When the Ground Is Hard

by Malla Nunn

  I sigh with relief, and there in the dirt is one of my shoes. It must have come off when I fell from the path and hit the ground. Except . . . I blink into the hazy light. The shoe is wrong. It’s two sizes too big, and the leather is scuffed and worn. My shoes are brand-new from the Bata shoe store. I wiggle my toes and feel the new leather stretch against them. That shoe is not mine.

  “Adele. Hold still,” Lottie calls. “I’m coming.”

  I sit up slowly and realize that the shoe is attached to a foot, and the foot is attached to a pale leg with an ugly blue bruise on the right knee. Pressure builds in my throat. My mouth opens, and a long scream comes out. Flies scatter from Darnell’s face, and my scream goes on and on, till the valley echoes with the sound of my terror.

  “Shh, Adele.” Lottie arrives and covers my mouth with her hand. “It’s all right. I’m here now.”

  I try to shake her off, but she holds me down with a fierce expression. “Not all right.” My muffled words escape from between her fingers. “Darnell. Over there.”

  “I see him, Adele,” she says. “I see him.”

  “He’s . . . he’s . . .”

  “I know.” Lottie’s voice is still and flat. “We need to get Mr. Vincent and Mr. Moses, but first you have to be quiet. Remember where we are.”

  On a crazy white man’s farm. Or on the edge of it. I don’t know.

  “Are you ready?” She waits for me to catch my breath and slowly lifts her hand from my mouth. The pressure inside my throat builds, and I press it down inside my body. I keep it there.

  “We have to go and find help.” Lottie pulls me to my feet, and Darnell is close enough for me to reach out and touch. I try not to look, but the stillness of his limbs and the strange way his eyes reflect the sky breaks my heart.

  Lottie makes a soft sound, and the pressure inside me moves from my throat to behind my eyeballs. Tears roll down my face, and I cry in small, hard sobs.

  “Stop,” Lottie says. “Crying won’t bring him back.”

  “It’s just . . . he reminds me of when Rian is sick and there’s nothing we can do to help him. Only be here.”

  What I say is silly. Rian is clever and fits wood-block puzzles together for the fun of it. Darnell was simpleminded and always behind. They both hated school, but Rian escaped. He got away. Now Darnell is stuck on the border of Keziah forever, and that makes me beyond sad.

  “Come.” Lottie grabs my hand and hauls me up the steep rise. She forgets that I’m hurt, and I think that’s because she’s hurt too—just in places I can’t see. That wall inside her is strong, and with Darnell dead on the ground, she’s focused on what to do next. “We’ll go back to the village. Mama will send a runner to Keziah with the news. Mr. Vincent will need two or three senior boys to help bring up the body.”

  We reach the top of the rise, damp with sweat and puffing for breath. I wipe away tears, embarrassed that Lottie, who knew Darnell and was his friend, hasn’t leaked a single tear.

  “Hey . . .” A voice calls from the mountainside, drawn by my endless scream. It’s the little girl who pretended to fall over dead from Mama’s pretend gun. She waves at us and shouts a question in Zulu, afraid to come closer.

  Lottie answers the girl, and I make my own translation. Dead boy. Go to the school. Bring the white man. Tell him to bring others.

  The girl disappears, and I go to follow her. Lottie grabs my arm and holds on. “We can’t leave Darnell alone,” she says. “We have to stay with him and tell him where he is and what’s going to happen. If we don’t, his spirit will stay trapped here forever.”

  “But you said there are no spirits. Just bones in the ground.”

  “We can’t leave him, Adele. He needs us.”

  “But he’s dead . . .”

  “Go then.” Lottie waves me off with a flick of her hand. “I don’t need you to stay with me. I’m all right by myself.”

  Except that she’s not. The muscles in her neck strain against her skin, and her eyes have the glazed blue expression that signals her rising temper and fear. I spoke half a dozen words to Darnell when he was alive. But he was Lottie’s friend, and Lottie is the only friend I have left at Keziah. I won’t leave her crouched all alone, behind that wall of hers.

  “Do we have to go down there?” I pray that she’ll say no. From the ridge, Darnell’s body is a dark smudge in the landscape, and that’s how I prefer it.

