Dust Devils

by Roger Smith

  Horst told him that a few years back he had been on holiday in Thailand, Phuket, with his wife Lotte and two children – Dieter an eight-year-old boy and Dorothea a fifteen-year-old girl. One morning he left them on Patong beach, saying he had to return to the hotel to make a business call. Instead, he walked to a brothel, a ten-story building a couple of blocks back from the beachfront.

  On the ground floor of the brothel around twenty Thai girls were displayed behind glass, like merchandise, with price tags hanging from their necks. The cheaper ones dressed in jeans and T-shirts, the more expensive in cocktail dresses and high heels.

  "So I end up on the tenth floor with a girl maybe younger than my daughter. On the bed she can put her legs behind her head, very supple. While I am fucking her she makes funny noises. Reminds me of the sounds my first Volkswagen made on a cold morning, when I could not start it." Horst laughed, throwing back his drink.

  Zondi balanced the cup on the dash and cracked his door, wanting to get away from this man and his pornographic ramblings. The dome light flicked on and he saw the haunted look on the German's bloodless face.

  Horst put a hand on his arm. "Wait, please. This is where it gets good."

  Zondi paused, the car door still open.

  "So we are fucking and I hear another noise. A loud, unbelievable, smash of water." He laughed. "Ja. The tsunami."

  Zondi stayed in the car. Closed the car door. Gave the man back his shadow.

  The German saying he ran to the window, a red condom still hanging from his wilting dick, and pulled away the heavy drapes that blacked out the room. Had a narrow view between buildings up to the beach where his family was. Saw the water and the cars and the trees and the bodies. Saw the ocean suck back and the second wave hit.

  Zondi lifted his cup and emptied it. The German telling him how he had wandered through the devastation. Cars washed into hotel lobbies. Naked dead people in trees. Days later he identified the bodies of his wife and son, rotting in a makeshift morgue. His daughter was never found.

  "So," Horst said. "You are my confessor."

  "Why me?"

  "You looked like a perfect stranger."

  Horst laughed and so did Zondi. He opened the door again, stood up out of the car. "Thanks for the drink."

  "You won't come back here, will you?" Horst asked.

  Zondi shook his head and closed the door. As he walked away from the Mercedes, his fingers found the folded fax in his pocket. He thought about the girl in the photograph. Thought about the place he hadn't been back to in years. Home. He used the remote to unlock his BMW, turn signals blinking. Alarm chirping like an urban birdcall.

  It was still dark when Sunday left her aunt's hut, creeping out so she didn't wake Ma Beauty who snored in the single room where they ate and washed and slept. Sunday had a blanket around her shoulders, to keep out the chill of the mist that clung to the hills like smoke.

  The hut was halfway down a rocky slope, looking as if it had slid from the top, then lost interest. Sunday passed neighboring huts, walked past the chimney of the communal pit latrine poking up out of the fog, the stink of human dung heavy on the morning air. The sun tore an orange hole in sky and she saw goats and a few thin cows, legless in the mist.

  She walked for two hours, her feet finding the paths that took her across a valley thick with a marijuana crop, over a dry stream and up another hill. It was fully light by the time she reached the top and the fog had burned away leaving a view over the valley.

  The mud floor of her parents' hut lay like a tombstone on the crest of the hill. Part of one crumbling, fire-blackened wall remained, leaning like an old man in the hard light. It had been many months since Sunday had last been here. She sat down on the cracked floor of the hut where she had spent the first years of her life. Pulled the blanket around her shoulders as she remembered.

  It was nightfall and her mother was cooking in the hut. Beans and maize meal on a paraffin stove. Sunday, five years old, sat with her, on the floor, paging through the photograph album with the beautiful white people on the cover. Her father was outside chopping firewood. Sunday could hear his axe splitting the timber.

  Then she heard loud voices. She went to the door and looked out. Saw men shouting at her father. Saw a man lift a machine gun from under the blanket he wore around his shoulders. Saw her father lift his axe. Before her father could bring the axe down the man shot him. Sunday's mother ran out of the hut, screaming, trying to reach her husband. The man shot her and she fell, something wet and twisted spilling from her abdomen.

