by T. M. Clark
Eventually, they’d ended up at a brain injury hospital in Howick, and the doctors there had advised her to put her father in permanent care. Even threatened to take him away from her, but she’d insisted that in less than a month, more adult help would arrive and she’d have the support of others who’d ensure that he would be more comfortable at home than in an institution. The doctor had given her time to consider both her and her father’s futures; and time was what she’d needed while Enoch and Xo made their way through the bush with the horses, to join them in South Africa.
Things were pretty much the same five years down the track.
‘Come on. Let us get home so Mike can remember with us, too,’ Enoch said as he put the bakkie into gear, and the windscreen wipers sloshed the rain off the window just as another round of thunder shook the vehicle. ‘Your suitcase is going to be saturated by the time we get to the farm.’
‘It all needs to be laundered anyway,’ Chloe replied as she dug out the belt from behind the seat.
Enoch put on his flicker to move out from his parking spot close to the door. Dependable Enoch who had never let her down. Enoch, her father’s best friend. And his son, Xoline, her best friend.
She remembered so clearly her drive across the Beitbridge border five years ago, into the land of apartheid. Where everything she had known as normal had changed so dramatically.
In South Africa, Enoch and Xo were viewed as nothing more than servants—or workers at best. They were considered to be her driver and the horse boy, not part of her family. But skin colour did not define a family for Chloe. Together with her father, Enoch and Xo were all the family she had left, other than Aunty Grace, who had stayed behind on their farm in Zimbabwe.
‘Last chance to wave goodbye to all your friends,’ Enoch said.
‘If I hug one more person I might just stick to them I’m sweating so much.’
‘The horse trough is nice and clean, you can have a splash when you get home,’ Enoch said.
‘Thanks. Bet it was Xo who removed the slime and frogs for me.’
‘Of course.’ Enoch smiled and slowly edged the yellow Datsun bakkie out of the parking. ‘Ethel is too busy with your father to help clean outside the house.’
A horn blasted behind them.
‘Come on, kaffir, I don’t have all day!’ Meneer Botha shouted out of his window.
‘One day, I am going to shove my fist down the throat of that fat son of a —’
‘Stay here,’ Chloe said as she opened her door, and was out as Enoch grabbed at the air where her arm had just been.
She stormed to where Meneer Botha hung out of the side of his Mercedes-Benz. She watched as his hand beat his annoyance on the thin metal.
‘Meneer Botha, I don’t like the way you speak to Enoch, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop treating him like a second-class citizen. For three long years we’ve put up with your racist slurs whenever he fetches me, and in all that time has he done anything to you?’
‘No, but —’
‘No buts! Can you remember any time when he hasn’t gone out of his way to help your family, despite your horrible behaviour? Do you remember when you had a flat tyre going up Fields Hill, and we brought Melissa to you so you didn’t need to travel back to Umdloti in the dark? Enoch drove her there, despite making himself late for a cattle pick-up. Even though you never bothered to thank him, he has been nothing but a gentleman towards you.’
‘You told him to drive Melissa there —’
‘No. It was his idea. I had an assignment due and just wanted to go home as fast as I could. That was Enoch’s good heart helping your family. Believe me, Enoch is a better man than you, he’s not someone who should have to put up with the way you speak to him. He fought in the war in Zimbabwe alongside my dad, and he’s part of our family. So, I ask you to show him the same respect and courtesy that you would show my dad, because I’d like to believe that my friend has a decent father, even though this side of your character says otherwise.’
‘I … I …’
‘I’m not asking you to apologise for behaviours gone, Lord knows that would never happen, but I am asking you to be a better person and to not disrespect Enoch again.’
Meneer Botha’s face was now red, and Chloe could see he was near his breaking point of humiliation.