  Lottie nods and mumbles, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends. Once more,” and I believe that she has gone mad.

  * * *

  • • •

  Lottie leads the way back to Darnell, and I shuffle after her, scared of falling off the path again and terrified of what’s waiting to greet us at the bottom. Wind stirs the wild grass, and a cloud of butterflies lifts into the air. Yellow circles on their purple wings shimmer in the afternoon light. I grip my hands into fists. It’s almost insulting to see such extravagant beauty so close to a dead boy’s body.

  “Darnell,” Lottie calls as we approach where he lies. “It’s Lo-Lo from school. I’m going to stay with you till Mr. Vincent and the others come and get you.”

  Lottie turns around and sees me nibbling my bottom lip, and she glares at me, having already explained what we have to do and why we have to do it. Darnell, she said, hasn’t been dead very long, and he is confused by the sudden change. Lottie’s mother has taught her that we must keep his spirit calm so that when the time comes, he’ll leave this place with us.

  We arrive at the body. Darnell lies spread out on the ground, his uniform dirty, faceup. My stomach is in knots.

  Lottie kneels beside him and tries to close his eyelids. All by themselves, his eyes half open again, to stare at nothing.

  “Hello, Darnell. It’s me. Adi. You showed me the snake skin, remember? It was lovely and . . .” My voice fails. I swallow a lump in my throat and crouch opposite Lottie with Darnell between us. Two girls at the bottom of a hill, speaking to the dead. What we’re doing is insane. Maybe even unchristian.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” Lottie tells him. “The sun is bright, and the air is fresh. You picked a nice place to rest for . . .”

  She stops to grab a breath, and I realize that every word she speaks is painful for her but she stays strong for Darnell, she holds her tears back for Darnell, for the sake of keeping his spirit safe from harm. African beliefs mean nothing to me, but Lottie believes, so I take up where she left off.

  “And butterflies,” I add. “Clouds of purple butterflies with yellow circles are all around us. If you listen carefully, you can hear their wings beating and the birds singing in the brush.”

  Darnell’s mouth is slightly opened, and for a moment, I think that he might sit up and speak to us. Contrary to what the old aunties say after every open-coffin viewing, Darnell does not look as if he’s fallen asleep. He looks startled, as if he had other plans and can’t believe how he’s landed in the grass looking at the sky. The faded bruise under his eye, for some reason, makes my heart ache.

  “The valley’s nice, but you can’t stay here,” Lottie says. “Your father is waiting for you to come home, and your mother’s waiting for you in heaven. When we take your body, your spirit has to come with us all the way back to your daddy’s farm. I promise we’ll get you there, safe. All right?”

  Lottie falls silent. I count to thirty, half a minute gone, and I tell Darnell about the aloe plants and the smooth white stones scattered across the ground; the sun above us; and the heat. I talk to Darnell, but I talk for Lottie—to lighten her sorrow.

  We crouch together next to the body. Lottie starts to cry softly. I put my hand on her shoulder. It’s not enough. I shift position and put both my arms around her, and her body shakes with grief. I feel her tears on my neck.

  “Oh, Darnell . . .” Lottie says.

  23

  I Know You

  It
takes Mr. Vincent, Mr. Moses, and two senior boys an hour to haul Darnell’s body up the slope to the where the land is flat. The stand of green bananas is below us, and all around is dry grass and a wide, flat sky. Mountains loom in the distance. We lay Darnell in the shade of a marbled rock, and Lottie and I go and sit under a scrawny indoni tree. After two hours of close contact with the corpse, I’m glad of the break. Grateful for the silence. The childish injuries on Darnell’s body still tear at my heart: the scrape on his knee, two broken fingernails, and the bruise under his eye. Small hurts. Easy to fix. Death can’t be fixed.

  Mr. Vincent sends Gordon Number One and Barnabas Phillips to see if Mrs. Vincent is back from picking up supplies in Howard’s Halt. “Tell her to put sheets and a blanket in the back of the pickup truck, and to park in the field just inside the Bosman farm,” he says. “I don’t care whose land she has to cross to do it.”

  “Yes, sir.” Barnabas and Gordon take off at a sprint, and I think tonight Gordon Number One will visit Miss December’s probationary hut to try and forget the weight of Darnell’s body pressed to his shoulder and the low murmur of Lottie Diamond’s voice whispering comfort to the dead.

