Out of Shadows

by Jason Wallace

  “Jacko! Run, Jacko,” Ivan yelled. “I’m telling you, you’d better run hard cos we’re coming to get you. Gonna slot you, one time. You’re dead.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I was aiming for the main gate, and as far beyond it as I could get, but even from a distance the moonlight was enough to show me the outline of a closed barrier. The cherry of a soldier’s smoke flared red.

  I veered from the road and cut across uneven ground. I stumbled over loose rocks and soil, then slammed into the fence because it was much nearer than I’d realized. Up the line I heard the sound of a rifle being readied.

  “Eweh! Who goes?” came the gruff voice.

  I pulled myself over and down onto the other side, and headlong into the pines.

  At the road, I ran down the center lines until my lungs burned. I sat in the ditch, crying and heaving for air. There were no cars, no lights. I was alone and miles from anywhere. Anywhere but here.

  Then a voice, and it wasn’t Ivan’s.

  Forget you ever came to this school and get on with your life.

  Miss Marimbo.

  A light wind grabbed me from nowhere and it made me cold.

  Scared eyes through the gap. A chain kept the door tight.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She didn’t know; they hadn’t been yet. I’d never felt so relieved about anything.

  “Miss Marimbo, you have to get away from here, it’s not safe,” I told her. “I think he’s . . . I think he could . . .”

  She knew who I meant.

  I heard noises and glanced over my shoulder. “There might not be much time.”

  Her expression paled. She let me in off the stoep and locked the door behind me. Inside, I vaguely registered the naked living room and the boxes piled against one wall.

  She noticed me looking.

  “I am leaving tomorrow, as soon as speeches are over. I cannot wait until the end of term.”

  “No, go now,” I said. “It isn’t safe.”

  She stared at the cut on my face. “What has happened?”

  “All sorts. I can’t explain everything now, but Ivan believes you might go to the police about what he did to you.” She looked at me, terrified, and I hated myself. “I told him we’d spoken. It’s my stupid fault. Can you drive us out of here?”

  “To where? There are soldiers all over, the headmaster has warned us that we must not . . .”

  “Please. Right now.”

  Miss Marimbo stood, dazed, wanting and not wanting to understand.

  I told her what I knew.

  “Ivan’s planning to kill the prime minister tomorrow.”

  She didn’t laugh, or rebuke me, or even ask me to say it again.

  “Okay,” she simply said at last. “We’ll go now.”

  There was a sharp crack against the window and the curtain puffed into the room. Miss Marimbo jumped and frowned at it, then at the pieces of glass on the floor, but already I understood. Before I could warn her a second crack sounded, and this time the stone smacked into the shade hanging from the ceiling. The bulb exploded.

  Miss Marimbo screamed. I grabbed her hand, pulled her to the kitchen and shut us in, killing the lights. I slid the table across as a barricade while heavy feet smashed into the front door.

  I pushed the window.

  “Is that your car?”

  Miss Marimbo nodded. She grabbed keys off a hook.

  “Get out and start it. Quickly.”

  “What about you?” she wavered.

  A loud thud against the kitchen door. The table rammed in and for one horrifying moment Ivan’s face was there. I leaped and made him disappear and wrestled the barrier back into place.

  Miss Marimbo was halfway out.

  “Robert.”

  “Just go.”

  “But—”

  “Now!”

  With a sob, she vanished, and long seconds later the engine roared to life. Headlights flooded the kitchen. With a last shove, I jumped and scrambled headfirst out of the gap and rolled to the ground. The car wailed, then Miss Marimbo’s scream rose above it. Pittman was on the passenger side slapping at the door while Klompie had managed to get the driver’s side open and was lunging in.

  Without thinking, I dived at Klompie, tackling him to the ground. He slashed his arms while I pinned him face down. Pittman picked up a rock and aimed at the windshield.

  I reached out my foot and kicked the car door shut.

  “Get out of here!”

