by Linda Ihle
12.
Paul Bezuidenhout, an upstanding member of the town of Ukunkwe’s local police force’s Criminal Investigation Department or CID, long known to her in this little dorp where she had lived all her life, had called Sandra that morning, asking if he could stop at the house to talk to her. (She had called in to Ukunkwe High School where she worked as secretary, pleading ill health, a migraine, and sat now, smoking and drinking hot tea, staring at her children in the cool shade of the sitting room. The news had been blurted this morning by a stand-in for Derek Partridge on Radio Rhodesia. Another Viscount shot down. More casualties. Not all recovered. Another heroic pilot, saving lives by bringing the plane down, leading survivors into the bush and onto a main road, four hours away from the scene of horror that was only hinted at.)
“They’re not saying too much on the news, hey, Mrs. G.,” Paul told her. He sat on the blue settee, a delicate china tea cup gripped in his thick, hairy fingers. (He would have preferred coffee.) His blonde hair was severely brush cut, his eyebrows thick and unruly above a set of ice-blue eyes.
Sandra had known him since he was a little boy. He was a good looking young man, but his thin lips bespoke a vein of cruelty running not too far below the surface. A glint of that vein lurked in his eyes. She listened to the thick accent and wondered again why Devin hated this man so, called him a rock spider, a pig. Was it his boer background, because he was CID? Then who knew what drove Devin to do things, feel things the way she did? “About what?” she asked, puzzled.
“The pilot told them that she was on the plane and that he remembered talking to her after the shootdown. She was with them when they took off into the bush, but they ran into a herd of jumbo, hey. He got them around that, but a couple of hours later, after running and walking hard through the bush, he realized she wasn’t with them any more…”
“Oh, my Lord!” she whispered. “She’s in the bush somewhere?”
“Ja, hey, and they can’t broadcast that because then there might be more than the Security Forces looking for her.” He put the tea cup down and leaned over to place the heavy, powerful hand on her arm. “She’s clever, hey, Mrs. G.,” he stated. “She’s been in the bush a lot. You know, alles sal reg kom (everything will be all right), hey.” He squeezed her arm.
“You cannot tell a soul about this,” Sandra warned her children. “If you do, and the terrs hear they missed someone who’s out there in the bush, by herself, she…” She couldn’t finish.
They stared back at their mother and nodded in agreement. “We won’t,” said Mark, pinching his sister’s arm. “Owie, man, Mark!” she exclaimed pulling her arm away. “I won’t tell, Mommy,” she said, “not even Charlie.”
“Who’s Charlie?” Paul Bezuidenhout asked.
“That’s her, um, friend,” Sandra responded.
“Ja, her imaginary friend,” Mark blurted.
Tears sprang in Julia’s eyes. She blushed, punched her brother hard on the shoulder, and stormed into her room.
Perched on the back steps to the kitchen, busily podding peas, Enos had heard everything.
13.
That night seemed interminable. Devin slept restlessly, dozing, often awaking startled, her hair rising on her arms and head, mouth dry, eyes wide, searching. She remembered dreaming, just before the dawn, of the python, and the culmination of that scene brought her again to her senses. She waited until the sun began to emerge above the horizon before she started to move down from the treetop. She determined then that she would start early in her trek toward what she hoped was Lutope, and nap during the middle of the day. Stiff and weary, she carried her things down to the flat forked fat branch, then clambered down and reached back up for them, re-attaching the strap to the weapon before slinging it over her shoulder. She winced as she did and looked down to see a blue-purple bruise along her collar bone, spreading outward and fanning over the inner portion of her shoulder. She switched the weapon to her left shoulder, drank some water, and headed for the riverbed.
