by T. M. Clark
She turned as if sensing his presence. ‘Is she down at last?’
‘Yeah, she was exhausted from the trip, I think. Overtired. She played with that new doll almost the whole way home, instead of sleeping like I thought she would,’ he said, slipping down to sit next to her.
‘You’re going to regret getting down so far,’ she said.
‘No regrets,’ he said, smiling.
‘I bet when you were sixteen and leaving to go to the commandos, you wouldn’t have even considered taking on a crippled orphan child.’
Joss nodded. ‘I guess I’ve grown up a little since then.’ He ran his fingers up her arm.
‘We’re all forced to,’ she said. ‘It’s called maturing.’
They sat looking at each other. He searched her face for some sign, for something to say what she wanted now that their time away was over, and if she had made a different decision on them and their friendship.
Then she leant forward and kissed him softly on the lips.
‘I’m sorry—’ She broke the kiss but didn’t move away.
‘There’s nothing to be sorry for,’ he said and dipped his head for another kiss.
He felt her arms wrap around his shoulders, her fingers in his hair.
The sound of Sophia crying on the baby monitor interrupted them.
‘This isn’t finished,’ Joss said as he clambered up and went to settle Sophia, his mind filled with images of where he and Peta could have ended up if they hadn’t been interrupted.
* * *
Joss knocked on Peta’s rondavel door. He heard her check who was there before she unlocked the latch, and opened it.
‘Hey, you,’ she said. ‘Come on in.’
‘Hi. I asked Lwazi to watch over Sophia for a few hours. He’s so excited with some of her toys we brought home, I feel that I should be showering him with the gifts I bought for him too, not waiting till he’s ready for them. He’s going to love those sports sunglasses we picked up.’
Peta laughed. ‘He’s still a big kid at heart. I know you think of him as grown up and mature, but remember what you were like at fourteen? I remember you were just as energetic as him, and it was as if you couldn’t sit still ever. I remember when you tested your boundaries with your folks, a lot. You and Courtney got tossed out of a nightclub in Harare, if I remember rightly, and she was suspended from school for two weeks for some prank you guys did together.’ She sat on the couch.
Joss laughed and ran his hand through his hair before sitting next to her. ‘Bubble bath. They were rationing the girls’ bathwater, but they had the fountain bubbling up and looking great. It was Courtney’s idea, to protest that they couldn’t have bubble baths. I just helped. I never understood why I didn’t also get suspended.’
‘You didn’t go to her school. And you were a golden sports star at yours. They never would have punished you for anything, as long as you kept winning their rugby matches for them in the winter, and their swimming carnivals in summer.’
‘I just didn’t get caught and she never ratted me out. Besides, it wasn’t my fault I was good at sport. Lwazi doesn’t test boundaries, he doesn’t have the same restrictions put on him that we did. He’s fourteen and already earning his own money, and Madala has him learning to save and budget already.’
‘Well, I’m glad he’s watching out for Sophia for the next couple of hours at least,’ Peta said, grinning. ‘I wish that I had let my hair down more like you and Courtney did when I was in my teens.’
‘Me too,’ Joss said, taking her hand in his. ‘But I’m not sure that at twenty-two you would have got away with half the pranks we did. You might already have been too old even then.’
‘Gee, thanks for reminding me that I am so much older than you,’ she said, attempting to pull her hand out of his.
He held on to it. ‘Not happening. We are staying connected for this conversation.’
‘What conversation?’ Peta asked.
‘The one that is happening now. About that kiss ...’
Peta let her hand go slack, then turned her fingers to thread them through his. ‘What about it?’
‘I wanted to know if it means what I hope it does. That the look of my mutilated body didn’t repel you this week, nor did the fact that you need to be as strong as you are to actually help me sometimes.’
‘You are an idiot, Joss Brennan. If you think I’m going to look at you differently because you are missing one and a half legs and have a few scars ...’
‘I think we already established that I’m definitely an idiot. But I was asking if you would take me as your idiot?’
Peta grinned. She leant towards him and he matched her stance on the couch, putting his forehead to hers.
‘I think that we both know that what’s happening with us isn’t just a transfer of friendship from Courtney to me. We both know that I’m going to be called a “cougar” by many people, and I don’t care one ounce for their opinions. I would like to believe that you knew my answer was always going to be that you were already my idiot. From the moment you walked in the stupid road at Beit Bridge. I should have run over you and done away with a lot of the heartache I know will come from us being together.’
Joss tilted her head and kissed her. He said against her lips, ‘I don’t know how I got so lucky to have found you again in my life, but I thank the universe that you can see past everything, and still see me. The real me. I want you, Peta. I can’t say it was that first night together, but I can honestly say this was inevitable for me. I can’t imagine life here without you. I love you. I want you in my life, always. And even though I know that we’ll still have obstacles in our way, I want to believe that together we can achieve anything we want to.’
‘Rewind to the part where you said, “I love you”, and I’ll be happy.’
‘I love you,’ he repeated for her, between kisses and holding her close.
‘I love you too, Joss.’
