Blind Date at a Funeral (10 page)

I felt the pipe shift. I frantically felt around for something to hold on to. I suddenly realised that it was the gutter pipe and that it was totally corroded at the point where the brackets held it onto the wall.

I froze, not wanting my movement to jostle the pipe any more. But it was too late. The pipe shifted again and then it slowly started separating from the wall. I wrapped my legs and arms around the pipe, hanging on for dear life.

Then the pipe came away from the wall and, still clinging on for all I was worth, I fell backwards in slow motion. It soon became fast motion and I landed flat on my back on the lawn below.

I was completely winded. I lay there, unable to catch my breath.

Suddenly lights came on in the house and the front door opened. Silhouetted against the light, I saw Debbie's father angrily wielding a cricket bat. By his body language I could tell that he was more than somewhat agitated.

Adrenaline helped me find my wind and I scrambled to my feet and hobbled through the bushes like an old man in a cartoon. The old British word ‘scarper' comes to mind. I had visions of him happily clobbering me with that cricket bat.

I clambered through the neighbour's hedge, ran down the road and hid behind some trees to catch my breath. Thankfully, he did not see where I went.

Even though I was a few houses down the road, I could hear him cursing to himself as he checked around the garden.

I waited for what seemed like an eternity and then, when the light turned off at Debbie's house, I snuck back to my car and drove home as fast as I could.

Ha. So much for basic training and being invincible and not being scared of her father.

(Soundtrack: ‘I Can See Clearly Now' by Johnny Nash)

When I was in the army, we had to stand guard at the ammunition depot a couple of times a week. For some reason, I always had the 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift.

An inner barbed-wire fence, a walkway and then an outer barbed-wire fence surrounded the ammunition depot. It was located in the bush some miles from the base and unless the moon was full, it was a pretty dark and quiet walk between the fences.

The perimeter beyond the outer fence was made up of dense scrub, large bushes and trees. On each of the four corners were spotlights that were supposed to light up the walkways, but they didn't do a very good job.

One night, my guard partner, Colin, and I were walking the beat.

Although we were thousands of miles away from the operational area, we were all aware of the enemy and how they were going to kill our wives and girlfriends. We were newly trained, eager for action and ready to blast anybody who put his or her face near our depot.

As we rounded the corner closest to the guardhouse, something caught Colin's eye. He grabbed me and pointed. My heart nearly stopped. Up in a tree, about twenty metres from the gate, sat a man.

We both fell to the ground and assumed an attack position, pointing our rifles at the man.

‘Halt,' I said stupidly. How could the man halt? He was already halted. He was sitting in a tree for goodness' sake.

‘Come down, or we'll shoot,' I barked.

There was no reply. The man did not move; he just sat there. Colin and I became very nervous. It was more than that – we were petrified. Even though I had just completed basic training, I was not ready to shoot anyone. I kept my rifle trained on the man while Colin went for help.

A few minutes later he came back with the bombardier.

‘Where?' he urged.

‘There,' I pointed.

‘God, you're right,' he said. ‘What the hell are we going to do?'

‘Should we shoot him?' asked Colin.

‘Are you crazy?' said the bombardier.

‘Why?' I asked. ‘He might have grenades.'

The bombardier disappeared and came back with another bombardier. He started yelling at the man in the tree, but got no response.

‘Should we shoot him?' asked the first bombardier.

‘Are you crazy?' said the second.

‘Why?' I asked. ‘He might have grenades.'

Nobody knew what the hell to do.

The man was too far in the bush for us to see what he was carrying. With the use of a fading torch, it was determined that he had a bazooka, two rifles and at least six grenades.

The bombardiers agreed we should do nothing but wait. It was decided that if the man moved one inch, we would blast him to smithereens.

It was close to dawn and the grey-pink morning light was beginning to spread slowly across the landscape.

The man was either sleeping or very well trained, because he didn't move.

As we waited, I spotted at least two other men with rifles far off in the trees, but I said nothing for fear of starting a third world war.

Then, a little later, the sun popped its orange face over the horizon and the enemy was immediately visible.

My heart almost stopped.

The man sitting in the tree, laden with grenades and a bazooka, was not a man, or a woman, or even human. It was only an army uniform that one of the soldiers had hung in the tree to dry after he'd washed it.

(Soundtrack: ‘Show Me the Way' by Peter Frampton)

‘Get out of this damn car. Now!' he yelled.

‘Ag sorry, man,' I said.

‘And next time you try that stunt, I'll moer you.'

‘Just because you have a larney car doesn't mean—'

‘Get the hell out!' he screamed.

‘Jasus. Don't have a thrombosis!' I shouted.

‘Fokoff.'

‘Relax. We're going. We're going!' I said.

We jumped out and before we'd even closed the door, the car peeled off down Louis Botha Avenue and we ran after it, half-heartedly throwing zap signs at the guy.

Why was he so upset? Well, because we pulled a fast one on him. We tricked him. We used emotional blackmail on him.

Yes. Emotional blackmail.

