by Philip Roy
Chapter Fourteen
AFTER THE GENTLE green shores of Mozambique, where people lived in thatched huts and children played on the beach, Richards Bay was a shock. It had a large, deep-sea harbour, and was home to the largest coal-exporting plant in the world! Giant mounds of coal turned the south side of the harbour into a world of sooty blackness. They reminded me of the pyramids in Egypt, except they were black.
There were also factories and industrial yards here for aluminum, titanium, iron ore, granite, woodchips, paper pulp, and phosphoric acid, which, according to my guidebook, was used in batteries, rust remover, and soda pop. Freighters lined up in rows, like pack mules, waiting to carry the smelly stuff to factories all over the world. As we motored into the harbour at periscope depth, I had the feeling we were entering a hole in the earth, out of which all the materials of industry came. I couldn’t help being fascinated, but Los wore a heavy frown. Coal was his enemy. Factories all over the world burned coal nonstop, spewing thousands of tons of carbon gasses into the atmosphere every day, heating up the planet and killing the oceans. And the biggest exporting plant for that coal was sitting right in front of us.
“I wish I could blow it up,” said Los.
I wondered if he really would. I didn’t think so.
There were nice areas of the harbour, too, with sailboats, deep-sea fishing boats, and even a pier of rescue vessels. That suggested there might be a real police force here, which was a welcome thought. But the harbour was enormous, and with so many corners and canals and piers, we spent most of the first day just looking for a suitable place to moor, and couldn’t find one! Everything was too open and exposed. There was one channel that might have been a decent place to hide, but it was lined with sailboats, and had houses and condominiums right on the water. And it was only twenty feet deep. Someone was likely to see us sneaking in, like a snake in a drain pipe.
On the south side of the harbour, right in front of the monstrous coal mounds, were a few tiny coves that might be okay for hiding the sub at night, or for a few hours in the day, but I wouldn’t feel safe leaving it there longer than that. If I did go with Los to Ladysmith, I had to expect to be gone for as long as a week. I couldn’t leave the sub where someone might see it, even if the chances were slim.
We took turns steering around the harbour and staring through the periscope. Los wanted to practise diving and surfacing. But I had to stand next to him when he was pumping air into the tanks because, brilliant as he was, he was not very patient, and he brought us right up on top of the surface in the middle of the harbour, with a big show of bubbles and waves. I hit the dive switch immediately, and we went back down. Luckily, it was almost dark, and we could hope that nobody saw us. But by now, we were tired and hungry, and the crew was anxious to get out.
“There’s got to be somewhere we can leave it, Alfred?”
“I don’t know, maybe for now we should leave it in one of the coves in front of the coal.”
Los frowned again.
“At least then we can get out and walk, and maybe find a pizza.”
“Pizza?”
“Yah. That’s the thing I miss the most at sea.”
“Why don’t you just make pancakes?”
“No way. I can eat pancakes whenever I like. I want pizza. And Hollie needs exercise. Just a minute.” I went into the stern, dug out the South African money from underneath the potatoes, and brought it back. “Here’s the money I took from the pirates. See how dirty it is? We have to wash it before we can spend it. Do you think there would be a laundromat here?”
Los’ eyes opened wide when he saw the money. “That’s a lot of money.”
“I know. And it stinks, doesn’t it?”
He covered his nose and nodded.
“But maybe we can buy a car with it. We have to clean it first, though. See the blood stains?”
He looked more closely. His face changed. He looked a little horrified. “People died for this.”
“I know. I met one of them. Believe me, he wasn’t very nice. Here. Let’s wrap it in a towel and carry it in a bag. We’ll take Hollie with us. Little Laura will have to stay behind.”
I steered into one of the tiny coves and surfaced until the hatch was only two inches above the surface, just enough to climb out and not let water in. It took a lot of patience, care, and practice to surface so precisely, and I hoped Los was paying attention. It didn’t look like it. His mind was somewhere else. I think he figured he knew how to submerge and surface now, and that was enough. It wasn’t. Ziegfried would not have been impressed. He would probably have made Los practise surfacing every day for two weeks. And I knew what he would say to Los. “You can’t go to sea in a submarine if you don’t have patience.” And he was right.
We slithered out onto the hull, up to our chests in water, and reached for the bank. I helped Los across. It was just five feet. Hollie swam it. Seaweed went up in the air. We climbed up the bank, stepped onto the railway tracks, and headed towards town. Our clothes dried along the way.
