A Rock and a Hard Place

by George Zelt PhD

  “We can do without the ice, Henry. Cheers,” I replied, raising my glass, then feeling the raspy liquor coat my throat.

  “Cheers, George.”

  I sat quietly for a moment, reaffirming my suspicion that the whiskey was cheap when my tongue dragged over the roof of my mouth like sandpaper.

  Henry put his feet up on his paper-laden desk and stared out his dusty window. I looked out, too, as the oxcart I had passed stopped under the window. Another girl had joined the first. A light-skinned baby was sucking at her breast as she shooed flies away from its running nose.

  “A lot of flies,” I commented without thinking, distracted by the women’s breasts.

  “It’s dry now,” he said. “The flies need water to drink, and I guess snot is as good as anything.”

  “Are you watching snails, Henry?” I asked, nodding at a crude aquarium in a corner of the office. Filled with red dirt and vegetation, a number of snails had attached themselves to its unevenly matched glass walls.

  He turned around in his chair and focused on the aquarium. “I suppose you could put it that way. About a month ago I saw one creeping up the garden wall and watched it crawl over its own silver slime. It was like laying down your own rug before you. I was fascinated. I decided to put some in the tank to watch them.” He leaned forward on his elbows and squinted at the aquarium. “Their eyes are at the end of their horns, and I actually saw one put one of its horns down its gullet. I think it wanted to see what it ate. Why it didn’t look before it swallowed, I can’t figure out. Maybe what it ate turned out to be bad.”

  I watched the snails while Henry went on. “What else is fascinating is that I reckon every one of them has had a go at the other. They seem to have sex indiscriminately and even simultaneously with both sexes. Anyway, their approach works. I’ve no shortage of snails.”

  He drained his glass and stood. “I’d best take a walk through the store.” He handed me a box of assorted items he must have received as trades. “Take a look at these. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll find some information on snails when I get back to Durban and bring it to you,” I called out as he left.

  The box contained baubles: intricate bead necklaces and bracelets painstakingly sewn together; pipes; homemade knives; a few short spears; and at the bottom, a distinctive purple rock I recognized immediately as bornite. Henry knew that as a geologist I’d be interested in the rock. I suppose he wondered what it was and if it had value, which is why he slipped it into the box.

  “There’s an igqirha outside who wants beer,” Henry said as he returned and sat down with a sigh. “For free.”

  “A witchdoctor? What did you tell him?”

  “That the beer is in the generator room, and he could help himself.”

  I laughed. “Did you warn him about the snake?”

  “I told him and asked if he could remove it. He said he would go home and brew a mixture that would make it leave in a few days.”

  “It will get hungry and leave anyway.”

  “Yes, or I’ll get bloody sick of warm whiskey and chase it myself. Did you find anything in the box?”

  “Some very nice beadwork.”

  “Anything else?”

  I held the bornite in my open palm. “This is an ore of copper.”

  Henry raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”

  “Miners call it ‘peacock ore’ because of its color, which means it contains a high percentage of copper. Perhaps it’s from a vein that leads to a larger deposit. Where did you get it?”

  “From the local old inkosi. He offered to trade me that for a large three-legged cooking pot. Is it worth the trade with the chief?”

  “There must be more, but the price of copper is always low. You would need a lot, which is possible here due to the geology. Best tell the old chief he has to take you to the spot in return for the pot. If you’d like, I will go with you.”

  I turned the bornite over in my hands and had no problem imagining it as part of a large deposit of copper.

  “Okay, let’s have another drink to celebrate hope.”

  I went out into the store to buy some food and a new shovel, as my old one had broken when I used it to pry a rock loose. As I left, a throng of men and women dressed in wraparound clothing as well as odd pieces of Western attire, including men’s hats, had gathered just outside the front door. They were in a commotion about something and raised a light cloud of dust.

