Mortals

looked odd but better. It would look odd to Keletso when he got back to him, but not as frightening as the alternative.

One last task was to find heavy things he could heap on the drinking trough to keep it secure until the authorities could come. There were no heavy things. He needed the drinking trough to be in place over its contents, its contents… Because the Cape vultures would be coming soon, dropping down through the smoke. He had been creative. There was no time to do a burial. What he could do was cap one end of the trough with the tipped-over three-legged pot sitting in ashes next to the second rondavel. It was a heavy item, very heavy, a cauldron. It was iron. It would do.

He rolled the pot into place and tipped it over and got the mouth solidly over one end of the drinking trough. But then for the foot of the trough he had nothing, unless he made a collection of less heavy items stand for something truly heavy like the three-legged pot. That was all he could do. He brought fire-blackened rocks from the ring around the cooking space the pot had been in the center of. And he found a sledgehammer head, solitary, detached from its shaft, that would add something. And then he dragged the kraal gate over and laid it on top of the rocks. And that was as much as was possible. He began coughing again and again asked God to help him stop. He stopped. He thanked God.

Whatever was twitching in the landscape across the donga was not being aggressive. He could see more of the shape than before and it was low to the ground. He had to proceed around to that side and get close enough to what he was seeing to determine what it was and help it or kill it or run or do whatever God might suggest at that point. He was nowhere nearer believing in God than he had ever been in his adult life, and yet he doubted he could have gotten through this excursion without the God-talk. No doubt someone like Morel would sneer at him. He wouldn’t mind discussing it with Morel someday. His wife liked to talk to Morel. She found him interesting. But the God-talk was like an addiction, like needing to chew gum. God-talk assuaged something and got people through extreme situations without turning them devout, so what was the problem? It was a puzzle for people like Morel.

He got around to the far side of the donga and advanced delicately toward the object of his attention, which was inert, not moving at all. It was a white low lump, a long white low lump half obscured in the wreckage of a rough trellis that had once supported granadilla vines. Now the trellis was destroyed, pulled down, the vines uprooted. Someone had taken the trouble to dump diesel oil into a pathetic melon patch in the same area. He could see now that the white bundle was only partly white. He was seeing white fabric, a bedspread, stained red in places, swaddled or caught around an unknown thing. He wanted to leave it alone but knew he couldn’t. He was afraid. It was impossible not to think it might be a child, a small child, or an infant, swaddled up there, dead. Hello I must be going, he thought. God would keep it from being a child.

He pulled at the fabric. It was fixed to whatever it contained. A metal spindle or sharpened rod had been driven through it and into the body within, because it was going to be a body. Blood had welled up from the wound the rod had inflicted.

He unfurled the bedspread. He thanked God for his goodness, because the bedspread had been wrapped around a dog, a dead dog, newly dead. It was a ridgeback, gaunt, as they always seemed to be, wolflike, gray, with its coarse coat of hair tufting peculiarly along the spine. This must have been the camp watchdog. It was an old animal. And it was clear what had happened. The dog had a dart in its throat, a flimsy metal thing, a Bushman dart. So a Bushman had gotten close enough to blow a dart into it, to shut it up, and the dart would have had one of their paralyzing poisons on it, and then to completely neutralize the dog someone had muffled it up in a bedspread and jabbed a skewer into it for good measure. And what Ray had seen was the dog dragging his shroud feebly around, unable to bark, obviously, giving his last kicks and twitches. The dart proved that Bushmen were involved in this. He would have preferred not knowing that for a certainty.

A washtub caught his eye. He could use it. He pressed the dog bundle into it and overturned it and placed it next to the drinking trough tomb, under the kraal gate. It was pointless. Nothing could stop the legions of carrion eaters for long. Everything is a gesture, he thought.