  Sunday hid in the shadows. Watched the men kill her cousin, who came running from where he tended the goats. Watched them set fire to the hut, the flames leaping like dancing devils in the black night.

  Then the men were gone. Sunday sat next to her mother, crying, looking on as the hut burned to nothing. Holding her mother's hand. A hand that was cold when the morning sun washed away the haze of smoke.

  She saw the burned scrap of the photo album lying on the blackened floor of the hut. Held it to her chest as she walked down to town. She lost her way and it took her hours before she arrived at the police station. A giant man in a blue uniform scooped her up and sat her on the counter in the charge office. Listened to her story. Called other men.

  They put Sunday in a white truck, sitting between two policemen. Two others in the rear, crouching under the low roof. She showed them where to go and they drove to the foot of the hill until they could drive no farther. She was told to wait with the fat policeman, who was happy not to be climbing. The other men walked up the hill.

  It was very hot and the shadows of the aloes drew long black lines across the rocks and sand by the time Sunday saw the men return. Each sweating man carried a body on his back. They dumped the corpses of her mother and her father and her cousin on the sand. The bodies were stiff as boards, arms and legs spread wide like those of scarecrows.

  The fat policeman took Sunday by the hand, walked her away and held her face to his soft belly. But she peeped out under his arm, smelling his sweat like old meat. And she watched as the men used rocks to break the legs and arms of her family, so they could fit their bodies into the rear of the truck.

  Now, as she sat in the ruins of the hut, Sunday saw the face of the man with the gun, hot in the flames of the fire. The face of the man she was to marry in five days time.

  "Bail denied."

  Dell didn't understand what he was hearing. The words not penetrating the fog of grief and pain that he wore like a coat. Didn't realize things had gone badly wrong until he heard the kid lawyer's shrill voice.

  "Your honor, this is absurd! Mr. Dell isn't a flight risk, and he's an upstanding member of the community."

  The magistrate, a khaki-colored man with a snowfall of dandruff on the shoulders of his black robe, peered over his glasses. "That is my ruling. The State has requested that this case be transferred to the jurisdiction of the Cape Town High Court. Take it up with them if you want to appeal. Until then the accused will be held in custody at Pollsmoor Prison." The magistrate shuffled papers. "Next matter."

  Pollsmoor. A prison where a hundred men shared a cell. Where gang rape and murder were commonplace. Dell turned to his lawyer, waiting for him to make this all disappear.

  "I'm on this, Mr. Dell. Don't worry," the boy said, looking shocked. "Hang in there."

  Dell felt a hand on his shoulder and a uniformed policeman pulled him toward the stairs leading down to the holding cells. As he was hauled away Dell saw the plainclothes cop and the man who looked like a pimp standing at the rear of the courtroom. Theron said something to the black man and laughed.

  Inja and the Boer were in the Mercedes, driving back toward Cape Town, the mountain and its cloth of cloud already looming on the horizon. Theron drove fast, weaving through the traffic on the freeway, forcing cars out of his way like a train with a cowcatcher.

  "You spoken to your minister?" Theron asked. "'Bout my money?"

  "This thing is not do
ne yet."

  "Jesus, you're like an old woman with a sore tit, you know that?"

  Theron flew past a small Japanese car, the woman at the wheel a frightened blur behind glass. The Boer was using the car lighter on a Camel, speaking with smoke trickling from his mouth.

  "I've organized that when Dell gets to Pollsmoor he gets thrown in with the 28s who're awaiting trial. You know the 28s?" Not waiting for an answer. "Cape Flats gangsters. The hardest motherfuckers you'd ever wish to meet. Few weeks back they killed a guy in a cell one night. Cut his body into pieces and fed it down the shithouse. Problem was, his fucken head got stuck and the toilet overflowed, sending crap and body parts down the corridor." Theron laughed smoke. "Talk to the minister. Tell him your Mr. Dell is dead meat, my friend. No loose ends."

  Dell sat on the floor of the holding cell beneath the courtroom, jammed in with maybe twenty colored men. The older men huddling together, in fear of the young ones who stalked the cell, demanding money and cigarettes.