  At first, I thought they were just staying in motion so the ever-present flies would be less likely to land. Then, peering into the crowd, I saw an old woman at their center, sitting on a wooden box. She was holding her head and staring ahead, glassy-eyed.

  Suddenly, she removed her hand from her head, and the crowd gasped and groaned. What looked to be a ten-penny nail head protruded from the top of her partially shaved skull. She said a witchdoctor had driven it in. She also had a tuft of goatskin tied at the back of her neck, a sign that someone, probably another witchdoctor of lesser importance, had tried to cure her of the unpleasant effects of the nail.

  Henry heard the moans from the crowd and came outside. I had discreetly retreated from the group, not knowing how they might react in their agitated state. Like a nervous wave, the mob parted for the white trader. Silence prevailed.

  Henry looked at the head of the old umakhulu, grandmother, for a full minute. No sound . . . the calm before a storm? I calculated my chances of reaching the Land Rover should it all go badly.

  Henry turned and faced the Xhosas. I could tell he knew that if this didn’t turn out well, the crowd could get very excited and whip themselves up to a point of damaging his store. He recognized the inkosi who wanted the three-legged cooking pot and spoke directly to him, knowing the people would listen to their chief.

  “If you think it best, Inkosi, I’ll take old umakhulu to the hospital where Xhosa and white doctors will help her. When I return, I will fill your cooking pot with homemade beer, and you and your people can discuss the actions of the igqirha.”

  The inkosi understood. Part of the deal was that he would get the three-legged cooking pot he wanted. He probably also realized that the tuft of goatskin tied to the old grandmother hadn’t cured her.

  “Take old umakhulu,” the chief commanded.

  “Hiiiiiiiiii . . . Hiiiiiiiiiii . . .” the crowd chorused in approval.

  Henry gravely nodded acceptance of the inkosi’s decision, and the group dispersed.

  I watched Henry walk toward his car with the umakhulu.

  Wanting to avoid any problems, I went briskly to my Rover and drove ten miles or so to the rocks I’d come here to investigate. A few days later, I returned directly to the university.

  Several weeks later and curious about what happened with Henry and the umakhulu, I visited him on my way to my field area. He was staring at the closed cash register and glad to see me. Xhosa customers strolled up and down the aisles, buying nothing but fingering everything as if they had never seen it before. A can of soup would generate a discussion.

  Later, as Henry and I chatted, I asked him about the old grandmother.

  “The hospital told me the witchdoctor had scraped skin away from her head and rubbed in a powder that caused irritation.” He looked up at me. “An enlarged scab had formed from excessive scratching. It looked enough like the head of a nail to scare the doctor pretty well at first. They explained this to the woman, but she didn’t seem to understand. She just sat there, staring, apparently convinced that a nail was in her head. Last I heard she hadn’t come out of it yet. Perhaps she never will.”

  I shook my head and watched a chicken enter through the open door. One tentative foot at a time, it advanced on the concrete floor, watching people sidelong. It pecked its way down an aisle, following a trail of spilled mealies.

  “Not much the doctors can do when rural people become convinced of something,” he continued, now stacking Rhodesian tobacco on a shelf.

  “Poor old lady,” I said. “And did
the chief get his cooking pot?”

  “Yes. Then he wanted an additional three blankets to take me to where the bornite came from.”

  “What did you say?” I asked a bit amazed.

  “What the hell could I say? I agreed to give them to him. Then, all pissed off, I went into the generator room with a broom and fenced with the fucking snake until it slithered out the door. I filled a glass with ice and whiskey and sat down to watch the uncomplicated snails.”

  Hearing a noise, we turned to see the chicken fluttering its wings, apparently as its red-rimmed eyes spied its own reflection in a chrome milk bucket. Henry excused himself and went for the chicken, which, sensing danger, began to run, surprisingly agile, between the customers. Although Henry tried to maintain his dignity, it was difficult. He returned, somewhat flushed, with the chicken struggling under his arm, and continued our conversation as if nothing had happened.

