Dust Devils (40 page)

Zondi wasn't sure why he was doing this. He didn't need a haircut, and if he was doing it in the name of ritual, he wasn't observing the correct timeline. Africans in mourning shaved their heads, true, but only the day after the burial. Believing that life is concentrated in the hair. Shaving it symbolizes death and its growth symbolizes a new cycle of life.

What the hell, he'd go with that. Even if he was a day early. He needed a new beginning.

It was the morning of Dell's birthday and he lay alone in bed, the sheets still warm from his wife's body. He sat up and looked out at the sun, last traces of a nightmare about his father dispersing like smoke.

The sound of his children laughing in the kitchen lifted Dell from the bed. He pulled a shirt over his bony shoulders and stepped into a pair of Levi's. Barefoot, toes curling up against the stone floor that still held traces of night chill, he left the room.

Dell walked down the corridor, past Rosie's studio. One of her huge abstracts leaned against the wall. Unfinished. Abandoned a year ago. He entered the kitchen, the table piled with birthday gifts wrapped in bright paper and ribbon. The twins burst through from the sitting room and ambushed him, climbing Dell's tall frame like he was a jungle gym. He spun them around and they laughed.

Rosie stood in the doorway, wearing one of Dell's old T-shirts over sweat-pants. Her eyes making a lie of her smile. He lowered the twins and they stood beside his wife and the three of them sang
Happy Birthday
to him, and he had to fight back the tears. They were just so bloody beautiful, his family.

Dell hugged the twins and kissed them. Tommy broke loose and ran out into the cramped backyard. Mary clung to Dell. When her small fingers finally released him, he set her down gently. She smiled at him for a moment then she went out after her brother.

Rosie put her hands on Dell's shoulders, looking up at him, dark hair falling over her one eye. "Happy birthday, Robbie." She kissed him on the lips, then she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him. Hard. He returned the embrace, smelled her skin. Like almonds.

Dell lifted his wife's face and kissed her again. "I love you, Rosie."

"I love you too." Her eyes deep and dark and troubled.

The scream of a buzzard brought Dell back to where he sat on a boulder on a hillock, staring down at the striped marquee wavering in the heat haze. The bird circled lazily above him, then flew off, its shadow grazing the red earth. Dell felt a pain in his heart, as if the grief and the longing would stop it beating. Then he took himself into a place beyond pain. Into nothingness.

Shadows chased themselves across the sand and the sun sagged toward the horizon. A burst of music blared out from the public address system in the tent. Choked off abruptly. A man's tinny voice said, "One, two. Testing. Testing. One, two."

Dell drank bottled water. It was warm and he spat most of it back onto the dirt. He took the container of Cobra boot polish from his pocket. The black and red tin, with the rearing serpent. Dipping his fingers into the melted polish he smeared it onto his face, using the inside of the silver lid as a mirror, covering the areas where his white skin shone through. Blackened his arms and hands. Then he watched as night strangled the valley.

He heard the low rumble of a generator kick in and the marquee glowed with yellow light. Minibus taxis arrived in swarms, spilling the rural poor out into the area around the tent, where bonfires burned. A buzz of excited chatter hung on the night air.

BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes and SUVs with up-country plates bumped to a halt at the rear of the tent. Dell watched through the cheap binoculars as the dignitaries took their places on the plastic chairs facing the platform and the microphone. Armani and Gucci rubbed shoulders with tribal gear. Beemer keys and cell phones dangling from the waistbands of animal-skin kilts.

Dell heard sirens and a convoy of vehicles, blue lights flashing, slid in from the night. Flashbulbs strobed as the minister of justice, resplendent in hyena tails and leopard skin, led his number-one wife, a hefty woman in a giant white Maidenform bra and towering headgear, into the tent. The sound of cheers and ululating rolled across the plain.

Dell checked the pistol. He'd fired it twice at the gas station. Six rounds left. Enough for what he had to do.

Dell approached the marquee, hanging back out of range of the lights and the fires. The minister's deep voice, an amplified bellow, thundered Zulu into the night, whipping up the crowd, who were dancing and chanting, fists raised. Taking Dell back to the illegal political rallies he had attended back in his twenties, both as a reporter and as a participant. The lines between his job and his convictions blurring in those days, when a newsman could get arrested as easily as a black kid hurling a rock.

Dell found a spot in the shadows. He could see past the raised fists, onto the speaker's platform. The minister in his traditional garb, belly swelling over his loin-cloth, raised his clenched fist. Loud music blared from the speakers. A Zulu war chant, set to a street beat. The crowd picked up the words and the minister joined in, stamping his feet,
toyi-toying
, clenched fist raised.

He left the platform and stepped down into the audience, swallowed whole by the adoring crowd. Dell caught glimpses of the minister's bodyguards, men in dark suits, fighting their way through the mob, following their master's sweating bald head, gleaming like a beach ball in the sea of admirers.

