Like it Matters

by David Cornwell

  I got his phone.

  He had one new message, and I sort of knew it’d be from her

  But I couldn’t look right then—

  I just turned the phone off and put it in my pocket, made sure I still had the pouch, got the bags sitting better across my shoulders and then headed for the woods.

  I had one last look back at the scene.

  As if on cue, the bakkie let out a long groan and the headlights went out.

  The moon flared above me.

  That hot, bright colour.

  A gas ring turned on full.

  FALLOUT

  AT FIRST, I FELT SO WEIGHTED DOWN I could barely move forward.

  I kept bumping into trees and then staggering badly, and every cricket, every owl—every single thing—sounded like sirens on the wind.

  I got Dewald’s pouch out of my pocket and I found the pipe and put the lighter under the bowl and I got a bit of smoke out of it.

  Then I went on pretty much like before, except it felt quicker

  And I was still scared, but it was much, much better.

  I started climbing after I left the woods. It was pretty steep and the slope was covered with low scrub that rustled and snapped under my shoes. The drugs made it so easy, though—the hill blew past me like a wind.

  I walked for hours—I veered past a township, crossed a road, then went through a huge basin of veld and up a steep hill—and the whole time, all I could think about was her.

  What’d she know?

  Were she and Dewald fucking trying to kill you, Ed?

  Jesus.

  To try and get that thought out of my mind, I made myself remember one of the better days we’d had. We’d gone out for some things and we were in the Checkers and she found a dress on a sale rack near the aisles

  This yellow polyester thing with blue flowers on it

  And she’d changed into it when we got home and it was a sunny day and the thing was sticking to her skin in no time, I could see every curve—

  And then unbuttoning that dress

  Watching it peel off her skin, down past her belly button

  There was a low hem at the waistline and for the longest time, before I reached in and touched her, I was just staring, in love with the way her skin fitted the bone down there, those graceful lines that drew in from the top of her hips, shading the paler skin, turning to folds right on the inside of her thighs—

  But then I remembered that was also the day I asked her why she never told me she loved me.

  She’d said, “You know when you decide on a thing? And then even when you forget why you decided it—or even if you remember why, and if it seems dumb, it doesn’t matter—that’s still your thing? I’ve had tons of those in my life and I’ve dropped all of them except this one. Sorry, Ed. It’s just my thing.”

  And that got me thinking about that other day, the bad one—maybe the worst

  That day when she lied to me about snorting with Dewald in the room.

  Remember how natural it was, Ed.

  Like a fucking bird flies, she lied to you

  And so soon, thanks to her, I was in one of those moods where I was ready to believe the absolute worst about myself, and while I walked on, this disgust with myself just grew and grew

  Until finally I got a thought that struck me as something real and true—some salvage drawn up from the depths.

  You’ve got it coming, Ed.

  Whatever it is, you deserve it.

  What the fuck’re you doing stealing drugs—again?

  You’re like fucking Lot’s wife

  And I started thinking about her—that poor woman, she didn’t even get her own name, with her weakness that would be tragic if her punishment weren’t so swift and abject and cruel. Her home, her city, the stuff that all her thoughts and dreams are made of are burning behind her—she can feel the heat of a supernatural fire on her back—and she knows she mustn’t look behind her, she knows she mustn’t, she doesn’t even want to, she has these thoughts in her mind

  At the very second that other loyalty, just simply to the life she’d had, to what she knew and all she really knew to love

  Breaks the cord of her will, and she turns around, and from there the only way to save her is to imagine that before god turns her to salt she gets a glimpse of the blaze and it’s so big and beautiful it’s worth it.

  So, is Charlotte worth it, Ed?

  Is she really worth it?

  Eventually—near the bottom of a long, punishing slope—I started winding my way through thin white trees that caught at the bags on my back, and then I found the road again. I was too tired to stand still, I had to keep stirring the pain in my joints and muscles, so I just went on along the tar, sticking to the far side of the road because it had the thickest trees and I figured I could duck away if I heard any cars coming.

  By that point I was so locked inside my pain, my thoughts so clouded by it, that I didn’t even notice the road coming to an end—

  I sort of became conscious again—and there was a thin, cold wind blowing from a bald view of the sea, and the sky was like gunmetal, and headlights going both ways down a wide road spined with cat’s eyes. And like an angel had stuck it in the ground, right in front of me, an old metal sign that said STASIE .

  I wished I had a mirror. I could see my clothes were filthy, but I wanted to check my face, my hair, see how my eyes were doing—I guess to get a perspective on how obvious a choice it’d be to search me, if you were a cop and you saw me down at the train station.

  Then I laughed, thinking, How about the blood on your shoes and the two bags on your back?

  I checked my pockets. At first I thought I had nothing but then I found a crumpled note at the bottom of one of them. Fifty bucks. I held it out in my left hand and even though I was walking towards the station, whenever I saw a truck coming at me, I shook the money and tried to get them to stop but no one did.

  There was just one taxi that came past but it was full and I didn’t mind that, actually. I was convinced the gaartjie was looking at me funny—like he knew.