  We made plans to take the inkosi to where he or somebody in his tribe had found the bornite. “Let’s try, Henry,” I said. “It’s one of those things you just have to do or you’ll always wonder.”

  Chapter 22

  Guano over Everything

  On the appointed morning, Henry and I drove in his battered old Land Rover to the chief’s hut. The day was already warming up. The chief, still wrapped in a blanket, climbed in the front seat—the only seat—between us. He smelled badly and took up a fair amount of space with his large beer belly.

  “Oh shit, Henry,” I mumbled, holding my breath, “open the windows.”

  “Any beer?” the chief asked, reminding Henry of the complexity of the arrangement.

  “Sure.” Henry pointed to a case in the back among other supplies and suggested we all have one.

  For miles we jostled along unused dirt tracks mantled with tall ferns and patterned in gold and shadows until we reached the crest of a forested ridge. “Magnificent scenery,” I remarked as I looked down at the undulating hills and valleys. I turned to Henry. “Have you traveled this way before?”

  “Years ago with my father, just as he had with his dad.”

  “How did your grandfather get here?”

  “My father said he was shipwrecked, but he always said it with a smile, so who knows. He may have come here to get away from the law or the British army.”

  “That’s a bit mysterious.”

  “It’s not so mysterious here. My father must have thought it best not to discuss it.”

  “Ever thought of leaving here? Perhaps moving to a city?”

  “Yes, but this is my home. What would I do somewhere else? I don’t have much formal education. Christ, I’m watching snails.” He swerved around an ant mound.

  “Nothing wrong with you, Henry. You’re what’s called street-smart. Here I am, educated with nothing but a pile of books, a dream to get a degree; and you own a big store.”

  He took a long pull on his beer. “A store I might lose because I’m a white man.”

  I glanced at Henry and the chief, their profiles bouncing in unison beside me.

  “Hell,” Henry continued as the chief belched and passed gas, “the blacks and whites in South Africa are only just beginning to understand and work with one another. Not all this business of recent sanctions and forcing confrontation makes sense to me. How can people from other lands understand what we ourselves don’t? Give it time, and apartheid will crumble of its own accord.”

  The chief, silent to this point except when he wanted beer, motioned for us to stop. Alighting, we all lined up at a tree like dogs marking their territory. The chief struggled with his fly.

  “What makes you think apartheid will collapse?” I asked.

  “People need each other to survive. They give and take until balance takes place. You know, before the whites arrived in Africa, the Africans controlled trade themselves for over ten centuries. At one time they supplied the world with most of its gold.” He repositioned himself. “Nature speeds things up, too. Eventually all will breed together. Look at the three million colored population—they are part white and part black or something. If snails can figure out how to mix, why can’t we?”

  Henry and I walked back to the Rover. A minute later the chief finished climbing in between us, struggling to close his fly. Henry offered words of encouragement that caused the chief to grin.

  In a moment we were weaving down the track. Swallowed by the thickening forest, Henry wrested with the steering wheel and cursed each time he ground the gears together. He cut his lip on his beer can when we bounced over an ant mound, and blood dribbled on his shirt. Now he drank out of the side of his mouth.

  We bounced together: I, the battered trader, and the stoical chief. Here we are in Africa, I thought, going down some nameless track. Life is interesting.

  The chief stared ahead with heavy-lidded eyes and swayed with us. I drained my warm beer and tossed the can with the others on the bed of the Rover. “Do you think it’s much farther, Henry?”

  “Christ, I hope not. There’s a spring in the seat that’s about to enter me.”

  “What about you, George?” Henry asked as we drove on, holding on to the dashboard from time to time. “You’re a long way from New York. Are you looking for money? Trying to find your pot of copper?”

  I drained the remains of my beer before replying. “I’m following my dream and want to contribute to science. But, sure I’d like to find a copper mine,” I said quietly.

  “It sounds partially noble.”