  Miss Marimbo didn’t need telling. With one quick movement, she pulled the car into reverse and sped through a narrow gap between the trees, leaving Pittman bathed in blinding headlights and swinging his rock at fresh air. He was almost clownlike in the way he spun and collapsed to the ground.

  Now the car was on the track. Miss Marimbo straightened up and the tires dug deep. Above me, Ivan leaned out of the window. Without looking back I scurried the only way I could and didn’t stop until I was over the perimeter fence, away from the retreating glow of the car and back out into the safety of the bush.

  The night stalked me. I felt I’d been going for hours, my limbs aching and hot.

  The stars were hidden now and every few seconds the clouds glowed silver as a battle ravaged the sky. Angry murmurs rumbled in the distance. I wasn’t sure where I was going, but I needed to stop and think so instinct took over and put me on the path to the Cliffs. I also needed to shelter because the rain had started to fall, instant and heavy.

  I shuffled under the overhanging rock close to the drop. Initially I cursed how the storm trapped me there but secretly I was comforted by it. I felt safe, the sound of it a reassuring blanket. As long as it was there I was certain they wouldn’t be hunting for me, so I pushed myself further beneath the granite and lay with my head on the earth.

  Sleep was fitful, and in my dream I saw that Miss Marimbo had made it and released the news, so that when I went back to school it was all over. Soldiers and police were everywhere. Ivan and Klompie and Pitters had been arrested and Prime Minister Mugabe was safe. And I was welcomed back as a hero. Then the dream turned and Miss Marimbo hadn’t made it, so I had to smuggle my way back, get past the soldiers, and disable Ivan myself. Only I couldn’t find him. And I could hear the prime minister’s motorcade getting closer and closer, but however hard I tried to tell them, the lines of boys and masters and parents in the chapel sat blankly and unhearing like dummies. They couldn’t even see me. I screamed at them, I shook them. They did nothing. And now the prime minister was here, coming through the huge doors at the far end with all his bodyguards around him. The light behind him was so bright he was faceless, an apparition devoured by silhouette.

  Snap, the bolt of a rifle echoed.

  Klompie was at the altar and aiming his gun down the aisle.

  Snap.

  Pittman, in the pulpit, rifle butt nuzzled against his cheek.

  Snap.

  Ivan, suddenly right next to me, ready for the shot.

  My eyes burst open into the murk of predawn. The rain had stopped, the air was heavy and still. It was too early even for the birds.

  I pulled myself out.

  I hadn’t been to the Cliffs in ages—this was their domain—and the whole area seemed different somehow, smaller. I remembered the night I’d saved Klompie, the day of Nelson and the scorpion . . . So long ago. It could have been another lifetime. It was another lifetime; I’d been so many different people.

  They obviously still used the place because there were patches on the ground where fires had been lit. Then I noticed the marks in the bark of a tree, all our names and a date. I picked up a rock and started to hack at it, wanting to erase every sign, past or present, that they existed and that I’d had anything to do with them.

  And then I stopped. The rock slipped from my fingers.

  Something hidden through the bushes.

  Nothing very remarkable, just mounds of earth, each no more than a few inches high. They hadn’t been there befor
e, I was certain of it. They looked out of place because some of them had grass or plants on them that weren’t growing anywhere else, while a few were completely bare.

  Just long drops, I told myself. Ivan never liked people shitting near the camp.

  And then there are the children who do not return.

  The light crept and shapes emerged from the dark. All of a sudden this was a very bad place to be.

  I inched forward until I was at the first line of raised earth, one of the fresher ones without any growth. I didn’t want to touch it so I broke off a stick and started to rake over the top. When I eased the end down it went in easily, and kept on going until it met resistance. A rock? Too soft. Elastic, almost. I prodded my way around until I was underneath whatever it was, then levered back. The top of the mound breathed, but whatever was down there was too heavy for my length of wood, and as I pulled harder something gave and a popping sensation raced to my hands. A rancid smell hit my nose.

  I let go instantly and stumbled. I fell. The bush suddenly came to life as birds woke and cried and flapped. I watched them overhead, a flurry of shapes against the pale sky, and I wondered what evils they were fleeing, and what they had seen in the past.

