Mortals (100 page)

He was on the stairs. He was descending carefully. He was holding his bundle against his chest. Kevin was descending backwards, holding lightly on to him, which he didn’t approve of. Going backwards down the stairs was dangerous for his friend Kevin.

“Wemberg, the old man, is dead, Ray,” Morel said. Morel was just behind him on the stairs.

So that was another entry on the list of things he could do nothing about. The world was turning white.

“Catch him,”
was the last thing he heard as he sank into vibrating whiteness, all the way into it.

He came awake looking at something like the sun and realizing he was being conveyed roughly away from the brilliant thing he was interested in. He was in a blanket turned into a hammock or sling in which he was being dragged somewhere else. His behind was suffering, which was only fair since unlike other main parts of his body nothing had been done to it to make it hurt. Two people were moving him along.

His mind was on the thing it had been on just before this, it was on Dwight Wemberg. It was important. He wanted to get up and get out and do something. The man had a history that had to be honored and it was unthinkable that his body might be left in the terrible desert. It couldn’t be allowed to happen, because it had been the agony over his wife’s body, being unable to reclaim it, that had led him out into extremis and his own death. There was some kind of parity that had to be honored. Wemberg’s body had to go back to Gaborone,
his
body at least had to go where Wemberg would have wanted it to go, undoubtedly to where Alice was buried, to Gaborone.

Two men were hauling him along. One of them was Kevin. He could communicate with Kevin. The other man was a stranger. He was wild-looking, a rustic, very thin, wearing seedpod armlets. He was straight out of the bush.

Kevin would understand about Wemberg. And if he didn’t, there were others he could inform about the problem. Except that he was being dragged away from the center of things, because of the fire.

He didn’t like to look at the fire, but he was facing it so he had to. He would never be able to come here with Iris, assuming that the world could have evolved in some inconceivable way, their world, and that Ngami Bird Lodge existed in that world … It was burning to the ground before his eyes, they could never come here. This would have been if she was through with Morel or he was through with her, if by some unimaginable turn of events either one of those things had happened and he had somehow heard about it.

The entire roof was in flames, it was a platform for spikes and leaping snakes of fire. It was crownlike. And smoke was beginning to leak and pour from the windows of the second floor, and that would be because burning stuff from the roof would be dropping down and setting the wainscoting, the carved wainscoting he had liked so much, and the other carved appurtenances, on fire. It would all burn. The furniture would burn, the beds, the bolsters, the rugs.

“Stop,” he said to Kevin.

“We must go as far as that,” Kevin answered, pointing. Ray couldn’t see where that was.

“This is far enough, isn’t it?”

“No, rra.”

Explosions, five or six of them, very loud, caused Kevin and the other man to speed up. The explosions had come from the east end of the burning building.

“It is ammunition, now,” Kevin said.

So it was prudent to get well away. Obviously there hadn’t been time to extract all the munitions or other gear the witdoeke might have wanted.

“I can walk, Kevin, rra. I can.”

At least he thought he could. He looked down at himself. He had been tended to, somewhat. There was oil on his skin. Someone had put a longsleeved shirt on him, not a clean shirt, a filthy one, but that was all right. It wasn’t oil on his skin, it was Vaseline. He had his boots, still. His bad knee was crimson, but it was nothing but Mercurochrome, the redness, on Quartus’s bite mark there. He felt his bad knee. He had to suppress a groan. Still, he knew he could get around. He had a knobkerrie. It was somewhere. Probably it was in the building and on fire itself. So he didn’t have a knobkerrie to prop himself up with.

“Stop
here,”
Ray said, jerking on the blanket.

They obeyed. Ray wanted to jump up. He couldn’t, quite. He rolled out of the sling he was in and got on all fours and laboriously got erect.

“You see,” he said, and immediately fell down.

They put him back in his hammock and dragged him along to the sound of even greater explosions. The entire building was going. He could see people running around like ants. Sobeit, he thought. And he went into darkness again.

…

He was awake. He was on a slight incline, he was beyond all the outbuildings. It was getting late.

He was by himself. He had been left there like a turd on a doily.

