Free White Dog Fell From the Sky by Eleanor Morse Page B

asked the
oldest, jumping up and down on one foot backward out of the room.
    “Listen to them,” Erika said.
“They sound like English boys.” But they didn’t.
    During a lull after they’d left,
Judith said, “Apropos of nothing, a disturbing thing happened to us two days ago.
Our dog came home with a stomach wound.”
    “An abrasion,” said her
husband.
    “Worse than an abrasion,” Judith
said. “A dirty wound. Gravelly. His front paws too. Do Batswana generally dislike
dogs?”
    Alice looked at Lawrence. “What kind
of dog?” she asked.
    “A miniature schnauzer. With a cute
little beard. We’ve kept him in the last two nights.”
    “Where do you live?” asked
Lawrence.
    “A little way up from the Old
Village.”
    “That accounts for it then,”
said Lawrence.
    “For what?”
    “For the fact that your dog
hasn’t been in our yard the last two nights, making an ungodly racket, attempting
to hump our dog.” He was holding his glass tautly and looked explosive.
    “How do you know it was our
dog?”
    “I threw him out of the yard. These
things happen when dogs are allowed to run loose and a man is deprived of sleep.”
He laughed a little, a laugh of self-forgiveness, but no one joined in.
    “You
threw
him?” said
Judith.
    “He didn’t seem to understand he
wasn’t welcome.”
    “You injured him,” said
Stephen.
    “You didn’t know what he was up
to?” Lawrence asked.
    Just apologize, Alice thought. All you need
to do is apologize.
    “No,” said Judith. “We
just thought he was out sniffing around.”
    A wash of laughter snorted out of Alice. It
wasn’t funny. And then she was crying. She excused herself and went through the
kitchen toward the bathroom. The boys were sitting at the table stuffing themselves with
pudding. She went into the bathroom and shut the door. She splashed water on her cheeks,
dried her face on a towel, and thought of walking home. She fled into the garden and
stood under a banana tree, its big fronds waving like clown hands, beating in the hot
wind. All he’d needed to do was say,
I’m sorry, I lost my head.
But
would he ever do such a thing? Lawrence was never wrong. Never, ever. It was tiring
living with a man who was never wrong.
I don’t even like you,
she said to
him under her breath. It shocked her a little.
    Politeness got the better of her, and she
returned. There was an awkward silence when she walked into the room. They were already
sitting down at the table, the Lunquists’ servant, Neo, passing dishes of food.
Neither Judith nor her husband would look at Lawrence. Stephenstudied
his meat, cut it into small bites, and put each piece carefully into his mouth as though
it might detonate. They were like people on a life raft, afraid to tip. The heat was
undiminished.
    Out of the corner of her eye, Alice saw the
Lunquists’ cat dash under Hasse’s chair. It was a large black animal with
long white whiskers, formidable, as wild-looking as their children. She took little
notice of it until the crunching began. She looked down and saw that the cat had brought
in a green lizard, which struggled in its claws. The lizard’s tail lay a few
inches from it. “Hasse,” Alice whispered.
    “What?”
    She pointed.
    “Oh, that. He seems to prefer eating
when we do.” Crunch went the head.
    Judith and Stephen talked dispiritedly about
tours of duty they’d experienced elsewhere in Africa. Hal, who’d been
sitting quietly, mentioned his mother’s visit, which was just over. He said that
she’d found everyone in Botswana so friendly. Hal was as uncontroversial as a pan
of warm milk. Alice could imagine him as a little boy, hopeful, anxious to please,
outgunned by overbearing elders, stripped of his longings. Someone at work had told
Alice that Hal and his mother had been invited to lunch at the house of an
anthropologist who lived outside Lobatse. His mother had needed to use the outhouse
during the visit. There’d been a rumbling of tin as she wedged her way