Nowhere

by Roger Smith

  What if somebody found her and she blabbed about what he’d done?

  A long shot sure, but it could happen.

  Shit fuckin happened. His father was living proof of that.

  No, fuck that—dead proof.

  Joe Louw had stood up on that podium expecting nothing more than to trot out some boring facts in that droning voice of his—Jesus, when Leon was a lightie he couldn’t help but fall asleep the few times his father’d had the time to read to him at night—and instead a mad fucktard had blown him away.

  So shit fuckin happened and it could happen to Leon.

  He fired the pipe and hit it so hard that he coughed like a dog and when he finally got his coughing under control he sucked it to extinction.

  But the meth did nothing but magnify his terror and he heard his breath coming in rapid, shallow rasps as panic drove him from the room. He opened the front door of the house and stood sucking hot, dusty air.

  Hansie, the moron from the gate, lumbered past and gave him a stiff armed salute, and then stared at him, slack-jawed, and Leon realized he was standing outside still wearing only his boxers, his scrawny body yellow in the glare of the low sun.

  Leon ran back into the house, pulled on clothes that lay strewn around the bedroom, grabbed his KSG bullpup 12-gauge pump action and sprinted for his truck.

  He had to get to Sue Kruger.

  Get to her and kill her and bury her ass deep in the desert where nobody’d ever find the skanky bitch.

  FOUR

  Zondi drove due west toward Nêrens, squinting into the low red sun that stained the earth at the horizon. He’d lowered his side window a few inches, his sinuses burning from the Freon in the AC refrigerant, and as a sudden wind roared across the plains he tasted grit in his mouth.

  He wound up the window, the truck buffeted by the hot gusts, the chassis rocking and the spring-mounted antenna flaying the roof above Zondi’s head like a bullwhip.

  Within a minute the wind had thrown a curtain of dust across the landscape and Zondi was lost in a dim brown world, visibility reduced to just beyond the hood of the Nissan. He switched on the headlights but they did nothing but cast spectral shadows on the shifting sand.

  He contemplated pulling off the road but he couldn’t see the shoulder and feared that he’d end up in a ditch or, worse, be pulped like the bugs on his windshield by one of the eighteen-wheelers that thundered through the desert. So he drove slowly, concentrating on the wavering white line.

  The sand storm blew itself out just as Zondi passed the road to Witsand and he was able to lower his window again, the dusty air warm to his face.

  He heard the grumble of an engine and saw a Ford pickup speeding up at him in his rearview. The truck flew past him, too close, the wind of its passing buffeting him, and through his open window he saw the driver, small, sharp-featured, hunched over the wheel.

  Leon Louw.

  As Leon swung back into the left lane he oversteered and the backside fishtailed and Zondi, already braking, thought the Ford was going to roll, but the drift stopped and the truck sped on toward Nêrens, a dark speck sucked toward the giant orb of the sun, the dust in the atmosphere making for a lurid sunset.

  Zondi, though he’d been born into a hugely superstitious tribe—a tribe that consulted witchdoctors and communed with the ancestors and believed that potions and incantations could make or break luck—had jettisoned these beliefs over the years, but even he couldn’t but feel some sense that the appearance of Leon Louw, like an evil djin blown in from the dust, was predestined and without acting consciously found himself accelerating after the man with the crude tattoo.

  Zondi could see the gleaming sheet metal of the township and the far spire of the Afrikaner church silhouetted against the sun and assumed Leon was making for the town when the Ford suddenly veered off the road onto a vast flat plain, a spur of dust pursuing it.

  Zondi slowed when he reached the place where Leon had turned off. There was no road, just the tracks of the Ford’s tires on the sand.

  As he watched the Ford crested a low rise and disappeared, the last rays of the dying sun setting ablaze the cockscomb of dust that hung in the air.

  Zondi clicked the Nissan into four-wheel drive and bumped off the road, feeling a moment’s uncertainty as the tires found the sand and then he was moving forward, driving into nothing as dusk crept lower.

