Dust Devils

by Roger Smith

  "With an injured man."

  "Injured how?"

  "He's been stabbed. In the stomach."

  "Then bring him in."

  "I can't."

  "And why not?"

  "Because there'll be people looking for him. This would be the most obvious place."

  She stared at him, expressionless, sucking on the cigarette, cheeks hollowed by the inhalation. Spoke around smoke. "You're trouble, aren't you, Disaster Zondi?" He didn't bother to reply.

  The Belgian dropped the cigarette into a coffee mug and it whispered as it died. She unearthed a pair of panties from the clutter and stepped into them, her breasts hanging heavy.

  "I'll be outside," he said.

  Zondi walked down the corridor, toward the pay phone mounted on the wall near the entrance, scrolling his useless iPhone for a number with one hand, searching for coins with the other. He dialed, looking at his watch. 2:00 a.m. Ringing.

  Fucking answer.

  "Moloi." Crisp, alert.

  Doesn't the man ever sleep?

  "You know who this is?"

  A moment's hesitation. "Yes. Give me your number."

  'No time. I have the animal we were discussing."

  A quick backwash of breath. "You have it where?"

  "Near its home. It's injured."

  "Badly?"

  "Yes. But there's a chance."

  "Can you get it to Dundee at daybreak? I can have a chopper in place."

  "Why not land here?"

  "Too dangerous. Can you transport the animal?"

  "I think so."

  "Do it then."

  The phone was dead in his ear. He hung the receiver back in the cradle, turned to see the doctor walking toward him, dressed in Levi's and Nikes, a man's white shirt unbuttoned over a gray top.

  She said, "I need to pick up a trauma bag. Wait for me in the car park."

  Zondi nodded, watched her walk away. Wondered who the shirt had belonged to.

  Dell heard the rattle of the Ford. He beckoned the girl over to keep pressure on Inja's wound, drew the pistol and stood by the door.

  Feet on gravel then a knock and Zondi's voice, "Open. It's me."

  Dell unlocked the door and Zondi motioned him out. The truck was parked hard against the side of the building and Dell caught the sheen of pale hair through the windshield.

  "How is he?" Zondi asked.

  "Same. The girl tried to cut his throat, though. With a hacksaw blade."

  "Jesus." Shrugged. "She has her reasons." Zondi looked toward the truck, then back at Dell. "I don't want the men in there to be able to ID the doctor. Help me get them outside."

  Dell followed Zondi into the room. He checked that the girl hadn't tried to kill Inja again. She had not. She knelt, pressing down on the T-shirt, which was sodden with blood.

  Zondi laughed when he saw the old man's mouth overflowing with cotton waste. "And this?"

  "He was hassling the girl."

  "Big on the oral tradition, this old fucker."

  Zondi took the old man under his arms. The Zulu writhed and twisted. Zondi gave him a short-arm jab to the abdomen that quietened him down. Dell lifted the old man's feet and they carried him out into the dark, dumping him on the sand by the car wrecks, where he had no view of the room. They went back for the hunchback, who was as light as a child. Left him lying a few feet from his father.

  Zondi crossed to the Ford and opened the passenger door, said something that Dell couldn't hear and the woman slid out. Zondi led her into the hut, a canvas bag with pouches and zippers slung from his shoulder.

  Dell stood in the doorway, saw the doctor crouch beside the trauma bag, unzip it and remove a pair of white surgical gloves and roll them onto her hands. Find a penlight, click on the beam and reach across to Inja. She said something to Sunday in halting Zulu and the girl moved away, staring at the blonde woman.

  The doctor pulled the blanket aside and lifted the T-shirt off Inja's abdomen. Played the penlight over the unconscious man's flesh. Intestine bulged pink and wet from the mouth of the wound.

  "With what did she stab him?" the woman asked in her accented English.

  "A knife," Zondi said.

  "Be more specific."

  Zondi questioned the girl in Zulu and she whispered her replies. "She says it was a kitchen knife."

  The doctor felt for Inja's pulse, prodded his abdomen, moved the beam up to his face and lifted his eyelids, examining his pupils. She opened his mouth, inserted her fingers. To free blockages to his airways, Dell knew. Remembering his medics training. A lifetime ago.

