The Wife got a second wind, now that we were closer to her brother’s camp. She left my father and walked next to Boubacar, who ignored her endless chatter. I dared to hope that our journey was coming to an end. Climbing into the car early yesterday morning was now wrapped up with the faraway past of leaving Bulawayo. With each step through the darkness toward the Banda camp, I was moving farther away from the life I had had in the city. How could I ever tell Sheena anything of what had happened to us since then? She would be waking up soon, having breakfast, putting on her school uniform, and walking the familiar road to Milton High School, refreshed and ready for just another ordinary day, whereas I had no idea what was waiting for me in Marange.

The guide stopped, cocked his head as if listening for an imagined sound. He whispered hurriedly to the man behind him and pointed at figures running toward us. A loud police whistle blasted the night air and was followed by angry voices. The men dropped their ore sacks and metal rods and sprinted away, leaving us standing out in the open. If this was the end of our journey, caught by the police and driven away in the back of a van, then so be it. I had had enough of this long night.

Boubacar passed the sleeping bundle of Grace to my father and instructed the Wife to stand behind him. He swung his backpack to the ground and lightly twirled his iron bar in his left hand. The knife was again in his right hand as he stood tall, waiting for the police, treading heavily toward us.

But they were not police. Instead, four men wearing balaclavas and armed with knives and rods, and one with the handle of a pickax casually slung over his shoulder, approached us.

“Magombiro,” said Boubacar, raising his knife before him. “Miners who failed as diggers and who steal from others. The worst kind of Marange parasite. We’ll see if they have the stomach for a fight.”

The four men stopped. They spread out to surround us. My father pulled me close to him, while the Wife clung to his arm. Boubacar merely stood his ground as the beam of the flashlight lit up a look of scorn on his face.

“What do we have here?” said the one who appeared to be the leader, a police baton twirling from his wrist. “Trespassers? Stealing what doesn’t belong to them?”

Boubacar, his gaze firmly fixed on the masked man in front of him, did not reply.

“You know what we want, big guy. You can’t be as stupid as you look. We can take it with blood or without. The choice is yours.”

Boubacar’s size, stance, and silence unsettled the leader enough that he had stopped a healthy distance away. The other three men moved cautiously to the side of their leader. Boubacar’s resolute stand was not the response they expected.

“You step aside,” the leader demanded. “Do you hear me? I mean what I say.”

“Does your father know what you are doing, boy?” Boubacar finally replied.

The man’s head jerked as if Boubacar had slapped him.

“Does he know you prowl the night like the coward hyena? What would he do to you if he found out that you prey on those who cannot defend themselves, stealing their day’s honest work?” Boubacar’s tone left little doubt as to what he thought of these magombiro.

“And do you give your father anything of what you steal?” Boubacar lifted his knife and pointed it slowly at each of them in turn. “Or do you and your friends hide it from the Banda syndicate?”

Unsettled by Boubacar’s questions, the men glanced nervously at one another.

“And what would your father do to your friends if he found out you’re running your own little business on the side?” Boubacar goaded the leader. “Have any of you clowns ever thought about that?”

The leader adjusted his balaclava to get a closer look at Boubacar.

“Boubacar?” he exclaimed, pulling off his mask and gesturing to his companions to step back.

He laughed, a tight, high-pitched snuffle that seemed even scarier than his anger. He quickly stuffed his balaclava into his back pocket, while the police baton swung loosely from his wrist. Boubacar, however, did not lower his knife as he approached.

“Musi?” The Wife broke away from behind my father. “Musi Banda, is that you?”

The man froze at the mention of his name.

“It’s me. Auntie Sylvia. You remember me? Sylvia from Bulawayo,” she said, with a girlish laugh. “We should have arrived yesterday but that driver deserted us after the first checkpoint. We had to walk. It’s been a terrible journey.”

Confusion, laughter, embarrassed embraces, and hurried introductions came rapidly. Musi had transformed himself from a dangerous thug into his family’s welcoming representative. With all the noise, Grace woke up and looked around in a daze. Boubacar stood to one side, letting Musi take charge, sending one of his friends ahead to wake his father. But before we were swept along, two of the men quietly hid their sacks behind a clump of rocks and covered them with a bush. Then Musi ordered them to carry our luggage. He talked loudly, laughing at the misunderstanding, shaking my father’s hand more vigorously than was necessary and embracing the Wife as if it were he who had rescued her.

“My father will be so pleased I found you, Auntie. I come here only to watch for strangers in our fields. Everyone steals from everyone else. I thought you were magombiro. You’ll tell him that, won’t you?”

“Of course, Musi, of course,” said the Wife, leaning on his arm. “We’ll tell him exactly that.”

“And your face, little cousin,” he said to me, cuffing me painfully on the shoulder. “You looked like you had seen the devil himself!”

Boubacar, forgotten in the excitement, put away his weapons and stood apart, observing our strange family reunion. He motioned for me to follow my family, but before I did, I slipped off his tie from Grace’s neck and looked up into his scarred, ugly face, which was no longer the least bit scary.

“Thank you, Boubacar.” I handed him his tie.

“We would never have made it without your magic tie,” said Grace.

He fixed her with his sternest gaze but a flicker of a smile played on his lips. “I hope you will like your new family,” he said, glancing at Musi, who was now leading the way. “You will have a new life, Patson, one that will require all the courage you have inside you.”

“I will never forget what you did for us,” I promised.

“You can have my necktie, Mademoiselle Gracie. It will keep you safe.” Boubacar slipped the tie back around her neck and turned to leave.

“Boubacar, where do you come from?” asked Grace.

“The Congo,” he replied. “Go now. Tomorrow is here already and your uncle will be pleased to have another pair of hands working in his syndicate.”