Роберт Фиш - Rough Diamond

“Pa!” Her head appeared through the tail flaps, tears starting to her eyes. “Barney! Mr. Pirow!”

Bees had brought his oxen to a halt, tying back the reins so the smell of water would not drive them on without permission. He hurriedly climbed through the wagon, stepping over the household furnishings they had brought, dropping down beside his wife’s pallet. Barney brought his team to a halt and ran forward. Andries was already there, up on the wagon, dragging back the flaps, tying them for better light. Fay stood staring, a look of horror on her face. Mrs. Bees lay there, her eyes open, a grimace upon her ravaged face, a trail of drying sputum running from the corner of her mouth, her hands clasped tightly, her breathing stopped.

They buried Emily Bees beside the river, far enough from the banks, as Andries explained it, so that the grave would not flood and be under water when the spring freshets brought the wide river to its high mark. They placed stones over it as a protection from animals, and Andries fashioned a rough cross from the straightest branches they could find on the trees bordering the river, binding the two halves with rawhide from his wagon. It was dark when everything had been done, and each pair retired without speaking, the evening campfire and meal jointly rejected without discussion.

And in the morning, when Andries to be helpful went to round up the Beeses’ oxen for inspanning, the man from Simonstown stopped him, shaking his head. His eyes were red from weeping and from lack of sleep; he seemed to have aged years in the night.

“I shall stay here a bit,” he said. “There’s no rush now to get to Bultfontein. There’s no rush now for anything. Besides,” he added, staring at the grave, “I want to make a better cross. With words on it.”

Andries nodded in understanding. “As you wish,” he said, and thought to himself that the Bees oxen could stand the extra forage near the river, as well as the extra rest and ample fresh water. It was a miracle that Bees had come this far; Emily Bees and Fay must have worked hard for this poor man. He waited until Barney had their own team inspanned and then shook hands with Bees. “Good luck.”

“Thank you for everything,” Bees said. “May God bless you.” He bit his lip to keep the tears from coming, but he could not keep the unevenness from his voice. “She was so beautiful,” he said, and bit his lip even harder.

“You still have Fay,” Andries said.

Bees stared at him without speaking, as if wondering at the other’s lack of understanding, and then climbed into his wagon, his shoulders shaking. The tail flaps dropped. Andries sighed and moved beside his own wagon, waiting until Barney could finish saying his good-byes to the girl. Andries waited patiently. Emily Bees must indeed have once been beautiful, he thought to himself, and wondered if his choice of never having married had been a wise one, of never having a wife like Emily Bees, or a son like Barney or a daughter like Fay. On the other hand, he had never known the pain that Gustave Bees was suffering at the moment. It was hard to know what was worth what. Everything was a trade-off.

He looked up from his thoughts, with the intent of hurrying Barney, and then stared as a wild scream came from the other side of the river. A terrified black had burst from the trees on the far bank and was floundering through the shallow river trying desperately to reach the other side. A moment later two horsemen, rifles in hand and accompanied by a pack of baying dogs, burst through the same fringe of trees and rode into the river after the struggling black. The dogs, momentarily held back by the water, ran excitedly back and forth along the bank, barking frantically and pausing every now and then to give great bays that echoed over the river. One of the horsemen bent low, easily lifting the small black figure under one arm, his other arm cradling his rifle. He wheeled his horse, joined the other horseman, and the two splashed from the river. On the bank, joined by the yelping pack of dogs, the two rode back into the trees, the black dangling helplessly, and disappeared.

The entire action had taken only a matter of seconds. Fay was frozen in horror while Barney automatically took a step forward as if to help the poor victim of the violence, and stopped at the edge of the water, staring across the river at the trees. The leafy branches there waved gently, the only remaining sign of the brutal passage of the men and dogs. There was a sudden salvo of rifle shots, a high-pitched terrified scream of desperation and pain, trailing into sudden silence.

Fay echoed the scream; the violence, after her mother’s death, was too much for her. She threw her arms around Barney’s neck and hid her face against his shoulder, holding him tightly. Barney’s arms tightened about the girl automatically, but his eyes sought Andries in startled nonunderstanding.

“A diamond thief,” Andries said, and tried to sound noncommittal about it, although inwardly he was seething. Like almost all Boers raised on the Bible, Andries had little feelings for the blacks; hadn’t the Bible sentenced them to be servants forever as the descendants of Ham? But Andries hated the violence that had come to his land with the advent of diamonds. Before diamonds the Kaffirs had been content to work the land for their Boer masters; now they were flocking to the mines and becoming thieves to boot. “They’ll cut him open, looking,” he said somberly, “and then leave what’s left as biltong for the vultures.”

Barney was staring at him over Fay’s bent head. “What!”

“You wanted Kimberley; you wanted the diamonds,” Andries said quietly, dryly. He looked up at the sun. “And we’d best be going. Your Kimberley is less than two days away.”

Barney looked at the head on his shoulder, reveling in the warm smell of Fay’s hair. The head was bent, making him realize again how short he was, that Fay was as tall as he was, actually a little taller. He suddenly wanted to turn the head around, to kiss those full lips, to somehow stop her trembling. He tightened his hold on her, but instead of responding Fay suddenly pulled away. She walked a bit unsteadily to her wagon and climbed in without looking back. The flaps fluttered at her passage and then closed. Barney turned. Andries was watching him.

“Let’s go,” Barney said expressionlessly, and cracked the sjambok.

They forded the shallow river without Barney looking back once. He hoped Fay was watching them, thinking of him, but he was fairly sure she was not. Why should she? Her reaching for him had been an automatic gesture, caused by the horrible and unexplainable cruelty they had witnessed, and by the sudden death of her mother. She would have turned to whoever had been standing beside her at the moment.

But despite that all-too-true fact, Barney knew he was in love. Oh, he knew he had no money and even if he had all the money in the world he could never hope to ever have anyone as lovely as Fay for his own. But he could be her friend, protect her from harm, and when she finally fell in love with a handsome man, he, Barney Isaacs would see that she got the man she had fallen in love with, no matter what sacrifices he had to make to see it done.

The thought almost brought tears to his eyes. But as dramatically romantic as he knew it to be, he also knew that now he had someone to work for, to be successful for, even though he himself would never be the one to benefit from his great love.

And Barney also was sure that despite the hardship of the desolate land, despite the violence he had just seen and which he was sure would not be the last violence he would see in that violent land, he had no fear of the future. Barney Isaacs had found his permanent home, he knew — Africa. He cracked the sjambok over the ears of the oxen, proud that he could come as close as Andries without touching a hair of their hides. And make as good a fire as the next one from ox dung… He smiled at the thought.