Dust Devils (20 page)

Dell grabbed a wad of toilet paper and crossed to the basin. Wet the paper and went back into the stall and wiped his father's mouth. There was nothing to be done about the blood on the shirt. Goodbread's breathing was more regular and some color had seeped back into his face.

"You okay?" Dell asked.

"Yes."

Dell tried to get an arm under him. "Let me help you back to the truck."

The old man shrugged him off. "I'll make my own way. You go." His voice a whisper.

Dell walked out. Crossed the road and stood looking into the ruined swimming pool. It was filled with rotting garbage. He could see the frame of an old bicycle and the stiff carcass of a dog in the bed of waste.

He remembered reading about this place, around the time apartheid ended. The Afrikaners who ran the town had emptied the pool and smashed its tiled walls and floor with sledgehammers to make sure it would never hold water again. Refusing to share the rectangle of blue chlorine with the dark people from across the railroad tracks.

Dell turned and watched his father cross the road. The old man looked like a ghost. Goodbread climbed up into the truck, shut the door and beckoned him. Dell made his way back to the pickup, cranked the engine, and drove down the main street. Goodbread fought for breath, gulping air through his mouth.

"Lung cancer?" Dell asked

"Yes."

"How long have you got?"

"A month. Maybe two." Words coming with difficulty.

"That why they let you out?"

"Uh huh. Compassionate parole." Laughed. The laugh triggered a coughing spasm.

Dell had nothing to say. He turned the truck toward the highway.

The little car struggled up the last of the inclines that would take them out of the valley and onto the Durban road. Sunday sneaked glances at Sipho as he drove, the low sun silhouetting his fine features, almost girlish beneath his short-cropped hair. He felt her eyes on him and turned to her.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yes. Thank you." Looking away quickly. Her cheeks burning.

"You're really sure you want to do this, Sunday?
Induna
Mazibuko is not a man you want to anger."

"Of course I'm sure."

As she spoke she took the betrothal beads from around her neck and snapped the string of cotton and dried grass. The plastic beads pooled in her hands. Sunday wound down her side window and threw the beads out, saw them bouncing on the sand road, black as rabbit turds. There was a taxi a little way behind them and it amused her that its wheels would crush them. She laughed and felt lighter. She closed the window and saw Sipho glancing at his rearview mirror.

"Do you have any family, in Durban? Who you can stay with?" he asked.

"No." Sunday felt a sudden panic. She had an image of Sipho abandoning her in the middle of the giant city she had seen only on the pages of magazines.

He worked the gearstick with his long-fingered hand and the engine whined, the car hugging the hairpin bends. They seemed to be moving no faster than the goats ambling along at the roadside, with their bearded old men's faces.

"Don't worry. You can stay with me. My family, I mean. We've got a house in KwaMashu." He looked at her. "You know KwaMashu?"

"I've heard of it." She'd seen pictures of the township sprawling over low green hills, small houses and shacks packed close together.

"You'll have to share a room with my sisters. One is about your age and the other is still at junior school."

"Thank you," she said. "You are very kind."

"Oh, you'll earn your keep, don't worry. My mother does hairdressing from the house. Maybe you can help her." Smiling at Sunday. Then looking at the rearview, smile fading.

Sunday glanced over her shoulder. The taxi was close behind them but not overtaking. Unusual for these drivers, who were impatient enough to pass slow-moving traffic on the suicidal curves. Sunday turned, about to ask Sipho a question, when they rounded a sharp bend and she saw a car parked sideways across the road. A big red car.
Induna
Mazibuko's car.

Sipho braked. The taxi behind stopped, boxing them in. The small car stalled and there was a moment of silence that went on forever. Sunday could hear Sipho's keychain scraping against the steering column. Heard his breath. Swore she could hear her heart stop and then start again, pumping blood through her veins.

Then behind her the hard rattle of the minibus taxi's door sliding open. The old dog stepped down from the high red car and she heard his shoes crunch on the gravel as he walked to her door and opened it. "Get out."

Sunday shrank from Inja. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from the car. She fell to the sand, the skin of her knees tearing.

"Leave her!" Sipho shouted, standing. Four men from the taxi crowded him and one of them took him by the throat and stuck a gun to his head.

Sunday knelt, the gray shoes of the old man before her on the dirt road, sun kicking off the brass buckles. "Bring that rubbish here," he said.

The men dragged Sipho around the car and forced him to his knees beside Sunday. Inja had a gun in his hand, silver against his dark skin. He put the barrel to Sipho's head. The boy was expressionless, staring straight ahead.

"Has he fucked you?" Inja asked Sunday. "Broken you? Put his filth in your blood?"

She looked up at the old dog, a black shape against the red sky. "He has not touched me."

Inja pushed the gun hard against Sipho's temple, almost shoving him off balance. "Be truthful now, girl. Or I will shoot him."

"I swear to God. I am speaking the truth."

"And to where were you going? With him?"

"To Durban."

"And what about our wedding?" She said nothing. "You are a disrespectful girl." He cleared his throat, spat on the sand. "Or have you fallen under a bad influence?"