  Before long I was standing across the road from the station. I could see the lights were on inside and I could hear the tracks were humming.

  I thought: The shoes have to go.

  I thought: Anyway, you’re probably better off looking like a permanent bum than just someone who had a night that went to the devil.

  I was standing in some soft ground, not quite mud, and I put the bags down and then took off my shoes and socks and threw them away into the bushes. I dug my feet into the cold ground and stamped, and wiped dirt across the topsides of my feet as well, up to my ankles—till it looked like I hadn’t been wearing any shoes in the first place. I took off my jacket and that went the same way as the shoes. My T-shirt was dirty enough. I didn’t need to fake anything there.

  The bags went back onto my shoulders, the straps biting into the same grooves, and I crossed the road and went into the ticket office.

  There was no one in there but it was full of bright light and it was unquiet. There was the hum of the tracks and then a dull buzz which might’ve been the bulbs in the ceiling or it might’ve just been something going on with me, I couldn’t tell.

  I could see there was a train out there on the platform, with lit carriages, open doors, some shadows in the windows—it looked ready to go.

  I had to run—and the doors were closing and then they were closing on me

  But I pushed myself through and fell into the carriage just as the train lurched forward.

  I stumbled, then righted myself, then collapsed with the bags onto a long seat by one of the windows in an empty section of the carriage. I felt so much tension spread out of my back and neck and shoulders, my calves and my ankles and my bare feet, I could’ve fucking cried again.

  I lay there on the bags and stared out the window at the gold and grey sun and I wondered where I’d get off the train, sort of wishing I never had to. And it wasn’t even that I decide
d to stay on the train when we pulled into Muizenberg—it was more like I just didn’t do anything. I couldn’t anymore. And it passed, the lights fading outside the window, dark shapes again and the low sun …

  It was closer to town—Plumstead or Wynberg—when the church stuff started.

  A blind old lady with eyes as bright and cloudy as stardust, and a pregnant woman with a tight belly and thin arms holding the blind woman’s hand, leading her—the two of them singing in a ragged harmony and heavy Xhosa accents:

  Jesus is the way

  To my father’s house

  To my father’s house

  They passed me on their way down the carriage, I looked in the plastic cup the pregnant woman was carrying and it was just brown coins in there

  And I think I’d passed again into some kind of bad compromise between buzzed and sober, where I wasn’t being rational and I wasn’t being stoic, either.

  Who knows what I was trying to buy. Luck? Grace? And who knows who I was trying to buy it from, but I put the fifty rand in the cup and straight away felt like an idiot for doing something so out of the ordinary at a time like that. I felt eyes on me. I got so edgy I had to bite down on my hand.

  The train stopped again and along with all the people, I saw two cops get in at the far end of the carriage and sit down.

  I knew they were coming for me.

  I knew when the women got down to their end of the train they’d see the fifty bucks in the cup and that’d be it, they’d swoop in—

  And I stood and put the bags on my back and shuffled my way to the doors, making sure there were people between me and the cops. I stood there and waited, feeling my heart beat in my throat.

  The train stopped and I put my hands on the doors and there was that excruciating wait before the doors hissed, then I pulled and they released me and lots of people were leaving the train and they were also moving fast, like they had other trains or taxis to catch, and I just moved with them and tried to stay part of the crowd.

  But even moving with that panic and purpose, with my head down and all my energy focused on keeping the bags tight around my body—I cut my feet badly down on the platform, and I didn’t notice that till later—

  I had this other feeling in me.

  I knew this place.

  I was halfway up some stairs but I stopped and looked around for something to tell me where I was. Beyond the station I saw container ships, shining in patches of rust and silver, and brick buildings wearing skins of soot, and then people down on the platform hawking chips and soccer shirts and a whole row of people sleeping against a wall that got the morning sun …

  I was back in Salt River.

  And I hadn’t even tried to do it.

  I WAS SITTING ON THE EDGE OF THE BED—or one of the beds, you got two in a room for a hundred and twenty bucks at the Daybreaker Hotel—

  Sitting there with my head in my hands and my hands bunched in my hair, staring across a thin strip of floor at the other bed, piled high with all the stuff.

  I looked at it, the narrow iron frame with its chain and deadbolt in the mottled floor, the grey sheets, those black packets wrapped in duct tape, that fucking gun lying on top of them, more money than I’d ever seen in one place before in my life—

  And all I could think was, So what the fuck do you do now?

  With all of this?

  The sun was getting up and it shone through holes in the curtains in long, pale streaks. I looked at the bed again and there, lying in amongst the packets, was Dewald’s phone. Still off.

  Next to the door there was a chair that was also chain-bolted to the floor. I suppose you could sit on it, but I could tell from the scars on the chair, and the scars on the door, and the marks on the floor that people usually used it as a lock. I’d done the same thing as soon as I got inside.

  I stood up and went to check that the chair was still wedged in tight under the door handle. The floor sucked at my feet and I noticed some blood on the tiles and I hoped it was just from me, from the cuts I’d got down at the station.

