by Linda Ihle
“Well, I reckon that answers my question,” Devin remarked as she watched Angela regain her composure.
“What?”
“You don’t want to try to catch up with that stick. You want us to try to make it out of here on our own?” She lifted a stick and began to draw with it, lazy boxes and circles in the reddish dust.
“Stick?” Angela stared at her.
“Um, platoon? I dunno – that’s a stick back there – not a lot of soldiers, I suppose. That’s what they call it. Anyway, it’s too late now. Soon the helicopters will come in to pick up any wounded. I don’t know what they do with the dead ones.” She shrugged, not really caring. “I don’t want to be spotted by the guys in the helicopters and mistaken for a terr. And I sure as hell don’t want to detonate another bloody landmine.” She turned her head, testing the air as a dog would and as she did, the first thud thud thud reverberated, seeming to come from the area of the gorge they had so recently exited. She stared around seeking a hiding place and then grabbed Angela’s arms and dragged her back to the donga near the giant ant hill.
“Quickly, quickly!” she panted. They dashed through the grass and clambered down into the donga making for its east wall where some young mopane saplings had a tenuous hold in the fragile earth walls. Devin looked very quickly for spider webs, saw none, and dragged Angela back behind one of the saplings. They flattened themselves against the wall where a very narrow overhang of roots and dirt hid them from easterly exposure. The heated air vibrated and hummed in advance of the choppers, then throbbed and pounded in unison with heartbeats as the two camouflaged aircraft thundered overhead. Each had a door gunner, perched it would seem quite precariously within the doorway, leaning out over the skids. Both were facing full ahead, to the southeast, where the stick had gathered to secure wounded enemy and line up the dead. Neither saw the two figures huddled against the dirt wall of the donga.
The two choppers hovered and lurched and swayed above the kill zone, the wind from the rotors flattening the grass and raising dust-devils. The women could hear the shouts and instructions from the men in the aircraft to those below and could not imagine anyone below actually hearing and understanding in the midst of that outrageous clamour. Devin and Angela slowly emerged from their hiding place, as the rotors slowed and the noise dissipated, and the choppers landed. Neither could see, only imagine, what was going on, but they used the time to extricate themselves from the donga, collect their belongings at the base of the big mopane and begin to move south and east virtually parallel to the gorge where Devin had killed the terrorist.
They walked quickly, crouching and cowering instinctively when noise carried to them from the kill zone. The tips of the grass were bronzing as the sun began its inexorable slide into the west; the sepia light hid the sharp thorns in the ends of the grass, camouflaged the sun-blanched bone white of acacia thorns. Both cursed in breathless whispers as their flesh was assaulted. Both fell simultaneously to the ground and lay there in silence as the pounding throb of the choppers picked up and resounded across the bush, then rose as the tumult faded off into the east where the light was evaporating.
25.
Sandra’s tea spilled into the saucer as she carried the cup across the sitting room and into the dining room where the telephone squatted, mocking her in its silence. She never thought she would have wished for the infernal thing to ring and now when it suddenly did as she approached it, she jumped creating a lake of hot orange tea in the saucer, threatening to spill over onto the carpet under the gleaming, imbuia wood table. Gingerly, she placed the saucer and cup on the sideboard and picked up the telephone. “Let it be Devin, Lord,” she whispered. “Let it be Devin,” as she raised the receiver to her ear.
“Sandra?” The all too familiar gruff voice of Devin’s father rasped through the lines.
“Yes, Neville,” she responded. “Hold on while I call the kids.”
“No, Sandy, I need to talk to you.” He paused, awaiting her response. None came, and so he continued. “I got a visit from CID,” he said quietly, “and I know what’s going on, but, agh, listen Sandy, if she’s where I think she probably is, around Lutope somewhere, she’s going to be alright, hey. She’s been there before and she knows her directions and how to avoid the bad shit, hey. I taught her and she’s clever, hey, Sandy. But you know what?”
