Dust Devils (39 page)

Found another road, a track that disappeared toward a clutter of huts, huddled around a low hill. Looked back. No blue car in pursuit. Just Dell, bouncing, gripping the roll bar. Zondi looked across at the girl. She lay slumped against the door.

The Ford drifted to a stop beside a fence of rusted barbed wire. Hundreds of brightly colored plastic bags caught in the twisted spikes, buzzing in the breeze. Zondi took his hands from the wheel and reached across to the girl.

Dell jumped down from the truck and went to the passenger door, the girl's face pressed like putty against the starred and bloody glass. He opened the door slowly and felt her weight as she sagged against it. Her hand dangled down, limp fingers dripping blood onto the sand.

Zondi drove back down toward Bhambatha's Rock, feeling as if the flesh-colored earth was swallowing him. The girl sat with her head resting on the back of the seat, like she was asleep. He was startled by his cell phone, chirping and vibrating in his pocket.

Zondi saw the name of the caller: M.K. Moloi. The signal evaporated before Zondi could answer and he dropped the phone onto the seat. He passed the hospital and fought the temptation to drive in and fetch the Belgian doctor. Beg for some miracle. Pointless. The girl was dead. The mystery of her parentage gone with her. Zondi was nobody's father.

Dell's eyes closed. He felt the thrum of the tires on the road as the Ford sank down toward the town. He was in a place beyond exhaustion but he didn't want to sleep, because sleep meant waking, having to fight panic and grief and tell himself some lie about life going on.

Dell opened his eyes. Saw men in overalls erecting a yellow and white striped marquee on the open ground between the hospital and the first cinderblock buildings in the main street. Workers unloaded chairs from the rear of a truck, the white plastic kicking the fierce sun back at Dell.

The Ford slowed and stopped, waiting for a rig that rattled toward the tent with a hiss of air brakes. An old woman standing beside the road, dressed in a blanket, a water container balanced on her head, saw the dead girl in the front of the truck. She crossed herself and brought her fingertips to her furrowed mouth and kissed them.

The Ford rattled on and turned into the alley beside a funeral parlor. Stopped outside the rear entrance, beside a black SUV, the mortician's name painted on the door in ornate gold script. Zondi left the truck and walked into the mortician's. Didn't look back.

An outlet pipe in the wall of the building burped and spewed grey liquid onto the sand. Dell got a lungful of embalming fluid, bringing with it memories he couldn't handle right now. He swung himself off the back of the truck, wanting to escape.

Then he stopped, looking in at the girl slumped in the front seat. Felt he shouldn't leave her here alone.
Wherever she's going, she's already there
, he told himself and walked up to the mouth of the alley.

Zondi followed the fat man out into the yard. Giraffe paused a moment, staring at the dead girl in the truck. Zondi could hear the undertaker's breath, like the roar of a distant waterfall. "Can you take care of this for me?" Zondi asked.

"Of course."

"I can't be bothering with death certificates and so on."

Giraffe shook his head. "This is Bhambatha's Rock, Zondi. Bits of paper have a way of blowing away in the wind."

Two men in overalls stepped out of the doorway, wheeling a gurney toward the Ford. Zondi didn't want to see this. "Only the best, please Giraffe."

"Of course, Zondi. Of course."

Zondi turned and walked up the alley to where Dell stood like a scarecrow who had lost his field.

Dell, in the shadow of a poster of the minister of justice, watched as two men strung a cloth banner up against the side of a building. The banner was in Zulu and Dell saw the minister's name, the rest incomprehensible to him.

He heard feet on gravel and turned as Zondi joined him. "You okay?" Dell asked.

"Yes," Zondi said, staring off toward the hills.

"So, what are you going to do now?'

"Bury her. And then get the hell out of here."

They stood a while in silence, then Dell said, "She was your daughter, wasn't she?"

Zondi looked at him, face impassive. He shrugged. "To be honest, I'm not sure."

Dell heard the workmen shouting instructions to one another in Zulu. "What's all this about?" Pointing at the banner, the minister's face revealed as the banner was unfurled.

"Don't you know?"

"Know what?"

"He's addressing a rally here tonight."

"Jesus. You're kidding?"

"No."

"At the marquee across from the hospital?"