  On my way back to the bed I picked up Dewald’s phone.

  I sat with it in my hand for a long time before I turned it on, sort of hoping it’d ask for a PIN code and then I wouldn’t actually be able to do anything with it. It turned straight on though, with some music and a picture of hands coming together, then a picture of an aerial searching for signal.

  I closed my eyes and waited. It wasn’t long before the thing started beeping, the same little tune, over and over again.

  I forced my eyes open and looked at the screen. It said there were five new messages.

  The first three were about missed calls. I checked, and they were all from the same number—some 021 number I didn’t recognise.

  Then there was a message from an unsaved number that said:

  Leaving now

  And then another one, same number, that said:

  5 mins

  But the last one was from her. Her name glowing under the cursor. I winced and clicked it open and it said:

  Dewald, what’s going on? Is it over???

  And even though that was probably better than I was expecting, still, seeing it made the walls come down a bit.

  What if she knew?

  What if she knew, Ed?

  And that thought, suddenly, seemed so nastily full of the world that it had the power to kill all miracles. My jaw locked and I felt spit rush up into the back of my mouth—

  But, before the nausea had even had a chance to peak—

  I nearly screamed I got such a fright, the phone started buzzing in my hand and flashing, and then the ringtone kicked in.

  I saw there was a thing on the screen saying SILENCE and so I pushed the button underneath that, and then the phone was just flashing in my hand.

  I was pretty sure it was the same 021 number that had tried to call the night before.

  The air around me seemed to grow clear, all the colours sharpening. Like it was going to be my last ever breath, I breathed, and then pushed the green phone.

  I didn’t say anything, I just listened.

  I thought I might’ve been hearing street noises on the other side of the call.

  I stayed quiet, not even breathing—

  And then finally her voice: “Dewald? Dewald, it’s me, ’s jy daar?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Hello? Dewald, please,” she said.

  I was scared that if I spoke to her, she’d tell me lies and I’d believe them—

  And I’d already fucking swallowed the hook, I didn’t want it to go in any deeper—

  “Please?” she said

  But I just hung up.

  Then I quickly opened a new message and I typed out:

  This Friday night. At the beach by the super tubes

  And I sent it.

  I threw the phone across the room and it hit the wall and smashed into three pieces.

  The sun was way up. It fell heavily on the curtains and oozed out the bottom. It lay in the dust on the dirty floor, banded by grime and breathing when the draught moved the curtains.

  Monday morning.

  Lying there in the corner like a coiled snake.

  CLOCK TICKING

  I NEEDED THINGS.

  Food, painkillers, something to read, water—litres of water.

  And a pen and a notebook so I could start my planning for Friday night.

  I mostly slept through Monday though, and when I was awake—a sweaty stretch around noon, then a blue hour when the streetlights came on—I felt more unglued than I could ever remember feeling, and actually just too terrified to step outside the room. The bars on the window made shadows on the curtains and I fell asleep with cool sweat dripping down my eyelids, worried that any second now the cops were going to come and kick in my door, and convinced I’d never be able to sleep again until I went under. And thank god I went deep down, into blackness.

  Tuesday started bright and warm.

  My mouth
was so dry my tongue felt cracked. I peeled my feet off the sheets, some skin stayed behind and then they were bleeding again. I put them on the floor and sat with my head hanging between my knees.

  A whole-body hangover—that poisoned feeling right up and down. I felt like if I didn’t get water right away I might never be able to swallow again, and I had visions of sweating, green-capped doctors having to take a hacksaw to my feet if I didn’t purge them of Salt River Station as soon as possible.

  I shuffled over to the other bed. I gathered up all the little black-plastic bricks of cash and I packed them into the smaller bag. Then I peeled off a thick stack of hundreds from the big roll of cash and put the rest of it in the bag as well, and I zipped it all up. Then I packed that whole bag into the other one and threw in the gun and the two sacks of drugs and I pushed the superbag under the bed. I put the two thousand or so I’d taken from the roll into my pocket. I moved the chair out from under the door handle and stood at the door for a while.

  I worried about leaving the bags there.

  But I worried more about having them with me on the street again.

  Outside, I moved slowly because of my feet, with my eyes down to watch for broken glass. I didn’t look up at all, but still, I felt like people were looking at me, even the ones in cars, and the whole time I was convinced that any second a police van was going to pull up alongside me.

  I was lucky I washed up in Salt River, where when you’re close to Main Road you basically can’t spit without hitting some kind of cheap store. I saw an Asia Mart across the road, a big one. Through the window I could see clothes and food and stationery, plus the place looked pretty empty. I didn’t want to go into a busy place smelling like sweat and death.

  Inside the tiles were so clean and smooth I knew my feet were going to streak them. I grabbed a basket and tried to ignore it, but when I got to the other side of the store, I looked round to check, and already there was a girl who’d been sent over with a bucket and a mop. I went straight to the clothes. I ripped the tag off a pair of black socks with cartoon pandas on them and I put the tag in the basket and the socks on my feet.