Place of Bones

by Larry Johns

  “Miss?”

  “What!”

  “Toast?”

  She looked again at the pitifully small array on the dressing table. At that moment those three things represented the sum total of her short life. A purse containing a few coins and hair pins; a comb; and... Tears were very close now, she could feel them pricking at her eyes. Why did she have to be so alone? Almost unconsciously her hand reached out for the necklace. She stared at it as if mesmerized. Johannesburg seemed a million miles and a hundred years away. Her entire life might have belonged to someone else.

  “It’s not fair!” she heard herself say bitterly.

  “Pardon, miss?”

  She tore here eyes from the necklace, frowning at the door. “What?” She noticed, with a strange kind of detachment, that the paper above the door was peeling away from the wall. She had not seen it before. Then she looked around the rest of the room. It was all like that; peeling and faded like an old photograph. And it smelt. She sniffed, her nose crinkling. God! Was that smell her! She lifted her arm and sniffed beneath it. No, it was the room. Decay, rot and disinfectant. Again she sniffed her armpit. Now she perceived the beginnings of a very definite body odor. She would have to bathe soon, she knew it. Besides, her friend would be here before the day was out, or tomorrow, at the latest. With some residue of embarrassment she remembered Ryan, and hoped he had already left to do her shopping. She would have a bath before he returned. She had refused before, but that was out of petulance. Now it was a matter of some urgency.

  She also realized that she was hungry.

  “Miss?” Isa’s voice had a measure of desperation in it now.

  She smiled suddenly, despite herself. From the beginning Isa had bent over backwards to make her feel at home, she realized that now as if for the first time. In fact, they had both, Isa and Ryan, been as nice as they knew how. It had grated on her before; nice was not enough. She needed explanations, she needed....she needed to go home, back to her life. She needed this to be a bad dream from which she would soon wake.

  But it was real. It had happened, and here she was. Almost without thinking she said, “Where is this place, Isa?” She had asked the question many times before.

  “Pardon, miss?”

  “You can open the door, you know.”

  The door opened and Isa poked his head into the room. “Eggs, miss?”

  Karen felt like bursting out laughing. She remembered Ryan, only this morning, saying, “It’s an adventure, for Pete’s sake! Don’t you like adventures?” And for no reason at all, she wanted to stop acting the sullen teenager. It was a strange feeling. Up to that moment everything had been dreamlike, fantastic. The kidnapping, the flight to the middle of nowhere, the visit from that odd, nameless South African, when Ryan had taken a picture of her, the endless hours of boredom and frustration, with Isa hovering nearby, always trying to do things right.

  “Yes, thank you, Isa. I’ll have eggs.”

  Isa beamed, straightening from the apologetic crouch that had annoyed her so much. “Yes, miss. And toast?”

  Karen smiled at him. Where this sudden change of heart had come from, she had no idea. Perhaps she had simply drained herself of all the negative feelings. She had not cried, but she felt as if she had. It was a release of some kind. The questions were still there to be answered, but it seemed different now. It was as if a switch had been thrown. She wished she knew why. She took a deep breath and stood up. “I’ll have the toast if you tell me where we are.”

  The happy smile vanished from Isa’s face, to be replaced by the one he generally wore when she confronted him with such questions. He shook his head sadly. “I can’t tell you anything, miss.” He waved an arm vaguely about the room. “I just look after this place. Mister Ryan -”

  “Sod mister Ryan!” she retorted uncharacteristically. “He isn’t God, you know.” She smiled again. This was better. “I just want to know which part of the world I’m in!”

  The smile came back. “Africa, miss...” His expression told her that he was not being sarcastic; he was simply answering a question that he felt able to. Besides, she knew that Isa did not have a sarcastic bone in him.

  “I know that. I want to know...” She had a sudden thought. “Do you know where I come from?”

  Isa frowned. “Pardon, miss?”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  Isa looked uncomfortable. “No, miss.”

  “Do you know why I am here?”

  His gaze slid to the window. “No, miss.”