“What?”
“There’s more that they might not have told you yet. Paul is supposed to be phoning you today, unless he has already?”
“No, I was waiting for his call.” The hair on the back of her neck rose and her face flushed and prickled as adrenalin rushed through her veins. What was this “more”.
“It’s not bad, hey,” he said quickly. “I will let him tell you. Little kaffirs have big ears, hey,” he joked and she winced at his use of the word.
“Don’t call them that,” she hissed.
“Agh, they know what they are and it’s always what they will be, Sandy. Trying to coddle them and not hurt their feelings while they murder us one by one is not going to change the fact that they are murdering us one by one. Ow, sonofabitch!” There was the sound of a scuffle and he could be heard, “Fuck off, stupid bastard!” Then he returned to the phone. “Sorry. This stupid black bastard here just smacked me with his truncheon.” She sighed.
“Is that all you needed to tell me?”
“Oh, ja. I’ll sign off now, hey, in case Paul is trying to get hold of you. Give the kids my love, hey.”
She said nothing, just quietly replaced the receiver in its cold black cradle and turned to her tea again. As she reached for the cup, she caught a glimpse through the open window of a police jeep pulling up alongside the fence across the front of her yard. It parked beneath the jacaranda and she could see then that it was Paul as he alighted from the vehicle. She stood stockstill, afraid to move, afraid to hear this “more”. Perhaps if she pretended not to be home he could just go away, but, too late, he could see her through the dining-room window and now he waved, almost cheerfully. She managed a brief nod, before walking to the front door and opening it to allow him in off the verandah.
“Hello, Paul,” she said quietly. “Neville said you’d be contacting me. Would you like some tea?”
“Um, no thanks, Mrs. G. Not while I’m on duty, hey,” he laughed uproariously at his own humour. Seeing her still passive face, though, he stopped and assumed his policeman demeanour. “Ja, I actually have some interesting news for you, but I think we should sit out here on the verandah, hey?” He pointed to the kitchen where Enos could be heard beginning the evening meal, then pointed to his ear.
“All right,” she agreed and made her way to the springy old couch she had put out there for comfort on cooler sunny days, like today. She sat down and he sat beside her.
“We have it on good authority that Devin may not be alone out there,” he blurted. Sandra stared at him. He seemed to be enjoying this!
“What?” She became aware that her mouth was open in a slack-jawed O and that Bezuidenhout appeared to be examining her tonsils. She quickly snapped it closed.
“It appears that on the plane manifest and according to the pilot too, there was a black woman on board, an American Negro. She stayed behind with the plane, but when the security forces secured the scene, and later captured a couple of the terrs who shot it down….”
“They have found the plane and the terrs?” she cried. “Where?”
“That’s classified, hey, Mrs. G., but I’ll tell you this, it’s in a place close to where Mr. G. used to take them hunting.”
She stared at him. “Why all the secrecy still, Paul? It’s going to be out very soon if the plane has been found.”
“The pilot and the other survivors have been debriefed and he and the others who escaped are being, um, sequestered until we can locate Devin. The terrs were hit in an ambush about 40 miles south of the plane shootdown. Those terrs that survived were choppered out to a base and have been questioned. So all the country knows, other
than the survivors’ families, is that another Viscount was shot down. They don’t know how many escaped, who was on the plane, etc. The newspapers, especially the Chronicle, have been a proper pain in the ar…, um, a proper pain, but we’re keeping it contained. Thank God for censorship, hey?”
She blinked at him. “What about this Negro woman then?”
“Well, according to the pilot, she stayed behind, but she was not among the dead found at the plane. So, she either escaped or she was abducted by the terrs when they went to find the plane.” He coughed, bringing his giant hairy paw to his mouth to intercept the germs and spit. “We think there’s a better chance that she ran off into the bush, maybe after Devin and they might have teamed up. Safety in numbers, Mrs. G., safety in numbers, hey.” He grinned at her, his large, white, even teeth gleaming in his sunburned face. “Anyway, she wasn’t with the bas….terrs that were ambushed and turned out to be responsible for bringing down number three.”
