Dust Devils

by Roger Smith

  Zondi stopped the Ford at the empty pump, behind one of the taxis. A man in a soiled overall crossed to the driver's window. Zondi spoke to him in Zulu and the attendant nodded and clanked the nozzle of the pump into the side of the Ford, shooting a glance at Inja lying under the blanket. Looked at Dell. Quickly lowered his gaze to the nozzle.

  Dell caught a chemical hit of the gasoline and his eyes burned. He felt for Inja's pulse. Faint. Irregular. But the man's heart was still beating.

  Dell jumped off the truck and wandered across to where the church people were buying corn on the cob from an old woman. Cooked on an open fire in an empty lot next to the pumps. He ignored the curious glances and the muttered Zulu comments. Looked up to see Zondi walking over to him.

  "Go back to the truck," Zondi said. "You look like hell."

  Dell didn't move. "How far to Dundee?"

  "A half-hour or so."

  "Then why're you filling up?"

  "In case the chopper aborts. It's unlikely, but . . ." Letting it hang.

  "And this chopper? Who's laying it on, exactly?"

  "A faction that wants change."

  Dell found a smile. "A force of good?"

  "Good has nothing to do with it." Zondi shrugged. "They want to take the minister down. For that to happen, Inja needs to talk."

  "And if he doesn't?"

  "Don't worry. He'll talk." Zondi impassive.

  "What happens to me, when we get to Jo'burg? I broke out of jail. Killed a man."

  "A hitman. A low-life."

  "Still."

  "It'll be spun, Dell. Like a top. That's what these people do."

  Like you're spinning me, Dell thought. "So you're telling me there's a future?"

  Zondi shook his head. "No. I'm telling you there's tomorrow. And the day after. That'll have to do until the future gets here." Zondi's eyes moved back toward the truck, where the girl sat still as carved wood in the front seat.

  The church aunties in the taxi in front of the Ford sang a hymn, their voices high and haunting, spiraling out into the early morning. It was a hymn that Sunday's mother used to sing when she carried her around on her back, and for a moment her mother's warmth and scent enveloped her like a blanket.

  Sunday wondered about her mother and the tall man. She sneaked a look to where he stood with the white one. Quickly turned her head away, not wanting him to see her staring. Thinking about going to Johannesburg with him. Excited and frightened at the same time. Thinking that all this had come about because of the wounded dog who lay in the bed of the truck behind her. She couldn't suppress a feeling of joy, a sense of wonder that something good had come out of something so bad.

  She sat watching the aunties rocking the parked taxi as they swayed side to side, clapping their hands. A few men came over carrying firecooked corn and they joined in the harmony, their voices low and deep. For a moment Sunday let the music take her far away.

  Then she was aware something at the very edge of her hearing. A low throb. Somehow familiar. She saw a windshield flaring and the sheen of blue paint. A car coming toward her, along the main road. A blue car. A pink blur behind the windshield, something swaying, moving slow as reeds in water. Pink dice.

  Sunday wanted to scream a warning. Reached for the door handle. Heard the smack of gunshots and glass shattering.

  Zondi sprinted for the truck, pistol in hand. Men shooting from the blue car. The singing in the taxi cut like a blade sliced across a throat. Then screams.

  He saw a man running from the street, in a low crouch, firing bursts from an AK-47. Some of the bush Christians went down, red splashes on their white robes. The gunman reached the back of the Ford and aimed down at Inja. The rifle bucked, spitting spent cartridges. Zondi fired as he ran. Missed. Fired again. The gunman brought the snout of the rifle toward him, then pitched forward onto the oil-streaked concrete.

  As Zondi reached the Ford the face of the pump exploded, raining glass over him. He dived behind the wheel. Turned the key, hearing rounds smacking into the door of the truck. The engine caught and he threw the Ford into reverse. Another man coming from the road. Firing.

  Dell tugged the pistol from his belt, fumbling for the safety catch. Saw the truck reversing away from the pump, the nozzle springing free and rising like a snake, spraying gasoline into the air. A black man in a yellow Kangol hat blasting at the Ford with an automatic rifle.

  Dell heard his father's voice: just point your finger. Did. Squeezed the trigger and the man dropped. Dell sprinted and caught up with the Ford just as Zondi found first gear. Dell dived for the truck, landing hard in the flatbed beside Inja, who was bleeding from the face and the chest.

