was the ugly reptile. It was swimming for the old man.

  ‘Eeh!’ the women screamed and the old man turned to face the crocodile. He lifted his spear and shouted, ‘Aaarh!’

  ‘Oh Jesus.’ Mahoney swung the gun round and shot at the hideous head. It missed, but the crocodile jerked and swam angrily away.

  Mahoney lowered the gun. ‘Now come out of the water, old man.’ He was shaking.