Bush Meat

Day after day, a boy tends his cows and watches the sky. The grass is brown; the animals dying; the trees unable to put forth leaves. The clouds cast shadows but release no rain. One day, an eagle flies overhead and a feather floats to the ground. The boy makes an arrow from the feather and shoots it into the dark clouds. The rain falls in sheets.

Under the wrecked frangipani bush, the bird sits like a steamboat. It’s a Barbary duck, I think, with that strange red head that looks melted, as if a new face has run down and set on top of the old one.

‘Is it an orphan?’ asks Sarah.

‘Don’t go too close,’ I say. ‘Careful of your dress.’

The rain has pelted down all morning, making the red dirt shine. The locals will be glad: the dry season lasted forever apparently and killed half their livestock.

The bird makes a whirring sound.

‘It’s wagging its tail,’ says Sarah.

At the bottom of the compound Chidike comes out of his hut, wearing the regulation red check shirt that the oil company provides for everyone’s servants.

‘It’s time for your nap,’ I tell Sarah.

But she waves him over. She was wary of him for the first few months then something changed. ‘Look, Chidike! Look what I found!’

He looks at me. ‘Madame.’

He can inject contempt into a single word. He crouches by the bush, in the litter of white wax petals. ‘This bird, she swim down from Heaven. All the way.’

Sarah gazes at him.

He touches the bird. It shifts uneasily. ‘Lucky for she, land at house with good, kind daughter.’ I sigh. ‘We dry her feather,’ says Chidike.

Sarah reaches for the duck. I grab her wrist. ‘I’ve told you about touching animals.’

‘Buthe touched it!’

‘That’s different,’ I say, glancing at him. But I know he’ll never be on my side.

While Sarah is in her room, Chidike digs a hole behind the house. Jim gives him one of the thick pink plastic bags they use to keep the dynamite dry and by the time she comes out, Chidike has anchored it with stones and fitted the