The Great Karoo

by Fred Stenson

  Brooke could only stand crookedly, and the cadaver came to him with a nasty smile.

  “And now we will have Christmas. You will give me your clothes, and I will give you mine.” Then, to the others: “All of you. Clothes off.”

  No one moved. The cadaver had already pulled his own skin shirt over his head. He threw it at Brooke’s feet. He was all ropes of muscle and seams of scar.

  Seeing they had done nothing, the cadaver snarled at Brooke.

  “Listen, old man. If you don’t take off your clothes, I’ll take them off my way. After, I will club you and your friends like dogs.”

  Brooke’s pain was great and his eyes had glazed with it. Alice had to help him out of his shirt and trousers. As Frank stripped, he could not help but look at Alice, wondering what she would do. She gave him a wink, then quickly undid her shirt buttons. Beneath the shirt was a tight undershirt that squashed her small breasts flat. She started on her trousers.

  The cadaver did not notice because he was watching Young Sam. When the boy undid his shirt cuffs, the cadaver signalled to a soldier who grabbed the boy’s arms and stopped him.

  “Nobody wants your clothes, kaffir,” the cadaver said.

  Then he glanced at Alice and saw she was still in her undershirt and smalls. “Go on. Get it all off. And your boots.”

  While the cadaver watched, Alice crossed her arms and hoisted the undershirt. The cadaver gaped, swore a Boer oath, and spun around. Some of the others were laughing to see this man now standing there a woman. The cadaver looked sideways at Brooke and spat in his direction.

  “You are a fool. You bring niggers to this war? And a woman? Tell her to put her clothes back on. There are children here.”

  Alice put the undershirt and shirt back on. The boys looked embarrassed but kept staring. Brooke was fully naked now. He looked very old and ill. He could not straighten and, besides stooping, had to lower one shoulder to loose some cord that was hitched wrong in his back. He had crushed mats of white hair on his shoulders and across his scrawny chest. His body was the colour of paper.

  The cadaver walked over to Frank, who was naked and cupping his pecker and balls.

  “We know about you because a Mr. Kleff followed you south. He lost you for a while until you helpfully lit a fire at night. He would like to speak to you.”

  The cadaver backed away and the stout farmer rushed forward. He reared and spat, and the bullet of phlegm hung on Frank’s cheek. The farmer brought his face even closer and roared in Boer. Finally, he punched Frank awkwardly in the face, stalked off, and stood with his back to him.

  The cadaver returned, looking amused. “What my friend tells you does our language proud. I wish I had the English to translate it correctly. What he says is you must stay away from his daughter or he’ll cut off your balls. He would do so right now, except you are a white prisoner, and it’s against our rules. If you disobey about his daughter, he will do it anyway.”

  Then the cadaver moved on to Young Sam. The two Boers who had pulled the prisoners from the horses stood beside him. The cadaver nodded upstream to a knot of willows.

  Brooke forced himself straight with a yell. Standing to attention, he took a step toward the cadaver. The man behind him reached forward and grabbed his bushy hair; stopped him from going closer.

  “There is a misunderstanding,” said Brooke. “That young man is not what you call a black or a nigger or a kaffir. He is a North American Indian of the Nez Perce tribe. They are mountain people and famed horse breeders. That spotted stallion of mine was sired by one of their studs.”

  The cadaver nodded again, and the two Boers took Young Sam by the arms and walked him up the path.

  When Alice and Frank started after them, their Boer guards barred their way. Alice threw her man aside and ran. The Boer chased her, and drove the stock of his gun into the middle of her back. She fell and he jammed the rifle’s mouth against her head. The one guarding Frank turned his rifle around and drove the butt into his throat. Frank fell to his knees, unable to breathe.

  Young Sam fought the two who were dragging him. He hit one hard in the middle of the face. Then the two together threw him on the ground. They tied his hands, then picked him up like a bag of sticks. They carried him behind the screen of green-leafed willows.

  “You can’t do this!” Brooke yelled. “It is against the rules of war. This man is in no way your enemy.”