She looked for crocodile in the big pool and saw none, so decided against dipping her feet and hands in the water. She smiled as she made that determination, remembering the days she and her sister had braved the Umniati River rapids in a zinc tub, hearing all about them the roar of the hippos, maddened by this intrusion upon their serenity, seeing the wide flat swathes of crocodile tracks in the sand along the shores, and oblivious to it all. Nothing can happen to you when you’re eight years old. That was the belief, almost a mantra, even though they had seen things happen to their peers - a boy chopping off his little finger where a boomslang had seconds before embedded its fangs; a child stealing honey from a massive hive and running screaming from that hive, a brown shroud of bees covering his head and upper body and arms like an evanescent, buzzing cape - he had died. A boy riding his bicycle under the huge gum tree by the railway lines, struck and killed by lightning. Those sorts of things happened, but only to the other kids. Not us. We were golden.
Devin’s stomach grumbled loudly as she traipsed through the sand and over the rocky, dry river bed. She longed for some bacon and eggs, toast and Marmite, even sadza porridge with condensed milk, then shoved the thoughts aside. If she was going to eat, she was going to have to either find a nest with eggs in it, or she was going to have to shoot something again. She looked down at the magazine, attempting to gauge how much firepower she had left, but could not tell.
The river bed narrowed as it passed through the gorge and the banks climbed steeply. They were strewn with boulders and granite and the odd scruffy baobab or mopane. She suddenly felt exposed and moved from the center of the bed to the shadows along the side, walking there where it might be more difficult for anyone, or anything, above her to see her. She found a spot where the roots of a mahobohobo tree had thrust through the bank, hanging over a small pool. She could hear water falling into the pool and bent and peered under the gnarled roots. A small spring, obviously, she thought; a little like the one where she had lost her watch.
Devin placed her possessions on the sand and crawled cautiously under the roots, peering about in the twilit cavern. Satisfied that nothing lived there, she reached out and dipped her hands in the water, raising them cupped to her mouth and tasted it. It was cold, sweet, with a hint of limestone and iron. She swished it about in her mouth then turned and spat onto the sand. She crawled farther into the pool, the chill of the water assaulting scratched, sunburnt shins, knees, and thighs, until she reached a point where she could stand on her embattled feet, then approached the miniature waterfall cascading it seemed from the innards of the tree. She reached up to it and drank, then moved quickly into the shower, gasping as the cold water splashed on her shoulders and breasts.
She removed her bra and panties and stood there letting the water wash the grime and aches from her body, then, through mere force of habit, scrubbed at her face, underarms and groin, while the underwear soaked in the pool around her knees. Satisfied that this was about as clean as she could be, and not wanting to relinquish her possessions for too long, she retrieved her underwear, wrung it out, put it back on and crawled out of the hollow. She grabbed the water can, emptied it in the sand, and refilled it with the spring water. Still wet, knees now caked in sand, she climbed the embankment, found a dry, dusty spot, and rolled in it. This time, the dust would stick! That done, she clambered back down, picked up her things and continued upriver, a bedraggled, barefoot ragamuffin smeared with red clay and grey sand, filthy underwear losing their tenuous grip on bony hips, and thin, long blonde hair now tangled in rat-tail dreadlocks.
14.
As the sun rose higher, Devin found that the gorge was narrowing even further, and the banks seemed lower. She had no idea how many miles she had walked, and tried to calculate it using her sense of about what time she had left her shower and what time it would be now, but that would mean that, at the most five miles per hour, she had walked only about five miles and it seemed more like twenty. She stopped near a small pool to eat a
little biltong, drink some water, and smoke half a cigarette. As she lit it, she peered down into the pool and caught sight of her reflection.
“Jesus Christ!” she whispered, then laughed. She picked up the kerosene can, mixed some sand and water in her hand and rubbed its side with the concoction. She used the can as a mirror to verify what the pool had revealed, and laughed again.
“What a sight!” Here I am, wandering the bloody bush, covered in mud and scratches, my mascara still streaked all over my face as if welded there, and all I have on is bra and pants! I’ll be lucky if our guys don’t shoot me!
