by Fred Stenson
Frank told Jimmy he would go to the party. They had already passed the town hall and the park beside it, and now they started walking the ridgling toward the livery barn. Quite a bit of Frank’s money from Alice remained, and they agreed that the ridgling would enjoy a night with other horses. Provided he did not bite, kick, or fuck anything, it would be a rest for everyone. Jimmy had no interest in the party, but said he might have himself a smoke if Frank had tobacco money.
Along the way, Frank bought Jimmy a tin of coarse-cut Boer tobacco and a cheap pipe. He bought himself six sheets of paper and a pencil that the storekeeper shaved to a dangerous point. He also bought a tin mirror and a comb.
Frank waited until after dark to walk from the livery barn to the town hall. He had spent the afternoon and early evening fooling with his appearance. His hair was long and his clothes were dirty. He had not shaved since the hospital in Kroonstad. The person in the mirror did not look like Winston Churchill, Rudyard Kipling, or Banjo Patterson. He looked like a bummer. Frank had returned to the shop and bought a keen-edged knife and a bar of soap. He paid the liveryman to make a fire in his stove and to loan him a basin. A dirty, odd-smelling towel was thrown in as goodwill.
Shaving with a tiny knife had been a bloody business, and his hair did not get as clean as he’d hoped. When he was all done and had combed his locks, Jim Whitford suggested it needed greasing down. A can of horse ointment was found and put to this purpose. By now, Frank had climbed society’s ladder no more than a rung—from bummer to pimp, or maybe a losing gambler. To achieve even that much, he’d had to rent a jacket from a fellow who came into the barn to sleep off a drunk. This was another of Jim’s ideas.
Walking down the dark street toward the lamplit hall, Frank had little confidence. He smelled of horse ointment and would be badly outdressed by soldiers in their dress uniforms. The image of him quizzing people and writing down their answers was eclipsed by pictures of soldiers keeping their distance and some officer’s batman asking him to leave.
For these reasons, when Frank got to the hall, he did not plunge in. He walked by the fan of steps and around the building’s side. The hall windows above had been opened to allow in the evening’s breeze. Looking up, he could see tobacco smoke escaping.
He was looking for another entrance, and he found it near the back: a few steps of raw lumber to a small landing and a door held open by a wooden wedge. The landing and steps were dense with soldiers passing a bottle. Frank had to push himself through while they made fun of him, calling him a gatecrasher, a spy, a bum. That got him to the door.
As he had feared, it was a well-dressed affair. A food table to one side, piled with sandwiches, made his stomach lurch. Some kind of German band blatted out a polka on a tiny stage. There was a punch bowl that fellows dipped into with a ladle; dainty cups.
Franks eyes kept coming back to a clutch of men near the middle of the vacant dance floor. It was the uniform. They were wearing tapered khaki tunics, compared to everyone else’s red, blue, or green dress uniforms. The khaki was tan, which suggested new because, after a dust storm or two and a couple of muddy launderings, khaki turned almost white.
They had whipcord trousers and lace-up boots to the knee. Several had left their silver spurs on for decoration.
These men were also noticeable because they laughed loud and often. British officers pinched the tiny handles on their punch glasses and cast frowns at the boisterous ones. Then one of the khakis stepped back to turn and cough, and Frank saw it was Casey Callaghan.
Frank was still on the landing. He jumped back into the dark, bumping a fellow who bumped a fellow who spilled his drink. Frank was cursed and given a shove.
“Why don’t you go inside, for chrissake?”
He ignored them, held his ground, and tried to understand what he’d seen. Why was Casey here? The ships full of Canadian mounted infantry had sailed a month ago, according to Brooke’s newspapers. Frank squinted at the group in khaki, trying to see the red dot on their uniforms, some kind of insignia.
As they jostled and laughed, more faces became visible. Frank saw Gat Howard and the young gunner Walter Bapty. Ed Hilliam. Charlie Ross. A man stood up straight and was half a head taller than the others. Jeff Davis.
When Jeff turned his way, it occurred to Frank to show himself. He leaned forward into the light, for a few seconds.