  Finding my legs, I ran.

  The soldier must have been watching me the whole time as I struggled at the top of the fence, trying to unhook my shirt, because as soon as I hit the ground he stepped from behind the trees. He held his Kalashnikov in one hand, in the other he had a length of sugarcane, which he tore at and shredded with his teeth. His uniform buttons were mostly undone and his eyes were heavy and red. I caught alcohol fumes as he swayed.

  “Who are you?” he demanded. “What are you doing?”

  I threw up my hands. “I go to school here. I’m a pupil.”

  “What are you doing?” he said again, spitting out bits of cane. He jabbed me with the barrel. “This is Prime Minister’s day, you are trespassing, murungu.”

  “No, I—”

  He held the gun in both hands.

  My throat hitched.

  “I’m a pupil. I was just going . . . for a run. I didn’t know we weren’t allowed to move around still.” His finger wavered over the trigger and my words garbled. “I’m sorry I didn’t know I’m really sorry. Please.”

  He stopped chewing. He believed me, but that didn’t mean anything and he dug the butt of his Kalashnikov under my ribs. I collapsed with a groan.

  Laughing, he stepped over me for a second helping when a voice boomed across the athletics field.

  “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? Leave that boy alone.”

  Dunno was marching toward us, his lips so tight they’d disappeared.

  “You can see perfectly well he’s harmless. You so much as lay another finger on him I’ll have you reported for malicious intent.”

  The soldier trained the weapon on him.

  “He must not be here. We have orders to protect the prime minister. I say he is wrong. You are wrong.”

  “And I say you’re nothing more than a thug in uniform,” Mr. Dunn told him.

  “I am a war vet.” It sounded like wovit. “I fought for this country.”

  “With the likes of you in a position of authority, God help us. And don’t you bloody point that thing at me.” Dunno swatted the rifle away.

  The soldier had to do something. To my relief, he backed down and walked away with a tut and a sneer.

  Dunno helped me up.

  “Thank you, sir,” I managed.

  “Don’t thank me. You’re a bloody idiot. But that lot . . .” he smoldered. “You know you’re lucky to be alive. What the hell do you think you’re playing at? And at this hour?” He noticed my clothes. “What have you been doing, boy?”

  I struggled for words. “I found . . . I think there’s . . . Sir, I need to tell you something. It’s important.”

  But I’d already lost him. His eyes burned holes into the back of the ambling soldier.

  “It’ll have to wait,” he told me.

  “Sir, I—”

  “I said, not now. I’ve been up all night and I’m in no mood. Not after what’s happened.”

  “Happened?” I didn’t like this. “Is it something to do with Hascott, sir?”

  “Hascott? What are you talking about, boy? It’s Miss Marimbo,” he said, jaw tensing. “That poor woman. They said she wouldn’t stop, that they tried to wave her down. They said she was driving aggressively and that they were only obeying orders. She was trying to leave, for Christ’s sake, not get in.”

  Each word a solid punch.

  “The filthy gook bastards . . . They shot her. They murdered her. And the government will brush over this like it never happened. I’m telling you, someone should shoot him. If this is the kind of game our prime minister plays then we’re better off without him.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  I started to cry. As Dunno spoke everything caught up with me and I lowered my head and bawled. I didn’t know what to do now.

  Neither, it seemed, did Dunno.

  “Boy? Are you all right, boy?” he asked.

  I wanted to tell him everything, but when I tried it felt like needles were stabbing the back of my throat. I couldn’t talk. My knees buckled.

  Mr. Dunn caught me and half led, half carried me back to his house, and hastily made his wife take over while he went to try and deal with the mess. Mrs. Dunn was from the same cast as her husband, but she was also a mother of some twenty years and still had an instinct.

  “Don’t you worry, my boy,” she said as she laid me onto a bed. I was dazed. Numb. I stared at nothing. “It’s Robert, isn’t it? You look in a terrible state, Robert, but you’ll be fine. It’s been a great shock. Try to get some sleep.”

