Shelter Rock

by MP Miles

  “Friend of yours?” he asked.

  “He works for my lawyer. His name’s Nels. Who are you?”

  “My name is Angel Rots.”

  “Did my lawyer send you too?” She spat out his name: “Snyman.”

  “No. He doesn’t employ me.”

  “He employs that pig Nels.”

  “I work for an old friend of your father’s. Snyman contacted us and we wondered if there was something we could do to help,” he lied.

  She didn’t believe him.

  “Which old friend?”

  “An old friend from before the war. Your father probably never mentioned him.”

  She sorted herself out while listening to him.

  “You sound odd. Your Afrikaans is terrible. You sound like a fucking baby.”

  Angel thought all Afrikaans speakers sounded like babies but he didn’t like to tell her. It sounded like a baby’s language, baby Dutch, certainly compared to Arabic. Now that was a real language.

  “My mother is in England. I grew up in London.”

  “And your father?”

  “He’s from here.”

  Angel looked around the room.

  “This is a beautiful house,” he said.

  Elanza moved away from him.

  “Is it?”

  “Have you lived here long?”

  Elanza had lived there since soon after her father had died, since Snyman had thought it better for her to be in town, to make it easier for him to keep in control.

  “A while.”

  “Can you tell me about Ralph?” Angel asked.

  “Why? Did Snyman tell you about him?”

  “I want to help him. Your father’s old friend wants to help him.”

  Elanza banged her fist on the arm of the chair in frustration.

  “That bastard. Snyman has no right to tell people about my private affairs.”

  Angel said nothing, waiting for her to compose herself.

  Elanza tried to light a cigarette with shaking hands, moving her head around to catch the flame. Angel took her hand and guided it to the right place.

  “Thank you.”

  She smoked quickly, her head bobbing slightly up and down.

  “Are you still here?” she asked him.

  “Yes. Take your time. I’ve nothing to do.”

  Elanza was curious. His accent was weird and untraceable, notable for its contrast to Nels’. Unlike him this man Rots sounded compassionate and kind-hearted.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she asked.

  “Same as everybody. I joined the Army. I went to varsity. Now I’m a teacher.”

  “Teaching what?”

  “Languages. But not Afrikaans.”

  She laughed.

  “And what did you do in the Army?”

  “I was an interpreter. Spanish.”

  “What bit of the Army?”

  “Parabats.”

  “Oh, tough man. You should have gone with that other bastard. Talk about old times.”

  “About Ralph,” said Angel patiently.

  She remained silent, pensive.

  “Tell me about the Parabats,” she asked. “Was it tough like they say?”

  “It’s like they say.”

  He needed to build a relationship with her, to get to know her and for her to trust him.

  “We were beaten down and then built up. It’s the same in any army. Just more beating.”

  “How?”

  Angel remembered doing eight hours’ physical training every day, hard PT. They did fifteen-kilometre runs just to end the day after training. They would carry telegraph poles twenty kilometres. They’d drag tractor tyres around for hours then play rugby, except that they would have to use the tyre as a ball. He looked around the room and thought it cold, not cool.

  “We each had a concrete block weighing twenty-five kilograms. They called it a marble. We had to carry it everywhere. And run, never walk, even from the latrine to the cookhouse.”

  Angel thought of his time in training.

  “We had one instructor, renowned for being a complete psycho, who had a crazy tattoo on the inside of his forearm. He went to someplace in Simon’s Town, drunk, gave the tattooist a picture of the Parachute Battalion cap badge, pointed to his arm and passed out. The tattooist did it upside down. It should have been an eagle in the strings of a parachute with the number one on it. Instead it looked like a jellyfish.”

  Elanza smiled.

  “One recruit he hated more than the others: me. Maybe I looked different. He made me carry two marbles. Kept asking me: ‘Why are you here?’”

  Angel paused.

