Dust Devils

by Roger Smith

  "How are you, Sunday?" He stood, pocketing the notebook.

  She gave him a shy smile. "I am well, thank you."

  "Are you going to the road?"

  She nodded and he opened the car door for her. "Let me give you a ride."

  Sunday hesitated. It wasn't proper for a betrothed woman to be with a man unchaperoned, but when she saw nobody was watching she ducked into the car. Sipho closed the door and came around and got behind the wheel.

  When he tried to start the car it made a sound like a sick animal. Then the engine caught and he laughed. "One day I'll have something better."

  They bumped out onto the sand track that led to the main road where she would find her taxi. This was the third time Sunday had driven in a car. She knew minibus taxis, of course, but only twice before, on church trips, had she been squeezed into the rear seats of old cars, the flesh of the aunties at her side overflowing onto her like brown jelly. To sit up front, alone with a man, was a new experience for her.

  "I hear you are to be married this weekend?" Sipho glanced across at her.

  She nodded. He saw her expression and said nothing more.

  "When are you going home?" she asked.

  "In two days. I'm just here to finish my project. I don't think I will be coming back. I'm needed in the city."

  Sunday's heart sank. She hardly knew this boy, but the idea of not seeing him again was too much to bear. As if all hope would leave with him. Before she could stop herself she spoke. "Take me with you to Durban. Please."

  He was staring at her. "Are you serious?"

  "Yes. If I marry this man my life will be over. Please, Sipho."

  "But what will you do in Durban? It's not like here."

  "I'll do whatever I need to do. Please. I beg of you."

  He put his hand on hers for a second. "I will be here in two days. Same time. If you still want to go, you can come with me. If you change your mind, that's okay."

  "I won't change my mind."

  They were at the main road. Sunday wished they could turn right and drive out of the valley now. Drive to Durban and a new life. But he stopped the car and she climbed out.

  "You're sure of this?" Sipho asked.

  "I'm sure."

  He waved and pulled away, and she watched as the red road swallowed the little car.

  Driving. No idea where. Or for how long. Dell lay under the blanket, hearing the tires on the blacktop. They had left the town behind. No more bleating horns and yelling taxi drivers. The car was out on the open road, moving at a constant speed.

  The man in the rear didn't speak again but it was his father. For sure. Dell could smell him. The same smell that had come from the clothes that hung in the bedroom closet of the house he grew up in, heavy with nicotine and booze and something indefinable. The smell of his father. He and his mother left behind in Durban while Goodbread was away killing people. First in Vietnam, and then in a bush war that had brought the superpowers to the ass-end of Africa, lured by Angolan oil.

  Goodbread had been part of the CIA's covert "black ops" in Angola until Jimmy Carter had pulled them out. Then he'd joined up with the South Africans, who had their own reasons for trying to bring Marxist Angola down.

  Dell lay feeling the vibration of the car but hearing the chatter of a helicopter, back in 1988, in the rear of a South African Air Force Puma, fighting nausea, watching the chopper's shadow skim the yellow dunes of the Namib desert. The seats had been removed and Dell sat on the floor, his head throbbing with stale booze and avgas.

  Two South African crewmen upfront and five men in the rear with Dell. An Angolan with one empty eye socket. A feral looking Afrikaner. A child-size bushman as wrinkled as a tortoise. A Cuban prisoner of war. And Earl Robert Goodbread.

  Since midnight, when Dell – up in South West Africa reporting on the last days of the bush war – had run into his father in a beer hall in Windhoek, he'd heard Bobby Goodbread holding forth in Portuguese, German and Afrikaans.

  "Languages are like goddam viruses, boy. I just pick them up," Goodbread had told him on one of the rare occasions he'd been home when Dell was a kid.

  And now he was speaking Spanish to the Cuban MiG pilot who had been shot down and paraded before the media in Windhoek. The Cuban sat with his back to the chopper door, staring into his lap, his hands cuffed before him. Goodbread, wearing faded brown fatigues, crouched beside him. At fifty he was tanned and muscular, good looking in a craggy Clint Eastwood way. White teeth exposed in a fuck you grin.

  Dell caught the word "niños" above the smack of the rotors. This got the Cuban looking up and he nodded, mumbled in Spanish. Dell thought he heard "dos." The prisoner held his cuffed hands level with his head, then a little higher, showing the height of his two kids. Trying out an uncertain smile. He was dark-haired, with an almost pretty face. Bruised around the left eye.