  I imagined every great copper mine I’d seen. All of them found by fellows like me—guys with a stack of wrinkled maps, a Brunton compass, and a rock hammer. What they had more than anything else, though, was luck. In a few years the large deposits still to be found in the world would be discovered by scientific methods. The old prospecting days were over; the remaining deposits buried too deep in the earth with no recognizable surface expression for the passing geologist.

  Henry was about to say something when the chief abruptly leaned in front of him and blocked his view. The Rover hit another rock, and we bounced high. Henry bashed his lip again.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Henry swore as he tried to regain control of the Rover.

  “There!” The chief jabbed a finger toward the foliage.

  Tree limbs beat the windshield and doors as Henry frantically pumped the weak brakes.

  “Time to walk,” Henry said slowly as he lifted his rucksack and tentatively touched his swollen lip. It had begun to bleed again.

  A mile later, the tottering chief, now without his blanket, pointed to a sheer wall of rock covered with very heavy vegetation. “Rock from there,” he proclaimed.

  Henry focused first on the innocuous wall and then on me. “Your move,” he said, scratching himself.

  I dug around in the foliage and found pieces of copper-bearing minerals scattered here and there. What is this? I wondered. Why are broken pieces lying around?

  The chief interrupted my dreams by asking for another beer. “Jesus, Henry. Does he have any notion of what we’re up to here? Does he know what a mine could be worth?”

  Henry grinned broadly. “He’s thinking in the short term—the three blankets he’s now almost earned and the immediate relief of his thirst. It’s day by day here. You, white man, think in the long term.”

  “Pass me a machete, Henry.”

  “My pleasure,” he replied, seeming happy there was only one available.

  I hacked for some minutes, peering ahead, and finally reached the base of the rock wall. I found a man-sized cavity in the wall. It was a tunnel: an old prospecting tunnel!

  “Get a flashlight!” I called through the vegetation. “I’ll bet no one has been inside for a hundred years. It’s a forgotten shaft. Henry, stay outside. The chief and I will go in.”

  Henry motioned to the chief, who began to retreat.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t know what’s in there. Actually, neither do I.”

  “Hell, I don
’t, either! So what?” I was thinking about money. Thinking more, I realized there could be something else in the tunnel. The cavity would make a fine house. “All right, I’ll go first. Tell the chief to follow. It was part of the deal to show us.”

  The small, round-roofed tunnel, with a single-rail track for taking out rock, widened after about forty yards in.

  “Shit, this really goes into the mountain,” I turned to say to the chief. I saw that he had advanced only half as far as I had. About that time I became aware of shuffling noises above me. I shone the light upward.

  I was not prepared for what I saw: hundreds of very restless, ugly bats about the size of starving pigeons, angling upside down as only a bat can. I dropped low automatically. Their radar was impeccable, but mistakes can be made; and I wasn’t happy about the idea of being struck in the face by a misguided or aggressive bat. I decided to chase them toward the entrance rather than chance an uncontrolled situation. I protected myself as best as I could—waving the machete in one hand and the flashlight in the other while quickly shuffling a few feet toward the now-distant entrance.

  That was all it took. They unhooked themselves and uttering shrill squeals and raining white guano, they took off on the obvious course, away from my flailing arms and rotating light—toward the entrance.

  Unfortunately, I had forgotten about the chief, now forlornly frozen in the dark passageway halfway between me and the entrance. In the distance I caught a glimpse of his blinking white eyes in my flashlight beam as he tried to grasp the situation. Too late. The disturbed bats, their cries echoing, closed in on him with frightening speed.

  “Howwww . . . howwww . . .” he wailed as he ducked and stumbled toward the entrance, his arms overhead and his stomach bouncing.

  The bats whisked by him on all sides at astonishingly close margins. Henry heard the commotion and came rushing into the entrance. His frame filled the small opening. The lead bats, bright-eyed with their radar fully honed, received signals that their escape was blocked and came screaming back at the chief.