The Right Thing

A man, tall, deformed, tucks a bone-smooth stick under one arm,
military-fashion and ducks under the frame into the House of Tea. He
stands for a moment, sun-blind. Taking his bearings, he makes for a
stool, fashioned from a stolen hubcap and covered with grass-stuffed
cloth for comfort. Light slices into the shelter through gaps in the
thatch, exposing a wedge of dust and flies, dancing over a plate. The
man holds up a gnarled thumb and forefinger and a woman, drawn, demure
but brightly attired, carefully carries, on a saucer, a glass of clear
liquid, full to the brim. The man downs half the drink, tipping his
head back smoothly, smothering his choking with a tight fist. Leaning
forward to place the half empty glass on a table modelled from mud and
decorated with tattered paper, he glances sideways: a game of chess, a
cat licking itself, incense smoke rising. 'Gah Wah', he calls, in a
voice firm from commanding camels to lie down. Draining his glass he
leans, shepherd-like, on the crook of his staff, waiting while the
woman prepares his coffee. Through the rear entrance of the hut which
is half-covered by a ragged curtain, he can see smoke from her cooking
fire, drifting, and dispersed by a whiff of quick wind. A toddler,
flies buzzing round its face and bottom, investigates the dirt where
chickens scratch. Beyond, razor wire against the pale sky.

Beyond the shadow of a high wire fence, in the middle of the hot
afternoon, the voices of thirty students chant in rhythm. At the
scratched blackboard, wiping the sweat and chalk from the palms of her
hands stands Dawn - white, sunburnt, slightly overweight. She has
written in uneven letters on the board, 'Who Owns Africa? The
development industry or big business?'
'Development.' The chanting makes them soporific.
'OK, into teams!' No one moves.
'Right.' She walks around the class, pointing at each and intoning, 'A,
B, A, B'. Grudgingly, the students shuffle into two groups.
'Help each other', she offers, 'And remember,' she adds, ' I'm a
resource too. Use me!'
Crossing her arms, Dawn withdraws into silence. Her eye is caught by a
man, staggering out of a hut nearby. Drunk or exhausted.
'Right. Who's first? Fire away.'
She's perching on a corner of one of the two hand-hewn heavy tables,
avoiding the oblong of fierce light that stretches through the
afternoon. Re-fixing the bright smile, eyebrows raised to enhance the
appearance of interest, she inclines her head. Festo smiles back, his
forehead glistening. 'We think whites should get out of Africa. They
have colonised us for long enough.' Her face is stiff with smiling. She
sighs and nods, encouraging him to continue. She longs to be stretched
out on a bed under a fan, naked and unwatched.

Later, under a sky pregnant with moon, clouds and stars spinning
through the expanding blackness, the sound of cicadas and toads
whirling and croaking reaches a deafening crescendo. Through the noise,
a handset on the bed crackles. Lima Whisky? Dawn listens, then pushes
aside the papers on her desk and takes a bag from a drawer. She dips
wrist deep into the bag and scoops out a handful of dried grass. She
rolls two joints. An irregular rattle and she pauses. Gunfire. The
radio cackles again. She picks it up. 'Lima Whisky, this is Lima
Whisky. Over.' 'Dawn, there's a problem with the Turkana. Something to
do with a wedding in Zone Four. You are to come to the compound
immediately, I repeat, immediately, over.' Zoltan's accent and the
static blur the message. Dawn pauses. 'Papa Bravo, this is Lima Whisky.
I did not copy, repeat, did not copy?' The red light flashes. Her
battery is low. The razor-wired enclosure where the whites spend their
evenings is three miles away. She only has a bicycle. She throws the
handset onto the bed.

The week before, on the way to the Sudanese border, she and Zoltan had
come across a man, lying in the road, spreadeagled, face down. He had
groaned as they rolled him over and out of his mouth had sighed a
stream of blood. They had climbed quickly back into the pick-up and
driven on, only for a swarm of locusts to smash into the windscreen.
There was no water and the blades had wiped and wiped, smearing the
screen with guts.

She stares at her reflection for a long while, listening. Mutterings
like distant thunder, a child crying, scuffling, then silence. The skin
on her face and hands is as cracked and yellowed as old newspaper. Her
cheeks are cold with tears.