Dell followed, too, moving along the side of the tent, skirting guy-ropes. The crowd spat the minister out near one of the raised tent flaps and the big man stepped into the dark alone, the bodyguards trapped by the mob. The minister gripped one of the tent poles, chest heaving, battling to catch his breath.

Dell moved fast. Drew the pistol, rushed the sweating man. He put the barrel to the minister's head and felt his body tense. "Move," Dell said.

"Who are you?" the Zulu asked.

"Just move."

Dell pushed the bald man beyond a generator truck, away from the bonfires. He heard the voices of the bodyguards, shouting out into the night. "
Nkosi!
Nkosi!
"

It would have to be now. "On your knees."

The minister looked at him, the moon catching his glasses, enough light to see his mouth was a twisted slit. Not a man used to obeying orders. Dell still wore the dead farmer's heavy boots. Raised his foot and kicked the Zulu in the kneecap, heard him suck air. The minister sank down onto one knee. Dell kicked him again and had him kneeling. Heard the shouts of the searching men.

"Tell me who you are," the minister said.

"My name is Robert Dell. Your dog killed my family."

The Zulu's head jerked in recognition, seeing beyond the boot polish. "Whatever Moses Mazibuko did, it was without my blessing."

"Shut the fuck up," Dell said. Cocking the gun. Pushed the barrel against the bald head.

"Please. I don't deserve this." Something high and weak cracking the baritone.

No, you deserve something much slower, you fucker.
Dell felt the trigger beneath his finger. Ready to squeeze. But he couldn't do it. His finger refused to obey. Heard his father:
you just flat don't have the goddam balls, do you boy?

The gun drooped away from the minister's head and the man said something but Dell was in the morgue with what remained of his family, his nostrils thick with the stink of charred flesh and when he heard the shot he thought he was being fired upon. Then he felt the recoil still flowing up his arms and understood what he had done.

Panicked shouts rose above the noise from the marquee and the minister sagged until his chest and chin touched the ground, fingers crawling like a spider across the sand, breath coming in wet rasps. Dell shot him again and he was quiet.

Dell heard the men's voices coming closer and he turned and walked off into the night. When he left the tent behind he slowed, looked back as flashlight beams sliced the darkness, Zulu shouts echoing across the plain.

Dell slid the magazine from the pistol and threw it far into the dark. Dropped the gun into a deep crease in the earth. Made his way back to where the Ford was hidden on the sand above the main road.

As he started the truck, exhaustion flattened him. He killed the engine and slumped onto his side, folding in on himself, bringing his knees to his chest like he was a child. Letting the moans of the sirens lull him to sleep.

Zondi sat beside the open casket. Three white candles dripped wax onto a grass mat, the flickering light creating the illusion of life as it played across the girl's face. She looked older in death. Even more like her mother.

The coffin was the most expensive Giraffe had to offer. He'd displayed it proudly, fat fingers caressing the polished oak, the gleaming bronze handles and the plush velvet interior that reminded Zondi somehow of a bordello.

He knew it was absurd. Empty symbolism. The girl could just as well be buried in a pine pauper's coffin but he'd handed over his credit card, no match for the voices of tradition that were still hardwired into him. Sitting now, in a sort of vigil, in the small room Giraffe had set aside for him at the funeral parlor, the smell of death and embalming fluid creeping in under the door.

Zondi remembered these funeral vigils from when he was a kid. All the mirrors in the hut covered by cloth. He couldn't remember why. The coffin was brought into the hut and set down on a mat. The three candles were lit. So the ancestors could see the dead person and guide him on his journey, he seemed to recall. The elders would sit beside the coffin, receiving visitors who brought condolences and gifts.

He'd come down from Jo'burg on the day of his mother's funeral, too late for the vigil. Intentionally. Not wanting to be trapped in the cramped hut, stifled by superstition. But here he sat. Alone. No visitors to receive. Paying lip-service to something he'd scorned. He rubbed a hand over his shaved head and stared at the candles, dust motes circling the flames.

Then he heard sirens. Too many for anything other than a calamity. Fucking Dell. Heard the clatter of helicopter blades coming in low, the high whine of the engine powering back. Within minutes the chopper lifted off, rattled the tin roof, and took its noise away into the night. Zondi wondered what else it took with it.

He didn't sleep but subsided into a kind of stupor. Didn't notice the sunlight seeping into the room from the one high window. Took a while to hear the knocking at the door. "Yes?" he said, standing. His body stiff from the hard floor.

Giraffe entered, in a charcoal suit with a dove-gray vest and matching necktie. The rings on his fingers shining like embers against his black skin. "Have you heard, Zondi? The minister is shot?"

"Dead?" Zondi asked.

Giraffe nodded. "Yes." He adjusted the hang of his coat, smoothing the lapels. "I would have offered my services, naturally, but they flew him down to Durban." His rubbery face wearing a look of disappointment.