Diamond Boy

by Michael Williams

  We followed a path that led to a barbed-wire fence. It was dark there. The noise of the border was replaced by the steady sound of the unseen Limpopo River. Boubacar eased me to the ground and we both looked back at the brightly lit border post against a dark night sky. Commander Jesus’s soldiers were still walking up and down the lines of people, pulling truck drivers from their cabs, opening the doors and trunks of every car and van. We were looking at them looking for us and, somewhere in that brightly lit oasis, Commander Jesus was giving orders.

  “Come on, move,” said Boubacar as he lifted the barbed-wire fence. I crawled into a shallow trench dug by hundreds of hands before me and worked my way to the other side. Boubacar followed and scooped me up, and we headed down the banks, stumbling along the uneven pathway. Powerful searchlights from Beitbridge moved slowly over the bushes, probing, searching for us. At one point we fell to the ground and lay in a hollow as a beam of light passed over us. Loud voices floated up from the banks of the river. More soldiers were patrolling the Zimbabwean side of the Limpopo River.

  “We’re going to have to hide,” Boubacar said. “Lie on top of your crutches. Keep as low as you can and wait here.”

  “No, don’t leave me, Boubacar. I’m coming with you.”

  Boubacar dashed quickly from bush to bush, looking for a better place to hide. I tried to shuffle forward on my stomach, but keeping the crutches out of the spotlight made progress impossible.

  The voices drew nearer. The soldiers were coming in our direction.

  “Over here, Patson. Come quickly,” whispered Boubacar as he disappeared over a small rise. I crawled forward, shuffling on my knees, dragging my crutches, dropping down each time the white light swept over my head. I flopped down into a small space, protected on one side by a sandbank and on the other by the leaves and branches of thick bushes. And then I felt Boubacar’s big hands dragging me the rest of the way through the undergrowth into a deep burrow.

  Someone had been here before us. Cardboard from packing cases covered the ground; empty tins lay scattered in one corner with a plastic bottle half full of water. A cloth hung from a branch above a single baby shoe. Boubacar quickly covered our tracks and rearranged some of the branches over the entrance, just as the searchlight drifted over the bush. The soldiers’ voices were closer now, and as their heavy footsteps approached, Boubacar laid a hand on my arm. He was breathing calmly beside me but his knife was drawn and ready.

  Three men walked along the path only a few meters away. One carried a powerful flashlight, sweeping the ground in front of them.

  “This is a waste of time,” he grumbled.

  “And you want to tell the commander that?”

  “They’ll never cross the river at night. It’s too dangerous,” said one of the other soldiers as they stomped past us.

  Boubacar stared hard into the darkness after the men. He waited, listening intently for at least another ten minutes. Then he peered through the branches and whispered, “Relax. They’ve gone.”

  I was still too afraid to relax, and between Stumpy, the cramps in my good leg, and the crutches jutting into my chest, I had to shift my position.

  He crawled out of our burrow. “I need to go—”

  “Don’t leave me, Boubacar!” I pleaded, grabbing his arm.

  “Patson, listen to me. I’m not leaving you. I’ll be right back. Stay calm and you’ll be fine.”

  I was ashamed of how afraid I was of being left alone. Before my leg was blown off, I had been fearless, to the point of recklessness. Now everything frightened me. I nodded reluctantly, biting my lower lip, and slowly released my grip on his arm.

  “If you’re in pain, chew on this. You’ve earned a double dose tonight.”

  He handed me a nub of ganja and I gratefully popped it into my mouth. My panic at being left alone was equal to my shame at how afraid I was. As I chewed the soft substance, I began to believe that everything would be fine.

  “I’ll be back soon,” he promised. “Don’t move. And sleep if you can.”

