Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms, Page 2

  • • •

  Simon stood watching Will’s galloping back and then turned, awkwardly, to the boy, who still lay on the ground. Simon held out a hand.

  “Peace, hey?”

  A pause. Then, without a smile, the boy nodded. “Peace.”

  “Here. Give me your hand.” Simon hauled him up. They stood, face-to-face. Simon scratched at a scab on his chin. The boy picked his teeth and rolled the result between finger and thumb.

  “We were just playing,” he said.

  Silence.

  “I could have beaten her, hey? But I wouldn’t fight a girl. But”—in grudging admiration—“we’ll leave the ’boons alone now.”

  Simon grinned. “You couldn’t beat her. She’s a crazy, that one. And strong like a leopard.”

  The boy snorted and flicked his now circular tooth-pickings into a thorn tree.

  “Ja. But she’s still just a girl.”

  “Nah, man. She’s different, right? Like fire. She’s a wildcat girl.”

  WILL WAS GOOD AT LIGHTING fires. She was proud of it, because fire was such an odd thing. It was like water, she reckoned; if we didn’t have the name for it, didn’t have it every day, we’d be so choked and awed and flabbergasted by it. Will tried to teach Simon this strange wonder, but it wasn’t really a success.

  “No, but look. Look properly.” She blew on the flames, and she jabbed Simon with a twig. “Look, Si. Like it’s alive and it’s also not really alive. Watch. It moves without wind. D’you see?” She blew harder, and sparks shot into the air. “It is amazing, isn’t it, Si?”

  “Ja. I guess. It is.” Simon looked unconvinced. He wished it would heat up faster. They had lit the fire at the foot of the tree house, which meant there was no breeze to help it along, but it had the great advantage that they knew they couldn’t be disturbed. When they were younger, they had done their cooking in the bread-smelling kitchen, but then the two of them had set fire to the wall (Simon said it was Will’s fault; Will said it was both of them) frying bantam eggs in oil that had been too spitting-hot. The wall was still stained black, and Will still made her ashamed smiling face whenever she passed it.

  Since then, Will had had to bake her food in open fires, or in the hollows of the tree roots, which was nicer anyway. She could make meals that tasted enticingly of smoke and leaves, and eggs and animal, and Africa.

  Simon stretched, and snuffed at the smoke. “It’s ready now, ja.”

  “You’ve got no patience, Si,” said Will. And that was rich, thought Simon, because she had even less. “It needs more wood, hey. It’s still hungry.”

  “Ja. But more to the point, I’m still hungry. It is ready. ’T’s just you’re blind like a chongololo—Ow!”

  Will had picked up a gooseberry from the pile at her side and flicked it at Simon’s head.

  “Hey! That’s my eye, mad girl.” He flicked one back from his own pile, and Will caught it in her mouth. “Ha-ha!” And inside she burned and whooped with pleasure. That was how life should be: snap-gulp-whoop. She grinned, with yellow gooseberry seeds between her teeth. “Ja, okay. You win. Fire’s ready.”

  Together they split open the banana skins with shards of sharp flint. Kezia chattered and tugged at the bunch in Will’s hand. After only a week, Will had trained her to sleep inside her shirt, and to sit on her shoulder and chew at her hair. The bananas today were the best on the farm, in celebration of Kezia’s cleverness.

  Simon sprinkled salt and pepper onto the green ones and used a single wet finger to poke brown sugar into the yellow. Will was emptying her pockets, looking for a fatly folded envelope she had put there this morning. Elastic for her hair, a mint, a ball of dog hair and dust, a msasa pod, a catapult, more unidentifiable animal hair, a now wilted jacaranda flower—

  “There! That’s for you, Si.”

  She watched anxiously as Simon peered inside the envelope; there was a large slice of good white bread and two squares of mint chocolate. The envelope was a big one that had held legal-looking letters, but Will judged it had served its purpose, and she had borne it away in triumph. Captain Browne was in fact at that moment searching furiously for it, but it hadn’t occurred to her to ask permission. Paper was not a “permission” thing. The only things she could not take were money—and what would she do with that, here, in the sun?—or grain from the planting bins, or water belonging to the men in the compound, which she would have been honestly ashamed to do. Beyond that, Will was free.

