JJ did most of the talking, Dara listened. He was a good listener and enjoyed the man’s insights, enthusiasm and grasp of many subjects; from the sciences to economics, social issues to personal sensitivity of the prevailing race biases.
“You do know that it comes from fear, Dara?” JJ pointed out. “What you’re dealing with here is a small band of Doppers, a sect of our most conservative, mostly old men practicing a strict version of Calvinism. Kinda like Amish, but not as peaceful,” He laughed his warm and generous laugh. “They think they’re strong; they’ll trumpet how strong they are in their Lord, and that their Lord gives them this or that authority. It all sounds very convincing, even to them; they even convince themselves that it’s true. And in many cases, it is true. Their conviction of a higher authority to authenticate and authorize their actions does make them overcome what perhaps those without that faith might achieve. But it’s all self-hypnosis. I know, I was one of them, a youth leader for half my young life. Until I went to the city.”
He’d ordered a beer and offered one to Dara, but Dara refused. JJ sipped and smacked his lips, savouring it. “Delicious on a hot day,” he said, raising it to Dara.
“Yes. My Mum often allows me a beer, but I’m on the bike.” Just saying that out aloud made Dara feel quite grown-up. Though, he cringed within for having preceded it with “my Mum allows”.
JJ saw the boy cringe and felt for him, so he pretended he didn’t hear it. “I’m driving too, so I’ll just have the one… a lite, it’s basically flavoured water.”
The waitress brought some snacks, and when she’d gone, JJ returned to their conversation, chatting easily with the unhurried tempo of a man who commanded his own calendar.
“I’d grown up here and had blinkers on, but at university I had my eyes opened. ‘The Bible says this’ and ‘the Bible says that’… that was my reference. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t stupid, just misinformed. I wasn’t un-educated, just under-educated. It was a mess, really; just a tangle of self-assured prejudices put in my head that I kept repeating till they were true. You must remember that where I come from, I was taught blacks and coloureds… anyone not European, were automatically stupid, lazy, untrustworthy. Atheists too! Atheists were the worst; in my view they were devils… demonic. You couldn’t trust them, they had no moral fibre—because in my world, morals only came from the Bible. And then I met these people, these atheists, brown and black people on equal terms. In Cape Town, I couldn’t dominate them, and I couldn’t avoid them. I couldn’t ostracize them, they were everywhere; and they had the same rights as me. If I tried to ostracize them, I’d be the one ostracized by just about everyone else. I had to adapt or wither.”
His phone pinged with a message and his eyebrows rose as he looked at the screen. “This is what drives me nuts. Those cops or the tannie are broadcasting. The family knows I’m in Loxton, they want to know what’s keeping me.” His thumbs were a blur as he typed a response, his brow furrowed with irritation.
Dara made to collect his keys to leave.
“No, relax, they can wait. I just need to also tell the wife I’m safe. She worries… hates this car.” His expression softened to a smile as he sent the second message. “But, you know… it’s the reward I promised myself in the years of sacrifice.”
He put the mobile aside. “I was telling you—when I came home in the early years there was strife. Trouble in my home with my father mostly and trouble in the dorp with my old friends and the Dominee. My wife’s American and not very welcome. I went to church to appease the family, but it irritated me, a waste of my time. My mind had moved on. Predictable nonsense—you only see it as an outsider. I didn’t go back and the pressure came on; endless guilt trips, threats of damnation, shunning. Jeez, enough to have intimidated me if I wasn’t so independent. Eventually the nonsense stopped when they realized it wasn’t working.”
The tannie came outside to ask if they wanted anything more and JJ was very friendly with her. He made small talk in Afrikaans and ensured she didn’t hear anything of the heresies they’d been speaking of to feed back into the town’s gossip mill.
When she’d gone, he went on.
“That was a decade ago, we get on fine now—nobody bothers me about it anymore. I don’t come home often, not much for me here. My business is in the city, and my friends and life are there. I mainly live in the suburbs but also have a beach house for weekends and holidays.”
