Swimming with Horses

by Oakland Ross

  “No,” said Bruce. “I don’t know what the word in whatchamacallit is for whatever you said. People.”

  “No. For a liquor store.”

  He frowned. “Huh …?”

  “What I’m asking you. I’m asking if you know the Afrikaans word for a liquor store. It’s a rhetorical question.”

  “A what …?” He didn’t seem to be keeping up.

  She giggled and said something. It sounded like “drank-vinkel.”

  “Drank-what-el?” I said.

  “Vinkel.” She laughed and swallowed some more of her drink. Orange Crush and rye. “Drankvinkel. I think it’s the funniest word.”

  I laughed, too. “I vink it’s the vunniest vord. I vinkel it’s the vunniest vord.” I took another sip. Actually, I was starting to like it.

  “Christ,” said Bruce. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

  I was quickly coming to the conclusion that Bruce Gruber would always be hampered in his professional pursuits unless he took urgent and comprehensive measures to enrich his vocabulary. I was about to say something to this effect but managed to stop myself. It was at this point or at a point slightly later that Bruce topped up my paper cup, again, with more rye.

  I sipped some more of my drink. First it had seemed gross. Then it had seemed surprisingly good. Now it was seeming gross again. I fought off an urge to belch, but I belched anyway.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “Fuckin’ hell.” Bruce rolled down his window and reached over for the speaker that was mounted on a steel post and connected by a spiralling cable. He rolled the window halfway back up and balanced the speaker on the top edge of the glass pane. “Fuckin’ bloody hell.”

  The movie trailers were still playing, but now they had sound. I hunched in the middle of the back seat so I could watch the screen through the gap that separated Bruce and Hilary. That didn’t last long. First, Bruce’s outsize shadow loomed up out of the darkness, blocking my view of the movie screen completely.

  “Where’s your fuckin’ cup?”

  I held up the large paper container, and Bruce sloshed it with rye. Then he swung back into his seat and topped up both his own cup and Hilary’s. For a time, there was silence, except for the tinny sounds that yammered through the speaker. We sipped our drinks and peered out the windshield at the succession of movie shorts being projected onto the giant outdoor screen. Finally, Hilary spoke.

  “My, what long arms you have,” she said, speaking in a sort of Little-Red-Riding-Hood voice, a girlish voice.

  As far as I could make out, Bruce was massaging Hilary’s left shoulder with his right hand. He had to reach a long way, though, because she was scrunched up against the passenger door. I sipped from my drink again, and my head lolled to one side. I felt as if I were gaining weight fast, all of it on one side of my cranium. It was the rye. I didn’t think I could swallow much more.

  Right about then, several things happened in quick succession. First, the feature presentation began: Son of Flubber. Next, Bruce seemed to fling himself across the front seat as if seized by the force field of a powerful magnet. He landed almost right on top of Hilary. For a time, no one said a word. The only sound was the metallic reverberation of the movie speaker — recorded actors’ voices, loud and very thin.

  Then Hilary spoke: “Get off me.”

  A little later: “I said get off me.”

  Later still: “Stop it. I said stop it.”

  All I could hear from Bruce was a lot of heavy breathing and the occasional grunt.

  “Ow,” said Hilary. “Christ, stop it. You’re hurting me, hey.”

  Then louder: “I said you’re hurting me.”

  I tried to move. I wanted to do something to stop this, whatever it was, but I was having trouble turning my thoughts into action. My balance was shaky, and everything seemed kind of blurry.

  A few seconds later, Hilary’s voice rose almost to a scream: “You’re hurting me!”

  Immediately, Bruce seemed to vault backward, landing in the driver’s seat on the other side of the car. His elbow punched the horn, which blared a couple of times. “What the fuck …?”

  I managed to lean forward, and I turned my head toward Hilary, to see what was going on. I couldn’t believe what I saw. Hilary was holding a gun. Even in my woozy state and in the unsteady light cast by the giant movie screen, I could clearly make out that much. She was huddled with her back pressed against the passenger door, and she was clutching a gun, obviously the same weapon she had shown me that night in the upstairs bathroom at our house — the Makarov she’d got from Nelson Mandela. She was pointing the gun at Bruce, who had his hands raised in surrender or something like it.

