Dust Devils (25 page)

Goodbread shrugged. "I'm told they get tourists on this road, going to what they call the cultural village. Zulus in skins and girls with bare titties. Apparently the foreigners pay good money to see that sorry shit." The old man removed a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and unfolded it. "This here's our bride-to-be. Just so you know who we're looking out for."

Dell reached across and took the paper, holding it against the wheel with one hand, taking his eyes off the road to glance at the color printout of a wedding invite. Saw a girl in traditional costume, standing next to a man in a suit. The pimp who had watched while the cop interrogated him back in the Cape. The man who had killed his family.

Dell looked back out at the road. "Where did you get this?"

"I served with some Zulus in the early nineties. One of them lives hereabouts, near Dundee. E-mailed it to me up at the farm. He's no friend of Mazibuko. Wishes him harm, I reckon." A dry laugh. "Funny thing is, it's not customary for Zulus to send out wedding invites. It's usually done by word of mouth."

"What's that then?" Tossing the page onto his father's lap.

"That's a man getting above himself. A man ripe to be cut down."

Dell changed gear as they headed into a bend, looked across at his father. "This girl, she doesn't get hurt. Are we straight on that?"

Saw his father jerk upright. "Jesus Christ!"

Dell hit the brakes but the tires found no traction on the gravel and the truck slammed into the bull that had ambled into their path. The animal was flung into the air, landing on the hood of the truck with a heavy wet smack, blood spraying across the windshield. The Toyota stood on its nose for a moment, then the rear spun, throwing the bull to the ground.

The truck sat stalled, pointing back the way they had come, red dust shrouding them. Dell looked out the rear window as the dust cleared. The bull lay on its side on the road, tributaries of blood flowing out onto the sand.

Dell turned the key in the ignition. The engine caught, then spluttered and died. "Fuck." He pumped the gas pedal.

Goodbread said, "Don't you flood her now." Dell turned the key again. Nothing. "Give her a moment," the old man said.

That's when Dell saw them, maybe ten Zulu men and boys, swarming down the hillside from a cluster of nearby huts. He caught the gleam of blades in their hands. He turned the key. Engine coughed and cut out. Dell felt for the gun in his waistband as the men reached the truck.

Goodbread slid out of the Toyota, relaxed, but with a hand near the pistol under his shirt. The men surrounded him. Torn clothes, bare feet, dark skins shining with sweat. Blades in black fists. Dell heard the rattle of Zulu, tongue-clicks like small explosions in the mouths of the men. Heard his father reply in the same language.

Then Goodbread laughed and shook his head. A couple of the Zulus laughed too and the old man leaned down into the window to talk to Dell. "They want to know if we're of a mind to claim the meat. Told them no."

The men fell upon the bull, started butchering it with cane machetes and pocket knives. Dell stepped out and walked to the front of the truck. The hood was dented and the bumper and bars were bent and red with blood. But the bull had come off worse. Dell watched as two small boys each grabbed one of the animal's horns, while a shirtless man – all ribs and sinew – started hacking off the bull's head with a rusted wood saw.

Dell got into back into the Toyota, tried the key, and this time the engine fired. Goodbread lowered himself into the truck and slammed the door. Dell turned the vehicle and drove slowly around the Zulus. One of them waved a bloodstained arm. Goodbread flapped a hand in reply. Dell worked the stalk of the windshield washer and twin jets of water hit the glass. The wiper blades smeared blood across their view, the color of the landscape that surrounded them.

"Welcome to the heart of goddam darkness, son." The old man's laugh sounded like a death rattle.

Zondi sat on a wooden bench under a thorn tree. He would rather have waited in his Beemer, with the A/C cranked up to the max, but it was the only car in the parking lot at the Zulu Kingdom and he felt conspicuous anyway.
So what's your plan?
he asked himself. The answer was simple: he didn't have one. He'd improvise.

A small yellow bus with a tour company logo painted on the side lurched up the road and stopped with a squeak of hot brake drums. Zondi waved away the dust, the fine red grains settling in the folds of his crushed linen shirt. How had he lived here, all those bloody years ago? Simple. He hadn't known any better.

Zondi watched as a group of skinny Orientals filed out of the bus and stood in the shade of the vehicle, casting anxious glances up at the blowtorch sun. A woman in a baseball cap barked at them in Japanese. Or maybe Korean. They formed an obedient line and followed her into the
kraal,
camera lenses flaring in the sun.