  Dell had been the only white face in cells full of dark men many times before. But that was back in the eighties, when he'd been arrested for being part of illegal protest marches, and he was held with the other politicos. The general prison population had considered the political prisoners as part of an elite, and Dell had received major cred, as a white man who fought apartheid shoulder to shoulder with his black comrades.

  But those days were long gone and now a white skin made you a target. The boy standing over him hadn't even been born when Nelson Mandela was released. A yellow-brown boy with a broken nose and missing teeth, crude tattoos coiling like snakes from under his clothes. "Hey, whitey, that's then a nice watch."

  The black and chrome Swatch visible on Dell's wrist under the sleeve of his pajama top. His birthday gift from Rosie. The glass was cracked but the second hand ticked on.

  "Gimme it." The kid held out a palm stained by years of meth pipes.

  Dell looked at him, slow to react. Earned him a kick in the teeth with a dirty Nike. Dell's head smacked the wall and he tasted blood on his tongue. Something snapped inside him. The kid was lining up another kick. Dell grabbed the boy's shoe, tipping him backward so he sprawled into a group of men looking on.

  There were shouts and cheers. "Yaaaw, the white man only wants to die!"

  The kid was up and cursing, coming back at Dell, bringing three friends with him. Coming to get them some white meat. Dell with his back to the wall felt hands grabbing at him, then he heard the rattle as the cell door opened.

  A white cop in uniform came in, shouting, "Stand still, you fucken rubbish!" The men obeyed. "And who is Dell?" Dell raised his hand. "Come, then. You going to Pollsmoor."

  Laughter and jeers at that. "Hey, you better stop by the drugstore and get him some Vaseline. His white ass gonna be working overtime."

  The cop had Dell by the arm, shoved him out into the corridor. Cuffed him. Pushed him toward the door that led out into the car park. Dell expected to be put into a truck with other men but he was led to a white Ford sedan, dented and without hubcaps. A man at the wheel and another sitting in the rear.

  Something was thrown over Dell's head. A coarse jailhouse blanket. Stinking. He struggled, heard the car door open. He was propelled forward and landed on the floor of the car, wedged between the front and rear seats. The engine cranked. He fought to lift himself.

  Felt a hand push his face down onto the floor, heard the man in the rear speak. "You just be still now, boy, or we'll be obliged to lock you in the trunk."

  The voice that had been in his head right before the nightmare began. The voice of his father. Earl Robert Goodbread.

  First his cell phone signal went missing in the hills. Then the pine forests were strangled by dry veld, and the wide road – white lines vivid on the smooth black asphalt – gave way to a narrow track of cracked tar and potholes. Finally the blacktop dwindled to nothing and the tires of Zondi's BMW drummed on sand corrugated from drought, a cloud of dust pursuing him.

  He pulled off the road, left the air-conditioned cabin and stepped out into heat so dry that when he inhaled it seemed to microwave him from within. Looked out over the valley spread below him. Once he had called it home.

  This place, with its red hills and craters of erosion like axe wounds in the flesh-colored soil, reminded him of a corpse. The corpse of the boy Zondi and Inja Mazibuko and the others had killed, in sight of where he now stood.

  Zondi had left the valley not long after the boy's death. Made his way up to Johannesburg where he had found himself in other mobs that had dispensed street justice to suspected informers and collaborators. But he'd always stayed at the rear, an observer, feeding on the rush, but never striking the killing blows. And he'd been back here only once, to bury his mother. Sixteen years ago.

  And what the fuck are you doing here now? he asked. Got not reply.

  Zondi saw a man pushing a bicycle up the hill. Part of a car fender, mangled and twisted, lay across the saddle and handlebars. A boy of maybe ten walked behind the bike, supporting the weight of the metal, stopping it from dragging on the ground.

  The man, in a torn brown shirt and old suit pants, was sweating, urging the boy on. The child was shoeless and Zondi remembered when his own feet had been immune to the heat of the sand and the sharpness of the rocks. He saw the boy's hands were bleeding from the sharp metal slicing into his flesh. The child kept his head down, following his father without complaint.

