The Other Four
Page 4
The alcohol was wearing off Dumani’s system, but his zeal to get rich kept his mind away from the shebeen. He wanted to get rich. But there was no way he was going to get rich if he wasted time hunting for alcohol. His potential wealth depended on whether Thabang and he managed to recapture that bastard or not. Time was not on their side. Plus it was getting a bit dark. And Thabang was looking uglier.
Dumani came up with a plan. Thabang should wait by the van and possibly drag the body into it while Dumani went hunting for their victim. The lazy bastard readily agreed to the plan and ambled over to the van while Dumani tore through the bush looking for their victim. He knew the chances of catching up with him were slim, considering how fast he had seemed to be on his feet. But Dumani wasn’t going to give up. He was counting on the possibility of the young man getting tired and stopping at some point, judging from the way he was sprinting when he last saw him. He wasn’t familiar with these areas, but Thabang, who had done a few jobs around here, had said there was a short cut somewhere around here. Dumani found the short cut and ambled down the narrow path.
He hated the fact that he had gained weight. He used to be very agile. At one point during his school days he had been an athlete. He blamed booze. Before he’d started drinking, people used to tell him that booze added a bit of weight to the tummy. And now he was living proof of that. Once he got rich, though, he would hit the gym and shed off the weight. Hopefully that would be soon. At least he still had his neck. For some reason’s Thabang’s has been replaced by folds of fat. And he had the ass of a very undesirable woman.
As he got closer and closer to the village, his hopes of finding the young man waned. That was until he saw a figure sitting by a tree, in seeming pain. Dumani increased his pace. The figure — he could now make it to be that of a young man — stood up as he approached. It seemed like he wanted to run away, but was injured. Dumani smiled to himself. He was sure it was the young man they were looking for. Only he had changed into shorts. The young man was limping away, but Dumani had no trouble catching up with him.
Thabang couldn’t quite understand why a fat bastard like Dumani thought he could really catch that fast young man. He had seen no reason to argue with the fool when he made the decision to chase the young man. He would have preferred to give up the chase for today and try another day. But he had feared that any argument with Dumani might result in another fist fight. The last thing Thabang wanted right now was to lose another tooth. In fact, his missing teeth were partially the reason why he decided not to argue with that bastard Dumani. Maybe the bastard could actually catch the young man. You never know. Miracles did happen, especially where fools like Dumani were involved.
Thabang was walking back to the van now, having recovered his breath. First he had to drag that body into the van. He took a detour and walked over towards where they had left the body. He stilled himself against the grisly sight of the maimed woman, contemplated carrying the body over his shoulder but feared that may leave blood on him. He stood looking at the body for a while. He held both her legs and dragged her towards the van. By the time he got to the van he was panting and angry. He was angry with Dumani. He wouldn’t be in this situation had it not been for Dumani. It wasn’t necessary for Dumani to have thrown away that chicken foot. Not at all. Thabang cursed.
It was a little dark and that combined with the fact that he wasn’t completely sober was making his eyesight play up a little bit. He opened the back of the van. He leaned over, heaved the body and dumped it onto the back of the van.
Somebody would have to worry about cleaning up the blood later. It wasn’t his job to do so. He closed the door to the back of the van, rolled some tobacco, stood against the van and enjoyed a smoke.
He was feeling a little restless and agitated. This always happened whenever he was beginning to sober up. To calm himself down, he paced up and down, looking around just in case their victim was stupid enough to come back to the van. He took a leak in the bush, cursed when he showered his boots with urine, then walked back to the van. That was when he noticed that the front tyres of the van were deflated. Suddenly he was on high alert. Scared. He was sure when they’d chased that young man earlier on all the tyres of the van had been fine, which meant that somebody was around here. But who?
I had arrived home. But something worried me: there seemed to be no fire at the heath. My wife would always be home around this time. I literally jumped over the fence, calling out her name, panicking.
“Josephine!” I said.
“Mmoloki!”
I could only think of the worst. I went to our
bedroom, lit the candle and checked. She wasn’t there. I went to the children’s bedroom, lit the candle. They, too, were not there. My wife would never go anywhere without first telling me. Her sister lived on the eastern side of the village. Sometimes she would take the children with her, but she would tell me in advance if she was going to do so. Maybe she just forgot to tell me today. Feeling a ray of hope, I literally sprinted down the path that leads to the eastern side of the village. I bumped into locals, they greeted me, but I was too preoccupied to respond. I knew I looked like a madman but right now this was the least of my worries. An attempt had just been made on my life and now my wife and children were missing.
I found my grandmother-in-law sitting by the fire, alone. She lived with my sister-in-law.
Without bothering to greet her first, and out of breath, I said, “Where are they?”
She looked at me, perplexed, and said in her characteristically quiet and calm voice, “Who?”
“My wife and children?”
She looked even more perplexed and said, “I don’t think I follow you?”
“Some people tried to kidnap me. I managed to escape. My wife and children are not home.”
She seemed to ponder over this, yet, under the light from the fire, she appeared to be perplexed.
