Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [73]
“Because they hate me more than they fear me.” And, “Fear makes anger.”
Dad says, “Thompson was probably after their wives.”
But I shake my head.
When we first moved to the ranch, before Richard died, in the brief, blissful period when Mum was well enough to be at home—with her health, and with her swelling belly, and with the end of the war, it seemed as if we might at last be allowed some peace and undisturbed happiness. There was then a period in my life of uncomplicated childhood, a pause of delicious hubris. In those days, I explored the ranch as if I were capable of owning its secrets, as if its heat and isolation and hostility were embraceable friends. I covered the hot, sharp, thorny ground of the ranch on horseback, foot, and bicycle, ignorant of her secrets and fearless of her taboos, as if these ancient, native constraints did not apply to me.
Most mornings, I rode Burma Boy across the river in search of kudu and impala, the dogs panting through the bush on either side of me. In the afternoons, I walked, or rode my bike, down toward the compound past the old airstrip (a hangover from the ranch’s more prosperous days) and searched the ground for wildlife finds. Once, I discovered the skulls of two impala rams, their horns locked into an irreversible figure-of-eight; the two animals had been trapped in combat, latched to each other during the battle of the rut. The harder they had pulled to escape from each other, the more intractably stuck they were, until they had fallen exhausted, to their knees, in an embrace of hatred that had killed them both. When I picked up the skulls to add to my growing collection of what Vanessa called “Bobo’s smelly pile,” the hooked horns fell away from each other and the story of the impalas’ death struggle was undone.
On one of my rides, I had found a game track to the surprising kopjes, which bulged with dark, shiny boldness out of the flat blond savannah, alluring in their strangeness, small islands of secret life. I circled the outcrop, looking for an obvious way up, into the dark creases of rock, but the routes were too intimidating for me. Besides, I was afraid of the leopards I knew might be panting silently in the kopje’s caves, or the snakes that lay like fat coils of rope, sunbathing, on the heat-absorbing rocks.
Then one day Vanessa suggested we take a picnic and explore the kopjes.
“What about leopards?”
“It’ll be okay.”
“What about snakes?”
Vanessa said, “Don’t be a scaredy-cat.”
“I’m not a scaredy-cat,” I whined, “it’s just . . .”
“It’s just you’re a scaredy-cat.”
“Better take someone with you,” said Mum, “just in case.”
“See,” I said, “even Mum thinks it might not be safe.”
“I didn’t say that,” said Mum. “And make sure you take your hats, it’s hot out there on the rocks.”
It was Cephas’s day off, so we were sent with Thompson, still gleaming in his white kitchen uniform, as an escort. Thompson carried a string bag with oranges, boiled eggs, an old wine bottle, corked, with water, and a fragrant clutch of warm buns fresh from the oven that morning. When we reached the kopjes, we chose the one closest to the road to climb. Thompson let Vanessa and me go ahead, helping us up over the steep sections of rock until at last we were panting, itching with sweat, on top of the world, able to see as far as the river over the top of the gray-hot haze and the mopane trees. Thompson sat on his haunches and peeled an orange, the creases of his hands turning chalky white with the juice. He handed sections of the fruit to Vanessa and me, and we ate quietly. Happy with our accomplishment.
It was later, after we had eaten our oranges and climbed around on top of the kopje singing, “Needles and pins-a,” that Vanessa and I found the old grave sites, cool dark places of ritual and burial where half-broken pottery, cracked, blackened jewelry, dull arrowheads, and crumbling water gourds lay heaped on top of pyramids of rocks. We scrambled excitedly through our find.
“What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know, maybe people lived