Seas of South Africa (13 page)

She made a face and looked like she wished I would go away. I stood and waited. Finally, she opened her purse. “Do you have any soap?”

“Oh. No. We forgot to bring soap. Do you think you could sell us some?” I asked nicely.

The other lady frowned even harder.

“Twenty rand,” said the lady. “For the soap.”

“Thank you,” I said. “That's kind of you.”

She gave me the change, and put some soap in a tissue. “What are you washing?” she asked again.

“Some towels,” I said. I went back to the machine. While the ladies stared, we opened it up, pulled the towel carefully out of the bag, and put it inside the machine. Then we added the soap. I studied the directions, chose a delicate wash cycle, shut the door, and hit the button. We took two chairs, sat in front of the machine, and watched the money go around.

After fifteen minutes, the machine beeped loudly and startled us. We jumped up, opened the door, and looked inside. The towel was twisted up on the bottom, and the money was pasted all around the inside of the machine. Some of it was in thick wet clumps. It didn't look very good.

“Did we ruin it?” Los asked.

“I don't think so. We just need to dry it.”

I handed Los the towel, then carefully peeled each bill from inside the machine and handed it to him. We kept our backs to the ladies so they couldn't see what we were doing,
though they tried. Then we put the wet towel and money into a dryer, put in some coins, hit the button, and sat down.

It was warm in the laundromat and we were getting sleepy. Hollie curled up on the floor and shut his eyes. Los did the same thing on a chair. I tried to keep watch on the dryer, but my eyelids kept falling. Finally, we were shaken awake by the loud buzzer on the dryer. Los jumped to his feet, swung open the machine door, and out floated a few dozen crisp one hundred and two hundred rand bills. I turned towards the ladies, who were folding their clothes. They were staring at the money with a look of horror. I smiled awkwardly. “Oh! There it is. We found it. We didn't know where it was. It must have gotten mixed up in the towels.” The ladies weren't listening. Now that they had seen the money, they couldn't pack their clothes fast enough to get away. How different it was here. In Canada, people would gather around if they saw money falling on the floor. In Africa, they seemed to run away from it. But we had little piracy in Canada, and an effective police force. Here, it was the opposite.

The money cleaned up fairly well, though some of it was definitely stained. And it was terribly wrinkled. We'd have to find a way to iron it, to flatten it. We stuffed it into the bag with the towel, and started back towards the coal dock. Now the walk seemed endless. We were dragging our feet. When we reached the sub, we hopped into the water, opened the hatch, climbed in, submerged to the bottom of the harbour, dried off with the towel, and went to sleep.

Tomorrow, we would buy a car.

Chapter Fifteen

WE WERE WAITING
for Los. He had gone to buy a car. He said that, if I came, the seller would see I was from another country, and expect twice the money. That made sense to me, so I stayed behind. But that was a long time ago. He should have been back already.

I was sitting on the grass above the train tracks, watching the sub and watching the harbour, trying to think of better places to hide. Hollie was lying beside me, chewing a stick, and stretching in a way he could never quite do inside the sub. Seaweed had been gone since yesterday, which was typical whenever we visited a new place. He was probably hanging out with other birds. He was a sociable bird. Little Laura was
inside the sub, probably carrying small pieces of Hollie's rope and wood into her cage. Eventually, she would have enough to make a nest.

While I had made pancakes, Los had flattened out the rand by fitting it between metal plates, then pressing it in the vise in the stern. The money came out flat and crisp. Now, he was gone with the whole stash of it wrapped tightly in a rubber band, hidden inside a sock. For hours, I had been expecting him to show up with an old car. It felt like we had been waiting forever.