“They are not here. Dineo is not here either.” Dineo was my sister-in-law.
“Where is she?” I was hoping that maybe wherever she was my wife and children were with her.
“She went to Lentsweng yesterday.”
I wanted to cry. Things were not looking so good. Something was just not right. I stormed out into the setting darkness and headed off to the western side of the village although I didn’t know where to exactly. Everything felt so unreal. I really hoped I was dreaming. I’ve had dreams that feel so real. This could be one of them. I had one before in which my wife got killed by a robber. I woke up groping under the bed groping for the knobkerrie I kept there in case of an intruder. I frightened my wife and she quickly switched on the lights and shook me awake. She was scared for the following few days, and didn’t trust me much, so she spent the few nights in the kids’ bedroom. She finally took me to the doctor at Tsebeyatonki clinic and he gave me some tablets that helped. I haven’t any that are so frightening since.
Modimonthuse had been the headman of Tsebeyatonki village since the death of his father many years ago. Although
he was only headman, the villagers referred to him as chief. He was okay with that for he believed that this label could eventually lead him to end up at the House of Chiefs.
He had been married for fifty years and still loved his wife. For the past year or so he had been on some tablets that the doctor claimed would improve his mood. His mood hadn’t been the best because of the sudden rise of crime in his village. He believed there was something he wasn’t doing right for his ancestors, hence the rise in crime. He had seen various traditional doctors and two had told him he wasn’t doing anything wrong, and two had told him his ancestors were not happy with the way he was running the village.
He owned a large herd of cattle and it had always been a habit of his to count them every evening. He had just finished doing so and was walking back towards the fireplace where his wife was frying something when a young man came rushing in. Modimonthuse squinted his eyes and tried to place the young man, but his eyesight was p
laying up like it tended to do in the evenings. Or maybe it could be a hungry and broke local? Sometimes a stray soul would stroll into Modimonthuse’s yard just before meal times, only to leave only after he has had a meal. They never refuse the offer of food. Why would they when it is the very reason why they came down in the first place? Modimonthuse believed strongly in generosity, and over the years his wife has learnt to cook more food than necessary, just in case.
“Chief! My wife and children have gone missing!” the man says before Modimonthuse could recognise him.
At first Modimonthuse couldn’t recognize the young man. He waited for his eyes to adjust before he could respond.
“Ngano, my son, slow down and tell me what happened.”
Ngano stumbled over his words as he recounted in detail what happened.
“And these two men, have you ever seen them before?” said Modimonthuse.
“No.”
Modimonthuse had heard of the killers that were rumoured to roam the surrounding areas. All along he had been sceptical about their existence. Now here was a witness who had seen them with his own eyes.
“I fear the same people that attempted to kidnap me may have taken my family. Please, help me. I don’t know why this is happening.”
“Calm down. You may be over-reacting. Maybe your wife has visited friends. Or maybe…”
“I know she hasn’t.”
Modimonthuse suspected Ngano may have smoked ganja. He knew of people who smoked the stuff and ended up mad. So there was a possibility Ngano was imagining what he was recounting. But with the way crime had been soaring in the village, it was possible the young man could be telling the truth.
“Okay, I’ll organize a search party.”
“Please chief, do. The kidnappers may still be where I left them.”
“Why do you think so?”
“Because they must still be searching for me in the bushes.”
The thing that worried Dumani most was that the guy he had captured was injured. The instructions, if his memory served him well, were that they should bring the guy well and whole. But then it was only his foot that was injured.
When Dumani had caught up with him, the fool had tried to fight Dumani and run away. Dumani had injured his foot several times before and knew that you can’t run much when your foot — particularly the toes — was injured.
He had pulled the guy just as he was limping his way along the winding path, delivered a punch in the small of his back. The guy, who refused to give Dumani his name, had co-operated then. Dumani had, as calmly as he could, explained that there was someone who was interested in meeting him. The guy had looked scared, but reasonable enough to realize that Dumani meant business.
Now Dumani was walking behind the guy. Once in a while the guy would stop and plead, “Please, let me go. I won’t tell anyone,” but Dumani would simply push him forward and say, “Let’s go.”
Dumani hated it when he was sobering up. He tended to become a bit cranky. And this fool was pushing his luck. The idea of hurting him real bad and carrying him over his shoulder was tempting. But the instructions were clear: a live man was needed. What Dumani wasn’t sure about were the injuries the young man had. Damon didn’t specify whether the guy they brought would be useless if he had any injuries.
The fool stopped and said, “Man, my foot really hurts. I’m feeling dizzy. I’ve never seen you before. If you let me go, I will not tell anyone you tried to kidnap me. I’ve a wife and children. Please.”
The young man had tears in his eyes. For a moment Dumani felt sorry for him and for this reason he nearly let him go. But the thought of himself sitting in a nice house in Gabs, driving a nice car, brought back the venom in his being. With a stern voice, he said, “Look young man. I don’t need you. I don’t need to kill you. Somebody needs you. Live. Whether he kills you or not is none of my business.”
