Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [22]
She taught the horses not to be scared of guns. She burst paper bags at their feet for a whole morning. She popped balloons all afternoon. And the next day she shot guns right by their heads until they only swished their tails and jerked their heads at the sound, as if trying to get rid of a biting fly. So the horses lazily ignore gunshot when we’re out riding, but they still bolt if there’s a rustle in the bushes, or if a cow surprises them, or if they see a monkey or a snake, or if a troop of baboons startles out of the bush with their warning cry, “Wa-hu!”
Dad and Pippin
DOG RESCUE
Although Mum actually shot an Egyptian spitting cobra once, and killed it. But that was for real, when her dogs were threatened, which is more serious than target practice.
We are sitting at the breakfast table eating oat porridge. Mum is ignoring my string of questions. She is reading a book and the radio is on. Sally Donaldson hosts Forces Requests and plays songs sent in by loved ones for the boys in the bush.
“Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away,” I sing along.
Mum says, irritably, “Shhh,” and turns the radio down.
If I peer around the huge stone-wall flower bed Mum has erected to stop bombs and bullets from coming in the dining room window, I can see that Flywell has brought the horses up for our morning ride. I look at Mum. She is absorbed in her book. We won’t get out for a ride until it’s too hot and then we’ll ride until the afternoon, riding through lunch, past the time when my stomach turns and knots with hunger and my throat is burning with thirst and the sun will burn the back of our necks. I will complain of thirst and Mum will say, “You should have had more tea at breakfast.”
I kick the legs of my chair. Mum says, without looking up, “Don’t.” And then, “Eat up.”
But I’ve already eaten up. “Can I have some more?”
“Ask July.”
But before I can get to the kitchen to ask July if there’s more porridge, there is a scramble of dogs from under the dining room table, claws scrabbling on the cement floor before they find purchase and race yapping into the pantry, which is between the kitchen and dining room. Mum looks up from her book. “What have you got?” she asks the dogs.
Three of the dogs retreat sheepishly from the pantry and suddenly Mum says, “Oh hell,” because she can see from their faces and from the sound of their voices that they’re barking at a snake. And then the maid starts to shout, “Madam! Madam!” from the kitchen door and pointing. She has her hand over her mouth, “Madam! Nyuka!”
Mum and I stand at the entrance to the pantry and stare in at the snake. Its neck is caped, as wide as a fan, and it’s swaying and tall.
Mum shouts, “Stand behind the table!” She calls the dogs. Shea and Jacko, Best Beloved Among Dogs, are still barking at the snake. “Come!” shouts Mum. She’s loading the magazine. I hear the bullets go in, clicka-click. “Come here!” Suddenly the snake rears back and snaps forward and sets out into the air a thin mist of poisonous spray and the dogs come reeling back out of the pantry, yelping and blind, staggering from the pain. Mum lifts the gun to her shoulder. She squeezes her eyes shut and eases back on the trigger. There’s an explosion of glasses and bottles and tins and a wild chattering of bullets. Mum has the Uzi on automatic. She empties an entire magazine toward the snake and then there is dust, the splintering of still-falling glass, the whimpering dogs. Violet, July,