  “Save your breath, old man. You are a spy. I know one when I see one. I know a nigger when I see one too.”

  “I tell you, he’s an Indian.”

  “The Basutos in these mountains are horse breeders but they’re still niggers. If they help you British, we shoot them like dogs.”

  There were two shots and the sound echoed off the cliffs.

  The leader of the Boers removed his ragged trousers and threw them toward Brooke. He picked up Brooke’s shirt and put it on, then his trousers. He rolled up the legs and the sleeves to fit. Finally, he took off the crude leather flaps he wore as shoes and drew on Brooke’s tall boots.

  The cadaver was too thin for the clothes but strutted like a dandy. He got Frank’s attention and pointed upstream to where the two gunmen were coming out of the trees.

  “You’ll find your new clothes up there,” he said, and laughed.

  Alice had already started in the direction of the willows. No one stopped her now. The Boers were mounting to leave. The cadaver shifted his saddle and bridle onto Century. The stallion flattened his ears at the foreign taste and shape of the bit.

  Brooke shuffled forward until he was near his stallion’s head.

  “I will report this murder and theft at the first opportunity. I would like to name the man responsible.”

  “You say that,” said the cadaver, “yet you don’t expect me to tell you. But I will tell you, because I am proud of myself and what I do. Go tell your British authorities that Piet Von Roster killed a Half-Black and see how much they care. Another thing. If you see your old nigger before I do, tell him I will kill him too.”

  Then the cadaver dug his heels into Century’s sides and jerked the stallion’s mouth. He walked the horse to the packed mules and slid a short-handled spade from under the hitch ropes. He dropped it on the ground. He was about to go but had one more thought. He went to Alice Kettle’s horse and untied her bedroll from its saddle. This, too, he dropped on the trail as he left.

  Riding high on Century, the cadaver joined the procession near its end, followed into line by a boy of nine who might have been his son. Of the humans, only this boy looked back. Halfway up the line, the ridgling danced sideways and looked at Frank with one china eye.

  Basutoland

  Not far from the place of murder, the valley was joined by another with a stronger stream of water. This creek came in from the west and the three fugitives began to climb beside it. There were glimpses of black-streaked clouds between the peaks, but, where they were, the sun bored down with a baking heat. The yellow rocks soaked it in and poured it back.

  When Brooke still had his map and cared what it said, he had told them about Basutoland. He had shown them how it bordered the Cape Colony and Orange Free State. The Basutos were neutral in the war. Now, Brooke was locked in silence, and it was left to Alice and Frank to decide whether to go higher and deeper into this country. They did so hoping the heart of Basutoland would be farther from the Boers and the war. They were hoping for someplace kinder.

  As the three climbed, Frank relived the morning. When Von Roster rode away on Century, Lionel had sagged into a curled shape and let himself drop. He coiled in the dirt in this damaged shape; put a hand under his cheek and stared across it.

  Frank had left him and joined Alice in the willows. The two of them sat beside Young Sam. Alice had straightened the boy so he would not go rigid in the crooked shape he had assumed while dying. A hole in his head. A hole in his heart.

  Young Sam was still wearing the tan shirt and olive drab trousers that Lionel had bought him for the jo
urney. Clothes he had been proud of Only his feet were bare. One of the executioners had overcome his repugnance long enough to steal his boots. Beside his feet was a pair of worn-out flaps, and Frank put them on his own feet, having already hurt himself with thorns and stones.

  “You have to put on Young Sam’s clothes,” she told him.

  Frank shook his head. He would not bury Young Sam naked.

  “You’ll die of the sun.”

  Alice went back down the path to check on Brooke and saw her bedroll: the cadaver’s act of chivalry. She brought one of the two blankets and the shovel to the willows and told Frank it would be Young Sam’s shroud. She had put the second blanket over Brooke and asked him if he wanted to watch them bury Young Sam. Lionel made no response.