  - - -

  “I’m not afraid! I’m not afraid!”

  Leon, even though he was shitting himself, terror gripping him by the throat and the balls, bellowed along with Eminem like it was some kind of mantra that could fix him, the sound in the truck cranked to the max—he’d had a monster system installed down in Cape Town: tweeters, subwoofers, bass bins, crossovers, the whole fuckin toot—the hip hop anthem driving him across the sand, desperate to get where he was headed before he lost the light, not sure he’d be able to find the bitch in the dark.

  He had maybe ten minutes, he reckoned.

  Cutting it fuckin fine.

  “I’m not afraid!”

  He clanked over the railroad track, the rails orange against the dark sand, reflecting the last of the sun.

  When he smacked through a growth of bush and just missed a deep ditch Leon hit the spotlights, sure that he was far enough from the road to be invisible.

  There was just enough light in the sky for him to see his landmark, the silhouette of a lone camelthorn up on a hill that had always brought to mind a hanging tree, and he knew he was okay, that he’d found her.

  It was only when he stopped the Ford and killed the engine and with it the pumping hip hop, and was already stepping out of the truck that he heard the vehicle following him and turned and saw it coming right at him, the driver only now hitting his lights, the beams catching Leon and getting him to lift his arm to shield his face, even as he was diving back into the pickup for his shotgun.

  - - -

  Sue Kruger, like flotsam washed up on the shores of hell, drifted in and out of consciousness. Her skin was burned and weeping with blisters. Her tongue was so swollen that it was jammed up against her palate. Her lips were cracked and bleeding. Her eyes, puss filled, were cracks in her face.

  When she heard the sound of the truck she thought she was imagining it then she saw the beams of its lights against the dusky sky and pulled herself back enough from that dark tide to hear the misfire of the engine, and her heart sank because it was him.

  Him again.

  The engine cut and with it the music that she’d felt as much as she’d heard, a bass punch low in the gut, and she thought she was losing herself again when she caught the whine of another truck.

  Sue stilled her panting breath and concentrated hard and yes—Jesus, yes—she did hear it, the second vehicle, and saw its headlights rake the sand and find Leon, frozen beside his pickup, then the skinny runt was ducking back into the cab.

  - - -

  When the mad little fucker stood up out of the Ford with the black shotgun Zondi wished he’d prevailed on the giant Boer, Van Staaden, for a weapon. Guys like that always had a stash of guns lying around like empty longnecks, didn’t they?

  Too late for that.

  Zondi heard the weapon being racked and he smacked the truck into gear and floored it, ramming Leon’s Ford.

  - - -

  As Leon fired the open driver’s door of the pickup was sent swinging and smacked him hard against the shoulder and the shot went skyward and the shotgun flew from his grip and slid down the verge toward where Sue Kruger lay.

  The impact killed one of the Ford’s headlights, but in the beam of the remaining light Leon saw the smart-ass kaffir who had arrested Magnus Kruger emerge from the red Nissan.

  “I need to talk to you, Leon,” the cop said.

  “How do you know my fuckin name?” Leon said, massaging his shoulder, trying to get his head together.

  “I know who you are. And I know who your father is.”

  Before he could find a reply Leon heard a
cry from down in the gloom.

  The Kruger bitch.

  - - -

  Sue found her voice and yelled and pleaded. She pedaled her legs and smashed her heels into the dirt, the puffs of dust just visible in the failing light. She looked to that other truck, to the shadowy figure and she screamed for her life.

  - - -

  Leon plunged back into the cab of the Ford, fired the engine and, with a scrape of metal as he bumped against the Nissan, took off into the coming night. Zondi got himself behind the wheel of his truck and turned the key.

  The engine stuttered.

  Then it caught and, sliding, tires spewing sand, he took off after Leon, the Ford gone into the gathering darkness, speeding back toward the railroad track.

  - - -

  Sue saw Leon’s truck fly away and she shouted even louder, but the other vehicle roared to life and clattered off and she watched its lamps sweep over her head like searchlights and then they were gone.

