Whitethorn by Bryce Courtenay Read Free Book Online Page B

crust and tie it to a length of string and drop it into the stream just below the water. The platanna would come swimming up, grab it and wouldn’t let go so then you could yank it onto the black pebbles or the grass. Boy, what a kerfuffle happened then! The frog would leap this way and that, land on its back and from that possie spring high into the air with no control of its movements, yellow belly then green top and shivering and shaking like all get-out, legs going like propellers. That’s how Mattress said Pissy was when he had his fit. His eyes were rolled back in his head, which also happened to a platanna , and he was busy trying to swallow his tongue, which isn’t a thing a platanna can do.
    Mattress laughed. ‘ Kleinbaas , I had to sit on his chest and hold his arms to the ground. I found a stick and I put it in his mouth just like you do with a goat if it has convulsions when they’ve eaten a certain poison fruit you find growing on a small bush in the mountains. If a goat swallows its tongue it will choke and it will not live, so I think that boy is same like the goat. Ahee ! He is not a strong one, that boy, but when he had the “goat fit” he is strong like a buffalo. I have to hold him very tight with all my strength. After a while he finish that fit, but I left the stick in his mouth because sometimes with a goat it comes back. Then I go and fetch Big Baas Botha and he come with the Big Missus and a blanket.’
    I was very glad to hear the story because now we were evens; I’d punched Pissy in the stomach and Mattress had saved his life. I confessed my role in the whole affair, telling Mattress what had happened, telling him how Pissy tried to take Tinker away from me. He shook his head slowly.
    â€˜You have a strong heart, Kleinbaas , that boy he is a bigger one than you, but a man, he must protect what is weaker than him always.’
    I must say I was rather pleased with the compliment, as there weren’t that many compliments flying about in my life.
    That night Pissy was in the dining-room queue again and seemed to have completely recovered. Later in the wash house, when we were washing our faces and hands and feet so that when we went to bed we didn’t dirty our bottom sheet, he came up to me and whispered, ‘I’m still going to get you, you hear, Voetsek ? Just you wait, man!’ Those words with no further explanation. He had a sort of a half smile on his freckled face and I caught a whiff of his piss smell as he moved away. Now I knew an epileptic fit doesn’t make you lose your memory. It made me worry a lot as we went into the dormitory to go to sleep.
    You must be thinking that I didn’t say we cleaned our teeth before we went to bed. Well, we didn’t because the Government couldn’t afford toothbrushes, let alone toothpaste. Twice a year the dentist would come in a van with a special dentist chair and a nurse and pull out your teeth if they were bad. If you couldn’t wait, Doctor Dyke, who was a vet who owned the farm next door, would come in an emergency when aspirin and oil of cloves didn’t help any more and you could see the swelling from the outside of a person’s cheek. Mevrou would leave a white dishcloth hanging from the gate of The Boys Farm, and Doctor Dyke on his way to or from where he worked in town would see it and drive his Dodge truck in if he had the time. She could have called him on the party line but she didn’t want everyone knowing our business: ‘ Ag , man, Boys Farm business is private, you hear? The Government doesn’t like it if people go telling its business all over the place.’ This was intended as a general warning to us kids not to talk about The Boys Farm to anyone at school. Later I realised she didn’t want to call Doctor Dyke on the party line in case someone listening in heard that the vet was taking out our teeth.
    They’d strap your arms to the back of this