  Simon’s eyes glinted. “Excellent! Chocolate. Ach, ndatenda hangu! I love mint.”

  Simon pulled a leaf from a branch that poked inquisitively over his shoulder and laid it out like a plate.

  “Budge up, Wildcat, ja. You’re in my way.”

  “I can’t! Your big feet are taking up my space.”

  “My feet! Yours’re bigger.”

  It was true. Will grinned. Her feet were enormous. She shuffled sideways as, biting his tongue with concentration, Simon crushed the chocolate into powder and sprinkled it onto the bananas.

  “There. Looks good, hey, Will?”

  It looked almost unbearably delicious: sugar-brown against chocolate-brown against soft, fibrous banana-yellow. Will’s mouth was tingling, and she wrapped foil round the fruit with greedy, stomach-quivering quickness as Simon handed them to her. Her fingers were long and brown and out of proportion, people said, to the smallness of the rest of her.

  “Done!”

  Simon nodded approval. “Ja. You want to put them in?”

  Putting bananas into the embers was a minor act of bravery and therefore something to be fought over.

  “Together,” said Will. “On three, okay?”

  “Okay. And no cheating, hey, Will? Okay? No cheating? On three. One . . .” Simon was licking his hands to protect against fire.

  “Two . . .”

  They both cheated and went on two. They always did. Laughing, together they pushed the foil packages deep into the papery embers of the fire. Will snatched back cooked fingers and bit her lip to stop herself from wincing. Simon made a meal of his small burn, hamming it up, sucking his teeth—“Ona! Look! Aish! Ow, Will”—but Will only laughed. Simon was like that; sympathy only made him worse. She held herself still. The best bit, really, was this—the waiting with her chin on her knees while the bananas made promising noises. It was a fat, luscious feeling.

  They split the bit of bread, straight and fair down the middle. Simon nudged Will with his toe.

  “You got more than me.” He reached his long arm across to grab Will’s piece.

  Will snatched it away, held it safe behind her back. She widened her eyes in mock anger. “I do not!”

  “Do.”

  “Do not!” This was a ritual, as familiar to Will as food itself.

  “Do!”

  “Not!” They launched themselves at each other, Will trying to pull Simon’s nose, ears. Simon had the advantage. He could grab handfuls of her hair, and she wondered in a breathless way about cutting it, as she ducked and kicked, and tried to bite at Simon’s ankle; it would make fighting easier.

  Captain Browne, watching them, had once compared them to his scrapping terriers, but that wasn’t quite right. They were different, swifter and lighter; young leopards would have been more appropriate.

  Will had Simon down and knelt on his chest.

  “Okay, okay.” Simon panted “Do not. Get off me, you madman. You’re like a pregnant hippo.”

  “Good.” Will lay back, red-faced but victorious, shimmeringly happy, and stared at the sky. “I’ll swap, Si, if you want.”

  “Nah. Actually”—Simon’s smile was wicked, thought Will, wicked, and her nose prickled with affection—“I think mine’s bigger.” And without scraping off the earth it had gathered, he crammed the entire piece into his mouth.

  IT WASN’T UNTIL WILL’S WILDCAT life came under threat that she realized how dearly she loved it.

  It began three days after the tree house fire, with a convoy of cars drawin
g up in the courtyard. This was unheard of. Nobody visited the captain. He was known, they said, to like his privacy, up there behind his crumbling old walls. And his mongrels farted at the tea table. And yet now five farmers were clambering out of five cars, kicking at the dogs that swarmed round their legs. They explained their mission.

  Captain Browne, grimly entertained, rang the cowbell. It had “Staff” engraved in bronze.

  “Yes, boss?” Lazarus appeared, barefoot. His shirt was buttoned awry; all the men, including William Silver, worked bare-chested when nobody was around.

  “Ah, Lazarus.” Captain Browne felt surreptitiously for his handkerchief. He used the cowbell only when other farmers were present, and a year’s worth of dust had transferred itself to his hands. “Yes. Fetch Will, please, Lazarus.” And, as Lazarus hesitated, “Both Wills. Quickly, Lazarus, man.”

