White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,36

They blamed each other for things beyond their control: the Pass Laws, no money, the roof falling in chunks during the heavy rains and smashing their crockery. It was a mystery why men and women loved and why they did not, a mystery he would perhaps never understand.

“She’s back now,” Itumeleng told him the following morning. “But they’re not sleeping in the same bed. I know because of the sheets.”

“Ijo! Don’t tell me these things,” Isaac said. He threw another shovelful of dirt into the hole. “You’re like a chicken picking up every piece of dirt in the yard.”

“You would like mabele?” She curtsied as though he was Sir Seretse Khama.

He smiled. “Ee, mma.” She brought out a bowl of porridge and poured milk into it. He sat on his heels eating while Daphne and White Dog romped around the yard, nipping at each other’s backsides. Daphne’s mouth was upturned as though she was laughing.

From inside, he heard them talking: the husband’s hardly audible shadow-words and the madam’s lighter, more musical voice. It didn’t sound like fighting but it didn’t sound like love, either. He didn’t believe this man would beat her. Not physically. But from her face, he could see that he’d hurt her.

He finished the porridge, rinsed the metal bowl and spoon at the outside faucet, and placed them just outside the door. No one could say now that his hands were not the hands of a gardener. He rubbed them together and heard a rough, dry sound they’d never made before.

The madam and her husband got into the truck and drove off. You could see that their hearts were not beating together, the blood in their veins wanted to flow toward different oceans. He walked to the hole, picked up the spade, and threw in another shovelful of dirt.

The madam came home alone after work. She inspected the hole and told him she noticed a difference. Itumeleng had just gone into the house, having taken four sheets off the clothesline. Her little girl was sitting on the stoop at the servant’s quarters. Isaac couldn’t have said what caused him to look up when he did, but he suddenly dropped the spade. White Dog was down on her haunches, ready to spring at something. “Come!” he called sharply. “Tla kwano!” At first White Dog ignored him, then backed like a stealth soldier away from a six-foot snake. Itumeleng’s daughter started to toddle from the servant’s quarters toward the house. “No!” he screamed. “Stay!” She began to cry and ran back into her house.

Isaac picked up a long limb that he’d sawed from the crested barbet tree that morning, his eyes on the mamba the whole time. Its skin was silvery in the sun, like metal. The snout was square, the head coffin shaped. He didn’t need to be told this was the fastest snake in the world. You get bitten. Fifteen minutes later, you’re dead. It opened its mouth. Black inside. The blackest cave. When a black mamba shows the inside of its mouth to a herd of Cape buffalo, the sight is so fearsome, the animals stampede from it. Now there was a stampede in his chest, the hooves beating hard.

The snake hissed. It flattened its neck and stood up high. He threw a rock on the other side of it to make it turn.

Madam screamed for him to get away, get away! But he brought the limb down on the snake’s back with all the force in him. The snake twisted and turned to strike, and he struck again, closer to the head. It was one fast muscle, a muscle that could do anything. Again and again, he brought the limb down on the writhing body until finally it twitched, jerked, and went still.

He dropped the tree limb and went into the undergrowth and was sick.

That snake had only wanted to live. When he came out, she who must not be called madam thanked him, although something else was in her face. A kind of horror.

14

The letter from his mother had taken two weeks to be delivered from Pretoria. He sat on the flat rock under the large aloes and opened the envelope. As he read, he heard his mother’s voice among the trees. Her voice was a deep one, almost like a man’s, with a roundness like the sound of a large gourd, a vessel for holding things. He read the words quickly, turned over the page and read the words again. And a third