One Hundred and Four Horses

by Mandy Retzlaff

  “No,” he began. “It’s from the cattle. There are a few horses with marks like that. Sometimes a horned cow will gouge them when they’re feeding at the same troughs.” He paused. “She came through it, though. Jade’s a strong girl.”

  John moved as if to run his hands through Jade’s mane. It was obvious that he and the horse had once been close, for she did not startle so easily as the others.

  “What do you think?” John ventured. “Can you help?”

  There must have been fifty horses in the field, and perhaps just as many cattle. Here were the old and the young, the strong and the lame, more horses than we had had on Crofton and Two Tree combined, more even than we had collected up on Biri. When I turned back, the horses blurring in front of my eyes, the last thing I caught sight of was Pat’s face. He was wearing an inscrutable expression, as if going through a calculation too complex to comprehend.

  Then he simply nodded.

  “We’ll take as many as we can.”

  Rounding up the horses was difficult. Perhaps they had seen some terrible things from the invading war vets, but the wildness in them seemed to have made them distrust humans again.

  As we were about to set off, Pat’s eyes had landed on the big gray mare and her plaintive little foal.

  “What about Jade?” Pat asked. “And this foal of hers?”

  There was no hesitation. John simply shook his head.

  “She isn’t just one of the herd, Pat. She’s my horse.”

  I knew what that relationship was like. Every horse is an individual, but, just like humans, sometimes those individuals click. That was the way it had been for Pat and Frisky.

  “John, you’re not thinking straight. See it from Jade’s perspective. How long have you got left? Two months? Three?”

  “Less,” John admitted.

  “When it comes, it comes fast. You might not have time. What if you couldn’t get Jade off? What if they . . .”

  For a young man, John looked suddenly very old.

  “If you get the farm back one day, John, I’ll ride her back here myself. I’m not trying to steal your horse off you . . . but I don’t want to leave her, not when I’ve seen what’s coming.” Pat paused. “And I have seen it, John.”

  Jade seemed to move her head between Pat and John, following the conversation.

  “You mean, if it ends, you’ll send her back?”

  “If it ends, I don’t think I could stop her.”

  In resignation, John passed Jade’s lead rope to Pat. Then, he ran his hand along the length of her muzzle. Good luck, he mouthed. Jade’s ears swiveled and folded forward, her lips turning to nibble at John’s hand.

  As Pat led Jade off, her foal followed after. In the end we drove twelve horses from John’s fields to Biri. That same day we had to work on the foals in a round pen, and by the evening we had them eating out of our hands.

  Back at Biri, Pat put his arm around me. I nestled into his shoulder and soaked up his smell: the smell of earth, of home, of our long years of work. We looked out across the land together. On one side of the field, the Two Tree and Crofton horses seemed to be gathering, while on the other, Jade, the little foal whom I had named Brutus—for there was never a less likely looking Brutus in the whole of Zimbabwe—and the rest of the Crawford horses were making a separate herd of their own. In between, the other horses we had taken in looked like dark islands in a sea of green. Then, one of the Crawford mares ventured out and Deja Vu, recognizing her from the day’s journey, shifted from her side of the paddock, too. It was, I decided, a sight wonderful enough to make all thoughts of tomorrow, and the day after, simply evaporate away. The horses were getting to know one another.

  “I think we’ve collected enough,” I began. My count had reached thirty-five before I started seeing double.

  “Mandy,” Pat said, grinning, “we haven’t even started.”

  Late that night, Fred came to see us. In the sitting room, he sat down with Pat, opened a cold beer, and looked at him with sad but eager eyes. From the kitchen doorway, I listened to them talking—or, rather, I listened to Fred talk and watched Pat’s reaction. Pat, Fred was certain, had to see sense. The more horses we took in, the less able we would be to provide for them; the more horses we took in, the less able we would be to provide for ourselves. Some people, Fred said, had nervous episodes that could manifest themselves in the most curious of ways; the sooner Pat recognized his mania for what it was, the better.