  Lottie and I huddle in the thin shade and wait for Mrs. Vincent to arrive. I curl my hands in my lap to stop them from shaking. Outside I’m calm, but inside I’m filled with dread. No matter how many times Lottie and I shower or douse ourselves in talcum powder, the stink of death will stay with us.

  A faint machine noise comes from far off and Lottie sits up straight. She peers across the field.

  “What is it?” I ask. Mrs. Vincent is fifteen minutes away.

  “Pickup truck.” Lottie scans the horizon. “Driving fast.”

  Mr. Vincent wipes his glasses on the tail of his shirt, and Mr. Moses points at a dark speck that quickly takes on the shape of a rusted red truck with a cracked headlight.

  “Bosman.” Lottie pulls me to my feet. “Those are his sons in the back.”

  Mr. Vincent and Mr. Moses pass a look between themselves as the truck speeds straight toward us, the tires churning dirt into the air. “Stay where you are, girls,” Mr. Vincent says. “I’ll handle this.”

  Lottie sighs. Americans think that the whole world is America, but this is the British protectorate of Swaziland, with its own guns and warring tribes. Smiles don’t fix anything here.

  The truck screams to a stop a few yards from us, and I cough up dust. Three white boys, scrawny teenagers in grubby clothes, sit on the edge of the truck tray with rifles balanced across their knees. A sandy-haired girl crouches between them with her face hidden in her hands. The driver’s door opens, and a tall man wearing khaki pants and a blue work shirt gets out. He grabs a rifle from the dash and swings it onto his shoulder, the way hunters do before they set out.

  Mr. Moses whispers, “Stay calm, ladies, and keep back.”

  Four armed white men: Lottie and I already know well enough to steer clear. We eye the boys with their guns, and the man with his. The father, Bosman, spits on the ground and walks straight up to Mr. Vincent. White man to white man.

  “Mr. Bosman.” Mr. Vincent smiles his wide American smile and goes to shake the farmer’s hand. “I’m Edward Vincent.”

  Bosman ignores the greeting and growls in Afrikaans: “This here is my land. What are you doing on my land, kaffir-lover?”

  I blush for Mr. Vincent. Kaffir-lover is the worst insult that one white man can call another. Not that Mr. Vincent understands. Missionaries mostly speak English, with a smattering of Zulu words thrown in to prove their commitment to being here in southern Africa. Afrikaans is another matter.

  “What did he say?” Mr. Vincent asks Mr. Moses, who shrugs. Mr. Moses is from Durban, where decent mixed-race people speak English and poor whites speak Afrikaans.

  “Go and help, Adele.” Lottie gives me a shove even though she takes Afrikaans classes and speaks the language too. It’s only fair, I suppose. She translated for Mama Khumalo and talked Darnell Parns’s soul out of the valley with her words.

  I reluctantly go over to Mr. Vincent, and Lottie follows, two steps behind. Bosman takes in Mr. Vincent’s dirty clothes and flyaway hair with contempt, and I’d turn back and hide behind the rock with Darnell except that Lottie is right behind me. Then she’s right beside me, and somehow her presence makes me feel safer, even with the rifles so close.

  “You two belong to him?” Bosman motions to Mr. Vincent with an ugly smile, and my cheeks burn at the insinuation. Lottie huffs out a breath. If she had a stone, she’d throw it.

  “He’s the American principal,” I say before Lottie has the chance to tell the man to shut his fat mouth and go home to his fat, cross-eyed wife, or whatever insult comes into her mind. “Mr. Vincent doesn’t speak the tongue.”

  “Bad luck,” Bosman says. “This is my country. My farm. We use my language.”

  “What’s he saying?” Mr. Vincent asks, frustrated.

  “He wants to know what you’re doing on his land,” I tell Mr. Vincent. Kaffir-lover is an insult that I can’t bring myself to say out loud in front of adults. And the sly suggestion that Lottie and I are Mr. Vincent’s girlfriends is too filthy to repeat.

  “Tell him that we have an emergency.” Mr. Vincent combs rough fingers through his hair and peers at the sunburned farmer standing with a rifle hitched onto his shoulder like he was born with a notch in it to fit the gun. “We’ll be off his land soon.”