Confused? Let me explain. We were a bunch of fourteen-year-olds, hitching down Louis Botha Avenue in Joburg on our way to Corlett Centre to go to the ice rink on a Friday night. Not to skate, mind you. But, as per usual, we heard that the Waverley chicks would be there and we wanted action.

Yes, action. Like we even knew what action was.

We always hung around in a group. It was great for jolling but, as you might imagine, not easy for a group to hitchhike together. Nobody wanted to stop and pick up five or six guys at a time.

So.

We would choose one of us to stand and hitch alone, while trying to look as forlorn as possible.

And the other knuckleheads would hide behind a bus shelter like
Trompie en die Boksombende
, until the car stopped and we'd all saunter out chatting as if the man who picked us up had actually invited us all to climb into his little Anglia for a soiree, like they used to cram into phone booths in the USA.

Sometimes people let us into their cars and other times they'd flee or yell at us like the guy above.

Stop for a second. Did you say fourteen-year-olds hitchhiking? Yes, I did. In those days it was okay to hitch. We hitched everywhere. Starting at about twelve years old. We hitched into town to watch movies at the Empire, His Majesty's and the 20th Century, among others.

We hitched to Yeoville to go to Rockey Street. Or to the Piccadilly bioscope.

We hitched to Barnato Park School for a social. Or to the Longhorn Steak House on Corlett Drive. Or rugby at Ellis Park. Or Turffontein, because your brother had a girlfriend there, but that's another story.

We hitched to Hillbrow to loiter around and look for chicks. It seems that's all we ever did – look for chicks. We were definitely doing something wrong though, because we never found them. But the search, man, the search was what it was all about.

Now I must say, hitching was a pretty cheap and efficient way of getting around in the days before murder and mayhem enveloped the world.

We had our ups and downs while hitchhiking though.

Sometimes you'd get picked up in a bakkie by a guy who was so intoxicated he'd jam on brakes and we'd all go flying to the front of the bakkie, then he'd accelerate and we'd almost fall off the back. The guy would be so wasted that you'd be banging on the top of the cab for him to stop. And then he would stop, like ten blocks after you wanted to get off, and he'd reverse back up the road at 90 kilometres an hour into on-coming traffic.

Then you'd get the guy driving an old Zephyr who was so stoned on zol that he would drive at 10 kilometres an hour and think he was driving 120. His eyes, bigger and redder than the brake lights of the car in front of him.

You would sometimes get involved in a domestic dispute between a couple sitting as far away from each other in the front seat of their Cortina three-litre Escort as possible. And, in the back, you were the go-between. They would look around and expect you to be their therapist.

‘Tell him I'm not going to Plum Crazy.'

‘She said I must tell you …'

‘Yes, I heard what she said – she's sitting right next to me. Tell her I'm not going to Raffles with the larneys. I am going to Plum Crazy to listen to Circus.'

‘He said he's not …'

‘Yes, I heard what he bloody said. Tell him I want to hear Julian Laxton.'

‘She said she wants …'

‘I know what she said. Tell her I hate Julian Laxton's stjoepit hat …'

And on and on it went. From the Radium Beer Hall, all the way to town.

One of the very last times I remember hitchhiking was on the way back to camp the day after I had a life-changing experience in the army.

All it took was twenty seconds to change my life. It was as simple as that.

It's amazing how one second I was your average South African troepie doing my national service. The next moment, I was your average South African troepie doing my national service, but I was different. I was different, but I didn't know it at the time.

My life didn't change because I went bossies in the army or anything, although we were all a bit crazy, mainly from eating horrible food.

It wasn't because of being broken down and rebuilt the army way. Or from being bored out of our skulls. Or standing guard instead of having weekend pass because some fool called his rifle a gun.

It wasn't because of a near-death experience when an idiot almost killed us at the shooting range because his rifle jammed and he was waving the rifle around trying to un-jam the thing.

It wasn't because we had to bite the edges of our beds to make them square or iron a seam in our shirts or polish our boots in the dust for hours, or sleep on the floor so our beds could be perfect for the morning inspection.

No. None of that.

It was a simple thing. And I've come to realise, now that I'm a bit of a toppie, that simple things are sometimes extremely complicated.

I did not wake up that morning with a premonition. I didn't have a dream that my life would change. It just happened naturally.

I was at the military hospital. I was recovering from surgery on my knee. I was talking to a guy who had terrible shrapnel wounds from an attack on the border. The poor guy was bruised black and blue. He was one of the lucky ones. One of my best school buds, Howard, wasn't so lucky.

I hobbled back to my ward after chatting to the injured guy. I always stopped and spoke to people on my rehab walks. Firstly, because I can never stop talking and secondly, because I was bored out of my skull lying around that hospital.

On my way back, I saw a little kid sitting on the edge of one of the beds in another section of the hospital. He was about three or four years old. They said he was a kid from the Caprivi Strip. Some SWAPO thing went down and the little guy's legs were mangled in a land-mine incident or something.

For some reason that I cannot explain, I was drawn to the kid. And that's where it all started.

Literally.

I walked over to the little boy and he put his arms up to me. I didn't know what to do. I looked around. No nurses or doctors were in the ward. Only an old toothless guy cleaning the floor with a mop, but he didn't seem particularly interested in the kid.