"It was my idea," she said. "Is this true, AIDS man?" Inja asked, smacking Sipho lightly with the gun barrel. Sipho said nothing.

Sunday tried to catch Sipho's eye. To find a way to show him how sorry she was. But he stared out over the valley at the sinking sun.

An explosion. Sunday felt a wetness on the bare skin of her arm. Something hot on her cheek. She saw the boy topple forward, his face turned toward her, blood bubbling from his mouth. Light fading from his eyes. Another shot and his body jerked and a little river of blood flowed from under him, soaking into the parched sand of the road.

Sunday tried to scream but she could find no voice.

Two men grabbed and lifted her, carrying her toward the taxi. Threw her in the rear and slammed the door. As the taxi reversed and turned, she saw Inja and the other men standing over Sipho's body. Inja said something, laughed, and kicked the dead boy with one of those ugly gray shoes. Then the taxi took the bend and Sunday could see no more.

Inja sat on the cement porch of his house, watching as a blanket of darkness was thrown over the valley. Usually the end of the day was a time of pride and reflection for him. When he would look down on the hard hills and the dry red earth from which he had sprung – a skinny runt, a bastard, unwanted and scorned, growing up as an illiterate herdsman – and congratulate himself on what he had become. An
induna
, with a fleet of taxis, fertile fields of Durban Poison, and two surviving wives with mightily dimpled thighs, each with her own hut here in his
kraal
. The father of a brood of children so numerous he had lost count.

But tonight he felt hollow and dissatisfied. His appetite was gone again, the plate of steak, tripe and maize meal all but untouched on the floor beside his chair. Even his brandy and Coke tasted sour as goat's piss.

He belched, rubbed at his stomach. Listened to the sounds of the night. The thin wail of one of his children out in the gloom. A man's laugh, quickly stifled: one of the guards patrolling the perimeter of the compound. Inja felt more than heard the thrum of the generator that powered his house, the focal point of the
kraal,
where he slept alone. His wives lived in huts lit by candlelight and cooked over open fires, in the way of their ancestors.

He threw back his drink. "Woman!" he bellowed.

The duty wife for the night, who crouched on the floor inside his house, waiting to serve him, hurried out and knelt before Inja. Not looking him in the eye. Wearing a red and black beaded hat, her heavy body wrapped in a plaid blanket despite the heat.

"More brandy. And take this swill to the pigs." He shoved the plate of uneaten food toward her with his shoe. She lifted his plate and glass and backed away from him, bowing, until she disappeared into the house.

His cell phone sang in his pocket, loud as a cicada. High enough up in the hills here, to get a signal. He removed the phone and saw the caller ID. The moment he had dreaded.

"Yes?"

"Call back." The line went dead.

Inja walked into the living room, dominated by a giant TV that flickered, mute, and a bulky brown leather sofa and chair set, still swathed in the transparent plastic it was shipped in. He dug into the drawer beneath the TV and found another cell phone, loaded with an anonymous pay-as-you-go card. He dialed the number he had memorized.

The voice said, "Hold on."

Shuffling and muttering and then another voice. One used to issuing commands. "Tell me it is done."

For a moment Inja considered lying. Knew it would be suicidal. "They have crossed the border. To the north."

"Jesus. I don't like this loose end."

"
Nkosi
, there is no cause for concern."
Nkosi
. Chief. Also the name of God.

"I'm trusting you on this. If you're wrong, there will be consequences."

"I understand." He cleared his throat, his tone more wheedling. "
Nkosi
, as you know I am to marry in two days' time. Since you will be here, in Bhambatha's Rock, it would be the greatest honor if you would grace us with your presence."

Inja shut up when he realized the phone was dead in his hand. He let the instrument droop to his side and stood staring blankly at the flickering TV. Then he opened the back of the phone and removed the little yellow card. Closed the phone, dropped it into the drawer and went back out onto the porch.

A fresh drink waited for him beside his chair. He took a box of matches from his pocket and set fire to the sim card, threw it out into the night, watching it flare and fade like a dying glow-worm.

Fear nagged at Inja's innards. The knowledge that the escape of the white men would tell against him. He depended on the goodwill of the chief, his mentor these many years. The man who had helped him to become all he had become. The minister of justice. Living far away in his house in Pretoria, but a man from these parts, a royal Zulu. One of the few Zulu chiefs who hadn't collaborated with the Boers to hold on to his crust of power. When he was forced into exile by the white men, Inja had gone with him.

Back then, in the late eighties and early nineties, the chief had purged the ranks of the freedom fighters in the training camps in Zambia, Angola and Tanzania. Convinced they had been infiltrated by apartheid spies. There were no trials. The chief would point a finger and Inja would pull the trigger. Dump the bodies in unmarked graves. Proud to serve his master.

When Nelson Mandela walked free and the apartheid regime fell, the chief began his rise within the new government. And his dog was always in the shadows, ready to do his work.

The chief was now one of the most powerful men in the country, more powerful even than the president, who was his stooge, it was said. He had patiently collected dossiers on ally and enemy alike, and he terrified men into absolute loyalty. When they wavered he whistled, and Inja came running. But he knew if he misstepped it would be his body thrown into a ditch far out in the valley.