I was still lying there when I heard the engine of the black car gunning, turning tightly around in the farmhouse yard. Then, slowly, the rumble of the engine faded.
It took long moments for the strength to return to my legs. I stood, feeling like a newborn foal who doesn’t quite trust her own limbs.
Pat was still at the desk, his fists still closed. A new fire surged through me, and I threw myself across the room, my own fists clenched. I hurled those fists at him, but he only stood there, unflinching.
“You risked our lives!” I cried. “We might have . . .”
His hands closed around my own, stopping me from striking any more blows. I looked into his unrepentant eyes, called him every name under the sun, cursed him and raved.
“What would you have had me do, Mandy? Just walk away? Let happen here what happened at Crofton?”
I could hold myself back no longer. Uncontrollable tears began to flow. They poured out of me and I couldn’t stop.
Pat released his hold on me, and I stumbled back. He said nothing more, just gazed, unrepentant, in the direction the departing men had taken.
“We have to leave,” I said. “For Paul . . . For Kate . . .”
At last, Pat nodded, but his face was as sad as I’d ever seen it.
The Commercial Farmers’ Union had an office in Chinhoyi, and it was to them that we found ourselves turning. We were not the only ones. Thousands of the nation’s farmers subscribed to the union, and in the past months, its responsibilities had swollen. The CFU had taken up the cause of finding temporary homes for farmers, as well as facilitating their flight from the country if the farmers decided to leave, but the union’s resources were thin, and it didn’t have sufficient staff for such widespread chaos.
Nevertheless, there was good news for us here. There was a property here in Chinhoyi itself that might suit our needs, a “safehouse” donated to the cause by a wealthy English businessman who was out of the country and sympathetic to the plight of Zimbabwean farmers and their families. What the union staff described to us seemed almost too good to be true: on the outskirts of town, a house big enough for Pat, Kate, and me on one floor, and another for Charl, Tertia, Resje, and baby Charl-Emil on their return from South Africa. There was good security, tennis courts, and even a swimming pool in which we could relax and pretend we were not living there against our wishes. We would be able to stay there for three months, or until other evicted farmers needed it, more than enough time to order our lives and, in true Zimbabwean fashion, to “make a plan.” As the union people told me about it, I felt myself flushed with a new feeling of optimism. For the time being, Pat, Kate, and I would be safe.
We moved into the safehouse the very next day. Settling in was surreal. It was a town house on the edge of Chinhoyi, with private gates and gardens, very secluded and secure. Behind the gates of the grounds, it might have been any moment in Zimbabwe’s long history. Here, we were cocooned from the world, cocooned even from the rest of Chinhoyi, whose streets still swirled with rumors of what was happening on local farms. It was easy, here, to forget.
We spent the first days organizing ourselves and beginning to make the plans from which we might put our fragmented lives in order. On the third day, a huge truck arrived at the gates and the driver opened up to reveal a great mound of household furniture piled up within. It was a gift from old friends of ours, the Pearces. Like us, they had experienced hostilities on their farm, and they had decided to leave while they still had a choice; now, they were bound for Australia with high hopes of beginning a new life out there, and their furniture was a parting gift. As we unloaded it and tried each piece in different corners of our new home, I was overwhelmed. There were, I knew, still good things happening in the world.
I had expected Paul to move into the safehouse with us, but the events on Palmerston Estates had taken a greater toll on our elder son than I had imagined. On the night we abandoned Palmerston, he had confided that he would not be joining us in whichever new home we could find. Like countless others, he had decided to leave and was making plans to travel to England and find work there. There were big Zimbabwean communities in London, communities that had swollen since the land invasions began, and the idea that Paul would be joining them was both painful and a blessed relief. I did not like the idea of our family fracturing, but I knew exactly how much Paul had inherited from his father, and I felt sick at the thought of him standing up to another invasion. Perhaps, if the country lurched from bad to worse, it was for the best that Paul was not here.