  She could hear the two engines a long time after the trucks disappeared and, at last, she surrendered herself to the tide and allowed herself to be dragged into the darkness, and as she was swept down she heard a long, mournful howl of a train, far, far away out in the world.

  - - -

  Leon, shit out of ideas, the darkie on his tail as he sped toward the railroad track, saw the dirty yellow light of a train rushing toward him, heard the rhythm of its wheels and the moan of its horn. One of those monster freight trains that went on forever. As it snaked around a curve, Leon couldn’t see the last of its carriages.

  Then he had to catch a cackle because suddenly, just like that, he knew exactly what the fuck he had to do.

  - - -

  As Zondi thumped over the tracks after Leon he felt the ground shifting under the wheels of the Nissan as the diesel engine bored down.

  He followed the Ford that seemed to be slowing a little, and he slowed too, cautious, keeping on the passenger side of Leon’s truck, all too aware that the runt may have another weapon.

  The Ford came to a halt and Zondi coasted by, turning so that he had Leon’s truck fixed in his headlights. The train was screaming up behind him, the night filled with its noise.

  Zondi waited, seconds ticking by, hearing nothing but the roar of the train as it drew ever closer.

  Then Leon was on the move again, flinging the Ford into a U-turn, a gauze of dust hanging in Zondi’s headlights, the truck charging away, back toward the tracks, and Zondi thought of Dolly, the girl who’d been raped in Rosetown, and how she’d avoided being murdered by putting a freight train between herself and her assailants.

  - - -

  Leon floored the Ford and shot toward the railroad.

  He’d timed it perfectly, feeling the tires bite into the little rise that led up to the tracks, knowing that he’d leave the darkie stranded behind the train.

  Then, unbelievably, just as the front wheels juddered over the first rail and he juiced it the truck died.

  Stalled.

  Fuck.

  The flat face of the locomotive flew at him, light burning his eyes, as he turned the key, pumping the gas frantically.

  Nothing.

  Leon flung open the door and had got as far as stepping one foot out onto a wooden tie when the train was upon him, vibrations dancing his bones, his scream lost in the lunatic bawl of its air horn.

  - - -

  Zondi watched the train bear down on the stranded truck, the engineer hitting the brakes, the scream of metal on metal as the train screeched along, a trail of yellow sparks like cut wheat thrown away from its locked wheels.

  But it was still traveling at speed when it struck the Ford and crumpled it like a wad of foil and dragged it and the sparks must’ve ignited the ruptured gas tank because the truck blew before the train came to a shuddering, hissing stop.

  Zondi sat in the dark and watched the oily fire and then he turned the Nissan and headed back toward town.

  FIVE

  Steve Bungu trundled through Cape Town’s chichi V&A Waterfront, his dented dome bathed in the fulgent light of store windows that flaunted designer clothes and fragrances and dazzling displays of jewelry. People gave him a wide berth, this lumbering troll of a man in the check shorts and old COSATU T-shirt, his limp causing his left loafer to scuff the tiles.

  He was eating a soft serve ice-cream cone, leaving a trail of white drops as he walked, the closest he’d ever allow himself to get to celebrating.

  The president was off the hook. The media had swallowed the Louw letter. Not without a few cynical, dissenting voices, true, but they were seen as churlish (not to mention racist) and lacking in empathy for everybody loved a fallen hero, and that’s what Joe Louw had become.

  Incorruptible until the last, cut down by a cowardly lunatic just when he had unselfishly returned from self-imposed exile to do his duty for his country.

  And Bungu, lurking in the shadows behind the throne, had only enhanced his power and prestige. Hence these few minutes of self-indulgence.

  A skinny brown security guard in a blue uniform, aclank with walkie-talkie and nightstick and cuffs, set forth toward Bungu then seemed to entertain second thoughts for he drifted backward, like a dinghy in the wake of a tug boat, and muttered something into his radio, unable to hold the Xhosa’s gaze.

