Switch! (3 page)

“I don’t mind staying with Sophie then.” Ethan knew it was going to be a nightmare staying alone with Sophie, but his skin crawled at the thought of being subjected to the questionable hygiene of a farm.

His dad ran a hand distractedly through his thinning brown hair and allowed it to flop back over his forehead. He took a sip of his whisky, swooshed it around his mouth, and swallowed. “Well, that’s just the thing... Sophie has to come with.”
 

Ethan opened his mouth, about to point out that there was no reason for a housewife to have to travel with her husband on business, but thought better of it. Sophie had reminded them often enough before that it was not her responsibility to look after Ethan. He wondered why Sophie and his dad had campaigned so heavily to have him visit them in the first place. Sophie had been even more insistent than his dad.

“It’s Neil’s turn,” she’d spat down the phone at Ethan’s mother. “It’s his turn and he is entitled to have Ethan for at least four weeks.”
 

So Ethan had come. They must have known they would have to go to Malawi.
 

“Well, I would like to fly back to mom and Eric then,” he said now.

Sophie’s mouth tightened. “Don’t be stupid,” she said, as if Ethan wore upon her patience. “We can’t send you home yet. You only just got here. Besides, your mother needs the break.”
 

Ethan was flabbergasted. He would put up with a lot of things from Sophie if that was what his dad wanted, but she was not going to use his mother as an excuse. “No, actually, she doesn’t need the break! She didn’t want me to come, if you remember.”
 

Sophie whipped her head back to glare at Ethan, her wispy ponytail swinging round and hitting her in the face. “Are you calling me a liar?” she hissed through her tightly pursed lips. “Spoiled little rich brat. You never do anything you don’t want to.” She slammed her drink down on the coffee table, then rose from her chair and stomped off into the house.

Ethan bit the inside of his lip. He glared at his father, waiting for an apology, or even some show of support, an explanation even, but the man could barely contain his irritation.

“Now look what you’ve done,” he grumbled instead, through clenched teeth. For a moment or two Ethan watched the tendons pulsating in his father’s neck, but his father’s eyes stayed firmly fixed on the progress of the gardener who manhandled an ancient lawnmower back and forth across the yard in the semidarkness. It vaguely annoyed Ethan that there was enough fuel for the mower but not for the back-up generator that supplied the electricity for his computer, which he needed to complete his homework assignments for the holidays.

