White Dog Fell From the Sky (22 page)

The road was rough, and Ian’s head
bounced against the roof of the truck. The convoy got stuck in the sand twice on the way
to Maun. The radiator of the Land Rover needed filling up a dozen times before they
returned, but it held until the vehicle was able to limp into town.

The group stayed that night at Crocodile
Camp on the banks of the Thamalakane River, and everyone but Arthur Haddock gathered on
the veranda, drinking bad beer, watching the river turn into a ribbon of blackness. The
hippo voices sounded like the bellow of a huge cow. Before the dark swallowed
everything, there were their two enormous heads, their eyes and rounded ears and great
wide-spaced nostrils just above the water in the shadows of the bank, followed by their
hulking broad backs.

Will asked Alice, “Are you glad you
came?”

“God, yes.”

“Do you think we accomplished
anything?”

“I don’t know. People can
surprise you.” Ian watched her. When she wasn’t saying everything she felt,
he noticed she pushed her tongue into her right cheek, which created an almost
imperceptible bulge, like a bubble of tiny words straining to get out.

“Arthur’s not the only bloke in
the Ministry of Agriculture.”

“But he was the one who came,
unfortunately.”

“You know,” said Will,
“someday, after millions of animals have piled up against fences, someone’s
going to say the fences didn’t do any good, and they’ll come down. The
bloody ignorance, it staggers one. You wonder how the human race got this
far.”

A sudden hissing expulsion of air from the
river surprised him. Crocodiles. No one else seemed to have heard it. Ian felt sadness
sweep over him, partly at Will’s words, partly at what felt suddenly like the
waste of his own life. Somehow, things had become fractured. He looked at Alice, thought
of the freshness of her laughter, her anger, her grief, how they seemed to pour straight
out of some living cauldron in her.

He stood up, holding half a bottle of beer,
and left the circle, muttering something about needing to go have a piss. He felt her
eyes on him, felt them burrow into the curve of his lower back, almost as though
she’d laid a hand there.

He needed to get away from her. A point of
no return would soon be reached. He wasn’t far from it now. You’re on a
river. You hear the sound of a waterfall in your ears. You haven’t navigated this
particular river before, but you’ve navigated others like it. You’re
paddling along at the same rate as the river, hardly noticing how fast the trees are
whizzing by, when the earth suddenly drops away and the water rushes down into boiling
mayhem, leaving no time for regrets, second thoughts, resolutions.

There was something ancient about her large,
generous face. Her eyes looked right at you. They weren’t drifty like the eyes of
most people, looking vaguely in your direction, glancing off. They saw you;
it was like looking into the sea on a cloudy day: gray, blue, green.
They were wide-set, her mouth also wide, easy with its shy smile. Her face had a
calmness in it, the kind you see in wild animals who have no predators. Her hair was
almost always a mess. He liked this. And he liked that it was already almost entirely
gray, as though some older wisdom had outpaced her age. It was curly with a kind of wild
abandon, and he often had to stop his hand, wanting to tuck it behind an ear, out of her
eyes. In the heat of the day, she pinned it up, but not successfully. It often fell
down.

He was too old for her. Down the road, it
would be miserable for her to be saddled with an old codger shuffling about in bedroom
slippers needing his tea, when she was still in the prime of life. Fifteen years is
almost a generation. And age aside, he wasn’t exactly the catch of a lifetime.
He’d pretty much lost whatever looks he had. His grant awards were hit or miss.
When necessity called, he taught. When he didn’t have to, he wandered about in the
hills, discovering what he could. He’d be hard pressed to say where home was, or
even that it mattered. That had been a problem with any woman who’d ever wanted
him in her life. It would be a problem again.

He felt protective of her. She was a bit of
a mug. He needed to get the hell out. Crack of dawn tomorrow. Give her a wide berth
tonight. Say a quick good-bye when they reached Nata: it’s been dandy, see you
someday. Get over whatever hit him, get back to work. Head for the hills. Literally. He
hadn’t been with a woman in a while. That was part of the problem. A man needs a
woman. But Alice didn’t need him making a shambles of her life.

