by Peter Bowen
“Ye’d best not fall ooooverrrboard,” said Captain Macneice. He had come up by me while I was still waiting for the ox to bob back up. “Fearful great gurries they have here. Saw one bite a man in half once. They get much more common and bigger as we go up the coast to Durban.”
One of the sharks heaved his head out of the water and looked around. I thought I could throw a grand piano down his mouth without bumping the sides, if my aim was good.
“Well, Mr. Adendorrrff,” says Macneice, “ye’ll see Durrban soon and be glad, I am sure. Course, they’ll draft you.”
“Draft?” says I.
“Ye’re an English subject sound in wind and limb and they’ll be needing such,” says this damned old Scots buzzard. “And ye’ll take the widow’s shilling, sure enough.”
“Widow?”
“An expression we English subjects have, Mr.—cough—Adendorrrff. The widow is the Queen. Her name’s Victoria. Or you could tell them you are an American and then only have to explain why ye’ve anooooother man’s papers.”
“How much you want?” I says, fingering my moneybelt.
“I am nae blackmailer,” says Macneice, “and I went to sea a long time ago because I’d be hung for murther on the shore had I stayed. Keep the name Adendorrrff if ye like, but cast the papers to the sharks. They’re not much for questions in Durrban; ’tis a young place, like your West.”
“How ’bout a drink, then,” I says.
“Fine.”
The old bastard put away a full bottle of my Scots whiskey, and he told me about himself. I had known a lot like him, they were up and down the Rockies after gold, or foremen on the cattle ranches, or merchants. After he had made a big dent in a second bottle he excused himself and went back to the bridge. I went back to the fantail and tossed Adendorff’s papers to the sharks. There were five big fins following the wake now.
The next day the wind brisked up and the seas ran across our course, and the bucketing of the boat got bad again, and I got seasick. I laid in my bed, moaning, and time to time I stared at the roses in the bottom of the basin, and when I was feeling blue I wondered if I could walk back home over the polar ice.
Macneice stuck his head in the door and said something choice about the crew having voted me the strongest stomach on the voyage, as I had been throwing farther than anyone else, and would I care to enter a contest and like that. I tried to throw a bottle of Scotch at him—full, too—but rather than duck he caught it one-handed and smiled and nodded at me.
“Temper,” says Macneice, “temper, Mister Adendorrrff. It is one of the holy virtues to bind your anger.”
I unleashed a string of blasphemies—the useful part of the catechism classes I had been drug to as a kid—and Macneice rolled his eyes and said, “Tut tut,” and I finished up telling him that now I knew why all firearms had to be surrendered to the purser and kept under lock and key during the voyage.
Our arrival at the entrance to Durban’s harbor was announced most emphatically. We ran aground on the bar—there was a good-sized river there, and it shoved out the sand which built up where the current of the river lost to the ocean. The ship heaved and shuddered and scraped and I scraped myself off the wall of my cabin.
I went out on the deck—the ship was shuddering forward a bit—and looked out at the coast of Africa. It looked lovely. The boat pulled free and slid slowly into the harbor, and a couple of little tugs, belching black smoke, rushed out and stuck their bows into the side of the ship.
Twelve hours later we were tied up to the dock. I bade Macneice a fond farewell and gave him the rest of the Scots whiskey. He told me that the Durban Inn was a good clean place and promised to have my things sent on. When I wobbled down the gangplank and put foot to the quay I fell over. I had totally got out of the habit of walking on things that didn’t move. Some loafers sitting on bales nearby laughed and pointed. I staggered up and sort of tacked and yawed my way up the street, and about a half mile up the street I saw the Durban Inn. I stumbled inside and made way toward the desk. The clerk, a pimply youth, looked for a second and then went back to the newspaper.
“I need a room,” says I, holding on to the counter for support. The clerk wrinkled his nose, no doubt at the smell, or rather, smells, I gave off. My nose had give up long since.
