Dust Devils

by Roger Smith

  "Don't worry. You can stay with me. My family, I mean. We've got a house in KwaMashu." He looked at her. "You know KwaMashu?"

  "I've heard of it." She'd seen pictures of the township sprawling over low green hills, small houses and shacks packed close together.

  "You'll have to share a room with my sisters. One is about your age and the other is still at junior school."

  "Thank you," she said. "You are very kind."

  "Oh, you'll earn your keep, don't worry. My mother does hairdressing from the house. Maybe you can help her." Smiling at Sunday. Then looking at the rearview, smile fading.

  Sunday glanced over her shoulder. The taxi was close behind them but not overtaking. Unusual for these drivers, who were impatient enough to pass slow-moving traffic on the suicidal curves. Sunday turned, about to ask Sipho a question, when they rounded a sharp bend and she saw a car parked sideways across the road. A big red car. Induna Mazibuko's car.

  Sipho braked. The taxi behind stopped, boxing them in. The small car stalled and there was a moment of silence that went on forever. Sunday could hear Sipho's keychain scraping against the steering column. Heard his breath. Swore she could hear her heart stop and then start again, pumping blood through her veins.

  Then behind her the hard rattle of the minibus taxi's door sliding open. The old dog stepped down from the high red car and she heard his shoes crunch on the gravel as he walked to her door and opened it. "Get out."

  Sunday shrank from Inja. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from the car. She fell to the sand, the skin of her knees tearing.

  "Leave her!" Sipho shouted, standing. Four men from the taxi crowded him and one of them took him by the throat and stuck a gun to his head.

  Sunday knelt, the gray shoes of the old man before her on the dirt road, sun kicking off the brass buckles. "Bring that rubbish here," he said.

  The men dragged Sipho around the car and forced him to his knees beside Sunday. Inja had a gun in his hand, silver against his dark skin. He put the barrel to Sipho's head. The boy was expressionless, staring straight ahead.

  "Has he fucked you?" Inja asked Sunday. "Broken you? Put his filth in your blood?"

  She looked up at the old dog, a black shape against the red sky. "He has not touched me."

  Inja pushed the gun hard against Sipho's temple, almost shoving him off balance. "Be truthful now, girl. Or I will shoot him."

  "I swear to God. I am speaking the truth."

  "And to where were you going? With him?"

  "To Durban."

  "And what about our wedding?" She said nothing. "You are a disrespectful girl." He cleared his throat, spat on the sand. "Or have you fallen under a bad influence?"

  "It was my idea," she said. "Is this true, AIDS man?" Inja asked, smacking Sipho lightly with the gun barrel. Sipho said nothing.

  Sunday tried to catch Sipho's eye. To find a way to show him how sorry she was. But he stared out over the valley at the sinking sun.

  An explosion. Sunday felt a wetness on the bare skin of her arm. Something hot on her cheek. She saw the boy topple forward, his face turned toward her, blood bubbling from his mouth. Light fading from his eyes. Another shot and his body jerked and a little river of blood flowed from under him, soaking into the parched sand of the road.

  Sunday tried to scream but she could find no voice.

  Two men grabbed and lifted her, carrying her toward the taxi. Threw her in the rear and slammed the door. As the taxi reversed and turned, she saw Inja and the other men standing over Sipho's body. Inja said something, laughed, and kicked the dead boy with one of those ugly gray shoes. Then the taxi took the bend and Sunday could see no more.

  Inja sat on the cement porch of his house, watching as a blanket of darkness was thrown over the valley. Usually the end of the day was a time of pride and reflection for him. When he would look down on the hard hills and the dry red earth from which he had sprung – a skinny runt, a bastard, unwanted and scorned, growing up as an illiterate herdsman – and congratulate himself on what he had become. An induna, with a fleet of taxis, fertile fields of Durban Poison, and two surviving wives with mightily dimpled thighs, each with her own hut here in his kraal. The father of a brood of children so numerous he had lost count.

  But tonight he felt hollow and dissatisfied. His appetite was gone again, the plate of steak, tripe and maize meal all but untouched on the floor beside his chair. Even his brandy and Coke tasted sour as goat's piss.