  It dawned on me that Fred was probably right. I had seen Pat’s mania manifest itself like this before. I had borne the brunt of the hundreds of turkeys he had collected in the early days of our marriage. Farmers around us were constantly losing their heads as their lives unraveled. We had heard of countless heart attacks, divorces, extramarital affairs. Was it really so far-fetched to believe the same thing was happening to Pat, and showing itself in this most incredible of ways?

  “There are herds and herds of animals out there,” Fred said. “Cattle and sheep. You can’t rescue them all.”

  Pat suddenly looked the way Jay had as a young boy, thrilled to be out hunting with a new bird of prey.

  “Do you know, Fred,” Pat said, “you might have given me an idea. Cattle and sheep! Somebody has to rescue those cattle and sheep!”

  Even though Pat was only joking, Fred looked suddenly downcast, perplexed beyond measure.

  In the doorway, my face broke into the widest grin. Pat, I decided, might well have been mad—but in the new Zimbabwe, only the truly insane could ever hope to prosper.

  For a while, now, the impact of the land invasions on Zimbabwe’s economy had been clear. We watched helplessly as the nation’s only real resource—its agricultural land—was systematically destroyed. Most of the farms taken did not go to the local black populace, as was being promised. Instead, they became the country residences of party officials, or else they were simply put to the torch or abandoned. If any farming was happening on River Ranch, Two Tree, or the countless other farms to have fallen, it was simple, subsistence stuff by the settlers. Commercial agriculture was finished and, with it, the Zimbabwean dollar.

  In Harare one morning, my mother left home to withdraw her pension. At the bank, she produced her passport and identification. Having withdrawn her money for the month, she set about her regular routine: first to the shops for supplies, and later to a restaurant in town for afternoon tea with an old friend.

  It was only upon opening her bag and seeing the money she had withdrawn that she realized: her month’s pension, that symbol of the lifetime she had spent nursing, was worth little more than half a loaf of bread and a bottle of Coke.

  She looked up when the waitress came to take her order and politely excused herself without ordering.

  On the table behind her, her month’s pension fluttered on a plate. It was the biggest and yet smallest tip the waitress had ever received.

  “Only in Zimbabwe, Amanda.”

  In Harare, all of my mother’s possessions were in cases, carefully being loaded into the back of our car. We had packed as much as possible off to relatives, and it felt strange to see my mother’s long lifetime reduced to a few boxes and bags. She was seventy-three years old and now she had nothing.

  When I closed the trunk, I saw her slipping into the driver’s seat.

  “Mum, I’ll drive.”

  “Amanda . . .”

  “You don’t know the way.”

  She relented and shuffled to the other side of the car.

  “Come on, Mum, let’s get out of here . . .”

  There had been a great influx of farmers into Harare, those who could not flee the country often finding new homes in the city. Perhaps Pat and I would have considered it, were it not for the horses out on Biri. Pat was spending his days with John Crawford’s foals in his training ring—and the idea of him giving up that life to move to the city felt as objectionable as what Mugabe was doing to the land.

  We pulled off into Harare traffic. The roads wer
e ragged at their edges and full of great potholes. Darkness was falling and the streetlights shone only intermittently, so that we had to roll from one halo of light to the next through pools of blackness. In that blackness, I saw that the streets were filled with men in uniform, soldiers out on patrol. I checked the dashboard and saw that our fuel was running low—but every garage we passed had big signs outside declaring that there was no gas, no diesel, nothing in their stores.

  “Mum,” I began, “how long has it been . . . ?”

  “Oh, Amanda,” my mother said with a lofty grin, “this is nothing.”

  I wanted to tell her I was glad she was coming to live with us. Biri Farm, at least, was at peace. Then, the thought occurred to me that it might not always be that way, and in silence I drove on.

  My mother did not deserve this.