As he circled around the side of the lodge,
he heard the eerie call of a Pel’s fishing owl, the song rising and falling,
falling some more. He stood still, not breathing. It reminded him of departing souls.
And then he thought, not wanting the thought, of the thousands of animals hung up on
fences, perishing for water. Last night, he’d woken himself, crying out in his
sleep. He couldn’t remember the dream, but he remembered the feel of it. Something
important. Running across an empty tundra, arriving too late.

He went around to the road, away from the
river, and sat on a stone. He imagined an impala arriving at a water hole, its
slenderness mirrored in the surface, spreading its front legs wide before drinking.
One animal. You could look at it forever. Something like wonder was what had first drawn
him to rock paintings. As a boy, while sitting in the cold pews of a church (out of
which he’d bolted the day he was old enough to outrun his mother), he’d seen
people going through the motions of awe. A silver chalice lifted at an altar. A
passionless hymn. It was fine for those who were there, he supposed, but for him, it was
beyond bearing.

Ancient Bushmen pounded hematite for red
paint, bound it with blood serum, shaped quills, feathers, or bones for brushes, and
found the stillness in themselves to capture life as they’d felt it. You could see
it in the paintings: they’d watched, they’d listened, they’d
understood their own place in the universe, no greater and no lesser than the animals
they painted. You could feel in these paintings how time whirled through them, how the
infinite opened before them when they knocked at its door, spilling out its terrible
glories.

Any fool would be happy poking around in the
hills, he thought, making copies of paintings in a notebook, trying to puzzle out the
lives behind the images. But only a handful of San people were now left in Botswana,
whose very existence was threatened by these cursed fences. He imagined returning to the
place he’d first gone with Alice, carrying proper tools this time, cutting the
fence section by section. It wasn’t something he wanted to do. You’re not
born to pull down things other men have erected. Nor did he look forward to the rotting
carcasses he’d find on the boundary. But you know when something feels right by
the way it sweeps through you. It’s no longer an idea but something that inhabits
you.

He stood up, as though tonight was already
too late. He thought he’d go find her, then he thought he’d leave it, then
he thought he’d walk along the road and think a bit. He’d settled on a walk
and was half a kilometer down the road when a battered Toyota pickup stopped. The dust
settled, and a man got out. His gait was familiar. All at once, Ian recognized Roger, an
old friend he’d met on his first trip to
Botswana. It was Roger
who’d taken him up to the Tsodilo Hills for the first time.

“Imagine meeting you here!”
Roger yelled. Ian thumped him on the back. It had been a couple of years since
he’d seen him. Although Ian wasn’t a small man himself, Roger was half a
head taller, a huge, slow-moving ox, deliberate in every way. His parents were
Rhodesian. He’d grown up in Maun, one of four brothers, and was the only one still
left in Botswana.

“Where are you coming from?”
asked Ian.

“Ghanzi. Had to see a fur
trader.”

“Shaw?”

Roger nodded. “And you?”

“I’ve been on a trip,”
said Ian. “Not alone. We got as far as Sehitwa, a little beyond.”

“Who were you with?”

“A guy from agriculture sliding around
in city shoes, another guy from Ministry of Local Government and Lands, Will, the
wildlife chap—you know him—a woman working on San policy, a few others.”

“What were you doing with that lot?
Here, jump in.” He opened the passenger door, and Ian climbed in.

“Glorified sightseeing. The idea was
to talk to people, try to understand the needs of all parties, and come up with a
reasonable land-use policy, something that won’t screw wildlife and the
San.”

“Good luck with
that
.”
He drove up the road and stopped in front of Crocodile Camp.

“I’ve got a favor to ask,”
Ian said. “You wouldn’t be heading toward Nata by any chance?”

“I’m leaving in an hour or so.
Just have to grab a bite to eat and fill up with petrol.”

“I’d like to hitch a
ride.”

“No problem. You want dinner
first?”

“I’ve eaten.”

“About that woman you mentioned. Is
she spoken for?”

“God’s sake, Roger. You never
quit.”

“What does she look like?” They
got out of the truck and went up the steps onto the porch. They lingered there a moment,
looking in the direction of the truck cooling in the evening shadows.

