I blush for Mr. Vincent. Kaffir-lover is the worst insult that one white man can call another. Not that Mr. Vincent understands. Missionaries mostly speak English, with a smattering of Zulu words thrown in to prove their commitment to being here in southern Africa. Afrikaans is another matter.

“What did he say?” Mr. Vincent asks Mr. Moses, who shrugs. Mr. Moses is from Durban, where decent mixed-race people speak English and poor whites speak Afrikaans.

“Go and help, Adele.” Lottie gives me a shove even though she takes Afrikaans classes and speaks the language too. It’s only fair, I suppose. She translated for Mama Khumalo and talked Darnell Parns’s soul out of the valley with her words.

I reluctantly go over to Mr. Vincent, and Lottie follows, two steps behind. Bosman takes in Mr. Vincent’s dirty clothes and flyaway hair with contempt, and I’d turn back and hide behind the rock with Darnell except that Lottie is right behind me. Then she’s right beside me, and somehow her presence makes me feel safer, even with the rifles so close.

“You two belong to him?” Bosman motions to Mr. Vincent with an ugly smile, and my cheeks burn at the insinuation. Lottie huffs out a breath. If she had a stone, she’d throw it.

“He’s the American principal,” I say before Lottie has the chance to tell the man to shut his fat mouth and go home to his fat, cross-eyed wife, or whatever insult comes into her mind. “Mr. Vincent doesn’t speak the tongue.”

“Bad luck,” Bosman says. “This is my country. My farm. We use my language.”

“What’s he saying?” Mr. Vincent asks, frustrated.

“He wants to know what you’re doing on his land,” I tell Mr. Vincent. Kaffir-lover is an insult that I can’t bring myself to say out loud in front of adults. And the sly suggestion that Lottie and I are Mr. Vincent’s girlfriends is too filthy to repeat.

“Tell him that we have an emergency.” Mr. Vincent combs rough fingers through his hair and peers at the sunburned farmer standing with a rifle hitched onto his shoulder like he was born with a notch in it to fit the gun. “We’ll be off his land soon.”

I translate from English to Afrikaans in a shaky voice. The wounds on Darnell’s body scare me, but Bosman’s lopsided grin scares me more. He is full of hate, this one. He enjoys being mean.

“What emergency?” Bosman makes a show of scanning the empty field. “I don’t see nothing here but a foreigner and his half-castes walking on my land without permission.”

“Mr. Bosman wants to know what the emergency is.” I change Bosman’s ugly words to nice ones, but Mr. Vincent isn’t fooled. Bosman’s scorn is obvious.

“There’s been an accident.” Mr. Vincent’s American accent takes on a sharp edge. “A Keziah student died in the ravine below. We’re here to retrieve the body.”