Now Is the Time for Running

by Michael Williams

  Innocent grabs Patson’s crutches and stumbles forward. Helping Patson is all that matters to him now.

  “Come down here, Lennox!” Mai Maria blasts from her rock. “I want you to look after these three boys. No trouble for them, hey?” she says, pointing her finger at a tall man who waits for us. “The Ghuma-ghuma can take the first lot, but these three—you look after them.”

  Lennox nods at her. I want to ask about the Ghuma-ghuma, but something tells me that now is not the time. Lennox takes the crutches from Innocent and lashes them to the bamboo pole. Patson’s father holds on to the first knot and lifts his son onto his back, holding his butt with his left hand. Patson wraps his leg around his father’s waist and clings to his neck. Patson’s father has the backpack strapped to his chest. He doesn’t look very comfortable.

  Innocent grabs hold of the pole with his right hand. I take his Bix-box and stuff it into a plastic bag I found. Behind me, two more men take their place at the remaining knots on our pole. At the end is another one of Mai Maria’s helpers. We start moving toward the water. There is no turning back now.

  “HEY, SOCCER BOY, WHEN YOU GET INTO THE PARK, DON’T STOP RUNNING. YOU HEAR ME? NOT FOR ANYTHING!” I hear Mai Maria yell, but I’m not sure what she means.

  I have to get Innocent across the Limpopo River. The water is cold. The current tugs at my ankles. Innocent whimpers in fear in front of me.

  “Drag your feet, Innocent, don’t lift them out of the water,” I say.

  “Nobody must let go!” shouts Lennox from the front. “The water may pull you, but you must not let go of the pole.”

  We wade into the river, deeper into the mud. I stub my toe on a rock. The water covers my knees. I wrap my right arm around the pole and cling to the rope knot.

  “Hold tight, Innocent. Hold tight!” I shout.

  “I’m holding, I’m holding,” cries Innocent.

  The water claws at my thighs. It wants to pull me downriver to where the crocodiles wait. I lift the plastic bag above my head, trying to keep my balance. We are not yet in the middle, and the water is already lapping at my stomach. If it gets any deeper, I won’t be able to hold on.

  Then Innocent slips. The water sweeps him off his feet but he holds on to the pole with both hands.

  “Don’t let go!” shouts Lennox.

  “Let him go! He will take us all down!” bellows the man behind me.

  “No! Innocent, you must hold on!”

  We stop moving. I cannot help Innocent without letting go of the pole and dropping the damn Bix-box. Lennox has now turned completely around and is trying to move past Patson’s father to help Innocent. I hear the splashing of somebody coming through the water. The last man at the back of the pole has rushed forward.

  “Grab him!” he shouts.

  Patson slides off his father’s back and tries to help Innocent.

  “No, Patson!” shouts his father, but it is too late. Patson is in the water, struggling to get Innocent back onto his feet.

  Innocent disappears under the water.

  He thrashes about, trying desperately to get a grip. His face breaks the surface of the water. A wave covers him again. He’s spluttering and coughing. “Deo, help me! Help me!”

  I try to lift him up, but he is too heavy for me. I’m losing my grip on the pole. From behind, Mai Maria’s helper wraps one arm around Innocent’s chest and somehow pulls him out of the water. Innocent’s hands are locked on to the pole, making it difficult for the man to get him upright.

  “Let go with your left hand!” I shout at him. “Stand up, Innocent. Stand up!”

  He tries to stand up. “Deo, I’m slipping. I’m slipping,” he screams in terror. But the man jerks him roughly into an upright position.

  “Move!” the man shouts at Lennox.

  Lennox turns around and starts moving toward the faraway riverbank. Patson’s father is struggling to hold on to Patson, who is holding on to Innocent, who is holding on to the man.

  “Patson, let him go! I’ve got him now,” shouts the man. “Hold on to the pole.”

  Every now and then Patson kicks with his leg and then sinks back into the water. His father has lifted the pole above the water and is dragging and lifting at the same time. Innocent is still whimpering but is able to drag himself through the water now that the man is holding him up.

