White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,3
from falling onto his chest.
He lay down in the sun and dreamt troubled dreams, of pursuit, of open veldt that gave no cover or shelter. When he woke, sweating and confused, there was no sign of the woman, only the dog keeping watch. His head hurt. The wind had blown his shirt off the post. As he put it on, he faintly smelled the woman. It gave him strength. He wanted to give her something before he left, but he had nothing. In the suitcase, his brother had packed three shirts, a pair of pants, mhago for the journey—oranges and sweet biscuits. The undertaker who transported the dead would be eating the food and wearing his brother’s shirts.
His feet were unsteady when he set out. From a distance came the sound of shebeen music. He pictured cartons of Chibuku strewn about, the taste of sorghum beer, raw and sour with the haste of brewing, old men with red eyes. The music grew louder. He felt someone following him, turned around, and there was the white dog, trotting behind, just close enough to keep him in sight.
“Tsamaya!” he said, flinging his arms in the air. The dog cowered and crouched down.
“Tsamaya!” he yelled again. Go away! He stooped down and pretended to pick up a rock, and she slunk away, looking over her shoulder. He set forth again, but when he turned, there she was, trotting the same distance behind him.
The shebeen was close now. Then he saw them: sitting on their rickety kgotla chairs in the shade of an acacia were the same sorts of old men he’d seen a hundred times at home in South Africa.
“Dumelang, borra,” he greeted them. They stared suspiciously. “Lo tsogile jang?” How are you?
“Re tsogile,” said the oldest, continuing the greeting.
He pulled up a three-legged stool and sat a little distance from a man with grizzled salt and pepper stubble on his chin. On the radio, a new group was singing, a woman wailing. Her voice sounded like the yelping of a wild dog. So much animal. You’d want to know that woman. You’d also want to keep your distance.
“Which way to town?”
“Go that way,” said the oldest man. “Follow the path, and there is the road. Northward is the town.” He waited for Isaac to say where he came from and where he was going but was met with silence. The less people knew about where he’d come from, the safer for everyone. Isaac rose to his feet, thanked them, and was gone.
The path was strewn with goat droppings and cans. Behind him, the music grew fainter. He heard a rumble in the distance, and as he emerged from the bush he was enveloped in the dust of a three-ton truck traveling south in the direction of Lobatse, sliding through the sand like a wounded beast. With every step, he shed parts of himself—friends he’d never see again, debts of kindness he’d never repay, empty hopes, his biochemistry notebook, his anatomy and physiology book as thick as a fist. He was surprised how fast that life was dropping from him. He thought how soon he’d be unable to imagine himself walking on the streets that had been his home, how even the memories would fade to ghosts and then to nothing. He wanted to chase after them, but he would be running backward.
The future was blank. Only two days ago, it had been inhabited with obligations and dreams, by soft-eyed Boitumelo, by his mother, and by Moses and his other brothers and sisters; it had been pointing the way to sweetness like a honey badger running toward a hive. He pictured his little brother Moses sitting on the ground, his hands fashioning a car from bits of tin can and wire he’d found here and there. You hold the future for others, not only for yourself.
His mind swirled, became confused, remembered things he didn’t want to remember. Back home, a few months before he left, he’d walked out one late afternoon to buy a half loaf of bread, and he’d seen a crowd catch a middle-aged man suspected of complicity with the South African Defense Force. They took that man, and they beat him with sticks and tire irons; they kicked him in the belly, and when he was unable to stand, they sat him in the middle of the road, forced a tire over his head, drenched it with gasoline, and lit it. There was nothing to do but turn away.