Even so, our new temporary home would be busy. Charl and Tertia were soon to return from South Africa, and I looked forward to their arrival like nothing else. It was only in these past few weeks, with the clarity of mind that comes with staring death directly in the face, that I realized how much our neighbors truly meant to us. At night, I closed my eyes and images of the attacks on Two Tree and Palmerston flashed through my mind—and I could not find the words to express how fortunate I felt that we had come through it unscathed.
On the day that they returned, Pat and I watched the car come through the safehouse gates and into the yard. For a moment we faced one another across the safehouse garden. Then, at last, we rushed over. Pat clasped Charl’s hand in his own, and, though few words were said, we were overjoyed to have them back. I threw my arms around Tertia and held her tight, Charl-Emil pressed between us and gazing up at us with his big brown eyes. Resje hung back quietly, her small hand pressed into Tertia’s. I pulled back. Tertia’s smile was wider than ever, but I could sense the strain in her eyes. It was, I knew, taking enormous strength to do this, but Tertia would not show it in front of her children.
I took her around the safehouse, pointing out the swimming pool, the tennis court, the little parlor where I had taken to making soap to keep myself busy and occupy my mind.
“Not bad for refugees,” she said with a grin, laying her hand softly on my back.
Once we had shown the Geldenhuyses around the safehouse, we gathered for an early evening meal.
“Have you been back, Mandy?”
Charl had been wanting to ask the question all night. My eyes darted at Tertia’s, and hers at Resje and Charl-Emil. It was time, it seemed, for them to be put to bed.
“Crofton was ruined. Two Tree too,” I said. “They were just shells. Photographs, furniture, window frames—it was all gone.”
“What about the horses, Pat?” Charl interjected.
At last, we could relate some good news.
“They hadn’t been touched,” Pat began. “They were roaming free at Crofton, some of them down by the dam. Grey and the rest were still up on Two Tree. Not a scratch on them. The workers had cut them loose.”
Leaving our workers behind had caused us great concern, especially when we knew how Mugabe’s thugs treated any workers who remained loyal to their farms. That they were still on Crofton and Two Tree was both a relief and a worry, but at least they had been there to tend to our horses. We sat in silence, imagining what it must have been like, the horses spooked and running down the farm trails while the mobs moved into the farmhouses.
“They can’t stay there,” Charl said.
Pat weighed the idea up. Since we had settled in the safehouse his thoughts had been heading in the same direction as Charl’s. Deja Vu, Imprevu, and the rest could look after themselves for a time—there was plentiful grazing, and water was not scarce—but they could not be left to go wild. The horses had been fortunate once, escaping the attacks wrought against our other animals, but to risk them again would have been foolish.
“Charl’s right,” Pat began.
Before he could say anything else, Tertia cut him off. “Then what?” Her eyes drifted up, as if she could see Resje and Charl-Emil sleeping in the rooms above. “Go back onto Two Tree?” Her voice faltered. “How?”
“Under cover of night,” said Pat. “And as quickly as possible.”
With so many animals left behind on the terrorized farms,
the SPCA—Zimbabwe’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals—found itself at the forefront of a crusade to rescue domestic pets from the looted farms. Officers of the SPCA had special dispensation, and often police escorts, that allowed them to enter occupied territory and coax out a family’s beloved animals. In this way, a multitude of house cats and farm dogs had been brought to safety, not a few by Meryl Harrison, a doughty and stalwart SPCA officer who, time and again, risked her own personal safety for the betterment of the animals in her care. Yet the SPCA had dispensation to go onto occupied farms to remove the livestock only under extreme circumstances. So if we were to rescue the Two Tree and Crofton horses, we would have to do it ourselves.
As Pat and Charl steered a farm truck out of the gates of the safehouse that morning, I will admit to a faint stirring of unease in the pit of my stomach—but perhaps I was grateful that I would not have to see Charl’s anguish when he saw what had become of their home.
It was quiet as they turned from the Chinhoyi road into fields where Charl had once sown and reaped soybeans and wheat. Pat and Charl were not alone—they pushed the vehicle carefully past the eyes of settlers who watched them from the sides of the road. Voices did not cry out. Weapons were not raised. Pat looked at Charl and saw his eyes glassy and glazed. He said nothing, but simply stared ahead, as memories of his last day on Two Tree flashed through his mind.
