The Sands of Kalahari

by William Mulvihill

  Grimmelmann found a spearhead buried in the sand of the cave floor, seven inches long, narrow and balanced, chipped from a heavy black flint. He held it in his hand, studied the honed edges, the clever groove that some Bushman or Herero craftsman had fashioned to hold its wooden shaft. It was an artifact, old, an elemental tool. He dropped it into the deep pocket of his windbreaker.

  He would keep it, bring it back to the outside world and send it to some museum. He had killed Herero and Bushmen and it was something he could do now; a good deed to place with all the bad deeds. The guilt was on him. He had seen but he had not acted; he had known but had not spoken. He was the base on which everything rested, good and bad, the kleine Mann.

  He’d come back to Africa to hide, to escape Europe and the shame; he’d come to see the places of his youth again, the land he’d seen as a boy with good dreams, so long ago… .

  He showed the spearhead to the others and they all agreed that it was a rare thing of great beauty.

  Entry in the diary of Jefferson Smith.

  The desert is a place beyond description. The real desert where there is only the great dry earth, the sky and the terrible sun. It is so alien to me, to most men. We have always shunned such places as we have shunned mountain peaks, caves, the depths of the sea, swamps. Before that we were afraid of the night, peopled these places with spooks, goblins. Fear of unknown. Most feats of mountaineering, cave exploration, desert crossings have occurred in memory of those now living. (New techniques, scientific advances.) Strange that we were so late in conquering these places. We had television and A-bomb before Everest was scaled. Stone Age people in Brazil stand in ruins of lost city and watch Sputnik. This part of the world seems as remote as the far side of the moon.

  O’Brien is magnificent. I cannot picture him outside of this place. He would seem strange in a business suit, tie; I can believe he is extremely wealthy. Has unlimited assurance, adaptability, leadership. Better born in another time. Elizabethan. An officer of Alexander. Hard to picture him at stockholders’ meeting. He keeps us all on the ball, fighting. We might all be gone if it were not for him.

  Trip seemed so long. Got a gemsbok, ate until we were sick. Too far out to bring any back. O’Brien says we relieved pressure on canyon’s food supply for the time (lizards, honey, melons). I was happy to get back to mountain. Strange feeling. Slept better in cave. People can adjust to strange ways of living. Read of convicts who regret leaving their cells. Understand. If only we had more to eat this wouldn’t be too bad to take for a while. Our problem an old one. Overpopulation.

  Difficult to determine how far we went on this hunting-exploration trip. Walked at night. Barefooted. Water heavy on our backs. O’Brien impatient with me. Six nights of slow walking. How far out? Fifty miles? Pointless for me to go if I can’t come back with a load of meat. I could go alone, look for melons, etc. but would be afraid of getting lost, breaking ostrich shells, dying out there on the Great Thirst.

  Bain seems better since before we left. He made a net from all manner of string and wire. Catches birds with it somehow near the pool. Not bad. Is working on lizard trap. Deadfall principle, balanced flat rock with bait under it. Difficult because of terrific speed of lizards. Grimmelmann and Grace Monckton are thin as we all are. Hanging on. I suppose we are all in a state of slow starvation.

  O’Brien and Smith went into the desert again. They took one melon apiece, hoping that they would find new patches of them in the wasteland beyond the horizon. They carried enough water to last them six days.

  “Don’t take chances,” Grace said.

  “If I shoot anything we’ll bring it right back,” O’Brien told them. The melons kept them alive but they needed meat. They’d eat baboon now if he could get any, but the apes were too smart; it was impossible to get within range of them.

  “A fat zebra,” Grimmelmann said. “Look for them. If you find tracks follow them and they will lead you to water.”

  “We’ll bring something back,” O’Brien said. He did not want to face them again empty-handed.

  They left and after a while the sun went down and the night breeze came. They headed south and after six hours they each took a water-filled eggshell from their pack. O’Brien dug a hole in the sand while Smith searched for stones to make a cairn. They buried the precious shells and rested for half an hour. Then they rose and walked on, hurrying before the sun came to halt them.