‘I’ll leave you to think about the way you treat people. I hope that from now on, you’ll show the community that perhaps deep down inside you’re a kinder and better-mannered person than the one we’ve seen over the last few years.’ Chloe looked past Mr Botha to where her friend sat. ‘Bye, Melissa,’ she said, before she turned and walked back towards where Enoch stood under the umbrella at the back of the bakkie. Immediately he sheltered her with it, allowing himself to get wet as he walked her towards the passenger door. She turned around and shouted, ‘Good luck for the holidays!’
‘Why are you wishing her luck?’ Enoch asked.
‘You’ve met her father; don’t you think she needs it?’
‘Good point,’ Enoch said as he opened her door. Once back in the driver’s seat, he released the handbrake, placed his foot on the accelerator and drove out of the gates, another backfire covering the Bothas’ car with black exhaust fumes.
‘Do you want to tell me what you said to Meneer Botha? He looked ready to burst, his face was so red.’
‘We were discussing the correct way for him to address his betters, that’s all.’
‘Did not look like it from where I was standing.’
She smiled at him, and turned her head to look out of the side window as the rain splattered against it.
Enoch smiled and switched on the windscreen wipers as the rain turned into a torrential downpour.
* * *
The rain stopped as they turned right off the main road and onto the dirt one that led towards their smallholding. Chloe began to fidget.
‘What is wrong?’ Enoch asked.
‘I don’t understand men like Meneer Botha or Sebastian. We’ve never done anything to them, so why won’t they just leave us alone to live our own lives?’
‘They do not think like you and me. They see the colour of skin as a measure of character and a means to judge who a person is. They are too stupid to see the truth.’
‘True, but it makes me feel bad for you. Them not being able to see you for who you really are, makes me so mad.’
Enoch looked over at her. ‘Chloe, I have never treated you as anything other than the daughter I never had. It is not important what small-minded men think, just that I have done my best by you, that you are a daughter both Mike and I can be proud of.’
‘Oh, Enoch,’ Chloe said.
For as long as she could remember, Enoch had been a second father to her. He had taught her to drive when she was only fifteen so that she could get her licence as soon as she turned sixteen. He’d also drilled her in unarmed combat skills, making sure she and Xo kept their tracking up, so that they knew how to disappear in the bush if they needed, for survival.
‘I’m not sure what I would do without you and Xo.’
‘You would be fine. You are mature beyond your years. You had to grow up fast with your father, but know that Xo and I will always be there with you.’
Enoch stopped at the gate. The sign on the small farm was old, but you could still read ‘Amalfi’ quite clearly. The ‘No Trespassers’ sign next to it was newer. Despite their best efforts, her father had a habit of disappearing on them, but he never seemed to go outside the gated area. Trying to keep people out went some way to ensuring that no one accidentally left the gate open, which helped protect her father.
Chloe climbed out and pushed the gate open and waved Enoch through. As he went past her, she put her hand out and begged for money, as many of the black kids used to do on other farms. He playfully slapped her hand. He stopped on the other side to let Chloe climb on the back. Standing up, she took the elastic out of her hair and let the wind comb it as he drove the last stretch. She could
smell the freshness after the storm and the familiar aroma of home. Her house came into view, and she smiled.
The thatch-roofed cottage was painted white, the beams under the windows stained black, in the Tudor style popular with many South African farmers. The garden that surrounded it was meticulously groomed; it reminded her of Delaware, the home they had left behind in Zimbabwe. That was why she had chosen to settle here. When she saw the picture of the house five years ago, she had negotiated to lease the farm and they had lived here since. Accessing superior medical care in South Africa had been the main objective of leaving Zimbabwe, but always in her mind was what she’d seen on the night her dad had been hurt. She had a deep-seated dread that the police would come looking for him, because of what he and Enoch might have done.
She was almost certain that she’d seen Enoch bury someone that night. But when she’d asked him about it, Enoch had told her to drop the subject and never bring it up again.
The huge oak trees that surrounded the lawns had bright-green leaves of summer on them already, and at the bases of the trees there was a mass of bright fuchsias covered in their little lantern flowers which danced in the wind. The wire fence that separated the garden from the farm was strung tightly, keeping the sheep and horses out of Xo’s masterpiece. Washing flapped in the wind on the line and wood smoke curled from the donkey boiler at the back.