Right then, Davis sprang away from his crowd and clamped a hand over his mouth. He must have said something, for the others jumped back. A path cleared as he ran in an undignified gallop toward the main door.
The men in Jeff’s group turned to watch him go. Every one was laughing. By now, Frank could tell they were drunk, and drunks always find a puking drunkard amusing.
Frank struggled through the bunch on the landing and steps. They blocked him. One clouted him on the ear. He made it down and hurried toward the buildings front. There were spots of light cast by the windows, and he saw Jeff pass through one. He caught him before he could enter another.
Jeff took Frank by the arm and towed him into the park. There were no lamps among the trees. They passed a group of soldiers gathered around a fist fight. They didn’t stop until they were on the park’s farthest side. In a space of grass and flower beds lit by the half-moon, they faced each other.
Nothing was said for a minute. Jeff kept looking at Frank, then back and around for spies. Finally, he reached under the tail of his tunic, and pulled out a bottle. He held it to the moon to see the level. Two-thirds. Only when Jeff tipped the bottle up and took a couple of big swallows did Frank fully understand that Jeff’s run for the door had been an act.
Jeff handed Frank the bottle, and Frank took a sizable drink. For some reason related to the fancy party, he was expecting good liquor, but the stuff was harsh. It burned and made him cough.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, coming here?” Jeff asked. He was not joking or faking now.
“I wanted to see if there were guards from the concentration camp. I wanted to ask them some questions. I didn’t think there’d be anyone I knew.”
“Everyone thinks you’re dead or captured.”
“I was captured for a while.” Frank took a breath. Before he could go on, Jeff put an open hand in front of Frank’s face. He was angry and wanted no tale of adventure.
“If you’d come inside and Casey had seen you?”
“I told you. I didn’t think he’d be there. Or you, or anybody. Why are you here?”
Jeff ignored the question. “Casey doesn’t like you. He thinks you’re a deserter.”
“I guess he’s right.”
“You tell anyone else that?”
“No. Nobody in the army, anyway.”
Jeff took another pull from his bottle. It occurred to Frank that Jeff was different than his usual self. Frank had seen him drunk before, but he’d seemed sleepy and calm then. Tonight, he was sped up, intense. Frank did not understand at all why Jeff would be here. Why wasn’t he on a boat? Or even back home by now? On the Blood with his girlfriend, telling her father he’d shot Villamon.
Jeff was talking again, in that rapid way.
“If you’re caught and Casey convinces the others you’ve deserted, you’re a dead man, you know that? It’s about the only thing they’d shoot you for. Cowardice or desertion.”
Jeff drank more. Downing it like water. Frank took another couple of turns. The mutton was long burned off, and not having had liquor in a while, each swallow punched him in the head.
“Why’d you do it?” Jeff asked.
“Why’d I leave? Sick of it, I guess.”
“There was only a month to go. You’d have been home by now.”
Frank began to feel grumpy about this interrogation. He’d had his reasons. Ovide, Dunny. Everyone treating the blacks like animals and treating him like a black.
Then Jeff seemed done talking. They stood and drank, with the insects in the trees making their ruckus and the bats careening: streaks of silver.
> “I got a girlfriend now,” Frank said. The garbled drunken sound of his own voice surprised him. Things were happening thick and slow, and a sadness jumped in him at the word girlfriend, for in truth Alma might not be his at all.
“Who is she?” asked Jeff.
“I found Lionel Brooke, Jimmy Whitford, and Young Sam on a farm south of here. They were staying with a Boer family. There was a daughter named Alma.”
“Brooke, the rancher? He’s here?”
“Said he was going to kill De Wet. His plan didn’t work out. He’s going home. What about your girlfriend? The one on the Blood?”
“She’s dead.”
Frank went still. Under the power of that word, the whole night began to roar. The insects barked. The bats sizzled. The roar of talk from the hall was a riot. The news fell through Frank as if he’d turned to rotten ice.
Jeff took a drink and handed over the bottle. Frank drank.
“I gotta sit down.” Frank dropped where he was. Jeff sat beside him, his knees tall in the moonlight.
