The Power of One Read Online Free PDF Page B

was covered with khakiweed and blackjack that reached to my shoulder. No one ever came here. It was the ideal place for Granpa Chook to stay while I reported to Mevrou.
    Deep inside the orchard I set about making a small clearing among the rank-smelling weed and in the process unearthed a large white cutworm with a gray head and a yellow band around its neck. Granpa Chook thought all his Christmases had come at once, and with a sharp squawk he had that plump grub in his beak. You could see the progress of that worm as it made a bulge going down his long, naked neck.
    The clearing complete, I drew a circle on the ground and he settled politely down into it. It still annoyed me a bit that he refused to go through the whole magic rigamarole, but what’s the use, you can’t go arguing with a chicken, can you?
    I found Mevrou in the washhouse folding blankets. She looked at me with distaste and pointed to a tin bucket that stood beside the mangle. “Your rubber sheet is in that bucket. Take it.” she said.
    I tried not to sound scared. “I—I am cured, Mevrou,” I stammered.
    â€œHa! Your oupa’s beatings are better than mine then, ja?”
    I stood with my head bowed, the way you were supposed to in the presence of Mevrou. “No, Mevrou, your beatings are the best—better than my granpa’s. It just happened. I just stopped doing it.”
    â€œMy sjambok will be lonely.” Mevrou always called the bamboo cane she carried her sjambok She handed me a coarse towel and a blanket. “You are too early, there is no lunch. The other children will be here not till this afternoon.” The blanket smelled of camphor balls, and with the familiar smell the old fear returned. And with it came doubt that perhaps I wasn’t cured of my bed-wetting habit.
    I dropped my blanket and towel off in the small kids’ dormitory and returned to Granpa Chook. The absence of lunch didn’t bother me. Nanny had packed two large sweet potatoes in my suitcase and I now planned to share one of these with Granpa Chook.
    As I approached the abandoned orchard I could hear a fearful squawking coming from Granpa Chook. Suddenly he rose from above the weeds, his short wings beating the air. I lost sight of him again as he plunged back into the undergrowth. Up he came again, neck arched, legs stretched with talons wide. Down again, the weeds shaking wildly where he landed. This time he didn’t come up and he had stopped squawking, though the khakiweed continued to shake where he’d disappeared. My heart beat wildly. Something had gotten Granpa Chook. A weasel or a feral cat? It was my fault, I’d left him helpless in the magic circle.
    I stumbled blindly toward the tiny clearing where I’d left him, khakiweed and blackjack lashing out at me, holding me back. Granpa Chook stood inside the circle; held firmly in his beak was a three-foot grass snake.
    With a vigorous shake of his head and a snip of his powerful beak he removed the head from the snake and, to my astonishment, swallowed it. The snake’s head went down in the same way as the fat cutworm had done. Unaware that the show was over, the snake’s brilliant green body continued to wriggle wildly in the weeds.
    The toughest damn chicken in the whole world tossed his head and gave me a beady wink. I could see he was pretty damn pleased with himself. I’ll tell you something, I don’t blame him. How could you go wrong with a friend like him at your side?
    The snake had ceased to wriggle and I picked it up and hung it from a branch of a cassia tree that grew only a few feet from the window nearest my bed in the little kids’ dormitory. Now there were two hatless snakes in the world and I was involved with both of them.
    The afternoon gradually filled with the cacophony of returning kids. I could hear them as they dumped their blankets and suitcases in the dormitory and rushed out to play. Granpa Chook and I spent the