  This time I would do exactly as I was told. Boubacar slipped out of the burrow, repositioned the branches to hide the entrance, and disappeared. I listened until I could no longer hear his footsteps. I was alone with the soothing sound of the river as the warm glow and bright flashing colors of the ganja flowed through me. I could lie here for days. No one would find me. Then my flesh would be peeled off by giant termites and my bones would be crushed and carried away to be eaten by small animals until nothing was left but the horrible crutches of the boy once called Patson. I chewed on the last of the bitter ganja, took a sip of water, and gazed through the patches of the bush at the night sky. A star sparkled, sending me an image of my sister, Grace.

  I sighed deeply, trying desperately to hold on to her, as my exhausted body sank deeper into the sand. Stumpy was still mad at me for the soccer game and spiked me a couple of times before the ganja made him finally go quiet. With my eyes closed, I saw the ashen figure leaning on a pair of crutches and its dust-gray arm pointing me in a direction I didn’t want to go. My eyes flickered open at the memory. Moonlight, spilling through the branches, covered me like a quilt of silver light. If that figure with the shimmering halo was trying to tell me something, I still couldn’t understand. But the more I thought of it, the more it looked like Arves.

  I was elated the day Boubacar and I drove away from the Old Mutare Mission Station hospital. For the first time since the land mine took off my leg I had a real purpose beyond feeling sorry for myself. Instead of lying in the hospital bed with my dismal thoughts, I would be doing something positive. Boubacar was driving me away from the country of the Diseased and Disabled, to fetch Arves and take him with us to get the best HIV treatment in South Africa. There we would find Grace and with the money still left from the Baron for our ngodas, everything would be possible.

  It was late afternoon when we arrived on the outskirts of Mutare, and after charging my cell phone in the pickup truck, it buzzed alive as message after message downloaded. It felt good to be connected again. I skimmed past Grace’s texts from before she left the tobacco shed to her new ones.

  “Listen to this, Boubacar,” I said, reading her messages aloud.

  Wed 4/9/08 10.16am

  Big Brother, I want to go with Scoutmaster Determine to jamboree in SA. Be back in a week. Lot of fun!!! Please say yes, BB. Okay? xxx

  Wed 4/9/08 11.23am

  Can I go? Where r u BB?! xxx

  Wed 4/9/08 04.32pm

  I hate the sheds. Auntie Prisca is mean. She makes me work all day. Determine is taking No Matter, Maka + Sidi. Can I go? Dad would let me. BB u there??? xxx

  Wed 4/9/08 08.19pm

  Kuda says I can go. Jamboree in Cape Town. Yayyy!!! Back in a week. Don’t worry. Text me. Plzzzz! xxx

  “And the last message came from her this morning, Boubacar. She’s at the border already,” I said, realizing that she had probably crossed into South Africa by now.

  Fri 4/11/08 09.16am

  At the border now. We hide in a truck. Sidi hates the dark. Determine has no travel papers. I’m scared. xxx

  “We should be at the border tomorrow and in Musina the day after,” he said, overtaking another truck heading south. “If all goes well.”

  “You don’t think she’s in any danger, do you?”

  “The border’s a dangerous place, Patson. The sooner we get there the better.”

  “What shall I text her?”

  “Tell her we’re coming to fetch her and she should go to the police in Musina,” he replied flatly.

  I wrote the Mxit and pressed Send. I imagined these words flying through space to a satellite and bouncing back to a tower in South Africa. She would open my message and know that she was not alone; her big brother was on his way to find her.

  “Grace doesn’t know what happened to me, does she, Boubacar?”

  “No, Patson.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Nobody told her about your acciden
t.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” I muttered, lost in the stream of messages Sheena had sent while I was off-line. She had received my last Mxit warning her about the soldiers. Her family had been stopped at an army checkpoint on the highway to Marange and had been forced to return to Bulawayo. There were several messages about her not getting to see me again; how worried she was about me; and how sad they were to be back in Bulawayo. Then the tone of her messages changed. She must have become irritated with my nonresponse and pinged me with a few angry faces and a string of question marks. Her last Mxit was now four days old:

  I can’t do this anymore. Why don’t you answer? What happened to us? Patson speak to me!!!