  “Another recruit he made lie on his back and hold his marble above his face with straight arms. He left him there an hour. The recruit was a strong guy. He got impatient then so he kicked his arm. The marble fell on the guy’s face. Fractured his skull. If he wanted you to quit he’d always find a way. Nearly always.”

  He stopped.

  “It’s rumoured he killed the tattooist. Went back the next night. Waited until closing time and then snapped his neck.”

  Elanza said nothing.

  “So, why Ralph?” he asked.

  “He was nice to me. Made me tea.”

  “Tea?”

  “And he made me laugh. I asked if he spelt his name with an f or ph. He said an R.”

  She laughed again remembering.

  “The only person who’s been nice to me since…”

  She stopped.

  “Where was he going?” Angel asked.

  “He wanted to travel. Africa. Foolish boy. He talked about seeing Victoria Falls.”

  “Vic Falls?”

  “Yes.”

  Angel got up to go.

  “Okay. Thanks. Anything I can do for you?”

  “No. Yes. Come and tell me what you find out. Where he is. Don’t bring him to me. I don’t want to see him. I can’t see him.”

  He made ready to leave but turned.

  “I’m sorry I was late. The train,” he held up his hands in exasperation. “I could have prevented it. I would have been here.”

  “Not your fault,” she said. “You know you should have let him.”

  “What?” said Angel.

  “Nels. You should have let him finish. I’d have killed him.”

  *

  Nels, angry and frustrated, drove north. Lunchtime traffic around Pretoria slowed him but thereafter he drove dangerously fast, an inner rage at the thought of losing the boy, of being beaten, making him blind to the risk.

  He calculated his chance of finding Ralph to be very low. The boy had left Elanza on 23rd February, eight days previously. Nels had no idea of Ralph’s route or how he planned to travel. Ralph could be anywhere, most probably already out of the country. He hoped that the boy had stayed on foot. In that case it might take him ten or twelve days to walk to the border. Ralph could still be in South Africa, but not for long.

  Clear of Pretoria he made Pietersburg in three hours on empty roads through fields of tobacco, cotton, maize and citrus, too early in the year to see the jacaranda in flower. For another hundred kilometres the endless N1 ran over a red landscape to the line of the Tropic, the Soutpansberg Mountains a hazy blur on the horizon beyond Louis Trichardt. Nels climbed slower now around hairpin bends and through tunnels, the empty Far North stretching towards the border with Zimbabwe. In the desolate countryside around him shy remote farmsteads, widely spaced, were quietly raising beef.

  Nels had driven nearly five hundred kilometres in five hours and stopped the car at a sign that said ‘Game Lodge’. He stretched, knowing he had only sixty kilometres to drive to the border, maybe two days on foot. A dirt track led to the Bakstaan Boerdery, a cluster of low blue roofs 1,500 metres from the
road, a farm producing little except wall trophies for hunters.

  A man shuffled slowly down the track kicking red dust, tired eyes never leaving his feet, and walked past Nels without looking at him.

  “Hey, you.”

  The man didn’t stop or look but carefully held a bucket brim full of milk with two hands to avoid spilling it and continued walking.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you!” Nels shouted.

  He had grey stubble and thick black arms and a shirt buttoned to the neck. Nels stood in front of him, blocking his way. The man looked in his bucket.

  “I know you understand me,” Nels said slowly. “What do you speak up here? Venda or some crap?”

  The man said nothing, his eyes on the milk.

  “And look at me when I’m talking to you.”

  Nels lifted his foot and kicked the bucket of milk. Half of it slopped over the pail so that the man stood with his bare black feet in a white puddle. He set what remained in the bucket down and straightened. His shoulders went back and he lifted his head, looking at Nels with his head on one side, his brow furrowed and black eyes staring.

  “Don’t you fucking look at me like that!” Nels shouted at him. “I’ll kick your black arse!”

  The man relaxed and took a step backwards out of the milk.

  “You work around here?”

  He nodded and looked back up the track.

