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By Root 552 0

the second tank of brackish, throat-clinging water from the river has nearly run out. Our tea has started to taste like the bottom of the water tank, metallic and singeing. It’s so hot, the bush feels narrow, slender, barely-hanging-on. Everything is still. We drive past impala and they barely flinch, shoulders hunched under the thin, fluttering shadows of thorn scrub. The only things moving are their little, alarm-flashing tails. Even the wild cattle are subdued by the heat. Dad has them in the kraal. They bleat weakly; their sound is dry and wispy, evaporating into the dust. There is a wood fire in which there are four branding irons, getting hot. And a kettle in which Dad is boiling water for tea.

Dad tells the men to push the cattle through the chases. They make a run at the cows. The cows stir; dust rises and is a blinding, blond mist. They begin to cry like foghorns. Dad says, “Bloody idiots.” And then “Stop!” These are lowveldt men, who have never herded cattle before. They are bush men. They can make fire by rubbing two sticks together and they can kill impala with a spear. They can snare rabbits and live off stagnant river wells. They can tell their way from one end of the ranch to the other in the dark by reading stars, but they cannot herd cattle.

They are herding cattle the way they would herd impala into a baobab-rope net. Waving arms, coming at a run, “Wooo-ooop!”

“Stop!”

The men stop. The dust settles. The cows are jittery now, ready to startle.

Dad says, “Pole, pole, eh?”

“Boss?”

“Slowly, slowly, catch a monkey.”

The men looked confused.

“Come on, Vanessa. Bobo. Let’s show them how to herd cows.”

We come at the cows slowly. “Dip-dip-dip-dip-dip,” we sing. The cows start to move forward. The herd leader—an old, scarred bull with a mean slant to his horns—is anxious. He looks over his shoulder and makes a sweeping, half-threatening gesture at Dad that could also be a halfhearted attempt to shoo a fly. Dad has him cornered. “Dip-dip-dip-dip.” Dad lowers his eyes, sticks a shoulder out and down: “Dip-dip-dip-dip.” The old bull begins to make his way into the races.

Dad won’t allow sticks, shouting. He won’t allow the cows to run. “Stress them, and they’ll drop their babies too early. They’ll lose weight. They’ll sicken and die.” Dad comes from the side, showing the cow his shoulders. He whistles gently. The cows stop looking panicked and they begin to move calmly toward the race. They have dumb cow faces on now, they will go anywhere. “Treat your cows nicely and they’ll treat you nicely,” says Dad.

Leopard skin—Devuli

CHARLIE CHILVERS

Dad knocks on the door. “Tea’s ready!” It’s still dark, not quite four o’clock. Dad has lit a candle in the bathroom and there is a paraffin lamp hissing bluely on the dining room table where Thompson has laid out tea. He has already put a basket in the car with our breakfast: boiled eggs; small twists of newspaper containing pinches of salt; slices of buttered bread; bananas; and a thermos flask of black coffee. The milk is in a small, separate plastic bottle.

Before five, we pile into the Land Rover and head for Mutare. Dad likes to get to town by nine in the morning, when the shops are just starting to open. Dad shops like a man who hates the exercise, spinning in and striding the aisles, paying with scribbled checks, and hurrying out, buckling and overladen with baked beans, candles, soap, oil, yeast, flour, engine oil, toilet paper enough to last a month or two. The young grocery clerks, who run from the stores in their aprons, anxious to help with the bags and boxes and earn a tip, are growled away. Vanessa and I are not allowed in the stores with Dad; we have to guard the car.

We eat lunch in the car, waiting for Dad while he flies around in Duly Motors or the Farmers’ Co-op yelling his orders, shouting his hellos and good-byes, waving over the back of his head as he leaves, and then we drive home so that we are back at seven or eight, in time for a warm beer and hot supper.

Today, the mourning dove is just starting to call as Dad starts the Land