This man did not like me, and he was not trying to conceal it. “I don’t understand.”
“After what you did in Khayelitsha, you expect me to help you?” he said, his voice incredulous.
“I’m sorry, Kevan,” I said, truly dumfounded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I went to Khayelitsha looking for Matt, your boyfriend. They told me he was working in Tuli Block, so here I am.”
“You cleverly omitted telling them why you are looking for Matt,” he said accusingly. “You must want to see him pretty badly, to do what you did.”
I frowned. “To do what I did? All I did was ask a few questions.”
“Is it your intention to do the same today?” he spit out at me. I saw his mighty arm muscles flex. “Are you going to ask me a few questions?” He said it as if the words were a euphemism for something completely different. “I warn you; I will not be as helpless a victim.”
I held up both hands in a defensive gesture. “Wait, wait, wait, Kevan, I think you have the wrong guy here. Just what is it you think happened in Khayelitsha?”
Kevan let out a humourless snort of laughter. “You did the same thing there. Pretending to be innocent. Well, let me tell you, I am not believing it.”
“Believing what?” This guy was talking circles around me, and I was getting dizzy trying to figure out what was going on.
“You left the Chikosi house as if it were over,” he said. “But then you came back, later, without your Afrikaner guide. And then you tried to beat the information you wanted out of them.”
I stood staring at him, for the moment stunned into silence.
“Why did you do it?” he demanded to know. “They’d told you everything they knew. They had nothing left to tell you. The Chikosis are good people, kind people, yet you tortured them to get information they did not have.”
My brain was whirring with this new information. Who could have done this? Jaegar? But why? Cassandra had been with me that night in Khayelitsha; there was no reason for him to attack the people whose home we visited. What about Joseph, our guide? That made even less sense. No, this was someone else. Something about this felt…hauntingly familiar.
I put a hand against the well-padded massage table to steady myself. “The Chikosis…are they…all right?”
Kevan’s eyes grew narrow as he weighed the motive for my question. Was it concern? Was I being sincere? Was it possible that I was not responsible for what happened to these people? Or was I trying to trick him? He began slowly, “Piksteel, he was badly beaten.” He registered the upset on my face and continued. “Thandile, less so. Her injuries were mostly due to her own attack on the man, as she attempted to protect her husband. Piksteel will lose an eye, but he will live.”
I winced at the words. My God. The man would lose an eye. Had I done this? Had I somehow led this brutality and violence into the home of these innocent people? Of course I had not physically carried out the appalling deed, but if this was somehow related to my case, related to the fact that I had been in the Chikosi’s home, then I did bear some responsibility.
“Your face,” Kevan commented, stepping closer and staring at me.
I stared back, saying nothing.
“There are no scratches.”
I shook my head, not sure what he was getting at.
“Walk,” he said simply.
Another head shake, not understanding.
“Walk,” he repeated.
I did as he asked, taking a stroll to the balcony doors, then back to my original spot.
He released a frustrated huff of air. The features of his unusual face were drawn into those of someone trying to fit a round peg into a square hole and knowing it was futile.
“Again.”
I complied, feeling a little like a circus animal.
“You do not walk with a limp,” he noted, intently assessing my legs.
My heart began to race as an ugly, rotting déjà vu invaded my insides like a fast-spreading disease.
“The man who attacked these people, the only things the Chikosis could tell us about him was that he walked with a limp.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “And Thandile, she is quite certain she scratched the man’s face beneath his balaclava, with her fingernails. Deep. Yet you have no scars. You do not walk with a limp.”
Oh good lord. What was happening here? The Chikosis had been attacked after talking to me. Just like Ethan Ash. By a man with a limp. Just like Ethan Ash. Ethan’s attack happened thousands of kilometres away in Saskatoon, on the other side of the world, but I knew this was no mere coincidence. I had heard someone with a limp following me in Cape Town. Could it be the same man? If it was, there were so many new questions that needed answering. Who hired him? Why? And how is what happened to the Chikosis and Ethan Ash related?
