One Hundred and Four Horses

by Mandy Retzlaff

  The call had come from a very concerned director at Highveld Paprika. Rumors had reached them concerning various tobacco farmers in the Chimoio district—some of whom were the very same farmers in whom we had invested to grow paprika. According to Highveld, some of the farmers were refusing to harvest their tobacco crops, claiming that the prices they had been offered were far below market value. Rather than harvest, they planned on holding the crops as ransom to force the price up; every day they did not reap in the fields, the crops were another day closer to simply rotting in the ground.

  “You know how much money we put into those farms,” I began. “What if Highveld just walked away? We’d be left . . .”

  It was Pat and I who had sourced the farmers, found the farms, employed agronomists and laborers, purchased tractors and harvesters and countless kilometers of irrigation pipes. Out on those farms the results of our work were clear: the bush was being driven back and beautiful, bountiful fields were appearing in its wake. Another few seasons, another few years, and Chimoio could be the heart of a new agricultural wonderland. The country was untouched; the farms could grow and spread. But, for all that to happen, it demanded good, honest, hardworking people—and an insidious thought had taken root in my gut. Perhaps, in our haste to forge a new life beyond Mugabe’s control, we had been too naive.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  Pat shoveled in his food. At least one of us still had an appetite. “I’ll go out to the farms,” he said, “and see if I can get wind of what’s going on. In the meantime, there’s still the riding school to be thinking of . . .”

  I nodded. Where had all my old Zimbabwean resolve gone? We had come through war vets and worse; whatever was happening on these paprika farms had to be a piece of cake compared to that.

  That night, my thoughts were filled not only with Grey, Treacle, and Romans. If our farming investments disappeared, it would touch every single horse in the herd.

  I woke in the dead of night, my heart thundering like hoofbeats, and lay awake until dawn.

  Mozambique was putting us through hardships, but in return it promised us a great future. Yet all it took was one phone call from Highveld Paprika and that promise turned sour.

  It wasn’t long before Highveld’s fears became a reality. Only a week later, Pat received a phone call from one of the farmers we had backed. He was demanding a greater price on the paprika in his fields and threatening to let it rot if we did not agree. Soon, other farmers joined the chorus, demanding prices for their paprika that we could not promise. Giving in to this blackmail was not an option we could even consider; the prices were set in stone by Highveld Paprika, and contracts had long ago been signed. Of the dozen farmers in whom we had invested, only three had subscribed to the plot—but three was enough to cripple our operation and ruin the scheme for the rest. Such were the fine lines on which farms succeeded or failed. This was a line we were all too familiar with from our earliest days on River Ranch. As our new world, once filled with such promise, began to crumble around us, Pat spent his days driving out to the traitorous paprika farms, reclaiming as much of the crop as he could. We would still be able to sell it, and every little bit would help. Meanwhile, I remained with the herd, committed more than ever to taking out rides and giving lessons, finding any way possible to eke a living out of these horses that meant so much to us. If we were to claw our way out of this chaos, the horses were our only hope—and yet, as the farming boom collapsed so spectacularly, I feared that the people too would begin to leave Chimoio. It seemed that we had rescued our horses from Mugabe’s war vets only to lead them into another disaster.

  At the riding school, I cupped Lady’s head in my hands and prayed for better times.

  A few days later, Jay appeared on the doorstep, bedraggled but rugged, with hair falling in curls around his shoulders.

  “You look like you might need a wash.”

  “It’s nice to see you too, Mum.”

  I welcomed him in and set about fussing as only a mother can. Once a huge breakfast was heaped on the plate, Jay set about demolishing it. If Kate and Paul had been there, the room would have been filled with banter, but Jay was as silent as ever. I propped myself against the counter and drank my tea, waiting for him to finish.

  “I have something for you,” Jay began. With a flourish, he produced an envelope from the backpack at his feet. He twirled it over the table.

  I wandered over, opened the envelope, and lifted out a stack of Mozambican meticais.