We had counted fifty thousand rand, give or take a couple of thousand. That was about ten thousand US dollars, or a little more in Canadian dollars. That was a lot of money in South Africa, especially to someone who didn't have any. The thought that maybe Los had taken the money and was never coming back kept sneaking into my head, and I had to chase it away. I trusted him. He was my friend now. Besides, it wasn't as though I had earned the money. I had stolen it. And the thieves and murderers I had stolen it from had surely stolen it from somebody else. Just because I had taken the money, didn't make it mine. It didn't make it Los', either. As I stared across the water and watched the freighters make the awkward turn at the mouth of the harbour and head out to sea, I wondered if I should have given Los just half of the money to buy the car. Why did I give him all of it?

A few more hours passed and it began to seem less likely that Los was returning. Now I started to worry that he had
been seen with the money and robbed. What if he had been attacked and was lying in a field somewhere? Probably that hadn't happened. Nobody knew he was carrying it. He certainly didn't look like someone who would have money. And he wouldn't have walked around waving fifty thousand rand in people's faces. He was too smart to do that. I'm sure he would have separated a small amount from the bulk of it and gone looking for a good deal on the car. Probably he had to wait for a seller. Then, he had to test drive several cars, and negotiate. And then it probably took them forever to draw up a bill of sale. Yes, that would take some time.

But it was seven hours ago when he left, almost eight. That was a really long time. Maybe he had been told about a good deal out in the country, and had to walk there. I stood up, stretched, and danced around a bit to shake the stiffness out of my legs. We had been sitting on the ground all day. What if Los had simply bought the car hours ago, for five thousand rand, then realized he still had forty-five thousand rand in his pocket, no real connection to me, and no reason to come back, or not a good enough one? I began to wonder how long I would wait. It had been all day already. Twilight would be falling soon. Places that sold cars were most likely already closed.

I decided to wait until dark. If he wasn't back by then, I would know he had taken the money and gone and wasn't coming back. Maybe he didn't even buy a car with it. Maybe he just kept walking.

An hour after dark, I stood up again. I was trying not to feel like a fool. So I had waited one whole day? So what? So I had trusted someone with a bunch of money, and he took it? Big deal. It wasn't my money in the first place. And I learned a lesson: you can't always trust people. Sometimes your gut feeling is just wrong.

But we were friends. And the thought that a friend might have cheated me upset me. I tried not to let it, but it did. I realized now that I really believed in Los. I believed in everything he had told me about global warming and wanting to save the earth. He inspired me. It would be too disappointing to think that he had just been making it all up. He couldn't be. He had built and flown his own plane. He certainly wasn't making that up.

Then a car came by, and I, foolishly, got my hopes up. A few cars and trucks had passed during the day, but it was never him. Besides, I was waiting for the sight of an old car. All of the cars had been newer ones. It was time to go back to the sub. What was I waiting for?

And then . . . I heard the sound of a motorcycle. And I saw a motorcycle. And it had a sidecar. And it was Los.

I jumped to my feet. Los came off the road, over the train tracks, and right up the hill. Hollie jumped behind me. The motorbike was dirty, noisy and old-fashioned. But it seemed to run well. Los was beaming. “Alfred. Isn't it great? It runs perfect. It's got lots of power. See?” He revved up the motor until it roared. His eyes were wild and wet.

“I thought you were going to buy a car.”

“Naaaaaah! A car wouldn't take us where we need to go. Jump in! I'll take you for a ride.”

I looked closely at the sidecar. “Do you think it's safe? It won't fall apart?”

“Of course it's safe. You worry too much, Alfred. Jump in.”

I picked up Hollie and climbed into the sidecar. I looked for a seat belt, but there wasn't one. There weren't any helmets, either. “Hold on, Hollie.”

“Ready?”

“Okay. But don't go too fast, okay?”

Los put the bike in gear and off we went. It was always a shock to me how fast vehicles drove on land after I had been at sea. We went down the hill and onto the road. We drove to one end of the coal dock and back. Hollie stood up on my lap. He loved the wind in his face. “Don't go too far from the sub,” I yelled over the noise of the engine.

“Hah! You are the captain of the submarine, Alfred. I am the captain of the motorbike!”

