White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,46

A crested barbet, covered in chimney soot, wooffled over the open screen at the living room window, looking for a way out. Isaac recognized it as one of two birds that sang at the top of the tree outside the kitchen door. He went back into the bedroom to put on his trousers, and when he came out, Horse had it in his jaws. The wings were flapping. He pressed his fingers outside the cat’s mouth to release the jaw, and the bird flew up onto the curtain rod. He picked up Horse, put him outside, and closed the door. Back in the living room, the bird looked down from the rod.

Every day he was in the habit of speaking to this bird at the top of the tree: “Good morning, and how did you spend the night?” But this morning, he said, “I go to the trouble of putting thorns around the trunk of your tree to protect you from the cats. But now you must fall down the chimney and put yourself in the mouth of the cat? How many times do you expect to be saved?” The bird looked at him from the top of the curtain. He was very dirty and his feathers were sticking up untidily. When Isaac went to him, the bird seemed to understand he would do him no harm. Or perhaps he was too frightened from being in the jaws of a cat and could only stare. Isaac picked him up with two hands and opened the outside door. “Pshhhh! Pshhhh!” he said to Horse, who ran under the aloes. Isaac opened his hands, and the bird stood there a moment before flying. He weighed almost nothing, and his feet felt friendly on Isaac’s palm. His mate was waiting on the branch of the tree when he flew up next to her, making the alarm call puta puta puta!

19

Alice’s hair was stiff with grit and dust, and she’d never felt happier. Only the dusty road before her existed, the bush and the sun and the bright, wide horizon. She thought of home, the large kitchen sink, the screen on the veranda where the geckos ran up and down chasing flies, Isaac pottering about in the garden, Itumeleng calling over the fence to friends. She could picture these things, but Gaborone felt a million miles away.

The group had been on the road a day and a half already, having set off from Gaborone in two government Land Rovers and a three-ton truck driven by Sam, Motsumi, and Shakespeare. The idea was for them to gather information about the interplay between livestock, wildlife herds, and the !Kung San that would enable them to draft a national policy that would protect all three. They were to talk with !Kung San leaders, visit cattle posts, view a veterinary boundary fence, take in the Tsodilo Hills, stop off in Shakawe, and return home. Everything was arranged for them—drivers, food, cook tents, cots, sleeping bags.

Representing the Ministry of Local Government and Lands were Alice and C.T., her boss. The Ministry of Agriculture had sent their new assistant permanent secretary, Arthur Haddock, who’d recently arrived in Botswana from Wisconsin, plus Ole Olsen from the Division of Veterinary Sciences, and Will Vreeland, a wildlife specialist and a friend of Alice’s. A British guy who was studying !Kung San paintings in the Tsodilo Hills would be meeting them east of Maun.

She was traveling in one of the Land Rovers with her friend Will and the new assistant permanent secretary. Arthur Haddock knew how to greet people with a dumela, mma or dumela, rra, and that was about it. This must have been his first trip out, but it didn’t stop him from telling Sam, the driver, how to do his job. “Aren’t you even going to stop?” he asked, when a hornbill collided with the windshield.

“Very dangerous to stop, rra. Anyway, the bird is dead.”

Thirty kilometers down the road, the vehicle got a flat tire. Mr. Haddock said that there needed to be a more systematic regulation and monitoring of government vehicles. Alice wanted to say, Hey, buster, this isn’t Milwaukee.

Sam glanced at him. “Many thorns on the road, rra. You have a new tire, she goes over a thorn, and boom! Flat.”

They stayed in Francistown that night and went on toward Maun the following day. Deep sand tracks made the driving treacherous. One false move and the vehicle would jump the track and they’d turn upside down. It was already