  Goodbread said something and pointed at Dell. The Cuban said in English, "This is your son?"

  "Si," Goodbread said.

  "Okay. I can see it."

  Goodbread laughed. Dell shut his eyes. The night before he'd been out drinking with a guy from the New York Times, knew it was time to leave when the beerhall started spinning and the correspondent lost his tongue down the throat of hooker who looked like Grace Jones. As Dell pushed through the crowd he felt somebody grip his arm. Turned and looked into his father's face.

  "You not even going to greet your daddy?" That voice. Big and loud as Texas.

  Dell shook his arm free. He hadn't seen his father in ten years, wanted to keep on walking. But he knew if he didn't sit, he'd fall. So he slumped into a chair. Bobby Goodbread poured him a Jack and Coke and pressed the glass into his hands.

  The night passed in a blur of booze. At dawn Goodbread had told Dell that he and his men were escorting the Cuban back up to the Angolan border. Offered to take Dell along for the ride, let him see a commie war hero up close. Dell was too wasted to disagree. An hour later, head vibrating and stomach heaving, he regretted his decision.

  Goodbread, squatting beside the prisoner, lit a smoke and handed it to him. The man said, "Gracias."

  "So you like to fly?" Goodbread asked in English.

  "Si, I love it," the Cuban aviator said.

  "You wanna fly again?"

  "Si, I hope I shall."

  "Then you may just be in luck, señor."

  Goodbread nodded at the bushman who rolled open the chopper door behind the Cuban. Dell felt the tug of the wind, his hair flying across his eyes. Gripped the bulkhead behind him. Saw the South African pilot, in his Ray-Ban Aviators, look back over his shoulder, sun catching a gold tooth as he grinned beneath his Magnum P. I. mustache.

  The prisoner turned and stared out over the endless expanse of desert. The pilot banked the chopper and the Cuban started sliding backward out the open door, his cuffed hands scrambling for purchase. Goodbread stood, surefooted as surfer and swung a boot, catching the Cuban in the head. Kicked him again. The man hovered for a moment in the doorway, eyes wide, clothes flapping, then he was gone, screaming, a black dot falling toward the yellow sand.

  "Adios," Goodbread said and the bushman slammed the door shut. His father shouted to the pilot, "What just happened here?"

  "Commie fucker jumped, Major."

  Goodbread smiled down at Dell. Challenging him to say different. Dell said nothing and his father ignored him for the rest of the flight and dumped him on an airstrip just south of the Angolan border. Dell never wrote a word of what he'd witnessed in the helicopter. Never spoke of it.

  After the bush war ended the South Africans had found a use for Goodbread's talents in their security police. The last time Dell had seen him had been on television, in 1994. On trial for massacring a black family in a ghetto township east of Johannesburg.

  Dell heard doors slam. The car engine idled under the mutter of men's voices. He lifted himself up from the floor and was about to pull the blanket from his head when he felt the weight of a hand on his back.

>   "Do that, boy, and you're likely to be shot," his father said. "There's men out there skittish as deer."

  Dell allowed himself to be led from the car, flip-flops slapping cement. Pushed into another vehicle. Higher off the ground. A pickup truck or SUV. The smell of his father followed him in. He caught something else mixed in with the booze and cigarettes, something sour, almost medicinal. Heard the low rumble of a big engine and they were moving again.

  The half-breed whore lifted the orange dress over her head in one motion, standing naked in front of Inja. She hadn't bothered with underwear. Inja looked at her breasts. Small, stretched and used up. A scar like raw liver ran across her belly, above the thick scrub of hair, where a child had been pulled from her.

  She kept on her red high heels, toenails painted with chipped black varnish. "What's your name?" Speaking fast like she was spitting the words, the way these people did.

  "Moses." Inja sat on the bed, fully dressed, hands dangling between his knees. Despite himself, he felt aroused.

  "You going to part the waters, Moses?" Touching herself between her legs. Laughing the laugh of a street woman. He let the whore push him back on the bed and felt her hands loosening his belt. "Where you from?"

  "I'm a Zulu."

  "Jesus," she said, unzipping him. "That's one hell of a cultural weapon you got on you." Laughing again. An axle in need of grease. "I better get danger pay."

