Like it Matters

by David Cornwell

  “No, fuck off,” I said. “This is ridiculous.”

  “This is safe,” he said.

  He glared at me.

  I put the headlamp on and tried to find the button. I shifted so my left hip was flat on my seat, then I opened the door and stuck my head into the gap. Exactly like if we’d been driving home and I needed to throw up.

  As we rolled forward, I could see a bit of the front tyre and then the shoulder in the near distance. But we had to go so slowly, and it was cold with the air blowing in my face, and even though at least I wasn’t choking on any dust, my eyes were fucking suffering, and because I’d used a razor to neaten my beard up a bit before we left, my throat and my cheeks felt on fire. After what seemed like ages, just saying things like Slow down and Keep right and There’s a bend now, I said, “How much further do we have to go?”

  “Like this? About twenty kays.”

  “Fuck sakes. Just drive a bit faster or something, I’ll tell you when to slow down.”

  That was just as awful, and to try to distract myself I thought about saying goodbye to Charlotte when we’d left the house. She was crying—I nearly was, too—and at the time I just thought, same as me, it must’ve been nerves. That soul-dread of having so much invested in one thing.

  But I was definitely at the end of my buzz—you know when your thoughts just hitch onto your feelings, and you can’t stop them?—and all of a sudden I got a grim view of those tears, and it almost sank me.

  Does she know, Ed?

  That when you get home—she’s gone?

  Is that it?

  Has she made her plans already?

  Every bad thought you could think of—I started crying at some point—and I didn’t say a thing to Dewald for ten minutes, at least.

  When I knew my voice wouldn’t crack, I called out, “How’re we looking? Are we close?”

  “Amper, amper,” Dewald said

  But it was still ages till he stopped the car and announced, “Vyf en dertig. Hier’s ons. Kom binne.”

  I took off my seat belt, found the water and opened my door, filled my hands and rinsed my face. “What’s the time?” I said.

  “Just after eleven.”

  “No ways.”

  “Nee, regtig.”

  “Even with all that stealth shit? Why’re we so early?”

  “Nee, man, dis goed. It gives us time to get ready.”

  He took off his seat belt and reached into the back seat and started digging around in his backpack.

  First came the little pouch he kept his pipe in. Then a small bag filled with powder. He said, “Bra, if you going to stare, gooi that headlamp on there, please.”

  He filled the pipe and then closed the bag.

  “Buite,” he said, and opened his door.

  There was no wind where we’d stopped and the night was quite warm. The moon was all alone in the sky between the trees, almost bright enough to be putting out heat. I was wearing all my black clothes, and the jacket I had on was too heavy so I chucked it on the bonnet. It was very quiet out there, just frogs and insect noises.

  I heard Dewald’s lighter flaring and then the smell of the pipe started curdling the air. I felt like I was smelling it in my throat.

  Dewald let the smoke out quickly, but it hit him hard. Either that or he was just being theatrical about it. As soon as he’d exhaled he jumped up and down, then spun around on the spot, then kind of got down on one knee and offered me the pipe.

  “Moer. Dis ’n Concoction,” he said.

  I took a short pull, nothing special—

  But when I swallowed the smoke my stomach just erupted, and I heaved and threw up thick bile.

  My throat felt seared and my nose was completely fugged up, my eyes watered like they were trying to put a fire out, my hands shook, I felt like I’d been needing to piss for days

  But then beyond the pain, almost behind it, I sensed the night coming into view again—

  That deliverance you get maybe every fifty times you get high, every hundred—

  That glorious feeling of being born again into a different place, a new world where, just for a second, you’re not you and you never ever have been.

  My skin prickled. I ripped off my T-shirt and I said, “Are these moonbeams also making you hot? Fuck, it’s like silver sun.”

  Dewald checked his watch.

  “Ja,” he said. “Dis tyd.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Are you calm, Ed?”

  “I was—what the fuck’s going on?”