  He belched, rubbed at his stomach. Listened to the sounds of the night. The thin wail of one of his children out in the gloom. A man's laugh, quickly stifled: one of the guards patrolling the perimeter of the compound. Inja felt more than heard the thrum of the generator that powered his house, the focal point of the kraal, where he slept alone. His wives lived in huts lit by candlelight and cooked over open fires, in the way of their ancestors.

  He threw back his drink. "Woman!" he bellowed.

  The duty wife for the night, who crouched on the floor inside his house, waiting to serve him, hurried out and knelt before Inja. Not looking him in the eye. Wearing a red and black beaded hat, her heavy body wrapped in a plaid blanket despite the heat.

  "More brandy. And take this swill to the pigs." He shoved the plate of uneaten food toward her with his shoe. She lifted his plate and glass and backed away from him, bowing, until she disappeared into the house.

  His cell phone sang in his pocket, loud as a cicada. High enough up in the hills here, to get a signal. He removed the phone and saw the caller ID. The moment he had dreaded.

  "Yes?"

  "Call back." The line went dead.

  Inja walked into the living room, dominated by a giant TV that flickered, mute, and a bulky brown leather sofa and chair set, still swathed in the transparent plastic it was shipped in. He dug into the drawer beneath the TV and found another cell phone, loaded with an anonymous pay-as-you-go card. He dialed the number he had memorized.

  The voice said, "Hold on."

  Shuffling and muttering and then another voice. One used to issuing commands. "Tell me it is done."

  For a moment Inja considered lying. Knew it would be suicidal. "They have crossed the border. To the north."

  "Jesus. I don't like this loose end."

  "Nkosi, there is no cause for concern." Nkosi. Chief. Also the name of God.

  "I'm trusting you on this. If you're wrong, there will be consequences."

  "I understand." He cleared his throat, his tone more wheedling. "Nkosi, as you know I am to marry in two days' time. Since you will be here, in Bhambatha's Rock, it would be the greatest honor if you would grace us with your presence."

  Inja shut up when he realized the phone was dead in his hand. He let the instrument droop to his side and stood staring blankly at the flickering TV. Then he opened the back of the phone and removed the little yellow card. Closed the phone, dropped it into the drawer and went back out onto the porch.

  A fresh drink waited for him beside his chair. He took a box of matches from his pocket and set fire to the sim card, threw it out into the night, watching it flare and fade like a dying glow-worm.

  Fear nagged at Inja's innards. The knowledge that the escape of the white men would tell against him. He depended on the goodwill of the chief, his mentor these many years. The man who had helped him to become all he had become. The minister of justice. Living far away in his house in Pretoria, but a man from these parts, a royal Zulu. One of the few Zulu chiefs who hadn't collaborated with the Boers to hold on to his crust of power. When he was forced into exile by the white men, Inja had gone with him.

  Back then, in the late eighties and early nineties, the chief had purged the ranks of the freedom fighters in the training camps in Zambia, Angola and Tanzania. Convinced they had been infiltrated by apartheid spies. There were no trials. The chief would point a finger and Inja would pull the trigger. Dump the bodies in unmarked graves. Proud to serve his master.

  When Nelson Mandela walked free and the apa
rtheid regime fell, the chief began his rise within the new government. And his dog was always in the shadows, ready to do his work.

  The chief was now one of the most powerful men in the country, more powerful even than the president, who was his stooge, it was said. He had patiently collected dossiers on ally and enemy alike, and he terrified men into absolute loyalty. When they wavered he whistled, and Inja came running. But he knew if he misstepped it would be his body thrown into a ditch far out in the valley.

  Inja stood with his back to the cool whitewashed wall and tried to breathe through the fear and the fever that heated his blood. Yellow light from the doorway at his side spilled out across the sand, in an elongated rectangle that brought a pine coffin to his mind.

  He tried to shake these morbid thoughts, looking at the new hut, the half-thatched roof beams just visible against the night sky. The house of his fourth bride. He'd torched the house that had belonged to the wife who had rotted to nothing before she died. Commissioned locals to build this one for the virgin he would marry on Saturday.

