The Sun Between Their Feet

by Doris Lessing

  We would never have seen them at all, if the dogs hadn’t been miles away.

  In fact, all they were good for was their indiscipline. If we wanted to be sure of something to eat, we tied ropes to the dogs’ collars until we actually heard the small clink-clink-clink of guinea-fowl running through the bush. Then we untied them. The dogs were at once off after the birds who rose clumsily into the air, looking like flying shawls that sailed along, just above grass level, with the dogs’ jaws snapping underneath them. All they wanted was to land unobserved in the long grass, but they were always forced to rise painfully into the trees, on their weak wings. Sometimes, if it was a large flock, a dozen trees might be dotted with the small black shapes of guinea-fowl outlined against dawn or evening skies. They watched the barking dogs, took no notice of us. My brother or I – for even I could hardly miss in such conditions – planted our feet wide for balance, took aim at a chosen bird and shot. The carcase fell into the worrying jaws beneath. Meanwhile, a second bird would be chosen and shot. With the two birds tied together by their feet, and the rifle justified by utility, proudly swinging, we would saunter back to the house through the sun-scented bush of our enchanted childhood. The dogs, for politeness’ sake, escorted us part of the way home, then went off hunting on their own. Guinea-fowl were very tame sport for them, by then.

  It had come to this, that if we actually wished to shoot something, or to watch animals, or even to take a walk through bush where every animal for miles had not been scared away, we had to lock up the dogs before we left, ignoring their whines and their howls. Even so, if let out too soon, they would follow. Once, after we had walked six miles or so, a leisurely morning’s trek towards the mountains, the dogs arrived, panting, happy, their pink wet tongues hot on our knees and forearms, saying how delighted they were to have found us. They licked and wagged for a few moments -then off they went, they vanished, and did not come home until evening. We were worried. We had not known that they went so far from the farm by themselves. We spoke of how bad it would be if they took to frequenting other farms, perhaps other chicken-runs? But it was all too late. They were too old to train. Either they had to be kept permanently on leashes, tied to trees outside the house, and for dogs like these it was not much better than being dead – either that, or they must run free and take their chances.

  We got news of the dogs in letters from home and it was increasingly bad. My brother and I, at our respective boarding-schools where we were supposed to be learning discipline, order, and sound characters, read: ‘The dogs went away a whole night, they only came back at lunchtime.’ ‘Jock and Bill have been three days and nights in the bush. They’ve just come home, worn out.’ ‘The dogs must have made a kill this time and stayed beside it like wild animals, because they came home too gorged to eat, they just drank a lot of water and fell off to sleep like babies …’ ‘Mr Daly rang up yesterday to say he saw Jock and Bill hunting along the hill behind his house. They’ve been chasing his oxen. We’ve got to beat them when they get home because if they don’t learn they’ll get themselves shot one of these dark nights …’

  They weren’t there at all when we went home for the holidays. They had already been gone for nearly a week. But, or so we flattered ourselves, they sensed our return, for back they came, trotting gently side by side up the hill in the moonlight, two low black shapes moving above the accompanying black shapes of their shadows, their eyes gleaming red as the shafts of lamplight struck them. They greeted us, my brother and I, affectionately enough, but at once went off to sleep. We told ourselves that they saw us as creatures like them, who went off on long exciting hunts: but we knew it was sentimental nonsense, designed to take the edge off the hurt we felt because our animals, our dogs, cared so little about us. They went away again that night or, rather, in the first dawn-light. A week later they came home. They smelled foul, they must have been chasing a skunk or a wild-cat. Their fur was matted with grass-seeds and their skin lumpy with ticks. They drank water heavily, but refused food: their breath was foetid with the smell of meat.

  They lay down to sleep and remained limp while we, each taking an animal, its sleeping head heavy in our laps, removed ticks, grass-seeds, black jacks. On Bill’s forepaw was a hard ridge which I thought was an old scar. He sleep-whimpered when I touched it. It was a noose of plaited grass, used by Africans to snare birds. Luckily it had snapped off. ‘Yes,’ said my father, ‘that’s how they’ll both end, both of them, they’ll die in a trap, and serve them both right, they won’t get any sympathy from me!’

