Bumi

by Linda Ihle

  “We have company!” she yelled at Angela. “Get your gun ready.”

  Angela was scrabbling around with her hands on the sand floor where she thought she had been sleeping, seeking the rifle she had lain at her side. Quickly finding it, she swung it around in front of her and peered into the darkness at the back of their cave. “What are they?” she asked, her mouth and throat dry with fear.

  “I dunno. I hope they’re vervets and not baboons,” Devin called back. “Just keep an eye on them – either way, they’re horrible buggers.”

  The roar of the helicopter faded quickly as it rose and passed over the kopje, toward the valley where Devin believed at least one poached elephant lay. The clatter slowed to a leisurely chop-chop-chop, barely audible in the cave, then stopped. “Oh, for chrissake, they’ve landed!” Devin hissed. “You know we can’t go out there, Angela?” She shuffled on hands and knees over to the woman. “They, the army, don’t fly choppers at night or that’s what I heard anyway. So, we can’t be sure who it is. If that’s a dead jumbo under the tree there and these are poachers come back for the ivory, our lives wouldn’t be worth a tickey.” Angela nodded. “And if they do happen to be our guys, my guys, they may just shoot first and ask questions later. So,” she sighed, “I’m not going out there.”

  “Me either,” Angela agreed, all the while watching the area where the four sets of eyes had shone back at them. “But can’t we creep back up to the top of the hill and see what they’re doing?” she asked.

  “I’m really curious too,” Devin told her, “but what if they are right now climbing up the other side? We don’t know if they saw us or not, hey.” She rested the rifle on her knees and sought a more comfortable cushion for her bony backside. “Let’s just sit here and be very quiet for about half an hour and then, if we hear nothing, we might be able to investigate. Anyway, if those buggers over there are baboons, we might be chased out of here sooner – they’re going to think they’re cornered.”

  No sooner had she spoken than there was a flurry of movement at the back of the cave, accompanied by a low growl. “Move along the wall toward them, so they can see the doorway is open,” Devin told Angela who, very reluctantly, complied, shuffling butt-first along the floor, closer to the monkeys. That was greeted by a deeper, more pronounced growl and both women froze. Devin slowly reached for the lighter, flicked it open and struck the flint. “Get ready to fire,” she murmured. She thrust the small flame toward the back of the cave and peered into the small halo of light it offered. The four sets of eyes shone back at her, daring her to come closer. “They’re vervets,” she informed Angela. “Keep moving toward them, but keep that gun up.”

  Again, the bum-shuffle resumed, across the dirt and sand and jutting rocks, and again the growl resonated in the small space, growing deeper, more ominous. Devin handed the hot lighter to Angela. “Here, hold this, but drop it if they charge, hey.” Angela took the lighter and held it aloft, a shining talisman in the encompassing dark. Devin stood up and the growling stopped. This vervet monkey was apparently not willing to take on someone five times his size. She stretched slowly, then stooped and picked up a handful of sand and pebbles. Taking a deep breath first, she ran toward the little group and hurled the objects at them, yelling, “Voetsak! Voetsak! Voetsak!” One of the small monkeys brushed her leg as it sped screaming past her and within seconds all four had fled into the dangerous night, seeking the relative safety of a tree.

  Devin sat down and dusted off her hands. She realized Angela was giggling hysterically. “What’s so bloody funny?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing, everything,” Angela gasped. “What is that word – footsack – what does it mean?”

  “It’s Afrikaans, basically, for ‘bugger off’.”

  “And I thought you were speaking the language of the monkeys,” Angela remarked, giggling again.

  “You’re not far wrong in that respect,” Devin retorted, swinging the AK-47 back over her shoulder. “You want to have a look on the dark side of the hill?” As she spoke, a minor avalanche of pebbles and sand rattled down the side of the kopje and bounced off the parapet where they had made their fire. She lunged for the lighter, extinguishing it and again clamped her hand over Angela’s mouth.

  “Follow me,” she whispered. She released her grip on the woman’s lips and crawled toward the very low niche of rock and roots adjacent to the cave opening. Shit, shit, shit! Please no spiders, please no spiders! The mantra ran through her head as she dragged assaulted knees across the floor and into the little cubby-hole she had noted upon first leaving the cave. She dragged Angela under the shelf of rock and whispered in her ear, “Breathe through your mouth.” Angela obeyed. The two sat motionless, hearts pounding, listening. No light penetrated their hiding place and, as they were effectively perpendicular to and a little behind the aperture, they would not see any light shone immediately outside the cave, but they could hear.

  Another cascade of rocks heralded the hilltop arrival of something or someone. Then something else cascaded past the cave entry – urine. The hot, acrid stink of it assailed their senses and Devin’s gut cramped as she hoped against all odds that the pee-perpetrator would not inadvertently aim his stream at lingering coals in their erstwhile fire. Too late! She heard the sizzle of an ember doused by the urine and smelled the small plume of acrid smoke arising from the ashes. She pulled up the rifle, settled the butt between cheek and shoulder, and waited. Nothing. He appeared not to have noticed.