At last, his father sighed as if he had come to a decision. “I’m going to the gym,” he said, shoving himself to his feet and stalking around the side of the house to his car.

~~~

It actually came as a relief to Ethan when Uncle Alan collected him the next morning.
 

“Welcome to Zimbabwe!” his uncle declared, waving an arm expansively to indicate the whole country, as if he owned it. He was a beefy blonde man with a booming laugh and kindly eyes that slanted downwards at the corners like Ethan’s mom’s. He wore the same faded, ranger-style, olive green fatigues and shirt that he always wore, even on his visits to Ethan’s family in Cape Town.
 

“What kind of a school are you going to now, boy, that lets you grow your hair so long?” Ethan ducked his blonde head out of Alan’s reach before his uncle managed to tousle it. Ethan didn’t like to be touched. Alan grinned sheepishly and withdrew his hand, patting the dog instead. The dog’s tongue lolled out of the side of its mouth, dribbling disgustingly.
Watching a glob of dribble fall and hit the driveway right next to Alan’s foot, Ethan just stopped himself from gagging. It was a good thing his uncle had shaken hands with him before he touched the dog and not the other way around, he thought.

Alan looked Ethan over with an appraising eye. “Dad gone to work already?”
 

Ethan shrugged. “Not so much. He went to the gym again before I got up this morning. Sophie is sulking because I implied she was lying.”

Alan didn’t have to ask. It seemed even he was familiar with Sophie’s outbursts. He hefted Ethan’s rucksack onto the back of his beat-up Land Cruiser pickup, his rough, weathered features relaxing into a cheerful smile. “She is kind of hateful, isn’t she?” he laughed. “Come along, Ethan, cheer up. You’re going to have a fantastic holiday. I want to pop into the Farmers’ Co-op to collect a few things for the guys from Tjalotjo village while I’m in town, and then we’ll fetch your cousins. Joe has a friend coming to stay. A real character. Hop in, I’ll tell you all about him on the way.” He hooted and waved a friendly farewell to Sophie, who had twitched the curtain aside to glare out at the truck as it disappeared down the drive.

“She feeds her spite by brooding about the money,” Alan explained later in the coffee shop at the Farmers’ Co-op. “You see, she thought it belonged to your dad. It was a bitter blow when your mom took it all with her.” He flashed Ethan a mischievous grin and heaped more cream on his apple pie. “Of course, when your mom and Eric sold his computer program for so much money, it was an even worse slap in the face for Sophie. She can’t get her head around the idea that if it belongs to your step-dad, your mom doesn’t have to pay any of it out to your dad.”
 

After coffee Ethan helped his uncle load the back of the pickup with supplies for his farm and Tjalotjo village. They left three neat little nests amongst some grain bags up near the cab for the boys to sit in during the trip.

“Now about the boy, Tariro,” Alan said, wrestling a tin of sheep dip into an impossibly small space. “He’s a difficult customer. The oldest of four sons, you see, and used to bossing his brothers around. But that is not the worst of it.” He leaned across the bed of the vehicle and regarded Ethan intently, as if contemplating whether or not to divulge a secret. “He’s a good kid, but his dad is a very dangerous man – something in the government to do with land acquisitions. He could take away my hunting concession, and my farm, if he wanted to.”

“Surely they would never get away with it,” Ethan said. He’d heard this happened a lot in Zimbabwe, and he knew they
would
get away with it, but still, it didn’t seem fair. “And why is Joe hanging around with a kid like that anyway?”

“Easy, I didn’t say the dad will take my farm – just that he can.” Alan placed a hand firmly on Ethan’s arm. “According to the school, Joe saved the boy’s life. Joe won’t talk about it but they’re as thick as thieves now.” He moved to the other side of the truck where he made a slipknot at the end of a long rope, hooked it onto the side of the truck and threw it over the bed in Ethan’s direction.

“Besides, I don’t know. The more I get to know the boy, the more I like him.” Uncle Alan smiled. “Who knows, if you try, you might find you have something in common. Either way, we have already committed to having him for the holidays so you’ll have to make an effort to get on with him.”

Ethan fed the rope under a hook on his side of the truck and passed it back over the bed to his uncle. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find something in common with this boy. The more Ethan thought about it, the less he liked having someone so volatile around his family. The government this boy’s father belonged to had seized most of the white-owned farm land in Zimbabwe and now they seemed to be seizing farms willy-nilly, according to which political party the rest of the people belonged to. Usually with the help of thugs with machetes.

“I’ll do my best,” he said somewhat hesitantly.

~~~

“Now what’s all this about you not wanting to go on safari?” Alan said in the Land Cruiser on the way to the girls’ school.

Ethan shook his head and smiled at his uncle. “There is just no way that I can ever get you guys to understand,” he sighed. “Tramping around the bush after wildlife holds as little interest for me as learning to play games on the computer holds for you.”

Alan retracted his neck into his shoulders like a tortoise. “Computers!” he laughed. “We don’t need the belligerent blighters. They make no sense at all. In any case, we don’t have power out at the farm most of the time. We only run the generator in an emergency. Have to save the fuel for the vehicles. But I get your point, my boy.” He flashed Ethan a roguish smile and wiggled his eyebrows up and down. “If you want, you can stay at home with your Aunty Cheryl and the girls.”

“That’ll be the day,” Ethan said. “The last time you left me alone with those two, they cut my hair while I was sleeping. Don’t get me wrong, Alan, I love Amy and Jessie dearly, but they’re a menace.”

Ten-year-old Jessie shrieked across the schoolyard at the unexpected sight of Ethan. She raced towards him like a leaping impala, two flaxen plaits flying out behind her as she wove precariously in and out among the cars of the other parents collecting their children. She was followed closely by her sister. At twelve, Amy was a little more circumspect, but not much. She dropped her school bag on the road and launched herself at Ethan.
 

Since Jessie was already hanging on to his back, Amy’s hug brought a squirming Ethan down on the filthy grass verge. He hoped no one had spat there. The three of them wrestled under the indulgent eye of Uncle Alan till Jessie manoeuvred herself on to Ethan’s chest, pinning his arms above his head.

