African Dawn

by Tony Park

  ‘Will the electricity from the dam reach Bulawayo, Mr Bryant?’ Winston asked.

  Paul nodded. Winston had an enquiring mind and was proving to be a good student at the Catholic college he attended in Natal, South Africa. There were few opportunities for higher education for young Africans in Rhodesia, yet in the more liberal provinces of South Africa, at the far extent of the National Party Government's reach, privately funded church schools offered local students and those from other African countries a chance to better themselves, at a price. Paul had tried to give Kenneth money towards Winston's education, but his friend had refused the charity. Instead, Kenneth had agreed that Winston would work at the Bryants' dairy during every school vacation. The other employees on the farm didn't know, but Winston was being paid well over the odds, on the assumption that most of his earnings went towards his school fees. The arrangement allowed Kenneth to retain his dignity and Winston to continue his schooling. Sometimes, especially on the farm, Winston called Paul ‘baas’ in order to not flaunt his education or close connection to the boss and his family, but Paul preferred plain old ‘mister’.

  ‘The power from the hydro-electricity plant will go into the national grid, so it could end up anywhere, theoretically.’

  Winston nodded. ‘Then despite the fact that the Batonka and the animals are suffering, this dam is a good thing.’

  Paul shrugged. He knew the job of politicians was to make tough decisions – when they had the balls to do so – but all three of them had seen the sad toll of animals killed by the flooding. Paul guessed, too, that Winston's father had some strong views on the forced relocation of the Batonka, which had probably filtered down to his son.

  ‘There are winners and losers,’ George interrupted from behind them. ‘Some animals, like some people, were smart enough to move to higher ground. The lions mostly moved inland when the waters rose – didn't they, Dad?’

  George was right about the lions – on the evidence they'd seen so far – but Paul was uncomfortable with the inference that the Batonka who had resisted relocation were stupid or ‘losers’ because they were opposed to leaving their ancestral homelands. Personally, having made a home in Rhodesia, Paul couldn't imagine a worse fate than being kicked off the farm by the government and told he would have to live somewhere else. He was about to make the point when Winston pointed out that the rhinos had changed course and were now heading towards them.

  ‘Easy,’ Paul cautioned George. ‘Come alongside the mother, my boy. She's still heading the wrong way. Let's try and shepherd her.’

  George slowed the throttle and it looked as though they would be able to take up a position behind the calf, moving at more or less the same pace as the ponderous swimmers.

  ‘See how the calf is behind its mother,’ Paul said to the boys. They were all momentarily entranced by this rare opportunity to come close to an animal that had a justified reputation for unpredictability and fierceness in the wild. ‘That's one of their downfalls. White rhino cows make their young walk ahead of them, so they can keep an eye on them, but black rhino babies follow their mothers, which make them more vulnerable to lions and hyenas when they're small.’

  ‘Like the difference between black mothers and white mothers. A black mother carries her picannin on her back, and a white woman pushes hers in front with a pram,’ Winston said.

  Paul and George laughed. ‘But, Dad,’ George asked, ‘isn't it bad for the mother rhino to go ahead of her baby? What if it gets lost?’

  ‘There's a reason for everything in life, George,’ Paul said. ‘Black rhino live in thick bush and often the mother needs to walk ahead to clear a path for her calf. White rhino live on the grasslands where visibility is better.’

  The lesson ended when the rhino stopped.

  It took Paul's brain a full two seconds to comprehend what had happened. The rhino's feet must have touched ground on an unseen hilltop beneath the water's surface. It had probably been a rocky kopje, with no trees to give away its position. The water was up to the rhino's chest as she turned and issued a long, loud snort that rippled the lake's shiny surface in front of her. The calf, confused, continued to paddle up beside its mother. Its legs were too short to touch the bottom, and its swimming became instinctively more panicked. Its little head thrashed from side to side as it picked up the shape, size and noise of the approaching boat.

  ‘Cut the throttle! Reverse, George, reverse!’

  But they all acted a fraction too slowly. The mother rhino charged.