  My legs ache. Cramps stab my thighs. I don’t know how much longer I can hold on to the pole. The other side still seems so far away.

  “We’re almost there, Innocent. Keep going. Take one step at a time. Almost there,” I say to encourage both of us.

  And then suddenly, the river lets us go into shallow waters, the water lapping gently at our ankles. We scramble up the bank of the river and collapse on the ground. We’ve made it across the Limpopo River and into South Africa.

  “Hurry! No rest now,” shouts Lennox. “The Ghuma-ghuma will come. The danger is not over.”

  If he has done this so many times, why does he sound so afraid?

  12

  GHUMA-GHUMA

  Lennox runs up the riverbank and sprints toward the nearest bushes. I don’t know what is going on. We are here in South Africa now—what is there to be afraid of? Patson’s father struggles to his feet and frantically tries to untie Patson’s crutches from the bamboo pole. The water has made the knots tight, and he can’t get the crutches free.

  “Wait!” he shouts after Lennox. “My son needs them.”

  The two men who crossed the river with us run after Lennox. Neither will help Patson.

  “In my Bix-box,” says Innocent. “In my Bix-box.”

  I give him his tin box. Innocent takes out a pocketknife and hands it to Patson’s father. The string binding the crutches is quickly cut, and Patson slips the crutches under his arms and negotiates his way over the rocks.

  I look up and down the riverbank. The groups that crossed ahead of us have disappeared into the bush. The men and women from Harare, however, rest on the rocks of the riverbank. One of the women is complaining loudly and wringing out water from her skirt. The men smoke cigarettes, enjoying the morning sun. There are no signs of Mai Maria’s men who took them across the river.

  Then, without warning, from out of the bush, a group of men appears above the rocks. One of them carries a rifle in his hands as if it is nothing, as if its power is asleep. The men who walk with him all carry heavy sticks and machetes. The group smoking and laughing on the rocks beside the river has not yet noticed these men.

  “Ghuma-ghuma,” whispers Mai Maria’s helper. “Hurry! They must not find us here. Big trouble. Come!”

  Patson hobbles after his father, his crutches slipping in the river mud. As Innocent scrambles up the bank, I watch the Ghuma-ghuma moving over the rocks toward the group from Harare.

  “What do they want?”

  “Everything you have,” comes the answer.

  The Ghuma-ghuma fall upon the group from Harare. Machetes and sticks are raised in the air; the men try to run away. The women cry out for mercy. They are trapped between the river and the Ghuma-ghuma. They have been led right into the hands of robbers.

  Innocent stops and turns around. He wants to see the reason for all the noise. I push him up the riverbank. “Go! Run, Innocent. Run!”

  We dive into the bushes. Rough hands pull me down. It is Lennox.

  “Lie still! Not a word. Keep quiet or they will find us,” he hisses, pushing Patson’s father farther back into the bushes. “You.” Lennox points at Innocent. “Shut up or I will cut off your balls.”

  I pull Innocent down. And not a moment too soon.

  Ghuma-ghuma rush up to where we stood a moment ago. Two of them carry the bags of the men from Harare. Now I understand what the adults were whispering about last night. These men are waiting for people who have crossed the Limpopo. The Ghuma-ghuma wait to beat and rob them. It’s so easy.

  Lennox is breathing softly beside me. He is watching closely, holding a big knife in his hand. I hold tightly on to
Innocent’s arm. He knows of the danger. He has his fingers in his ears and has closed his eyes.

  The Ghuma-ghuma look up and down the path. The man with the rifle kneels and checks our footprints in the sand. He looks up and stares in our direction.

  I hold my breath. Lennox is rock-still.

  But then one of the men notices another group crossing farther up the river. He shouts to the man with the rifle, and the Ghuma-ghuma run down toward the river to attack their next victims. The man with the rifle follows.

  “Now!” whispers Lennox. “Let’s go.”

  We slip out of the bushes and start running.

  Patson jumps onto his father’s back. Innocent follows Lennox and I run behind him. The two men follow me. We can hardly keep up with Lennox. I feel a pain in my side—the running-too-fast-too-long pain. After a while Lennox slows down. In front of us is a huge barbed-wire fence.

