Lady, Fleur, Grey, and the rest were loose in their paddock when we walked through the farm. Lady hurtled over as we approached, responding to the quiet burr of Charl’s voice. There was only one other animal that responded to him in the same way, an eland brought to Two Tree during the droughts. Em was perhaps the tamest of all wild creatures I had ever known. Fifty inches tall at her shoulder, with the eland’s two distinctive spiral horns, she seemed to have fallen in love with Charl. Whenever he was out on the farm, Em would somehow know where he was and canter over. Tertia was of the opinion that Charl was a little bit in love with the eland, too. She had caught him, more than once, with Em’s head lying contentedly on his shoulder, Charl rubbing her gently between the eyes—and whenever Tertia approached, Em would come to attention and push her aside, as if to say: Charl is mine; this is my time with him now.
“Where would you send them to?” I asked, my hands pressed against Grey’s flank.
“Do you know Rob Flanagan?”
I nodded. Rob Flanagan was a mutual friend, a horseman who also farmed outside Chinhoyi, about thirty kilometers away. A polo player, he belonged to the same club where we would often go to watch matches. Charl had run into him only recently, at a farmer’s meeting in Chinhoyi. So far, Rob’s farm had not been affected by the roaming bands of war vets—and Charl, mindful that Two Tree was so close to the resettlement area, had begun to wonder: might there be room with Rob for some of his horses, if the worse came to the worst?
“There’s too many of them,” Charl said, looking into the distant bush where the war vets had begun to assemble their traditional huts. “And . . .”
Charl had cause to worry for his horses, for in the past, he had not spared the animals belonging to the men who came poaching on Two Tree land. Often, having chased the poachers away, he found himself compelled to shoot their dogs. It was a grisly business, for it was not the dogs’ fault that they were being used to kill game, but there was often no other choice. The idea of these men returning to Two Tree in force and meting out their revenge was all too easy to imagine.
“There’s nothing to say they’d be safer with Rob Flanagan,” Pat interjected. “He’s a farmer, just like the rest of us.”
Charl nodded, one hand cupped around Lady’s muzzle.
Back inside, Tertia poured us drinks. As we settled down, casting our minds around for something to talk about other than the land invasions, the telephone began to ring. Wearily, Charl stood and went into the hallway.
In the living room, we could barely hear the muted whisper of Charl’s conversation. Yet, when he placed the phone back in the cradle and came through, his face was an ashen gray, his eyes wide and empty.
Wordlessly, he crossed the room to turn on the television. Channels whirled by until Charl finally found CNN.
He stood back.
“It’s Dave Stevens,” he said.
Dave Stevens was a farmer in the Macheke area of Zimbabwe, to the east of Harare. Up on the screen, we saw pictures of five of Dave’s neighbors and friends. Their faces were purpled and swollen. Some looked disfigured, their eyes sealed shut where they had been beaten. Others had lacerations across the sides of their faces. One’s nose looked dark and out of joint.
There was no picture of Dave, and there never would be again.
“They killed him,” Charl said. “Came onto his farm, dragged him into their van, beat him, and then shot him in the face at point-blank range, near the police station.”
We sat, transfixed, staring at the screen, trying to make sense of the words that poured out. Dave Stevens and his wife, Maria, and their four small children, it transpired, had had war vets squatting on their land since soon after the defeat of Mugabe’s referendum. The day before, they had surrounded his home, chanting and beating drums, drunk and stoned, demanding he come out to face them. For Dave, there was no way out. The squatters snatched him and drove him to the town of Muhrewa. It was his final journey.
I reached across the sofa to take Pat’s hand. Both of us, I knew, were thinking the same thing: this could have been us. It was only by some strange grace that this had happened on Dave Stevens’s farm and not on our own.
The pictures of five bludgeoned farmers, Dave’s neighbors who were beaten but spared death after coming to his assistance, came back on the screen. Unable to watch any longer, Charl reached out and turned the television off.
Was this what was coming to us, our families, our animals, if we remained in the homes to which we had dedicated our lives? Though the image faded to black, for days to come it was still there when I closed my eyes.