  Frank took off Young Sam’s shirt and trousers and drew them on. He put his finger through the red hole in the shirt’s breast and touched his own skin above the heart. There was a broader, bloodier hole on the shirt’s back. When they rolled Young Sam in the blanket and tied it twice with more willow strips, Frank felt glad to be wearing his friend’s shirt with its bloody record of what the Boers had done to him.

  They took turns digging with the short-handled spade and got the hole down a couple of feet in mostly rock, but could go no deeper. They covered him and went for more rocks until there was a pile.

  The hardest moment came then: the part that should have been a funeral. Frank thought of Morden’s and Kerr’s funeral: the speeches and prayers. The hymns. What would any of that have meant to Young Sam, neither Christian nor a soldier? All Alice and Frank could offer their friend was silence.

  Then Alice said in a bright, loud voice, “We are sorry, Young Sam.”

  Frank said he was sorry too.

  The boy had been so young, and none of them had taken care of him well enough.

  Before they could leave this place, they had to dress Brooke. He did not want the smelly animal skins, so Alice fashioned the blanket into a Mexican-style poncho. She insisted he wear the Boer’s leather trousers, and she and Frank worked together to manoeuvre them over his bent shape. They also combined to tie the cadaver’s leather flap shoes on Lionel’s feet. The last thing in Alice’s bedroll was an oiled cotton groundsheet. She rolled the cadaver’s leather shirt in it and carried it across her shoulders.

  Now, higher in the valley that was still rising to the west, they took turns helping Brooke walk, taking weight off his injured back. In the hooded poncho, with his pale glassy eyes, he looked like a Bible prophet addled by visions. He stayed silent even when Alice ordered him to talk and told him he was a poor excuse for a man. He was far beyond the reach of insult.

  At night, it grew cold, and they huddled together like barn cats, Brooke the ill-fitting middle piece. When it rained in the dark, they spread the groundsheet over themselves. Frank kept expecting Jimmy to ride in with guns and horses. Sometimes, he imagined Jeff Davis coming to their rescue.

  After another wet day and night, they were very hungry and barely able to move. They needed people. Alice climbed to a saddle between peaks and saw a valley that opened into a high terrace. The far side of the terrace was closed in by a steep mountain face. She saw a clot of white that she thought must be sheep.

  They made for this place and, well before they arrived, a dozen children joined them. Close-shorn, almost bald, the children wore woven blankets and stayed well away from the whites. But they also led the visitors to a trail that entered the green place on which their village spread.

  Some men with spears and one with an ancient flintlock took over from the children at the first field. They were ushered between round houses. The thatch on the conical roofs was precisely tailored. They walked between mud-smooth curving walls. Women watched calmly as they passed.

  In the middle of the village was a sidehill of grass. They were told to sit. The men with spears went away and left the owner of the flintlock to guard them. The children played at a safe distance.

  For several miles, Lionel Brooke had faltered badly. He could only move his feet if most of his weight was slumped over Franks or Alice’s back. Now he lay on his side in his snail shape, the blanket partly over him. Because he could not or would not speak, they did not know how to help him.

  Along the journey, Alice and Frank had shied away from speech. Now, they talked. Both had made up their minds to leave, to get away from the people and ideas that had led to the youngest and purest of them being killed. They had the same thought about what must be done first. Brooke must be put into safe hands. Though the stupidity of his fire had cost Young Sam’s life, Brooke was still too innocent to abandon.

  When the village men returned, there was a new one among them: a man with no weapon who was dressed differently. He wore a round brimless hat like a Mountie pillbox. His blanket was dense with colourful geometry. He was, it turned out, a teacher and scholar, the one in the village who knew English.

  “You want? What?” was his first question.

  Alice said they were hungry. Children were dispatched to deal with this. The scholar asked what was wrong with Brooke. Alice explained about his back.

  “No speak?”

  “No speak.”

  At this, the man frowned, for it was left to him to wonder whether Brooke lacked the mechanism of speech, or simply would not talk.

  “Soldiers?” he asked, moving on.

  “No,” said Alice pointing at both Brooke and Frank. “Not soldiers.”

  The scholar pointed at Frank and asked again: “Soldier?”

