What was supposed to be a happy moment, maybe the greatest of her career, turned into something sad and deeply scarring. She studied her image in the reflection of the mirror. Wayne saw her as nothing but a nuisance, and she was tired of feeling like one. Tonight, she’d get him out of her system, once and for all. She showered and dressed for a party, taking special care with her hair and make-up.
When Bella rang her bell at eight, she looked Sara over, her eyes skimming over the tight jeans and strapless top. “I’m going to have my hands full keeping the men’s hands off you tonight.”
“No men.” Sara picked up her bag. “I’m sick of the male species.”
Bella raised a brow. She looked glamorous in a short, black dress and heels, no make-up as usual. “The species in general, or one male in particular?”
She locked her door and looked at Bella’s shoes. “I need to invest in some of those. I only have flats.”
“He pissed you off big time.”
“Who?” She made her way to the convertible parked out front, keeping her gaze straight ahead so she didn’t have to meet Bella’s eyes.
“Our friend, West.” Bella stopped her with a hand on her arm. “There are things you need to know about West. He had a real tough time in jail. He lost everyone and almost everything he loved. It’s not that he doesn’t like you, or that he doesn’t care, but blood is thicker than water, and that damn farm runs in his blood.”
Sara pinched her eyes shut. “Not tonight. Can we please not talk about him?”
“Okay,” Bella smiled, “but he’s my friend, and I like you. At some stage, I have to interfere. It’s in my nature.”
“Maybe on Monday. Let’s pretend we’re two girls out for a fun night.”
Bella threw her the car keys. “Want to drive?”
She caught them with a grin. “I won’t say no.”
The bar was a bit sleazy, but they had good shooters and great music. There were plenty of dark corners to hide in—exactly what Sara needed. Bella seemed to be a well-liked regular. Unlike in town, everyone greeted her and treated her with kindness. They were also not bothered with unwelcome attention from guys set on picking up girls.
A tray of drinks arrived at their table not long after they’d taken their seats.
“What’s this?” Sara said, looking at the wooden plank with holes in which six tot glasses rested.
“Shooters. Lipstick kisses,” Bella said over the music. She lifted two glasses and handed Sara one. “I reckon you need to party, so let’s party.”
Sara watched Bella shoot back the liquor and did the same. The taste was sweet and the alcohol strong.
She grimaced and wiped her mouth. “Yuk.” Then she reached for two more glasses, placing one in front of Bella, but Bella shook her head.
“Uh-uh. I’m driving. These are for you, but take it easy. We’ve got the whole night ahead of us.”
Sara shot back another, feeling the bite that burned down her throat, wishing the burn could wipe out every single memory she had of Wayne. Or maybe not. Later, once back home, she’d want to hold onto those. What was she thinking? Certainly not about him. The whole idea of being here was to not think of him. She took another glass.
“Hey.” Bella laughed and touched her hand. “Have a glass of water, first. Then we should dance.”
Sara shrugged. “Whatever.” She downed the third drink and got to her feet. “Let’s dance.”
Chapter Ten
The nearer Wayne got to the huts, the tighter his gut twisted. It wasn’t just facing Dumile. It was all the things he’d said to Sara, the lies that had tumbled from his mouth. It made him feel like a piece of shit, but he’d cut off his own hand if it would make her go away. He didn’t trust the Therons.
The kraal came into view, putting a stop to his train of thought. The people sitting on drums around a fire turned and stared, recognizing his truck. If they decided to kill him, he’d be a lucky bastard. It would end his misery, put a stop to the constant guilt and unanswered questions tormenting him day and night. His phone pinged as he parked the truck. A call-me message from Clive. Not now. He turned off his phone and dumped it in the cubbyhole.
When he got out, Dumile got to his feet. The old man had aged fifty years in six. His lanky figure was stooped and his deep-set eyes cushioned in wrinkles. Zandi met him halfway, her black eyes spitting venom.
“How dare you come here?” she said in Xhosa. “How dare you show your face?”