“I forget your girlfriend’s name.”
“You never knew it. Ran After.”
“How’d you find out?”
“You were there. It was in the letter from General Butler.”
Frank remembered. At Bankfontein, the day Jeff and Casey killed Villamon. It gave Frank a strange feeling that he’d been the one to carry the news, without knowing it. Everything made better sense now. How Jeff had looked and acted that night and next morning. That Jeff had passed up the chance to go home.
“The old people call it blood-spitting sickness,” Jeff said. “Lots were dying before we left.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What about your girlfriend? She still at the farm?”
“We don’t have to talk about her.”
“Why not?”
“They burned her farm. She’s here in Middelburg. In the camp. She and her mother.”
“So she’s a Boer.”
“Ya. Boer.”
“Pretty?”
“I’m sorry about Ran After.”
“She pretty?”
“Ya, she’s pretty.”
“You drunk enough now?”
“I guess so, ya.”
“Good, ‘cause this soldier’s dead.”
“What soldier?”
Jeff flung the bottle into the dark. There was no sound. Frank kept waiting for it to land.
“Frank, you hear me?”
“Ya, I hear you.”
“Can you listen and remember something?”
“Guess so.”
“Try hard to listen. Casey and me, we’re Canadian Scouts now. Some call it Howard’s Canadian Scouts.”
“I saw him in there. Gatling. And Charlie Ross.”
“Howard put up the money. It’s his command. Charlie’s second-in-command. Fifteen Mounted Rifles signed up. Some Dragoons. Rest are from all over. We’re heading out on a drive in a few days. A bunch of columns are going to sweep east to Swaziland.”
“I won’t see you, then.”
“Frank, listen. You gotta come with us.”
“How?”
“Invent some story. Join the Scouts. Can you think of a story?”
“I have a story.”
“As long as you do and it makes sense, that’s good. Howard isn’t stupid, so don’t count on that. But come in and tell Howard your story. Tell him you want to be a scout. I’ll vouch for you.”
“Casey’ll say I deserted.”
“He will, and you’ll say different. I’ll vouch for you. Don’t do anything tonight. Just get out of here.”
Jeff jumped up and was gone.
Frank thought he should stand and go, like Jeff said. The trouble was that his head would not lift. He could still think, though. He rolled onto his back. The damp night was fragrant. Half a moon stood trapped in some branches.
Besides needing to move, there were bigger questions. Should he take Jeff’s advice and join these Canadian Scouts? Wouldn’t that take him farther from Alma?
When he tried to focus his spinning thoughts on her, they went out of control and landed on Jimmy. Suddenly, Frank understood what Jimmy had been up to. Being so drunk had torn up his thoughts, and what had not been visible was now obvious.
Jimmy had wanted Frank to go to the party so he could get arrested. Giving him horse ointment for a pomade and a drunkard’s jacket to wear. Coming here to Middelburg and urging Frank to pose as a reporter with a fake English accent had been part of it too.
Twice today, Whitford had mentioned the Strathconas. He had been hoping Frank would run into someone who knew him, someone like Sam Steele, who would guess he had deserted and arrest him. But Sam had not been at the party.
Powered by this, Frank sat up. Then he stood. He was weaving badly, but he did not fall. He found that the faster he went, the straighter his steps became. To hell with Whitford, Frank thought. He was going where he wanted to go.
Soon, Frank was passing the last of Middelburg’s houses. The little windows were dark, and his way was lit only by the moon, as clouds skated across it. The fast walking had changed his state and left him stranded somewhere between plastered and sane. His senses worked but not as a team, and while his fury had flown off, fear came to nest in the void. A gust of wind caused a broom to blow off its stoop and whack a wall. Franks reaction whipped his neck and spine. He was jumpy. Jumping out of his skin.
He left the hard pan of the final street and felt the bounce and squish of the boggy ground. He was descending the swale. The camp was below. There was more than dogs to fear now, for the Brits would have guards watching for the likes of him—town relations and boyfriends with wire cutters or guns.