Those were weeks that tested our resolve. Crofton was our home, and Two Tree a place so dear to Charl that he had brought his young wife and children back to grow up in its splendor. It was the only land our horses had ever known. Yet the longer we remained, the tighter the noose seemed to become. We hated to think about leaving, but the thought began to creep into our minds. Yet this option was not so easy, not with so many animals, pets and livestock, depending upon us. We could not ditch everything and flee in a matter of minutes. To do so would mean abandoning horses like Deja Vu, Grey, and Lady, horses we had come to care deeply about.
Something had to be done. If we could not yet leave, we could at least send some of our beloved horses to safety. Charl’s plan was to be put into action.
The following week, I stood at the foot of the Two Tree Hill homestead road, Deja Vu at my side, watching as Pat maneuvered a truck into place. Beyond him, Charl stood at the gates to the paddock, drawing Pat around. Pat edged the truck into position, climbed out of the cab, and opened up the back. There was room inside for six of the Two Tree horses. I did not know how Charl had picked who would stay and who would go. I did not want to ask. They were going to Rob Flanagan’s, though whether that would keep them safe for long none of us could say. We only knew that it was a gamble worth taking.
Leaving Deja Vu tied to the fence, I helped Charl lead the horses out of the paddock. First came Lady, needing no other coaxing than Charl’s voice to lead her up the ramp and into the darkness of the truck. After her came the chestnut mare Fleur and, after that, the big bay gelding Duke and his sisters, Duchess and Marquess.
As they drove off and the truck shrank in the distance, I hoisted myself onto Deja Vu and gazed at the other Two Tree horses left standing in the paddock. The silvery half-Arabian Grey’s eyes seemed to be fixed on the truck while, around him, the remaining members of the herd grazed on in ignorant bliss.
It was only looking at Grey that I wondered if the horses, too, knew how suddenly our old world was falling apart.
Chapter 5
IT CAME, AS we had known that it would, in August of 2001.
Since the first stirrings of trouble across Two Tree and Crofton, Pat, Kate, and I had been spending more and more time staying with Paul at Palmerston Estates about a half-hour drive away. It had become a second home, one in which we might breathe more easily than in the tense atmosphere of Crofton. Early in the morning, as the first pale lights of dawn were just beginning to touch the Palmerston tomatoes, I pushed open the door to the room where Kate had been sleeping and stirred her. Urging her to get up, I dropped down into the kitchen to make us all a cup of tea.
Kate had not yet risen when I heard the first crackles coming across the radio sitting in the corner. Perhaps I was too distracted by rattling china cups and the hissing of the kettle to really acknowledge the fragments of words coming through the handset, but suddenly I recognized the voice. The china cup slipped out of my hand. I turned around.
The voice on the high-frequency radio belonged to Charl.
Wearily kneading her eyes, Kate appeared in the kitchen doorway, her eyes also drawn toward the spitting voice.
“Find your dad,” I said.
Kate, the possibilities just dawning on her face, hurried away in search of Pat. Alone in the kitchen, I went to the radio and gently fiddled with the frequency, dreading the moment that the words would leap
into real distinction. As I teased with the controller, I felt them come up behind me: Kate, with her father looming behind.
At once, Charl’s voice leaped out of the radio, clear and free of static.
“We’re surrounded,” he said, broadcasting the words, not knowing who might hear. “Two Tree farmhouse is surrounded.”
Images flickered across the backs of my closed eyes: Tertia holding Charl-Emil, barely a year old, trying to pretend that nothing was wrong; Resje, rushed into some back room, knowing too well what was happening but too afraid to voice it. I could picture the men at the gates, Charl’s pained fumbling with the radio.
Pat pulled the radio to his lips.
“Get out of there, Charl,” he urged. “Put Tertia and the children in the car and just”—he paused, as pictures of Two Tree flooded him—“drive through them, if you have to, Charl. But, whatever you do, get off the farm . . .”
“It’s too late for that, Pat,” Charl said—and, as the last word bled through, I heard utter despair in his voice.
