A Blade of Grass by Lewis DeSoto

that she is not entirely alone. Perhaps the car will stop for her, she thinks. It is probably a farmer transporting something to Klipspring, to the railway station for the early freight train, and he will stop for her, because the farmers in this district sometimes stop for a person walking on the road, even if you are black, and they let you sit in the back of their trucks—unless you are walking out on the main road where the traffic speeds by too fast to even make out a face and nobody stops because nobody knows who you are.
    Grace sets her case down in the dust and listens, unsure in which direction the car is traveling, but just the sound of human life out there lifts her spirit. To be alone in the darkness is to be lost in the world. A brief arc of light flashes across the veldt, then disappears. The vehicle is some distance away, she decides, and she lifts her case and walks on. The sound of the engine comes and goes. She wants it to be traveling in the direction of Klipspring, even if just a little way, for her legs are tired and she is uncomfortable in the darkness, afraid of animals, even though it has been years since so much as a hyena has been sighted in this district. But she does not know this, for this is not her district, and so she is afraid of the darkness.
    Her breathing is labored and she holds her breath a moment, so that it will not sound in her ears, so she can listen for the car. The sound of the engine is louder, and Grace thinks she sees the lights again, coming from the direction of the farm, and she is glad because that means the vehicle is heading in the same direction as she is. She turns to wait for it.
    In the car that travels alone towards the dawn, Carl’s eyes droop for a moment with happy exhaustion. He is happy to be home, away from the war, back in his own country.
    Grace sees the bushes at the side of the road light up in sudden detail, every leaf clear and frozen in the white light as if painted by a flash of lightning. The roar of the engine shatters the stillness, and in a moment of disorientation Grace realizes that the car is immediately behind her. As she turns, the left fender hits her on the hip, breaking the bone on impact,and Grace is flung to the side of the road and something else breaks inside her as she falls. A deep pain rips in her chest, a pain that pulls the darkness of night down deep into her body.
    “ Fok! What was that?” Carl grasps the steering wheel in both hands and slams his foot on the brakes as the suddenly swerving vehicle slews towards the bushes. The rear of the car fishtails to right and left in the soft sand, then rights itself before the vehicle comes to a stop.
    Carl looks in the rearview mirror and sees only swirling dust in the red glow of the brake lights.
    “I think it was an antelope,” Eugene says, because out of the corner of his eye he saw a dark shape, a quick leaping shape just as the car bumped.
    “You think so? Did we hit it?” Carl gets out and walks around to the front of the car and looks at the hood, which is unmarked, then he walks back a few paces down the road and peers into the darkness and sees nothing. The dust settles.
    “Hello?’ he calls. “Anybody there?” No sound, no movement. There is only the night.
    “Well, it didn’t do any damage, whatever it was,” Carl says as he gets back in. “It must have been an animal of some kind. Did you see it, Eugene?”
    “An impala or something,” Eugene says. “What else could it have been?”
    “It could have been a person,” Carl says, because at the moment of impact he thought he saw a face. He rubs his eyes and looks out into the darkness.
    “A person?” Eugene says disbelievingly. “But what would a person be doing out here at this time of the night?”
    “Up to no good, probably,” Carl says, and chuckles. “All the honest people are in bed by now.”
    “Except for us,” Eugene says, and twists in his seat to look through the rear window. “Maybe you