He stood up. He had the bundle under one arm and he was clutching the waist of his shorts tight. He thought he could manage his right leg.

And the conflagration was absolute, nothing would be saved. It was peach and black. He needed Kevin.

Things were going on near the conflagration he needed to be part of. He had to hobble toward the event.

It was hard, going there.

And his comrades the witdoeke were doing something that had to be stopped. They were throwing bodies into the flames and one of those might be Wemberg’s. He didn’t know. He needed to discuss Wemberg with them.

He needed to find Kevin, Morel too.

“Hey,” he shouted, entering the heat from the conflagration.

He saw people he knew.

“Here I am,” he said to Morel and Kevin and, there he was, Kerekang.

It was Kerekang, sitting on an overturned washtub, exhausted-looking, gray in the face, his hair grown long. He was wearing a witdoek, appropriately enough. He was wearing a fur vest and he had bandoliers crossed over his chest. He looked Mexican somehow. His arms were sinewy but too thin. He was wearing cargo pants whose pockets were loaded with things. He was wearing sandals. He was looking at the ground.

Ray went up to Kerekang. He cleared his throat. He had too many things he wanted to say.

“Dumela, rra,” he said. Kerekang looked up.

“We have met,” Ray said.

Kerekang stood up. He looked at Ray and then looked differently at him. He had heard about Ray’s exploit, it was obvious.

Kerekang strode up to him and embraced him too hard. Ray was in danger of losing his balance, briefly.

The dead had been collected into a heap and a pair of men with bandannas over their faces were taking one body at a time and running with it through the zone of heat around the building and getting as close as they could to the flaming doorway Ray and Morel had entered after their escape from the shed and hurling the body into it. The bodies had been stripped. The work had just begun. There were fifteen bodies, at a first rough estimate, waiting to be incinerated.

Kevin was with him. Ray asked him how many bodies had gone into the flames and Kevin held up three fingers.

Kerekang was sitting again. He seemed to be in a kind of reverie. He looked caved-in, was the way Ray described it to himself.

Ray needed a belt. Kevin would help him.

“Kevin, can you get me a belt?”

“Ehe, rra.” He seemed to have an idea. Ray saw what it was. Kevin was going to the litter of clothing taken from the dead. You’ll have your choice of belts, Ray thought.

And it was so. Kevin brought him three belts to choose from. He took the shortest one and threaded it through the belt loops. But with the tongue in the last punch hole, the belt was still too slack, so he discarded that belt and took the longest one instead and secured it with a knot. He felt ready then.

He considered the tableau he was part of. They were in an open space beyond the outbuildings, one of which had been his prison. Which reminded him that Morel was not in evidence. He was full of anxiety. There was Kerekang, on the washtub, now bracketed by armed men. More fighters were filing in from the pan, their legs and shoes and lower pants legs covered with white dust like tooth powder. The pan was dry as bones. But where was Morel?

The staff people from Ngami Lodge were present. All the faces he had seen in his moments on the first floor were there. They had survived. That was good. He would talk to them later, if he could, say something, thank Dirang and the old man again.

Salvaged weapons and ammunition were being sorted in the area just in back of Kerekang, and certain items were being brought to Kerekang’s attention from time to time and he was nodding in precisely the same manner to each item presented for his reaction. He was an automaton.

Ray went up to him. He bent down and touched Kerekang’s shoulder, to get his attention. The armed men bristled and one of them put the barrel of his rifle in Ray’s stomach. He had white legs. He was a newcomer, from the pan. He wouldn’t necessarily know about dilau, that he was dilau. Kerekang said something rapidly and the rifle went away.

Ray said, “Rra, excuse me. Listen, this burning of bodies … Listen to me, you have to let me find Rra Wemberg. He is among the dead and I know you know the man you love him you loved his wife Alice, and Dwight needs to be buried with his wife, rra. I can take him, you can give him to me. I will do something. And do you know where my friend is, the doctor? He will agree with me. Do you know where he is?”