Chloe jumped off the bakkie as soon as Enoch stopped the vehicle in its parking space in the workshop area at the side of the house.
Xo was waiting as always when they drove in, waiting to catch her when she jumped off the bakkie, wanting to hear about her week at varsity and to help carry her bag into the house. He would wait while she changed and kicked her clothes in a pile in the corner of her room, and then race her to the paddock and call their horses, if he hadn’t already got them ready and waiting in the stable.
Friday was steeplechase afternoon, when she got to ride freely and feel Pampero’s strength under her as they raced around the small farm over the ever-changing course that she and Xo had constructed.
‘I’m home,’ she said, giving him a hug.
CHAPTER
4
Douglas stared down at the fax and then at his diary that he was trying to concentrate on, but the image of the two game rangers who had interrupted his opportunistic hunt last month niggled in the back of his mind. Demanding he correct what was denied him.
He’d been with a Polish client, Aleksy Bargiel, and they’d followed the targets from the Paul Kruger gates when the odd tourists had pushed in front of them to pay for entry. Douglas had planned on using the park to cut down the time to get to Komatipoort before they went into Mozambique, where the 6th hunt was going to take place.
Rude, obnoxious people who cut in and had no manners deserved what they got in life, and if he had any say in the issuing of karma, it would be a lead present.
He’d casually started up a conversation with the couple, telling them about the Lindanda Wolhuter Memorial, and how they had to visit it. How it was best viewed late in the day when the golden sunlight lit the area where the ranger had once fought off the two lions that’d attacked him just at sunset, before dragging him off into the bushes, and how despite that, the ranger had managed to stab the lions with a knife and kill one. How he’d climbed into a tree in order to survive in the bush, until his colleagues came and took him to safety.
Douglas had set them up perfectly. He’d even ensured they’d have engine trouble by slamming a screwdriver into their radiator. But those rangers had robbed him of his kill, just as a cheetah is often robbed of theirs by another predator.
Except the game rangers were not apex predators. They were just guards. But there was something about the way those two worked together, how they’d found the couple, the way they seemed as one with the bush, that had had him backing away from his first instinct—to hunt them, too.
He could have instructed Mason to take the black ranger as his 6th and he would have had the white one as a bonus kill for himself. It wasn’t often that he got the opportunity for multiple hunts in one day. But he hadn’t.
And their images continued to burn in his gut. He’d made the right choice to abandon the hunt. But one day soon, he would finish what he’d started. Because Douglas Jones always finished what he started. It was who he’d become. A man that had been created in the back alleys of Manchester’s slums, and the corridors of the community home he’d been sent to at the age of fourteen.
He shook his head to try to dislodge the memories, but it was too late. At times, as now, they came flooding back …
* * *
The train tracks that led through the dockside warehouse of Stalford’s docks hadn’t been used in over ten years. Not since they began to use the huge containers on the bigger ships that couldn’t make it up the canal, which was too shallow to accommodate them. The merchants who’d stored their cargo here had left long ago, leaving behind a derelict dockside building, with damp rising into the red brick mortar from the ground level, and the rain slowly collapsing the slate roof from the top. In a place where unemployment continued to rise, and the slum areas around Salford continued to degenerate, the condemned building was used by the youngsters in the area who needed a place to hang out. To hide away from the ugly places where they lived.
Graffiti covered the walls inside and out and the doors no longer shut; some of the hinges had long rusted through and fallen off. No one cared, they just added to the industrial mess with their own discarded cigarette butts and newspapers that once had wrapped greasy fish and chips.