  The truck bucked its way over the rocky sidewalk and Dell grabbed hold of the roll bar to keep himself aboard. The right fender of the Ford caught the side of the blue car. The impact threw open the tailgate of the truck and as Zondi floored the Ford, leaving rubber and smoke, Inja flew from the rear. The space blanket floated to the earth and the naked man landed in the spreading pool beside the pump.

  The arcing nozzle threw a jet of green-blue gasoline onto the old woman's cooking fire. The fuel ignited in a trail of flame that ran low to the ground, zigzagging like an animal. Hunting Inja. Dell, clutching the roll bar, watched as the naked man disappeared in an explosion of black and orange flame.

  Sunday looked back as they sped away. Saw the dog burning. There was a heat in her head, like she could feel the flames that ate Inja. She touched her fingers to her temple, brought her hand away red with blood.

  She heard a torrent of voices, as if all the radios in the world were playing at once. Then Sunday heard only her mother's voice, sweet and true. Welcoming her home.

  Zondi sped into a curve, fighting the oversteer, nearly losing the Ford. He took the truck off the road onto gravel, scattering traders and chickens and goats as he barreled between shacks of tin and wood. Hearing screams and curses.

  Found another road, a track that disappeared toward a clutter of huts, huddled around a low hill. Looked back. No blue car in pursuit. Just Dell, bouncing, gripping the roll bar. Zondi looked across at the girl. She lay slumped against the door.

  The Ford drifted to a stop beside a fence of rusted barbed wire. Hundreds of brightly colored plastic bags caught in the twisted spikes, buzzing in the breeze. Zondi took his hands from the wheel and reached across to the girl.

  Dell jumped down from the truck and went to the passenger door, the girl's face pressed like putty against the starred and bloody glass. He opened the door slowly and felt her weight as she sagged against it. Her hand dangled down, limp fingers dripping blood onto the sand.

  Zondi drove back down toward Bhambatha's Rock, feeling as if the flesh-colored earth was swallowing him. The girl sat with her head resting on the back of the seat, like she was asleep. He was startled by his cell phone, chirping and vibrating in his pocket.

  Zondi saw the name of the caller: M.K. Moloi. The signal evaporated before Zondi could answer and he dropped the phone onto the seat. He passed the hospital and fought the temptation to drive in and fetch the Belgian doctor. Beg for some miracle. Pointless. The girl was dead. The mystery of her parentage gone with her. Zondi was nobody's father.

  Dell's eyes closed. He felt the thrum of the tires on the road as the Ford sank down toward the town. He was in a place beyond exhaustion but he didn't want to sleep, because sleep meant waking, having to fight panic and grief and tell himself some lie about life going on.

  Dell opened his eyes. Saw men in overalls erecting a yellow and white striped marquee on the open ground between the hospital and the first cinderblock buildings in the main street. Workers unloaded chairs from the rear of a truck, the white plastic kicking the fierce sun back at Dell.

  The Ford slowed and stopped, waiting for a rig that rattled toward the tent with a hiss of air brakes. An old woman standing beside the road, dressed in a blanket, a water container balanced on her head, saw the dead girl in the front of the truck. She crossed herself
and brought her fingertips to her furrowed mouth and kissed them.

  The Ford rattled on and turned into the alley beside a funeral parlor. Stopped outside the rear entrance, beside a black SUV, the mortician's name painted on the door in ornate gold script. Zondi left the truck and walked into the mortician's. Didn't look back.

  An outlet pipe in the wall of the building burped and spewed grey liquid onto the sand. Dell got a lungful of embalming fluid, bringing with it memories he couldn't handle right now. He swung himself off the back of the truck, wanting to escape.

  Then he stopped, looking in at the girl slumped in the front seat. Felt he shouldn't leave her here alone. Wherever she's going, she's already there, he told himself and walked up to the mouth of the alley.

  Zondi followed the fat man out into the yard. Giraffe paused a moment, staring at the dead girl in the truck. Zondi could hear the undertaker's breath, like the roar of a distant waterfall. "Can you take care of this for me?" Zondi asked.

  "Of course."

  "I can't be bothering with death certificates and so on."