“I am surprised to see you here,” Kevan said. There was something about his voice and face that made me think he was softening toward me, maybe beginning to believe I truly had not been aware of the goings-on in Khayelitsha.
I was about to ask why he was surprised to see me, but as I looked him in the eye, I knew.
Ubuntu.
All of this was because of ubuntu: Richard Cassoum, the camp manager at Mashatu, arranging to have me abandoned at the Limpopo airfield; the men who blew up the Jeep after Cassandra and I crossed the Zambezi; the gunmen shooting at us on the Chobe River—none of it was Jaegar or local criminals or anyone else. All of these acts were perpetrated by men intent on ridding Africa of a bad man who’d visited pain and suffering upon its people. And that bad man was…Russell Quant.
It was ubuntu at work, from the township of Khayelitsha in South Africa to Zambia to Botswana; it was ubuntu. An overwhelming sense of community, humanity; I am what I am because of who we all are. Like the stolen camera case in Khayelitsha, no bad deed against anyone is perpetrated without consequence, otherwise all bad deeds against humanity will flourish.
“Ubuntu,” I said it aloud.
Kevan Badanga looked taken aback to hear the word coming from my mouth. As a native, he probably practiced ubuntu so thoughtlessly that he rarely connected it to his actions or the actions of those around him. His eyes warmed even further, and his heavy jaw moved up and down in silent accord.
“That’s just crap!” I responded, surprising him. “They almost killed us!” I protested. “Blowing up our Jeep! Shooting at us! That doesn’t sound like the ubuntu I heard about from Joseph. The way I learned it, the spirit of ubuntu helped keep peace in post-apartheid years; it’s not supposed to be about bloodshed and killing—it’s about understanding and forgiveness and humanity towards one another. That sure as hell is not what I’ve been through these last few days!” I fumed. “We could have died!”
Kevan nodded sadly. “The Jeep was a grave mistake. I apologize to you,” he said with humility, taking responsibility for something that very likely was far from his own doing. “It was only meant to scare you, but the charges were too strong and the men over-zealous.”
My eyes grew wide, still in awe that so many people over so many kilometres of African countryside had joined together to thwart me. “The people in the SUV with the evil grille? The driver of the Jeep that exploded? All in on it?”
“Yes,” he admitted.
“And using us for target practice last night? What about that?”
“They would not have hurt you, those men,” he told me. “The guns they used were loaded with blanks, or else they were firing high in the air. They were only meaning to scare you and your friends away. The big man and the woman, we did not know who they were, but if they were with you, we knew they too were dangerous. You have to understand. You were responsible for what happened to the Chikosis. And now you were in Chobe, looking for me and for Matt. You were too close. It could not be allowed.”
I stared at him, as unwilling to believe him as he had been unwilling to believe me. “But I heard them! I heard those bullets whiz by my ear.” I could still hear them as I spoke.
A small smi
le crept onto his lips. “But were you hit? Were either of your friends or the boat hit?”
Got me there.
“But you are a determined man, Russell Quant. You do not scare easily.” He came a step nearer to me, as if seeing me up close would confirm his growing notion that perhaps I was not the bad man he’d been told I was. “We are all related,” he said. “When the beatings took place, the story began to pass from mouth to mouth, of how a man and woman from North America had come to the townships in search of a man many of them knew well, Matthew Moxley, and how this couple was willing to use great violence to find him. If this man and woman were willing to do such a horrible thing to the people whose home Matthew once shared, what would they do to others as they continued their search? What would they do when they finally found Matthew? It set in motion a chain of events meant to drive you away from your purpose, away from Africa.
“Over the years, Matthew lived in Khayelitsha many times. He had many friends and loved ones there. When the beating of Thandile and Piksteel was discovered—the same night you had been in their home—and they told their story, the community of Matthew’s friends—his African family—banded together. Thandile had made a terrible mistake. She’d told you, the man she was certain was their attacker, that Matthew was in Mashatu. The people immediately contacted Mashatu to warn Matthew. The camp manager, Mr. Cassoum, told them not to worry, that Matthew had gone to work at Chobe, and this terrible man would not find Matthew there. Even so, they made him promise that he and his staff would do whatever they could to divert you from finding out anything about Matthew. Of course, you did find out that Matthew had gone to Chobe, and when Mr. Cassoum discovered this, he contacted me, as well as Matthew’s friends in the township. The people in Khayelitsha felt the circumstances had grown dire, and they made the plan to have you stopped.”