  “If this is payment, that was one expensive breakfast . . .”

  “It’s not for breakfast,” Jay replied. “It’s my pay from Gorongosa. It’s for”—he shrugged, noncommittally—“you know, for the horses, for helping with the farm debts. For . . . food, water, life. That kind of stuff.”

  “Jay, we can’t take . . .”

  I tried to push the money back across the table, but Jay was already standing to slouch away. “You already did,” he replied. “Just don’t spend it all at once.”

  I stood in the kitchen after Jay left the room, counting the money he had given me and feeling a terrible welling in the bottom of my stomach. It should not have come to this. The money Jay had given me was all he had saved from his work in the national park. It would tide us over for a little while, but it would not make such a significant dent in our debts that we could flee Chimoio and start again somewhere else. My mind was reeling, wondering how on earth I was going to convince Jay to take his money back, when the telephone rang. Preparing myself for yet another disaster, I picked it up and cheerily said hello.

  “Mandy,” said Pat. “I’m at the riding school. You’d better come.”

  Half an hour later, Jay and I stood with Pat at a shredded fence at the riding school. In the early hours of the morning, somebody had evaded the night guard and taken off with a roll of wire.

  “I don’t have time for this.” Pat cursed. “What’s the head count?”

  Jonathan stood on the edge of the paddock, with Lady on one side and Shere Khan on the other.

  “We’re one down.”

  Pat kicked a stone out through the hole in the fence. On the dirt road, it shattered.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “Tequila,” Jonathan replied.

  Pat opened his mouth as if to bark out another oath, but in frustration he swallowed it down. “Well,” he said, “let’s go find him.”

  Jay, Pat, and I took a truck and drove out along the same road on which Grey, Treacle, and Romans had met their fate, but there was no sign that Tequila had come this way. When, at last, we reached the spot of the accident, we pulled to the shoulder of the road and stepped out.

  “Lightning doesn’t strike twice,” I muttered, as if trying to convince myself.

  A truck appeared and rumbled past us, blaring its horn.

  “It’s not lightning I’m worried about,” answered Pat.

  My phone rang, and I answered it. On the other end of the line was Jonathan. We spoke for a moment, and then I hung up.

  “He’s been seen,” I said, hurrying back into the truck.

  “Where?”

  “The other side of Chimoio. He’s going west.” I slid into the seat and Jay jumped in back just as Pat coaxed the engine back to life. “Pat, he’s fifty kilometers out. He thinks he’s going back home.”

  We cut around Chimoio on the back roads and joined the highway back to the border on its farthest side. On the horizon, the heights of the Bvumba sat, their crowns almost merging into the blueness of the sky. Slowly, the mountains grew bigger. Their peaks became more defined, their forested escarpments burst forth in rich color. The day’s light waned.

  At last, we saw Tequila. The highway was long and gun-barrel straight, and we could pick him out, a tiny dot trotting toward the mountains, long before we reached him. When we finally drew near, we could see that he was walking, head down, at the side of the road, refusing to be distracted. Afraid that we might spook him, we pulled the truck ont
o the verge a hundred yards behind and hurried to join him.

  “Tequila,” I said, approaching on his flank with enough room between us that he would not be frightened off, “where do you think you’re going?”

  By increments, Pat crept near. Tequila gave a shallow snort of recognition, and Pat laid a hand on his flank.

  “You dumb old boy . . .”

  Pat lifted a halter and rope from his shoulder. Even then, Tequila walked sedately along. If he was listening to my commands at all, he did not seem to care. Either that, or he cared about Zimbabwe—about the idea of home—so much more.

  Pat put himself in Tequila’s path and told him to stop. Tequila tried to weave one way, then another, but in the end it was a simple thing to slip the halter over him and attach a lead rope.

  “Did you really think you could get over the mountains?”

  His eyes lifted, locking with my own. He gave a sudden shake of the head, his mane falling down.