  Karen could have hugged him. “Then we’re both in the dark.”

  Isa bin Mohammed, a Moslem from Madagascar, had managed Kronje Farm as an SAI safe house for several years. He knew the business he was in and he knew who paid him his wages. He also knew the rules which governed his employment. Beyond these things, as Karen McCann had stated, he was in the dark. Unlike the girl, however, such a general state of affairs bothered him not one bit. He had no desire to know the finer details of the work he was involved in. In fact, he could have cared less. His only desire was to channel as much money back home as was possible. And the only reason he worked for South African Intelligence at all was because his father had done so. It was, however, a well-paid job, if lonely on occasion - the farm was not used often. Certainly, he had never had to entertain a woman before, let alone a young girl. He, like Karen herself, could not imagine why she had been brought there, and to what end. He had gleaned from Ryan, his temporary control officer, that it was something to do with the girl’s father, a mercenary soldier. But that was all he knew. He would, however, have liked very much to be in a position to tell Karen exactly where she was, geographically, but had been forbidden to offer any information at all. So, however sorry he felt for her and her predicament, this was the way it must be. His “Africa” offering had actually been a feeble attempt at humor.

  *

  For once it was a cool night and the humidity level was reasonably bearable. I figured to take a shower and make the most of it, the rain forests didn’t hand out nights like that without keeping something worse up its sleeve for later. Also, I was shattered. Mentally and physically. We had chewed the whole deal over for three hours, sorting out the bits and pieces, which Brook committed to his damned clipboard. He was off now going through the stores and getting the hardware ready for issue. But for most of the camp there would be nothing to do until morning. The floodlights were ablaze and a football game had started up. Piet was with me in the portacabin. He laid his AK on the radio table and threw himself onto my bunk.

  “Jeez! I’m bloody whacked! I’ll doss down here, if you don’t mind.”

  “I do mind,” I said, attempting to grab a bluebottle in flight. I missed.

  “You’re an uncharitable bastard. “Cat” was right.”

  “About what?” I leant on the door jamb and watched the match dashing through the trees. They had made a ball of someone’s rolled-up shirt and it was mayhem. I had second thoughts about the shower.

  “About you being an uncharitable bastard.”

  I thought about “Cat” and had a sudden attack of the melancholy. “They’re all gone now, Piet,” I said. “Near as dammit. The youngsters are taking over.”

  Piet grunted and settled his head into his hands. “The youngsters can have it. Uganda was going to be my last. I hope you’re suitably impressed.”

  “Oh, I am, I am.” I felt oddly at ease as I stood there and watched the shirt taking a pounding, and the men dashing through the shadowed areas like kids, and the guys on the sidelines yelling encouragement. I felt at home. Almost. “Where do you hang your hat now, Piet?”

  “You mean when I’m not hanging it in a suitcase?”

  “Yes, pillock!”

  “Durban, when I get there, which isn’t often. You?”

  That was a good and a valid question. “Christ knows! Nowhere...anywhere. What would you do if you quit?”

  “Absolutely sod all.”

  “And be bored shitless wi
thin a week.”

  Piet was silent for a moment, his eyes closed. “Yeah, I guess. How about you?”

  “Who said I was quitting?”

  “You did.”

  I looked at him and he widened his eyes and looked at me. Maybe I had. I said, “I’ll probably join you, then.”

  “You mean that?”

  I had a feeling we were talking pie-in-the-sky. “I’ll have to join something. There aren’t going to be many people who’ll employ me after this little bundle.”

  “As you remark, old son,” he nodded. Then he closed his eyes again. “Come to S.A. Take your commission. That’ll probably be my direction. Can’t be all that bad. Four square ones a day. Clean sheets. Free this, that and the other thing. And I’m not sure regular officers don’t get batmen. That’s better’n a smack in the mouth. Think about it.”

  “Maybe,” I said, trying to spit another fly off the door jamb. “I could do that once.”

  “Do what?”

  “Spit a fly into oblivion.”

