his head. He throws the key into the veld.
Below the ridge a man and woman scuffle at the barracks. She falls, her head, top heavy with curlers and the man snatches something from her hand, disappearing into the low-roofed house. His father ignores the ruction, tossing the dog onto the back of the bakkie. The woman does not move, her filthy feet stick out from under the bell-bottom trousers.
They drive down to the orchards, past the barracks, where children are pressed against fencing, waving with frightened eyes. Isak waves back.
The bark of the trees is shrivelling. They walk along one row of trees, his father in front with the dog. Turning down a side row, they head for the heart of the orchard. Here the ground is like talc. Isak bends down, printing his palm in the dust.
“Gone,” the man says to himself, “gone.”
The trees have begun to wean of the green fruit. Small pears lie in the grass.
The trees are dying. Thousands of them, for the dams are empty and the river has run itself dry and the boreholes that tap into underground lakes are waterless holes of stone.
A bundle of feathers lies ahead in the path. Isak picks it up. The bird is light and limp enough to spin up high above his head. Then it flops into the dust. A useless thing for him. His father reverses the bakkie out by the gate. He takes a chain and a heavy padlock, locking the gate that leads to the trees, then they drive back, past the barracks to the house, to get ready for church.
The woman is murmuring on her back. Isak unwinds the window as they pass her by. She is singing a hallelujah liedjie and her head looks like an oversize lollipop.
“Jou ma se meid,” is all his father says as he closes the window.
* * *
Church comes and church goes. The dominee with the dark lenses and grey Hush Puppies thanks the Lord for their white skins. Isak sits on the front stoep with Kalbas, running his fingers over the dog’s back as he waits. From the village side, the red-winged Chevrolet of Oupa can be seen as it hovers above the road, kicking up a storm past the orchards. It is as though Oupa does not want to see what they see.
They climb out of the broad-bodied car with difficulty and they are shaped the same because they are cousins and share the same surname, even before their marriage. Their faces remind Isak of upside-down houses and their strongly boned hands and feet of oxen.
Ouma opens her arms for him and he is glad for her but Oupa stiffly climbs the steps grumbling so loudly that David can hear in the garage where he polishes the hubcaps of the Ford. His own bruised expression is one of dissatisfaction.
His mother and father come out of the house. She wears gloves and a coat to go with the sky blue of the car, while his father’s cufflinks sparkle. He and Oupa look alike, as they shake hands with their backs bent towards the farm.
Isak embraces his Ouma around her hips. Her arms that take his shoulders are powerful, arms that can carry a bag of chicken manure in each hand. Oupa’s feet are turning green and blue because his blood can’t get there anymore and he is angry with Ouma, as though it is her fault.
“Sakkie, Ouma’s skatlam.”
She is soft and he stays in her arms until she lets go and turns to his mother.
“Sara.”
“Ma.” She turns her cheek to the older woman but their cheeks do not touch.
Danie hides behind his mother. Ouma takes a peppermint out of her bag, holding it out to him. Shyly, he steps forward to take it. His mother clicks her tongue for the sweet offered, the pillar-box hat, with the blue net over her eyes, hiding her disapproval.
They watch their parents climb into the shiny Ford. Their father wipes the dash with a folded hanky. Danie searches for Isak’s hand because they are going away for a long time but Isak shakes it off, his brother’s peppermint breath in his face.
The Ford reverses out of the garage and they wave, then the car turns with its engine facing the road and the boys run behind the car. Isak keeps an eye on the turning hubcaps.
The Ford sprays stones in their faces as it picks up speed. They stop running. Both of them don’t move from under the camphor trees until the car has disappeared on the big road that runs north.
Things change when his ouma is around. Nothing you can see, just a feeling really. He picks a bunch of leaves, crushing them in his hand, smelling-smelling as he runs up the hill with Danie following. In the kitchen, his oupa dribbles over the table, coughing, his face flushed, while his ouma sits as calm as a windless day, reaching up to Raatjie. She ties a piece of raw meat over Raatjie’s bruised eye.
“David, David,” Ouma says quietly as she fastens the string behind Raatjie’s head.
“It’s all that woman’s fault,” Oupa accuses. “You must tell that woman the floor polish she uses is bad for my chest.”
Ouma says nothing, so Oupa lifts his head, turning his attention to Raatjie. “Tell that nooi of yours she must stop using the floor polish with the sunbeam on the lid, it makes my chest close.”
“Ja, Baas,” Raatjie answers with a deadpan face, her one eye looking at the floor.
Ouma holds out her arm and the boys pull. They walk with her to the room, the spare bedroom, the one of Tannie Lettie when she nursed Oupa. Obediently both sit on the bed and watch her undress. Her back is speckled with large freckles. When she untwists her bun, lifting her arms above her head, her skin is like kneaded dough. Isak loves the way her flesh folds.
“Will Ouma sing the song about the tea?” Danie asks politely.
A trail of coughing leads out onto the stoep and they hear how Oupa swears at the dogs.
“Ouma can’t remember a word of it.” She slips on a housedress and her back is so broad she could have been a man if it weren’t for the bun.
“Tea for two, Ouma.” Isak prompts her.
“Oupa doesn’t want Ouma to sing any more, he says it sounds like a dying organ.” She vigorously combs her grey hair, the pins and nets next to Oupa’s vials and asthma pump.
“Please, Ouma, just one time, please.” Isak closes the door. “Oupa won’t hear.”
“Ag, why not?” She smiles, reaching out to the two of them to join her on either side, then she takes a deep breath, pushing back her shoulders and stretching out her neck. Isak looks at her in the mirror, while Danie turns to her. At first her voice is tremulous, especially on the high notes and Isak closes his eyes imagining her on stage, young and beautiful, like in the photos, singing in the city hall.
The screen door bangs closed. Ouma stops.
“Enough, let’s go for a little walk.” She laughs gaily, “I want to see how my garden is doing.” But her eyes stay on the closed door.
Either side of her they stroll out onto the front stoep. Isak enjoys burying his whole hand in the palm of hers. The sun sets over the cypresses and the garden planted by Ouma when she came back from the sand dunes of the north. Out of the veld a wild hare appears, loping over the lawn, unafraid of the dogs. It stops at a dripping tap, pawing at the muddiness. They wait quietly for it to hop further towards the orchards.
She picks a single blossom from a dark green bush. “Gardenia thunbergia,” she says, holding it out for the two of them to smell. “Katjiepiering.”
“I like it, Ouma.” Isak sniffs at the flower. “It smells like bath soap.”
Ouma picks another for Danie as they walk to the rose garden. Here and there a rosebush carries a head. Ouma clicks her tongue with disapproval as she walks between the neglected bushes.
“Skatlam, come and look here.” She points to a minute creature on a rose leaf. “It’s a predator, we call it a krokkedilletjie because it eats the eggs of the red spider mite.”
She scratches at the tiny creature