“Let up, would you?” He felt
disloyal going on, but he did. “The woman’s American, recently divorced.
Alice is her name. She works in Local Government and Lands with C.T. what’s his
name. She’s prematurely gray, nice body. Big bones. Not your type though. You go
for the slim, frail sort.”

Roger laughed.

Something made Ian turn, and his eyes went
hollow. Alice was standing there. And then she was gone.

“Bloody hell,” he said.

“You’re right,” said
Roger. “Not my type.”

“Put a sock in it, man.”

“It’s her you’re running
from, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer. But then he said,
“You know, forget about Nata. I need to stay the night in Maun after all, head to
Nata with the rest of them in the morning.”

Roger laughed. “They’ll do that
to you—you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.”

Fuck you,
he wanted to say. But it
was his own damn fault. “See you before long, old man. Maybe when I get to Nata,
if you’re still about.”

He stumbled away toward his room, no idea
how to make it better. Splashed water on his face and dried it with a towel. Changed his
shirt, as though he were starting the day again, then looked in the mirror with a hard
eye and said, “You stupid cock up.” He turned on his heel without saying
another word to that sorry bastard in the mirror and headed down the steps.

He saw her from a distance, sitting with
Will on the porch overlooking the river. Neither was speaking, just watching the night.
If he joined them, she’d find the earliest opportunity to escape, and that would
be that. He waited in the shadows of the building. And waited some more. He’d
already made up his mind to clear out, and as those silly nits were fond of saying, God
had provided. She’d never want to see him again. As it should be.

But still he waited. As his legs cramped, he
treated the pain as a form of penance. His mind chattered. He wanted it to be still a
moment, but his thoughts scooted out from beneath him. Something dark flew overhead.
He’d never particularly liked Maun, as beautiful as the river was. Depressing
expatriate community. A lot of heavy drinkers. Wives in various stages of desperation.
People went bonkers in places like this.

Alice stood up just then. Will got to his
feet too, waited until she’d gone a few steps, and sat down again, his feet
propped back up on the railing.

It turned out it wasn’t in him to run
her down. It wasn’t right. He’d scare her out here in the dark for one
thing. For another, she’d know he’d been watching. So he left it and went to
his room and thrashed under mosquito netting until the night was used up and its scraps
had smudged into dark shadows under his eyes. By morning, he looked and felt like
hell.

Alice was up early, still furious with
him—the insolence of the man. She felt humiliated, angry with herself for being taken
in. She stood on the veranda of the old hotel, trembling with something more than anger,
something more vulnerable that she’d just as soon not admit to herself. The
morning breeze came off the river. She’d intended to head down there, but the
hotel owner’s little toy terrier had latched on to her, his front paws wrapped
around one of her ankles, pumping away, his ears slapping against his eyes with his
violent exertions. She shook her leg. “Get away, Ralph.”

She’d always been susceptible to fleas
and had noticed the night before that welts appeared on her ankles when Ralph was near.
She dragged her canine ball and chain forward, and when she got to the stairs, she
thought of bumping him down, but he became satiated and let go. Still, he trailed her
with his self-involved little snout. How did people ever love an animal like this?

“Go home, Ralph,” she said.
“I’m going to the river. There are crocodiles down there who love little
dogs.” His whole back end wagged. She headed instead for the road, hoping
he’d peel off and cling to
someone else. The wooden steps
creaked, and Ralph trotted in front of her, his scraggly tail held high.

Nothing seemed to move or breathe. Her feet
raised small clouds of dust as she walked away from the hotel toward town. She had no
destination, but her feet walked faster, as though she did.
He
, that man, was
back there somewhere, feeling what she hoped was remorse, but perhaps that was too much
to ask for.

Ralph suddenly took off into the
undergrowth. “Ralph!” she called.

“Ralph! Come here, damn it.”

She heard him crashing around, breaking
twigs. For a small animal, he made a huge racket. And then the sound of his high-pitched
terror. She beat her way down a narrow footpath and found a pack of feral dogs
surrounding him. “Get away!” she yelled running toward the pack, waving her
arms. She picked up a couple of stones and hurled them. One of them found its mark on
the flank of a dog that looked more like a hyena. It slunk off, but it turned and began
creeping back.