We stayed by the radio as Charl reported the growing horde at the gates. Through the static, I could almost hear the chanting and shouting, the flare of an engine.
I looked up. Pat had an old, familiar look in his eyes, the kind a young man once had as he put himself in the path of a violent drunk at a hotel bar.
“Pat . . .” I said.
“Well,” he began. “We can’t just sit here, can we?”
He was across the kitchen by the time I could reply. Behind him, Charl’s voice still rasped out of the radio. In the doorway, he pulled on his boots.
“Where do you think you’re . . .” I asked.
I reached out and took hold of his arm. For a second, Pat was still. Then, the door was open and he was striding out. I followed him.
“What do you want me to do, Mandy?” Pat began. “We can’t just . . .”
At that moment, Kate reappeared behind us, dressed and ready for school. She stood, framed between us, looking from one to the other. It was a strange imitation of the normal life we had been living only a short time ago.
“You can’t,” I breathed.
I looked into Pat’s eyes and knew he was, finally, thinking the same things that I was: how Dave Stevens’s neighbors had rushed to his aid, only to be abducted and savagely beaten, lucky to escape with their lives; how there would be no police rushing to Two Tree’s defense today; how we had a daughter and two sons who needed us.
Something seemed to soften in Pat.
“But we can’t do nothing . . .”
Back inside the farmhouse, the telephone started to ring. For a heartbeat, Pat and I simply stared at it. In the passageway outside, Kate slumped nervously against the banister rail. I could see the shadow of her brother Paul fall across her as he came through the door and she began to tell him what was going on.
I snatched up the handset, but it was another halting moment before I could bring myself to answer.
“Yes?”
“Mandy?”
There was a flood of relief, for this was not the terrible call I had been expecting. The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Carol Johnson. Carol and her husband, P.C., lived on Anchorage Farm outside Chinhoyi, and her son Andy was our son Paul’s closest friend.
“Mandy,” Carol breathed into the phone, “where are you?”
At last, I understood. The news had crackled across the radio that Two Tree and River Ranch were among the new wave of farms besieged by war vets, and she thought we were there.
“Carol, we’re on Palmerston . . .”
Her relief was palpable.
Before I could go on, Pat looked up at me, waving his hand wildly to catch my attention. He was hunched over the radio, trying to discern the voices amid the crackle coming out of the speaker. I said a fevered good-bye to Carol and hung up.
Tertia’s voice was coming down the line.
The first shots had been fired on Two Tree Hill. From the kitchen window, Tertia had seen one of the war vets lift a gun and shoot their pet Boerboel down. The dog now lay, spread-eagled, on the dirt before their home, its life pumping out of the wound in its side. Though Charl forced his way out to cradle it back to safety, he did not get far; another shot rang out, this time meant for him, and he beat a hasty retreat.
Tertia’s voice was unnaturally calm, but behind it I knew she had to be afraid. As she put the radio down, she was carrying Charl-Emil and hustling Resje into a back room of the farmhouse and locking it down. She was, I knew, preparing them to die.
For the next moments, we sat in impotent silence.
“Is that it?” Pat uttered.
The radio was dead. No longer would we hear Tertia’s frightened breathing, Charl’s reports. No longer would we hear the chanting of the crowd crackling in the background.
Through his fingers, Pat looked up at me.
“You can’t,” I said. “What use would it be, Pat? We’re not even armed . . .”
At once, he stood.
“Well,” he said, “I can’t just sit here.”
He strode through the kitchen, past Kate and Paul in the hallway, snatching up the keys to our truck.
“Dad . . .”
He stalled, looked at Kate. Her eyes expressed the thoughts she dared not voice: that somewhere, even now, our neighbors and friends were injured or worse. All the same, she remained silent. Perhaps it was only that, if she did not say it, it need not be true.
“Mum’s going to take you to school,” Pat said, running his big hand along the line of her cheek. “Paul, you stay here, get on the radio as soon as anything happens.” He paused, looking at me down the long hallway.
“What about you, Dad?” Paul said.
“I’m going to find Les,” Pat said—and, with that, he was gone.
