Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

believing that nurse who was only good for
doing bilharzia tests and checking for worms.
     
    THE BOY was more curious than other children. He loved to look for stones
in the red earth and polish them with his spittle. He found some beautiful ones
too—deep-blue ones and ones which had a copper-red hue, like the sky at
dusk. He kept his stones at the foot of his sleeping mat in his hut and learned
to count with them. The other boys learned to count by counting cattle, but
this boy did not seem to like cattle—which was another thing that made
him odd.
    Because of his curiosity, which sent him scuttling about the
bush on mysterious errands of his own, his parents were used to his being out
of their sight for hours on end. No harm could come to him, unless he was
unlucky enough to step on a puff adder or a cobra. But this never happened, and
suddenly he would turn up again at the cattle enclosure, or behind the goats,
clutching some strange thing he had found—a vulture’s feather, a
dried tshongololo millipede, the bleached skull of a snake.
    Now the boy
was out again, walking along one of the paths that led this way and that
through the dusty bush. He had found something which interested him very
much—the fresh dung of a snake—and he followed the path so he might
see the creature itself. He knew what it was because it had balls of fur in it,
and that would only come from a snake. It was rock rabbit fur, he was sure,
because of its colour and because he knew that rock rabbits were a delicacy to
a big snake. If he found the snake, he might kill it with a rock, and skin it,
and that would make a handsome skin for a belt for him and his father.
    But it was getting dark, and he would have to give up. He would never see
the snake on a night with no moon; he would leave the path and cut back across
the bush towards the dirt road that wound its way back, over the dry riverbed,
to the village.
    He found the road easily and sat for a moment on the
verge, digging his toes into soft white sand. He was hungry, and he knew that
there would be some meat with their porridge that night because he had seen his
grandmother preparing the stew. She always gave him more than his fair
share—almost more than his father—and that angered his two
sisters.
    “We like meat too. We girls like meat.”
    But that did not persuade the grandmother.
    He stood up and began to
walk along the road. It was quite dark now, and the trees and bushes were
black, formless shapes, merging into one another. A bird was calling
somewhere—a night-hunting bird—and there were night insects
screeching. He felt a small stinging pain on his right arm, and slapped at it.
A mosquito.
    Suddenly, on the foliage of a tree ahead, there was a band
of yellow light. The light shone and dipped, and the boy turned round. There
was a truck on the road behind him. It could not be a car, because the sand was
far too deep and soft for a car.
    He stood on the side of the road and
waited. The lights were almost upon him now; a small truck, a pickup, with two
bounding headlights going up and down with the bumps in the road. Now it was
upon him, and he held up his hand to shade his eyes.
    “Good
evening, young one.” The traditional greeting, called out from within the
cab of the truck.
    He smiled and returned the greeting. He could make
out two men in the cab—a young man at the wheel and an older man next to
him. He knew they were strangers, although he could not see their faces. There
was something odd about the way the man spoke Setswana. It was not the way a
local would speak it. An odd voice that became higher at the end of a
word.
    “Are you hunting for wild animals? You want to catch a
leopard in this darkness?”
    He shook his head. “No. I am
just walking home.”
    “Because a leopard could catch you
before you caught it!”
    He laughed. “You are right, Rra! I
would not like to see a leopard tonight.”
    “Then we will
take you to your place. Is it