  Each step was boosted by the effect of the water, allowing the cow to surge forward on a near weightless body. When her curved horn splintered the wooden boat just above the waterline, the impact sent Winston toppling over the far side into the water.

  Paul crashed to the bottom of the boat and had to roll to one side to escape the wicked point of the rhino's horn. The beast shook her head and grunted and snorted bubbles in the water as she fought to free herself.

  As the rhino lowered her head the boat tipped to one side and Paul slid closer to the horn's point. He could hear her grunting and the sound terrified him almost as much as the deadly tip. Water seeped in through the hole she'd created, then poured over the gunwale as she pushed down again, threatening to capsize the small boat.

  George revved the engine hard and the outboard screamed. ‘It's still in neutral,’ Paul called. As Paul got to his knees and started moving aft he saw Winston's arms thrashing in the water. The boy's mouth was open wide in a scream that was drowned out as his head slid below the surface.

  Paul crawled to George and reached out, turning the throttle setting to reverse. The boat strained against the rhino, locked in a tug of war. As the great beast finally unhooked her horn the boat surged backwards and Paul used the momentum to help propel himself over the side and into the cool waters of the lake.

  When he broke the surface he waved at George to keep going in reverse. Paul struck out, overarm, for a pale pink palm he saw disappearing below the lake's surface. He duck-dived and groped blindly in the murky waters for Winston. He flailed around him but couldn't feel the young African.

  He swam to the surface again and sucked in a lungful of air. George was turning around and had the boat back in forward gear. Paul shook his head, but he didn't have time to warn his son. The rhino was walking in circles on her underwater island, and she shook her head and snorted again when she saw him. Paul wiped the water from his face and eyes. ‘Winston!’ To lose his friend's son would be like losing his own.

  Paul thrashed around in circles until he saw the bubbles. In two fast, hard strokes he was there and diving down again. His outstretched hand brushed something that flicked and groped for him. Paul wrapped his hand around Winston's forearm and felt the boy weakly grasp his in return. He kicked for the surface but Winston seemed stuck. He sensed the boy's panic as he let go of his arm and prised Winston's fingers from his own arm. Paul dived deeper and felt for the problem. Winston's leg was trapped in the fork of a submerged tree. Paul grabbed his foot and untangled the creeper vines that had wrapped around his ankle. He took hold of the young man's limp upper arm and kicked again for the sunshine above.

  When he broke free of the water's grasp, Winston was floating motionless beside him.

  ‘Over here,’ he spluttered unnecessarily, because George was beside him in the boat in an instant, and reaching over the side to help him. Paul had underestimated George's strength as he felt his son drag Winston almost effortlessly over the gunwale. Paul grabbed the boat and boosted himself aboard. He rolled the unconscious Winston onto his side and checked his airway was clear, then pushed him onto his back and blew into his mouth. Paul broke from the kiss of life and started pumping the boy's chest.

  ‘Come on.’ He lowered his lips again to Winston's and blew in another deep breath. The boy coughed water and began spluttering. Paul rolled him onto his side again and thumped him on the back as Winston continued to cough.

  ‘The rhino, Dad!’

  Paul
saw, too late, that they had been drifting closer to the cow and her calf while reviving Winston. She lifted her head and blew a challenge at them, then lowered her horn and started her waterborne charge again.

  Their rocking movements up and down the boat had caused water to leak in through the hole the rhino had gored in the planking. Paul reached in the bilge for the wartime .303 he brought along for emergencies. This qualified as one, he reckoned, though he had no idea if the round would kill the cow or even slow her. He worked the bolt and as he raised the rifle to his shoulder he saw, in his peripheral vision, George's arm moving in a blur.

  The smoking tin canister tumbled through the air, hissing towards the rhino. Suddenly it detonated with a bang as loud as a hand grenade and in a storm of instant lightning that rocked all of their senses to the core. The thunder flash had the same effect on the rhino, which stopped mid-charge and turned away from the painful burst of noise and light. She started swimming and her startled calf paddled slowly behind her.

