Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [34]
Dad’s boat is an old and ordinary banana boat, a bit leaky from the time a hippo bit it when Dickie, my brother-in-law, was out fishing over new year’s, but it works, more or less, and has the charmed river smells of mud, weed, fish, and sunscreen. The boat was loosely tied was in the middle of a canal. K scooped me into his arms and waded thigh-deep into the water and I closed my eyes and envisioned crocodiles, and then he deposited me on the cooler and pushed the boat out into the weak current.
Where the canal met the Pepani, the current grabbed the nose of the boat and we were flung out into the wide expanse of river. I kept a wary eye on the hippos, which K appeared to be ignoring, and we motored downstream into the bright glare of water that swirled ahead. K fished and I read, cringing from the sun under a wide hat and a towel. If I shut my eyes I felt suspended in a hot bubble of peace; the water licking the edge of the boat, the creak of the hull, the sounds of K fishing, the occasional eerie cry from the fish eagles.
We ate lunch pulled up on an island with our toes dug in the sandy beach, keeping half an eye on the boat, which was bellied up on a stretch of sand just downstream from us. I smoked a cigarette, waving it around my head to get rid of the flies, and K stripped down to his underpants and waded into the river.
“How do I start the boat when you get eaten by a croc?” I asked. The engine of Dad’s boat, in common with almost everything mechanical on the fish farm, had quirks of temperament that required an intimate knowledge of the psychology of machines to operate.
K laughed (a smack of reflected sun caught his throat and face in profile and turned him black, like a cardboard cutout).
I said, “I wish you wouldn’t.”
“I do this all the time,” he said.
“Why don’t you save it for rescue missions?”
“Nah, I’ll be okay. I’m too tough for a flattie anyway.”
“I’ll just write that on your tombstone, shall I?”
K waited until he was chest-deep in the water and then went under. I waited several seconds and then I got to my feet, feeling stupid with a rising panic. This is exactly how people are said to be taken. In half a minute or so, K will resurface, he will shout once for help, a crocodile’s tail will arc out of the water sending silver droplets of water and red droplets of blood into the air, and that will be all I will ever hear from K again. I will yell, throw rocks, and call on God. But I will stop short of running into the river. Nevertheless, I will tell everyone at his funeral that I did my best to save him. Everyone will know that I am lying.
And then he came up for air close to the boat, squirting a mouthful of Pepani water into the sky above his face, like a living fountain. He waded to shore and shook himself dry and came and sat next to me. “Ja, ja. Refreshing, hey.”
“I was having croc visions.”
K laughed. “When my time’s up, it’s up. I reckon my fate is all written in God’s Big Book and there’s not a whole lot I can do to change the time and place and nature of my death.” K bit the lid off a beer for me. “Here,” he said, “keep your hair on and drink this. I’m going fishing.”
I lay back on the warm sand and put my hat over my eyes. I could hear K’s fishing line; a high whine as it buzzed over the water, a pause, and then—plop. I dozed off and when I woke up I found that K had made an umbrella for me out of a towel and four sticks. “The shade from the tree shifted,” he explained, “I didn’t want you getting sunburned.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll get the boat,” said K, handing me the fishing rod and wading off into the river. I stared at him sleepily as he plowed through the water and returned towing the boat behind him. With his dark skin and tight metallic gray hair, he looked colossal and African, like Mwetsi, the first man in Shona mythology,