Rendezvous

Rendezvous

The snake god Nyami Nyami lives in the center of Lake Kariba. Legend says he is three meters wide, but nobody dares to guess his length.

There wasn’t a moon on the vlei that night. The rains had just taken the eastern highlands and they would have to take the pass west of the Monte Binga. The other way through was a steep climb up the cliffs past the Mopane trees, through the smaller meadows and across a ravine to the southern face. It wasn’t a large ravine, but the waters that ran through it were smooth and fast. There was a bridge last summer with a small house on the far side where a family had lived. Seasons brought travelers and the money they spent to cross made a fine living for the household. The bridge was gone now, as was the family. The last son had died of Malaria in the camps near Botswana.

The war continued in the cities and the towns and on the roads, as it always did. All the well-formed paths to Bulawayo were flooded with men and their guns. Even here, they had passed the casings from the loud guns, those the British sold, on the long plateau that led up to the edge of marshy patches that took the boots from your feet.

He prodded the coals, sending sparks into the Bana grass.

“If that catches we wont be out here for long” The old man told him. “The Mujiba take the road only a few miles from here and they don’t mind a detour if it means something.”

“We’d be gone before they got here if you hadn’t taken us through the ridge line past the Blackwoods.”

“I took the path that led us here, as we did before. There isn’t anything that can be done now. Have a drink- there wont be any news till morning and it might warm your foul mood.”

He was right, after they had set out from the border nearly two days ago there hadn’t been any sign from the contact. Normally, she would send a courier, or leave directions to a cache of food and supplies. They were down to their last tins, and had been shooting small game to move forward. Quail and grouse were not common here, the soil was too sandy to roost properly, so they had shared a brace of warblers earlier in the evening. Drinking together had the profound affect, as it always does in the dark, of opening the mouths of those who want to talk but don’t quite know what to say.

“Do you suppose their god will let them win?”

“God is on both sides now. Its been that way for a long time.”

“Is he on ours?”

“We don’t have one, a side that is. If you throw a rock in a river, it doesn’t float to either shore.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“There was a man from Ohio, the kind of fella you wouldn’t notice in an empty bar. He worked at a mill on the Wabash river. One day there was a labor protest and he stayed home to avoid it. He didn’t come to work the next day or the next. Eventually they found him blue from a heart attack in his bed. Just cus’ he died don’t make him a martyr.”

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?”

The fire sunk below the roughly placed wall of rocks the two had set up before dusk. The older man had been unthreading the nylon loops from his pack and pulled out his whittling knife. He selected a small piece of fine grain from the fire, half marred already with the kiss of the fire.

Slowly and evenly, he started to carve. The thin shavings dancing down his legs and onto the dusty mire.