CHAPTER
23
An Elder’s Secrets
Amos moved from his hiding place on top of the koppie, throwing a small stone down the side, hoping that it would reach Julian Seziba waiting at the bottom. Julian quietly moved away from the face of the koppie where they had set up camp and signalled that he was ready for the next instruction. Amos pointed down the road. A column of dust rose into the air where a bakkie was moving at high speed. If the traveller was legitimate, they would carry on past the hidden turn-off to the hunting camp on the outskirts of Chizarira.
They didn’t.
Instead the dust seemed to hang, before changing direction and heading towards the koppie, to where the spotter’s camp was. Amos took his binoculars out at the same moment that Julian began climbing for a better vantage point.
At first Amos hadn’t understood why Bongani had insisted that he take Julian with him, but now he had set out to learn all he could from the old man because, although he moved more slowly than the younger rangers, his mind was sharper than an assegai honed for a fight. Julian had proven that he was a mine of information.
‘Two men. One white, one black,’ Amos said.
Julian looked through the binoculars Bongani had given him. ‘That man who drives does not respect machines. Look at the speed he drives at. It means he has more money than sense, and he does not care about destroying things. Machinery. Lives. He has potential to be a killer.’
‘That is three-quarters of the white men in Africa,’ Amos said. ‘The black man, he looks ahead; he has not turned his head to the side. Not once. He is used to travelling like this. They are used to each other.’
‘I see him. He looks like an Ndebele.’
‘Can you see in the back?’
Julian raised his binoculars again. He shook his head and made a gesture to indicate that the back was covered. They had waited a whole week for someone to arrive and now they watched to see what the men would do.
‘Can you read the plates?’ Amos asked.
Julian read the 4x4’s num
ber plate through the binoculars and Amos texted it to Bongani.
When Peta had found Hunt’s body and been so insistent that she get to keep the laptop, Amos had not fully comprehended why she was worried. She had understood the significance of those numbers and images on the computer. When they had stumbled on this place, and then got the confirmation from the files, the pieces had begun to fall into place for him: Peta was walking into trouble if she carried on looking at these graves. Someone was using the information that Hunt had been collecting, and no one leaves a dead man’s possessions in the bush for long. Not any more, not with the communication available nowadays. Whoever his partners were, they might have left his body to be claimed by the police, but the equipment and his belongings, they would want to collect those.
He took the cover off the camera that Mitch had given them to use, with its lens that was so big it had meant he had had to leave a whole extra week’s worth of rations behind, and began taking photos.
The men parked their vehicle under the hunter’s net before they retrieved deck chairs, lit a fire and settled in for the night. The fire glowed red, but if they had been at ground level, it would have been difficult to see. Once the smoke had begun to disperse on the breeze it would have been difficult to even tell where the fire was. It would take time to track down a fire like that.
The white man had climbed to the top of the smaller koppie right next to the campsite, stretched his back, urinated, and then sat on a boulder to watch the sun set.
Amos said, ‘Guess not even a small fire for us tonight and cold food.’
‘Yebo, but I cannot remember when packet stew last tasted so exciting. The camp food that Mitch loaded us up with is better than any rations I ever got working in these parks.’
‘Exciting? Are you sure you are using the right word? We might have to run for our lives if they discover us.’
Julian nodded. ‘If we simply do our jobs right, we will not be found, young man. Bongani, he told me to show you some of the older tracker skills while we are watching them. This is the first one: I am sleeping first; wake me at three am.’
Amos chuckled quietly. ‘Why did they let you go? You still have so much to pass on to others who need to learn.’
‘Because the men who took over are stupid; they are there for power, not passion for the bush and the animals they are supposed to protect. They see an old man, one who cannot read a paper or write his name, and they believe he is the past. They think we are useless. They do not realise that the old ones, it is where much of the real wealth, the knowledge, still lies.’ He pointed to his head. ‘They are penga. They do not understand. They put all our animals in danger, because they allow mistakes that have happened before to reoccur, because they do not ask the old people; they get rid of us. Chief Bongani, he is a clever one. This is his area, and he knows what is happening in it, and no one is going to hurt this park while he can help it.’
Amos sat quietly for a while. ‘Has this happened before? Has someone set up these spotter camps in the game park while you have been alive?’
‘Always. White, black, private or government. The Chizarira, it is a sanctuary for beasts, birds and skabengas. It is always the job of the rangers to remove the skabengas.’
* * *
The sun rose bright red in an indigo sky, caressing the African bush with the hope of a new day. If the men in the camp had been more observant, they would have noticed that the koppie had grown a few new plants overnight: Julian and Amos had fortified their position, fearing the reflection from their binoculars and the camera now that people were in the spotter’s camp.
The silence was disturbed by a string of profanities as one of the men washed in cold water in an outdoor shower.
Julian lay on his stomach next to Amos. ‘See? I told you they would take the water from their bakkie to wash in the morning. They do not know this land as we do. These men were told of this place on a map; they know nothing about the spring that lies just around the corner.’
The white man came out of the shower area quickly, his hair wet.