The men surrounding Kerekang, which Ray couldn’t help thinking of as a chorus, were saying something, chanting something, and it was Setime. Ray thought he knew what was up, which was that he had to use the right term of address, which was Setime, bringer of fire, fire-thrower, whatever it was.

Ray began again, “Setime, man, please tell them to stop until I can find our friend.”

Setime nodded, mechanically, not looking up.

Ray was at the pile of bodies.

The pile was smaller.

Anything can happen, he thought, and he was thinking a body he might find would be Morel’s. The king on the throne was just nodding, Kerekang on his washtub.

He thrust his hands into the mass of dead bodies, pulling the topmost ones aside. He wanted to see if Quartus was there, but he didn’t care what happened, now, to his body. He needed a better framework for what he was doing, because it was too terrible. The bodies had been piled midway between Kerekang and the building, and that had been a mistake. Because Ngami Bird Lodge was dying in a roar, the fire was a roaring thing, a beast. Every window was sprouting horns or prongs of fire. The conflagration was tending in one direction, to the east, coming to a furious point to the east. Another clutch of explosions went off. He was getting bloody again. Whoever had cleaned him up had wasted his time. He was sorry not to know more about the dead he was pushing out of the way, but he only wanted one thing, he was sorry to say. The original team of body-tossers had withdrawn because of the heat. That was sane of them. He saw a white foot, a white leg. It was Wemberg. He was on the bottom tier.

He needed help, but where was help? And where was Morel? That was next, after this.

“What do you think you’re doing?”
Morel said. Morel was there, had found him.

“Help me, man. This is Dwight. Help me.”

They worked as one and got Wemberg’s body free and together dragged it back out of the blasting heat. The side of the building came down. Bits of burning stuff fell on them. It was the body of an old man, someone not far from death in his original life, that they had rescued. It was the naked body of an old man. Ray’s face was cooking. He was afraid for his eyes.

“Where have you been, by the way?” Ray asked.

“Man, I was looking for you. I lost track of you. Also I was being sick.”

“So you were off puking somewhere.”

“No I was looking for you.”

“Well so you were doing both things.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Then okay. And have you drawn my bath?”

“Not yet.”

Ray took Wemberg’s body by the ankles and dragged it as far as he could. He was weakening. He collapsed onto the ground. He made himself sit up. He had to get his bundle. It was exposed.

The men who had been feeding bodies to the fire had followed him. They were taking Wemberg’s body by the arms and starting to drag it back toward the fire.

Ray attempted a howl as he threw himself on Wemberg’s body. He had almost no voice. He was in despair.

These men were as strong as devils. He was being carried along. No notice was being taken of him. His right arm was scraping the ground, the arm that was under the body. He needed help.

Morel was helping. He was pushing his way between the devils and pushing one of them to the side.

Ray’s progress toward the fire stopped. He could say that he was ready to go into the fire with Wemberg except that that would be a lie.

The fire was lunging out at them. Everyone needed to be away from where they were or they would all just constitute a disposal problem for some other group yet to appear on the horizon.

Morel had been knocked down. If what Ray had seen was correct, Morel had pushed at the devils and then swung at them with his doctor bag, which he had been keeping close by him, and it was funny, to Ray, Morel using it as a weapon, like that. It was like a woman striking a criminal with her purse. And he was so grateful. His wife’s boyfriend was a physician and he was not supposed to injure anyone and there was all of that.

It was too hot for the devils. They were dropping the project. And they were not devils they were his friends.

He smelled a certain smell. It was meat roasting, and another smell that reminded him of hair burning. He touched his head. It was someone else’s hair, not his, burning.

He got himself to his feet and began dragging Dwight Wemberg’s body back to safety. His arm was dripping blood. Morel was not helping him, he was lying still. He was lying on the ground, back there.

He dropped Wemberg’s body and ran to see about the good doctor.
He had a strange feeling as he ran, which was that he was running on a sheet of glass or on some thickness between himself and the ground, a thickness he could run on forever and that he would never tire of running on if he had to. He was probably using up vital forces from his what, his bone marrow or his coccyx or somewhere. It was connected with something, a line
I staggered banged with terror through a million billion trillion stars
. I can step on anything and not fall, he thought.