  Beryl Sheldon Whitefield was born in Hyde in England in 1929 and did not find herself in African climes until she married my father, John, in 1952. My father was an architect from Galashiels in Scotland and, soon after they were married, answered the clarion call for architects to seek their fortunes in Ghana in West Africa. My grandparents, horrified that their little girl was being dragged off to the Dark Continent, pleaded with my father to reconsider. But my parents had their hearts and minds set on adventure. It was to dictate the shape of their lives.

  It was in Ghana that I spent my early years, before my parents finally settled in South Africa to raise me and my two younger brothers. After twenty-one years, my mother and father went their separate ways. Beryl left Africa to live with her mother in Spain, but, on hearing that I had taken up with a Rhodesian and was moving to live in a country at war, she decided to return to the continent that had dominated so much of her life. She found work as a hospital nurse and gave her days and nights to helping old and sick Zimbabweans, both black and white.

  Now, that country to which she had given everything for twenty-five years was condemning her to a cruel, impoverished old age.

  “Do you know, Amanda, I believe I may even owe the bank. The pension doesn’t even cover the account costs now.”

  When we reached Biri Farm, Albert and Caetano, two of the workers who had come with us from River Ranch, helped Granny Beryl to unload her packs. There was so little, and yet it was the sum of a life.

  “Welcome home, Mum.”

  She looked up at the face of Biri farmhouse.

  “Amanda, it’s positively a palace.”

  With a wry grin, I showed Granny Beryl around her new home. In front of the farmhouse sat Pat’s training ring, and farther on stood the beginnings of a gymkhana setup he and the laborers were building as part of the training regimen he was instituting for the newest horses. So far, the foals from John Crawford’s farm, including the tormented little Brutus, were being handled daily, getting them used to close human contact. Pat would spend long hours settling them, then lifting each of their hooves so that, when the time came to ride and work with them, they would not instinctively kick out. When they were old enough, he would begin a long process of groundwork, fitting them with halters and lead ropes, training them from the ground with long reins, before finally climbing into the saddle. It could take two years to school one of these horses properly; I only hoped Biri lasted that long.

  On the hill that backed onto the farm, some of the laborers were working at clearing an eight-kilometer trail for riding. It was to be the last part of Pat’s makeshift training program, a twisting track full of surprises—ditches, crests, sudden switchbacks—to help desensitize the horses and teach them not to be spooked. Looking at Brutus, standing forlorn in the field, and Lady, still bounding boisterously about, I wondered if they’d ever get to walk that trail.

  We had prepared a room for Granny Beryl and I showed her to it. As she unpacked clothes into drawers, I produced a small bag, no bigger than a school satchel.

  “Mum, put this somewhere safe.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s your ditch kit. Don’t worry about it—just keep it to hand.”

  My mother set the bag down, drew back the zipper, and peered inside. One by one, she lifted the items out: first, a clean pair of panties; next, a tube of toothpaste with a new toothbrush; then a bar of soap, some other toiletries, a small roll of U.S. banknotes. Using U.S. currency was still illegal in Zimbabwe, but at least it was worth something in a market spiraling out of control.

  “But . . . what’s it for?”

  “I’ve been keeping mine ever since Palmerston. Keep your passport with it too, Mum. And if anyone ever comes to the farm, anybody who looks like they’re Party or Air Force or CIO . . .” I trailed off. It was not fair to heap this on her after the shell shock of her pension disappearing. “Just keep it safe.” I folded my hands over hers.

  I was almost out the door, off to find Pat, when my mother stopped me short.

  “Amanda, is everything all right?”

  “No, Mum,” I said, the last few months hitting me with all the power of a train, “things aren’t all right at all.”

  Sometime after dark, a car pulled into Biri Farm, our driver Jonathan at the wheel. From the backseat, Kate tumbled out. The school run was longer than it had been when we lived at Crofton or the safehouse, but for the sake of continuity in her important exam years, we had not wanted Kate to be uprooted. Exhausted, she came into the farmhouse, ditched her bags, and ran straight into her grandmother.

  Kate beamed and threw her arms open wide. “What are you doing here?”