In the half-light, Dawn emerges from her room, manoeuvring her bicycle.
She bumps gingerly along the rough camp road. Already there are
hundreds of people walking like ghosts swimming through limbo, thin
dark figures carrying water drums, holding children by the hand, dogs
barking, chickens, ducks, scooting across the road, cows, flocks of
goats, camels in slow motion, turning to stare.
She is out at last through the gate, past the police barracks (the
camp's most unfortunate trapped there, sitting in cages, looking at the
ground) and onto smooth tarmac. The wind is against her. She headbutts
her way forwards. Across the bridge and through the village, corrugated
iron rooves and advertising on the hoardings, the bus stop, bars, a
couple of shop fronts, all shuttered now, and finally out onto open
road. The sky is a peach ripening.
The road has stopped meandering and stretches straight for three miles.
Her legs and lungs sing with effort but she feels herself becoming
free, the camp dropping away behind. Either side is moon country, open,
brown, cacti and thornbrush - balls of thornbrush on the road in places
- dry earth, patches of harsh grass, oases of flowers. The uneven
ground is baked into spiked bundles and fallen cracks. An eagle pivots
high on a thermal.
A man strides steadily towards her, a worn stick cradled across his
shoulders, his hands looped over the ends, like a walking crucifix. The
sun's rim gleams red over the horizon. She whizzes past a herd of
camels. A fox lopes across the road in front of her. An antelope looks
up and bounces away. A swoop of birds, white-crested, like hoopoes,
singes past. She wishes she knew what they were. She has turned the two
bends and crossed the dry ford. Now she is tired and sticky and the
sun's heat is already creating mirrors in the road.
She turns for home. The wind is behind her and she allows herself to be
coasted back until she is about half a mile from the village, where she
boosts the bike into a sprint. She is doing this when she notices the
man again, walking close to the road. She slows a little, though still
approaching fast, and rings the little bell.
He breaks into a run, sandals flapping against his heels, the noise
echoing, the brown cloth bouncing over his shoulders and down his thin
arms. The narrow back of the man's head is still turned away, he is in
the middle of the road now, he turns and sees the approaching bike,
feints to one side then double-feints.
In the split-second before collision, time slows enough for Dawn to
realise the rush of crushing gravel will smooth into her cheek, the
black is blood, the world has turned. A brief explosion of sound, a
muffled humph of impact, metalled meeting of bicycle, road and flesh,
the softest tearing, and a searing begins. She wants to lie still but
rolls over, disentangling herself. The man beneath her is utterly
still.
She gathers herself into sitting, knowing she must move, staring ahead
of her, her heart still thumping fast from the ride, the world spinning
and freeze-framed in turns. Faces coagulate about her with mingled
shock, fear, and the dawning of some distance. She must leave. There
develops a roar. She realises it is an engine and fingers the ground
gingerly, exploring the possibility of standing. A whoosh of anger
gathers as she stands, the other body still inert under the bike. A
hand hoists her into the cabin of a pick-up, screeched to a halt behind
her. The remains of her bike are yanked unceremoniously off the man and
clattered into the back. The driver - a Kikuyu aid worker she has met
somewhere before but cannot name - stares ahead through the gathering
crowd, not waiting for the road to clear, forcing the slow dignified
stride of the pedestrians into a flapping, hassled trot.

'You'll do what he says. Money. That's all they understand. And then
get out.' The Sister puts down the tray and rolls up her sleeves to
give the injections.
Her mother picks her up from the airport. It is raining. Dawn stares
hypnotically at the windscreen wipers' rhythmic motion. Their lights
cast the only arc for a long stretch on the black road. It takes her
slow moments to take in the increasing brightness coming towards them.
She looks across at her mother whose head, she now notices, has sunk
into her shoulders. Dawn utters a sound, an intake of breath, barely
perceptible but enough to jolt her mother who swerves round the
blasting, screaming truck. Absurdly, they are both giggling.
'That was pretty close, Mum!'
She's about to say more but her mother has descended into a single
pointed concentration on the road. The engine settles back into a
drone, against the whine of the wipers. The wedge of yellow light
nudges north.

Then they are heading west, further into the night, the rain and the
quiet. When they crunch down a drive, the rain has turned to drizzle
and a slight breeze ruffles the high branches. The sea smell embraces
them and then disappears beneath the dense cold scent of earth.
'You're getting some work done.' Noticing Dawn's look, her mother
replies tightly, 'A sun porch,' then changes the subject. 'Is this
everything?'
'I think so.'
'Come in, then.' The dog greets them joyously.
A scoosh of water and her mother plugs in the kettle. The scrape of the
shovel as she cleans the grate, then her mother disappears into another
room. Dawn takes the basket and fills it from the shed, groping in the
dark, slamming the back door with her foot. They sit by the light of a
side lamp, drinking coffee laced with whisky, looking into the
fire.
'It was only cold in February this year,' announces her mother, as
though the revelation demands an explanation. But Dawn only rounds her
mouth to an O and nods. The silence lengthens uncomfortably. When she
thinks her mother is looking away, Dawn fingers the skin around her
eye.
'Do you want to go to bed?'
'Not really, Mum, if you don't mind. I think I need to unwind a
bit.'
'You look tired.'
Something in her mother's voice causes her to look up. Her mother is
crying.
'Your face is?'
'It'll get better, Mum.'