White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,62

Ontibile could live with her granny in Mochudi. Or if living with her granny was not possible, Ditsego would raise her as her own child.

“Go,” she told Isaac. “Don’t worry.” Isaac went inside and watched Ontibile sleeping. He went down on his hands and knees and kissed her cheek and whispered, “Sala sentle, ngwanyana.” Stay well, little one.

He walked a little way with Grace and asked her the way back to Amen’s house; he was turned around and had no idea where he was. He felt sick from hunger, and his head swam with sorrow. When at last he knew where he was, he thanked Grace, and they parted ways.

Later, he understood that he should have returned to the Old Village. He might have considered that the house would not be guarded forever. In a week or two weeks, he could have walked in. Because what was there to guard? No one would want anything there: the blood-stained sleeping mats, the few clothes, the cooking pots filled with ghosts. But he imagined the bulldozers coming. The more his head swam, the less he could forget the money that was sitting under the chunk of concrete in the floor of that house.

He found his way to the main path and doubled back. His thought was to wait until the guard left, or at least to wait until he went to sleep. He had never met any all-night guard who did not sleep. While he slept, he would slip into the house, take the money, and be on his way.

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He stood at a distance and watched. The guard was sitting in such a way that Isaac could see only one side of his face. He was a large, serious man, about Isaac’s age, with clear skin and bushy eyebrows. From the way he held his chin, from the way his eyes moved, Isaac thought he was not a mild man. And he thought further that he would have no chance if it came to a physical contest between them.

While he waited, he looked at the place where he’d been standing when he first met Kagiso, the spot where he’d sat on the front stoop with White Dog. He thought Kagiso’s breasts would have been plump with milk when she died. This made him so sad he could hardly see or hear or think.

He walked away so he wouldn’t arouse suspicion and then returned when the darkness was deeper. All the time, his legs would hardly move because of the hunger in them. Although he had not gone to the she-been, he was drunk on an idea that wouldn’t let him go. When Isaac came back, the guard walked behind the house to relieve himself. When he returned to his post, he ate some jerky that he took from his back pocket. Inside the neighboring lean-to shacks, oil lamps were going out. People had become quiet, although the dogs had not. Isaac thought of White Dog waiting for him in the dark. When he returned, she’d be in the same place where he’d left her.

He walked away and came back. He sat on his haunches just out of sight and waited several hours more. When the guard finally slept, it was fortunate that he did not go to sleep across the threshold. He slept a little to one side. So when Isaac saw that he was snoring soundly, he came from his hiding place and made his way to the door. He knew the place well even in the dark, but it was one thing to know a place, and it was another to feel, crawling on your skin, the evil that lingered there.

As fear crept up the back of his neck, he thought, if you run from things that frighten you, you will never do anything. And very quietly, with his heart pounding into his eye sockets, he crossed the threshold into the house. He felt his way to the room where he had put the money, went down on his knees, and lifted the chunk of concrete. All the time, the hair on the back of his neck was shouting, Run! But the money was still there, and when his fingers closed around it, he felt triumphant. What he did not realize was that someone had moved the only chair, a metal chair, to a different place. Where it had been against a wall it was now in the middle of the room. In his haste to leave, he ran into