White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,14

find something.”

“Perhaps.”

“If you pray, then you will have more luck.”

“I don’t pray for myself.”

“Then I will pray for you.”

He smiled at her. She was like a child. He was touched that she’d do this for him. He believed in something larger than himself, but there was no evidence to point to someone or something listening to a man with brown leather shoes and a sweaty shirt. He didn’t find this unusual or disturbing. Why should he be noticed when there were so many others to notice? It was like the dry blades of grass at his feet. Every blade was different, reaching for the sky in its own humble way, but from a goat’s perspective, they were all the same: something to eat.

“What was he like back then?” she asked, only her eyes and mouth visible in the darkness.

“Amen?”

“Yes, when you knew him in school.”

“Pretty much the same.” Brash, overbearing, reckless was what came to mind. “He was good at sports. Sometimes he pushed people around. He told funny stories, played tricks on people. He was someone you noticed.”

“Did you like him?”

“Not very much, no.”

“Why?”

“We were different.” He saw himself back then, shy with others, a serious student. Serious in all things. He had to be. He knew this by the time he was eight years old.

“Yes, I see.” Her body was swaying, rocking Ontibile. “Sometimes he pushes me around too. But I don’t mind. I’m different from you.”

How could she not mind? One day, she’d have a mind of her own, but now, she was young. She rose with Ontibile and went inside. White Dog sat down, groaning a little, and rested her cheek against his foot. The skin of her forehead was wrinkled; her cheek was also wrinkled where it pressed against him. He wished again that he could call upon monna mogolo and ask him what to do. He owed part of his being to this old man who’d given him love for the stars and the moon and the trees and the wide silent sky and the summer thunder, who made him proud to be a human being with the same blood in his veins. His great grandfather was what some people call a Bushman, but he thought this was not as respectful as calling him one of the San people. Back then, he didn’t know what his grandfather’s kind were called, or care. He only learned later, when his mother taught him a few words of the click language, the language stolen from his son while the old man was in prison. He didn’t know how his mother had learned those words, only that they were precious to him now. His mother said that all the peoples on Earth come from the first San people. There was no one alive who did not have their beginnings in Africa. For thousands and thousands of years, the San people lived in the Kalahari, where they gathered food and hunted. What would the world be like now if it were peopled by them rather than the ones who’d stolen their land, killed their wildlife, stolen away their children and wives, and made them into slaves?

He thought, if they were like his great grandfather, there would be laughter falling from the sky. These days, people live in the world as though they are precious vessels, separate, each holding something that must be guarded. But his grandfather taught him something different. We are doorways, openings into something greater than ourselves, something that we don’t understand and will never understand. We have nothing precious in and of ourselves. We are only precious in that we are part of something that is too big to know.

4

Before the sun was up, he was out of the house. He did not want to be seen, or to speak to Kagiso that morning. He took a little water and gave some to White Dog, who trotted beside him, her tail held high; then they were down the path and out onto the road. He could feel the heat at the back of his neck like a beast stalking him, its hot breath coming closer. His heart felt sad, his bones tired, but it was his duty, he said to the morning, not to give in to those things, not to dishonor the freedom he’d been given. The pain inside Nthusi’s shoes reminded him with every step that he was here because of his brother.

He didn’t know where those shoes would take him, but when he