  ‘Good work, George,’ Paul said, clasping his son's shoulder. They'd had three thunder flashes – ex-army hand grenade simulators – in the boat since their last round-up of impala and kudu on an island further south in the lake. The noisy devices were used to scare the antelope into running into a funnel of nets that forced them into the water, where they were made to swim towards shore, or into a boma where they could be roped and carried to waiting boats. George had saved the day, and the rhino cow, by his quick thinking. Winston was on his knees, still retching, but apparently not permanently harmed by his own near-death experience.

  ‘Boat,’ George said, hiding his red-cheeked flush of pride by pointing towards the oncoming craft that cleaved through the lake's molten metal surface. ‘It's Rupert Fothergill, by the look of it.’

  Paul cupped his hands either side of his mouth, and yelled, ‘Rhino!’ His first priority now was to get the two boys back to shore, so they could give Winston time to rest and recover. He pointed to the cow and her calf, hoping Fothergill would take over the shepherding duties, but the ranger's boat ploughed on towards them, its bow riding high until the driver cut the engine and allowed them to coast up to the wallowing dinghy.

  Before Paul could explain what they'd been up to, Fothergill held up a hand. ‘Paul, I've just received a radio message … a friend of yours in Bulawayo, a Doctor Hammond, got through to the ops centre at Kariba by telephone. It's your wife, Paul … she's been taken to hospital. It's not good.’

  *

  George and Winston sat side by side on a green grassy spit of land in the newly declared Kuburi wilderness area, on the edge of the growing inland sea.

  ‘I wonder what happened to that rhino and her calf.’

  Winston lifted the galvanised-tin water bucket and pushed the end of the mopane log deeper into the fire, balancing the bucket again on the newly stoked coals. ‘Another man from the camp told me she ran through the township at Mahombekombe, not far from the dam wall, and then up into the hills.’

  ‘Shame,’ George said, but his grin at the thought of the rhinos stampeding through the workers' shanties faded when he thought of the animals' plight. ‘But her little baby didn't look like he would make it. He was struggling to keep up with her when we left to …’

  George looked out over the lake and stared at the red ball heading for the water. The sun sank like his spirits. He hated to think of his mother in hospital, in pain, and wondered what had happened to the baby brother or sister she was carrying. He felt his throat constrict and his eyes began to sting. He would not cry, he told himself. He was nearly a man. He felt Winston's hand on his shoulder and looked at him.

  ‘Your mother is a good woman. God will look after her, George. My mother … she is angry at everything all the time. She is angry at me, my father, the white people …’

  George smiled. Patricia Ngwenya's temper was legendary in the district and his mother, who rarely had a bad word to say about anyone, had a favourite word for Winston's mother – insufferable. It was good to have her son here with him, though. George sometimes felt he had missed out, not having a brother of his own, but he and Winston were close enough to be family.

  Rupert Fothergill had told George's father, when they'd met out on the lake, that there was a light aircraft leaving Kariba airstrip within the hour for Salisbury, but there was only space on board for one person. ‘Go, Dad,’ George had said, seeing the indecision further furrow his father's already stricken face.

  ‘We'll take care of the boys until you can send word or organise transport for them,’ Fothergill had added.

  George didn't feel nearly as brave now as he'd tried to be on the boat. He wanted to be by his mother's side, but at the same time he was scared of finding out what might be wrong with her. He couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to her; it was easier, he decided, for him to stay here on Operation Noah and act like everything was OK.

  ‘You and your father saved my life today,’ Winston said.

  George looked at his friend and realised he wasn't the only one who'd been doing some serious thinking. ‘You would have done the same for us.’

  ‘Of course,’ Winston nodded.

  George picked up a stone and tossed it as far out into the water as he could. It landed with a satisfyingly loud kerplunk.

  ‘What do you want to do when you leave school?’ George asked.

  ‘Me, I am going to join the army.’

  George looked at him in surprise. ‘I thought you'd become a teacher, like your dad.’

  Winston shook his head. ‘I'm sure that's what he has planned, but I don't like school enough to want to stay in the classroom for the rest of my life.’