As she gazed at the image before her, she wondered again about fashioning some form of headgear to protect her from the sun. She reasoned that she could not look any worse than she did now even if she were to find a piece of bark and somehow strap it to her head. With that in mind, she began to seek out the softer barked trees as she continued her trek upriver, and soon found a young mopane that the elephants had been at. That made her job much easier as they had left strips hanging from the trunk. She pulled a large diamond shaped piece off and beat it against a rock to get any scorpions, centipedes and spiders out, then sought a thinner, greener strip which she could use to tie the larger one to her head. Soon she was on her way again, hat in place, squinting less in the bright sunlight and feeling much cooler; on more than one level.
As the river bed narrowed, it also seemed to take a more southeastward course, which was what she had hoped for. The pools now were much fewer and farther apart, and boulders thick with geckoes and other reptiles seemed standard. As the sun began its steady climb toward its zenith, banishing the cool, moist air of early morning, and flooding the earth with heat, Devin found a flat boulder littered with dassie (rock rabbit) droppings, shaded by an overhanging thorn tree. She dropped her things on the rock, walked a few yards away to relieve herself, then sat in the sand, her back against the shady side of the boulder. She drank a little water and ate the last of her biltong, which just made her thirsty again.
As she sipped at another cup of water, she scanned the riverbed for something which might comprise her lunch. All the way from the shower tree, she had searched the banks and the sides of the ravine for signs of birds’ nests. She was not too happy about the thought of climbing a tree to steal eggs, and she wasn’t even sure that she would be able to stomach the eggs anyway. What if they contain embryonic young? Her gorge rose at the very thought. At that moment, she felt she would give anything for even one of those disgusting curry pies from the bakery. Even that would taste good at this stage. She thought about killing and eating a snake, and the nausea worsened. She had seen a couple of the harlequin-like mopane worms crawling in the flowering mopanes, but could not bring herself to eat such a thing. Hell, I don’t even know whether you’re supposed to eat the whole thing raw, gut it and cook it, what? She grimaced at the thought of merely having to pick up one of the caterpillars with her bare fingers. It would have to be a pheasant then or another guinea fowl. There was no way in hell she was going to kill a buck; what would she use to skin it? She sighed and dropped her head onto her folded arms and closed her eyes.
15.
Miles to the west-southwest, Andrew Harrison, exalted and much loved (especially by the girls), Standard Five teacher at Ukunkwe Junior School, watched as Mark Gray took his seat at a pitted wood desk. The late morning sunshine piercing the polished glass of the classroom windows cast a dust-moted beam across Mark’s desk, briefly illuminating and enhancing the hint of amber in his pale green eyes. Harrrison smoothed the tunic of his light blue safari suit, something he would never in a million years believed he would wear let alone own; especially during his years at Natal University where he was known as DP (Durban Poison) Harrison. It had been bad enough having to cut his long, black hair. Now this! He sighed and concentrated again on Mark. There’s something going on with this boy, he thought. He was reported absent yesterday by Sandra - illness. Hmm. Maybe daddy in jail again? Harrison took a deep breath as, suddenly, the hair on the back of neck prickled and raised. Like a dog’s hackles. I wonder where Devin is?
He sighed and grimaced as the ubiquitous odor of chalk and dirty socks and sweaty, pubescent children filled his lungs, growing in intensity as they all trooped back in after morning breaktime; some drowsy from ingesting fat slabs of white bread slathered in peanut butter and Lyle’s golden syrup; others more animated having stuffed themselves with licorice, gobstoppers or marshmallow ‘fish’ purchased at the tuckshop.
Mark looked up and caught Harrison staring at him. He quickly looked away. Someone nudged him from behind and he glanced back over his shoulder to see Charlie Jones passing him a folded note. He shook his head and turned away. The last time he had accepted such a note, he had to hand it in to the teacher (not Harrison), then stand up in front of the class and read it aloud.
