for permission to pursue him, I discovered Father leaving the house for his office.
“Where have you been, laddie? Did you find him?”
“He said he’s leaving for a few days. He told me not to worry. But I
“You saw the rains coming?”
“Yes.”
Papa smiled. “It’s like this, son: His people walk for days to follow the rains. In a desert, water is life. So if the storms fail to come, there is great hardship. He shall be gone for several days, I would guess, but he knows what he is doing.”
“There was lightning, Papa. He might be hurt.”
“No, he shall be fine. His people use lightning as a compass.” Seeing I was not convinced, he patted my shoulder. “Fear not for Midnight.”
“Fear not! But he’s all alone. And he doesn’t know Portugal. And … and — ”
“John, Midnight said to me once that the desert waits for the lightning like a bride for her groom. And when it comes, laddie, the desert unites with the lightning. All that lives there — all the great and small animals, and all the men and women and children — they abandon what they have been doing and move off. For them, lightning is a summons from the heavens. They must follow it or lose their purpose. Now, John, listen closely…. Midnight told me he was prevented from following the rains at Mr. Reynolds’s farm. He was ordered never to leave the property. But he is his own man here, and I shall never prevent him from doing as he wishes. You would not want him to live without purpose, would you, lad?”
I knew the answer Papa desired, but I was feeling too troubled to give it. He answered for me. “No, you would not. And he’ll not be hurt. He’ll come back to us.”
“But Porto is not a desert.”
“Nevertheless, Midnight will always follow the rain and lightning, just as we all follow the path life gives us. You can count on that, laddie.”
During Midnight’s absence, the heavenly floodgates opened for four days and nights, creating rivers of muck that flowed through our streets. We expected Midnight to be covered head to foot with mud and sneezing like a Druid on arriving home, but expectations always counted for very little with regard to our Bushman friend. When he returned five days later, his fawn-colored woolen breeches, white shirt, and blue waistcoat were impeccably clean. True, his bare feet were streaked with soil, but that, together with the dank smell of wet worsted, was all that indicated nearly a week spent under the rain, clouds, and stars. “Good day,” he said, his amused smile lighting up his face. “We saw you from afar and we are dying of hunger.”
After our exclamations of joy, Mother was the first to notice an inch-long gash across his forehead. She darted to him and touched her fingertip softly to the bruise, where blood had crusted. Midnight laughed and said it was nothing, then took her hand and brought it expertly to his lips, as he had been taught.
“I shall bandage it for you presently,” she said.
“Yes, but first let me look at the Stewart family again.”
Midnight was plainly overjoyed to be home. When he caught my look of happiness, he winked, as though he would have much to tell me in private. I rushed over to hug him and breathe in the comforting scent of him.
Papa helped Midnight put away his pack, quiver, and bow, then sat him down at our table, where Mother tended to his wound. I could no longer stifle the one question that I was desperate to ask and shouted, “But how did you keep your damned clothing so clean?!”
“John!” Mama cried. “A gentleman never speaks such words, even if vexed.”
To which I naturally replied, “But I am not yet a gentleman.” I was not jesting in the least, since I had decided that I ought not be required to conduct myself like a gentleman until I was at least sixteen.
“A truer word you have never spoken,” Mama replied, not without humor. “But I shall turn you into one if it’s the last thing I do.”
“So how
“As soon as I was safe in the countryside, with no houses nearby, I removed my clothes and folded them carefully in my pack, then tied them high up in an oak tree. They became very, very wet,” he laughed. “But they dried out today on my way home. Except the breeches.”
“How did you remember where the oak was?” I asked.
He looked bewildered. “John, don’t be silly — I could never lose such an important tree.”
“Enough of this,” Mama ordered. “Put on something dry this instant. I’ll not have you ill again before Christmas. My heart could not bear it. And as you are to start your apprenticeship soon, it would not do for you to arrive feverish at Senhor Benjamin’s doorstep. If you cannot — ”
Mama might have gone on like this until dawn had Papa not risked her wrath and interrupted, “You must do as she says, Midnight, or we shall have no peace. I beg you to go up with John to your room and change, then come down and take some supper with us.”
Midnight and I raced up the stairs to his room. While changing his clothes, he began to speak of his adventures. I nearly always felt a glow of privilege warming me deep inside when I listened to him. When I once described this sensation to him, he replied that when I was delirious with fever he had fed me a lightning bug to keep my chills away. The bug was still inside me. He harbored one inside himself as well, and when the two met they flashed their light in recognition.
Buttoning his shirt, Midnight told me how, after leaving Porto, he had sought out the heart of the storm, threading his way across farmland and forest toward the ever-darkening sky. When I asked if he’d met other people along the way, he replied, “No one. I stayed out of sight. I am clever-clever at hiding when I want to.”
He said the rains reached him as he climbed a hill crowned by pines. He had danced there for hours.
“To summon more rain?” I asked.
He shrugged, then made a clicking noise with his tongue. When I insisted that he reply in English, he simply grinned. This was hardly the first time Midnight had made me settle for a clicking in lieu of an explanation, but I learned that his silence signified neither a betrayal nor even a withholding of secrets, as I first presumed. It was simply that he could not give me an adequate answer.
Downstairs, Midnight recounted — for the benefit of my eager parents — what I thought were the mere beginnings of an epic story of perilous adventure. But he brought the proceedings to a swift close by explaining that after finishing his dance he spent the next four days hunting. Unaware of my expectation of at least an hour’s enthrallment, he picked up his spoon and began ladling carrot soup into his hungry mouth.
“Did you … did you kill many things?” I asked.
Mama thought this an inappropriate subject for a lad my age and tut-tutted me, but Father said, “No, May, let us hear a little of the spoils of war.”
Midnight said, “I killed a large gazelle. A beautiful creature.” His eyes shone. “I sketched him on a great rock as well.”
“How could you bear to take his life?” asked Mother, shaking her head. “I should be brokenhearted to see such a thing.”
“I am a Bushman, just as he was a gazelle. I must eat or die.”
“Why did you sketch him?” I asked.
“I must mark the spot where he has died. So that Mantis knows.”
“And how did you get that cut on your forehead?” Papa asked.
“My arrow pierced the gazelle here,” he answered, pointing to his ribs, “and he ran off swiftly. I pursued him through the forest. A branch came at me — ” Here, he made a swiping motion with his hand and laughed at his own carelessness.
“What else did you eat?” I asked.
“Two hares. And a great deal of ants.”
“Ants?” Mama made a gagging sound, then couldn’t stop coughing.
With his mischief-making apparent only as a glimmer in his eyes, Midnight added with grave seriousness, “Your Portuguese ants are not nearly as good-tasting as ours in Africa.”
“I shall make a note of that,” said Father, and feigned writing this tidbit on a notecard.
Mama’s mouth had fallen open. Rapping her fist on our table, she said, “I’ll not hear any more of this talk of