  “Back to all that?” I went on. “Nowhere to live for more than a few months, no money, no food, never knowing if they might come knocking in the dead of night?” My voice seemed to trail off. Tequila’s eyes were fixed again on the Bvumba, but mine had drifted up. Over Tequila’s back, I was staring straight at Pat, and he was staring back. “You don’t really want to go back home, do you, my boy?”

  Upon hearing those words, Tequila kicked into a trot, as if he did not want to listen. Cursing, Pat hurtled after him. For a moment his trot quickened; in response, Pat slowed his gait again, until Tequila slowed down.

  “Mandy!” he called back, in half a whisper. “Get Jay to fire up the truck, in case he bolts.”

  I turned and ran back to the truck, where Jay was resting in the baking sun. Back in the cab, he fired up the engine and we began to trundle forward. Up ahead of us, Tequila had slowed to a walk. Pat was keeping pace with him, though I could see my husband had developed a stitch in his side.

  We stopped the truck again, for up ahead Pat had his arms draped around Tequila. Speaking to him softly all the while, he fitted the lead rope and gently teased the horse around. As I watched, a shiver seemed to run down the length of my spine, even despite the searing heat.

  “What is it, Mum?” Jay asked.

  “I was thinking . . . I don’t know how I’m going to manage the herd. Not when he’s gone . . .”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  Pat and Tequila were drawing near now. For the first time, Tequila was facing away from the Bvumba, retracing the prints of his own hooves.

  “I wasn’t going to tell you like this,” I began, “but . . . your father’s leaving.”

  “Leaving?”

  At exactly the same moment, and in exactly the same tone of voice, Tequila let out a whinny of surprise. Through the windshield, I cocked a look at him. He needn’t have been so shocked; we had told the herd three days before. Obviously, he hadn’t been listening. Or perhaps that was why he had turned tail and fled.

  “It’s no good here, Jay. We’ve lost too much.” It was difficult to make sense of it, but I struggled to find the right words, eager that Jay should understand. According to our friends at Highveld Paprika, the farmers in whom we had invested were being advised by a shadowy businesswoman who never showed her face in Mozambique and operated from a house in Harare. It was this woman who had advised the farmers to leave their tobacco in the ground and ransom a better price out of their buyers, and it was this woman who was advising them to do the same thing with the paprika in which we had invested.

  “Highveld cut its losses. Just walked away,” I explained. “As soon as the directors understood, they were gone.” I saw the way Jay was looking. “You can’t blame them, Jay. They made a bad investment. It’s big business. They took it on the chin and got out.”

  “But you can’t do the same . . .”

  “We owe too much to too many people. All the equipment, all the irrigation, all the seedlings, all the agronomists and laborers we employed . . . It’s all on our heads. It would have worked. The paprika would have paid for it. There could have been farms here for generations. But they butchered it, looking for a quick buck . . .”

  It was worse than that, but I didn’t know how to find the words. When we discovered that three of the farmers were refusing to harvest, we were devastated. We hurried onto their farms, confronted them, tried to persuade them to do the honorable, honest thing. That they were holding us and our goodwill to ransom was terrible enough—but then we received a telephone call, instructing us that our paprika had been harvested in secret and was, even now, being shunted across the border at the capital city of Maputo, far to the south, for sale outside the country. Somehow, the same farmers who had accepted our investment and reneged on their promises had gotten ahold of signed export licenses and other government documentation. We were being stolen from wholesale—and all with the signature of a government official.

  “So Dad’s leaving . . .”

  “He’s going to Vilanculos with some of the horses to drum up work. I’m staying to salvage what we can from this mess. I’ll go after him as soon as this is over.”

  Vilanculos was the closest coastal town, 450 kilometers from Chimoio. It was small compared to the northerly port of Beira, tiny compared even to Chimoio, but it was the gateway to the beautiful Bazaruto archipelago, a ribbon of unspoiled islands in the glittering Indian Ocean, with golden beaches and a vast, serene bay in which people came to snorkel, dive, and sail on the local dhows. Perhaps some of the tourists those places attracted could be tempted to take a ride.