  William arrived first, hurrying in with a politely questioning look and a tray of beers.

  The captain smiled under cover of his mustache. “It seems, Will, that your young wildcat has been trespassing on every farm within twenty miles of here. These gentlemen feel we’ve been letting her run wild.”

  “Trespassing?” William bit the inside of his cheeks to hold back the smile. “I see. We’ll have to talk to Will about that. She should be here any minute. . . .” The men stood in an awkward semicircle, holding drinks and sucking their teeth, until there was the crash of a door, running footsteps, and Will was with them, launching herself at her father to kiss his rough face—and freezing abruptly, one leg off the ground, at the sight of strangers.

  They were sunburnt, thick-necked, potbellied men, hoarse and coarse with fat fingers. Harsh but fair, they said. Sometimes just harsh, Will would have said. One of them—the fattest, who wore, of all things, a Rolex watch—held two children by the hand. Will could feel them all staring at her—at her cutoff jeans, marked at the back where she had been sitting in the grass; at the long scar across her knee, where she had fallen from a tree onto an acacia bush; at her long feet and fingers and long eyebrows and long mouth. She stared at the floor.

  “So this is Lilibet’s girl, William?” The fat man’s voice was low and rough. All tobacco farmers sounded the same. It was the sound of fifty cigarettes a day. Ochre-colored voices, William called them. “She’s the spitting image of her mother. Aren’t you, Wilhelmina?”

  “Oh.” Will said. “Um.” She tried again. “Ja—I—”

  It was the best she could do, first because she had more of a loosely sketched idea of her mother than a proper memory, and second, because there were no mirrors on the farm. And she didn’t want to say anything anyway; she stood motionless, breathing hard. She wished she hadn’t come in, had stayed outside with Simon and Peter; she could have been playing stuck-in-the-mud-in-the-trees, or their improvised version of polo, with pilfered brooms and unripe lemons she tugged off the lemon tree with her teeth. But there was nothing for it now—

  The man was raising his eyebrows. “Like I was saying, Charles. William. She can’t stay here. I will not suffer trespassing, William. And—more important, ja—the girl needs her own kind.” This was white farmer’s code: “white girls need white girls.”

  “What?” Will’s frown burrowed her forehead deep into her nose. Oh, what? That was ignorance; that was the sort of prepackaged idea that didn’t belong on her farm, in her world. She struggled to be polite, but she was angry. “I think I’m fine like this, actually, thank you, sir. Truly, truly, actually, fine.” She couldn’t hold back a spray of spit with the last word, “Fine.” The men stepped back, wiping their faces.

  With an obvious effort, they smiled. They were wearing awkward oh-what-a-sweet-little-girl faces, and they looked, she thought, ridiculous. The speaker—who was Adam Madison, the biggest landowner this side of Mutare—looked rather grieved.

  “Ja, my dear. I’m sure you think that’s true, hey.” And he went on, speaking over her head, which she hated, “But look at the girl, William. She hasn’t got any of the things females need, man. She hasn’t got—”

  And although Will knew that Zimbabwean girls never, never interrupted their seniors, she couldn’t help bursting out here, frowning but relieved, because if that was the problem, then she had conclusive proof—

  “That’s not true—I’ve got everything. Sir. I’ve got more than everything. Don’t I, Dad? I’ve got ten bantams that lay eggs all over the house, and I’ve got the boys—Simon and Peter, and there’s Penga and Learnmore—but especially Simon. And I’ve got Kezia, my monkey—and Shumba, that’s my horse. And I’ve got more fruit than we could ever eat, and I’ve got books, and paints, and the captain said I can paint my ceiling with birds if I can find a ladder, and I’ve got my own mango tree called Marmaduke, and I’ve got . . .” This was a sworn secret between her and Simon, but it came burbling out. “I’ve got a nest of three baby hyrax—rock-rabbits, ja?—in the barn, and I’m going to feed them on currants and naajies and sadza and train them to sit on my shoulders.” And Will felt suddenly brown and strong in victory, because when all was said, nobody could argue with a world like hers.