  He watched as she tore a condom free of its wrapper with her teeth and forced it down onto him, using both hands. It pinched his flesh. He never used these things. He was an African man, he believed in meat on meat. No room for plastic. But today was different. He wanted to leave no trace of his presence.

  Inja stood, still in his shirt, pants bunched around his ankles. He grabbed the half-breed by the arm and pushed her onto the bed, kneeling, ass facing him.

  "Hey, be nice, man," she said.

  He shoved himself into her, heard her grunt. Rode her like a mountain pony.

  They were in a bedroom in some fancy apartment in Cape Town. Not as smart as the one belonging to the fat white man, but still nice. With a view out over the city and the harbor. Theron's idea. Saying they should have a little fun before Inja left. Saying a brothel keeper owed him, gave him use of her apartment and would throw in a couple of girls. On the house.

  Inja had been tempted to end it in the car park beneath the apartment block. Then he'd thought it through. A dead cop in a car was one thing. A dead cop in bed with dead hookers was another.

  Inja heard his flesh slapping against the woman's backside. Looked down and saw her cracked heels hanging over the edge of her shoes. Saw the swelling of flesh beneath her knees. Reached down and pinched her calf between thumb and forefinger, hard enough to leave a bruise.

  "Jesus fuck!" she said, twisting. A shoe slipped off her foot and hit the blond wood floor like a gunshot.

  Inja finished, his breath hard and loud. He sagged against her, holding onto her wide hips for support. Withdrew.

  The half-breed looked at him over her shoulder. "You don't waste time, hey?"

  "Wait here," he said, pulling up his pants, tucking himself in, condom still in place. Forcing his zipper closed. "I'm not finished."

  She shrugged, rolling over onto her back. He left the room, walked down the corridor. Heard Theron and the other whore busy in the main bedroom. Inja went into the bathroom, tugged off the condom and flushed it. Watched it spin and disappear in the whirlpool of water. Wiped the chrome handle of the toilet with a towel.

  He went back to the bedroom, the smell getting him before he'd crossed the threshold. The whore, still naked, sat on the bed smoking a meth pipe. A thin glass tube held over a lighter flame, the contents bubbling.

  She exhaled a lungful of bitter smoke. Offered the pipe. "You want?"

  He shook his head and she brought the pipe to her mouth again. Inja stood behind her, lifted his duffel bag onto the bed. Unzipped it and took out the pistol. Screwed on the silencer. The whore oblivious, lost in her pipe. He slipped the gun into the waistband of his pants, covered it with his shirt.

  "Come," he said.

  "Come where?" she asked, turning to him. Her eyes like burn marks in brown cloth.

  "To the others."

  "You mean like a foursome?" He nodded. "Okay. Cool by me."

  The half-breed sucked the last of the pipe and coughed so hard she almost puked. She blew her nose on the sheet and laid the pipe and lighter beside the bed. She slipped her foot into the shoe that had dropped and stood up, wobbled, dizzy from the tik. Sent a hand to the wall to steady herself.

  "Wow. Happy days is here again." Laughing as she clattered out the room ahead of him, naked flesh wobbling.

  Inja nodded at her to open the door to the main bedroom and followed her in. Theron and the other half-breed were screwing on the bed, the Boer on top, his pimply ass white where his tan ended. Theron stopped pumping and looked up at them. "What's this?"

  Inja's whore said, "He thought you want some company."

  "Hell, I'm up for it," the Boer said, rolling over to prove he was.

  Inja shot him in the forehead. Shot the whore under him next. His whore turned and fell off her heels, trying to get away. He shot her in the back of the head, the entry wound invisible in her kinky hair, but a mess on the bedroom door. The gun coughed three more times as he shot each of them again, just to be sure.

  Inja lifted Theron's suit pants off the back of a chair, found the keys to the Benz. Then he wiped down everything he had touched, got his bag and left the apartment. As he hit the stairs, his stomach rumbled. He was going to get that sheep's head. Then he was going home.

  Zondi parked outside the red telephone kiosk on the main road of Bhambatha's Rock, waves of heat rising from the corrugated metal container, making the cartoony silhouettes of people talking on phones look as if they were dancing. He stepped out of the BMW and heard the shrill chirp as he locked it. Drawing eyes like meat flies, the tall black man in his fancy car and city threads.