  “This is the first park. There is great danger beyond this fence. We must run now for two hours.”

  “A game reserve,” says Patson’s father. “It’s a place with wild animals?”

  “Or you can stay if you want to,” Lennox says, “and deal with them.” He points to where we have come from.

  Lennox shows us to a place in the barbed wire where there is a tunnel dug underneath the fence. Someone before us has cut a way through the barbed wire.

  “Follow me and do as I say,” he says, taking off his shirt, rolling it up tightly, and stuffing it down the front of his pants.

  “This is no time to be shy,” I say quietly to Innocent. “We’re all taking off our shirts. It will be easier to get through.” I help him undo his buttons and then wrap up his shirt into a ball. He stuffs it down the front of his trousers.

  We are on our hands and knees, crawling under the fence and through a row of barbed wire. I nick myself on the wire. Blood. One of the men behind me yells. I’m not the only one bitten by the barbed wire.

  “Keep moving!” says Lennox.

  “Deo?” calls Innocent. “Are you there?”

  “I’m right behind you. Keep crawling. Don’t look back. Slowly,” I say, as the barbed wire bites my brother. “Keep as close to the ground as you can.”

  One by one we crawl through to the other side. Lennox holds back the wire until all of us are through. Sweat is running down his face. He takes out his shirt and quickly puts it back on. We all do the same. The man who helped Innocent in the river has not come through the barbed wire. All we have now is Lennox.

  “Now we run. There are animals here. Hyenas, wild dogs, buffalo, elephants, but the worst of all are the lions. We will run in a line. We must hold hands where we can. You might see some bad things. But you do not stop. If you stop running, I will leave you behind.”

  I look around frantically. I see no animals. The bush looks peaceful. But from the frown on Lennox’s face and the worry in his eyes, I know we have reached a point of great danger. The two men look anxiously around the bush, and I can smell fear again, just like I did in Gutu.

  “What about Patson? He can’t run,” Innocent says.

  “I will carry him,” says Patson’s father.

  The sun rises above the distant trees in the Zimbabwe that we have left behind. The morning air in South Africa is buzzing with cicadas and the business of birds. The sky above is its usual cloudless blue. It will be hot today. The bush of the park is filled with shades of green, and now that I look more closely, I can see some bucks in the distance, grazing peacefully, unaware of our presence. But there is no time to enjoy any of this.

  “Let’s go,” says Lennox.

  Now is the time for running.

  13

  THE PARK

  We run. We stay close together.

  Patson’s father carries his son on his back and runs closely behind Lennox. Innocent holds on to the end of the crutch that Patson carries in his right hand. I hold Innocent’s hand. We struggle to keep up. The two other men run slightly behind me. We run through an open grassland, past a herd of impalas bounding away at the sight of this human train.

  On the slopes of a distant hill, several zebras look up at the unusual sound of running feet. Giraffes lazily follow our progress. They look like ships of the bush, their long necks gliding above the tops of the thorn trees. A couple of younger giraffes start following us, curious about this line of running men. Soon they pause, watch us leave, and with a twitch of their heads, return to nibbling leaves from the trees. I have never been this close to so many wild animals, but now is not the time for animal-spotting.

  Ahead of me Innocent is breathing heavily, but he is keeping up with Lennox. I wish we had the sneakers Captain Washington gave us. My feet sting from the thorns and sharp stones. There is no time to stop and pull out the thorns. Mai Maria got a good deal from us.

  We run.

  We run without stopping, until Lennox raises his hand. A herd of black buffalo are grazing on open grassland. The black beasts do not see us. They graze lazily, their enormous jaws moving from side to side, their tails swishing flies away. Everything looks peaceful, but Lennox has heard something. We crouch down in the long grass. I am happy for the rest.

  “I’m tired, Deo,” says Innocent, panting.

  “We’re almost there,” I say, without knowing if this is true.

  Patson crouches next to his father, who lies flat out on the ground. I’m not sure he will be able to get back on his feet.

  “Hyena!” shouts one of the men.

