Willem Anker - Red Dog - A Frontier Novel

He is mine, Father.

Go get him, I say.

He loads his gun, another one, and walks towards the bull. The bull’s ears flap, it lowers its ears and raises its trunk. The trumpeting and then the charge. Jan waits until the elephant is right in front of him, fires at the centre of the forehead, hits; the bull retreats. He seizes the other gun, fires again. The elephant crashes to the ground, the front legs crumple first, the head hits the ground. The animal grazes the ground dying and breaks branches and uproots a tree and comes to rest by Jan’s feet. A few men clap hands and applaud him. Jan ignores us, drops his gun and walks to his horse, takes out a hatchet and walks back to the carcase. He hacks at the left tusk without a word. We watch him, we let him be. He chops off the tusk. Now he starts hacking away at the hind foot. He starts weeping and when he gapes open his mouth threads of snot and drool web his lips. Vyfdraai takes the hatchet from his hand and starts hacking further at the foot. We escape the perturbation and lend a hand with chopping up the elephant. Like proud new fathers or hairy and terrible midwives with bloody forearms and with the fat still on our fingers we load the tusks and feet onto the wagon and leave the rest of the elephant to the creatures of the veldt.

I wash the slaughter off me and walk to Bettie’s tent. I perch my daughter on the horse in front of me as of old and we ride into the wilderness. We sit down by a broad and quiet stretch of river. See how the fish eagle cleaves the water and with a fish in its talons soars up again. It’s only on sitting down that I realise how tired I am. There isn’t much to say. I ruffle her hair, that beloved red bush that charmed the entire interior. I kiss her on her forehead and tell her I’ll miss her. That if one day I return to the Colony I’ll teach my grandsons to hunt. She says that’s Jan’s job. I say I’ll teach my granddaughters the names of the wild flowers. She says that what I taught her, she’ll teach her daughters in turn. I ask her what then remains for me to come and do. She says I must come and take off my shoes on her stoep and soak my feet in warm water and gaze across the yard and tell her all the tall tales of my exploits. I ask what shoes. She says I must come and lie and brag as old men do and fart in company.

What is that tree? I ask her.

Tambotie. Everybody knows that, my little father.

And that one?

Knobthorn.

I have no more to teach you, my child.

One day you must teach me how to say good bye.

The trick is not to make any promises.

She hugs me and cries a bit and then I lead the horse with her on its back to the camp. I make sure that my daughter has a proper seat on a horse before I let her go. She sits in the middle of the saddle. Stirrups on the ball of her foot, heels down, knees in. Reins light in the hands, as if she’s holding two chicks.

Maria cries when she hears the news. That night I lie up close to my wife. We tell each other stories about Bettie. We make sure that we remember each anecdote in the same way, so that our child can become a proper story.

A day or so later Bettie and Jan’s wagon is loaded. Why do I think of that pestilential schoolmaster when I see the two children riding off? I wonder if Jan and my Bettie will find the peace they long for in the Colony. I wonder how that goddam master achieved his calm, how his equanimity can make him so strong. Strong enough to shut the door in the countenance of Coenraad de Buys. Have never come across the prick again, but I’m sure you’ll never find Markus Whatsisname chopping up an elephant all a-blubber. To the devil with him. Be damned and be gone, all schoolmasters! There goes my daughter, riding away from me for ever, back to the country of stoeps and old men. I kick the nearest stone and curse my toe that shoots a pain all the way to just this side of my damned knee.

I’m on my way from the cattle when I hear Michiel shouting by the stream. The boys are playing at clay-stick. Two armies on opposite banks, smeared with the same clay clustered in lumps at the end of their sticks. My son jumps yelling from behind a bush and hits Segotshane – one of Makaba’s little bullocks – square in the chest.

Buys, your clay is full of stones! the Caffre prince shouts in his language.

Get gone, dog-dick! Michiel fires back in Dutch.

He and Segotshane are nowadays off in the veldt all day and get back to the kraal in the evening with sly smiles and skinned knees and keel over on the nearest kaross. He presses a handful of stones into the ball of clay, and with a resounding Begone, you utter goddam villain! his willow cane shoots the clay bullet with enough force to draw Segotshane’s noble blood. The other little Caffres gather in no time. Stones and clay and spit spatter and scatter all over. I grab Michiel by the scruff of his neck and drag him to one side.

You mother is going to wash that gob of yours with soap tonight.

Yes, Father.

What is your battle plan?

Father?

How are you going to bugger up the other side? I ask.

We just pelt each other, Father.

No, dammit, man. Come, get those blackies together so that I can tell you about battle tactics.

Father?

The science of strategy.

Yes, Father.

The little chaps stand listening, heads bent. They scrabble their sticks in the sand. I hear the mumbling. Michiel blushes, pretends the nearest tuft of grass is demanding his total attention. I instruct the children in strategy.

You have to charge out from those and those bushes, I say. Do you see that bit of sandy soil where the stream is shallow? If you can occupy that terrain, you have a crossing to the other side, you can surround the attackers, trap them against their own screens.

The little bantams stand counting their toes. The gang on the other side yell and jeer at us. One of the cheeky snot-nosed Heathens shouts something about my paunch. I grab Michiel’s stick from his hand, press a piece of clay around the point, and switch the little mocking monkey between the eyes.

The meeting scatters, the war now once again at full pitch. My men find the crossing I told them about, but so do the enemy. The lines clash and mingle and soon it’s a free-for-all. Ten-year-old fists fly and the sticks are now just sticks. If there is any throwing, it’s with stones. My toe is playing up again today; the hands are also not that wonderful at aiming the stick. I alone have to play by the rules. I can damnwell not pummel and pepper the children as they’re doing to each other. To them I’m just as much a part of the battle and perhaps the only adversary – the white man, the fat man, the old man. I trip, the damp clay sags under me.

The first one is on top of me and then the next. I’m lying under a heap of wriggling and squealing boy children who fell me like an exhausted elephant. They scramble over me, tug at my hair and beard and then tackle each other. My Midge is in between somewhere, now and again I spot a familiar arm or a pair of green eyes. My last linen shirt tears. Somewhere under the children I stop wriggling. I lie back in the river clay, close my eyes. Never have I heard Midge laugh like that. Never ever have I played like that with my own brood. It’s not too unpleasant.

Makaba says Stockenström and Campbell are poking about, sniffing the air for any smelly rumours about him blowing about. I am paramount chief here, he says and spreads his arms and sticks out his belly: They are welcome to pay me obeisance, but they dare not send me messages as to how I should lead my people. We dispatch two messengers, one of his men and one of mine. They tell Campbell Makaba invited me to stay with him in exchange for two or three herds of cattle, but when I turned up here, he gave me only thirty head of cattle. So I was supposedly highly upset and did not want to accept the measly number of cows. Makaba sends me two oxen to slaughter. According to the customs of the Ngwaketse these sacrificial animals say that I am his prisoner. Every time I want to escape from his trap, two more slaughter oxen arrive, saying Not so fast. Campbell swallows the story like Stellenbosch sweetmeats. So that when the messengers invite him cordially to visit Makaba, he stays well away, scared that he also will be detained here against his divinely established will.