  He stood in the lava colored light of afternoon, smelling the old familiar smells. Dust. Dung. Rotting garbage. The stink of rural poverty. Ignoring the blank stares of the vendors who squatted on the sidewalk, selling sweetmeats and snuff and purgatives, alongside baboon skulls and roots and skins. Deaf to the pleas of the beggars with cupped hands and minds numbed by alcohol and disease. Only five hours' drive from Johannesburg, but another world, this.

  The minister of justice watched Zondi from an election poster tied to a pole. The familiar bullet head, hooded eyes peering out from behind wire framed glasses. The small mouth that looked as if it had bitten into something sour. The man who had put Zondi's mentor into the ground. Zondi breathed through his anger, letting it drain away. That was another battle. For another time.

  He walked into the phone container. If it was hot outside, the interior of the metal box was like a convection oven. No windows. No A/C. Not even a fan. Just a fleshless girl in a cheap nylon dress slumped on a stool, fluffy high-heel slippers lying beside her like a pair of dead parrots. She wafted at the air with a gossip magazine, jaws working on a stick of gum. Her cheap perfume smelled like urine.

  Zondi unfolded the wedding invite and showed it to her. "Was this faxed from here?" She looked at the phone number and date printed on the bottom of the page and nodded. "Do you know who sent it?" he asked.

  "It wasn't my shift. You must come back later and see Vusi."

  "What time?"

  "After last dish." After supper.

  As Zondi went out to his car and unlocked it, he heard somebody call his name. An enormous man, as tall as he was fat, lumbered toward him, carrying a plastic bag in one hand and a liter bottle of Coke in the other. Despite the heat the man wore a dark suit, vest, white shirt and black necktie. Zondi could hear the stranger's massive thighs whisper to one another as he approached.

  The man said, "It's me. Giraffe."

  Zondi tried to find any trace of the lanky, skinny kid he had
once known. He couldn't. "Giraffe?"

  The fat man wheezed a laugh. "Ja, don't tell me. More like a hippo these days."

  He stuck out a hand and Zondi shook it. Like shaking a damp dishtowel. Zondi freed his hand and wiped it dry on his pants.

  "Come, open this car, put on the fridge," Giraffe said. "It's too bloody hot out here."

  Zondi was about to make an excuse and drive away, then he shrugged and slid behind the wheel. Turned the key in the ignition and felt the A/C blast out.

  The fat man heaved himself in beside Zondi and the car sagged. "So, my friend, are you back for long?" Mopping his face with a blue handkerchief.

  "No, just a day or two."

  "I hear you're up in Jo'burg?"

  "Yes."

  "Good for you. This is no place for a man, I'm telling you."

  Giraffe unpacked his meal onto his lap, filling the car with the stink of rural junk food. Chicken feet and beaks, known as walkie-talkies down here. A full loaf of white bread, the top sliced off, the center hollowed out and filled with curried meat. A bunnychow.

  "And what do you do these days?" asked Zondi, watching as the man lifted a yellow chicken foot, wrinkled and gelatinous, to his mouth. Crunched his way through cartilage, skin and claws. Reached for a beak cooked in batter.

  "I'm an undertaker. That's my place over there." Pointed an oily finger toward the cinderblock building across the road, picture window filled with coffins.

  "Business must be good."

  "Too good, Zondi. Too good. Lots of TB, and of course the taxi wars are keeping me busy right now. But mostly AIDS."

  The undertaker tore loose a chunk of bread and dunked it in the curry. Zondi remembered that this full loaf was known as a coffin bunny. Giraffe crammed in the food, the white bread bulging out of his mouth. He belched and leaned toward Zondi who caught the ripe mix of curried meat and embalming fluid.

  "This AIDS, it is worse than anybody says, my friend. Especially the women and the girls – they are dying like flies. And you know what these people are like," waving a beringed hand at the passersby, "they must have the very best coffin even though they don't have two cents to wipe their asses with. I tried, Zondi, to offer them cheap pine boxes. But no. Top of the range, my friend. Top of the range or nothing." Shaking his head. As the light caught his face, the features of the delicate youth Zondi remembered surfaced for a moment in the sea of fat, then sank again. The undertaker belched and shoveled in more curry. "Have you stayed in touch with Inja?"