  We were frightened into locking them up for a day; but we could not stand their misery, and let them out again.

  We were always springing game-traps of all kinds. For the big buck – the sable, the eland, the koodoo, the Africans bent a sapling across a path, held it by light string, and fixed on it a noose of heavy wire cut from a fence. For the smaller buck there were low traps with nooses of fine baling wire or plaited tree fibre. And at the corners of the cultivated fields or at the edges of water-holes, where the birds and hares came down to feed, were always a myriad tiny tracks under the grass, and often across every track hung a small noose of plaited grass. Sometimes we spent whole days destroying these snares.

  In order to keep the dogs amused, we took to walking miles every day. We were exhausted, but they were not, and simply went off at night as well. Then we rode bicycles as fast as we could along the rough farm tracks, with the dogs bounding easily beside us. We wore ourselves out, trying to please Jock and Bill, who, we imagined, knew what we were doing and were humouring us. But we stuck at it. Once, at the end of a glade, we saw the skeleton of a large animal hanging from a noose. Some African had forgotten to visit his traps. We showed the skeleton to Jock and Bill, and talked and warned and threatened, almost in tears because human speech was not dog’s speech. They sniffed around the bones, yapped a few times up into our faces – out of politeness, we felt; and were off again into the bush.

  At school we heard that they were almost completely wild. Sometimes they came home for a meal, or a day’s sleep, ‘treating the house,’ my mother complained, ‘like a hotel.’

  Then fate struck, in the shape of a buck-trap.

  One night, very late, we heard whining, and went out to greet them. They were crawling towards the front door, almost on their bellies. Their ribs stuck out, their coats stared, their eyes shone unhealthily. They fell on the food we gave them; they were starved. Then on Jock’s neck, which was bent over the food-bowl, showed the explanation: a thick strand of wire. It was not solid wire, but made of a dozen twisted strands, and had been chewed through, near the collar. We examined Bill’s mouth: chewing the wire through must have taken a long time, days perhaps: his gums and lips were scarred and bleeding, and his teeth were worn down to stumps, like an old dog’s teeth. If the wire had not been stranded, Jock would have died in the trap. As it was, he felt ill, his lungs were strained, since he had been half-strangled with the wire. And Bill could no longer chew properly, he ate uncomfortably, like an old person. They stayed at home for weeks, reformed dogs, barked around the house at night, and ate regular meals.

  Then they went off again, but came home more often than they had. Jock’s lungs weren’t right: he would lie out in the sun, gasping and wheezing, as if trying to rest them. As for Bill, he could only eat soft food. How, then, did they manage when they were hunting?

  One afternoon we were shooting, miles from home, and we saw them. First we heard the familiar excited yapping coming towards us, about two miles off: We were in a large vlei, full of tall whitish grass which swayed and bent along a fast regular line: a shape showed, it was duiker, hard to see until it was close because it was reddish brown in colour, and the vlei had plenty of the pinkish feathery grass that turns a soft intense red in strong light. Being near sunset, the pale grass was on the verge of being invisible, like wires of white light; and the pink grass flamed and glowed; and the fur of the little buck shone red. It swerved suddenly. Had it seen us?
No, it was because of Jock who had made a quick manoeuvring turn from where he had been lying in the pink grass to watch the buck. Behind it was Bill, pistoning along like a machine. Jock, who could no longer run fast, had turned the buck into Bill’s jaws. We saw Bill bound at the little creature’s throat, bring it down and hold it until Jock came in to kill it: his own teeth were useless now.

  We walked over to greet them, but with restraint, for these two growling snarling creatures seemed not to know us, they raised eyes glazed with savagery, as they tore at the dead buck. Or rather, as Jock tore at it. Before we went away we saw Jock pushing over lumps of hot steaming meat towards Bill, who otherwise would have gone hungry.

  They were really a team now; neither could function without the other. So we thought.