He did not flinch as they drove along the farm track and the ruin that had once been Two Tree’s farmhouse appeared on the hill. He simply kept his eyes on the track, and the truck rolled past the empty shell, past the gutted barns, on past the fringes of Two Tree Dam, and out toward Crofton.
Deja Vu, Imprevu, and the rest were waiting to be rounded up, and even Imprevu seemed not to complain as Pat led her up the ramp into the back of the truck. Once they were secured, Charl pulled the truck around and nosed back along the trail, leaving the remains of Crofton behind. Some of the bricks had been taken from the wall to build more shacks in the bush. Soon, the farmhouse we had spent all those years in would be gone forever, like a mountain eroded by time.
With our horses loaded up, Pat and Charl returned the way they had come. Once they had gone past the dam, they banked left, up the hill toward what was left of Two Tree Hill.
Charl pressed his foot to the brake and brought the truck to a grinding halt. In the back, the horses shifted awkwardly. A single snort split the silence.
“What is it?” asked Pat.
Charl said nothing, only kicked open the door of the cab and swung out of his seat. Guardedly, Pat followed.
His eyes were on the ridges around him, seeking figures in the bush. Certain that this was what Charl had seen, and remembering the day he and Jay had been shot at along these very same tracks, he followed Charl along the banks of the path.
There, lying at Charl’s feet, was the body of a dead antelope. A terrible wound had been opened in its side, and a mass of flies billowed out on a cloud of sour, meaty scent.
Pat stood at a distance, but Charl grew close, crouched, and turned the dead antelope’s head. Two distinctive spiral horns protruded from its forehead, marking it as an eland.
Charl looked up.
“Em,” he said.
Now Pat recognized her, too. In death she looked like any of the other game that had been slaughtered across Two Tree, so much of it, it seemed, not even out of a necessity for finding meat to butcher, but just for the thrill of the killing.
“Come on,” said Charl, eyes lifting to Two Tree farmhouse sitting above. “Let’s get this finished.”
He was about to climb back into the truck when Pat stalled him.
“What about Em?”
Charl’s eyes said it all: there was no helping her now; there was still time, though, to do something about Grey and the rest of his horses.
They rumbled the truck up the hill and into the yard where, weeks before, the mob had raged. In silence, they stepped out. The building still stood above them, its empty windows like sightless eyes.
At the back of the farmhouse, the horses were waiting.
Some were grazing nearby, in the paddocks in which they had always lived, but others seemed to have jumped the fences and begun to roam. A brown mare with dark points lingered between two of the enormous barn buildings, while a chestnut gelding seemed to spook at Charl’s sudden appearance and trotted off, disappearing into shadow. Pat and Charl pushed to the fences to inspect them further, but a sudden movement from behind startled them, and they turned to see a slight, dark mare shifting in the shadows of the ruin.
“Where’s Grey?” Charl began.
Pat scoured the paddock, but the silvery half-Arabian gelding was nowhere to be seen.
“They didn’t . . .”
Pat did not want Charl to finish the question and sharply shook his head. “They didn’t touch the other horses, Charl. Why would they harm Grey?”
They scoured Two Tree, rounding the other horses back into the paddock as they did so. The sun disappeared behind a fleeting cloud, spreading a gray pall across the farm. When at last they had ridden from one end of the grounds to another, there was Grey, standing alone and bereft, hugging the walls of one of the farm buildings. As they approached he seemed diminished, somehow, a shadow of the horse he had been only a few weeks gone.
Charl called out for him, and Grey turned, his ears revolving. Softly, he blew through his nostrils.
By the time Charl got near, he understood what was wrong. Somehow, Grey had been confined. Against one side, the barn building rose; against the other, farm equipment precluded him from easing his way out. The grass around his hooves was grazed to the quick, and the trough at which he had been drinking was dry as the earth.