  A great sadness swallowed me. How could I describe what had happened to me? Up at the mission station I had attempted several draft messages to her in my diary, but they were all pathetic. It was better if she thought I was dead. She was part of my old life, the two-legged-Patson’s life. Of course I could pretend that nothing had happened and lie to her again, but that had backfired spectacularly. I had put her and her family at great risk, and surely it was now better just to end it. Our relationship was over. I would never run with her again and she would never want a boyfriend with one leg. There was nothing left to say to her.

  Boubacar drove the truck across the open veldt and past the familiar hills of Marange. We approached Gwejana Rock from the west, well out of sight of the mine and army checkpoints. Once we reached the foot of the hill, Boubacar turned off the ignition and the cab filled with the silence of the veldt.

  “So you think he’s up there?” he said, looking up at the hill.

  I nodded. “Do you see that flat-shaped rock halfway? Our campsite is just behind it. He’ll be there and then we can go straight to the border.”

  Boubacar had made it clear that the longer we stayed in Zimbabwe, the harder it would be to find Grace. I watched as he climbed out of the truck and headed up the hill to the meeting place of the gwejana syndicate. Soon he was out of sight, and I waited as patiently as I could to see the smiling face of my friend.

  The time before the soldiers now seemed an idyll. I missed my friends and the way we had worked together on the fields. That part of my life had also been cut away. Poor people becoming rich overnight had drawn the attention of people more powerful than miners. Diamonds for everyone had been the dream but Operation No Return had become the truth. I waited anxiously, keeping an eye on the hill, until finally Boubacar reappeared, standing on a rock, alone, looking down at me. He came slowly back to the truck, wiping perspiration from his brow.

  “He’s not there?”

  “Yes, he’s there, Patson, waiting for you.”

  My heart soared. “But why didn’t he come down?”

  “You need to go and see him.”

  “But how can I climb that hill, Boubacar?”

  “You can for your friend.”

  “I can’t. Even if I wanted to, I can’t get up there. You know I can’t. Don’t look at me like that. You’re no better than Nurse Godi,” I said, spitting out angry words, and feeling their sting of self-pity.

  “Have you forgotten, Patson, what I told you when I found you and your family in the forest?”

  “What are you talking about?” I snapped.

  “I warned you that when you have worked the mines you are no longer a boy. Once you have come through the eye you are a man. Stop behaving like a boy, Patson. No diamond is a true diamond until it has been cut and polished. The same is true for a man. Not one of us becomes a man without the pain of being tested, or without the polish of suffering. So you’ve lost something. So you’ve suffered. So have we all.

  “You want to be a Stumpy all your life? Don’t look so shocked. I will call you Stumpy but that’s not who you are, Patson. That is Stumpy,” he said, pointing at my half leg. “You are a man now, but if you are going to make the rest of this journey with me, you’d better start believing it. You owe it to your friend to climb that hill.” He turned his back on me, walking far enough away that I would not follow.

  I was stunned by his words, the tone of his voice, and the choices before me. I looked up at the hill that I had bounded up so many times and down at my missing foot. “Are we going to do this, Stumpy?” I felt his spike of a reply. “Okay. I heard you, but I’m not listening. We’re going, and it will be just the two of us,” I added as I climbed out of the truck without my crutches.

  The day I climbed up to Gwejana Rock on one leg, I learned that pain could be controlled, managed, and even ignored. I learned, too, that being slow and steady was one way of achieving the impossible. I also made friends with Stumpy as I climbed over one rock at a time toward our secret camp. I never stopped talking to him the whole way up. I cajoled, encouraged, berated, swore, and praised him with every painful step. I refused to give in to his uselessness, or his outrage at being hauled over rocks. He had to learn who was boss, and although it was a painful lesson for both of us, this time, I was not going to back down. I dragged myself up the hill, and found that having one good leg was all I needed to make it to the top. All the way up I knew that Arves was waiting for me. When I lost my balance and fell to the ground, I got up, reminding myself how Arves had run through a minefield to fetch me. When I grazed my knee and cut my palms crawling over loose rocks, I remembered Arves cradling my head in his lap, assuring me I would survive.