  “You’re overdue a rest, man

  “Oh,” I said, “is that what I’m overdue!”

  “Out to pasture...” Piet sounded on the verge of sleep.

  I sniffed. God, I smelt to high heaven. A shower, then. “I’m going for a shower.”

  Piet glanced at me. “Too much bathing robs your body of its natural protection. Me, I’ll just lay here and stink.”

  I stepped out into the night. Someone scored a goal and the men danced around hugging each other and cheering.

  “Like kids. eh. sir?” It was Augarde. He sat on the ground, his back against the food store; an obvious spectator. I stayed there for a while and we chatted about this and that. Inconsequential stuff. Then I had my shower. It was a gerry-built affair consisting of a tin with holes in punched in it and a string you pulled. I did not look too closely to see how the water got into the can. I just used it. The dirt washed off me in rivers. I suppose I felt better for it, but I guess I was too tired to notice. I dried myself with my shirt and walked back in just my under shorts. The game was still in progress. And Augarde had not moved. I thought he was asleep but he wasn’t. “Hell of a game,” he offered unenthusiastically as I passed.

  “What’s the score?”

  “Three-nil to the Kikuyu...I think.”

  I glanced out there. I saw Kimba amongst the players and wondered what he was doing there. “Why did Kimba come in?”

  “Stores, sir. He just sort of got caught up in the game. I’ll put a rocket under him when it’s over. I didn’t think a few minutes would hurt.”

  Which was true enough. “Remind him that I want the landing area pushed back further.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  Then I saw that Kimba seemed to be refereeing. I cupped my hand to my mouth. “Come on, corporal! Cheat, for Pete’s sake!”

  Kimba, in the act of sorting out a penalty, glanced out at us. He saw who was doing the shouting - my fault - and he dived into the fray like a man possessed, yelling for order.

  “What a poser,” said Augarde. “Sorry about that.”

  “If he fights as well as he licks arse you’ll have done us a good turn. Who’ve we got on the ammo store?”

  “Bjoran sorted that out, sir. I think he put a couple of Simbas onto it. Someone’s there, anyway. I saw them, marching up and down like bloody grenadiers. Shall I go check?”

  “No, I will.”

  Augarde had been right. Not only about them being Simbas, but also about the marching. I even received a “Halt! Who goes there?” which I thought was bloody hilarious. I did not bother to look inside, mainly because it was too dark to see in any case; the ammo store was on its own, in back of the cookhouse, and in deep shadow. I told the Simbas to stay awake then I walked - limped would be more factual - back to the cabin. Piet was sound asleep. I lit up a cigarette, sat at the radio table and pulled out the maps. There might still be a problem with fuel...

  “FIRE!”

  The crackle of gunfire died, to be repeated as diminishing echoes speeding away up- and down-river in search of their antecedents.

  “Rest!” Corporal Ran Chardi, a lanky Simba who looked as at home in a uniform as he would have done in skirt and blouse, tried and failed to sound as authoritatively guttural as had Bjoran in his single command to open fire.

  The zigzagged double rank of marksmen swung their AKs upwards, butts on the right hip, fingers of the left hand rested lightly on the fire-select lever in anticipation of the next instruction. Several of these men allowed their eyes to flicker towards the fast-running water. But only for an instant. Bjoran, up by the makeshift targets, glared threateningly at them as he stepped into the line of fire to inspect the hit rate. Only one member of the previous group of shooters had been foolish enough to allow the barrel of his weapon to remain directed at the targets as Bjoran had stepped in front of them. This man was now, and still, walking the “measured mile”, as Augarde had nicknamed Bjoran’s method of punishment for such offenses against his person. The man was walking - or trying to - upstream, some twenty feet out in the river and neck-deep in the swirling water, his AK and ammo pouches held high above his head. The distance he had to negotiate was not a mile, nor was it close to that. It was a mere hundred yards. But it could easily seem like a mile, and might even turn into one if Bjoran, upon its completion, found so much as a single drop of water anywhere on the weapon or pouches. And woe betide any man who failed to stay in a depth sufficiently deep. The water had to always stroke his chin.

