Time to get up, Patson.”

I awoke from my ganja dreams to find Boubacar preparing to leave our burrow to search for the River Woman who would take us across the river.

“You’ll be safe here. I’m going to get some food,” he said, crawling through the bushes.

The sun was already high; cicada beetles trilled.

I was hungry but rested enough to now feel okay with being alone. Nobody, not even Commander Jesus, would find me here. Stumpy was hungry, too, so I fed him with the ointments from my kitbag and got on to washing his sock and dressings with some of the water still in the plastic bottle. Time passed more quickly when my hands were busy, so I rewove and strengthened the lattice of my peg leg with twigs, and scraped away some of the chipped bamboo from the base. Then, pulling my diary from my kitbag, I wrote about my ganja dreams while I waited for Boubacar to return. At one point, I heard voices down by the river, and later a man and a woman carrying a baby walked right past my hideout without seeing me. After that, I heard only the wail of a faraway police van. I checked my phone as often as I dared. Once again the battery was low and I had no idea when I’d be able to recharge it. Around midmorning, it buzzed.

Sun 4/13/08 11.02am

Musina is a bad place. So many people. Det wants my money! Sidi and No Matter gone. Det’s changed. Where r u BB??? xxx

She obviously hadn’t got my last message. But then the phone buzzed again.

Sun 4/13/08 11.06am

Hey, BB!!! So plzzzzd to hear from u!!!! Where r u now? xxx

My thumbs darted over the keypad.

At border. Coming to Musina. Go to the police. Where r u? Battery low. XXX

Sun 4/13/08 11.10am

@ Showgrounds. Can’t go to police. Come soon. xxx

Grace was all that mattered now. Every step I took was for her. Stumpy could protest all he liked but I could not give up on my sister. “Look to Grace” was what Arves’s granny had said in her trance. I owed it to my parents to find her. I could not ignore my shavi.

Around midday Boubacar returned with some food and news about our crossing into South Africa. I wolfed down the bread, atchar, and barbecued chicken he had brought for me and showed him the texts I had received from Grace.

“She’s at the Showgrounds in Musina.”

“Ah yes, I know the place. All the refugees that make it to Musina are sent there.”

“Do you really think Determine’s taking her to a stupid jamboree?”

“Some people take children to South Africa and sell them as domestic workers.”

It was obvious Boubacar was not telling me everything. I had heard the stories about young girls sold to truckers who kept them in their cabs as they rode the highways of Africa. “But it could be worse than that, Boubacar, isn’t that right?”

“It also could be innocent, Patson. There’s no point in guessing. How does that help us? We will find Grace. It is as simple as that. Yes?” And he quickly changed the subject to the River Woman. “I know where she is, but we will have to wait here until it is dark before we can move. The soldiers are everywhere and the border was closed all morning. They’re still searching for us. The sooner we get across the river into South Africa, the safer we will be.”

“Do you think Commander Jesus really knows about the girazis I found?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve been thinking a lot about all the people you told about your girazis. James Banda might have told the commander to bribe his way out of the mine. Also, the wives of Banda could have forced it out of Gracie and then told Sylvia and she would surely have told Commander Jesus. There were many different ways he could have found out about the diamonds.”

“When I was in the photocopying room I told Arves to give them to Grace, but I don’t think she has them. Maybe Arves hid them somewhere before he died? I don’t know where they are, Boubacar. You have to believe me.” Nothing that happened in the photocopy room was any clearer to me now than it was then. “What I really don’t understand is why Commander Jesus wants them so much.”

“You have no idea, do you?” he said with a hint of a smile. “From the way you’ve described them, just one of those stones is worth hundreds of thousands of US dollars. Commander Jesus knows that with those three stones he can retire from the army, buy his way anywhere in the world, and live the rest of his life in luxury.”

As soon as it was dark, we crept out of the burrow and headed away from the searchlights. Boubacar had trouble finding the path to the River Woman, and as he struggled to walk in the dark I was more aware of the effort it took for him to carry me. An hour later we found the small clearing, hidden behind bushes and tall trees, where a man stepped out of the shadows and stopped us. Once Boubacar explained what we wanted with the River Woman, the man pointed us to a narrower pathway that led to a larger clearing, high above the Limpopo River. At its center a man was preparing food over a fire, and people moved in and out of the simple shelters nearby. Two other men were busily hacking down long bamboo poles, while a third was laying luggage in neat rows in preparation for the crossing.