  Giraffe shook his head. "This is Bhambatha's Rock, Zondi. Bits of paper have a way of blowing away in the wind."

  Two men in overalls stepped out of the doorway, wheeling a gurney toward the Ford. Zondi didn't want to see this. "Only the best, please Giraffe."

  "Of course, Zondi. Of course."

  Zondi turned and walked up the alley to where Dell stood like a scarecrow who had lost his field.

  Dell, in the shadow of a poster of the minister of justice, watched as two men strung a cloth banner up against the side of a building. The banner was in Zulu and Dell saw the minister's name, the rest incomprehensible to him.

  He heard feet on gravel and turned as Zondi joined him. "You okay?" Dell asked.

  "Yes," Zondi said, staring off toward the hills.

  "So, what are you going to do now?'

  "Bury her. And then get the hell out of here."

  They stood a while in silence, then Dell said, "She was your daughter, wasn't she?"

  Zondi looked at him, face impassive. He shrugged. "To be honest, I'm not sure."

  Dell heard the workmen shouting instructions to one another in Zulu. "What's all this about?" Pointing at the banner, the minister's face revealed as the banner was unfurled.

  "Don't you know?"

  "Know what?"

  "He's addressing a rally here tonight."

  "Jesus. You're kidding?"

  "No."

  "At the marquee across from the hospital?"

  "Yes."

  Dell nodded, scraped a hand across his beard. Looked up at the minister. The tight mouth like a gash in the fleshy face. Dell had once admired this man, when he'd been a freedom fighter. Long ago.

  "Can I take the Ford?" Dell asked.

  Zondi looked at him, impassive, reading his mind. "It'll be suicide."

  "Assisted suicide, maybe." Dell laughed, thinking of his father.

  Zondi shrugged, fished the truck keys out of his Diesels and dropped them into Dell's dirty hand. Then he turned and walked away down the main road.

  Dell went back to the truck, breathing through his mouth to avoid the smell of embalming fluid. Didn't help. He ended up tasting it. He opened the passenger door and tried to wind down the bloody, bullet-starred window. The winder was stuck. Dell picked up a rock and smashed the window, the broken glass falling onto the red sand.

  A black man in overalls and white rubber knee boots appeared in the doorway of the mortician's, watched Dell for a moment, then went back inside.

  Dell dropped the rock and crossed to a hosepipe that was coupled to a faucet at the rear of the building. He turned on the water, a slow, stuttering trickle and dragged the pipe toward the Ford. He hosed the girl's blood from the front seat and floor of the truck, disturbing the meat flies. Rinsed his hands and closed the faucet.

  Dell started the Ford, the clutch and gas pedal as soft as wet newspaper. He bumped down the alley and turned into the main road, driving toward the marquee, the minister watching him from every fence and pole.

  Zondi walked along the sidewalk, dodging vendors and beggars. As he passed the liquor store he saw a familiar yellow Nissan truck parked outside. The big man with the dent in his skull leaned against the fender, smoking a cigarette. Two of Inja's soldiers emerged from the liquor store, lugging crates of beer. They dumped the booze the rear of the Nissan, bottles singing like wind chimes. The big man said something Zondi couldn't catch and all three laughed as they climbed into the front of the truck. The driver gunned the engine and the Nissan took off toward the hills. Word of Inja Mazibuko's death had reached Bhambatha's Rock.

  Zondi walked on, past the eating house, until he found the clearing. It looked exactly as it had twenty years ago. A rusted steel and Formica kitchen chair stood in the sparse shade of a thorn tree. A transistor radio balanced on a rock, blaring out Zulu choral music. Five old men were hunkered down in the dirt, playing marabaraba with bottle caps on a wrinkled square of cardboard.

  As Zondi approached, the most ancient of the men burst into a toothless cackle and swept money from the board with a horny hand. He looked up at Zondi. "A haircut, my son?"

  "Yes, grandfather."

  The old man poured the coins into his pocket and levered himself upright, old bones complaining like night crickets. He wore a dirty blue shirt, khakis and tire sandals, long yellow toenails curling almost to the dust. His white hair was a little sparser and his face more furrowed, but otherwise the barber was exactly as Zondi remembered him from his youth.