“That’s what they’re calling it now,” she acknowledged, “`number three`. Now all we need is another ‘Deafening Silence’ to go along with that.” She sighed deeply and a wayward tear escaped her right eye and rolled down her cheek. She swiped it away. “When will the world realize that we are not the monsters here?”
He shrugged. “I dunno, Mrs. G.”
“So, this is a good thing then, you think?” she asked, still puzzled as to why it would be. “Surely it’s harder to hide two people than it is to hide one?”
“I personally talked to one of the top okes at SAS,” he told her, “and he thinks that it is a good thing as well, hey. Like I said, safety in numbers.” He shrugged again and stared blankly out over the struggling brown and green checkerboard of lawn. “But, hey,” he suddenly broke his own brief reverie, “this is between you, me and the garden gate, hey?” He blinked. “Oh, and, the black American’s parents have been informed to keep it quiet, and they have promised to do that. They believe in God and that she will be brought safely home to them.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t jeopardize my daughter’s safety. I think, Paul, that I need to go and pray on this tonight and I hope you will do the same?”
“Hey, ja, I will of course do that and I will ask my ma to also pray for my boet Piet and all the others who’ve been lost – she won’t know that Devin is among them.” He rose and stretched, towering above her. “OK, then, I’ll see you soon?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Soon.”
Down Bauhinia Road, a recent transplant from Surrey, Mrs. Gibbons, her flame-red hair a bizarre halo in the light of the dying day, stood at her gate and watched the camouflage-painted Land Rover pull away, heading for Hospital Road. She turned to her husband, a slight, thin, pale, balding man with yellow-stained fingers and fish-belly white legs. “That’s the second time this week, Harold,” she announced. “Something is going on down there at the Grays’, I just know it.”
“Yes, yes, dear,” he muttered, paying her no mind whatsoever. His attention was focused upon the parade of nubile maids and nannies, walking, trotting and bicycling by, heading for Belvedere Road which would take them out to the township. His genitals quivered as a particularly attractive young woman strode by, her bright crimson doek ends fluttering in the breeze of her passing, the maid’s uniform clinging to ample bosom and bottom, her ebony skin glowing in the twilight. He leaned against the iron gate to conceal his excitement, but found that it had fully manifested itself, popping right through between the elaborate wrought-iron bars. The object of his desire noticed and giggled. “Sa’ bona,” she greeted the couple and picked up the pace, catching up to another woman striding along ahead of her. Still cackling, she touched the woman’s shoulder and said something to her. The woman turned and looked back and laughed uproariously before they both turned, giggling and dancing, slapping hands, and continued on their way.
“What the hell do they think they’re laughing at, Harold?” Mrs. Gibbons demanded. With a loud hmmph, she turned from the gates and made her way back up the driveway to her porch. Harold followed only after his spirited response to the young ladies had begun to sag.
Meanwhile, Gladys Gibbons was not the only one who had noticed the comings and goings at Sandra Gray’s house. Across the street, the Popes’ cook, Shilling, sat on the bench by the pool and dangled his calloused feet in the murky water. His employers were away and had left him in charge of the house and yard, not trusting the gardener, Robert, who seemed to spend way too much time at the front gate chatting up the female passers-by. Shilling had seen the police jeep the first morning when Bezuidenhout had arrived, and now he had seen it again. He had initially wondered if, perhaps, the white woman across the street and this policeman were having an affair. That would be normal for these mukiwa, he thought, but seeing them now, sitting quietly and talking, he wondered. “Hau, something bad is happening here,” he said softly to himself in Shona and bent to gently dry his feet with Mrs. Pope’s swimming costume.
26.