“You’ll be off the Forbes Castle?” he says, dabbing at his nostrils with a handkerchief. His eyes was watering.
“Yes, thank god,” says I.
“You’ll be all right on the morrow,” he says. “Shall I have the bellman carry you up to your room?”
“I’ll crawl,” I says. “Send me up some breakfast in the morning and right now I’d like a drink.”
“The bar is closed,” says the clerk.
I slammed a gold double eagle on the counter.
“Take a week’s worth for the room out of that, find me a bottle of good whiskey, and keep the damn change,” I says, knowing that room clerks are the same everywhere.
He nodded and whirled the register around. I scrawled on it, making no legible sign, took my key, and went on all fours up the stairs. There were roses in the damn carpet. The wallpaper in my room was covered in roses. I fell on the bed, and when there was a discreet knock at the door I said, “Come in” and didn’t even bother to get up. It was the clerk, of course, with my whiskey and a silver soda siphon and glasses. He put them down on the nightstand without so much as a nod and went off.
I had a few drinks and began to feel better, actually even walked over to the window without falling through it. I looked out on the small town of Durban, it being preferable to the roses.
A milkman went by, singing about he was a weaver and a roving blade. His horse’s shoes tapped on the cobbles. I went to bed.
30
THE NEXT DAY I peeled one eye open, winced at the sight of the roses, pulled the bellrope, got a bellman, paid him to go get me some clean clothes from my gear, which had arrived, and went to the baths. I soaked in hot water for a couple of hours and all of the time I had a feeling that something wasn’t right.
Oh, I finally said to myself, my guts ain’t playing cat’s cradle anymore. I haven’t been seasick for hours. Hooray. I got dressed and went down to the dining room and put away a lot of eggs and steak and tomatoes and other things I had given up on ever seeing again. I drank coffee. I could walk.
The hotel manager was on duty now, and he hovered around me, having had news, no doubt, of my generosity with the night clerk. Not being desperate anymore, I fended off his questions and finally scraped him off me and went out into the bright sun to walk a little. After you haven’t been able to walk, walking is very interesting. My head still felt like it had a big hole through it, and one look in the mirror convinced me that I ought to let other folks look at me for a few days but spare myself. My eyes looked like two pissholes in a snowbank. My clothes flapped about me. But I was on blessed, solid earth.
I went down to the docks and watched my shipmates being slung over the side. It was gratifying to see that most of them fell over, too. The oxen tended to sink down and put their heads on the ground, while the mules splayed their feet out and then, finding dry land, looked around for someone to kick. I was glad I wasn’t having to work that bunch. There were soldiers running here and there and officers and sergeants talking or screaming and several more ships unloading wagons and crates.
I ate lunch in an open-air restaurant, with good wine. It was hot—the seasons were reversed here, and though it was snowing by now in the Rockies, it was hot as hell here and the flies gathered in big clouds. There were hedges of dark green with big, sickly-smelling flowers in them, and the traffic on the streets was heavy, though all of the horses looked poorly—old and tired, or not fed well. Of course, I said to myself, all of the good ones have been taken by the Army. There were little knots of turbaned fellers walking by, chattering, and holding hands. Indians, I guessed, the ones from India, where Columbus thought he was.
Durban was a funny mixture of substan
tial, well-built houses and buildings and rude shacks, all cheek by jowl. It was a lot like Denver, actually, new and thrown up overnight and then getting all respectable. The streets was clean, and unlike Denver, there weren’t packs of mangy dogs everywhere, not that I could see, nor pigs rooting about in the streets. People didn’t wear guns much. The women all wore big bonnets and uncomfortable-looking dresses, and were followed by a couple of black servants, barefooted, and usually dressed in white.
While I was walking down the main boulevard late in the afternoon a troop of Irregulars rode by. They was dressed in uniforms of black corduroy with red stripes and facings, and they all wore slouch hats with a long bird feather sticking out behind. They was riding well, but not in columns like Army troopers.