  William looked down at his daughter. He appeared to be trying not to laugh. His eyes traveled from the two children clinging to the farmer’s sleeve to the four-foot-six of vibrating brown skin next to him. She needs her own kind. Madison’s girl was dressed in a spotless white tennis dress and patent-leather shoes, and, he thought, she had a very patent-leather sort of face to match. Beneath the curls, she was rather ordinary-looking. The boy, about two years older, was making faces at his reflection in the window, straightening his hair. Next to them, William thought, his wild Will looked grubby and torn, and that scratch on her leg needed some antiseptic. Her large mouth, set against the fragility of her jaw, made her look unbalanced. William thought her absolutely, irrefutably the most beautiful creature living, and the most beautiful that would ever live, but she was certainly of a different species from the farmer’s pink-and-white princess.

  Apparently the other men had been having much the same thoughts, because there was a sudden burst of hearty, raucous laughter.

  “Nah, William! You’re right!” Although he had not spoken.

  “Ach. Let her be.”

  “Leave that one to the horseboys.”

  “Ja, no!” And Madison nearly choked on his own hefty amusement. “Keep her off my land if you can, or I’ll wallop her. But you’re right. That one would take a lot of housebreaking.”

  • • •

  Soon after that day, there came the monthly gala-doings on the farm, in which every man laid down his tools and lit fires by the cottages, and there was acrobatics and dancing in traditional dress, and women and whooping and roasted meat. And Will’s skin-of-her-teeth escape from the farmers meant she had something real and important to celebrate. She rose early, while it was still dark, and swung out of bed without bothering to change out of her pajamas. She crept out of the house by the front door (the back door squeaked) and ran, light-footed, to fetch Shumba and to waken the sleeping horseboys. The festival meant that the fields would be empty—miles and miles of open ground.

  “Simon. Simon! Peter! Wake up! It’s here. It’s today! Wake up, Si.” She crept over to the mattress on the floor and put her hand over his nose.

  Simon choked and awoke, kicking and gasping.

  “Ach! Don’t do that, mad girl.” Then, as the dawn light struggled into the room, “Is it today, Will?”

  “Yes! Today! Today, today!” Today there would be unlimited time, unlimited sun, unlimited food. Will leapt into the air, seized her ankles, somersaulted. “Today!”

  On days like these, when the fields were silent and the horses needed little guiding, they could trespass wherever they pleased, jumping over billycans of water and stone walls.

  Will rode ahead on the broad back of her own brown Shumba, calling back, “Faga moto, boys!” Which meant, “make fire, let’s go, move faster.” She could feel her lungs in her chest—beating-beating-beating i
n time with her heart—and she was suddenly giddy, drunk with the day, high-pitched in hilarity. “Faga-faga-moTO!”

  Simon kicked his horse into a burst of speed—“Ja, faga moto yourself, girl!”—and they raced, too fast for safety but never quite fast enough, across the vlei.

  “Faster! Come on, Shumba, faster!” Will shook the sweat out of her eyes. It was impossible to be sweet and humble when the wind whistled like this through her ears. “Come on, Peter! Come on, Si! Calypso’ll go faster’n that.”

  Will dropped her reins. She couldn’t, couldn’t stay calm under that mad chaos of speed and sun. She was wild to show off, and she rose with deliberate wobbles to stand on Shumba’s wide back. With her gums exposed to the early-morning air, she whooped and gave the horseboy’s call, “Ai-ai-aiyah!” and Simon, a length behind, called back, “Ai-ai-aiyah!”

  Peter, a nervous hump on the brown nag, blind to the thundering beauty of the day, pulled his mouth down into his chin in panic. “Look out, you idiot!” Will wobbled again—not on purpose this time—and laughed. “I am, Peter. I am. Oh, Peter. I know you’re an angel, but you’re a fool, Pete. Look!”

  Intoxicated with her success and his awed eyes, and with the way the wind rushed by and flicked delicate strands of saliva across her cheeks, Will spread out her arms, spun in a pirouette. Shumba chose that moment to stumble over a rabbit hole, and with a terrific crash that sounded and resounded over miles and miles of vlei, Will fell into the long grass.