  “Have you seen a boy? A white boy on the road.”

  The man picked up the bucket as if making to leave.

  “I know you understand Afrikaans. You’d better say something soon or the rest of that milk is going over your fucking head.”

  “Milking time,” he said and looked down the road.

  “What?”

  “I came to do the milking and saw a white boy with a blue bag.”

  Nels smiled. Fourteen kilometres behind him, south of a track to Mudimeli, he had passed a farm by the side of the road. His map showed another farm the same distance ahead near a place called Mopane. There was absolutely nothing in between the two. They were in the middle of nowhere. A white boy alone on the road would be very unusual. It had to be Ralph.

  “That’s better. Now, what time is milking?”

  “I come to work at midday.”

  “Which way?” Nels asked quickly.

  “That way,” he pointed to Zimbabwe. “Walking.”

  Nels thought quickly and looked at his watch. Five in the afternoon. Ralph must be close, maybe twenty or twenty-five kilometres up the road. He would have to be quick. There was only an hour and a half of daylight.

  The man watched Nels drive away until the car blurred and disappeared. He picked up the bucket and stood in the middle of the freeway facing north, the direction the vehicle had gone. With a wide swing and a roar he threw the bucket, a white stain spreading over the African road.

  *

  He drove carefully, eyes scanning both sides of the road but found little to see. Straight tracks led to dusty red settlements set back from the freeway. Nels slowed and looked up each one. The whole country seemed deserted, no movement, no people, no cars.

  At a pull-in, a halt for tourists by a giant baobab close to the road, nothing caught his eye: still no sign of life. Nels drove on. The road ran up over a small hill then wound down towards a dry river. Set down from the road stood farm buildings with stock-handling yards made of wooden posts and galvanised sheets, an occasionally used facility for cattle but now completely empty.

  Nels stopped and checked the trip meter he’d re-set at the game lodge. It read twenty-four kilometres – about a five-hour walk. He checked his watch, the sun now low – less than an hour until it set over the wastes of the Northern Transvaal and Botswana.

  He looked at the buildings and corral below him. The stockyards were uncovered but beyond them the setting sun hit the green roofs of open-sided cattle sheds. With no one around it appeared to Nels a perfect place to spend the night, quiet and sheltered. There would be water somewhere, cut off pieces of timber to make a fire, maybe facilities for staff when sorting or drenching cows. With a little searching and only slight pressure on weak bolts a boy might find a canteen, possibly tins of food left for the next muster, all unoccupied in the middle of nowhere.

  Nels walked to the back of the car, watching the corral a hundred and fifty metres away and the buildings a hundred metres beyond. Nothing moved. He scanned the yards in the foreground left to right, and the buildings further away right to left. Down left right, up right left. Down left right, up right. He stopped and stared at a post holding the roof of the shed. The sun had nearly gone, the whole corral bathed red, but something a different colour leant against the roof support. Something blue: a blue rucksack. Nels, twenty kilometres south of Messina, South Africa’s northernmost town, and just thirty-five kilometres from the Zimbabwe border at Beitbridge, had found Ralph.

  *

  Nels realised cheerfully that Snyman hadn’t insisted that Ralph needed to be found alive. It gave him a pleasurable feeling he hadn’t had for a long time. Nels knew a way to stop Ralph for good.

  He raised the boot of the car and lifted out a large flat wooden box painted matt green, placing it carefully on the roof. It had two sturdy fabric carrying handles and three strong flip-over catches on the cover. Stencilled letters in white said ‘L42A1’.

