The Night Veld

outside, on a spread of lawn behind the fishpond, the heat of the day finally lifting.

dinner with grandfather.

tender pepper chicken, a splash of water, the old man talking — a table of remembered wisdom, the same stories I’ve heard all my life and only now begin to understand.

pockets of cropped moonlight break like lamps along the wall. the fish move slow in the dark water. somewhere a cricket, then the whole night singing. for a moment everything is held, safe, complete — the two of us, an old man and the grandson he raised, fed and quiet under a southern sky.

then the dogs erupt — snarling at a snake in the black grass, that sudden violence in the dark, teeth and hissing and grandfather half-rising, swearing.

and just like that he’s here.

the night veld opening onto another night veld, another patch of dark ground far away on the border, and Garth — gone since ’81, gone in an instant — arriving in an instant, the way he always does, the way he always will.

national service,
his name was Garth Henderson,
a single bullet.