Free A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto

she counts them unconsciously, following the dip and rise of the wires, the way she did when she was a girl traveling somewhere with her parents.
    Märit reaches for Ben’s hand and holds it in her lap, running her fingers across his. “You’ve cut yourself.”
    “On the fence.”
    “Does it hurt?”
    “No.” He shrugs. “A little.” He does not tell her about the blood dripping into the soil, or the inexplicable sadness he felt at that moment.
    “I’ll put something on it when we get home. You don’t want an infection setting in.”
    Märit watches the dip and rise of the telephone wires. A single white cloud drifts in the blue sky. The tires hum on the road, on the empty road.
    At the police station in Klipspring the sergeant is waiting for them. He shakes hands with Ben and greets Märit before explaining the circumstances.
    “The body is here, in the back,” he says. “If you would come through and identify her?”
    Ben looks at Märit. She shakes her head and says, “I can’t. I’ll wait outside.”
    Märit puts on her sunglasses against the glare and lights a cigarette. How do you tell someone that her mother is dead? Who among us can announce Death? Who will announce it now to Tembi, to her father, to the workers on the farm?
    Ben steps out into the sunlight at last, his face pale, his mouth drawn into a thin line.
    “Is it…?” Märit asks.
    “Yes.” He takes the cigarette from her fingers and draws deeply. “They think a car hit her as she was walking in the dark.”
    “What will happen now? What will we do? We have to contact her husband. We have to tell Tembi.”
    Ben gives the cigarette back to Märit. “The police will do it. They’ll contact the mine and notify Elias.”
    “Elias. I didn’t even know his name. But how will they find him?”
    “The records are on file here. Everybody is on file. They will notify him and he’ll come home.”
    “And Tembi?”
    “A native constable will go to the farm and talk to the bossboy—Joshua.”When Märit shakes her head, Ben adds, “It’s better. They have their own ways. We can’t just call Tembi into the house and tell her. She needs to be with those she knows, with her own kind.”
    “I suppose so. But what about the body?”
    “It will go back to the farm later today. Let them deal with it, Märit. They have their ways. I’ll talk to Joshua later about the costs and the burial. We can’t do much more now.”
    Märit nods and climbs into the pickup. Ben starts the engine and says, “We’ll go to the hotel and have a drink. I think we both need it. Let the constable go out to the farm and talk to Joshua first.”
    “I can’t understand how someone could just drive off and leave her lying at the side of the road. She might still have been alive. How could I let her walk into town like that in the dark, alone?”
    “I didn’t know,” Ben says. “I didn’t think of it.”
    “No, we didn’t think of her. We didn’t ask.”

11
    A ND SO THE DAY of the burial arrives, on a day of late spring sunshine, on a farm in the remote countryside.
    There will be no work done in the fields this day. Instead, on the banks of the river there is a singing of hymns and the chanting of prayers. The Reverend Kumalo leads the procession, enrobed in the sky blue cloth of the Living Water Assembly Church, walking at a stately pace with a wooden cross held aloft. Behind him, a donkey pulls a cart with the coffin. The women follow behind the cart, wearing their Sunday clothes, each with a blue sash tied across the waist. The men come after, many of them wearing their work clothes, for they have no special clothes for such an occasion. They have doffed their hats, and hold them clutched in their hands.
    The women wail. Their ululations, high and piercing, banish the sound of the river, the rippling and running of the water across the rocks, banish the cooing of the doves in the branches of the eucalyptus trees and the chatter of the finches in the