  But soon Jock lay watching the bush, and when Bill came, he licked his ears and face as if he had reverted to the role of Bill’s mother.

  Once I heard Bill barking and went to see. The telephone line ran through a vlei near the house to the farm over the hill. The wires hummed and sang and twanged. Bill was underneath the wires which were a good fifteen feet over his head, jumping and barking at them: he was playing out of exuberance, as he had done when a small puppy. But now it made me sad, seeing the strong dog playing, all alone, while his friend lay quiet in the sun, wheezing from damaged lungs.

  And what did Bill live on, in the bush? Rats, birds’ eggs, lizards, anything soft enough? That was painful, too, thinking of the powerful hunters in the days of their glory.

  Soon we got telephone calls from neighbours: Bill dropped in, he finished off the food in our dog’s bowl … Bill seemed hungry, so we fed him … Your dog Bill is looking very thin, isn’t he? … Bill was around our chicken-run – I’m sorry, but if he goes for the eggs, then …

  Bill had puppies with a pedigree bitch fifteen miles off: her owners were annoyed: Bill was not good enough for them, and besides there was the question of his ‘bad blood’. All the puppies were destroyed. He was hanging around the house all the time, although he had been beaten, and they had even fired shots into the air to scare him off. Was there anything we could do to keep him at home, they asked; for they were tired of having to keep their bitch tied up?

  No, there was nothing we could do. Rather, there was nothing we would do; for when Bill came trotting up from the bush to drink deeply out of Jock’s bowl, and to lie for a while nose-to-nose with Jock, well, we could have caught him and tied him up, but we did not. ‘He won’t last long anyway,’ said my father. And my mother told Jock that he was a sensible and intelligent dog; for she again sang praises of his nature and character just as if he had never spent so many glorious years in the bush.

  I went to visit the neighbour who owned Bill’s mate. She was tied to a post on the veranda. All night we were disturbed by a wild, sad howling from the bush, and she whimpered and strained at her rope. In the morning I walked out into the hot silence of the bush, and called to him: Bill, Bill, it’s me. Nothing, no sound. I sat on the slope of an ant-heap in the shade, and waited. Soon Bill came into view, trotting between the trees. He was very thin. He looked gaunt, stiff, wary – an old outlaw, afraid of traps. He saw me, but stopped about twenty yards off. He climbed half-way up another ant-hill and sat there in full sunlight, so I could see the harsh patches on his coat. We sat in silence, looking at each other. Then he lifted his head and howled, like the howl dogs give to the full moon, long, terrible, lonely. But it was morning, the sun calm and clear, and the bush without mystery. He sat and howled his heart out, his muzzle pointed away towards where his mate was chained. We could hear the faint whimpering she made, and the clink of her metal dish as she moved about. I couldn’t stand it. It made my flesh cold, and I could see the hairs standing up on my forearm. I went over to him and sat by him and put my arm around his neck as once, so many years ago, I had put my arm around his mother that moonlit night before I stole her puppy away from her. He put his muzzle on my forearm and whimpered or rather cried. Then he lifted it and howled … ‘Oh, my God, Bill, don’t do that, please don’t, it’s not the slightest use, please, dear Bill …’ But he went on, until suddenly he leaped up in the middle of a howl, as if his pain were too strong to contain sitting, and he sniffed at me, as if to say: ‘That’s you, is it, well, goodbye’ – then he turned his wild head to the bush and trotted away.

  Very soon he was shot, coming out of a chicken-run early one morning with an egg in his mouth.

  Jock was quite alone now. He spent his old age lying in the sun, his nose pointed out over the miles and miles of bush between our house and the mountains where he had hunted all those years with Bill. He was really an old dog, his legs were stiff, and his coat was rough, and he wheezed and gasped. Sometimes, at night, when the moon was up, he went out to howl at it, and we would say: ‘He’s missing Bill.’ He would come back to sit at my mother’s knee, resting his head so that she could stroke it. She would say: ‘Poor old Jock, poor old boy, are you missing that bad dog Bill?’