Despite the wet, Frank went down on all fours and proceeded like a dog. Cold water pooled darkly around his wrists and knees. Something splashed near him, hopefully a waterfowl and not a snake. The smell was rot and sweetness, a background of sewage.
He peered through the rushes at the fence. The page wire was printed on yellow lantern light. He crawled until he rose onto pocked ground.
The main gate was around a corner near the town side. When he squinted he could see two cigarette ends. The moon made shadows on the beaten ground. The prisoners’ tents were pale shapes fanning irregularly up the rise.
There were two lamps, both hanging on poles. One was beside a metal building with a ripple roof, a guard hut probably. The other was toward the camp’s lowest corner: the latrine at the swamp’s edge.
Frank had no alternative but to wait. Finally, a little ruckus came from the tents. Something had been kicked over. Then someone small passed through the first lamp’s yellow glow and into the pale moonlight. The motion was a boy’s. He was headed for the latrine. When he got to the bottom and stopped, there was a little rip of liquid.
Frank went fast. He got as close to the boy as he could and whispered.
“Wil jy kom, bitte? Here, here, kom.” Things the Kleffs had said to their servants.
The boy ran a few steps and stopped.
“Bitte, kom.”
Frank dug in his pocket for a shilling. Threw it. It glimmered in the lamp’s light and fell not far from the boy, who got down on his knees, groped, and found it.
Frank had a second shilling. He waggled it, made as if to throw but didn’t.
“Alma,” Frank said. “Alma Kleff. Alma Kleff. Okay?”
Then he threw the shilling. The boy picked it up and hurried away.
Frank imagined the boy crawling back into bed and forgetting everything. But it was all Frank could think to do.
Soon, there were new sounds. Someone else came, adult this time; dress and bonnet. She stopped well short of the fence.
“Alma, I’m here. It’s Frank. I’m here.”
The woman stopped. He could see nothing of her except that she was not moving. In a stout whisper, he kept calling.
Then the woman ran away. Frank reckoned it was just someone needing the latrine who was afraid to go
there now. Or maybe it was the boy’s mother come to discover the source of shillings. He lost sight of the woman among the tents. Kept waiting.
Something metal banged on metal. He looked at the guard hut and saw through holes in the wall that the yellow light was blinking. A woman dashed into the naked yard and pointed in Franks direction.
“There! There!” Mrs. Kleff, he understood.
Men followed her into the open. Khaki showing white against the dark. He could see their rifles wagging. One held a lantern by its wire handle.
They were coming at Frank accurately enough. He lit out, trying to stay low. When the first rifle barked, the sound doubled against the damp air. He straightened and ran as hard as he could, splashed in the swale’s ditch. In his mind, he was making for the fresh graves, beyond which he remembered forest.
More rifles cracked, several shots, and the bullet rips were so close he knew they could see him. He looked for shadow and made for it. He recognized the hill crest when the ground flattened and wondered when the graves would come. Then he tripped on one; fell across its greasy clay. He could tell by the yelling that the guards were still after him.
Then Frank heard a horse pounding out of the darkness. He stood and braced. The horse was right there. All he could do was dive sideways. The rider twisted the horse around and Frank heard it squeal. A hand gripped his collar and he was dragging, bumping along until his arms came out of the rented jacket. He fell on his face.
“Frank! It’s Jim! Come on!”
Frank stood and took the offered arm. All he could do was jump across the withers. After they had galloped a ways, Jimmy pulled the ridgling to a halt and jumped off. He boosted Frank so he was astride, then clambered on behind so they were riding double on the ridgling’s bare back.
Frank noticed little as they moved among trees, but when they entered the long white prairie, he felt something not right in the ridgling’s gait. Each time the horse went to his front legs it was as though he were falling and catching himself
Soon, Whitford pulled up and jumped off Frank did too. In the relative stillness, Frank could hear a whistle in the ridgling’s breath. Jimmy was hunting across the horse’s near side, then spun him so the offside was visible in the moonglow. The problem showed as a black streak. At the top of it, a bullet had entered, gone between the ribs into the lungs.