  Bungu strolled on, impulsively stepping into a store with a display of hats in its window. A cringing anorectic blond boy approached him fearfully, but Bungu was all charm, buying the hat he’d taken a liking to: a vented straw trilby with a red band that sat atop his massive head like a pebble on a boulder.

  Wearing the trilby Bungu ambled through the mall, gobbling the last of the cone and wiping his sticky hands on his shorts.

  He wasn’t at the Waterfront just to wander aimlessly, he was heading for a bookstore. The absurdity of the last few days had left Samuel Beckett very much on his mind and he had a hankering to read the Irishman’s plays again after thirty long years.

  Fuck, maybe he’d even write a play of his own.

  Christ knew he had the material.

  He stopped at a huge oval Victorian cast iron window and looked out at the last of the dusk over the ocean, watching a brightly lit cruise ship, as gaudy as an old tart, glide by, but he was looking through the liner, seeing his dead wife on the fifth or sixth day after she’d been locked in the cell with him.

  Fuck yes, he had the material.

  He shook the image away, determined to keep his celebratory mood afloat.

  As he stepped onto the escalator that would deliver him down to the bookstore his phone rang. Assegaai.

  Bungu sighed but he took the call. “Ja?”

  “So it’s over?” Assegaai said.

  “Ja, it’s over.”

  “And the thing with me? That over too?”

  “What thing?” Bungu said.

  A beat, then Assegaai said, “For real?”

  “Ja. I’ve got no more use for nowhere.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  “So you won’t mind if Kruger takes a fall?” Assegaai said.

  “No. Long as there’s no blowback my way.”

  “There won’t be.”

  “Well, fine then.”

  Bungu ended the call and slipped the phone into his shorts as he stepped off the escalator and went into Exclusive Books, passing the front shelves packed with beach reads and tourist fodder—wild animals and noble savages—in search of Beckett, and found a small selection of plays hidden deep in the bowels of the store.

  What should he buy? Waiting for Godot? Endgame? Krapp’s Last Tape? Happy Days?

  Ah, fuck it, he’d get them all.

  SIX

  As Zondi drove up the main drag of Nêrens the sparse streetlights flickered and ignited painting the dusty cars and the straggle of pedestrians morgue green until the sodium bulbs warmed to their task and glowed sickly orange. He could hear the distant mewl of sirens heading toward the mess in the desert and a white police truck
barrelled past him, blue light flashing.

  When Zondi arrived at Alwyn Van Staaden’s workshop to return the Nissan and reclaim his little bug he found the steel door rolled down and locked. The ludicrous rental Opel was parked outside beside Sue Kruger’s car, but there was no sign of the keys.

  From where he sat behind the wheel of the idling pickup Zondi could see the hotel. If Van Staaden wasn’t in the bar he’d track him down at his house. Zondi, now that it was all over, had no desire to spend another night in Nêrens. He’d pack up and drive to Kimberley and check into a hotel and get the plane out in the morning.

  Before he could click the truck into gear his phone warbled. “Zondi.”

  “It’s me,” Assegaai said.

  “Where are you?”

  “Everywhere but nowhere.”

  Zondi managed a laugh, then he said, “Leon Louw’s dead.”

  “Leon? Don’t you mean Joe?”

  “Joe Louw’s dead?” Zondi asked.

  “Ja, he got taken out in Cape Town. Few hours ago.”

  “Jesus, seriously?” Zondi said.

  “Where have you been?”

  “In the wind. What happened?”

  Assegaai told him.

  “Now what’s this about Leon?” Assegaai asked.

  Zondi told him about Leon catching the train out in the desert.

  “Fuck. Bad day for the Louws,” Assegaai said.

  “A very bad day,” Zondi said. “So, are you calling to tell me what this shit is all about? What I’m really doing here?”

  “No. All that matters is that you’re there. How you got there is not important.”

  “Jesus, I’m all Zenned out, Assegaai.”

  “Sorry. I get like this when I’m drunk.”

  Zondi sighed. “So what do you want?”