  Sometimes, when he lay dozing, he started up and went trotting on his stiff old legs through the house and the out-houses, anxiously sniffing everywhere and anxiously whining. Then he stood, upright, one paw raised, as he did when he was young, and gazed over the bush and softly Whined. And we would say: ‘He must have been dreaming he was out hunting with Bill.’

  He got ill. He could hardly breathe. We carried him in our arms down the hill into the bush, and my mother stroked and patted him while my father put the gun barrel to the back of his head and shot him.

  The New Man

  About three miles on the track to the station a smaller overgrown road branched to the Manager’s House. This house had been built by the Rich Mitchells for their manager. Then they decided to sell a third of their farm, with the house ready for its owner. It stood empty a couple of years, with sacks of grain and ox-hides in it. The case had been discussed and adjudicated on the verandas of the district: no. Rich Mitchell was not right to sell that part of his farm, which was badly watered and poorish soil, except for a hundred acres or so. At the very least he should have thrown in a couple of miles of his long vlei with the lands adjacent to it. No wonder Rich Mitchell was rich (they said); and when they met him their voices had a calculated distance: ‘Sold your new farm yet, Rich?’ No, he hadn’t sold it, nor did he, for one year, then another. But the rich can afford to wait. (As they said on the verandas.)

  The farm was bought by a Mr Rooyen who had already gone broke farming down Que Que way. The Grants went to visit, Mrs Grant in her new silk, Mr Grant grumbling because it was the busy season. The small girl did not go, she refused, she wanted to stay in the kitchen with old Tom the cookboy, where she was happy, watching him make butter.

  That evening, listening with half an ear to the parents’ talk, it was evident things weren’t too good. Mr Rooyen hadn’t a penny of his own; he had bought the farm through the Land Bank, and was working on an eight-hundred-pounds loan. What it amounted to was a gamble on the first season. ‘It’s all very well,’ said Mr Grant, summing up with the reluctant critical note in his voice that meant he knew he would have to help Mr Rooyen, would do so, but found it all too much. And, sure enough, in the dry season the Rooyen cattle were running on Grant land and using the Grant well. But Mr Rooyen had become ‘the new man in the Manager’s House’.

  The first season wasn’t too bad, so the small girl gathered from the talk on the verandas, and Mr Rooyen might make out after all. But he was very poor. Mrs Grant, when they had too much cheese or butter, or baked, sent supplies over by the cook. In the second year Mr Grant lent Mr Rooyen two hundred pounds to tide him over. The small girl knew that the new neighbour belonged for ever to that category of people who, when parting from the Grants, would wring their hands and say in a low, half-ashamed voice: ‘You’ve been very good to me and I’ll never forget it.’

  The first time she saw the new farmer, who never went anywhere, was when the Grants went into the station and gave Mr Rooyen a li
ft. He could not afford a car yet. He stood on the track waiting for the Grants, and behind him the road to his house was even more overgrown with bushes and grass, like a dry river-bed between the trees. He sat in the back answering Mr Grant’s questions about how things were going. She did not notice him much, or rather refused to notice him, because she definitely did not like him, although he was nothing she had not known all her life. A tallish man, dressed in bush khaki, blue eyes inflamed by the sun, he was burned – not a healthy reddish brown – but a mahogany colour, because he was never out of the sun, never stopped working. This colour in a white man, the small girl already knew, meant a desperate struggling poverty and it usually preceded going broke or getting very ill. But the reason she did not like him, or that he scared her, was the violence of his grievance. The hand which lay on the back of the car seat behind Mr Grant trembled slightly; his voice trembled as he spoke of Rich Mitchell, his neighbour, who had a vlei seven miles long and would neither sell nor rent him any of it. ‘It isn’t right,’ he kept saying. ‘He doesn’t make use of my end. Perhaps his cattle graze there a couple of weeks in the dry season, but that’s all.’ All this meant that his cattle would be running with the Grants’ again when the grass was low. More: that he was appealing, through Mr Grant, for justice, to the unconstituted council of farmers who settled these matters on their verandas.