  “Bloody bad!” yelled Bjoran as he checked the holes in the plywood sheets, onto which had been daubed reasonable facsimiles of human figures. He stepped backwards in the direction of the trees. “Auto!”

  The metallic rattling, as 30 men flicked the select levers on their weapons, sounded like a handful of ball-bearings dropped on a tin roof.

  “Okay, corporal.”

  Chardi waited until Bjoran was well out of the way then he filled his lungs. “Detail...Preeeee - sent!” The AKs curved and the butts thumped into shoulder. “Hauto - matic...ten rounds...” Chardi would have liked to give the fire order, but he knew that was the Swede’s job.

  Bjoran’s voice pierced the leaves. “Rapid...FIRE!”

  For several seconds the air was torn apart as 30 AKs loosed three hundred rounds into the targets, and the spent cordite fumes billowed around the firing line. And another set of echoes sped away. Then there was silence, except for an occasional grunt from the mile-walker and the buzzing of the flying insects. The mile-walker’s boot slid off an unseen rock and only by an extreme effort of will did he remain as near vertical as the racing current would allow. Though for a moment only his wrists and burden were visible above the surface of the water. No-one noticed.

  “Rest!” called Chardi, and the weapons came to order as the “walker’s” head came spluttering above the mud-saturated water.

  Again Bjoran inspected the results, and again, though the targets were now absolutely riddled, he yelled, “Bloody bad!” Then he stepped back into the trees and picked up one of the few remaining jerry cans, which he carried to the water’s edge. At that moment the “walker” lost his lone battle and disappeared completely. Interestedly, Bjoran studied the spot where the man had gone under. Some ten seconds later he reappeared, fifty yards downstream and well beyond the firing line, minus his AK, spluttering and foundering like a drowning man in his efforts to regain foothold on the river bed. Expressionless, Bjoran returned his attention to the men.

  “Right, you bloody lot of coon-skin maybes. On the run.”

  He swung the jerry can twice over his head then released it. It splashed down some fifty feet out. “Go! Go! Go!”

  The thirty men, yelling and screaming at the tops of their voices, charged up the bank, loosing indiscriminate fire at the bobbing can. Luckily for them, it was holed, sinking quickly. The “walker” made it to the bank at last, but well down in swampland. He would have to negotiate a greater peril than water to rega
in the solid clay tract.

  The proceedings were interrupted by the arrival of a jeep with Augarde at the wheel. “Get them in, Bjoran! Conference in an hour.”

  Bjoran nodded and called to Chardi. “Move it, corporal!” Then he trotted down the bank as Chardi began to yell his orders. “What now?” he demanded of Augarde, tossing his own AK onto the back seat and vaulting into the front passenger’s side.

  “Last battle orders,” said Augarde, “We pull out seventeen-hundred tomorrow.”

  Bjoran nodded. “Some bloody battle this gonna be...” He pulled a battered packet of Marlboro from his shirt pocket and lit one up, puffing a fan of smoke into the air. He added, “Well, I for one wanna see my extra loot up front!”

  Augarde shrugged. “You’re entitled to ask.”

  “Yeah,” Bjoran nodded. Then he changed direction completely. “My pris’ners still tucked up nice?”

  “They are.”

  “Good.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It mean good...Hey!” he yelled to Chardi, “Where’s Bolo, or whatever the fuick ‘is name is?”

  Chardi turned from his safety-catch check. He waved an arm downstream. “He comin’, suh.”

  “He got ‘is AK?”

  Chardi detached himself from the crowd of men and stepped out to the water’s edge, peering downstream against the glare of the sun. He shook his head. “No,suh.”

  Bjoran grinned at Augarde and stepped out of the jeep. He walked to the pile of ammunition boxes, tested one for weight, then banged it down on the bonnet of the truck, which was the mens’ transport. “Again!” he called to Chardi. “Wit’ this!”