He turned onto another road and we were suddenly riding alongside an open-pit mine. Then, he made another turn and we were cutting through farms. Richards Bay had something of everything. On the way back to the water, we left the road altogether and drove across open ground. It was bumpy, but the motorbike seemed able to go anywhere. I could see now why he chose it. “How much did it cost?” I yelled.

“Ten thousand rand!” Los pulled the bag out of his shirt
and dropped it onto my lap. It was still full of money. He had bargained well.

“What took you so long?”

He looked at me, and then looked away. I think he didn't want to answer. But he did. “Because I'm black.”

“Ohhhh.”

“None of the car sellers would talk to me. Apartheid is over, but sometimes you wouldn't know it.”

“Who sold it to you?”

“An old lady whose son died.”

“Oh.” Now I felt sorry I had doubted Los. And what if I had returned to the sub and left already? He would have learned he had been wrong to trust me. Thank heavens I had waited.

We rode the motorbike back to the pizzeria and bought three large pizzas. We ate one and took two with us for the next day. On our way back to the coal dock, I saw a gang on a street corner and, for a second, I thought they might be the pirates I had seen before. I wasn't sure. They weren't carrying knives or guns. But a chill went up my spine. Was it them? Would they hang around on a street corner in a place like this? They stared at us as we went by. But I was staring at them. Maybe I was just becoming paranoid.

We hid the bike in the bushes, not far from the sub. I took a careful look at the road with the binoculars. We were sure we hadn't been followed, but I wanted to check anyway. My gut feeling was nagging me now that I had seen those guys on the corner.

“Do you think that was them, Los?”

He shrugged. “I don't know. There are lots of gangs in South Africa. You can't tell who is bad and who is good just by looking, so you have to be really careful. Have you decided where to leave the sub?”

“Yah. I'm going to sink it.”

“What?”

“It's the only way to leave it here and not worry about it. There's nowhere else to hide it.”

“What do you mean, sink it? How can you sink it?”

“I'll set it on the bottom, climb out, and shut the hatch. Then, when we come back, I'll swim down, open the hatch, climb inside, and bring her back up. It's not the easiest thing in the world to do, but I've done it before. And it's one way that nobody will ever find it. I'll sink it right here in this little cove, where there's no current. It won't go anywhere.”

“But . . . won't water rush in and flood the sub when you open the hatch under water?”

“Yes.”

“But that's crazy.”

“No, because I shut the hatch right away so only a couple of feet of water will get in, and the sump pumps will remove that in about fifteen minutes.”

“But won't the sub come up to the surface then?”

“No, because I will let water into the tanks to keep it on the bottom. It won't surface until I pump air into the tanks.”

“So . . . you will climb inside the submarine while it is flooding, and shut yourself in?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I thought I was crazy, but you are definitely more crazy than me.”

“Maybe.” Actually, I didn't think so.

We prepared for the trip before bed. I packed a can of fruit and some trail mix for Little Laura, some dog biscuits for Hollie, water, cookies, pizza, money, binoculars, a flashlight, and the tool bag I used for Hollie. This time, I was bringing it for Little Laura. I set the alarm so that we would rise an hour before the sun. Los lay down with the crew. I got cosy in my cot and listened to them shuffle and snore until I fell asleep.

Bright and early, we ate our last feed of pancakes and drank a pot of tea. I changed my t-shirt and shorts, brought the sub up near the surface, and took a good look around with the periscope before opening the hatch. Los made it to the bank himself with a big commotion in the water. He refused my help. Hollie swam it. I went back inside and coaxed Little Laura into the tool bag with a slice of peach from a can. Once she was inside, I closed the bag. It was a good carrier for her. She had lots of space, and felt protected. I carried her up the portal and swam her over to Los on the bank. Then I returned to the sub, grabbed the flashlight, pizza, money, and things, tossed them to Los, and asked him to hold the flashlight under the surface and point down. I shut the hatch, let water into the tanks, and submerged slowly, until the sub settled gently on the bottom.