  Nels opened the lid. The weapon inside was a long rifle and looked to be entirely made of wood. The wooden stock joined a wooden fore end with a hand guard of the same wood both below and above the barrel. The only gun metal visible was the trigger guard and at the very end of the barrel around the fore sight. It glistened like a polished branch in the last of the sunlight, treasured and well cared for, a favourite. It had started life back in ’44 as a BSA No4, an old ‘three-oh-three’. Nels liked to imagine its history from that time, the conflicts it might have seen, Malaya or Korea or Suez. It had definitely come to Africa for the Mau Mau Rebellion, which Nels thought appropriate. In 1971 the most accurate of the old No4s had been sent back to Enfield in North London for conversion to the new standard 7.62mm ammunition. A wooden cheek piece had been added and a Rose Brothers mount to take the L1A1 telescopic sight. It had become a sniper’s rifle.

  Nels rested it on the roof of the car and spat on his hands, working the bolt backwards. He considered himself a purist but used .308 Winchester ammunition rather than 7.62mm simply because he found it easier to acquire soft-nosed bullets in that calibre. He fed a stripper clip of five into the streamlined ten-round magazine in front of the trigger guard and slapped the bolt forward. The rifle had never been designed to be a marksman’s tool but a battlefield weapon. Nels wasn’t concerned. He estimated the distance to the shed to be two hundred and fifty yards, half of the rifle’s effective range.

  Nels focused on the rucksack, then moved in an anti-clockwise circle in the deepening gloom inside the cattle building. A shape moved and then rested. Nels fired two rounds in six seconds, as quickly as he could work the bolt. He had become out of practice. He should be able to do two shots in four seconds, to fire thirty rounds in a ‘mad minute’. He admonished himself, not for the slow time but because he knew straight away that he had been well off aim. Both rounds had fallen short by a long way. They sounded as if they had gone through the tin sheets on the side of the handling race, the corral structure rattling, a section hanging limply now at one corner.

  “Kak,” said Nels.

  He knew what the problem had been and swore at himself for being impatient and careless. The scale rings on the telescopic sight were held in position by friction only. They often slipped in transit and needed re-setting. Nels held the top of a small adjustment drum to prevent it rotating and at the same time inserted the nose of a round into a recess on the scale ring, slipping it back with a sideways pressure to what he knew to be the zeroed setting.

  He re-sighted quickly into the
building. The shape he had aimed at had gone. He fired three more into the space where he imagined the target had been and fumbled a new clip of five into the magazine.

  “Fok.”

  That had been his second mistake. He knew now that he should have loaded a full ten rounds to start with. He took his eye away from the sight and looked around the farmyard.

  “Fok fok fok.”

  The blue rucksack had gone.

  Nels raced down the slope through scrub, past the corral and into the cattle shed. There was no one there. The sun had gone, the inside of the building now almost dark. He walked to the back wall. Water ran from three tightly grouped holes in a cattle drinking trough and ran over an improvised bed of straw.

  *

  In the high-priced investment in Westcliff that he sometimes called home, Snyman thought about his life and about Danelle, unsure what they meant to each other. They’d been married when he made junior partner at Pretorius Venter Kruger in 1969. She’d been twenty-seven, he forty. They’d bought the big house in Westcliff six years previously, just after Blackie had died and Snyman had started business on his own. Everything seemed if not quite perfect at least comfortable, but over time his evenings working late in the office had become more frequent and the bags of empty booze bottles had become heavier.

  Danelle had drunk a lot of wine and Snyman could tell it wouldn’t be long before they started arguing. There seemed little he could do to prevent it. He had learnt a new Yiddish word from an elderly vituperative Jewish client, a derogatory label for an overly groomed materialistic woman. Looking at Danelle he thought she had to be kugel.

  “Why are you so smartly dressed?” he asked her. “Every evening is a fashion parade.”

  “I’ve nothing else to do. I’ve no kids.”

  She wanted to fight now. She’d never wanted children but at times like this it became too tempting not to remind him that it was down to him – his inadequacy not hers. Snyman, familiar with the process, knew his Jewish ancestry would be next. This would be a repeat of a play they’d been to many times.

  “You spend more time thinking about Elanza than me,” she told him.

  “Well, Elanza is paying for all this.”

  He pulled at her dress and ripped it off one shoulder.