  “Jesus, are you crazy?” His voice was weak, an octave or so higher than normal. “Put that away. What the fuck are you doing?”

  “You wouldn’t get off me, shame,” said Hilary. Her voice was steady, gone flat and cold. She kept the gun pointed at Bruce. “When I say get off me, I mean get off me. It’s that simple.”

  No one budged. No one said anything. I remained in my seat in the back of the car. I tried to move, but I couldn’t seem to do it. It was as if I were glued to the upholstery. A gun! She was pointing a gun at Bruce Gruber, and I fully believed that, next, she was going to shoot him. But that wasn’t what happened next. What happened next was … I threw up.

  SEVENTEEN

  Jack

  South Africa, Winter 1962

  JACK LEARNED ABOUT THE kaffir’s escape from a report in the Witness, the Pietermaritzburg paper. Right away he guessed that Hilly would be returning from Joburg. Of course, she would. He knew exactly how her mind worked, part of the skill he had, what he liked to call “the knack.” The girl was loyal to a fault, and now the direction of her loyalty had shifted to an unspeakable degree, migrated to a dirty black-skinned cheat named Muletsi Dadla, a.k.a. Berkeley Hunt, now a convict freshly escaped from jail.

  Jack was passably sure he knew what was next in store. One way or another, Hilly would soon be on a plane to Durban, and then she’d take a taxi up here. Her dad would pay the passage, of course, cursing all the while. Jack doubted it would be long before she arrived, a couple of days maybe, not more than that. She would be fixing to find the boy, which meant that she would bear watching herself. That was all right. Jack knew a man in Bruntville who would keep him well informed in the event that Hilly was to venture over there.

  Now he got up from the little table, to fix himself another cuppa with chicory and to cadge himself a smoke. That done, he settled back into the creaky old Fred Astaire and took another drag. Strange. Here he was, puffing on a fag and sipping a nice cuppa molten toffee on a drizzly morning in Natal while reading the paper from Pietermaritzburg — and already he knew the future. Already he knew what was to come. He reached up and gave his forehead a tap. Many a man would trade his right arm to possess a portion of grey matter such as Jack Tanner had got, right effing here.

  Still, he couldn’t help wondering how this foreknowledge made him feel, emotion-wise. He was not exactly sure. It was hard to get a fix on his feelings some days. He’d encountered this trouble on previous occasions. At times his feelings would swill together into a rowdy blur that left him woozy on his feet, made him do things he didn’t fully intend. But at least he could say this: he felt a cracking lot better now than he’d been feeling of late. That much he could say. He’d been missing Hilary Anson something terrible, more than he’d ever imagined he would. He’d been wanting a chance to put matters straight between them, to square accounts, you might say. He’d have liked everything to be back to the way it was before. If that wasn’t possible — and, with her away in Jozi, it surely was not — then maybe something else was, some sort of agreement, a truce of some kind. Just the thought of it raised a warmth in his gut.

  But back to the question at hand — the boy’s escape. According to the newspaper report, three men had got away together, this Muletsi Dadla and two others. Already, he’d forgotten the other men�
��s names. A search was on, the police said. As always, the constabulary wished to assure all and sundry that the miscreants would be apprehended in short order. Until that happened, the public should exercise caution, as the individuals in question were possibly armed and surely dangerous.