“Okay, I yield, you little animals,” Ethan laughed. The more he showed his discomfort at being on the ground, the longer Amy and Jessie would keep him there.

The meeting with Tariro did not go nearly as well. Ethan’s cousin, Joe, peeled away from a group of boys in formal uniform lounging beside their school trunks, and came over to the truck. The same age as Ethan, he was about six inches taller, well muscled, with short-cropped, coarse blonde hair and sparkling green eyes. His olive skin, darkly tanned in contrast to his crisp white uniform shirt, was only slightly marred by the beginnings of acne.

“Hi, Ethan,” he said in a robust voice to match his father’s, dropping his school sports bag between them and flashing Ethan a delighted smile. He did not extend a hand in greeting. He understood Ethan’s aversion to being touched. An equally powerful looking boy of about the same height, also in uniform, trailed behind him. The boy was so dark Ethan wondered if that was what a black kid looked like with a suntan. He had almost shoulder-length dreadlocks twisted out of his own hair that looked like the tassels on the ends of a blanket, and not even a hint of a pimple.
 

“This is Tariro,” Joe introduced his friend. “He’s coming out to the farm with us.”

“I know. Your dad’s already briefed me,” Ethan said, extending his hand awkwardly to Tariro, but the boy did not take it, preferring to keep his right hand clutched around his rugby ball. Ethan’s scalp prickled with embarrassment as he dropped his own hand limply at his side. He wondered if Joe had told Tariro he didn’t like being touched, and then remembered that Joe hadn’t known he was coming.
 

“I’m also coming out to the farm,” Ethan stumbled on in the face of the other boy’s rudeness. Tariro didn’t say anything.

Ethan glanced at Joe, who hardly seemed to notice. Joe threw his bag on to the back of the truck and scrambled up after it, settling himself comfortably in one of the nests. Tariro climbed up and settled into Ethan’s nest, wiggling his backside up against the pillow Amy had given Ethan till he was comfortable.

“Um, I was sitting there,” Ethan said.

“You’ll have to sit in the middle, Ethan. Joe and I want to throw the ball to each other.” Tariro’s comment, when it came, was surprisingly soft-spoken, but his tone suggested it wouldn’t be a very good idea to argue. Setting his mouth into a stubborn line, Ethan flopped down into the middle nest.
 

“I’m not your younger brother to boss around,” he grumbled as the truck pulled out of the schoolyard. The boy raised one eyebrow in a mild challenge, but then turned away.

Ethan took out his cell phone to play a game on it, but it was no use. Every time Tariro and Joe threw the rugby ball to each other, it whizzed past his face, threatening to knock the phone out of his hand. He put it away with a sigh, and pretended to go to sleep. It was going to be a long four hours to the farm.

~~~

“We’ve got beef, dairy, sheep, goats, chickens, geese, pigs and we grow maize. And the ladies do it all!” Amy boasted to Ethan.
 

The girls had dragged Ethan out of bed just before the sun rose the next morning to witness this phenomenon. A buxom woman sat on a small three-legged stool in the dim recesses of the diary. The light of a small kerosene lamp flickered across her broad shining face as her head leaned on the flank of a black and white cow. She squirted milk out of its udders into a bucket between her feet, using her bare hands.
 

Ethan mentally crossed milk off the things he would be drinking at the farm. He knew milk did not just arrive by some miracle in a bottle in the supermarket, but he had imagined, fondly, that it was extracted hygienically and mechanically. The cow did not seem to mind though. She stood there, unfettered, gazing at Ethan, her jaws moving rhythmically.

“So what do the men do?” he wondered out loud, stepping between the cow-pats, carefully avoiding touching anything.

“Oh, they track stuff,” Amy said. “Even though it’s only photographic safaris, they still have to get the clients quite close up for the best shots. Sometimes they patrol for rhino poachers but they haven’t seen any around for years.” She patted the cow on her forehead. The cow chose a mouthful of alfalfa from the trough and chewed absently.

“Come on, Ethan, the sun is coming up. Let’s go and watch Jessie and the others feed their goats,” Amy said, suddenly bored with the unresponsive cow. She dragged Ethan by the hand over to the goat enclosure. Jessie and a group of little girls sat cross-legged, in a circle on the floor, under a vast thatched shelter. Each one held a kid who they were feeding baby formula using baby bottles.