Child of War

Chapter 3

Our village was perched on the brow of a hill. The broken line of dotted huts lay in a wide are in front of which stretched out the barren, rocky fields we ploughed every year. The fields were broken by a huge blue mountain which towered over our village.

Depending on the time of the day or the season of the year, this mountain sometimes appeared brown as the hide of an ox, at other times red as blood. On cold, wintry days it was covered by a thick white mist while on hot summer days it was hazy with a tremulous shimmer. There were several large caves on the mountain, but people rarely climbed up to them.

Every year the mountain caught fire, people believed it did so on its own and the shimmering heat blew down in sharp gusts to the huts. Black clouds gathered in the sky in the sky and rain fell. Yet on some nights when the moon was bright and the air still, the mountain was quiet, like a sleeping beast, and so clear that you could almost count the rock boulders and trees on its slopes.

As a child I had always been awed by the mountains, in my mind it was the scene of all the battles mother described in the folk stories she told round the fire.

Behind the huts the landscape was almost chaotic, terrifying. Every metre of ground was covered with sheets of rock which seemed to spress out every  year. Great big leafless trees snarled at the sky, while gnarled bushes struggled in the crevices. I remember the many pythons that had been killed in the crevices while I was still a child, even now it was not too rare to see a coiling flash among the rocks.

At the foot of the rocks the slope evened out mercifully into a forest, so thick that a man could hide in there and not be found. A fence ran through the forest, separating our rocky, jagged village from the rich rolling expanse of grassland that was Farmer Taylor's farm.

The name Taylor brought fear to every soul in the village. On hearing that name shouted even old grandmothers took their ancient skirts up in their arms and scurried for safety, whope brave men lay on ground, hiding. 

Farmer Taylor owned the rich grassland on the other side of our village. Every child knew him. We nicknamed him 'M' pengo because of his violent character. His farm was large , perhaps ten or fifteen times larger than our village. The land was, oh, so much richer than ours. The grass was waist high, the stoneless soil crumbly black.

As I child I had often wondered why our cattle browsed on the barren slopes and why we wasted our time scratching the stony fields with our hoes instead of using the rich grassland on the other side of the fence. As  young boys we had often climbed over the fence to gather plentiful fruits and wild honey which were found there. These were very dangerous adventures.

I still remember the day Farmer Taylor came riding down upon us from the fields, his bald white head shining in the sun and his fear instilling khaki clad body flashing through the grass. Yelling lloudly, he had pulled out his revolver, and, cursing us with the foulest words his tongue could command, had thundered at us on his horse. We had scurried back towards the fence, screaming on top of our voices for help that could never come.

We had wriggled through the fence, turned and yelled more frantically on seeing the great white horse surging over the fence after us. He had clattered up the the rocky slopes to our very mothers' doorsteps, leaving only after shouting angry threats at us for a quarter of an hour and firing warning shots into the sky.

He had left us to nurse gushing wounds where our flesh had been ripped open by the barbed wire. Even today, I still have scars on my body from the injuries of that day.

Much as Farmer Taylor tried to keep us out, our pressing needs could not allow us to stay on our side of the fence. I remember the case of a group of girls from our village who had gone to collect firewood from the farm early one morning. It was not unusual for women in our village to make these daring excursions; our village was so small and trees so few.

That morning there were six girls with ages ranging from ten to seventeen, up at dawn before the dreaded farmer was up. Unfortunately, and much to their bewilderment, Farmer Taylor had crept upon them, on foot, just as they were tying up their bundles of firewood. He had allowed four of the girls to go free. The remaining two, the oldest in the group, he had kept behind.

The two girls had returned home late in the morning, badly bruised, their dresses in shreds. There had been an outcry in the village ; the parents of the abused girls had stamped off to the white District Commissioner to report the matter. The Commissioner had done nothing but shake his head and smile, criticising the victims for trespassing.

No investigation of the case had been ordered.Some months after this, one of these unfortunate girls had been discovered to be pregnant. She had given birth to a coloured baby. In embarrassment, her anguished parents had packed up and moved to another village.

Nor could our starving cattle keep clear of the dreaded farm. Farmer Taylor had thousands of fat, shiny cattle and one of his fiercest dislikes was to see any of our starvelings mingling with his healthy herds.

If a village had the misfortune to lose his ox or cow to the other side of the fence, then he might as well forget about it. Perhaps he might dare to retrieve it at night, while Farmer Taylor was asleep.

But after the farmer had been spotted making a ghostly round of his property one night, villagers had given up the searches, in despair. Many cattle crossing into Farmer Taylor's farm had been lost that way.

Hello friends, new chapter is out! The story is getting sweeter and sweeter *laughs* .
Kindly comment and vote . How can you describe Farmer Taylor? Talk to me
See you all in the next chapter.