“What business?” Dara asked. He felt like he was being bad company, just listening with not much to add till this gap.
“I buy hospitals,” he said. “Bit of a long story,”
“Gee, that is amazing. Are you a doctor?”
“Oh no, businessman. I qualified in law and practiced for two years in South Africa, but I didn’t enjoy it. So I did a gap year in the States and made a bit of cash as a headhunter with an Executive Search firm helping place Vice-President and above at HMO, managed healthcare, facilities all over the States. It gave me a great sense of the medical industry as a commercial venture. When I got back to South Africa, hospital privatization was just taking off. Right place, right time; a friend of mine was a doctor at a hospital and I heard it was in trouble. My wife’s connected to big money, so we found backers and got our first buy out. It was very lucrative. We now have…” He squinted in thought; things lately had been moving so quickly that he needed some calculations. “Sheeew… it’s pretty close to a billion in cap value and it’s still a private concern. I’m resisting us floating it. Sorry—you understand what floating means? What cap value is?”
“Sure—floating on the stock exchange. The cap value is what your assets are worth,” Dara said.
“I forget—you’re still at school, but you’re so advanced,” he paused and looked at Dara in a quizzical way, cocking his head. “What were you thinking, going to Carnarvon School? It’s a village school, they’ve never seen anything like you before, of course there was going to be kak, shees man!” JJ laughed at him in a jovial way; it was a warm laugh, the laugh of an equal.
“I thought I should get to know the locals, even though I won’t really live here.”
“And how’d that work out for you?” The question was a politeness; JJ knew all about the incident, and more.
“I made one good friend. His grandfather’s a bushman clan leader around here.”
“Ahh, that’ll be Oom Karel—nice old man. You met him?” JJ asked.
“No, I only know his grandson, Dawie—Dawid. But he speaks a lot about his grandfather and his people.”
“Ja… his people,” JJ said it contemplatively, pausing. “Good, kind people, ambushed by history. We’ve done so much wrong to them. I doubt we can ever make it right.”
“Charity?” Dara ventured.
“Alas… Money doesn’t seem to help. A big issue is that their culture never developed alcohol—it’s lethal to them. What they don’t drink away, they get scammed out of—they’re pretty innocent people. Sitting ducks for every con artist or dirty politician.”
“What if they had their own land?”
“I might be wrong, but I think that party’s over. Their traditional ways are down the toilet, the game they traditionally subsisted on is gone. Poachers will see to it that it stays gone. They realistically can’t hunt for a living, and most don’t want to anymore. Subsistence doesn’t work in the modern world.” He shook his head.
“My dad says the same thing… insoluble,” Dara agreed.
“You know,” JJ nodded, “you really must meet my sister—she’s seventeen. You’re, what, eighteen?”
“No, seventeen also,” Dara said.
“You said you came by bike?”
He looked quizzical and Dara stammered the reply, “Yes… a… a small one.”
“Long way for a one-two-five-cc?”
“It’s… uhmm… a two-fifty,” Dara conceded.
“Hmmm, so, seventeen. No license then?” JJ smiled knowingly. “Glad you didn’t accept the beer or I’d be co
mplicit. Don’t let our friends in blue get you,” he winked, referring to the police uniforms. He sipped and pondered thoughtfully. “You must definitely meet my sis. She’s a beautiful lady, beautiful person. Your dad?”
“My dad’s an author, a speaker, evolutionary anthropologist; so he travels a lot,” Dara volunteered. “All over the world with lectures and book launches.”
“Interesting. What’s his name?” JJ inquired, and Dara told him. “Wow—I know his work well, I’m a fan.”
“He’s visiting soon.”
“Hell, I’d love to meet him.”
“I can organize it,” Dara assured.
JJ indicated to the waitress for the bill.
JJ paid and they bid farewell with a loose plan to meet again during the week.