  Alice pointed at the bloody hole in his shirt front and said, “Not soldier.” She pointed at Frank’s face. “Not soldier.”

  The children returned with a woman who carried a wooden platter of fruit and biltong on her head. Alice put a piece of the dried meat in Lionel’s mouth and he sucked on it. Another woman brought a bladder from which she gave them each a drink.

  Then the scholar asked what else they wanted.

  It was around then that the sky, which had been building up with clouds, released a dense rain. They were taken into a thatched building bigger than the rest: a meeting house. They sat on a woven mat that covered the packed dirt floor.

  Alice and the scholar resumed their conversation in the darkened room. By now, she understood that he knew more English than he could say. She was able to guide him through groups of questions to which he could answer yes or no. Progress became rapid.

  She found out that the Basutos, while neutral, were less afraid of the British than of the Boers. She was able to tell the scholar that they needed to get to some British place, maybe the fort at Springhaan’s Nek, without colliding with the Boers.

  The scholar told Alice that, though his people were anxious to be rid of them, they were reluctant to go outside the mountains, especially in the company of English people. The Boers were using their trails to avoid the British forts. If they saw the Basutos helping the British, they would kill them.

  What got them beyond this impasse was money that Alice had sewn into the seams of her shirt and trousers. She asked to be allowed to relieve herself and came back with English pounds. She said she needed horses: three, or at least two. Several horse owners were summoned, and what followed was the familiar routine of horse trading.

  Horses paraded in the rain outside the meeting house, the quality declining as Alice cut more seams and revealed the full extent of her money. In the end, there was only one horse in the whole village within reach of what she had. The Basutos explained that the British at the forts were short of horses and paying high prices.

  Frank wished Ovide could be there to look over the one horse Alice could afford. The owner called it a Basuto, but, though Frank had only known one of that breed, he was sure it was not. More likely, it was riff-raff that had wandered in from the war: a stout old thing near the end of its energy.

  Frank took Alice aside—as much as the situation allowed.

  “You and Brooke can both ride that horse. If you go dead slow and rest him,
he’ll make it to Springhaan’s Nek.”

  “But I don’t have any more money, and the owner won’t come down. He says he can get more at the forts.”

  “But he’s afraid to go there. Tell him you can get more money and you’ll bring it back. Leave me as a hostage.”

  “But I don’t know if I can get more money, Frank. I’d probably have to go to Bloemfontein—maybe Cape Town.”

  “I’m telling you what to tell them, not what has to happen.”

  On this basis, the sale was made. The seller arranged for a boy to ride with Brooke and Kettle out of the mountains. When the two horses stood ready, Alice came to Frank and hugged him tight. She whispered in his ear.

  “I don’t know what will happen, Frank. I’ll stay with Brooke until I get him to a hospital. Then I’ll try to get money.”

  It seemed that was all, but when Frank pulled back, she would not let him go. She had him around the neck and was as strong as barbwire.

  “Don’t try to find Alma. When this is over and you’re home, you’ll find a wife. None of this will matter then. Do you understand me?”

  She ground their heads together. He said he understood, but was only trying to get away.

  When she released him, there were tears in her eyes. It made Frank understand that she would not be back. She was still holding his hands in hers, and he felt something poke into his fist. When she let him go, and she and Lionel were boosted onto the sway-backed horse, there was a second in which Frank was able to put what Alice had given him into a pocket—on top of Young Sam’s lucky quartz stones.

  For two weeks, Frank lived with the chickens in the horse owner’s mud-walled yard. Even the children lost interest in him. At night, he was tied between two widely spaced stakes and had to stay awake to keep the chickens from pecking his eyes. When no one was watching him dig furrows in the man’s field, he would lie down in the dirt and sleep. As for food, he ate what the animals ate, dry mealie kernels pounded with a post.

  Two weeks to the day after Alice and Lionel left, the seller decided he’d had enough of feeding Frank. He put him on a mule that he led behind his own Basuto pony. They walked down several valleys until the sun was setting golden brown.