  Jack stubbed out his smoke in the small glass tray and cadged himself another, took a drag. Outside, the rain was pelting down at a dismal pace. It was the dry season, supposed to be, and look at the weather they’d got. He glanced back at the paper and reread that last sentence. Possibly armed …? He could well believe it. It was more than likely the three malefactors had simply lifted their guns from the prison guards while the guards themselves had nodded off and were having themselves a comfy little Sooty and Sweep. On the other hand, he also had reason to wonder if the escape hadn’t been staged from the start — staged for his own benefit. He hadn’t heard from Walt van Niekerk on the subject, or not as yet, but it was possible that old Walt — captain of the local police, no less — had put out the word. Let the boy walk free so’s old Jack Tanner can have his fun, have a go of his own at the miserable wanker. Wouldn’t be the first time that something of the sort had transpired. Of course, it was also possible that the convicts had managed to liberate themselves on their own initiative. Jack couldn’t rule it out. The rank incompetence of the civic authorities in these parts was sometimes hard to believe. And what of the likelihood that the fugitives would soon be caught? Not as likely as all that. A kaffir can hide a good long while in a country of kaffirs. These three buggers might manage to keep themselves scarce for weeks on end, maybe longer. They could simply disappear.

  But Jack didn’t figure his old pal Berkeley would be venturing down that path. Jack had an idea the boy might be casting his shadow around here before very long. Berkeley had his old ma to think of, for one thing. Besides, at the end of the day a black man is a dog. You take him away from his customary haunts, and the moment you turn him loose he’ll be on his way back home again, tail between his legs. That was what Jack’s instinct told him. He had a feeling old Berkeley Hunt would be showing up around Mooi River sooner rather than later. The boy’s mother would have sensed it, too. Maybe even Hilly would see it, once she was apprised of the boy’s escape. Could be even the police comprehended it, but Jack had some doubts in his mind on that score. The police in this country? Powerful long on muscle. Pitiful short on brains.

  Besides, if Jack had any say in the matter at all, it would not be the police that imposed a punishment upon a certain escaped convict known to some as Mr. Berkeley Hunt. No, sir. Where would be the justice in that? Why, there would be no justice at all. Jack had a different idea. To wit: he would take the helm now, Captain, and steer the ship from this point on. Who was more entitled than the man who’d withstood the attack? Damn that kaffir to hell. Even now Jack could feel a sting when he reached up to touch the left side of his face. He could feel the rough pebbling of skin, the unnatural contours where the bone had shattered. His face was still scarred and misshapen from the time when that Berkeley Hunt whipped a bridle at him. That was a misdeed he could not forget — a kaffir boy taking a run at a white man like that, throwing his weight into the fray before an honest bloke had time to get his own self set, his balance square, his arms up, his fists cocked. No righteous dog would ever have done such a thing. You fight a man, you fight him fair. That is the rule for gents. You don’t blindside a good man and kick him to the ground. Cowardice is what that is, what that boy had done — dirty black cowardice — and it stuck in Jack’s throat like a bone.

  EIGHTEEN

  Sam

  Ontario, Summer 1963

  “I OVERREACTED.” HILARY frowned at her cigarette. “I shouldn’t have pointed the gun at him. That was wrong.”

  “But he was attacking you.” I hesitated. “Or something.”

  “Still, no need for a gun, hey.”

  “I would have saved you.”

  She laughed. “Truth is, you did. I don’t think it was the gun that chased Grube away. It was —”

  “I know. I know.” Still, she did have a gun, and she had pointed it at the guy. As for my part in the drama, all I could do was apologize, which I did yet again.

  “Never you mind.” She closed her eyes. “Frigging hell. Let’s not talk about it. Any of it.”

  We were hunched side by side in the playground by the snack bar at the Newburgh Drive-In, each of us squeezed into a seat that was part of a children’s swing apparatus. There were no kids anywhere nearby; all were gathered with their parents, safe in their family cars, paying rapt attention to the movie. But neither Hilary nor I had any interest in watching the show.

  A gun. She’d pulled a gun on Bruce Fucking Gruber. It seemed unbelievable, and yet I knew it was so. The knowledge seemed to open an endless span of possibilities, more than I’d ever dreamed of. The dimensions of my world seemed to stretch as far as infinity, to the point of bursting. Anything seemed possible now. Everything that had once seemed ordinary had now been transformed into something larger, more powerful, with consequences I could barely imagine.