The car door thunked closed and the predator barked into life. JJ u-turned and the engine boomed a blizzard of sound. By the time the car reached the roundabout with the church built on it, he’d geared up three times and back down a gear to round it; the engine whistled out of sight and the car was gone.
The oblivion of silence settled once more over the town. It left Dara feeling strangely vulnerable and foreign all over again.
He walked quietly round to his bike, donned his helmet and kicked the machine into life. He retraced his path back to the highway, following JJ’s toward Carnarvon.
At the junction, he turned right and headed north. There was no traffic through the semi-desert and the sky was its usual electric blue, the temperature as hot as always. A light crosswind toyed gently with the bike.
Dara settled into the ride. He was already past the halfway mark and approaching a highway sign that said it was twenty-five kilometres to Carnarvon. It meant there was less than twenty to his turnoff, and home in ten minutes; he began to relax.
The road sloped and passed through a cutting into the apex of a hillock. As he crested and began the descent into the next dip, there was a small gravel lot obscured by a flanking rock formation. He passed it and in horror, glimpsed the parked police patrol van from earlier facing the road. His heart leapt, and his eyes flew to the handlebar mirror, but the knobby tires and rough off-road engine made it judder so that the image danced too much for detail.
The engine was screaming, and he realized that he had the throttle cranked wide open; he dared a quick look back over his shoulder and could see the van still parked. A moment later, he looked again and the van was moving from the slip road to the highway. He was crazed now, the bike shaking and near its limited extent for speed. Another stolen look over his shoulder and the van turned onto the highway, it’s blunt back facing him; retreating to Loxton.
With a flush of relief, he returned attention ahead with only a split second to react as the road was curving away and he was on a collision path with the crash barrier. Time jammed to slow motion again. He fought the bike to match the curve, but the barrier was bending faster toward him than he could manage; closer and closer it came. He knew the rule—look where you want to go, not where you’re afraid to hit—so he forced his eyes down the road.
It was only a glancing blow. His adrenaline surge anaesthetized the impact, the barrier slamming into the bike’s steel crash bars, but it gashed his pants open at the knee. The bike swerved, he corrected and over-corrected, then it swerved in the opposite direction—the barrier was coming up again. He pumped the back brake and the bike slid, the rubber bit and he corrected again.
The road opened in front of him and he was traveling normally in a straight line as if nothing had occurred. He shut the throttle right down, back down under the speed limit.
His tongue felt like a chunk of shoe leather in his mouth and every finger seemed to be capped by a golf ball. He felt the trickle of icy sweat down his flanks and then the numbness of his knee began to fade, giving birth to sickening pain. He stole a look—it was ugly; blood and gore, open flesh gaping through the rip in his blood-soaked pants.
“Oh… God!” he growled through the numbness and pain. It would need a stitch or ten and that would take some explaining.
Another few kilometres passed, and his knee was starting to stiffen, his whole leg racked with pain. The bike felt a little different too, felt like it was floating and crabbing, not reacting properly. Perhaps it was just the nausea from the bump he’d taken?
He passed the Fraserburg turnoff. Home was quite close now. His mind was a clutter, outthinking the questions that would be asked about his knee and the bike; where it had happened and how it had happened.
He needed a story that fitted the evidence. He hadn’t fallen, as there was no evidence for that. He also needed a story that wasn’t too improbable. His mother was penetrating in her questioning and she could link the most unlikely things.
To keep the bike, he also needed a story that explained the accident was not due to his negligence and was not caused by excessive speed. He couldn’t see how he could make that one fly given the probable scrape to the steel of the crash bar.
He couldn’t come up with very many plausible alibis for a dirt road that fitted what he needed his mother to believe.
All of those problems suddenly evaporated as he rounded a bend, and directly ahead, the road was blockaded. Instinctively, he shut the throttle and stood on the brakes. A police van stood across the width of the road, a single arms-folded blue uniform in front of it.