  He put his hands on my shoulders and said, “Bly kalm, bra. I’m about to tell you. It’s not a big thing.”

  “Just say then, please.”

  “You don’t want another little”—he mimed like he was hitting his pipe—“first?”

  “Fuck, no man, come on. Just tell me.”

  “Oraait, chill. Jissus.” He took a deep breath. “You know the guy I told you we meeting? The Congolese guy who works for the Russians in Sea Point? We not meeting him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We meeting a guy I know,” he said.

  But I knew that wasn’t everything.

  Before he spoke again—it was like when you see something delicate’s about to fall and break, and you know you don’t have time to catch it—I felt my ribs turn to ice

  And he was smiling

  “And we not going to buy a fucking thing,” he said.

  I DON’T REMEMBER SITTING DOWN, or falling, or whatever it was—

  But there I was, sitting in the road and it felt like I was swallowing blood.

  Dewald sat down next to me and started rubbing my back—I think he was helping me get my breath. “What’s even better than buying so much tik for eighty K, bra? Hey? Not paying for it.”

  I had one thing on my mind.

  “Does Charlotte know? Actually don’t tell me. No, tell me.”

  Dewald said, “Think of the money, bra.”

  “Fuck man, we’re buying ten kilos of the easiest drug to sell in the world. You know how much we’ll make, it’s enough. It’s enough, man. Forget the fucking robbery part.”

  “However much it is plus the money on the back seat is more. Onthou bra, that’s not your cash in the backpack there.”

  “A bit of it is.”

  “Ja, okay, a bit. In elk geval, jy ken nie vir Derek nie,” he said.

  And then Dewald launched into this whole, long thing about Dingy Derek—that’s what he kept calling him—and how he knew him from school, but then he didn’t see him for years, and then all of a sudden he runs into him in Kalk Bay, and it turns out Derek grew up to be a meth cook. Apparently Dewald gave him some stuff—Derek was itchy because he’d fucked up his batch—and now he was going to sell a shitload of the new batch to us as a kind of a thank you.

  Except here we were planning to rob him.

  I tried to tell him, “Dewald, I don’t know about this—”

  But he just said, “I’m going back to the car. We’ll talk there.”

  And I really thought that’s what I’d do—I’d lie there on the tar just a bit longer, try get myself feeling brave, then go to the car and fucking make him see we couldn’t do this

  But when I climbed in, Dewald was sitting there with guns and fucking latex gloves.

  Everything started whorling, I started seeing black spots—I closed my eyes and sucked my teeth. I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs.

  It took a long time but I managed to say, “No. No guns.”

  “Bra, how the fuck else you rob somebody? You want us to get physical? Hier,” he said. “Kom nou. Just hold the thing, get used to it. We only got half ’n hour.”

  “I’m not touching that thing. I’ve seen this movie, Dewald. Someone dies, the rest of them go to jail. Every time. Fuck this,” I said.

  I opened my door, but then he grabbed my arm with a grip like a hunting trap. “Eddetjie. You know this kind of thing happens, bra. All the time. What’s he going to do? Call th
e cops? Call his people? I checked, he got no people.”

  I started to say something but the sound of Dewald’s phone ringing drowned it out.

  He kept his grip on my arm. He took a deep breath and brought the phone up to his ear, but before he answered the call he sat forward and looked at himself in the rear-view mirror. He kept looking in the mirror while he spoke on the phone. He said, “Hey … Ja … Ja … Cool,” and that was it.

  He let his breath out. He said, “Okay. Dis too late now, Eddetjie. He’s on his way. He’s coming, and you better believe he’ll have a gun.”

  For the next ten minutes, I tried to reason with him by talking through a couple of different scenarios where some of the very vivid fears I had played out. Like what if Derek knew a dodgy cop? Cooks normally do. Or what if he ended up shooting Dewald first? Then I’m standing there with my fucking finger on the trigger?

  It wasn’t any use, though, he was saying anything just to shut me up.