  “Will they cancel Speech Day?” I croaked, surprising her. “Do you think they’ll stop him from coming? He won’t come after what’s happened. Will he?”

  Ma Dunn gazed at me, frowning. The glow of the rising sun coming through the window was unable to melt the stony set of her face.

  “It’s an important day,” she replied, “for the headmaster and the prime minister. They both have a lot to gain. I don’t think either man would let something like this hold them up.”

  And then she turned.

  “You look tired. Shame. Try to get some rest, hey.”

  It was so easy.

  Lying there in the Dunn’s spare room, staring at the colorless ceiling, I told myself there was nothing I could do. It was out of my hands. Besides, it was what they all wanted, wasn’t it? The whites, the Matabeles . . . So maybe it really was for the best. What if Mugabe really was as bad as they said, and not actually the great man my father insisted he was? His soldiers had killed Miss Marimbo without thinking about it, so they probably had killed lots of other innocent people for him in the past, just as Ivan told us they had, and would keep on killing in the future.

  After all, it wasn’t my country, so what the hell did I know? All I had to do was lie here and do nothing, let the hours run dry. Whatever the outcome, one way or another, it would all be over. And it would have nothing to do with me.

  I felt the lump on my head, the scratches and bruises on my body. I closed my eyes wanting only to come out on the other side, but beneath the shroud I met Ivan.

  Ivan at the bottle store.

  Ivan at the Cliffs.

  Ivan in a darkened alley with an inert Greet bleeding at his feet.

  Ivan by the workers’ village.

  Then I was dreaming, and I was in the chapel next to Ivan with the prime minister coming toward us again. This time Ivan didn’t take aim. Instead, he was handing the rifle—my rifle, from the club—to me, and as I took it he said, grinning and nodding: “Klompie and Pitters, they’re okay . . . But you’re better. I need you. . . .”

  The sound of the bullet echoed and I jerked straight. It came again—crack—but it was just the jacaranda pods exploding as the heat grew. There was another noise with it, and when I looked out acros
s the playing fields I saw cars.

  The morning had moved on. People were starting to arrive.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I like to think there was a moment in Derek De Klomp’s life in which he considered everything he was about to do and reevaluated his part. If he ever did, it was as he stood, smiling and proud, in the parking lot with his relatives and glanced across to see me running like a thief toward the house. I stopped, and for that moment there was a glimpse of uncertainty as a line of complete understanding passed between us. Not regret, exactly, or guilt, rather the genuine fear of someone who’d found himself in a place to which he’d willingly gone but didn’t like now that he was there. And there was no way out and he knew it.

  His aunt pulled him around to straighten his tie, and the moment was gone. He lifted his head once more to me, though now the look of deviance and loathing Ivan had taught him was back.

  By now everyone was beginning to notice what a state I was in. I finished my dash for the house while the De Klomp family joined the flow that headed for the chapel.

  I called for a squack from the junior dorm as I changed into my clean uniform.

  “Where’s Hascott?”

  The squack shook his head: He hadn’t seen him all morning.

  Through my study window I checked the state of the procession. The De Klomps were still in view but Klompie himself had broken away and was moving briskly around the back of the tennis courts and toward the new house, constantly checking over his shoulder.

  In the distance I heard the siren wail of the prime minister’s motorcade.

  I knew Klompie could only have been the failsafe. The backup. The last-chance shot should things not have gone to plan. He was too stupid for anything else. Simply lie still, wait for Robert Mugabe to step up to the decorative ribbon, and then pull the trigger. Even a monkey couldn’t miss at that range.

  I don’t think Klompie really believed he’d be required to make that shot, or maybe he just hoped it would all be over before the cloud of VIPs got anywhere near him. Whatever the reason, it obviously hadn’t dawned on him that by running through a mound of cement dust outside he’d leave a trail of footprints that led me up the stairs and right to the chair he’d used to climb up into the attic. The stink of cigarette smoke hit me straightaway. He hadn’t even bothered to pull the cover across after him.