There was a big, bluff-looking British officer leading. From time to time he’d look back at his troops and then look forward again and start muttering. They went by, chaffing at each other, like all youngsters who haven’t ever been in a war and think it is all going to be great fun. I thought that was what the officer was probably muttering about.
I ate again, early, huge portions of beef and salads and fruit and good wine—the waiter told me that Napoleon himself had preferred this South African wine to any from France, which, knowing Frogs as I do, must have made them scream a lot.
Full and feeling fit at last, I went out for a walk again. I heard a funny, sort of German-sounding babble behind me, and then there was a great thump on the back of my head and everything went to stars.
When I came to, back at the hotel, there was six people in my room. Actually, there was seven. The father, Piet Uys, was snoring under the table and out of my line of sight.
“It seems that when in his cups Piet likes to roar down the streets of Durban and butt a likely stranger in the back of the head with his own very hard skull. In England we call it the Liverpool Kiss.”
The face of the hotel manager come up behind his god damn fruity voice and he smiled at me sort of like he didn’t think that this could have happened to a more deserving feller.
Greetje Uys, the only woman in the room, was bathing my forehead and speaking softly to the manager, who translated. He introduced the four Uys sons, who had taken this opportunity to clean their guns, except for the one who was stropping his knife on one of my boots. Time to time they would look fondly at dear old daddy, who was snoring like a steam engine with a bust cylinder.
“They wish to apologize,” said the manager, above the din of all five conscious Uys’s Afrikaans, “for their father’s butting you. They are also thrilled to meet the great Yellowstone Kelly.”
“What?” I bellered.
“Just a moment,” said the manager. He listened to the five of them for a while, and nodded, and then came over by me.
“Mister ... uh ... Adendorff,” said the manager, “these people are convinced that you are Luther Kelly, whoever that is. It seems that an itinerant Jewish pedlar once became quite ill while near their farm. They nursed him back to health. He had a copy of a book about Yellowstone Kelly, written by one George Hanks, and the pedlar read a story to them aloud each evening. There was a picture of ... Kelly ... in it, and he looked like you.”
I started cussing, in a general sort of way.
“Mr. Adendorff,” said the manager, “they wonder what you are saying. If I should translate what you are saying the Uys boys will tear you in half before throwing you to the sharks in Durban Harbor. They are devout people. This is their mother.”
I looked over at the four cheerful louts, all of whom were smiling and nodding at me, and showing lots of big white teeth. That could, I thought, change real fast. They had the flat, clear gaze of critters that eat other critters.
“Tell them that I am James Adendorff, and that I once met Yellowstone Kelly,” I says. “And by the by would you find a copy of that blasted book for me?”
“Surely,” said the manager.
Having seen that I was all recovered, the Uys family rose and took their leave, the largest son throwing dear old daddy over his shoulder—Uys weighed maybe two-forty—like a feather comforter. The boys all shook hands, and poor, tired-looking little Greetje smiled and nodded.
“They say welcome to Africa, and they’ll be by for you in the morning,” said the manager.
“What?”
“Mr. uh ... Adendorff,” said the manager, “You apparently, when delirious, said that you were here for ivory, so they are going to help you get ivory. If you would like to explain to them that you don’t wish to take up their offer of hospitality, that’s fine, but you can find another interpreter and another hotel to do it in.”
“I see,” I says.
“And I might inform you that the Army is needing horsemen and men of military experience, and if you don’t wish to go hunt Zulus, you may wish to go hunt ivory. The Army knows you’re here. They will be by late tomorrow afternoon. My best guess only.”
“Please tell the Uyses I will be delighted.”
The manager beamed, I beamed, the Uyses beamed.
They stomped down the stairs.
“If you go with them,” said the manager, “I would warn you not to denigrate their religion or bother their women. The only book they ever read is the Bible, and I suspect only the earlier books of that. They are a fine and honorable people and they have a true Old Testament God.”