  We spring to our feet and look behind us. A hyena is following us. The animal is twice the size of the largest dog I’ve ever seen. He runs sideways, lifting his nose in the air, sniffing, and then dropping his head down onto the ground. The animal is following our trail. Lennox moves quickly to the back of the line. He turns one of the men around. His shirt is drenched with blood. He must have scratched himself quite badly going through the barbed wire. He has been bleeding all this time, his blood marking a trail behind us.

  “The hyena has smelled your blood,” says Lennox angrily. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bleeding?”

  Lennox tears the shirt off the man’s back and makes it into a bandage. He wraps the cloth tightly around the man’s chest. The man looks terrified as the hyena draws closer, his nose in the air sniffing the fresh blood.

  “Everyone lift your bags up in the air!” shouts Lennox. “Follow me.”

  I watch, amazed, as Lennox lifts his bag into the air and runs directly at the oncoming hyena.

  “Come on!” he shouts. “It’s the only way. Hyenas are scared of things higher than them.”

  Innocent is stuck to the spot. There is no way that I will get him to run at a charging hyena. Patson’s father cannot run with Patson on his back. I can’t believe what I am about to do, but without thinking, I grab Patson’s crutch.

  “Innocent, Operation Look After Patson, Operation Don’t Move. Okay?”

  He nods. “I’ll look after Patson,” he says.

  I turn and run after Lennox, who is running at the hyena, screaming as loudly as he can. He runs with his bag held high above his head. The two men do exactly the same. I follow them waving the crutch in the air, shouting.

  But then Lennox stumbles, falls, disappears headfirst into the long grass. The two men stop, uncertain what to do now. The hyena bounds forward, growling, snapping its jaws. But just as the men are about to turn and run, the sound of a shrill whistle comes.

  I know what it is before I see it: a referee’s whistle.

  Innocent runs past me, blowing a whistle and shaking his Bix-box high above his head. I follow him, yelling at the hyena and waving Patson’s crutch over my head. The men stare as Innocent runs past them, and Lennox gets up and screams at them, “Come on! Run!”

  We charge after Innocent, shouting and yelling.

  It works. The hyena dips its tail between its legs and lopes away in fright. Lennox catches up with us, stops, and picks up some stones. He throws them after the hyena. I do the same, but the animal is now
a long way off. Innocent gives a few more blasts from his whistle.

  “You can stop now!” I shout.

  My brother is trembling as he takes the whistle out of his mouth and grins at me.

  “Operation Scare Hyena, Deo. We chased him off!” he says, his eyes shining. As crazy as it sounds, I think my brother is having fun.

  “Where did you get that from?” I ask.

  “My Bix-box,” he says with a sly smile. “You don’t know what I’ve got in here.” He opens the box and pulls out a piece of string, which he ties to the whistle and slips around his neck. “Just in case,” he says.

  Lennox laughs. “Your brother’s taught me something today,” he says as we walk to where Patson and his father wait. “Next time, I’ll come with a whistle.”

  Lennox takes the remains of the man’s shirt and fixes it to a thorn tree. The blood-soaked cloth flutters in the breeze. “This will keep the hyena busy for a while. Now we must run. We still have far to go.”

  Patson climbs onto his father’s back, and we are off again, running. Down through the plain, past the grazing black buffalo who raise their enormous heads to stare at us, past a herd of elephants feeding on the leaves of thorn trees, through a small river where hippos lie in a deep pool, their noses and eyes and funny small ears the only signs of their huge bodies.

  The two men collapse onto their knees, drink greedily from the river, splashing their faces over and over with water.

  “Not too fast,” warns Lennox. “It will be painful to carry so much water inside you. We are not through the park yet.”

  The water tastes of mud, but at least it’s wet. I drink only a little and wash the sweat off my face. I sink my feet into the mud by the side of the river, grateful for the coolness. Then, just above the water line across the river, I see a stack of white bones and a skull. I walk through the shallow water, crouch down, and look at what lies bleached white and clean in the sun.

  “What is it?” asks Patson.

  “I don’t know,” I say, glancing up at Lennox, who has been watching me.