  I translate from English to Afrikaans in a shaky voice. The wounds on Darnell’s body scare me, but Bosman’s lopsided grin scares me more. He is full of hate, this one. He enjoys being mean.

  “What emergency?” Bosman makes a show of scanning the empty field. “I don’t see nothing here but a foreigner and his half-castes walking on my land without permission.”

  “Mr. Bosman wants to know what the emergency is.” I change Bosman’s ugly words to nice ones, but Mr. Vincent isn’t fooled. Bosman’s scorn is obvious.

  “There’s been an accident.” Mr. Vincent’s American accent takes on a sharp edge. “A Keziah student died in the ravine below. We’re here to retrieve the body.”

  Bosman rubs sweat from the back of his neck while I translate. His eyes are a peculiar shade of green flecked with yellow, which reminds me of Socks the cat when she hunts lizards in Mrs. Thomas’s garden.

  “And where’s this dead coon?” Bosman asks.

  “He’s in the shade of the rock over there, Mr. Bosman.” Polite Adele throws pearls before swine, hoping to make things nice. “We’ve sent for a pickup truck from the school to bring him home.”

  “Well, now.” Bosman pretends to think, an excruciating sight. “A dead colored on my land is bad luck. You’ve got to move him.”

  “We will,” I say. “The pickup truck is on its way. Ten minutes, tops.”

  “No,” Bosman says. “Now, now.”

  Now, now means right away, this minute, no delays. I don’t understand.

  “What?” Lottie demands in Afrikaans. “You heard what she said. The truck will be here in ten minutes.”

  “Not my concern,” Bosman replies with grim satisfaction. “I don’t want no dead coon on my land. Move him.”

  “Are you befoked?” Lottie demands, and the boys on the back of the truck go still. Befoked means “fucked in the head,” a stunning insult coming from the mouth of a mixed-race girl. Lottie, Lottie . . . what have you done?

  Bosman swings his rifle from his shoulder and fires a shot over our heads. The crack makes me jump and my ears ring. Birds fly from the indoni trees, and the girl in the truck screams in short, sharp bursts, a human siren. Bosman laughs at my terrified expression and Lottie’s pale face. He likes that we’re afraid of him.

  “What happened, Adele?” Mr. Vincent grabs my shoulder and pulls me away from Bosman, who really is befoked. “Tell me.”

  “He . . . he, uh . . .” I stop to c
lear my throat. “He wants us to move Darnell off his land right away. I told him that a pickup truck is coming, but he doesn’t want to wait for it. We have to go.”

  “And the gunshot?” Both Mr. Vincent’s feet are planted in Swaziland now, a country where “Love thy neighbor” is an almost impossible commandment.

  “Lottie wanted to know why we had to move Darnell.” I tell half the truth. “He shot the gun to hurry us up.”

  “God help me.” Mr. Vincent flexes his fingers open and shut, open and shut. “What difference will ten minutes make? Ask him.”

  A waste of time. Those of us who are from southern Africa know Bosman’s type. We meet them at police roadblocks, in stores, and standing guard in their front gardens to protect their personal kingdoms from the jealous eyes of natives and half natives who dream of taking everything they have. They are obsessed, Mother says, with white ruin and black revenge.

  “He won’t listen to reason, Mr. Vincent.” Mr. Moses breaks the standoff. “Between you, me, and the girls, we’ll be able to move Darnell across the border. It won’t take long.”

  Bosman’s finger lies across the trigger guard, and something like hate wells up inside me. Voices from the past echo inside my head. Rules are rules! That’s how things are! Keep sweet and avoid trouble! I’m sick of how quickly the laws of this stupid world roll off the tongues of teachers and aunties and parents, off my tongue. Things could so easily be different if the serving ladies gave the poor students an extra portion of mashed potatoes. If Bosman chose to be kind instead of cruel. Or if Father lived with us instead of splitting his love between two families.

  If.

  If only things were different.

  “Adele.” Lottie tugs my sleeve, and I wake from my daze. Bosman stands a half yard in front of me, with a searching expression that turns my stomach inside out. He scans my face, trying to place me.

  “I know you, girl,” he finally says. “You were born to sell yourself to a man with money.”