  With each step I took up that hill, I knew I could not fail. I had to reclaim, even if only briefly, some part of the old Patson. Boubacar was right: I owed it to Arves. When I finally reached Gwejana Rock, my T-shirt was soaked with sweat, and every muscle in my body trembled and ached, but none of that mattered. Stumpy and I had made it together.

  “Arves,” I shouted, looking about the camp, half expecting him to leap out from behind the rock where Kamba had produced his ngodas, armed with some outrageous joke. “Arves!” I crawled into the open space that was covered with the ashes of a recent fire, and saw evidence of his gran’s parcels of herbs and puddles of melted candle wax on the rocks around me.

  “Arves?”

  I pivoted around, looking up to the top of the hill and then down onto the familiar view of Mai Mujuru mine. There was no sign of anyone at our secret camp. A gust of wind scattered the ashes from the dead fire. And then I saw the mound of earth, the length and width of a boy, covered with small stones, carefully placed. Sorrow swept over me. Boubacar was right when he said that Arves was waiting for me. All the way up the hill, our friendship had been the reality that dragged me forward, and now the unmistakable shape and size of that pile of stones brought me the reality of his death.

  In all the moments Arves and I shared, in the back of my mind I knew that there would be a day when the sun would rise, and the sky would be as blue as it was today, and Arves would not be there to see it. He knew all along what the outcome of his illness would be. A walking miracle, the doctors had told him, and yet I only saw the spark of his life; I was only partially aware of the weight of mortality he carried on his shoulders.

  I knelt beside the mound. A stick had been wedged between the rocks, and hanging from it was an ironic comment only Arves could have made: his broken watch. Time will tell, he had said, and remembering that ever-present lilt in his voice, I shed tears for my friend, Tendekai Makupe. I realized that when someone dies so young it is not so much the past that is buried but all the things of the future. I wept for what we would never do together, for the loss of a friendship that would only grow as a memory. I wept for myself and for my father and the future I would have without both of them.

  From deep in my pocket I took out my father’s broken glasses and hooked them through the loop of Arves’s watch and hung them from the stick. Let him rest here too. Let me remember Joseph Moyo, my father, resting with my best friend at Gwejana Rock, overlooking the diamond fields of Marange. Sitting there alone, I realized that a friend and a father were not that different from each other. Both of them had loved me, wanted only what was best for
me, and, more than that, I thought with tears streaming down my face, they had wanted and encouraged what was best inside me.

  When I had no more tears, and Stumpy began to intrude on my grief, I felt the presence of someone nearby. Boubacar was standing over me.

  He offered me his hand. “Are you ready now to find Grace? We must leave this terrible place. The eye will take nothing more from us.”

  Time to get up, Patson.”

  I awoke from my ganja dreams to find Boubacar preparing to leave our burrow to search for the River Woman who would take us across the river.

  “You’ll be safe here. I’m going to get some food,” he said, crawling through the bushes.

  The sun was already high; cicada beetles trilled.

  I was hungry but rested enough to now feel okay with being alone. Nobody, not even Commander Jesus, would find me here. Stumpy was hungry, too, so I fed him with the ointments from my kitbag and got on to washing his sock and dressings with some of the water still in the plastic bottle. Time passed more quickly when my hands were busy, so I rewove and strengthened the lattice of my peg leg with twigs, and scraped away some of the chipped bamboo from the base. Then, pulling my diary from my kitbag, I wrote about my ganja dreams while I waited for Boubacar to return. At one point, I heard voices down by the river, and later a man and a woman carrying a baby walked right past my hideout without seeing me. After that, I heard only the wail of a faraway police van. I checked my phone as often as I dared. Once again the battery was low and I had no idea when I’d be able to recharge it. Around midmorning, it buzzed.

  Sun 4/13/08 11.02am