Mothusi’s heart seemed to stop. For a minute he forgot about the searing pain down his foot. His legs felt like jelly. His heart beat away at a rate he had never experienced before. He felt like shitting himself.
He had feared somebody had seen him kill that woman. He had feared the whole thing had been blackmail. Maybe the man who hired him simply wanted to use him. Maybe this villain who had just kidnapped him was in fact watching with his fat friend when Mothusi killed the woman. Maybe that was the whole plan. Otherwise why did they try to take the body with them?
The villain gave Mothusi a shove. Mothusi fell. The villain kicked him in the butt as he was just trying to nurse the pain from his foot.
“Get up, you fool!” the villain said. Mothusi bawled. He just couldn’t control himself. He knew he was going to prison. He had been caught red-handed committing a murder.
“I’ll give you whatever you want, but please, don’t report me. Please.”
“Report you for what?”
Mothusi pissed himself as the villain hauled him up back to his feet.
The crying became more uncontrollable. He halfwished the man would just finish him off. He had a morbid fear of prison.
Or maybe they saw him stab the tyres of their van?
“I’m sorry guys. I…” Mothusi said, but the villain wouldn’t let him finish.
“Sorry for what?” the villain said and slapped Mothusi on the back of then head then shoved him down the path. He fell again. This time the villain’s anger shot to the roof. He leaned over and delivered a punch into Mothusi’s tummy. Mothusi winced and his bowels let go.
The villain turned away and blocked his nose as the smell of shit invaded the place. If only Mothusi’s feet were still intact. He would simply disappear into the bush. But he couldn’t. Plus, he just didn’t know who else might have seen him kill that woman.
The villain leaned over, hauled Mothusi up, tried to carry him over his shoulder, and gave up just as soon. He was too fat to carry me, I guessed.
Thabang was trying to ring Dumani, but there was no reception. He looked at his phone and for a little while contemplated throwing it into the bushes but quickly changed his mind. He’d bought it off what he suspected to be a thief a year ago and it had never disappointed him. He put the phone back in his pocket, cursed and kicked a tyre. The thought of giving up the job and going home crossed his mind. But then the thought of the poverty that awaited him at home pushed itself into his mind and quashed the original one.
He moved to the slums of Lentsweng with his wife a year ago in search of greener pastures. Up till then they had been living in Matlakala, a cattle post that was a few kilometres from Thogonkope. He had had high hopes when the family made the move. But Lentsweng had proved tougher than he could imagine. He couldn’t find a job. He couldn’t afford to pay rent, so he had built a little shack for the family in the slums.
Every day he lived with the fear of the possibility of the government “yellow monster” (bulldozer) that was notorious for demolishing houses of squatters coming their way. It wasn’t just the poverty that annoyed him. His wife and children, too, did. He knew she was ugly. He had misjudged when he first met her. She had looked like a queen when he bumped into her eight years ago while fetching firewood out in the bush.
A romance had begun. It was the day after the wedding day that he noticed how ugly she was. He told himself that, oh well, maybe he was wrong, the beauty will come back. By then she was pregnant.
Six months after the wedding a baby boy was born and they named him Eric. Eric was now 14 years old and was uglier than his mother. Thabang appreciated Eric’s true ugliness when he turned one. That’s when Thabang told himself that he wasn’t going to have any more children. Not with his wife anyway.
The wife pestered him, saying she was hoping for a girl this time, but he refused, his excuse being that he needed to attain some form of financial security before they could bring another child into this harsh world.
But one day after a day at the shebeen, he came home feeling extraordinarily horny. Earlier on he had made friends with a young man down at
the shebeen who gave him this little root, claiming it was some form of an aphrodisiac.
Being an inquisitive type, Thabang had tried it. And he couldn’t keep his hands off his wife when he got home.
He found her snoring away — probably recovering from the fight he had had with her earlier — and woke her up. Another fight had ensued but he sweet-talked her and within a few minutes she was groaning underneath him. He had regrets the following day but kept his fingers crossed, hoping she hadn’t fallen pregnant. But she had. Her wish came true: she bore a baby girl this time. His didn’t: baby girl Agnes was even uglier than Eric.
To be honest, this deal he was doing was the only thing that kept him going, so giving it up would be a stupid idea. He just wanted to get done with it, get paid and disappear off the face of the earth, never to see those ugly animals he called a family. He would get his teeth fixed, find a more beautiful woman and live the life. He smiled to himself at this thought.
Where the hell was Dumani anyway? You just could never trust people when it came to such things. What if Dumani had recaptured that guy and submitted him without Thabang, got paid and disappeared into thin air? Thabang would hunt the bastard down and teach him a terrible lesson.
Angry and sobering up, Thabang walked around the van, surveying the tyres. The thing of it was, there was only one spare tyre. He examined the two slashed ones and decided the right one wasn’t too bad. He retrieved the spare wheel from the back of the van, together with the paraphernalia needed to change one. He decided to change the left one. He cursed throughout the whole process. When he’d finished, he rolled some tobacco then went to sit in the van. Before long he had fallen asleep.