  On the third night they came to another variety of terrain. Bushveld. Dry powdered soil filled with sharp pebbles and a billion half-dead bushes. When dawn came they did not stop but continued on, for they were excited. The monotony of the sand depressed them; the bush seemed to promise something. An hour later O’Brien shot a bustard and they stopped, putting their remaining eggshells in the shade to cool the water. They built a huge fire and cooked the big bird; then they found shade and slept through the heat, feeling strengthened and revived by the turkeylike meat.

  The sun waned. Smith got up.

  “Let’s get an early start. We can take the rest of the bird with us.”

  O’Brien got up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. They ate some of the bird and drank deeply from one of the shells. Smith picked up his netlike pack with the shells in it.

  “Do me a favor for a little while,” O’Brien said. “Carry my water.”

  “Okay,” Smith said. “You take the bird.”

  O’Brien carefully took his five remaining ostrich shells and put them in with Smith’s. He made the whole pack tight with an old belt so they would not jostle each other and break.

  “How does it feel?” he asked Smith.

  “Good.”

  O’Brien picked up his rifle. He walked back a few yards and then snapped a shell into the breech.

  “Just hold still a minute now,” he told Smith. “I want to say something.” Smith frowned but he went on.

  “You’re going ahead with all the water. I’m going back alone. I’ll use the water at the stations and I might get lucky and shoot something and bring it back to the others. They’re starving to death back there. They need meat.”

  “I’m not going to do it,” Smith said.

  “You are.”

  “No,” Smith said. “When these shells are empty I’m done for. We decided against this the first time we talked about it.”

  “You’ll go or I’ll kill you right here,” O’Brien said.

  “I don’t think so,” Smith said.

  “Try me. Come at me now. Try to take this gun.”

  Smith looked at him and knew he wasn’t faking.

  “This is pointless,” he said. “We have enough water to go on together and come back together.”

  “You miss the main point,” O’Brien said. “There are too many of us back in the canyon. With you gone there will be one less belly to fill. And I really think you can make it to water or to a railroad or a ranch. Keep your wits about you now. Build a big fire whenever you stop.”

  “I might circle in back of you and beat you to the water stations and leave you out here with nothing,” Smith said.

  O’Brien laughed. The idea of Smith outwitting him and outrunning him amused him. “Let’s not get silly, Professor, shall we?”

  “Don’t be too sure,” Smith said.

  “Keep in a straight line,” O’Brien cautioned. “You’ve got a good chance. Don’t quit on us now. Think of them back in that canyon.”

  Smith pleaded. “Don’t do this to me, O’Brien. I found these ostrich shells. I can’t last long without you. This bird we ate. You shot it. What can I kill with my bare hands?”

  “Look for melons,” O’Brien said.

  “Don’t do this,” Smith said.

  “Too many people to feed,” O’Brien said. “It’s best all around. In the end we might all die but this way gives us the best chance.”

  “But what gives you the right to decide?” Smith asked. “The gun?”

  O’Brien nodded calmly. “The gun. The gun and the ability to kill with it.
If I find you following me back I’ll shoot you. I don’t want you back in that canyon.”

  “I have a feeling that you’re planning to kill all of them back there,” Smith said.

  O’Brien brought up the rifle until it pointed at the center of Smith’s chest.

  “Okay, let’s go now. We’ve talked enough.”

  “You really mean it, don’t you?”

  “Listen to me, Smith. Whenever I talk to you I mean every word I say.”

  “I can’t make it,” Smith said.

  “But you can try,” O’Brien told him. “Just try your best. That’s all anyone can expect of you.”

  “It’s murder.”

  “Sure, it’s murder if you don’t make it. But if you find water or get lucky then you’ll be a hero. You and me. We’ll both be heroes. I’d deny all this and you’d be a fool to talk about it anyway. I’m going to tell the others that we got separated, lost. And then after trying to find you I headed back. Airtight case.”