  The man pushed the bicycle up to where Zondi stood. Stopped, sweat patterning the dust on his face. He leaned the bike against a thorn tree and approached Zondi with his hands cupped.

  "A cigarette please, brother."

  Zondi told him he didn't smoke. The boy looked at him, taking in the BMW that pinged as it cooled. Taking in Zondi's city clothes and Diesel sunglasses. Zondi reached into the car and came out with a plastic bag containing fruit and two cans of Coke. He didn't normally drink the stuff but he'd felt tired on the road and had used the caffeine rush to stay awake.

  He held the bag out to the boy, who looked at his father. The man nodded. The child wiped his bloody hands on his shorts and approached Zondi with his head bowed, not looking him in the eye. The boy extended his right hand, gripping his elbow with his left hand in the African way, and took the bag. He muttered his thanks and retreated, never showing his back to Zondi.

  "When last did it rain?" Zondi asked the man.

  The Zulu laughed. "Can a dry old woman remember her wedding night?"

  These fucking people, Zondi thought. Everyone a poet.

  The man said, "Are you going through to Greytown, brother?"

  Zondi shook his head. "Bhambatha's Rock."

  "You are with the government?"

  Zondi opened his car door. "No. It is my home."

  The man said nothing but Zondi could see the disbelief in his eyes.

  Zondi started the car, thought about throwing a U-turn and getting the hell out of there while he still could. But he released the brake and drove down toward the jumble of small buildings and sprawling huts, iron roofs sending back the sun like signal mirrors.

  Sunday was late. Running across the veld toward the cultural village, her tennis shoes slapping the hard pathway, the betrothal beads rattling in her bag like a curse. She ducked into the gate, under a pair of crossed elephant tusks and a sun-bleached sign written in English. Passed a small bus, red with dust, the driver sitting behind the wheel reading a newspaper. A handful of sweating white people flicked through postcards in the shade of a reed gazebo. She saw Richard, in his skins and plumage, his fat belly leading him toward her.

  Sunday sank to her knees. "I'm sorry, father. The taxi was late."

  "Stand, daughter, stand." She got to her feet and risked a glance up at him. He had never called her that before, used the term of respect. "Is it true that you are to marry Induna Mazibuko this weekend?" Respect and something else in his voice. Fear.

  She nodded. "Yes, father."

  "Then it is n
ot fitting for you to do the maiden's dance. You will demonstrate the loom weaving and help with the beer ceremony. And make sure you wear your betrothal beads, do you hear me?"

  "Yes, father." She bobbed and turned and hurried away to change.

  How the word induna had flowed off Richard's tongue. Headman. Advisor to the chief. A man feared in these parts. She knew the old man by another name. Inja. Dog. That suited him far better. Like one of those scavenging mongrels down in Bhambatha's Rock, blue tongues panting, skinny ribs poking through mangy fur. The thought of his hands on her body made her want to vomit.

  Then she saw something that cheered her. The small car belonging to Sipho, the AIDS educator from Durban was parked in the shadow of the bus. There was no sign of Sipho, but she knew he would be in the vicinity, handing out the English papers nobody here could read.

  Sunday sleepwalked her way through the next hour. Sat on a grass mat, her breasts covered by a bib of skin, as befitted a betrothed woman. The beads clutching at her throat. She weaved cloth on a wooden loom as the whites took their photos, her fingers moving automatically, braiding the colored strands, her mind far away.

  Later she helped to serve traditional gourds of beer to the tourists. The men and women sitting in separate groups, according to custom. The women pretended to sip, grimacing. The men drank the beer and smacked their lips as if they were enjoying it, but looked as if they wanted to spit it out. Richard, as always, threw back a full gourd of the mud colored liquid, patted his belly and burped, flashbulbs exploding as the tourists captured him to take home with them to whatever country made these pink people.

  Sunday changed into her day clothes, stuffed the beads in the bag and hurried out to the car park. Sipho sat beside his car, beneath a tree, writing in a book. It was hard to believe he had the sickness. He seemed so young and healthy and his eyes shone when he looked up at her, smiling.