His option was to run—to double back. On an open tar road, his machine could barely break the speed limit and the van would be on him in seconds. Besides, he had nowhere to run to. He had no option; he had to play it cool. So he rode steadily onward, slowing as any law-abiding citizen would in such an eventuality.
Then another realization detonated in Dara’s mind—the man in front of the van was huge, and had ice-blue eyes that bore ruthlessly across the closing distance between them.
Dara’s heart felt like he had an iceberg crammed in his chest; it was Kruger, JJ’s father. JJ had sold him out.
Just a putting green of distance between them now…
His mind was racing for how to react. He slowed to a halt and the hulk walked slowly forward, nodding curtly with recognition.
“You a veeeery long way from home,” the cavernous drone and throaty rumble of his heavily accented voice was unmistakable.
“A…. a bit”, Dara stammered. It was a weak statement, but he was surprised any sound left his mouth at all. His mirrored visor was still firmly down. He knew that he should tip it up but he was desperate to keep any last pretence at anonymity as long as he could. Realistically, his accent had already identified him and it was a pointless and silly hope.
The policeman walked slowly around behind him, seeming to take forever to reappear. Dara had both feet on the ground and was watching him intently in the rear-view mirrors. The engine pinged from heat and smelled of oil from the strain of the ride and the bump it had taken.
“You ran out of talent,” Kruger observed dryly, looking at the gash in Dara’s knee. “Going to need some needle work.”
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Dara tried to sound nonchalant, but with his leg now extended, his foot on the floor, the freshly wind-dried scab had cracked, and he could feel the trickle of new blood running down his calf, tickling into his boot. His nausea doubled.
“You’d better get it seen to.” The cop’s words sounded empathetic, yet his tone didn’t. “There’s an accident up ahead though so you’ll have to cut through the farm lands.” Constable Kruger indicated the dirt road that intersected where the van was parked. “That’ll bring you out on the R63 highway. It’ll get you into town and you can backtrack to your compound.”
Dara was lightheaded with shock, stunned that he was being released.
He thanked Kruger enthusiastically and pulled away, missing then clashing his gear change. The dirt road was loose and rutted, punishing his knee.
He rode on carefully, resisting the urge to run again. He felt exhausted from an afternoon full of so many sudden and unexpected events. There was exhilara
tion too. The recent surge of adrenaline with the policeman had dulled the developing ache in his knee and cleared his head.
“Just nurse the bike home,” he spoke aloud inside the helmet. He reminded himself of his dad’s watchwords when under pressure, “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”
He was very keen to be home fast.
His mind was now filled with concern for what the news of an accident—one sufficient to shut down the highway—might mean.
His mother jumped first to mind. He pushed that fear aside, as she worked in a different direction and only returned toward sunset. But the demons of worry that it could be her crept back and he subdued the thought again, checking himself when the urgency of that worry had opened the throttle a bit.
And what about JJ… Kruger’s son? Had JJ betrayed him? It seemed unlikely and pointless if Kruger had just let him go.
Had JJ crashed? he wondered. JJ had taken off like he had a coal on his seat. But the father would hardly be out on the highway directing traffic if his son was in the accident.
Perhaps then Kruger hadn’t realized or been told it was his son? That wasn’t possible either; JJ’s car was hardly inconspicuous.
Dara’s mind was a maze of escaped monkeys, thoughts bolting in every direction when a new one ran through the frame and began to gnaw at him. His own accent; the cop definitely knew who he was and therefore knew his age and that he had no license… and… and… and so many angles. Too many surprises for one day. His mind was running amuck.
The road inclined ahead and bore to the right. As he crested over the curve, he looked back and could see the distant intersection with the tar road he’d just left. Oddly, the road was empty and clear; no police van stood where he’d just been diverted.
He looked again, and again, to make sure he was seeing it properly and the geometry of the roads was right. He wasn’t wrong—the intersection was vacant and open.
A Trojan Affair Page 11