Pain for her, for Mariana, and for Sara made him stand there, willing her words to slash open his heart. He deserved nothing less.
“Daughter,” Dumile said, “show respect for the husband of your sister.”
She spat at Wayne’s feet. “He was no husband to her, not by the white man’s law.”
“By our law, he is your family,” Dumile said, “and you will invite him to our fire.”
Her eyes shimmered with the fierceness of her hatred. “I will not sit around the same fire as him.” She walked off into the bushes toward the river.
The adolescents, the ones who’d soon go into the sweat hut to become men, regarded him with open hostility. A boy of around six ran up and took his hand. He was dressed in dusty and battered clothes, his callused feet bare. The boy had a coffee-colored skin, much lighter than Dumile or Zandi’s onyx black.
He assessed Wayne with honey-brown eyes. “If you want, I will put in a good word for you with my grandfather.” He lowered his voice. “It’ll cost you.”
Wayne went down on his haunches, putting them on eye level. “Khwezi?” His throat tightened painfully.
Khwezi let go of his hand and made the sign of protection against evil spirits. “Aiwk! How do you know my name?”
Swallowing twice to contain his emotions, he demonstrated with his hands and said, “You were this size when I last saw you.”
“Away!” Dumile said with an impatient swipe of his hand.
The children who’d gathered around Wayne disappeared into the shadows, Khwezi following in their footsteps.
Wayne walked to the old man, fighting more emotions as he took in his fragile state.
“Nkosi,” he said respectfully, removing his hat and proffering his hand in greeting.
Dumile pulled him into a hug instead and slapped him on the back. “It took you a long time, West. A very long time.”
Wayne gripped Dumile’s shoulder. “How is your health?”
The old man motioned at a vacant drum. “You will sit, and we will drink to my health.”
On cue, one of the women exited with two tin mugs of homebrewed beer that she placed on a box between them.
“I should’ve…” Wayne started. “I couldn’t…”
“If you needed time, I understand. If you were hiding, you weren’t hiding from us. You were hiding from yourself. You must make peace.”
Wayne shook his head. “How can you make peace with something like that?”
“My daughter’s spirit is with us.” Dumile used Mariana’s Xhosa name. “Bongani is not gone.”
“Khwezi…” He looked in the direction of the forest where the boy had climbed into a tree, watching them from high.
It was hard to believe the reason for his and Mariana’s last conversation, their last fight, was this living, breathing, cocky little boy who sat on a branch. Before, he’d been a concept too vague and unreal in Wayne’s mind to think of him as a reality. Even when he’d seen him born, only that once, Khwezi still hadn’t materialized as a truth in Wayne’s mind. Maybe because he’d fought so hard to deny it. But there he was with his clever, light eyes and lithe, little body, the reason for Wayne’s last, stormy days with the boy’s mother.
“He’s a good child,” Dumile said.
“Does he know?”
“He knows you were with his mother when she died. Nothing more.”
Wayne looked at Dumile quickly. “What did you tell him?”
“That she died in an accident.”
“Does he…”
“Nobody knows his father. Bongani never told us his name.”
Wayne took a deep, shuddering breath, inhaling the pungent smell of the wood fire. In the smoke, he saw her face—Mariana—as she’d told him the ten months she’d worked up north were a lie, that she’d had a white man’s baby, a baby who wasn’t his. He turned his face away from the fire, catching the boy’s eyes.
“You came because of the land,” Dumile said, lifting his beer with a shaky hand.
When he’d slurped the hops, Wayne followed suit as per the custom to show his respect. “You guessed right, Nkosi.”
“I told the Parks woman I did not want your land.”
Wayne winced. “Is it such a big insult to you?”
“No, West.” The old man shook his head. “Did I not welcome you with open arms? If you were an insult to us, do you think I would’ve looked forward to this day for six years?”
He pinched his eyes shut and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I cannot remember.”
“It’s in the past.”