  Inja thought of her in the car with that polluted pig and a fury rose in him. He had wanted to fall upon her at the roadside, force himself between her thighs, feel his manhood rip that little skin inside her. Then leave her dead beside the trash she had wanted to abscond with.

  But he had held back. Heard the counsel of his sangoma, that only by marrying this virgin in the way of his ancestors would he free himself from the curse that had turned his blood to poison. He needed her. Simple. Only she could save him.

  Inja sat, trying to calm himself. He watched flying ants commit suicide against the lightbulb that hung above his chair. Tiny explosions of wings as the hot glass fried them. He closed his eyes. The afterimage of the light burning into his retina.

  Two shrill bleats woke Zondi. He'd slept like the dead. The pumping music and drunken shouts from the tavern hadn't disturbed him, but his cell phone message alerts startled him awake. He lay, disoriented for a moment, in the blackness of the room, hearing nothing now but the oppressive quiet of the country, the tavern long closed. Thought he'd imagined the digital yelps.

  The phone, lying beside the bed on the beer crate that served as a table, had been mute since he arrived. He fumbled in the dark, lifted its glowing face and saw one skinny bar on the signal strength indicator. Some freak of the elements: the microwaves bouncing off a mountain or a cloud. He dialed and listened to a mechanical voice speaking faintly African-accented English, telling him he had one message. One single fucking message. An indication of his pariah status. He hit play.

  Heard a voice say, "Call a man about a dog." A chuckle and then nothing more.

  Zondi played the message again. He recognized the voice. M. K. Moloi. A one-time colleague of his who had disappeared into a political think tank a year ago. A flashy man of thirty, part of a new alliance that had split from the ruling party. Men who were in opposition to the justice minister.

  As Zondi tried to call M.K. the signal evaporated. He stood up from the bed and hit the wall switch. The low-voltage bulb dangling from the ceiling dribbled its sickly blue light down on him. He paced the cramped room, holding the phone out like a dowsing rod. Nothing. He tossed it onto the bed.

  Zondi scratched at himself. He'd slept on top of the covers, dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, but he itched where the bedbugs had fed. And his head throbbed like some Zulu drummer was hard at work inside his skull.

  The light hurt his eyes so he killed it. Sat down on the bed. Listened to the night sounds – a dog barking, a muffled cough that could have been human – and thought about the message. Felt certain that whatever happened now was preordained. Beyond his control.

  Goodbread slumped in the front of the truck, looking up at the stars, like a hot white rash out here in the middle of nowhere. Heard the rumble of a rig down on the highway, its headlamps raking the bush that hid the pickup from view, sending dappled light across the interior of the cab.

  You're on a hiding to nothing, that's for damn sure. Talking to himself. Prison habit. Years in solitary confinement. Not loud enough to wake his son who slept in the rear of the truck, his long legs hanging out over the open tailgate.

  Goodbread ducked below the level of the dashboard and lit a smoke, killed the match before he sat back up. Kept the cigarette cupped in his hand so the glowing ember would be invisible. Behaving as if he was on night ops a lifetime ago. In some godforsaken rice paddy or a stretch of desert scrub.

  Goodbread felt a coughing spasm coming and he opened the door, reached across for the rifle at his side, wanting to get away from the truck so he didn't disturb his son. The dome light kicked in, making him a sitting target. He lifted a shaking hand to kill it.

  Jesus Christ.

  He slid from the truck, gripping the rifle. Ended up standing with his knees bent, head hanging down, hot blood spilling from his rotten lungs onto the sand between his feet.

  Admit it, old man. You're done for.

  Goodbread felt his knees give way like he'd been poleaxed and he found himself kneeling in the dust, jamming the stock of the rifle into the earth to stop himself falling on his face. He sucked air. Choking. Bright lights spinning before his eyes like a mirror ball in a Saigon cathouse. Used the weapon to push himself to his feet.

  He looked back toward the Toyota. Didn't seem as if he'd woken the sleeping man. The spasm was over, and his breath was coming easier. But he still felt as if he was suffocating. Out here in all this space, with all this goddam air, and he couldn't seem to get any of it into his lungs.

