White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,18

arrogance. He was no better than the next man, and you can find happiness in any kind of work. But the thought returned, and with it the dream in which his father had labored in a vast pit. The waters rose and still his father stood as though he’d been told to stand still until he died. Would he too stand still until he died? For as long as he could remember, he’d felt that you were given one small, precious life, not to be squandered.

“Tla kwano.” Come. White Dog followed him into the yard, looking for the Alsatian, her hackles raised like a small brush fire. It wasn’t long before Daphne discovered her cowering beside the house. She and Daphne circled and sniffed each other under the tail, and White Dog flopped down with her paws in the air, her mouth turned up in what looked like a smile. Isaac turned his back and disappeared. Leave them alone and let them work things out in their dog way.

He weeded and watered the new citrus trees, and then he went to the door of the house and called out for Itumeleng. She poked her head out. At first her face looked almost innocent, but look a little longer, and you saw something sassy in her eyes. A little girl clung to her skirts.

“I’m going out,” he said. “Madam has asked me to look at some other gardens and come up with a plan.”

“I’m not your wife,” she said. “You don’t need to tell me where you’re going.”

He laughed. “You wouldn’t like me for a husband?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I have one child already. What would I do with another?” She turned to go back inside and stopped. “So she hired you?”

“Ee, mma.”

“Even though you know nothing about gardens?”

“How do you know?”

“The way you are digging yesterday. Like the spade is your master.” She laughed. “And your hands are soft.”

“Is this your child?” The little girl had her mother’s dark, snapping eyes.

“What? You think it’s madam’s? Where are you from?”

“South Africa.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Working.”

“Most people find work there, not here.” She thought she knew why he was here, he could see it in her eyes. “Are you with the ANC?”

“Nnyaa, mma.”

“So … if you’re going, you better go,” she said.

She reminded him of one of his aunties on his father’s side, a saucy tongue in her head, hard to love but easy to like from a distance. He called White Dog out to the road. A neighbor dog slavered and barked and threw himself at a chain link fence. White Dog followed close behind. They hadn’t reached the main road before Isaac remembered that she hadn’t had any water. He retraced his steps past the barking dog and went back into the yard, turned the hose on, and cupped his hands to make a small bowl.

“You’re back,” said Itumeleng out the window. She gave him a square gallon tin for White Dog, who drank and drank. Isaac held the hose out and drank his fill too and then remembered that she who must not be called madam had said not to waste water. It was running all over the ground, gouging out a little stream bed. He shut off the faucet and scuffed out the evidence with Nthusi’s shoe. Itumeleng came back out with two slices of bread. He ate one and gave the other to White Dog.

Setting out once more, he crossed the road and came out onto a footpath. He walked a bit, stepping around goat droppings, until he approached a widening in the path where he sat on his haunches. From this place, he could study how things grew. There were no straight lines anywhere. The footpath curved around rocks. The trees and shrubs and grasses grew up where a seed had fallen. So, this was the first principle: fling seed out of your hand and let it land where it will. And mix things up, large and small, rocks and plants. And don’t make things too tidy. You want the crested barbet and the mourning dove to feel at home, the weaver bird to make its nest in a tree. The birds need grass and sticks and a certain untidiness. They don’t want everything perfect, like a woman with cornrows and no hairs out of place. You feel with a very neat woman, if you touch her, she’ll shatter. He called White Dog and went back toward the road, searching out the garden where he’d heard