He lowered his hands to stare at his father-in-law. “But what I did … it will never stop to haunt me.”
“You do not know what you did.”
“The witnesses… They saw. They said…”
“They spoke many words. Only the dead knows the truth. It is not our job to judge. The spirits will take their own revenge.”
He took another swig of beer, the familiar taste both welcoming and painful, like he didn’t deserve the homecoming. “I’m not going to give SAN my land.”
“I will not take the land of my son-in-law. I’ve already told you that.”
“They will fence in the forest. What will you do?”
“We will worry when the time comes. Today is not that time.”
“I know it’s not your custom to worry beyond today, but if you’re to survive in a white man’s world, you can’t afford not to think of the future.”
“I leave the worry to you, West. It’s in your nature. It’s in the color of your skin.”
“When the fences go up, they will relocate you. Where will you go?”
“We will see when the time comes.”
“I came to make you an offer. You can live on my land. We can move you to the part that still belongs to me.”
“The land belongs to no one.”
“By law, it does.”
“We don’t live by your law.”
“Government will make you leave. They’ll use force if they must. Let me move you,” Wayne said with more urgency. “Let me build you a house where you can spend the rest of your life. I will take care of you, Nkosi. We can build it overlooking Mariana’s grave, if that’s where you want.”
“How can you promise a land that doesn’t belong to you by your white man’s standards? How can you promise to give something that has already been taken from you?”
“Not yet.” His hand clenched around the tin mug. “I spoke to a lawyer in Grahamstown. There is a way.”
“What way? How can you fight the government?”
“If you denounce your birthright to the land, government can’t reclaim it.”
Dumile picked up a pipe from the ground next to him. He took his time stuffing it with tobacco before lighting it. “You want me to say my forefathers didn’t live and die on this land?”
“You’re the one who always says the land belongs to no one.”
Dumile took a deep drag and blew the smoke into the fire. A mixed fragrance of pipe tobacco and soot filled the air. “If that’s what you want, West, I will denounce the land.”
“I will take care of you. You must tell the tribe to move to the valley. We can pick the finest piece of land, get implements, and plough. Maize will take well. So will an orchard.”
Dumile shook his head. “You’re thinking too far into the future, again. One thing at a time. I will do as you ask and then we will see. Bring me the papers to sign.”
Wayne reached inside his pocket shirt, producing the contract and a pen. He unfolded it carefully on the box, ironing it flat with his palm. “Here, Nkosi.” He pressed a finger on the line. “Sign here.”
The old man took the pen with trembling fingers. Something inside of Wayne twisted as he watched Dumile draw a shaky X on the page.
“Thank you. I will not leave you stranded.”
Zandi appeared on the footpath from the river. It was dark now, the sun gone. The fire played over her high cheekbones and full lips. In the obscurity of the night and the guilt of his mind, she looked a lot like Mariana as she glared down at him with contempt.
“What is this paper, West?”
“Dumile denounced the land.”
“Is it not enough that you took our sister?” she hissed. “Must you take our home, too?”
“Mind your tongue, daughter,” Dumile said. “One of these days, it will get you into trouble.”
Khwezi came running up. “I’m hungry, Auntie.”
There was so much of Mariana in the boy. She hadn’t wanted him to raise the child, to adopt the baby of the man she’d cheated with. She’d been afraid he’d resent the child, and maybe she’d been right, because a wave of envy pushed up in his soul as he drank in the round, dirt-streaked face and the narrow feet planted squarely on the ground, the ground that would no longer be his home.
“Go inside!” Zandi said to the boy.
He hung his head and dragged his feet to the nearest hut.
“Don’t you dare lay your eyes on him,” Zandi said when Khwezi was gone. “Don’t ever look his way again.”
Wayne rose. He fitted his hat and tipped it at Zandi, and then he shook Dumile’s hand. “I’ll keep my word. I’ll take care of you.”
“Get off our property,” Zandi said, regal and haughty. “We may not have a piece of paper laying claim to it, but we’ve been here long before you.”