  "How long was the blade? Was it smooth?" the doctor asked.

  Zondi spoke to the girl again. She held her index fingers a few inches apart. Then drew a squiggle in the air.

  "A steak knife, then." The doctor's gloved fingers back on the wound. Index finger disappearing inside Inja's body, probing. Her face impassive.

  "What do you think?" asked Zondi.

  "I think he needs to be in an operating room." She slipped her finger out of the wound and wiped her hands on a square of paper towel. "Tell the girl to boil water."

  Zondi spoke to Sunday, who crossed to the paraffin stove. She removed a blackened pot from it, caked with offal. Took the pot and a plastic bucket of water and went out the door. Dell heard the splash of water as she washed the pot.

  The doctor reached into the bag and found a stethoscope, the chrome diaphragm beaming an ellipse of light onto the scuffed wall as she brought the tubes to her ears. She placed the bell on Inja's chest. Listening. A strand of her blonde hair falling across her face. She was beautiful, Dell realized. Wondered where Zondi had found her.

  The girl returned and lit the Primus stove. Placed the pot of water on the purple flame. Retreated into shadow, watching.

  The doctor lifted a silver space blanket out of the bag, kept it folded in a rectangle and placed it beside Inja in the light of the paraffin lamp. Removed a series of items from the bag and arranged them on the blanket. Pressure bandages. A scalpel. A plasma drip. Scissors. Tweezers. A bulb syringe. Surgical tape and gauze.

  "I'm going to need one person to assist me," the doctor said. "Not the girl, because I don't have enough Zulu."

  When Zondi stayed mute, Dell stepped forward. "I was a medic. In the army. Years ago."

  She looked up at him, as if she'd noticed him for the first time. Dell suddenly felt very aware of his bare chest, the skin of his face and arms still smeared with boot polish.

  "What is your name?"

  "Rob."

  "Rob." Rib. "Wash your hands and put on a pair of gloves." Spoke to Zondi and the girl. "You two are to go outside, please."

  Zondi motioned to the girl and they went out the door. Dell washed his hands in the plastic bucket. Dried them on a paper towel from the bag and pulled on a pair of gloves. Crouched down next to Inja, across from the doctor.

  She lifted one of the saline drips. "You have ever set up an IV line?"

  "Long ago."

  She threw the drip bag and the needle across to him. "Find a vein."

  Dell lifted Inja's arm. He was in luck. The man's veins were close to the surface, running like ropes up his skinny arms. Dell stripped the heavy needle from its plastic sheath. Took a breath. Shoved the needle into Inja's arm. Felt the man jerk. Hooked up the IV, held the bag aloft. Watched as the doctor swabbed Inja's abdomen, blood and plasma welling from the jagged wound.

  "What do you want me to do now?" Dell asked.

  "Pray." Not looking up at him, hair masking her face. Maybe she was serious.

  Sunday squatted in the shadows, a respectful distance away from the man who sat with his back against the cinderblock wall. Keeping herself invisible, an art the girl children in this valley learned before they could walk.

  But the man watched her. "Come here." She went across to him, hovering in a kind of a bow, not looking him in the eye. "Sit, please." She sat. "Your name is Sonto?"

  Nodding. "But my mother called me Sunday."
Darting a look up at him.

  "I knew your mother, Sunday." She watched him. Alert. "When I was young, your age, I lived here and we were friends, your mother and me." The girl said nothing, but she knew now it was his number in the book. The Pretoria number. "Have you ever been away from here?"

  "I have been to Dundee," she said. Thinking, I nearly went to Durban. Saw Sipho bleeding in front of her. Dying. Saw her mother and her father and her cousin. Dying.

  The man was speaking again, "I want you to come to Johannesburg with me."

  "Johannesburg?"

  "Yes. I need you to tell people about the man inside. Inja."

  "Tell them what?"

  He shrugged. "What you know of him."

  "I know he killed my mother." Found the courage to speak the words she had never in her life spoken before.

  He stared at her. "What are you saying, girl?"

  She told him about the night Inja and his men came. Told him about the shooting and the fire. And the police breaking the limbs of her family like they were tree branches, to get them into the truck. Told him about Inja shooting Sipho.