"Yes."

Dell nodded, scraped a hand across his beard. Looked up at the minister. The tight mouth like a gash in the fleshy face. Dell had once admired this man, when he'd been a freedom fighter. Long ago.

"Can I take the Ford?" Dell asked.

Zondi looked at him, impassive, reading his mind. "It'll be suicide."

"Assisted suicide, maybe." Dell laughed, thinking of his father.

Zondi shrugged, fished the truck keys out of his Diesels and dropped them into Dell's dirty hand. Then he turned and walked away down the main road.

Dell went back to the truck, breathing through his mouth to avoid the smell of embalming fluid. Didn't help. He ended up tasting it. He opened the passenger door and tried to wind down the bloody, bullet-starred window. The winder was stuck. Dell picked up a rock and smashed the window, the broken glass falling onto the red sand.

A black man in overalls and white rubber knee boots appeared in the doorway of the mortician's, watched Dell for a moment, then went back inside.

Dell dropped the rock and crossed to a hosepipe that was coupled to a faucet at the rear of the building. He turned on the water, a slow, stuttering trickle and dragged the pipe toward the Ford. He hosed the girl's blood from the front seat and floor of the truck, disturbing the meat flies. Rinsed his hands and closed the faucet.

Dell started the Ford, the clutch and gas pedal as soft as wet newspaper. He bumped down the alley and turned into the main road, driving toward the marquee, the minister watching him from every fence and pole.

Zondi walked along the sidewalk, dodging vendors and beggars. As he passed the liquor store he saw a familiar yellow Nissan truck parked outside. The big man with the dent in his skull leaned against the fender, smoking a cigarette. Two of Inja's soldiers emerged from the liquor store, lugging crates of beer. They dumped the booze the rear of the Nissan, bottles singing like wind chimes. The big man said something Zondi couldn't catch and all three laughed as they climbed into the front of the truck. The driver gunned the engine and the Nissan took off toward the hills. Word of Inja Mazibuko's death had reached Bhambatha's Rock.

Zondi walked on, past the eating house, until he found the clearing. It looked exactly as it had twenty years ago. A rusted steel and Formica kitchen chair stood in the sparse shade of a thorn tree. A transistor radio balanced on a rock, blaring out Zulu choral music. Five old men were hunkered down in the dirt, playing
marabaraba
with bottle caps on a wrinkled square of cardboard.

As Zondi approached, the most ancient of the men burst into a toothless cackle and swept money from the board with a horny hand. He looked up at Zondi. "A haircut, my son?"

"Yes, grandfather."

The old man poured the coins into his pocket and levered himself upright, old bones complaining like night crickets. He wore a dirty blue shirt, khakis and tire sandals, long yellow toenails curling almost to the dust. His white hair was a little sparser and his face more furrowed, but otherwise the barber was exactly as Zondi remembered him from his youth.

The old man pointed to the chair. "Sit." Zondi sat. The wizened Zulu shook out a sheet, frayed and torn, and draped it over Zondi's shoulders. "You are from Durban?"

"
Egoli,
grandfather."
Egoli
. City of gold. Johannesburg. "But I was born here."

"And who is your father?"

"He was Solomon Zondi."

"Ah, yes. Yes. I used to cut his hair, many years ago."

"I remember, grandfather."

The barber rubbed a hand over Zondi's neat hair. "What do you need, boy?"

"A
cheesekop
." Cheese head. Shaved.

"You are bereaved, my son?"

"Yes. I am bereaved."

The old man rested his palm on Zondi's shoulder for a moment, then he lifted the hand-powered clippers and started thinning Zondi's hair. Zondi listened to the radio. Sweet voices singing about God. Beneath the choir, he caught snatches of the conversation of the old gamblers. They were talking about Inja. One of them saying, "He burns still, that one. Where he has gone."

Amen to that
, Zondi thought.

The old man laid the clippers on the rock beside the radio and brought a jar of paste and a brush up to Zondi's head. Zondi felt the coolness of the shaving cream on his skull. The barber stropped a straight razor on a length of leather tied to a low branch of the thorn tree. He stood over Zondi and took away a stripe of shaving cream and hair in one smooth motion, Zondi's skull gleaming.