White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,146

might return to them and might not.

When she arrived at Princess Marina Hospital the next morning, Isaac was sitting up in his hospital gown, his thin legs dangling off the bed. His skin had a gray pallor, and his eyes were without sparkle. He looked as though he couldn’t walk twenty feet. “I’m ready,” he said.

“Have they given you breakfast?”

“The same porridge I made the last morning at your house. I left it that morning without eating, and now I have eaten it.” He smiled.

She passed him the paper bag. “Your old trousers and shirt are in there, and some new clothes from my friend Will. I think you remember him. Whichever you want to wear … I’ll be waiting for you outside.”

It took him a long time. She sat on the concrete wall where relatives waited for their loved ones. An old woman in a yellow kerchief sat near her. After some time, an old man in pajamas shuffled out to join her. Although neither of them spoke, their bodies made a complete circle.

When Isaac came out, he was wearing his own clothes and Will’s shoes and socks. Two nurses were with him, one on each side. In their faces, she could see their fondness for him. Wes passed him his bag of belongings and a cane, and both he and the young Motswana nurse kissed him good-bye.

When they’d turned to go inside, he said, “My shirt is mended. Did Itumeleng sew it?”

“No.” She felt shy to tell him. He tottered a little on his feet. “Here, sit down,” she said. “I’ll trade you.” She passed him food and water, and he passed her the bag the nurse had given him, along with the rest of the clothes. It felt as though he were setting out across the continent of Africa.

“I may not come until sunset.”

“However long it takes.”

Finally, they stood. He touched her arm and said, “You can leave me now. Thank you, Alice Mendelssohn.”

He started down the road. One knee bent normally, the other was still splinted. Even in the time he’d been gone, new houses had been built and new roads carved out of the wilderness. It surprised him how much had changed. The town felt like a living organism, its feelers moving out and out, consuming bush as it went. His limp, and the cane the nurses had given him, made his footsteps sound foreign. He walked as far as he might have walked to make one circle around the hospital and stopped. He’d covered hardly any distance at all. He told himself that he had made it three times around the hospital, and if he could do that, he could make the equivalent three times again. And then again.

A donkey cart creaked past, made out of a car sliced in half, driven by a white-haired man. People walking along the road seemed to move faster than he’d remembered. The sun felt brighter, crueler. He heard loud footsteps behind him. His heart sped. He kept walking and didn’t turn.

A young man passed him, carrying a sack of oranges over one shoulder, sweat darkening his shirt between his shoulder blades. A pickup truck roared by, loaded with people. Isaac’s first thought was that they were being transported to prison. But when he looked again, they were laughing, some of them singing.

He stopped to catch his breath. There was no shade on the road, and he stepped off into the bush and down a path that had been scoured clean by the feet of people and goats. He found a small bit of shade under an acacia tree. He felt calm there and drank a little water from the bottle Alice had given him and reached into the pocket of his trousers for a handkerchief to mop his forehead.

He checked the front pockets and then the back, but found only a small piece of paper folded into itself. When he opened it, there was a pale, flat seed, the eighth chili pepper he’d saved for Kagiso and misplaced. He folded the seed back in the paper and replaced it carefully in his back pocket. He walked back into the sun and started again toward the Old Village.

The sun was growing higher in the sky now. Fewer people were on the road. He’d walked perhaps a quarter of the way. He walked and stopped, walked some more, and rested. He traveled to that place in himself where his mind was blank to pain. She’d put cashews and bread