Grace Atkinson smaaks[9] you. She craves your bod and wants you to snog her behind the tuckshop after school today
The note had been illustrated with red hearts, replete with arrows and all the right initials emblazoned upon each one. Mark, if he could have, would have dug through the floor of the classroom and disappeared forever from Ukunkwe Junior School. Especially because it was Grace Atkinson, a boarder from the farming area near Enkeldoorn. He knew full well that she had a thing for him, but she was bigger than him, weighed about 30 pounds more and had the foulest breath and body odour. She stank. He (really) liked Nina Santos, a slight, dark-haired, sloe-eyed girl of Portuguese descent, but she was heavily protected by her big brother Luigi, already in high school, and Luigi didn’t like Mark Gray. Or any boys for that matter.
The nudge came again and this time when he turned the note was thrust onto his desk by the same red-faced Charlie Jones. Mark snapped, “No, man! Piss off!” and tossed it to the floor, which is where it lay rocking as Andrew Harrison made his way down the aisle and picked it up. Absolute silence marked his progress to the note and then back to his desk, holding it gingerly as if a tissue-wrapped turd. He turned and faced the class. Mark stared at him, silently begging and praying that he would not again be so absolutely embarrassed. Harrison held up the folded note. “Jones?” he said quietly.
“Yes, sir?” Charlie Jones was on the brink of wetting his pants. He had been sent by another teacher just the week before for dorks from the headmaster. His bottom still stung and burned from the caning. He tried to smile sweetly, innocently at Harrison, but it turned to a leer.
“Step up here, Jones.”
Charlie Jones rose awkwardly from his seat and, head down, trudged to the front of the classroom. Harrison unfolded the note and nearly dropped it. It depicted a very clever drawing of his own face. The grinning face was attached to a naked porcine body atop an equally naked, but nubile, except for the grossly enlarged breasts, female form. Her face was that of Nina Santos, his 12-year-old student.
Harrison grabbed Charlie Jones by the ear and led him out of the classroom and onto the verandah, shutting the top portion of the stable door behind him. “Who drew this?” he hissed. “I know it wasn’t you, you’re not capable. But you think it’s good enough to pass around? You think this is funny?”
“N..n..no, sir, sorry, sir. I didn’t draw it, sir.” Tears glistened in the corners of his eyes and his knees were becoming wobbly, his face now scarlet.
“Who?” Harrison demanded, twisting the ear a little for good measure. Shit, I cannot stand this bloody kid! knowing full well it was just not done to have favourites, but he couldn’t help himself. Charlie Jones was just…..unlikeable. Horrible little bastard. He had not fallen too far from the rotting snot-apple tree that was his father: a drunken bully known to beat his servants with a sjambok if he so much as suspected that they had stolen a cup of sugar or mealie-meal to augment their meagre rations.
Charlie Jones was now blubbering. “Grace!” he stuttered.
“Grace Atkinson!” Another …unlikeable… nasty little girl. Well, not so little. “She’s quite the little artist,
Jones!”
“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. She’s gunna kill me, sir.”
“I will deal with her. Go to the lavs and wash your bloody face, then get back in the class.”
Jones ran down the steps and across a dusty quad onto a parallel red-polished verandah and down to the boys’ toilets, praying all the way that he would not piss his pants. Harrison watched him until he disappeared into the toilets, before stepping back into the classroom.
“Open your arithmetic books to Chapter 7,” he told the still dead-silent, spellbound faces staring at him, some with trepidation (they had seen the drawing); others with admiration (mostly girls). “Oh, and, Grace?”
“Yes, sir?” She paled and pushed at stringy, unwashed, red rats’ tails of hair from cheeks blossoming early with a bumper crop of pimples.
“See me when the bell rings,” he said quietly, watching from the corner of his eye as Jones reentered the classroom and took his seat. She nodded and, for once, fear lurked in her soft-boiled eyes. She chanced a glance at Mark’s back, but he did not even turn to look at her. She lowered her gaze and tried to concentrate on the mathematics problems, but all she could think about was the bloody hostel matron, who was going to hear about this and she was going to tell. Without a doubt, she would tell Grace’s mother and then, well then, for sure, there would be hell to pay. She was so engrossed in her own misery and trying to hide her leaking eyes from those around her, she did not notice that Harrison had stepped outside the classroom, with Mark Gray.