With that, she turned her back on him, paying him the ultimate insult a woman of her culture could give a man who’d not yet taken his leave.
He nodded at the faces that peered from around the doors of the huts as he made his way to his truck. He placed his palm over his pocket where the denouncement rested. It should’ve made him feel better, but he felt a hell of a lot worse. Nothing seemed right. Did he even know the difference between right and wrong, any longer?
* * * *
“Oh, no.”
Sara groaned as she woke and blinked. Bright sunlight filtered through the windows. The curtains were white with a silver thread. All wrong. Those weren’t her curtains. She looked around. Neither was the bed. She was lying in a huge bed in a white room with a mohair carpet and modern fittings.
She sat up. “Oh, my head.”
She was fully clothed, minus her shoes. Her head pounded, and her mouth tasted foul. Thirsty. So thirsty.
The door opened, and Bella entered with a tray. “Morning, sunshine.”
“Shh.” Sara covered her ears. “My head hurts like hell when you talk so loudly.”
Bella left the tray on the nightstand and offered her a glass of orange juice with two painkillers, which she gulped down.
“Can I fix you breakfast?”
“No, thanks. What happened? Why am I here?”
Bella perched on the edge of the bed. It wasn’t fair that she looked fresh and perky in white slacks and a blouse. “You mean you don’t remember?”
“Please tell me I didn’t throw away my name.”
“Uh-uh. What can you remember?”
Sara touched her throbbing head. “Us dancing. Me dancing. Oh no, I danced on the bar counter, didn’t I?”
Bella laughed. “You sure did. You were throwing back shooters like it was going out of fashion. I told you not to make a drinking bet with Tom.”
“Tom? Who’s Tom?”
“You’re going to regret this if you can’t remember Tom.”
“Regret what?” she said with growing panic. After the stunt on the bar counter her mind was a blank. In the place of her memory
there was only a big black hole. “Why am I aching so much? My wrists.” She turned her palms up and shrieked. “Oh, my God! Oh, no. No, no, no. Bella, what have we done?”
“You got a tattoo,” Bella said, making a lousy job of hiding her amusement.
“No, no, no. You shouldn’t have let me. I was drunk!”
“You acted pretty sober, and you were mighty insistent. I tried to dissuade you, but you and the tattoo artist were in cahoots.”
“What tattoo artist?”
“Tom. The guy we met at the bar. He especially opened the shop for you.”
This couldn’t be happening. She groaned again, studying the inflamed W that was tattooed in cursive script on each wrist. Holding her wrists together, the two letters were linked with the image of a handcuff that ran from her left to her right arm. WW.
“Shit.” She admired the work. It wasn’t half bad. The letters were expertly done. “I guess if I wear long sleeves for the rest of my life no one will notice. Or I could say it stands for World Wildlife.”
“Um, that’s not the one I’d be worried about.” Bella grinned and bit her lip.
“You mean there’s more?” Sara jerked up her top, checking her hips and boobs, the most obvious places she’d consider for a tattoo. “Where? Where?”
Bella circled a finger. “Turn around.”
She jumped from the bed and grunted as her brain sloshed around in her skull. Looking over her shoulder at the mirror, she gasped. Oh dear God. Across her lower back was an intricate pattern of curls and twirls spelling one word–Wayne.
“No, no, no!”
“Yeah,” Bella said, “that one is going to be harder to explain. How about World Awareness for Youth Nature E-Conservation?”
“You’re not a good friend,” Sara chastised.
“You’re the one who threatened to lock me out of the tattoo parlor and get me arrested for obstruction of free will.”
“I said that?”
“Some other stuff, too.”
“Like?”
“For someone who didn’t want to hear Wayne’s name, you sure chewed my ear off about him. You said he’d be hot in bed because—”
“Okay! I don’t want to know.” She grimaced. “How the hell am I going to explain this to my future boyfriends?”
Scapulimancist (Seven Forbidden Arts Book 7) Page 16