  “Jan!” someone called from the other side of the hill and both women jumped. “Wat is dit?[18]”

  The urinater yelled back, “Fokkin’ aape (fucking monkeys)!”

  “Kom, Jan, maak gou, ou (hurry up)!”

  “OK, OK!” Jan responded.

  The women heard the rocks cascading down past the aperture as Jan made his way back over the hill. Silence reigned for a full 10 minutes before Devin nudged Angela and whispered that they should now get out of the cave and see what was going on.

  “Are you sure it’s safe?” Angela asked as she crawled out of the nook and rose, stretching cramping legs.

  “I dunno,” Devin responded. “I’ll leave it up to you. How’s that?”

  “Um, no. You would know better than me.”

  “Better than I,” Devin said automatically. “Not really. I don’t know a whole helluva lot about rock spiders running around in a bloody helicopter in the middle of the night, in the middle of the goddamn bush. But, dammit, I want to know!”

  “Rock spiders?”

  “Never mind. They just sound like maaties, that’s all. Not cool maaties, though. Jeez! What the hell is going on here?”

  She was speaking primarily to herself as she made her way to the aperture and hesitated only briefly before she knelt and crawled gingerly out onto the parapet, to the left of the now deadened fire, which had warmed the rock. Placing one hand on the parapet near the fire, Devin steadied herself before bringing the other forward hoping it would not land in some of Jan’s urine. The instant she lowered her hand, though, all her instincts screamed, “No! Wait!” One hand raised like a German pointer, she paused and peered down at the rock and, in the darkness, saw nothing at first. She began to rise and pull back slowly when part of the rock appeared to move and then she heard the scales scraping across the rutted surface. She froze and waited, straining to see what it was. It moved again, sluggishly, then released a loud, hollow hiss.

  “Puff adder!” she whisper-screamed as she reversed back into the cave, tearing at knees and palms, backside banging into Angela’s nose, knocking her over. “Goddamn it all to bloody hell!”

  “What is it?” Angela cried.

  “Puff adder,” Devin repeated, reaching with shaking hands for the lighter tucked into the front of her bra. She pulled it out and struck the wheel lighting the doorway into the cave and the narrow sill outside, along with its new occupant. The dim light confirmed it was indeed a puff adder and a magnificent specimen at that. It faced them, coiled an
d poised to strike.

  “We can’t let it block us and we definitely can’t let it get in here with us. And there’s no way in hell I am going to shoot it and have those okes on the other side of the kopje come to see why the bobbejaans[19] are using firearms.”

  As she spoke, the snake shifted position again, moving more rapidly as the warmth of the rock soaked into its body, straightening and coiling and straightening again. It began to move caterpillar like, slowly, a blurred shadow in the feeble moonlight, toward the ashes of the fire, its tongue flickering as it determined its surroundings, but stopped abruptly, turned to face the aperture, coiled into striking position and hissed again, sounding like the air rushing from a deflating tyre in an otherwise empty, concrete vault. Devin backed farther away from the opening, knowing the lightning-fast strike would come with no hesitation, no warning, and pulled the rifle up into her shoulder. She did not bother to check Angela’s location having heard her scurrying toward the back of the cave and her squeal when the snake had hissed a second time. Her focus was now entirely upon that snake.

  “C’mon, you bastard,” she whispered, “make up your mind.” The snake was rigid, still, except for its tongue, flickering back and forth, its eyes seemingly fixed upon the cave opening. “This is what you call being stuck between a rock-spider and a hard place,” she quipped, giggling inanely at her own joke, as she slipped her forefinger inside the trigger guard, a hair’s breadth from the trigger, and continued to inch backwards across the floor of the cave. As she raised her right knee to continue her retreat outside the strike zone, the snake struck sideways, away from her. The movement was so quick and surprising, Devin was not certain it had even happened, but the impact of the snake’s bite upon its prey was loud enough that Angela heard it from the back of the cave where she cowered. The prey squealed, the snake retreated, coiling again, waiting for the venom to do its work.

  A barely discernible, small, round shadow staggered, squeaking pitifully, past the aperture, brushing past that which had dealt the death blow, before collapsing, out of sight of the women, alongside the fire. And still the puff adder waited, motionless but for the tongue.

  “What’s going on?” Angela whispered from the back of the cave.

  “It nailed a mouse or something,” Devin explained, “and now it’s waiting for it to die.”

  “Oh, Lord! How long will that take?”

  “I dunno. All we can do is wait.”

  “Are they very dangerous?” Angela asked. She had not moved from her refuge at the back of the room.

  Devin turned and looked back into the gloom, trying to discern her. “Ja,” she said. “Ja.” She longed for a cigarette, but knew that would be foolish. The smell could carry from the cave and who knows whether or not the men on the other side of the hill will notice it. What if none of them smokes? I wonder if they heard me scream? They haven’t come back up here, but that doesn’t mean a thing. They could be just sitting there quietly on the other side waiting for us to make an appearance. And if they did hear me, and they are our guys, which I doubt, they would have come to investigate because, for sure, they know now that I am out here.