  I was quiet for a while, and I tried to remind myself that my game was longer than his. I had beautiful plans for the money that was going to come out the other side of this thing …

  Tonight’s just a river—

  A fucking dark river you’ve got to cross

  And she’s there—she’s there on the bank, Ed …

  Eventually, he pretty much forced the gloves onto my hands and then he picked up one of the guns, a black one with a clip, some kid at school used to have a bb gun that looked similar.

  He shoved it into my palm.

  It was so heavy my other hand had to help catch it.

  He said, “Nou luister. That baby is ready to go. D’you know what ready to go means?”

  “Okay, I’m going to say one more thing,” I told him. “You know in cowboy movies, Dewald, how there’s always one scene where an old dude will tune a guy like, Don’t bring a gun if you can’t go all the way with it, sonny? Something like that? Well I can’t go all the way with this. I know I can’t.”

  He said, “Bra, wait till you got one pointed at you. You’ll empty the clip—”

  And then a message came through on his phone.

  He said, “Fok. Okay.”

  “What? Is it Charlotte?”

  We’d bought her a phone earlier that day in case of emergencies. I suddenly wanted to call her very badly

  But then Dewald put his hand on my shoulder.

  He left his gun in his lap and he reached his other hand over and put it on my face. He leaned forward. It was almost like he was going to kiss me.

  “We got five minutes,” he said. “You ready, Ed?”

  He was staring at me. He had both his hands on my face, and with our eyes locked like that, I could tell, I could see he wasn’t ready yet, either.

  Everything felt like it was about to crack right through the middle

  And from some dank recess of my being, this valorous thing crawled up and made a home in my stomach

  And I said, “Okay, Dewald. Just tell me, okay? Look at me, look at my eyes. I’m asking you just to tell me, please. I know you from Grahamstown, right? That house with the cow skull? You were calling yourself TJ.”

  He’d looked almost sick when I started talking, but by the end he was just smiling.

  He said, “Ed, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I kept staring at him, and inside I was thinking, Come on, just tell me

  And what I realised right then—it was wonderful—I real- ised she had made me scared to die.

  Dewald moved his hands off my cheeks and put them over my eyes. He started speaking to himself, this soft, breathy whispering sound. Wind blowing in long grass.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Dewald, are you praying?”

  “THERE, ED, GO THERE,” HE SAID

  And he pushed me in the back, over to the other side of the road.

  “Then when he gets out the car, we chat a bit. Then you come out behind him with your gun. I’m only going to pull mine when he’s looking at you.”

  There was a high, whining sound in my ears and I couldn’t get rid of it.

  I willed myself to keep thinking about Charlotte, that feeling—seeing her that morning in April when I was so close to letting go.

  She saved you once, Ed, let her do it again.

  From where I knelt in the cold earth, very faintly, I could see headlights coming down the road. Then I could hear a wheezy engine, tyres on the tar, then dust was getting in the headlights, sweeping through the trees—

  I looked the other way, and from my low angle I could see about half of Dewald, standing there in the road with one arm waving and the other shielding his eyes. The yellow light washed over him and then stopped moving. The bakkie was right above me, idling like a tractor. I could almost touch it. I smelled diesel and I could see fumes curling in the brake lights.

  Now?

  When?

  If he dealt drugs, why’d Derek drive such a shit car?

  The bakkie coughed and rattled like it was going to shake some parts loose, that’s all I could hear. I moved out from behind the trees on all fours, and I crouched down on the bank with my eyes about level with the tar. I could see Dewald, he stood in silhouette just to the right of the headlights, the rucksack at his feet. Behind him, the stripes on his car were glowing. The door opened and Derek got out of the bakkie

  And that was the moment the whole thing took another fucking turn.

  Ja, he was tall. He was probably one of the tallest people I’d ever seen, but—and it sounds weird—that wasn’t really what you noticed about him. I mean the actual tallness.

