Two hours passed. The mosquitoes were bad, and her skin itched, but this was work, and she never complained when she was working. Then, suddenly, there came a growling noise from the dog. Mma Ramotswe strained her eyes in the darkness. She could just make out the shape of the dog, and she could see that it was standing now, looking towards the water. The dog growled again, and gave a bark; then it was silent once more. Mma Ramotswe tossed the blanket off her knees and picked up the powerful torch at her side. Just a little bit longer, she thought.
There was a noise from the water’s edge, and Mma Ramotswe knew now that it was time to switch on her torch. As the beam came on, she saw, just at the edge of the water, its head turned towards the cowering dog, a large crocodile.
The crocodile was totally unconcerned by the light, which it probably took for the moon. Its eyes were fixed on the dog, and it was edging slowly towards its quarry. Mma Ramotswe raised the rifle to her shoulder and saw the side of the crocodile’s head framed perfectly in her sights. She pulled the trigger.
When the bullet struck the crocodile, it gave a great leap, a somersault in fact, and landed on its back, half in the water, half out. For a moment or two it twitched and then was still. It had been a perfectly placed shot.
Mma Ramotswe noticed that she was trembling as she put the rifle down. Her Daddy had taught her to shoot, and he had done it well, but she did not like to shoot animals, especially crocodiles. They were bad luck, these creatures, but duty had to be done. And what was it doing there anyway? These creatures were not meant to be in the Notwane River; it must have wandered for miles overland, or swum up in the flood waters from the Limpopo itself. Poor crocodile—this was the end of its adventure.
She took a knife and slit through the creature’s belly. The leather was soft, and the stomach was soon exposed and its contents revealed. Inside there were pebbles, which the crocodile used for digesting its food, and several pieces of foul-smelling fish. But it was not this that interested her; she was more interested in the undigested bangles and rings and wristwatch she found. These were corroded, and one or two of them were encrusted, but they stood out amongst the stomach contents, each of them the evidence of the crocodile’s sinister appetites.
“IS THIS your husband’s property?” she asked Mma Malatsi, handing her the wristwatch she had claimed from the crocodile’s stomach.
Mma Malatsi took the watch and looked at it. Mma Ramotswe grimaced; she hated moments like this, when she had no choice but to be the bearer of bad news.
But Mma Malatsi was extraordinarily calm. “Well at least I know that he’s with the Lord,” she said. “And that’s much better than knowing that he’s in the arms of some other woman, isn’t it?”
Mma Ramotswe nodded. “I think it is,” she said.
“Were you married, Mma?” asked Mma Malatsi. “Do you know what it is like to be married to a man?”
Mma Ramotswe looked out of the window. There was a thorn tree outside her window, but beyond that she could see the boulder-strewn hill.
“I had a husband,” she said. “Once I had a husband. He played the trumpet. He made me unhappy and now I am glad that I no longer have a husband.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to be rude. You’ve lost your husband and you must be very sorry.”
“A bit,” said Mma Malatsi. “But I have lots to
do.”
CHAPTER
SIX
BOY
THE BOY was eleven, and was small for his age. They had tried everything to get him to grow, but he was taking his time, and now, when you saw him, you would say that he was only eight or nine, rather than eleven. Not that it bothered him in the slightest; his father had said to him: I was a short boy too. Now I am a tall man. Look at me. That will happen to you. You just wait.
But secretly the parents feared that there was something wrong; that his spine was twisted, perhaps, and that this was preventing him from growing. When he was barely four, he had fallen out of a tree—he had been after birds’ eggs—and had lain still for several minutes, the breath knocked out of him; until his grandmother had run wailing across the melon field and had lifted him up and carried him home, a shattered egg still clasped in his hand. He had recovered—or so they thought at the time—but his walk was different, they thought. They had taken him to the clinic, where a nurse had looked at his eyes and into his mouth and had pronounced him healthy.
“Boys fall all the time. They hardly ever break anything.”
The nurse placed her hands on the child’s shoulders and twisted his torso.
“See. There is nothing wrong with him. Nothing. If he had broken anything, he would have cried out.”
But years later, when he remained small, the mother thought of the fall and blamed herself for believing that nurse who was only good for doing bilharzia tests and checking for worms.
THE BOY was more curious than other children. He loved to look for stones in the red earth and polish them with his spittle. He found some beautiful ones too—deep-blue ones and ones which had a copper-red hue, like the sky at dusk. He kept his stones at the foot of his sleeping mat in his hut and learned to count with them. The other boys learned to count by counting cattle, but this boy did not seem to like cattle—which was another thing that made him odd.
Because of his curiosity, which sent him scuttling about the bush on mysterious errands of his own, his parents were used to his being out of their sight for hours on end. No harm could come to him, unless he was unlucky enough to step on a puff adder or a cobra. But this never happened, and suddenly he would turn up again at the cattle enclosure, or behind the goats, clutching some strange thing he had found—a vulture’s feather, a dried tshongololo millipede, the bleached skull of a snake.
Now the boy was out again, walking along one of the paths that led this way and that through the dusty bush. He had found something which interested him very much—the fresh dung of a snake—and he followed the path so he might see the creature itself. He knew what it was because it had balls of fur in it, and that would only come from a snake. It was rock rabbit fur, he was sure, because of its colour and because he knew that rock rabbits were a delicacy to a big snake. If he found the snake, he might kill it with a rock, and skin it, and that would make a handsome skin for a belt for him and his father.
But it was getting dark, and he would have to give up. He would never see the snake on a night with no moon; he would leave the path and cut back across the bush towards the dirt road that wound its way back, over the dry riverbed, to the village.
He found the road easily and sat for a moment on the verge, digging his toes into soft white sand. He was hungry, and he knew that there would be some meat with their porridge that night because he had seen his grandmother preparing the stew. She always gave him more than his fair share—almost more than his father—and that angered his two sisters.
“We like meat too. We girls like meat.”
But that did not persuade the grandmother.
He stood up and began to walk along the road. It was quite dark now, and the trees and bushes were black, formless shapes, merging into one another. A bird was calling somewhere—a night-hunting bird—and there were night insects screeching. He felt a small stinging pain on his right arm, and slapped at it. A mosquito.
Suddenly, on the foliage of a tree ahead, there was a band of yellow light. The light shone and dipped, and the boy turned round. There was a truck on the road behind him. It could not be a car, because the sand was far too deep and soft for a car.
He stood on the side of the road and waited. The lights were almost upon him now; a small truck, a pickup, with two bounding headlights going up and down with the bumps in the road. Now it was upon him, and he held up his hand to shade his eyes.
“Good evening, young one.” The traditional greeting, called out from within the cab of the truck.
He smiled and returned the greeting. He could make out two men in the cab—a young man at the wheel and an older man next to him. He knew they were strangers, although he could not see their faces. There was something odd about the way the man spoke Setswana. It was not the way a local would speak it. An odd voice that became higher at the end of a word.
“Are you hunting for wild animals? You want to catch a leopard in this darkness?”
He shook his head. “No. I am just walking home.”
“Because a leopard could catch you before you caught it!”