  George laughed. ‘I know what you mean.’ He looked up at Venus, rising bright in the purple twilight, and cocked his ear and held up a finger and pointed towards the far-off call of a lion. When it was still again, he asked, ‘Why the army?’

  ‘I want to be a warrior. Your father was in the war; he was a great warrior.’

  ‘He was a pilot.’

  ‘Yes, but he still fought for his country. I wouldn't want to fly an aeroplane, but I would like to be paid to fight. My mother says my father talks too much, and that he should learn to stand up and fight for what he believes in.’

  ‘I asked my dad once about joining the air force,’ said George, ‘and he told me he would do everything in his power to stop me. He says the war was terrible and that no one should ever have to go through what his generation did.’

  ‘Still, I don't want to be a teacher. Myself, I want to spend my days among warriors, not children. I want to drink beer and have many women. What about you?’

  There were hippos honking in a newly created bay, behind and off to their left, but they went quiet when the lion started calling again, closer this time. ‘I'd like to be a game ranger. I like it out here in the bush.’ He'd also like to be with Susannah Geary, whom he'd seen in church in Bulawayo whenever he was home from school.

  ‘I don't like the bush. But it's good to get away from school, and from the work on the farm. You know, that lion you can hear now …’

  ‘Yes?’ George said.

  ‘If it comes into camp tonight it's not going to bite you …’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘… it's going to eat you!’

  3

  ‘Let me see Kenneth Ngwenya,’ Paul said to Chief Inspector Harold Hayes.

  The police station smelled of sweat and urine. Paul felt as though he wanted to be sick. He hadn't slept and had hardly eaten, save for some gruel-like soup at the hospital. After flying from Kariba to Salisbury he'd hitched a lift to Bulawayo on a delivery van. He'd arrived in Bulawayo late the night before.

  Pip was in the intensive care ward. She'd suffered bleeding after her fall, and some cuts and scrapes from the pavement. Kenneth, according to Pip, had tripped as well and then lain on top of her to try to protect her from being trampled by the fleeing demonstrators. But that hadn't stopped the police from arresting h
im. As soon as he was certain Pip was all right, Paul had come straight to the police station.

  ‘You're not his lawyer, and you're not family, so no dice.’ The policeman folded his arms and rested both of his chins on his chest.

  Paul glared at Hayes. The two men loathed each other and Paul would have been very happy to live out the rest of his days without ever seeing the fat policeman again. Paul wondered if he'd got the term ‘no dice’ from an American movie or a crime novel. Either one would have radically improved his knowledge of policing and the law.

  ‘Philippa says Kenneth wasn't trying to assault her at the demonstration, so you've no grounds to hold him in the cells.’

  Hayes snorted. ‘You've got no grounds, Bryant, to tell me who I can or can't arrest and hold.’ He leaned forward over the well-worn timber charge counter. ‘You weren't born here, you don't know what these people are capable of.’

  Paul was seething, but forced himself to stay calm. ‘No, but my wife was born here and she says there was no assault.’

  Hayes stood straight again and shook his head. ‘I don't get you two kaffir-lovers.’

  Paul clenched his fist. He wanted to lash out and shatter Hayes's nose, but he knew that was exactly what the obese bully wanted him to do. That way he could arrest Paul too.

  ‘A munt knocks your pregnant wife down in the middle of a subversive rally and you come here begging me to let him out of gaol,’ continued Hayes. ‘Wait a minute. Perhaps this is all a ruse to get me to let him out so that you can donner him good, hey?’

  ‘We're not all like you, Hayes. Let me see him.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She won't make a statement against him. Look, Ngwenya's boy nearly drowned up on Lake Kariba yesterday. He's still up there. You don't want the lad to find out his father's been locked up on trumped-up charges, do you?’

  ‘Trumped-up? This is none of your business, or your wife's, Bryant. Special Branch is on the case now, and it's out of my hands.’

  ‘What's their interest in Ngwenya? As I understand it, he and the others were part of a peaceful demonstration over bus fares.’