The black man was laughing at him. He opened a beer and passed it to the white man before he crossed over to their camp kitchen area and cooked them breakfast on the small fire.
‘What are they waiting for?’ Amos asked.
‘I do not know,’ Julian said.
They watched the men begin to dismantle the spotter’s camp. The large crates were brought out, the straw emptied and piled against the rocks, then the crosses came out and were thrown where the fire had been. They packed both crates in the bakkie and filled them with all the items that had been in the camp.
Julian stretched a little then resettled under the tarp. ‘These men, they are not listening to the earth with their poaching, so she will send in someone to bite them, and they will feel her vengeance.’
‘Hopefully that is so. Perhaps in time we will get a chance to confront them, but today is not the day.’
‘Those two men are marked for destroying this ancient land, for destroying the animals of the BaTonga people.’
Amos looked at the sun, and then at the two men. The black man was burning the crosses. Black smoke swelled into the sky, a by-product of the paint covering the wood, but the man threw on a bush, turning the smoke white as you would expect from a bushfire, and the breeze gently blew it away.
‘The white man is still very colonial. He just sits in his deck chair while the black man does all the hot work.’
‘No, look, the white man is sick; he is sucking on an asthma pump.’
Julian clicked his tongue. ‘You sure? Perhaps that is just his manner. Like Ikanka yabo.’
‘I work around Baas Rodger all the time,’ Amos said. ‘It is not his manners that are faulty, just his brain.’
‘He always said he had no love for a kaffir boy. I have seen him string up a poacher by the ankles, and start to gut him like a buck before he got information from him. Another time, I saw him pull the pin from a grenade and tape it in a poacher’s hands, then tape them up. He would cut the tape so that if the poacher wanted to he could break it, but in breaking it, the grenade would go off. He marched that man through the bush until he got to his camp, where he arrested the other men.’
‘I knew that ikanka yabo earned his Ndebele name, but I never knew you worked with him.’
‘For many-many years we worked together. When he first came to the Matusadona. With him and Stephen, Joss’s father. I was always thankful that I was on their side, and not a poacher. But even with the news of how the poachers were treated within the reserve getting out to the people around Chizarira and Matusadona, the poaching continued. Then the armies came and shot so many animals, and I saw both those men weep over elephant herds that were killed for no reason other than their ivory, because someone far away wanted a pretty ornament.’
‘Rodger cried?’
Julian nodded. ‘When independence came, Stephen built his lodge. Rodger stayed for a few more years, and I was let go.’
‘Any others rangers who knew of these ancient sacred places we will visit?’
‘There was a young white ranger; his name was Hunt. Albert Hunt. And his tracker, Elmon Dudzi.’
‘That is interesting,’ Amos said. ‘Did he have a son, or a brother that you knew of?’
Julian’s mind raced back in time. ‘I cannot be sure. He did not stay very long in the Chizarira before he went away to war.’
They lapsed into silence.
Half an hour passed before there was more movement at the spotter’s camp. ‘Look. The white man is getting into the passenger side of bakkie – perhaps they are almost done.’
The black man closed the chairs and put them in the back. Finally, he walked to the koppie, slashed a few bushes and dragged them to cover where the camp had stood. He went to the driver’s side and climbed in. Slowly, with a lot more respect for his companion than he had been shown as a passenger, he drove away from the site.
Amos continued taking pho
tographs until they couldn’t see the small dust cloud in the distance.
* * *
Peta sat on the edge of her chair at the dining table in Joss’s house listening to Amos recount his adventure with Julian in the parks. Joss put his hand on her thigh to steady her leg as she bounced it up and down. But then his finger started drawing circles and she had to put her hand on top of his to stop it creeping upwards. She was still trying hard to digest the change in their relationship, but one thing was for sure – being together was now a reality. Everything else they could work out.
‘What else did you find, Amos?’ Bongani asked.
‘Julian said that there were two more people we had to check who knew about the old prospectors’ camps: Elmon Dudzi and Albert Hunt,’ Amos said.
‘I knew Francis was not Elmon. Francis came clean with me in the hope that I would help him. He is still in Amalunandi Village, feeding my useless brother the information we ask him to. We should get him back here and ask him more questions because we still do not know what has happened to the real Elmon,’ Bongani said.
‘Your brother has two spies that you know of watching you,’ Joss said. ‘And he’s doing something suspicious with children—’
‘I’d hazard a guess there’s more than that,’ Mitch said.
‘The white man, Albert Hunt?’ Amos asked. ‘Do you remember what happened to him?’
Bongani shook his head. ‘I do not even remember him at all. Although the name Hunt is familiar—’
‘Albert Hunt was the spotter Kenneth Hunt’s father,’ Peta said. ‘I’m pretty certain that there was something about an Albert Hunt in the file that we got off his computer.’ She went and got her copy from her bag, and flicked through until she found the passage she was after. ‘Here, Albert died in 1978, in the bush war.’
‘The Hunt family again,’ Joss said. ‘I think they’re worth looking into a little more.’