  After he was released from prison Goodbread had seen a doctor in Cape Town. Man told him he should be hospitalized. He'd walked out without saying a word. Went and holed up on Althea Vorster's farm. Her dead husband, Hendrik, had served under him in Angola. When Goodbread went to prison the Vorsters had been the only people who stayed in touch with him. Sent him packages that arrived torn and looted at his cell.

  After Hendrik was murdered Althea kept up the contact. Insisted he come and stay on her farm after he was released. The old bottle-blonde had been sweet on him, Goodbread guessed. Muffled a laugh. If she'd been expecting anything from him, she'd gone to her grave a disappointed woman. The years in prison and the disease eating his lungs had long ago robbed him of any firepower down below.

  Althea had known he was sick but had never questioned him. Let him alone to do his dying. He had reckoned he'd wait for the day it got too bad. Take the truck and drive out into the desert. Flatten a bottle of Jack and suck on a shotgun. Then this mess came along.

  Goodbread sat down on the warm sand and took a stainless-steel hip flask from his pants pocket. Drank bourbon and stared out at the stars. Thought about a vengeful God. The one he'd been taught to fear as a boy back in the ramshackle churches of West Texas.

  Spoke to that God now, old fool that he was: Just give me a few more days.

  He could tell himself he was atoning. Find grand words to explain that he was on this last mission to get justice for his boy. Truth was, he was terrified. Him, a man who had taken more lives than he could count, didn't know if he had the balls to pull that trigger and take his own. Saw himself trapped in a bed, an oxygen mask stuck like a limpet to his face, dark women in white uniforms prodding at him as he drowned in his own snot.

  But this was a chance to go out like a man. He'd never felt fear in battle. And he was driving them into one, up the road a ways. Knew there was a bullet waiting for him in Zululand. Knew he'd welcome it.

  Sunday's bladder, full as a sack of fermenting beer, woke her. She kept her eyes closed. Tried to burrow deep into the rough blanket, avoiding the thin daylight that reached out from the single window. Tried to stay unconscious where nothing could touch her. Where she wouldn't have to wake up and face the reality that she had killed Sipho, surely as if she had pulled that trigger herself.

  Sunday sobbed and sat up. She had slept on the blanket on the dung floor, the fat body of Auntie Mavis blocking the doorway
to the hut. The woman lay on her back and snored, sounding like a wasp's nest being smoked out. Last night the men in the taxi had brought Sunday here to the old dog's sister. Where she would be held prisoner until her wedding day.

  The hut was no bigger than the one Sunday had shared with Ma Beauty but it was crammed full of furniture. A sofa and two chairs. A TV perched on top of shelves filled with dusty little ornaments. A white dancer in a frilly dress, balancing on tiptoe, her arms above her head. A seashell with DURBAN painted on the side in flowing blue letters. A little white wooden rabbit with a pink bow on its neck. Plastic flowers. The walls were full of photographs in ornate frames, all of Auntie Mavis smiling, posing with her brother or with her arms around children Sunday assumed belonged to the old dog.

  Sunday stood, squeezed herself around a wooden dining table and upholstered chairs. She had slept in her jeans and T-shirt and slipped her feet into her tennis shoes. She stepped over the fat woman and opened the door.

  The hut was on the slope of a hill close to town and Sunday could see the taxis already bumping toward the jumble of buildings. A man sat outside the door, his back against the mud wall of the hut, chin to his chest as he slept. The squeak of the door roused him and he opened one yellow eye.

  "Where are you going, girl?" he asked, grunting as he pulled himself to his feet. He was a big man. Slow. With a belly that bulged from under his T-shirt, a pistol stuck into the waistband of his jeans.

  "I need to use the toilet," she said. Pointing down toward the communal pit latrine, chimney poking up into the dawn sky like a crooked finger.

  He coughed and spat, waved a hand for her to get moving. She walked down to the outhouse, the big man at her heels. She could hear him yawning and a sound like steel wool on a wooden board as he scratched at the tight curls of dark hair on his belly.

  Sunday went into the latrine and closed the door. A gap at the top gave her a view of the pink and orange sunrise. The outhouse stank even worse than the one she and her aunt used. Sunday finished and wiped herself on the scraps of newspaper she had brought from the hut.