He was visibly malnourished, his withers thin and ragged. As Charl spoke to him, his eyes lifted. He pushed awkwardly forward and nuzzled Charl’s shoulder, listening to his words of reconciliation.
There was anger in Charl’s eyes then, that it had come to this.
Once Grey had been coaxed out into the open and fitted with a halter, it became clear that malnourishment was only the beginning of his troubles. Every time he placed his right foreleg down, his body lurched and, cringing, he lifted his hoof again. Between two tall barns, on the way to the waiting truck, Charl eased him to a halt. Careful not to startle him, he crouched and lifted his ailing foreleg.
There was no injury to speak of, no mark where some war vet had taken to him with a panga or spear. Yet Grey’s hoof seemed beyond repair. The flesh hung, thin and loose, around his lower leg, separated almost entirely from his hoof. Grey cringed when Charl’s fingers brushed softly around the tender area, but Charl ran his other hand firmly across the underside of Grey’s flank, assuring him that everything was all right. Pat, too, tried to fix him with a look, wordlessly imploring the poor horse to be still.
“He can’t walk on this,” said Charl.
The hoof, Pat saw, was almost hanging off, connected only by bone and thin strips of Grey’s hide.
“We should get out of here,” said Pat.
Yet Charl remained crouched at Grey’s side, studying his damaged hoof: Grey, who had been born and raised on this very farm; Grey, on whose back he had ridden; Grey, who now might be lame for the rest of his days, whose eyes a lesser horseman might cover while he pressed a gun to his temple and shot.
Charl gently placed Grey’s hoof back on the ground, but as soon as the wretched-looking gelding put any weight on it, his body started to shake.
“I don’t think he can walk, Pat. We should have come sooner.”
“Sooner?” Pat returned. “Don’t you remember what it was like here?”
Pat and Charl coaxed Grey forward, but each time he put the damaged hoof to the ground his head lifted and he drew back, eyes rolling in pain. With one hand on his bare flank, Charl ushered him on. He came forward tentatively, refusing to put weight on his damaged hoof. The effect was heartbreaking: his head bobbed like that of a horse incurably lame, his gait
ugly and slow.
Pat hurried back to the truck to collect a lead rope and returned to fit it to Grey’s halter. Even with the rope attached, Grey came slowly. Again, Charl crouched, checking the hoof for any stray stone or piece of brick that might have become lodged in there. Tiny stones like that had been known to cause great trouble before—but there was nothing there.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Charl said, looking into Grey’s sorry, soulful eyes. “He isn’t lame because he was attacked. He’s lame because . . .” Charl could hardly bring himself to say it. The truth of the matter was Grey had been reduced to this because of lack of water, because of malnutrition, because Charl and Pat had not been on Two Tree to tend to the horses. While the other horses had been able to fend for themselves, with access to grazing and fresh water, Grey’s body had started to wither away; his hoof was simply a symptom of his body shutting itself down. Telling Charl that it was not his fault would do nothing to soothe his conscience, nor Pat’s; as every good farmer knows, livestock need to be tended to, cared for. Without it, they can wither and die. The same was true of our horses; the once-beautiful Grey had become a living embodiment of what can happen when a horseman abandons his post.
“Come on, Charl. It isn’t too late. Not yet . . .”
Slowly, they brought Grey back to Two Tree farmhouse, where Deja Vu, Imprevu, and the rest of the Two Tree horses were waiting. They seemed to snort, sadly, at Grey’s appearance. It is telling how sensitive horses can be, whether to one of their own kind or to the humans with whom they have made such a strong bond. Perhaps the horses could see the torment in Charl’s eyes too, for they watched him cut a sad figure across the yard.
Grey took little coaxing to limp toward the water trough where the rest of the herd had been drinking. As he took in the water he had been crying out for through his long imprisonment, Pat readied the other horses to get into the truck. His eyes wandered over the fields Charl would never farm again. Already they were going to waste; Mugabe might have claimed that these farms were being handed over to landless war vets, but the reality was they would be left barren, waiting for the bush to reclaim them.
One Hundred and Four Horses Page 9
