Read Online White Dog Fell From the Sky by Eleanor Morse - Free Book Online Page B

tell
me?”
    “If I had told you, you would not have
hired me. I have no papers. I came with nothing. Only the clothes on my back. You are
angry?”
    “No.”
    “It was necessary to leave for
political reasons.”
    “You don’t need to say anything
more. I don’t need to know. I don’t want to know.”
    “Thank you,
mma
. I will come
Saturdays to water the trees. Two days is too long for them to go without
water.”
    “Well, then, Sunday and Tuesdays are
holidays. You will have two days off each week, and you’ll be paid thirty rand for
five days.”
    “Yes, madam.”
    “And don’t come on Tuesday. And
please don’t call me madam.”
    He smiled, put both hands together, and
bowed slightly. “I understand,
mma
.”
    “Can I ask you how old you
are?”
    “Twenty-seven years old, madam. I
worked three years before I attended university. My mother’s employers helped me
go to university and then medical school. I was very lucky.”
    Lucky? How could he say such a thing?
    He went to the faucet and turned on the
hose.

8
    Lawrence returned home from Swaneng the
following weekend. When he stepped from the truck, he kissed Alice’s cheek, not
her mouth. It was impossible for her to know whether the coolness between them these
days was temporary or permanent. Since coming to Botswana, certainties eluded her.
    Daphne had recently gone into heat. Lying on
the cool cement of the kitchen floor, she panted happily, leaking blood. The male dogs
were gathering outside the window for the third night in a row. When darkness fell, they
would moan and fight and howl while the Siren paced restlessly.
    Lawrence and Alice got ready for bed and
climbed in. Their goodnight kiss felt like two blind animals bumping into each other in
the dark. A small whimper rose to Alice’s lips, the kind of cry Daphne made to the
dogs on the other side of the wall. Lawrence felt miles away, as though his heart were
buried down a mine shaft. She wanted to shake him, tell him to wake up. She could almost
hate him when he was like this. Outside, she could hear the dogs at it, circling the
house, cracking the bones of their desire, woofling and digging, the smaller ones
jumping up and down on their hind legs. Alice found it creepy imagining them out there,
a gang of sex-starved ruffians under the Southern Cross, vying for young Daphne in her
first blooming.
    Lawrence had promised Daphne’s former
owners, who’d returned to Scotland, that she’d be bred with Peter
Ashton’s dog, who had an equally good Alsatian pedigree. Alice would never have
made a promise like that. She didn’t trust all that hyperbreeding. She liked
mutts.They were better adjusted, and their names were better. Daphne.
How pretentious, but that was the name she’d come with. Alice lay in the dark
imagining Peter Ashton watching with satisfaction and interest while his dog did it to
their dog. Peter Ashton’s dog will never have her, she thought.
    Lawrence was awake. He was the only man
she’d ever known who could curse without making a sound. She’d once thought
of his silent cursing as a kind of sweetness in him, a resignation in the face of forces
more powerful than himself, but on this particular night she felt something vicious
brewing. He got out of bed, his displeasure subtle and potent, and clattered around in
the bathroom filling a metal bucket at the tub.
    She slid her feet out of bed and onto the
waxed concrete floor. Lawrence looked at her and sloshed toward the door with the
bucket. “I didn’t want this damned dog in the first place,” he
said.
    “You
did
want her. Stop
rewriting history.
I
was the one who didn’t want her, if you’ll
take the trouble to remember.” She followed him out the door and pulled it tight
behind her. The garden was dark as a black hat. She thought of the snakes Isaac had
warned her against, and Lawrence’s bare feet. Go ahead and bite him, she
thought.
    Lawrence threw the water and bucket at the
largest gang of marauders. A