Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [44]
There is a hissing pause of disappointment, and then the voice comes back at us. “Sending mobile medic team to Oscar Papa 28. Over.”
“Thank you. Over and out.”
Dad comes back. He says, “It was July.”
Mum straightens up and stares at Dad. “What?”
“The boys haven’t seen him since this morning. He’s not in his hut.”
“Fucking kaffir,” says Mum.
“The boys are coming with me. I’m going to catch him.”
“The boys” are Dad’s most loyal laborers. Duncan is the boss-boy. He has a handsome open face, with a long nose and wide-set eyes. Cephas is a small squat man whose father, Chibodo, is our witch doctor. Chibodo has very long nails and is very, very old. He smells as old as an ancient tree, like burnt bark. He doesn’t talk very much, but when he opens his mouth he has only a few teeth (black and brown pegs) and his tongue looks very pink, thin and alive and wet. He sits at night in the watchman’s hut, right up against the hills, and watches the maize, scaring off the baboons that come to steal corncobs. He has an old plow disk hanging from a tree which he beats with a simbe, like the old woman in the TTL who warns terrorists when a convoy is coming. Cephas has learned secrets from his father: he can track animals that have passed by days before. He can smell where terrorists have been, see from the shift in the landscape where they are camping. He can put his mind inside the mind of any other living thing and tell you where it has gone. He can touch the earth and know if an animal has passed that way. But he can’t tell you why. Philemon, the cattle boy, can read tracks, but he can’t read tracks as well as Cephas. Philemon is the one who can quiet a cow in labor and sing the calf into life when it is born too sick to stand. Cloud is the man from the workshop who whittles wood with a lathe into salt and pepper pots, spice racks, eggcups. He smells of the shiny paint he sprays onto the wood and his eyes are always burning red from the ganja he smokes.
“I’m going into the hills. He’ll be trying to get to Mozambique.”
“He’s armed,” says Mum. July has stolen knives. “And he’s not alone. He couldn’t carry all that stuff on his own. You’ll need backup.”
Dad says, “I’ll be okay.”
“At least call.”
Dad radios for backup but no one will come with him. This is not a military emergency, it’s only a robbery. We have not been attacked by terrorists. Dad’s friends tell him not to go into the hills. There are terrorists in those hills, and the hills themselves are unsafe: they are edged by minefields.
Dad settles on his haunches and smokes. Violet moans.
The men—Dad’s “boys”—arrive on foot. I see them running steadily up the hill to the house; they have lit the branches of a tree for light. They have a conference with Dad and decide to wait until just before first light before leaving for the hills. They don’t want to run into a terrorist camp by mistake. Dad gives the men a packet of cigarettes each. They are talking in low, intense voices to one another in Shona; their words are like water over rocks, bubbling, soft, incessant. Dad packs food and water, a shovel, a hatchet, matches, and a gun. They will drive as far as they can into the hills and then walk toward Mozambique from there.
Before first light, before Dad leaves, the mobile medics arrive. By the time they reach the house, Violet has had three drips, one in one arm and two in the other, and her eyes have fluttered open once or twice, but each time the pain washes over her again and drags her back deep into a blessed, dark, empty place. Near death.
Mum says, “Fergodsake, hold on. You can make it.”
The first medic, a man, hops out of the Land Rover, gun slung over his shoulder, and comes over to look at Violet. He turns away and vomits behind the flower bed in which our gardener has allowed some cannas to live. The second man comes out. He waves a cigarette at Dad.
“Howzit?”
Dad says, “Okay.”
The medics swarm around the back of the Land Rover. Mum crawls out. Her hands and clothes are covered with blood. “She’s going to make it,” she says.