Now it would be interesting to see if he had the strength to get back to the Land Cruiser. He was filling up with hollowness, if such a thing was possible. It was his right knee that was problematical. If he could go slowly enough he was sure he could manage, but if he went slowly he ran the risk of getting back to the road just in time to see Keletso driving off toward Nokaneng. He had twenty minutes, he calculated. He had to start off immediately. There was no time to do more than he had. He retrieved his knobkerrie. He could go.

A terrible cry alarmed him. There was more happening. Someone was screaming somewhere. He had to hide, but he had to go as well. It was too much. His knee was bad, hurting.

Another berserk cry came, as a figure appeared on the crest of the ridge he had to cross to get back to safety, a figure waving an ax. But then it was fine, a fine thing.

It was Keletso, disobedient man, angelic man, trying to terrify any antagonists there might be.

27. Nokaneng

They were in Nokaneng. They had made it by early dusk. They were in Nokaneng, eating.

Nothing is perfect, Ray thought. They were under pressure to finish eating with dispatch. There was a bathing shed attached to the Golden Wing Restaurant and General Dealer and he and Keletso had booked hot baths and the donkey boiler was heating up as they ate, but the proprietor, Rra Makoko, wanted them to eat and bathe and begone, so that he could close shop on time. Closing on the dot was a ritual in Botswana. Ray wanted to relax over his food and in fact dine for a change. His meal seemed delicious. It was rice with chicken gizzards in powerful peri-peri sauce, with bread rolls and Pine Nut soda. And tea was coming. Nothing was bothering him much, not even the outrageous five-pula charge for the load of cow chips and kindling that would be consumed in heating their bathwater. The help wanted him to finish. An elderly woman, barefoot, in a blue housecoat and white headscarf, was circling their table, at a distance, it was true, but still it was unnerving, as it was meant to be. Iris knew how to stop that when they did it. She would make a scene if she had to. She was bold. He loved her.

He sent Keletso off to bathe. Ray’s exhaustion, which had abated during the drive from the cattle post, was back, toweringly back. He wanted to put his head down on the table for a few beats, but that would give the impression he was drunk. The proprietor was a severe sort. He watched his plate being taken away. He had almost been finished. He held tight to his half-full tumbler of soda.

He liked the dim light in this room. He liked the Golden Wing. He found it interesting. It consisted of an old colonial residence much repaired and added to and attended by huts and outbuildings and derelict vehicles and parts of vehicles. The residence was a low, rambling wooden structure whose exterior was covered with green- painted panels of metal stamped with geometric designs and whose corrugated iron roof was painted rouge red, in mimicry of terracotta roofing, Ray supposed. There were numerous windows, all heavily barred, and some of the windowpanes clearly dated from the turn of the century or earlier, if that was what the thickness and irregularity in those panes meant. There was a broad veranda and there was a cactus garden flourishing, if that was the word, on three sides of the place. The store or dealership took up what had been the front parlor and dining room of the colonial house. It was aromatic because the wooden shelving, the wide plank floors, the wainscoting were all kept in a state of high polish. The grounds of the place looked like a cyclone had tossed things around. There was no external upkeep. But indoors there were armadas of women constantly mopping and oiling and dusting. He knew the pattern. And probably it made sense to concentrate on the struggle for interior cleanliness and amenity against the ceaseless intrusions of dust and sand and whatnot the Kalahari could be counted on to deliver. Nothing could be done about the Kalahari, the outdoors. This was a desolation, after all. Nokaneng had been founded in a particularly bleak part of the desolation. Trees of any kind were scarce thereabouts.

They had been served in the main room of the store, at a refectory table placed near the front. Three gas refrigerators, industrial-size units, took up most of one wall. The shelves were well stocked, but the selection was, he would say, on the limited side, featuring the usual staples, sacks of mealie and sorghum and rice, tinned pilchards and beef tongue and beetroot, cooking oil, boxes of Joko tea, containers of paraffin, packets of fruit salts. Four candles were burning on the counter near the baroque, gleaming, antique cash register. A woman, a different