Out on the road, Pat found a number of farmers, and together they drove up toward the Lion’s Den–Mhangura road to Two Tree Hill. On the horizon, dust clouds were kicked up by a convoy of cars that had turned off the road and were on their way to Two Tree and Crofton. Pat pulled over at the side of the road on the Two Tree Hill turnoff; he and a few farmers stayed and watched, ready to respond if the call came.
The radio had frothed with rumors and news from all the other local farmers, and for a little while it had been difficult to separate one from the other, as across the district farmers rushed to spread information. Now, from the edge of the road, Pat could tell that one particular rumor had been correct: there was a convoy of cars heading for Two Tree, ostensibly police going in to help.
It was three hours later when Pat saw the dust cloud returning, and the same convoy drove off Two Tree, careening onto the main road and heading back for Chinhoyi.
A lone car came along the dirt track. Before it was near, Pat could easily recognize it. As it approached, he flagged it down.
Charl sat in the driver’s seat, with Tertia beside him, Charl-Emil on her lap. In the back sat Resje, her face webbed with the trails of her tears. She kept her head buried in her shoulder as Charl wound down the window.
“We thought . . .” began Pat.
Charl nodded, the sentence left unfinished.
“What happened, Charl?”
The convoy of cars that had burst onto Two Tree, through the baying horde, had not been the police riding to Charl and Tertia’s defense. In those cars had been the local member of parliament, Minister Ignatious Chombo; two party officials, Peter Chanetsa, who was the governor of Mashonaland West, and Philip Chiyangwa, a cousin of Mugabe’s; a truckload of police officers; and a Zimbabwean state television film crew. Seeing the new arrivals from Two Tree’s shuttered windows, perhaps believing the police uniforms to be a sign that order was about to be restored, Charl, Tertia, and the children had stumbled, broken figures, out of the doors of their home. Before them, the crowd was stilled, the chanting dimmed.
“But they hadn’t come to help us,” Charl breathed. “Not to end it . . .”
Minister Chombo was perc
hed upon one of the farm trailers when Charl and Tertia emerged. From on high, he summoned them to his side. In front of the now attentive mob, Minister Chombo had declared Charl and Tertia to be the guilty parties. They had, he proclaimed, shot their own dog. They had, he proclaimed, stolen land that rightfully belonged to the people of Zimbabwe. As he went on, Tertia broke in, trying to defend herself and her family, spilling out the truth for all to hear, but she was roundly cut down. Minister Chombo’s knowing gaze fell upon her. She would, he told her, be permitted to leave Two Tree with her life, and with the lives of her children and husband—but only if they left that instant and never returned.
Behind the wheel of the car now, Charl was grim-faced. He and Pat locked eyes. Neither of them wanted to say what they were thinking—Two Tree was gone, and there would never be any going back.
Charl and Tertia had been planning on taking a trip to South Africa, where they first met, and after being driven off Two Tree they accelerated their plans. For their sake, Pat and I were glad to see them go. They would be gone for a mere three weeks, but we dared not think of how different Zimbabwe would be upon their return.
The jambanja at Two Tree was only the start of a fierce crusade against the forty-five farms in the area. In the days that followed, the mobs moved onto the farms of our friends and neighbors, systematically driving families from their homes. It soon became apparent that this was more orchestrated than the other farm invasions that had been unfolding since the death of Mugabe’s referendum. Most of the local black population in our district worked on the farms being attacked—and so, faced with a shortage of troops to carry out their invasions, the government released 7,500 prisoners from incarceration, with the express intention of using them in systematic violence against white-owned farms and supporters of the MDC. As the mobs spread and the farms fell, so too did the stories and rumors begin to take hold of our community. Some farmers, having abandoned their homes, took to the skies, flying over the farming areas in little biplanes. What they reported was enough to make our hearts break. Photographs began to seep out: pictures of farm dogs shot to pieces and beaten with sticks; horses who had been doused with gasoline and put to the torch; cattle and other livestock hamstrung, speared, and axed.
One Hundred and Four Horses Page 7