  “Kate,” Granny Beryl announced, “this is where I live.”

  Momentarily confused, Kate scoured the room until her eyes locked with mine.

  I’ll explain later, I mouthed.

  We drifted into the living room, where a table had been set for dinner. Pat was nowhere to be seen, still no doubt in his training ring with Brutus, and I hurried off to bellow for him. It would not have been the first time he had missed a meal while playing with his horses.

  By the time I got back to the dining room, Kate and Granny Beryl were in the midst of catching up.

  “And how’s school?”

  “Mum . . .”

  “Amanda, I’m asking the girl a question.”

  But it was a question Pat and I had been shying away from asking. Ever since Crofton, Kate had come home with rumors she had heard in the schoolyard, her friends’ families beset by war vets and driven from their farms. The school ground was a place where stories fermented, but, more than that, it seemed a microcosm of what was happening in the rest of Zimbabwe. It wasn’t only in the cities and on the farms that the rivalry between Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and the MDC was viciously played out; it was happening in Kate’s world as well.

  “It’s pretty empty,” Kate said, turning to Granny Beryl. “Lots of students didn’t come back at the start of term.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Australia, mostly. Some of them went to England, I think, like Paul.” Kate paused. “Lots of mothers are going, too. They’re finding work caring, now they don’t have their farms.”

  “Caring?”

  “Old people’s homes, Mum,” I interjected. “There are agencies for it.”

  “There was a”—Kate hesitated, searching for the right word—“thing after school,” she went on. “Some of the older students, they keep wearing their MDC shirts. Some of the others . . . well, they don’t like it. They came in with their ZANU-PF shirts. It was like those horses out there, everyone sticking to their own side of the field . . .”

  “Politics, is it?”

  “It’s because of the election,” said Kate.

  March was not far away. In ballot boxes across Zimbabwe, the battle would be lost or won: four more years of Mugabe and his rape of our country, or a fresh beginning with Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change. Knowing how overwhelmingly the nation had refuted Mugabe’s referendum two years before, I was convinced that the country felt the same way as we did, desperate for the MDC to take control and stabilize
this chaos; what I was not convinced of was that the election would reflect the true will of the people. I had seen how terrorized the workers on Crofton, Two Tree, and Palmerston Estates had been by ZANU-PF demagogues. The same thing was happening nationwide.

  At that moment, Pat came into the room, still wearing his chaps. Without stopping to wash up, he wrapped Kate in a big bear hug and dropped into his seat.

  “I’m starving,” he began, looking at what was left in the bowls. “Oh well, I suppose I’ll be the dustbin again . . .”

  He proceeded to shovel everything that was left onto his plate. It was a moment before he noticed Kate squinting at him.

  “What is it?”

  “Dad,” Kate ventured, “you stink.”

  Pat lifted his hands to his nose. “I’ve been dipping the horses,” he said. “For ticks.”

  While Pat rushed off to scrub himself, Kate, Granny Beryl, and I put down our plates and took a walk down to the paddocks. Over the fence, Jade, Brutus, and the other horses from John Crawford’s farm lifted their teeth to tear at the low-lying branches of the trees beside them. Having stripped each twig, they proceeded to carefully chew the leaves. It was a habit not even Pat had seen before. Our only thought was that there had been too much competition for grass to graze among the Crawford cattle, and these enterprising horses had found a unique solution.

  On seeing us, Lady bounded over. I could see why Pat was having an ordeal trying to properly train her; this little madam was spoiled beyond saving.

  “What do you think, Mum?” I asked. “Not bad for a group of desperadoes on the run?”

  Granny Beryl nodded sternly.

  “Amanda,” she said, as if it had only just occurred, “I thought I’d made it clear with that horrible little horse Ticky. Just what are you doing with all these horses?”

  In the farmhouse, the phone rang. Granny Beryl, sensing an opportunity to help out, strode energetically over.

  “Don’t worry, Mum. It’s probably another call about some horses . . .”