  The old man pointed to the chair. "Sit." Zondi sat. The wizened Zulu shook out a sheet, frayed and torn, and draped it over Zondi's shoulders. "You are from Durban?"

  "Egoli, grandfather." Egoli. City of gold. Johannesburg. "But I was born here."

  "And who is your father?"

  "He was Solomon Zondi."

  "Ah, yes. Yes. I used to cut his hair, many years ago."

  "I remember, grandfather."

  The barber rubbed a hand over Zondi's neat hair. "What do you need, boy?"

  "A cheesekop." Cheese head. Shaved.

  "You are bereaved, my son?"

  "Yes. I am bereaved."

  The old man rested his palm on Zondi's shoulder for a moment, then he lifted the hand-powered clippers and started thinning Zondi's hair. Zondi listened to the radio. Sweet voices singing about God. Beneath the choir, he caught snatches of the conversation of the old gamblers. They were talking about Inja. One of them saying, "He burns still, that one. Where he has gone."

  Amen to that, Zondi thought.

  The old man laid the clippers on the rock beside the radio and brought a jar of paste and a brush up to Zondi's head. Zondi felt the coolness of the shaving cream on his skull. The barber stropped a straight razor on a length of leather tied to a low branch of the thorn tree. He stood over Zondi and took away a stripe of shaving cream and hair in one smooth motion, Zondi's skull gleaming.

  Zondi wasn't sure why he was doing this. He didn't need a haircut, and if he was doing it in the name of ritual, he wasn't observing the correct timeline. Africans in mourning shaved their heads, true, but only the day after the burial. Believing that life is concentrated in the hair. Shaving it symbolizes death and its growth symbolizes a new cycle of life.

  What the hell, he'd go with that. Even if he was a day early. He needed a new beginning.

  It was the morning of Dell's birthday and he lay alone in bed, the sheets still warm from his wife's body. He sat up and looked out at the sun, last traces of a nightmare about his father dispersing like smoke.

  The sound of his children laughing in the kitchen lifted Dell from the bed. He pulled a shirt over his bony shoulders and stepped into a pair of Levi's. Barefoot, toes curling up against the stone floor that still held traces of night chill, he left the room.

  Dell walked down the corridor, past Rosie's studio. One of her huge abstracts leaned against the wall. Unfinished. Abandoned a year ago. H
e entered the kitchen, the table piled with birthday gifts wrapped in bright paper and ribbon. The twins burst through from the sitting room and ambushed him, climbing Dell's tall frame like he was a jungle gym. He spun them around and they laughed.

  Rosie stood in the doorway, wearing one of Dell's old T-shirts over sweat-pants. Her eyes making a lie of her smile. He lowered the twins and they stood beside his wife and the three of them sang Happy Birthday to him, and he had to fight back the tears. They were just so bloody beautiful, his family.

  Dell hugged the twins and kissed them. Tommy broke loose and ran out into the cramped backyard. Mary clung to Dell. When her small fingers finally released him, he set her down gently. She smiled at him for a moment then she went out after her brother.

  Rosie put her hands on Dell's shoulders, looking up at him, dark hair falling over her one eye. "Happy birthday, Robbie." She kissed him on the lips, then she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him. Hard. He returned the embrace, smelled her skin. Like almonds.

  Dell lifted his wife's face and kissed her again. "I love you, Rosie."

  "I love you too." Her eyes deep and dark and troubled.

  The scream of a buzzard brought Dell back to where he sat on a boulder on a hillock, staring down at the striped marquee wavering in the heat haze. The bird circled lazily above him, then flew off, its shadow grazing the red earth. Dell felt a pain in his heart, as if the grief and the longing would stop it beating. Then he took himself into a place beyond pain. Into nothingness.

  Shadows chased themselves across the sand and the sun sagged toward the horizon. A burst of music blared out from the public address system in the tent. Choked off abruptly. A man's tinny voice said, "One, two. Testing. Testing. One, two."

  Dell drank bottled water. It was warm and he spat most of it back onto the dirt. He took the container of Cobra boot polish from his pocket. The black and red tin, with the rearing serpent. Dipping his fingers into the melted polish he smeared it onto his face, using the inside of the silver lid as a mirror, covering the areas where his white skin shone through. Blackened his arms and hands. Then he watched as night strangled the valley.