that, and had hardly put down the phone when Greta was there beside her. “Oh, poppet.” She put her arms around her. “I’m so very sorry. You’d found someone to love, to love with everything in you, the rarest thing …”
“Please don’t,” she said. “If I start crying, I’ll never stop.”
“Those beasts were desperate for water, I suppose.”
“Ian was cutting the fence.”
“You knew this?”
She nodded. “He couldn’t bear it … their thirst.”
“I only want to say one thing, which may make you cry. Will and I were wrong about him.”
“I know.”
“What can I do?”
“I’m not sure. Take me to work this morning when you get the kids off to school? I need to retrieve his Land Rover. It’s at the ministry. His friend Roger brought it down.”
“Where’s your truck?”
“Also there. C.T. drove me home yesterday.”
“Do you want me to bring your truck home for you? I can leave ours for Will. I dropped him off this morning.”
“If you would.” She dug Ian’s keys out of her purse. “I’m going to Maun.” She’d only just realized it.
“When are you going?”
“Today.”
“You wouldn’t be better off waiting?”
“I have to go.” She pictured Ian buried somewhere in that vast land south of Maun, sand blowing sideways, covering up all traces of where he lay. Her ears rang with a crazy urgency. She imagined her hands, digging.
“Shall I come with you?”
“Thank you, no. I’ll take White Dog to keep me company.”
“Shall I feed the cats for you?”
“There’s only one cat now. Horse went missing again. I’ll ask Itumeleng.”
There was no earthly point to it, she knew. But she packed a bag for herself, dog food for White Dog, talked to Itumeleng, and left from the ministry after Greta dropped her and White Dog off. The cars and trucks on the north-south road pushed her to drive faster than she wanted to. A percussive rhythm between the wheels and the road corrugations intensified, and the Land Rover slid sideways as she fought with the wheel and brought it back into line. White Dog’s nose inched out the window as she grew more confident. A slow-moving hornbill passed in front of the windshield.
Inside his Land Rover, Ian was everywhere. The leather case for his sunglasses. A gauge for checking tire pressure. A can opener. His long-sleeved bush shirt. A cap, darkened from sweat. On the floor, a rumpled copy of Botswana Notes and Records, a couple of water bottles, a discarded paper bag. In the far back, a large container of water, canned goods, the two tents he’d put up on the Ntwetwe Pan, a rock he’d picked up from there. His notebooks.
North of Mochudi, she got stuck behind a bush drag. She saw it from a distance, like a beast on the horizon. Underneath that crazy cathedral-high swirl of dust, there would be a lone man, with a kerchief over his mouth and nose, bouncing along on a tractor that pulled a mountain of thorn bushes weighted down with old tires. When Ian had taken her to the train in Francistown, they’d gotten held up behind a similar bush drag. An old man was driving the tractor. His hair was white, his back and shoulders lean. Ian had called him “a one-man commotion.” He liked that word, commotion. He’d used it when he’d told her about knocking down Mrs. Cratchley’s flower beds as a kid. Her eyes filled to hear the sound of his words in her ear. She suddenly wished to die on this road. The thought shocked her. She could feel the desire already risen inside her like an exotic flower blooming in dust. She turned the wheel and pulled out into that brown cloud to pass the bush drag, more than half expecting to meet someone head on. Something like disappointment passed through her as she pulled back safely in front of the tractor. And then anger at herself. Kill yourself, but don’t take other people with you. Or an innocent dog either, for that matter.
White Dog sat straight up on the seat. For a moment, Alice envied her ability to live in an eternal today. But no, that wasn’t true. Why else would she have sat for weeks at the end of the driveway? She thought, I’d sit at the end of the driveway too if it would bring him back. Her eyes swam again, and the road disappeared. She pulled off onto a small track. Where are you? she asked into the dusty air. Her belly hurt from crying. White Dog