“Meaning that they’d have my liver and lights is what you are saying if I piss on their religion or chase their skirts.”
“I hope that you do,” said the manager. “I detest Americans. They are so ... second-rate.”
My reply resulted in my being assisted to the street by a couple of burly lads. My baggage landed beside me.
“Kelly,” says I aloud, “this is not working out like you hoped.”
Whilst I sat on my luggage thinking on clever rejoinders, the manager came out and dropped the stout leather valise with the very stout lock on it, that had my money in it.
I paid a loafer to watch my baggage while I hunted up a bank and rented some safe space. Say what you will about the English, they do respect money. The clerk didn’t bat an eye, gave a receipt and assured me that my gold was safe and would be sent on to me if need be if I included a coded number in the request letter. I took a thousand for ready money.
Then I got a bottle of brandy from a pub and went back and paid off the loafer and sat out in front of the hotel, saying nasty things about the accommodations to those who looked like they might be headed in there. I had an enjoyable evening.
The Uyses came by for me at four in the morning, which is the normal waking hour for all good Boers. They had a Cape Cart drawn by four fine bay mares. We went west out of the city, to where their two wagons were held for them.
There was a small passel of nigger retainers—on the Boer wagons a black runs along beside the lead oxen and guides them. An old white-bearded man, one of the ancestral Uyses, spent a few happy moments kicking the blacks awake. His eyes was covered with cataracts and his vocal cords sounded like they was covered with warts.
A young boy, maybe fourteen, with hair so blond it was almost white, ran circles around the little train on a dapple pony. He rode right up to me and stopped and looked down for a moment.
Dik Uys came over, laughing, chattering at the kid. He then spent a few minutes going over his limited store of English, and finally pointed at Greetje and then at the kid.
“Oh,” says I, light dawning. “This is your little sister.”
“Ja ja ja,” says Dik.
“Ape turd,” says the little sister.
“You speak English,” I says.
“Yaas,” she said, and then turned to her dear brother, and smiling very sweetly, she said, “You stupid baboon.”
“Ja ja ja,” said Dik happily.
“Want me to translate?” says I.
“I would look very innocent and my brother would beat you into the ground like a tent stake,” said the girl.
“Marieke,” said Dik. “Ja
ja ja.”
“Nice to meet you,” says I.
Marieke smiled sweetly and put spurs to her horse. She cantered off into the dark.
I got up on a wagon seat.
We lurched off toward a distant blue range of mountains. The mosquitoes were godawful.
31
THIS PART OF AFRICA looked a bit like most of Wyoming—dry, gravelly hills with sparse grass, buttes, and I could tell that there were high mountains far off by the way the clouds stacked up on the horizon in the evening. There were scrubby acacia trees along the little watercourse, and though the country was in some ways familiar, in others it was strange, and I was uncomfortable. I didn’t have no Jim Bridger to draw me maps on a square of sand.
The family Uys took turns chattering at me in their Afrikaans, and I was able to pick up a few words the first day and more the next. They dragged their wagons with teams of sixteen oxen, all matched reddish and white on one wagon, dirty brindle on the other. The wagons themselves were longer than the Conestogas, and the whips the boys used to drive the oxen were nearly forty feet in length. A young nigger ran beside the lead animals and tugged on a rein to guide them around this and that. The wagons were pegged and a lot of the fittings that would have been metal on an American wagon were rawhide.
We drove all night, and let the oxen rest and chew their cuds during the day. The Boers have a saying—“Never let the sun shine on spanned oxen”—and I thought that a lot of our immigrants were fools to have insisted on driving during the day, since it was harder on the stock.
Little Marieke spent her time riding hell for leather here and there. She’d lather up four horses in a day. When she was in camp, she argued with her mother constantly. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, of course, but I suspect that it was what all mothers and daughters argue about. Anything handy, favorite subjects being the loose comportment of the daughter, who is no doubt headed for a house of ill repute, and counter-accusations of fossilization and pecksniffery.
