One Hundred and Four Horses. Mandy Retzlaff

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СКАЧАТЬ was a lesson we would keep coming back to throughout our lives, for reasons none of us could begin to imagine.

      The lands were cleared, plowed, and treated. The irrigation pipes stretched for long kilometers from the rivers that encircled us. The grading sheds were ready, the curing barns waiting eagerly for their first crop; the tobacco seeds were germinating in the seed beds, waiting to be transplanted to the land.

      All we needed was the rain, but the rain wouldn’t come.

      Between 1993 and 1995 only fourteen inches of rain fell. The rivers disappeared, the game looked emaciated, and the waters in our neighboring Two Tree Hill Dam fell imperceptibly each day, until they were only a brown shimmer in the bottom of the basin, the dam wall standing high and exposed.

      In those droughts, tomatoes were all that we had. The farm was telling us that she could do no more. They grew in the fields all year round, so all that year I was setting out after dark to sell them, running long circuits around Harare and, now, into the villages and townships, too. Along the way I could see other Zimbabweans selling tomatoes, maize, and bush fruits on the sides of the road. It did not come to this for us, but as I looked into the grading sheds and saw the poor, wilted leaves of tobacco we had managed to harvest, I wondered what we had done. Had we sacrificed our children’s future by gambling on clouds in the sky?

      Those skies were endless expanses of blue, cruel in their blank simplicity. Beneath them, Crofton baked. I walked along the narrow channels between the tomato vines, lifting leaves and cupping each green fruit in my hand, turning them gently to look for signs of infestation or disease. Along the edge of the field, Pat and Frisky followed one of the trails, calling out to workers in the opposite fields. Every time I saw a mottled leaf or serrated edge showing the telltale signs of some hungry insect, I called out. Pat turned to acknowledge me. When he did not hear, I shouted louder. Here, I said. Here, and here. In silent fury, he swung from the saddle. He wanted nothing more than to ignore me, to go back to wrestling with blighted tobacco in the fields or opening another stretch of bush in the deranged belief that the rains would shortly come. Instead, he strode over to lift the same leaves I had lifted, to see the early signs of disease. He exhaled, his face breaking into a muted grin as he realized how full of fire he had been, and called over one of our workers. In minutes they were there to spray the vines.

      Opening up a farm, I constantly reminded him, was not only about driving back the bush. There were smaller, more insidious enemies to beat back as well.

      “I’m sorry, Pat. There’s nothing else for it. It really would be the kindest thing.”

      We stood in the garden of Crofton farmhouse. Dave, one of our local vets, crouched beside me. In front of us, the little foal Deja-vous, only recently born to Paul’s mare Imprevu, lay with her head in ten-year-old Kate’s lap.

      “It’s deep, Dave,” I said, “but isn’t there anything you could do?”

      “With an injury like this, it’s often better to put them to sleep,” Dave said.

      Pat bristled. “No, David. Let’s give her a chance and see.”

      As the vet said his good-byes, promising to come back if we needed him, Kate nuzzled Deja-vous. The little foal’s eyes revolved in their orbits and fixed on her. For a moment, the foal seemed to want to stand. Then, realizing the pain in her leg was too great, she simply laid her head back down.

      She had been in the paddock with her mother when she had become entangled in a length of wire fence. By the time her panic had roused the attention of a passing worker, she had struggled against the wire so much that it had tightened around her front leg, cutting her so that the bone was exposed. When Pat arrived, Deja-vous was in a weak, depleted state. Her mother stood guard over the trapped foal, and when Pat got near, it was to find the foal spent from her exertions, torn muscle glistening where the wire constricted her leg.

      After cutting her free, Pat had carried the tiny foal into the garden at Crofton, where Kate attentively lay down with her. When I called for the vet, I knew already what he would say. Deja-vous, I thought as I put down the phone, didn’t stand a chance.

      Back in the garden, I saw Pat crouching over the ailing foal, dressing the wound.

      “You wouldn’t let him, would you, Dad?”

      “Sometimes it is the kindest thing.” Pat stroked the little foal’s head. “But not this time, Kate. Not for this little thing …”

      “What do we do for her?”

      Pat was silent for only a second. “We don’t give up on her,” he said. “You don’t give up on her, Kate. The bone isn’t broken. She’ll walk again. But the cut’s deep. Her leg’s torn up. She’ll get infected. She’ll get a fever. She’ll need us. Need you.”

      Kate’s eyes were open wide, but her arm lay along the length of Deja-vous’s back. They both seemed so tiny together, shadowed by the mango tree.

      “Dad,” she whispered with a defiance I had never heard in her voice, “where do we start?”

      I opened the cupboard at the top of the stairs. Two eyes glimmered out, a round, feathered face looming in the darkness.

      I simply placed the folded sheets inside and closed the cupboard. This wasn’t the first time that one of Jay’s birds had found its way into one of the cupboards and decided to take up residence there. In fact, I was so used to seeing one of his hawks or owls lurking in some crevice at Crofton that I barely registered any surprise. Ours, you see, was not just a family home; it was positively a zoo as well, and Jay was in love with birds.

      “It’s your turn to take Jay out tonight,” said Pat, tramping up the stairs behind me.

      As I followed Pat into our bedroom, I caught sight of another pair of eyes, these hidden behind Jay’s long blond mop, shining at me from the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t yet dark, and our thirteen-year-old son was already waiting. He had become a keen falconer since starting high school, and he plagued us incessantly to take him and his falcon Buffy out on night drives so that he could practice hunting with her. Buffy only hunted at night, and without this practice Jay was apt to become disgruntled, mischievous, and more taciturn than ever. And Pat or I had to go with them. But I really didn’t want to go out tonight.

      I snatched up a deck of cards.

      “I’ll play you for it.”

      When we were at loggerheads like this, sometimes there was nothing for it but to play a hand of cards. The one who pitched the high card would get to sleep in the warm comfort of our bed, while the loser would have to drive Jay and Buffy out into the bush to go hunting. Sensing no other way out, Pat nodded.

      I cut the deck and cut it again. I passed it to Pat, who shuffled it in his big hands. He cut it, I recut it, he cut it again, then he fanned it out and offered it up.

      “Just deal it,” I said. The tension was unbearable.

      Pat picked a card from the top of the deck: the seven of hearts. My hand hovered over the deck. I cut it again and lifted the top card.

      The three of spades.

      “Sorry, darling,” Pat said.

      Two hours later, I set out behind the wheel of our truck, swinging out of Crofton СКАЧАТЬ