  “I might come back with a gun,” Smith said.

  “Sure you could,” O’Brien said. “You could come back and shoot me but you won’t. You’re too civilized. And too smart. If you survive the desert you’ll be in no mood to throw your life away for revenge.”

  “I could get you,” Smith said. “One way or the other.”

  “Wonderful,” O’Brien said. “You start figuring out how you’re going to revenge this. Get mad. Survive. Come back and get me. Now start walking.”

  Smith didn’t move.

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t go,” O’Brien said. “I told you that once.”

  Smith looked up, saw the rifle, the face, the eyes. He turned his back on O’Brien and walked off.

  O’Brien sat on the high rock until Smith was out of sight. Then he slipped down and trotted off. There was only a slight possibility that Smith would try to swing around and beat him back to the first water station but he could not ignore it. He had to act as if Smith were smarter and stronger and tougher than he was. That was the way to win.

  People like Smith … and Bain; all of them. Weaklings. The old German was tougher but old and without the desperate will to live.

  He stopped trotting. He began to walk fast. Once on an elevation he turned and swept the horizon behind him with his binoculars. He saw no sign of Smith. He went on.

  Five hours later he reached the water station and dug up the ostrich eggs. They were heavy with their precious water. He drank from one of them carefully, then put them in his net and continued walking. He was not tired. It was almost light now and he’d keep walking until he reached the next station.

  He walked up the valley just as the sun came up. He was very tired, and it seemed an eternity before he reached the cave and slumped in the sand exhausted.

  “Where’s Smith?” Bain asked in the darkness.

  “He’s gone.”

  “Gone where?” It was Grace.

  “He took off. Said he was going to find a way out of here. Said he was going to save us. I tried to stop him. He fought me, threatened to brain me with a rock. This was way out where we came to real bushveld.”

  “You should have stopped him,” Bain said.

  “I know,” O’Brien said. “But what the hell could I do, shoot him?”

  They were all silent for a while.

  “Has he got any chance?” Grace asked.

  “Who knows what chance he has,” O’Brien said. “I’ve had the same feeling out there; the feeling that it was better to keep going than to come back here. The horizon pulls at you; you start thinking about the next rise and what you can see from there.” He spoke slowly, lying with his eyes closed.

  “He hasn’t got a chance in hell,” Bain said. “Sturdevant didn’t make it. How could Smith? You shouldn’t have let him go.”

  “He’s got one chance in a hundred maybe,” O’Brien said sleepily. “But I wouldn’t bet on it. I told him it was suicide. He wouldn’t listen.”

  O’Brien was asleep.

  Far ahead in the tricky light of dawn Sturdevant saw trees. He saw them and he looked away, to the reddish sand, to his shoes. There could be no trees, bushes perhaps but no trees. It was another mirage to trick him. It was seven days now, or rather seven nights of walking, and in all that time there had been no trees, nothing green, only a few wait-a-bit thorn and queer desert plants that could live for years without water. Grimmelmann had been right. There was no way a man on foot could get to or from the black mountain. How far had he come now? A hundred miles? More?

  But they were trees. He felt the excitement build up; trees indicated water, water somewhere underground. He found himself running and stopped. Conserve energy. Act intelligently. He still had some water left and it sloshed around in the tins with each step, sometimes throwing him off balance.

  A vley, a depression filled with withered grass and scraggly trees fighting to stay alive. He sat down in the shade, slipped free of the water tins, rested, tried to sleep. There was no surface water; he’d have to dig for it but only when the sun went down. There were sixteen skinny trees, two of them obviously dead.

  He sat up and drank some of the water while it was still cool from the night; he drank all he wanted. The ground was hard under him and he scraped away a place for his hip and worked into it and closed his eyes. A hundred miles of sand and now a paradise of shrunken trees and dead grass.

