White Dog Fell from the Sky - By Eleanor Morse Page 0,75

leather shoes. He would never see Nthusi’s shoes again. Modimo was nowhere on the premises, nowhere on Earth for that matter, the God who’d once caused the noise of a great rushing, the noise of wings and of wheels whirling in air. The God who’d made the tree of life, the heavens and the Earth and all therein. There was only silence now. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death … If he was anywhere, He was the God of suffering. The God of injustice, of fruitless hope. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures … A white man’s God.

Starkers took his name, mashed his fingers into ink and then onto paper, told him to strip, pulled him roughly here and there, made him bend over so his cavernous eyes could inspect. Starkers wrote “communist threat” on a sheet of paper and sent him to be hosed down. From there it was emakhulakhuthu, the dark hole. Tiny concrete isolation cells lined up one after the other off a filthy corridor roofed in barbed wire, each a dunghill of human squalor and suffering. If he didn’t die from malnutrition, or at the hands of a man like Starkers, he’d die of typhoid fever. He was given a blanket that smelled of piss, and the door swung shut behind him.

27

After Will returned to Gaborone, he drove to Alice’s house. The first thing he noticed was White Dog just inside the gate, lying half upright, half on her side, barely able to lift her head. He thought he’d seen this dog with Isaac, and it gave him a bad feeling, hair-sticking-up-on-the-back-of-his-neck bad. He returned to his house, picked up a cricket bat and an open can of dog food from the refrigerator. He didn’t tell Greta why he was making a second trip, or what he was taking with him.

The dog was in the same place when he came back. Will parked his truck just inside the gate, held out his hand and called. “Here, girl.” She was too weak to rise.

Greta had said there’d been a short rain since he’d been away, and the evidence was still here—a bowl half filled with water, branches down from the wind, a bucket under a tree with water in the bottom, a drowned mouse floating. He tipped out the water, threw the mouse into the underbrush, and upended the dog food into the bowl. “Good girl,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.” Her nose twitched with the smell of meat, and she tried to get up. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, I’ll just set it down here for you.” He brought it close and placed it in front of her. She leaned forward and ate, sitting with her paws flat on the ground. Will crouched nearby and watched her. She was scoured down to bone, hunger pouches under her eyes. It tore his heart to see.

The light was fading, and he wished it had been morning. He didn’t want to face what he thought he might be facing, as dark was beginning to push down from the sky. “I’ll be back,” he said to the dog.

He grabbed the bat and carried it toward the house. “Koko?” he said at the door. “Anybody home?” He wasn’t a fretful, fearful man, but it took a gathering of courage to make himself enter. “Isaac?” he called. “Isaac! Are you there?” When he’d met him that once, he’d thought him a decent, reliable sort. Not one to go clattering off. He felt the cold creeps traveling along his spine as he entered the kitchen and found the spoiled porridge on the big wooden table, as though someone had left in haste. Something rubbed against his leg, and he jumped a foot sideways. “Christ!” Mr. Magoo swished through his legs, doing a figure eight in and out. “You’ve taken twenty years off me! Where’s the other one?”

He went into the spare bedroom near the outside door and found Isaac’s bed unmade, his few clothes in a pile on a chair. His shoes weren’t there. The house was darkening, and he made a quick tour through it, heart pounding, finding nothing amiss, before he returned to the kitchen. Magoo trailed him, and he opened a tin of sardines and tipped the whole thing into a bowl. The cat ate in a frenzy. A bag of cat food was ripped open, its contents gone. The milk in the refrigerator was sour, but he filled another bowl