Having skirted the low-road kill zone, that was well to the west now, and headed south, the two women resumed a gradual shift to the east again as their shadows lengthened laterally, bobbing across the tips of the tall grass. At one point, Angela stopped, recalling the tick embedded in her skin and asked Devin what to do about it. Devin lit a cigarette, pulled the tick out carefully to ensure the head came with it, then burned it on the tip of the cigarette. “Wanna say a few words for the dead tick?” she asked, but Angela shook her head.
“No.”
“Too bad, man, I could’ve had more time to smoke this ciggie.” She grinned as she stubbed it out on the reddish soil and placed the stompie back in the box. “Clean that area with the TCP,” she admonished and waited while Angela took care of that.
“It’s starting to get dark,” Angela noted as she screwed the cap back on the bottle. “Are we going to have to spend the night in the open?”
“Hell, I hope not,” Devin responded, shading her eyes and gazing out to the east where a line of hills marked the horizon. “This is lion country.” She paused, standing on one leg like a raggedy stork, and pulled a paper thorn out of her left foot. “Shit, my feet hurt, hey.”
Angela looked down at the woman’s feet noting the incongruously long, painted toenails, a bright red, chipped here and there by collisions with rocks and pebbles, the scratches and cuts along the toe line and across the instep. “You are a teacher?” she asked, suddenly remembering that Devin had talked about her ‘kids’ being the same age as her brother.
“Um, ja, well, I was. What’s that got to do with my feet?”
“Nothing, I was just wondering what you taught because you seem to use a lot of cuss words and slang.”
“Believe it or not, I taught English,” Devin said and laughed as Angela’s eyebrows went up. “I didn’t talk Rhodesian to the kids,” she added. “It’s just the way you get used to talking in this place, especially as teenagers. Sometimes we talk a mix of English, Ndebele, Shona and Afrikaans, but nearly all of us understand what the other is saying. We just don’t teach in that hodge-podge of languages and we certainly don’t write in it, unless it’s creative writing.”
“Why did you quit?”
“Hated it. Wanted to do something else,” she shrugged and scowled. “I wanted to get into journalism, and I thought I would love it. But when I did, I got hired as a so-called cub reporter, and I don’t know if you could tell or not, but I don’t toe the government line. So, they started giving me fluff pieces to do. Anyway, there’s so much goddamn censorship, you end up chasing your own tail on most days. It’s very frustrating.” She pointed to the eastern horizon. “See that line of kopjes there?”
Angela shaded her eyes and looked. “The hills?” she asked.
“Sorry, ja, hills. We need to get there before the sun goes down and see if we can find a big tree to sleep in. I heard somewhere that the horizon is always 14 miles away, so we better get a move on.”
“What did you do in Bradenton?” sh
e asked Angela as they pressed forward.
“When my husband was called back to fight in Vietnam, I went back to college to read my Master’s in Political Science and then I was going to try out as an intern in D.C.”
“What happened?”
“My folks ran out of money so I had to work and go to school at the same time.” She grinned ruefully. “I took a job as a fry-cook in a McDonald’s restaurant, but they paid only minimum wage, so I had to work overtime and long hours to keep up with fees, and my education suffered.”
“Shame, man. Too bad, hey. So then what?”
“My parents came into a little money when my Aunt Gloria passed, and they helped me through that year. Then, though, I decided to go for a doctorate. That was before my husband was killed. Anyway, my thesis was related to basically what’s going on here, and in other places with similar civil war issues where the fight is, ostensibly, against Communism. I focused on the role of Marx’s interpretation and conceptualization of Hegel’s theory of alienation. ‘Negation of negation’, I believe someone called it; and if that may have affected the Russians turning on Marx. Because one of the guerilla leaders in this war, Robert Mugabe’s, avowed affection for Marx and his teachings, I was particularly interested in how he would apply the Marxist ideology, especially in respect to alienation. I knew that he had just spent about 10 years in a Rhodesian prison and I am very interested in how that will strengthen or weaken the premises of his ideology, particularly that relative to his own alienation.”