  In the evening he would get up and find a spot in the grass and dig. The crust would be hard but he would break through it with the hunting knife. The soil would be dry at first and then heavy with moisture and then water. There had to be water. He would fill the two cans and then drink all he could hold and walk on. And the country ahead as far as he could see looked somehow higher, stonier; perhaps the blur ahead was more trees or hills. He would climb one of the trees later and look.

  He fell asleep.

  The dream came. He was underwater, swimming naked through great masses of tropical fish, and he caught one and surfaced. The fish was ready to eat and he bit great chunks from it and gulped down the boneless flesh. O’Brien was there too with several great grilled steaks sizzling over an open fire; they ate the steaks alone in their greasy hands and drank big mugs of cold beer with it.

  And the dream went on and he writhed and groaned and talked in stubborn sleep. He dreamed of good meals he had had, of meals that he had heard about, that others had eaten. Restaurant meals of turkey and wild duck; special wartime meals they’d had after the really tough deals; banquets, Thanksgiving Day at the American Air Base in 1944… .

  When the sun went down he got up and found the lowest spot in the vley and began to dig. He broke through the hard sun-baked soil with the hunting knife and lifted out the big chunks one at a time. Then the soil became soft and he stabbed it with the knife, loosened it, then scooped it out with his cupped hands.

  He thought of digging Detjen’s grave… .

  He had to find water here and get through to civilization and save the rest of them. It was his responsibility; if they all died it would be his fault. They had trusted him, put their lives in his hands, and he had crashed them into the middle of nowhere.

  He rested. The hole was two feet deep. He began digging again, clawing into the soil and flinging handfuls of it away; darkness came and he continued, slow now, for his fingernails were broken and worn, his fingers raw. He dug and rested, enlarged the hole. And then he was in the hole itself still digging, clawing through the endless sand and finding nothing. He stopped and rested once more, put his head on the soft sand, made himself comfortable, fell asleep.

  He awoke several hours later, cramped and still tired. He began to claw in the bottom of the hole, finding handfuls of sand and throwing it up and away. Then he remembered that he had some water in the cans and he found them and drank deeply. The sun was coming up. He ate one of the melons and went back to the hole.

  It was four feet deep now but the sand piled around it made it look larger. He got in it carefully and began to dig.
Fatigue set in again and his arms began to tremble. He cut his right forefinger on a sharp stone and rested for a time until the bleeding stopped.

  When he started digging again the sand was moist and then the miracle: water. He began to laugh and cry at the same time. Water seeping up from the dry sand.

  Two days later he came to a gnarled tamarisk stump, gray and ancient. He kicked it and it broke and fell heavily to the sand, split and bared its rotten pulp. Ants ran crazily from the new raw top of the stump that was almost level with the sand. Sturdevant saw them and was sorry; he had destroyed their home by a senseless act.

  He walked on.

  Long ago a seed had buried itself in the hostile soil, found rare moisture, germinated and grew. Tiny roots reached into the earth and the first leaf sucked life from the cold dew of morning. The year was good and the seedling thrived; no zebra came to eat it; it was tiny and it was not seen.

  It grew; its taproot found water far below the hot sand; its branches spread and reached for the sun. It lived. Twenty years passed.

  A pair of buffalo weaverbirds chanced to find it and they built a nest in its branches and reared their young. They returned the next year with other birds; the nest was repaired and new ones were built next to it. After a few years it became the nesting place of scores of weaverbirds and a great communal nest grew in the tree, an enormous clump of sticks and trash, for this is the nature of the weaverbird.

  The great nest became the home of other creatures. Lizards discovered its labyrinths and moved into them; tiny mice came and built their velvet-soft nests deep inside; lovebirds and finches came and fashioned their own nests from the debris and each year more and more weaverbirds came and the giant nest grew.

  A snake came. He fed upon the eggs and the young birds and the mice. He frightened the creatures that lived in the tree but they did not go; they grew used to him and warned each other when he uncurled from his slumber and began to move about the vast pile of sticks.