  What you saw, really—all you could see—was how it wracked him. He was bent and hunched and crooked, he stood with his chin almost resting on his chest, he had wild hair and he was wearing a long, loose coat. He looked like a fucking scarecrow, heartlessly assembled and roughly stitched, made absolutely without care.

  He shuffled over towards Dewald with his arms out, these lopsided, kinked things like tree branches—I think he was trying to hug him—but Dewald pushed him away

  And just when I needed to move out, I felt myself getting squeamish

  And I’m not sure why I did it—

  I was panicking—

  But I looked down at the gun and I saw it was exactly like one of those BBS, it had a button on the side of the stock that you pushed, and I pulled out the clip

  And the fucking thing was empty.

  I gasped, loudly, and then something Dewald said earlier resounded from a corner of my mind. Bra, wait till you got one pointed at you. You’ll empty the clip.

  A great white light, like a neon lotus flower, started blossoming between my eyes

  And I stood up and I reeled into the road

  And when I blinked away all that brightness, I saw Dewald had his gun out and he was pointing it at Derek. Derek was close to the bakkie—the engine was still idling—and he stood there with a nest of elbows and hands hanging above his head, and a piss stain spreading across his jeans.

  And then it all happened so fast.

  I heard the shot—it was flat and clipped and hollow, it was nothing like I would’ve imagined—and from where I was standing, as he ducked into the bakkie, I saw Derek’s shoulder jerk and spasm like if you yanked a string on a puppet, and a dark spout flew up into the moonlight. He fell into the bakkie, and then there was another shot that went in through the windshield. The bakkie was screeching and then it leapt forward. There was another shot through the windshield and I saw that one explode Derek’s head, his chest fell forward onto the hooter, and that must’ve been the last thing Dewald heard before the bakkie smashed into him

  And he fell back, all the way, and bumped against his car and landed face down on the road. The hooter was still going like a battle cry, and the bakkie wasn’t stopping—Dewald tried to crawl under his car but I heard the wheel go over him and then the bakkie crashed into the car and that headless thing fell out the open door and bounced on the road. The engine stalled and then the
re was almost nothing, just a quiet, ragged, steaming sound coming from the bakkie. Something like dying breaths.

  I knew I couldn’t be out there very long, but I had to just sit down on the tar for a while. With my back turned on everything. It didn’t feel like I was breathing, more like I had a giant moth beating around in my stomach.

  There were always going to be two bodies, Ed.

  You’re lucky.

  You’re lucky you’re around to see them.

  I hauled myself up and I turned slowly to my left, towards Dewald’s car. There he was still, pinned under the wheel of the bakkie.

  Spread out.

  Definitely dead.

  I went round to the uncrushed side and I opened the door. I grabbed Dewald’s pouch off the driver’s seat and put it in my pocket. The bakkie’s headlights were still shining into the car and I caught sight of myself in one of the windows—and god, I could’ve done without that.

  I saw the bandana lying under the passenger seat and I picked it up and wiped down everything I might’ve touched before I put the gloves on, the outside of the car as well, even the smashed-up bonnet. When that was all done, I turned and faced the road.

  The body on the tar was lying in a massive pool of blood. A wide, thick pool, shining darkly under the moon.

  I saw the rucksack lying behind the bakkie and I forced myself over there. The bag had tyre marks on it, but it was okay, it was still closed and everything, and I lifted it and put it on my back.

  I went to the bakkie, round to the passenger side, and I pulled open the door. I heard blood flow out the cab and splash onto my shoes—I felt that warmth on my shoes—but I still grabbed the bag that was lying under the seat and then I slammed the door.

  Bending over, I felt the gun dig into my gut and I took it out my jeans and put it away in the bag with the drugs.

  I knew I needed to get moving, I knew I had to go, but one thing was still bothering me.

  I still felt like I was dreading something, some final revelation.

  Two guns for two bodies.

  I got that. A deal gone bad.

  But then, surely, two cars as well?

  So how was he going to get home?

  I went back to the wreck and I bent down under the wheel and stuck my hand into Dewald’s pocket.