Eric sat by the door, swinging his chair backwards on one leg, perched precariously, as if by magic. He held the position as he spoke with Tommy, Douglas’s best friend, who was also there to negotiate what they needed to do to join the Dead-Snakes gang in Manchester. In front of them sat Joe, who claimed to be the local leader. He was about twenty years old, had terrible acne, and all Douglas could look at were the pus-filled sores on his face, and wonder if he squeezed those if the pus would hit the mirror with the pressure release. He realised that Joe was talking again, and tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
‘You’ll have to prove yourself before you can join. You have to be guerrillas. We expect you to be able to do things. Things that need you to be fit and strong. At your age, you might not be … let’s say, physically mature enough. I’m not sure you can do it …’
‘We want to join now. Tell us what to do? We’re ready for the initiation,’ Douglas said, adding his cigarette butt to the pile on the floor.
‘Yeah,’ said Tommy, ‘we’re ready. We’ve done everything you asked us so far. Everything. What else do we need to do to prove ourselves?’
Joe said, ‘I’ve seen other boys unable to complete their tasks. They get caught and rat to the police. They never get to do the fun stuff like blow something up.’
‘We won’t rat,’ Tommy said.
Joe looked at them. ‘Under the Barton Road Swing Bridge, there’s a man who’s a nobody. He’s old and dirty. Says he was a pilot in WWII. Nobody’ll miss him when you beat him to death.’
Douglas put both legs of his chair on the floor. ‘That all?’
Joe said, ‘Kill the Royal British Navy pilot, and you’re one of us.’
‘Thought it’d be something hard,’ Tommy said. ‘What-ya-say, Douglas? You and me, we can take him!’
‘Might be,’ Douglas said. ‘How long do we have to complete the initiation?’
‘Tonight.’ Joe sniffed hard and sucked snot down the back of his throat in a guttural snort.
Douglas nodded. ‘And if he’s not there?’
‘He’ll be there,’ Joe said. ‘He’s there every night. He ain’t got no place to go.’
It seemed like a simple enough initiation, but Douglas and Tommy hadn’t counted on being set up. No sooner had they begun their attack on the old man than the police were there shouting at them and hitting them with their billy clubs.
‘K
eep your hands in the air,’ the copper yelled. ‘On your knees!’
Douglas could feel the roughness of the man’s hands as he jerked first his left arm and then the right, to snap on the cold handcuffs.
‘On your feet,’ the copper shouted as he dragged him up by his arms, pulling them further up his back, causing Douglas to cry out in pain. The copper marched him to the waiting paddy wagon and practically threw him inside.
Douglas rolled on the floor and used the bench on the side to help him stand. He turned around when he heard a groan from outside. Tommy didn’t look so good. The copper had smacked him hard with his billy club when they had found the boys attempting to beat up the old guy, and while Douglas had immediately disengaged, Tommy had refused to stop kicking the beggar, who kept kicking him back, and had given them as good as they managed together to give him. The copper had gone in hard to break them up. It was amazing that Tommy was standing at all. He had a cut somewhere in his hair, which was obviously still open as blood poured down his face. He was also handcuffed.
‘Stop fighting and just get in, Tommy,’ Douglas said. ‘Once you’re in, that jackass won’t hurt you anymore. We’ll sue them for police brutality.’
The tall copper laughed loudly. ‘You think you can report us for brutality? Dream on, you little shits. Have you seen that poor old guy you beat up?’
‘I hope he dies!’ Tommy shouted.
‘Don’t talk,’ Douglas said. ‘Don’t say another word to these pigs.’
The copper smacked Tommy on the head with his wooden club again, causing him to fall to the floor. ‘Yeah, you little shit, listen to your buddy here. Don’t talk, because believe me, when we get to the station there’ll be plenty of talking going on. Most of it will be the magistrate putting you in an adult prison cell for this.’ He slammed the door closed.
Tommy groaned.
‘You okay?’ Douglas asked.
‘My head hurts. Why didn’t you fight back, Douglas? Why did you just give up?’
‘Because I needed my mind to fight another day,’ Douglas said as he looked at the ugly purple egg forming on Tommy’s forehead.