  The man watched her without speaking, but there was a look on his face like something was stabbing at his flesh.

  "Why won't you let him die?" she asked.

  "He may yet die." He shrugged. "There is another man who is as bad as he is. Worse, maybe, who will go free if Inja Mazibuko doesn't speak. So, I'm trying to keep him alive and I will try to get him to speak. But I know that I may fail in both. You understand?"

  She nodded. She understood that this is what men did. Fought each other. Even when they didn't know why they did it.

  "So you'll come with me? Tell what you know?" he asked.

  Staring at him, not used to being offered choices. Nodding. "Yes. I will do it."

  The man looked at her, a softness in his face, in the moonlight. As if he wanted to say something more. Then the door opened beside them and the white woman with the light hair stood framed in the doorway.

  Zondi rose and walked across to the doctor. "Well?"

  "I have closed the wound. Maybe he will live if you get him to a hospital."

  She snapped off her bloody gloves and threw them back into the room, next to where Inja lay covered by the space blanket. Dell stood over him, holding a drip bag that fed into his arm.

  The doctor stepped out of the doorway, taking her Gitanes from her jeans pocket. Slipped a cigarette into her mouth. When she struck the match and took it to the cigarette, Zondi saw a smudge of blood on the front of her white shirt. She saw it too, rubbed at it, distracted.

  "What's with that shirt?" he asked.

  Smoked, shrugging. "It's my lucky charm."

  "Where did you get it?"

  "From another doctor. An Ethiopian. When I was with MSF." Saw his questioning look. "Médecins Sans Frontières. Doctors Without Borders."

  "Where is he now? The Ethiopian?"

  "Dead."

  "I thought you said it was lucky?"

  "For me, yes. For him, not so much." He heard something in her voice. A need as deep as a well. She tried a laugh that didn't take, dropped the cigarette to the dirt and killed it with her shoe. "I think, now, Disaster Zondi, that I would like to go back to my room."

  The hunchback had very nearly freed his hands, sawing the plastic rope against a spur of jagged metal on a rusted fender. He'd cut into his palms as he hacked, felt the blood warm on his hands and wrists, but not long now and he would be loose.

  He looked across at his father, the old man lying gagged and humiliated. He had never before seen his father treated this way. Not by a black man, at least. Not by family. There had been a Boer once, a farmer, who had taken a bullwhip to his father back in the days when white men felt it was their right to do this. Whipped his father in front of his wife and children.

  His father had said nothing while the hunchback's mother bathed his back, cuts like deep furrows cross-hatching his skin. And he'd carried on working for the Boer, his back mending, thick scar tissue growing over the whip wounds. Acting subservient. Calling the white man boss.

  Then one night the boy had seen his father leave the hut, carrying a hammer. A pig killing instrument. He came back an hour later without the hammer and the boy heard him snoring within seconds of laying his body down on his mat beside his wife.

  The next day police were called to the farmhouse, walked into a bedroom filled with blood and brains and flies. They questioned the Zulu workers. Were met blank stares. Shakes of the head.

  Yes, such a man was his father. And now, for this rubbish who was ashamed of his people and his skin, to come here and do this . . .

  The hunchback sawed away. Heard feet on the sand and stopped. Hid his hands. His cousin appeared. Squatted in front of him, wearing shoes that could have bought two horses.

  "Where's my car?" he asked.

  The hunchback knew where it was. In Durban. Sold for a handsome profit. But he shook his head. "When we awoke this morning it was gone."

  Zondi laughed as he stood. "Doesn't matter, it was a piece of shit, anyway. I've got my eye on the new Audi." He walked away.

  The hunchback heard distant voices, the double smack of car doors and the churning of the Ford engine, the suspension complaining as the car bumped out of the yard. He attacked the ropes. He could still hear the rumble of the truck, drifting off into the blue pre-dawn, when he felt his wrists separate.

  He grabbed a length of toothed metal and hacked through the rope at his ankles. Went across to his father, pulling free the cotton waste from his mouth. The old man spat and gasped for air. The hunchback started sawing away at the ropes holding his father's hands.