I shook my head. “I did not do this thing, Kevan, but I can’t explain it either. I do not know who did this, or why.” I considered telling Matthew Moxley’s current boyfriend about the suspicious link to the limping man in Saskatoon who assaulted Matthew Moxley’s former boyfriend, but it seemed it would only cloud matters further at this point.
“This was no random act of violence,” I admitted. “And the timing could not have been better to implicate me, but…well, I don’t know what else to say. What else can I tell you to convince you that I had nothing to do with the attack on the Chikosis?”
“You can tell me why you are truly here.”
“I told you,” I began. “I’m looking for Matthew Moxley.”
“That much I know,” he answered back. “That much we all know. What we do not know is why.”
Was this to be a stalemate? Him not believing I was innocent, and me unable to prove my innocence in the only way he could accept. My client, Clara Ridge, did not want me to reveal her purpose in sending me to find her son, but the case had grown perilous and far beyond its original boundaries. I had a choice to make: I could keep her secret and likely leave Africa with nothing, or I could tell her son’s boyfriend the truth and find what I’d come all this way to look for.
“I am a detective,” I told the man.
“So what?” he said, his voice telling me how unwilling he was to suffer any more malarkey from me.
“I was sent to Africa to find Matthew Moxley.”
“Sent by whom?”
“His mother.”
Our eyes met somewhere in the space between us, mine asking the other man to believe me and grant my request, his searching for the something in me that would allow him to do so.
“I am sorry to say this,” Kevan Badanga said in measured, hesitant words, “but you have come a long way for nothing.”
Oh man! Now what African country was I going to have to hump my way to in order to track down Matthew Moxley? Tanzania? Somalia? Ghana?
“I am sorry to tell you,” Kevan said, “that Matthew Moxley died seven months ago.”
Chapter 15
We ran into a tempestuous storm somewhere over Bermuda, causing the aircraft to sway back and forth like Elvis Presley’s hips. I cannot sleep during turbulence—I’m usually too busy praying—so when we reached Atlanta, instead of spending the day investigating this lovely Southern city as I’d hoped, I holed up in my airport hotel room, ordered in, watched movies (both the blow-em-up and chick flick variety), and did my best to catch up on sleep.
The next day, after what seemed like years since I’d left South Africa and a century since I’d been home, I found myself on a plane circling Saskatoon’s John G. Diefenbaker Airport. It was a Friday night, near midnight, late March. I watched the twinkling, tangerine-hued lights that define the city’s streets and bridges and felt a sudden unexpected longing to be home. Was it homesickness? Was I simply disappointed to have gone all the way to Africa only to fail at my task of finding my client’s son? Maybe I was feeling guilt over the poverty that I’d seen in Africa, as compared to cozy Saskatoon.
It did seem hugely unfair that when I got off this plane, I would go to my large, beautiful, warm home that I shared with not one but two dogs; I would have plenty to eat, I would feel safe, I had money in the bank, no one I knew would have died from AIDS or malnutrition or natural disaster or violence since I’d left home. My African adventure had been exhausting, and, I had to wonder, had it all been for nothing?
As the aircraft pointed its nose down on final descent, I looked around the plane’s cabin at the other passengers; I studied the faces of the people I’d shared this last leg of my journey with. I felt an inexplicable warmth towards them, a warmth I was sadly certain would vanish as soon as we found ourselves elbow-to-elbow at the luggage carousel, jostling for the best spot from which to retrieve our bags and make our getaway, probably never to see each other again. I closed my eyes and waited to land.