“Welcome to the alternative border post,” Boubacar said, lowering me to the ground. “There’s no paperwork needed here, but to avoid any questions, I think we should say we are family. Perhaps I should be your uncle? Or maybe your father?”

“No, not my uncle,” I said, struggling up onto my crutches.

“Very well then, I shall be your papa, but only for the crossing.”

Together we stood at the edge of the clearing, unsure how to proceed, until a woman clapped her hands in delight at seeing us, and with a Congolese accent very similar to Boubacar’s bellowed, “HOH-HOH. LOOK WHO’S HERE—THE ONE-LEGGED GOALIE I TOLD YOU ABOUT.” Her physical size matched her booming voice and she had a nest of thick Rastafarian dreadlocks that hung to her shoulders. A scar ran from her forehead over her nose to the corner of her too-large mouth, which was open wide enough for me to see the glint of her gold teeth. This had to be the River Woman.

Boubacar greeted her like an old friend as she smothered him with her enormous embrace. “Mugabe’s soldiers are still looking for us, Mai Maria,” he said, disentangling himself from her and shaking his head with laughter. “Now they know exactly where we are.”

“BY JAH! THOSE SOLDIER BOYS DO NOT DARE COME TO MAI MARIA’S BORDER LODGE. I WILL EAT THEM FOR BREAKFAST AND SPIT THEM OUT LIKE THE FOUL-TASTING PIPS THAT THEY ARE.” Mai Maria had one loose eye that moved around in its socket as if it had a life of its own. I couldn’t help but stare at her, and when she looked directly at me, I didn’t know which eye to focus on.

“ARE YOU CATCHING FLIES, BOY? CLOSE YOUR MOUTH OR SPEAK.”

“I need to charge my phone,” I stammered.

Mai Maria shook her head, laughing, while her dreadlocks bounced around her shoulders as if alive. “Boubacar, you didn’t tell this boy that Mai Maria’s lodge has only one star? There’s no electricity here. You will have to wait until you get to South Africa for that,” she said, pointing across the river.

“Mai Maria, this is Patson,” said Boubacar. “My son.”

I felt a twinge when Boubacar called me his son. I was sure Baba wouldn’t mind but it reminded me again of the hole in my life now that my father was gone. No one would ever call me son again. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mai Maria. When do we cross the river?”

“You will sleep here tonight. Anyone who can play soccer the way you can is my honored guest. Then in the early morning, when it is still dark and the crocodiles are sleeping, we will cross the river. Your friends are here, too, Goalie,” she said, pointing to Deo standing beside a man in the doorway of one of the huts. “Why don’t you say hello to them. Boubacar and I have some business to discuss.”

I hobbled over to Deo.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey, Patson. What are you doing here?” he responded awkwardly.

“Same as you, I guess.”

“What happened to your leg?” asked the man standing next to Deo.

“This is Innocent, my brother.”

Innocent’s question took me by surprise. Not because how obvious it was, but by the simple way he had asked it. People were usually either too embarrassed to ask straight-out or they preferred to pretend that Stumpy wasn’t there. Innocent, however, had addressed the most noticeable thing about me, in a way that was intimate, even friendly. And he was looking right at me when he asked, as if I were the most important person in the world. For the first time, that question I always dreaded didn’t feel oppressive.

“I stepped on a land mine.”

“It must have been very sore.” The back of Innocent’s hand fluttered near my cheek, as if he wanted to stroke me, but then he pulled it back and smiled. “I watched you play soccer yesterday. You were brilliant. Deo says you are the best goalie he ever had.”

I turned to Deo in surprise. “You said that?”

He shrugged. “My brother likes to exaggerate.”

“Do you want to listen to my radio?” Innocent asked. “If we are lucky, there might be a soccer game on.” He carried a Weet-Bix cereal box under his arm; he opened it and carefully withdrew a small transistor radio. He bent his head low, slowly turned the tuning dial, and shyly motioned for me to come closer. There was something childlike about this man, as if he hadn’t quite grown up.

“You’re lucky, Patson. Innocent doesn’t share his radio with anyone.”

“You can show me your made-up leg, Patson. The bamboo one. I want to know if you can run on it and—”

“Innocent, Patson doesn’t want to show you his leg,” snapped Deo.

“No, it’s okay,” I said, finding myself laughing at his honesty and refreshing curiosity. “But I can’t run on one leg, Innocent.”

“My brother’s a bit special,” said Deo, by way of an apology.

“That makes two of us,” I said, taking Innocent’s hand and moving to sit with him beside the fire to listen to his radio.