White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,101

doing or why. In spite of what Alice had said, it often felt to him that his life’s purpose was unsteady. You could easily spend your whole life scattering your energies across the landscape. “Keep your eye on the ball,” his father used to say, not meaning cricket or rugby. But which ball was the question.

Snap, went another cable.

The rock paintings waited. He was aware of falling into what one of his anthropology professors warned against—mistaking social action for research. Still, unless you had a heart of gunmetal, how could you come to know a people without also coming to know their needs and desperations? A small group of buffalo rummaged in the brush behind him. One rubbed on an anthill, trying to rid itself of parasites. An oxpecker bird sat on its back. There were no young ones among them.

He moved along the fence meditatively, snapping wire as he went. He thought of Alice, her anger, her body, her blue gray eyes like the sea on an overcast day. Was it so terrible to spend one night with a former wife? Well, technically still a wife. She was right—he was sloppy, untidy. He couldn’t really blame her for flipping out. But if she’d known his heart, she would have seen Morning Star and Lynx clear enough.

He snapped another cable, which twisted back and nearly struck him in the face.

He hadn’t told Alice the whole story of their night in Francistown. Gwyneth had said she still loved him, that her life would never be right again. He’d replied that she’d forgotten all their troubles. She’d sat in bed, not speaking, shaking her head, her short hair sticking up in spikes. She looked like a patient in Bedlam. He hadn’t meant to say it: “You chopped off all your beautiful hair.”

“I was done with it,” she said. Once upon a time she’d said the same about him. He wished he’d never met her, that he’d had the sense to run. But she’d intrigued him with her wintry aspect, her dark hair falling over her white face like a shelf. She frightened him too, and in that fright lay some dark, sexual energy that he couldn’t put his arms around. He knew now what a sitting duck he’d been. He knew nothing about depression, had never felt that hopeless, subbasement mildew of spirit. She reminded him of a child whose knees are drawn up to her chin, who thinks there will be no end to it. How do you walk away from that kind of despair without feeling like a complete bastard?

Snap, went another cable, and another.

In the rhythm of destruction, he felt a confirmation of purpose. But thirst was catching up with him. He had only a small amount of water left in his plastic bottle, and he was a long way from his vehicle.

Xixae dug again for water and placed her reed upright. This time, only a few drops came to her lips.

Long ago, when she was a young woman, she had taken her eyes off her young daughter and walked behind her shelter to talk with a friend. Her little girl had taken a burning stick from the fire and thrown it onto the dry bedding grass. There had been no rain. The shelter exploded in flames. By the time they were able to get to her, her skin was flayed, her hair smelled like a veldt fire. A powerful healer had done his best, but after two days, the ancestors came for her.

Her small band of people buried her daughter near the campsite and moved to another site. Xixae thought that she too would die. But they didn’t want her yet in the realm of Kauha. Her womb went as dry as the earth around her. Her husband would no longer lie with her. He told her that she had become an old woman overnight. Time passed. She could laugh again now, but the laughter was wrapped around tears.

A puff of dust spread out over the dry savannah and then a distant rumble, softer and longer lived than thunder, floated into the air. Ian thought little of it, until he saw them at a distance, running, closing the distance between him and them.

The buffalo he’d seen rummaging behind him were the advance guard of a large herd. Had they felt in some part of their beast brains the uncoiling of the wire? They were coming this way in a fast-kindled, heedless frenzy. Closer now, he made out their