Looking like he might have just woken from a late evening nap—the type where it’s probably best to just sleep right through to morning—Alex Canyon was cute enough to eat. He was waiting for me just outside the arrivals gate looking not unlike a little lost boy searching for a familiar face. The closer I got to him, the faster I walked, so that by the time I reached him I was almost at a full gallop. I threw my arms around him and buried my head into the soft down of the thick fleece jacket that covered his chest. It was uncharacteristic of me to do this, and I’m not sure why I did, but it felt good, and he seemed to like it too.
After several seconds I pulled away, and we looked at each other. He grinned a lopsided grin, and I gave him one back.
“When did you get back into town?” I asked him.
“Just yesterday,” he answered, his voice low and growly and sexy. “How was the trip?”
“He’s dead,” I blurted out.
Jeepers, what the hell was wrong with me! That was not at all what I was thinking I’d say, which was supposed to go something like: “It was fantastic. What a beautiful country. I saw an elephant! We have to go back on safari. It is so good to see you.”
“Oh, Russell,” Alex said, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. What happened?”
“AIDS,” I answered with a frustrated bitterness in my voice, repeating what Kevan Badanga had told me. “AIDS killed Matthew Moxley, just like it kills almost everyone in Africa, it seems.”
Now what the heck happened to my oogly-googly, warmth-towards-my-fellow-man, I-love-Saskatoon, we’re-so-fortunate, good mood? Instead, something had happened to me between twenty-thousand feet and the ground, something that turned me into this miserable-cynic-beneath-a-black-cloud kind of guy, and, I swear to God, I felt kind of weepy too. Jeez, maybe I hadn’t gotten quite enough sleep in Atlanta after all.
“Let’s get your luggage, and we can talk about this at home,” Alex wisely suggested. “There’s still snow on the ground, but the temp has been pretty mild,” he added, hoping to find something to distract me and buoy my spirits.
I nodded in agreement and allowed Alex to lead me through the motions as we found ourselves
elbow-to-elbow at the luggage carousel, jostling for the best spot from which to retrieve my bags and make our getaway, probably never to see my fellow travellers again.
When we got home, Alex pulled me into a hot shower for two that lasted until the water turned chilly. After a speedy rubdown with thick towels that smelled of Bounce, we dived into bed, quickly followed by Barbra and Brutus. It was certainly crowded, given that none of us would ever be considered the runt of the litter. And usually I have a strict rule about no dogs on the bed when I have company in it. But they had quite obviously missed me, and I could not resist their squeals and grunts of intense pleasure as they curled up between us and nestled their cold noses into the crook of our necks, every so often sending a darting tongue of puppy love into one of our ears. We fell asleep like that, and I did not wake until a luxuriously late hour the next day. Nothing had felt so good in a long time.
Saturday dawned mild but with a pearl grey sky dizzy with early spring flurries that coated the roads and roofs of the neighbourhood like coconut icing. I would have loved nothing better than to stay in bed all day with my hunk and two pooches, but I had something else that needed doing. Something that could wait no longer.
I had to tell Clara Ridge that her son was dead.
I had debated calling her from Botswana as soon as I heard the news, but I couldn’t bear to give her such devastating information over the phone. This was a job best done in person.
I pulled up in front of a little bungalow in Pleasant Hill where Avenue T begins to slope down towards Fred Mendel Park and the West Industrial Area of Saskatoon. The Mazda purred with self-satisfaction at having delivered me safely on streets grown treacherously slippery with the fresh falling snow. Through a window edged with frost on the outside and condensation on the inside, I stared at the tiny, unfenced front yard. I pictured little blond Matthew Moxley, then Matthew Ridge, playing there as a child, already feeling the effects of his harsh, uncaring father and his ineffectual mother. Is this what had driven him to trouble with the law, reform school, and ultimately being ousted from his home and family? He’d eventually found peace and love in his life through work in developing countries, teaching children, in his relationships with Ethan Ash then Kevan Badanga, only to be struck down and killed by AIDS. I shuddered at the senselessness of it all. Now I was to be the messenger of this sad, final chapter to his mother.
Sundowner Ubuntu Page 23