Zondi heard an old pickup truck rattling to a stop. Saw the girl get out, swamped by a shapeless poorhouse dress. She looked sad. Somehow older than the day before. A big man, running to fat, fought his way out of the driver's seat. As he stood his T-shirt lifted and Zondi caught the hard shine of a pistol at his waist. The man followed the girl toward the beehive huts. He was pigeon toed and he walked with his head and chest flung forward, as if he were crossing a finishing line.

Okay, and now what's your fucking plan?
Zondi asked out loud, watching the big man disappear behind a reed fence. Feeling out of his depth here.

Zondi had never been at the sharp end of law enforcement. His skills lay in the meticulous collection of data, building mantraps of fact, conjecture and association under the corrupt and the venal. He'd left the wet work to others who were better equipped.

He eyed his Beemer, thought of settling his ass on its leather seat and getting the hell out of there. Then he sighed and stood and followed the girl and the gunman into the
kraal
.

It was one of those places Dell had always avoided. A tacky little tourist trap that looked like a bad movie set. A few beehive huts enclosed by a fence of sticks. An entranceway guarded by the skull and horns of an antelope.

A Zulu man with a beer gut, dressed in tire sandals and bits of skin, stepped out of one of the huts, wearing what looked like a feather duster on his head. He held a stabbing spear in his hand, waved it at the heavens, bellowed a war cry and made as if he was going to turn one of the little Orientals into a kebab. Then he laughed and the tour group giggled nervously. Fired off a barrage of flashbulbs in reprisal.

Dell followed at the back of the group, his father walking ahead, his bush hat pulled low over his eyes, doing an impersonation of a senior citizen on vacation. Dell saw another man on the fringes of the group. A man who looked as out of place as Dell felt. Tall black guy. Definitely city. Designer cargo pants and shades. Clean white Reeboks. A slim watch on his wrist. The guy caught his eye for a moment, then he walked on to where the girl from the wedding invite sat on a grass mat, weaving knotted strands of cloth on a wooden loom.

She wore a beaded skirt, a red and blue choker around her slender neck. Her breasts covered by a bib of animal skin. More beads wrapped her calves and seedpods encircled her ankles. The kind that would sound like cicadas when she danced. Dell couldn't see her as a bride. She was a child.

The girl ignored the tourists, kept her eyes on the cloth. She looked up just once, toward another Zulu guy, also in Western clothes. A big man in a T-shirt and jeans that bagged at his butt. He leaned against one of the huts and yawned, then he scratched his ass. Dell glanced across at Goodbread. Saw the old man's eyes on the big guy, then back on the girl.

It was just a recon, his father had said. To check out the lay of the land. Suited Dell. The rush of adrenalin that had come after they hit the bull had drained and he felt tired. Hot. Grief bubbling up from some bottomless underground reservoir. He wanted to go and lie under a tree somewhere and not wake up.

Sunday served the beer. Brought the gourd to the rich black man who had been there the day before. He shook his head and she moved on, wondering who he was. She had seen him sitting beside the shining car, watching her when she arrived. Sunday thought of that black fax machine swallowing the wedding invite in the phone kiosk.
Stop dreaming
, she told herself.

Sunday moved on to serve the small yellow people who chirped like birds and made faces when they tasted the beer. They reminded her of her aunt, with their thin bodies and the skin stretched tight as drum hide across their high cheekbones.

The last two people to get the beer were a tall pale man with dark hair, who drank and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, nodding, and an old man as white as the bones of a carcass left lying in the sun. His hand shook as he took the gourd and she heard his teeth smacking the clay rim. But he drank long and deep and when he was finished he looked at her with his light eyes and thanked her in Zulu.

Richard did as he always did, throwing back a full gourd and burping loudly, standing with his swollen belly bulging out over his skins, smiling with teeth like rows of yellow corn, while the foreigners took their snaps. When they were done he led them out of the ceremonial hut to buy souvenirs. Sunday sat a while, alone in the dark coolness.

Then she left the beer enclosure and went across to the small hut where the ugly clothes the fat woman had given her were waiting. Sunday was standing naked except for her panties, when the hut went dark and the big man ducked in through the low door.

She covered her middle with the dress. "Uncle, I am not ready," she said.

He stood, picking his teeth, staring at her. She could smell the sourness rising from his skin like the fumes from a pit latrine. He laughed. "Don't worry, girl, when I feel the hunger, I feed on a thing with meat on its bones. Hurry, now. Finish."

Sunday turned her back. Pulled on the dress over her head, the fabric coarse on her skin. Stepped into her tennis shoes, anxious to be out of the hut and away from this man looming behind her, his breath coming in wet grunts.