“Nobody will think the less of you if you phone Mma Potokwane right now and tell her that you have changed your mind. Nobody will think that you are a coward.”
“Yes, they will,” said Charlie. “And anyway, I want to do it. I have been practising and I know everything there is to know about parachutes now. You count ten-or is it fifty?-and then you pull the cord. So. Like that. Then you keep your feet together and you roll over on the ground once you land. That is all there is to it.”
Mma Ramotswe wanted to say that it was not so simple, but she kept her own counsel.
“You could come with me, Mma Ramotswe,” said Charlie, jokingly. “They could make an extra big parachute for you.”
Mma Ramotswe ignored this. He could be right, of course; perhaps you needed an especially large parachute if you were of traditional build, or perhaps you just came down faster. But then parachutists of traditional build would land more softly and comfortably, being better padded, and those of particularly traditional build might just roll over when they landed, as barrels do when you drop them.
“Well,” she said, after a while, “in your case you must be hoping to land on your bottom, which is much bigger than normal. That will be the best place for you to land. Put your feet up when you get close to the ground and sit down.”
The apprentice looked annoyed, but he did not say anything. Instead, he looked in a small mirror which he had hung on a pin near the door that led from the garage into the office. He could often be found standing before this mirror, preening himself, or doing a small, shuffling dance while he looked at his reflection.
ON THE day in question, they all met at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors: Mma Ramotswe; the two children, Motholeli and Puso; Mr J.L.B. Matekoni; Mma Makutsi; and the younger apprentice. Charlie himself had been collected from his home several hours earlier and driven to the airfield by the pilot of the light aircraft from which he was to jump.
They drove out to the orphan farm in Mma Ramotswe’s tiny white van and in Mr J.L.B. Matekoni’s truck, Mma Makutsi travelling in the van with Mma Ramotswe and the children sitting in the back. Motholeli’s wheelchair was secured in the back of the van by a system of ropes which Mr J.L.B. Matekoni had devised, and this gave her a very good view of the passing countryside. People waved to her, and she waved back, “like the Queen,” she said. Mma Ramotswe had told her all about the Queen Elizabeth and about how she had been a friend of Sir Seretse Khama himself. She loved Botswana, explained Mma Ramotswe, and she did her duty all the time, all the time, visiting people and shaking their hands and being given flowers by children. She had been on duty for fifty years, Mma Ramotswe said, just like Mr Mandela, who had given his whole life for justice and had never once thought of himself. How unlike these people were modern politicians, who thought only of power and tricks.
By the time they drew up at the orphan farm, the trees outside the office already had cars under them, and they were obliged to leave the tiny white van out on the road. People had obviously already begun to arrive, and some of the children were on duty at the gate, standing smartly and greeting the guests, telling them where they should go for tea and cake before the jump took place. Some of the younger children were wearing cardboard aeroplane badges which they had cut out and coloured themselves, and some of these were on sale for two pula at a small table under a tree.
Mma Potokwane saw them from her office, and she rushed out to meet them just as Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and the younger apprentice arrived in the truck. Then Dr Moffat arrived, with his wife, in his pick-up truck, and Mma Potokwane immediately seized him and led him off to look at one of the children who had developed a high fever and was being watched over by her housemother. Mrs Moffat stayed with Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi and together they made their way to the spot under a wide jacaranda tree where two of the housemothers were dispensing heavily-sugared tea from a very large brown tea-pot. There was cake too, but it was not free. Mma Ramotswe bought a slice for all of them and they sat down on stools and drank the tea and ate the cake while further spectators arrived. Then, after half an hour or so, they heard the distant drone of an aircraft engine and the children began to squeal with excitement, pointing at the sky to the west. Mma Ramotswe looked up, straining her eyes; the sound was clear enough now, and yes, there it was, a small plane, white against the great empty sky, much higher than she had imagined it would be. How small we must all look from up there, she thought; and poor Charlie, for all his faults, now just a tiny dot in the sky, a tiny dot that would come tumbling down to the hard earth below.
“I shouldn’t have asked him to do this,” she said to Mma Makutsi. “What if he’s killed?”
Mma Makutsi put a reassuring hand on Mma Ramotswe’s forearm. “He won’t be,” she said. “These things are very safe these days. They check everything two or three times.”
“But it still might not open. And what if he freezes with shock and doesn’t pull the cord? What then?”
“His instructor will be jumping with him,” soothed Mma Makutsi. “He would dive down and pull the cord for him. I saw a picture in theNational Geographic of that being done. It is very easy for these people.”
They became silent as the plane passed overhead. Now they could see the markings underneath the wings and the undercarriage, and then the opening door and a figure and a blur of shapes. Suddenly there were two little packages, but packages with arms and legs flailing about in the rushing wind, and some of the children shrieked and pointed upwards. Mr J.L.B. Matekoni looked up too, and gulped, imagining that it could have been him up there, and remembering that disturbing dream. Mma Ramotswe closed her eyes, and then opened them again, and still the figures were falling against the empty sky, and she thought: his parachute is not going to open, and she clutched at Mma Makutsi who had muttered something under her breath, a prayer perhaps.
But the parachutes did open, and Mma Ramotswe let out her breath and felt weak at the knees. Mrs Moffat smiled at her and said, “I was worried then. It seemed such a time,” and Mma Ramotswe was too overcome to say anything in response, but vowed to herself that she would make it up to this boy in the future; she would be kind to him and not be so impatient at the irritating things he said and did.
As they drifted down, floating beneath the great white canopies, the two figures separated. One of them waved to the other, and seemed to be gesturing, but the other did nothing and continued to float away. The gesturing one was now getting fairly close to the ground, and within seconds he had landed in the field, scarcely a few hundred yards from the spectators. There was a cheer, and the children ran forward, in spite of the calls from the housemothers to stay where they were until the second parachutist had landed safely.
They need not have worried. The other parachutist, now revealed to be Charlie, had so drifted off course that he did not land in the field at all, but disappeared behind the tree tops of the scrub bush on the other side. The spectators watched silently as this happened, and then people turned to one another in uncertainty.
“He will be dead,” cried out one of the smaller children. “We must fetch a box.”
IT WAS Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, Mma Potokwane’s husband, and the instructor (not freed of his equipment) who discovered Charlie. He was hanging a few feet above the ground, his parachute covering the upper branches of a large acacia tree, snagged and snared by the thorny limbs of the tree. He shouted out to them as they approached, and the instructor soon had him out of the harness and down on the ground.