  As for Bruce Gruber, he was gone. After Hilary had put down the gun, he ordered us both out of his car. He roared away in a fury, kicking up torrents of loose gravel and leaving us both stranded at the drive-in. I wondered why Hilary had anything to do with a guy like that. What did she see in him? Maybe it didn’t take much. He was stubborn, he was slow, and he had never in his life met anyone like Hilary Anson. Put those factors together, and they were all she needed, I guess — or I do now. But just then I wasn’t thinking along those lines. I was thinking, Screw you, Bruce Gruber.

  Meanwhile, Hilary and I were still shipwrecked at the drive-in. By this time, I had got myself cleaned up in the snack-bar washroom. For her part, she had smoked about nine cigarettes and drunk about three cups of black coffee, supposedly to calm her nerves. Next we’d called Colonel Barker on the pay phone, pleading with him to come fetch us. He grumbled for a time but finally said he would. What choice did he have?

  Concerning the gun, at first Hilary would say only what she had told me before — that she didn’t feel safe without it, or not in South Africa. Things were different back there, different for everyone. Why, even Nelson Mandela was behind bars now, a prisoner of conscience, incarcerated for his beliefs. She was silent for a time, and then she sighed. She said she owed me a bit of explanation. We were friends, after all, and that meant something. To her, it did.

  “Me, too,” I said, thinking that now she was going to come clean. Now she would tell me everything there was to tell about her past.

  As it turned out, she did not do that — not even close. But she did recount the broad outlines of what occurred: the conflict between Jack Tanner and her boyfriend, an African named Muletsi Dadla; the times spent with his mother in a place called Bruntville; Muletsi’s imprisonment and, later, his escape; a mysterious individual named Everest Ndlovu. Tensions mounted until she and this Muletsi were forced to make a run for it on horseback, aiming for a place called Basutoland. As it turned out, their attempted flight came up short, and Jack Tanner shot Muletsi dead by the banks of the Tsoelike River. Hilary had been there, at that very spot, and she had witnessed everything — her own soulmate murdered right before her eyes. After that it had been too dangerous for her to remain in South Africa, so she now found herself in Canada, where she would be safe, or so it was thought.

  “So here you are,” I said, “hiding out at the Newburgh Drive-In.”

  “Yebo.”

  I let out a long breath. “That must have been horrible.”

  “What was?”

  “Your friend. You know.” I tried to say his first name.

  “Muletsi,” she said. “Dadla.” She nodded. “It was horrible. Worse than horrible. Just imagine.”

  I wasn’t sure I could. “Why did that guy shoot him?” I meant the other man, the white man. Jack Tanner.

  She shrugged and shook her head. “Because Muletsi was black. In South Afri
ca, that’s all the reason you’d need.”

  “But he went to jail, right?”

  “Not on your life. A white man who kills a black man? Jail? Not bloody likely. In South Africa, it’s all part of the agenda.”

  She stared down at her shoes for a time, and I wondered whether she might be crying.

  “Anyway,” she said, “it’s done now. It can’t be undone in any way.”

  I listened but said nothing. Never in my life had I known anyone who’d been associated with a murder. It was like a Perry Mason show brought to life, a Perry Mason show set on the other side of the world. Just think: a friend of hers, more than a friend, shot dead right before her eyes. I had more questions to ask, plenty more, but some instinct made me stop. Hilary was still staring at the ground, and now I really thought she might be crying. Before long she started to glide back and forth in her swing, humming another of her South African tunes.

  “What’s that one called?”

  “‘Yini Madoda.’” She told me its name means “Why Men?” in Xhosa. She swayed back and forth in the swing.

  I preferred to remain motionless. I was still feeling pretty groggy. I kept glancing over at Hilary’s leather shoulder bag, where the pistol was hidden away.

  “He beat me up once,” I said.

  “What …?”

  “Bruce Gruber. Well, he beat me up a million times, but this one time was the worst.”

  “Tell me.”

  Hilary brought her swing to a halt, leaned closer to me. She scrunched up her forehead, as if she really did want to know. I remember being surprised by that, her degree of interest. Why would she care? But I told her the story, anyway — about that time with the football. It had been a gift from my dad, something special, a genuine leather football. It wasn’t made of rubber, the kind of football you normally see. This one was made of real pigskin.