  “Mum, I’ll send you more money,” Jay said, his face as stony as his father’s.

  “I know, darling . . .”

  “For Kate’s university fees, if nothing else.”

  I don’t know if my heart had ever felt warmer. Jay and Kate had always been close, ever since those days in which she trotted off after him into the bush to foil his attacks on the local birdlife, but the idea that he should send his pay home to keep her in school was too beautiful for words.

  “Jay, it’s for the best. He’s taking seven from the herd. Lady, Fleur, Jade, Black Magic, Squib . . .” I paused. “Spicegirl and Megan, too. He’ll put them to work there. There has to be more trade there. More tourists.” I hesitated to say it, but I added, “More hope. Chimoio’s going bust. We have to get out.”

  “Who are you kidding, Mum? You haven’t been apart all your lives . . .”

  I smirked. “There was a time before your father, Jay.”

  “You were younger than me. Much younger.” He stopped. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s not like I’ll be completely alone. Jonathan will go with your father, but there’ll still be Denzia, Albert, Never, and the other workers . . . And there’ll still be the herd. We’ll always have them.”

  “The herd . . .”

  I thought I sensed vitriol in Jay’s voice, as if it was the herd’s fault we were in this mess.

  At that moment, Pat and Tequila drew level with the truck. Tequila seemed to have given up straining back for the Bvumba now. I slipped out of the cab to greet him.

  Tequila dropped his head. I took hold of the lead rope and, conceding defeat, he ambled up the ramp.

  Back in the cab, Pat pulled the truck around.

  “It almost seems unfair,” he said, “to take him away from home like that . . .”

  I thought of Mugabe, that day on Palmerston Estates, rustling the herd off Biri Farm, my mother in England, Paul still in London, Kate in South Africa, our family scattered to the four corners of the earth while, here, the new world we were trying to forge came apart at the seams.

  “No,” I said, “it hardly seems fair at all.”

  From the back of the truck came a mournful snort. I had always understood that we were here to care for the horses—but now the thought struck me that they did not understand, that to Tequila and the rest it might have seemed that we had dragged them here, that we were the o
nes keeping them from home. I longed for a way to tell them: we love you; we’d take you back, if only we could. But there was a gulf of language and understanding between us, and I could never tell them exactly how I felt.

  At the riding school, Pat was fitting halters to Black Magic, Lady, and Jade, while Jonathan and Albert shepherded Spicegirl, Fleur, and Megan into the back of a truck. At the edge of the paddock, I stood with a reluctant-looking Squib. He was to be the only male horse accompanying Pat to the coast, but he didn’t look particularly pleased about it.

  “Come on, Squib, Pat’s going to need another man about the place . . .”

  Once Spicegirl, Megan, and Fleur were safely inside, Pat led Lady out. We stood together, in front of the truck, and I put my arms around the dainty, precious little mare.

  “You look after each other,” I said.

  Lady flicked her mane. Whether she was telling me no, yes, or simply not to be so melodramatic, I couldn’t tell. I watched her disappear up the ramp, into the darkness beyond. Jonathan slipped in afterward to help tether her and make sure she was secure.

  The last to board the truck was Black Magic. Once she was safely within, Pat and Jonathan lifted and secured the ramp. The last thing I saw was Black Magic’s darkly glimmering eyes looking back.

  Pat heaved a backpack into the cab of the truck. After the numerous times we had packed up our houses and fled, it seemed surreal to think it had boiled down to this: seven horses and a single pack, like some pioneer of old.

  “Hard to think she was one of the nastiest little horses when we found her . . .” I said, still looking at Black Magic peering out of the back of the truck.

  “What are you talking about?” Pat grinned. “It’s the nastiest horses that are the best. She’s got fire, that old girl . . .”

  Jonathan had already climbed into the passenger seat of the truck, and now Pat swung up beside him, taking the wheel.

  “So,” he said, cocking his head.

  “So,” I replied, looking up.