  She sighed and felt tears prick her eyelids. She brushed them away and swallowed the hard lump in her throat. “Eish, I caught a major skrik there, hey!” she joked.

  “Excuse me?” Angela asked.

  “Agh, sorry – I mean I got quite a fright there,” she replied. “Come, come sit here by me.” She patted the ground next to her, and Angela obliged. “He’s gonna go after that rat as soon as he’s certain that it’s dead and there’s nothing in his way. I just hope he eats it there and doesn’t decide to carry it off somewhere, like in here.”

  They sat in silence, watching the fat, heavy shadow. It had relaxed, straightening from the strike stance and now began to caterpillar-crawl, its scales rasping, across the rock toward the fireplace. Devin crawled closer to the door so that she could ensure it was on its way. She watched as it paused and took the small dead creature into its mouth, headfirst. “It was a rat,” she whispered back over her shoulder. “I can see its tail.” The snake slowly swallowed the rat, lay still for nearly 10 minutes, before moving off over the edge of the parapet and out of sight.

  “It’s gone,” Devin informed Angela, “but I don’t know how far. These are nasty bastards, I tell you. Beautiful. But nasty.” She bit her bottom lip and sighed loudly. “I would say we’re stuck here for the night. Bloody hell, anyway! I wanted to see what those guys were doing over there.”

  “How do you know they aren’t Rhodesian Security Forces?” Angela asked.

  “I don’t, that’s the thing. They’re obviously Afrikaners, so they could be SAP, you know, South African Police, because they’re here in full force, or they could be rock mercenaries; there’s a bunch of those here.”

  “”Rock” mercenaries?” Angela sounded shocked.

  “Ja, war parasites. We also call some Afrikaners rocks. But back to the mercenaries. They come from Australia and the U.S. and Belgium and France and Spain, even South Africa, and, I reckon the government doesn’t refuse their services. I met a couple of them at Coq d’Or in Salisbury a few months ago – one was from Spain – he said he was an importer of farm equipment. Ja, right.” She snorted and shook her head. “He wouldn’t know a disc plough if it came tearing full tilt out of his arse. Good looking bugger, though.”

  “Where was the other one from, Devin?”

  “Well, he said he was a Texan. He was quite pissed though, so couldn’t really tell if he was lying or not because he sounded a helluva lot more like a pommie.”

  “Pommie?”

  “Englishman.”

  “Ah. Gosh, you have a lot of odd names for different nationalities.”

  “Ja, we do. Most if not all of them are derogatory: Orientals are chinks, slants and gooks; Coloureds are goffals; Indians are churras or curry-munchers; pommies are also limeys and rooineks; Afrikaners are hairy-backs, rocks and rockspiders. Non-conformists and anti-establishmentarians, and by those I mean the kids who decided to think and behave outside that old indoctrination box, are called skates or just plain old JDs (juvenile delinquents). None of the skates I hung around with as a teenager ever murdered, raped or robbed anyone. They may have been smoking grass or just plain old tobacco, drinking some mushroom tea, popping LSD or sneaking G&Ts or a Carling Darling here or there - just having fun at no-one’s expense. But they were dangerous to the status quo I suppose. I am proud to have been a teenage skate.” She laughed. “It’s the nature of the beast, I suppose,” Devin told her and, anticipating another question, quickly added, “the human beast. We all classify or categorize, for whatever reason. I think it’s to maintain our own identity without being left too far outside whatever clique or group we most closely associate with. We all need to belong, you know? Not be marginalized or alienated. The blacks call us mukiwa and also mabhunu. The mabhunu though is the same as us calling them kaffirs – it’s derogatory. And you know what the equivalent American term is.”

  “Yes, I do. What a horrible word.”

  “Ja, it’s one word I don’t use as an epithet, but, I tell you what, my father was rather fond of it. He even named one of his Labs that word; thought it was very funny when the cook had to call the dog for its supper every night.”

  Angela was aghast. “You’re kidding!” she exclaimed.

  “No, and he still has the same cook, when he’s out of jail, my dad, that is. I suppose the bugger has a sense of humor.”

  “And why do you call those men up there rock-spiders?”

  “Agh, like I said, we have a lot of different names for Afrikaners. That one, obviously, is derogatory. I don’t know where it comes from. Maybe a lot of them were particularly hirsute and deemed as scary as a big spider?” She grinned and shook her head.

  “Why do you dislike them so much, Devin?”

  “Um, no, don’t get me wrong, Angela; my best friend in junior school was an Afrikaner and my best friend in high s
chool was an Afrikaner. Just like every other ethnicity, you get decent people and you get some really nasty buggers, and I had my share of experience with a couple of those…” She quieted. “And then there are those that are beyond nasty, absolutely thuggish, you know?”

  “What happened to you?” Angela asked, intuition kicking into high gear as she heard the subtle break in the voice of her companion.

  Devin sighed and stared out through the aperture, into the night. “I was raped by one of them when I was 12 years old. He was 18.”

  Angela gasped. “Oh, my goodness, I am so sorry, Devin! What happened to him?”