  "Waste no time on me, boy. Go now! Run like the wind!"

  The hunchback sprang up, leaving his father trussed like an animal and raced toward the room, flinging his one shoulder before him as he ran. Knowing what he must do. He tracked through the blood on the floor. Searched the clothes piled next to his mat until he found his cell phone and ran out, toward the hill.

  He climbed, jumping nimbly from rock to rock, moving with surprising speed. He kept his finger on the menu button of the phone as he went ever higher, watching the illuminated face for any sign of a signal. Nothing. Could still hear the faint vibration of the Ford's exhaust echoing through the valley. Climbed on, his breath coming in gasps, ill-matched legs pumping.

  Then, as he neared the top of the hill, he saw a few bars appear on the face of the phone, like stones stacking themselves. A signal. The hunchback turned toward the first light of morning, facing the direction of his fleeing bastard cousin, and dialed the number.

  Zondi drove the Ford through the retreating darkness, the doctor and the girl squeezed in beside him, Dell and the wounded man in the rear. He slowed the truck at an intersection in the middle of nowhere. People piling into a minibus. As the Ford stopped, the blonde doctor was skewered by the taxi's headlamps and a kid ran across, begging hands held out before him.

  Zondi accelerated away. The Belgian sat smoking, staring out at the road twisting into the squalor of Bhambatha's Rock. She was as remote as the star of one of those subtitled European movies. He wondered what penance had brought her here.

  They arrived at the hospital, the metal cross above the chapel black against the dawn sky. Zondi left the Ford idling and stepped out. He scanned the street. Taxis. Goats. Traders laying out their sad wares in the dirt.

  The doctor slung the trauma bag over her shoulder and headed toward the hospital entrance. He walked after her. "Martine."

  She turned and it took a moment for her eyes to focus on him. As if he were a stranger. "Yes?"

  "Thank you."

  She shrugged, lighting another cigarette. "You're not coming back here, are you Disaster Zondi?"

  "No."

  "Good." She walked away, disappearing into the cold fluorescence of the lobby, a blue smudge of cigarette smoke left behind.

  Zondi got back into the truck. The girl glanced his way, then sta
red straight ahead, silent. He observed her for a moment, trying to find anything of himself in her. He couldn't.

  Zondi steered the Ford out onto the road and hit the gas. Time to catch that chopper in Dundee. Get back to Jo'burg, where hungry blondes, crack whores – and even the possibility of parenthood – didn't seem that much of a threat after these last days out here on the torn edge of the world.

  They drove for maybe twenty minutes, the Ford laboring up the hills, then they escaped the valley and hit the plateau. Grass and trees appeared when the sun ran yellow as egg yolk over the low hills. Dell could see cows grazing. Distant huts almost picturesque against the green ridges.

  He sat in the rear of the Ford, his back to the cab, wearing one of Zondi's shirts. The kind of thing he wouldn't have been seen dead in, in his old life. An honest-to-god Lacoste, powder blue, the little green alligator looking like it wanted to take a bite out of his left nipple.

  The crisp shirt jarred with the rest of him. Matted hair, face and arms still streaked with boot polish, white skin peering through in leprous patches. His dead man's khakis a Jackson Pollock of blood. His father's blood. Sheep's blood. The blood of the man who lay unconscious in the bed of the truck, naked beneath the silver space blanket, his wound taped closed and bandaged.

  A drip bag, suspended from the Ford's roll bar, fed into Inja's arm. He cried out and his eyelids guttered like blown fluorescents. Then he lay still, eyes closed. The girl turned and looked back. Framed in the rear window of the Ford, in her tribal clothes, like a snapshot from another time.

  They came to a town, bigger than Bhambatha's Rock but still tiny. Not Dundee. A few stores and a taxi rank. A phone container. Traditional healers' iron shacks. The Ford rattled into a gas station. Three pumps. No convenience store.

  A pair of minibuses were attached to two of the pumps, their passengers milling around the forecourt. Members of an African Christian sect, men and women wearing long white robes with green trim. Headgear emblazoned with stars and crescent moons. Dell had glimpsed people like these since his childhood, praying under trees at the roadside, or singing hymns within circles of rock in the veld.