It was a warm and pleasant night. It was always warm and pleasant in Africa. We soon left the tracks for a road that led into the centre of town. The road took us through the woods, along the foot of the harbour, and past factories and industrial yards. There were a lot of industrial yards. Neighbourhoods had grown up around them. With so many smells to investigate, Hollie was thrilled with the hike, although he turned his nose up at some of the industrial smells. When we reached an area with streets and shops, and saw people on a corner, we stopped and asked if they could tell us where to find a pizzeria and a laundromat. Within half an hour, we were sitting at a counter, stuffing ourselves with pizza. Life was good.
The laundromat was harder to find. And Hollie was tired now. I had to carry him for a couple of miles. The laundromat was in a row of shops not well marked, but the people on the streets were friendly and gave us directions. There were two ladies inside the shop, waiting for their clothes to dry. They looked up when we came in and stared the whole time, which made it awkward to put the money inside the machine without them seeing it. They seemed awfully curious, probably because we were trying so hard to hide what we were washing. Our conversation likely didn’t help, either.
“Won’t this ruin it?” said Los.
“No. Not as long as we don’t wash it for too long. I’ve washed some before by accident and it came out okay. And I’ve found some that had been in water for a long time, and it was fine once it dried. The thing is to use a gentle cycle on the machine. It will come out all yucky, but when we dry it, it will be like new.”
“But won’t the blood stain it? Blood stains clothing.”
I glanced at the ladies and saw that they were listening to every word. Los didn’t care. He didn’t care two cents what other people thought.
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out. Oh. Shoot! We need coins. These machines don’t take bills.” I looked over at the ladies. Suddenly they turned away. I flipped through the money in the bag. Half of it was in one hundred rand bills; the other half was in two hundred rand bills. I was guessing there was about eight thousand dollars worth all together. We didn’t know for sure. We didn’t want to count it until it was clean. I pulled the cleanest one hundred rand bill I could find from the pile, walked over, and stood in front of the ladies. I waited for them to look up. They didn’t want to, but eventually one of them did. “Do you think you could make change for us so we can do a wash?”
Both of them frowned. But one answered. “What do you want to wash?” I think they didn’t have anything better to do than be nosy.
“Uhhh . . . a bunch of towels,” I said.
The lady looked at Hollie, and she looked at the bill in my hand. She didn’t believe me. “It’s dirty.”
I looked at the bill. At least it didn’t have any blood on it. “I’m sorry. It’s all that we have.”
She made a face and looked like she wished I would go away. I stood and waited. Finally, she opened her purse. �
��Do you have any soap?”
“Oh. No. We forgot to bring soap. Do you think you could sell us some?” I asked nicely.
The other lady frowned even harder.
“Twenty rand,” said the lady. “For the soap.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s kind of you.”
She gave me the change, and put some soap in a tissue. “What are you washing?” she asked again.
“Some towels,” I said. I went back to the machine. While the ladies stared, we opened it up, pulled the towel carefully out of the bag, and put it inside the machine. Then we added the soap. I studied the directions, chose a delicate wash cycle, shut the door, and hit the button. We took two chairs, sat in front of the machine, and watched the money go around.
After fifteen minutes, the machine beeped loudly and startled us. We jumped up, opened the door, and looked inside. The towel was twisted up on the bottom, and the money was pasted all around the inside of the machine. Some of it was in thick wet clumps. It didn’t look very good.
“Did we ruin it?” Los asked.
“I don’t think so. We just need to dry it.”
I handed Los the towel, then carefully peeled each bill from inside the machine and handed it to him. We kept our backs to the ladies so they couldn’t see what we were doing, though they tried. Then we put the wet towel and money into a dryer, put in some coins, hit the button, and sat down.
It was warm in the laundromat and we were getting sleepy. Hollie curled up on the floor and shut his eyes. Los did the same thing on a chair. I tried to keep watch on the dryer, but my eyelids kept falling. Finally, we were shaken awake by the loud buzzer on the dryer. Los jumped to his feet, swung open the machine door, and out floated a few dozen crisp one hundred and two hundred rand bills. I turned towards the ladies, who were folding their clothes. They were staring at the money with a look of horror. I smiled awkwardly. “Oh! There it is. We found it. We didn’t know where it was. It must have gotten mixed up in the towels.” The ladies weren’t listening. Now that they had seen the money, they couldn’t pack their clothes fast enough to get away. How different it was here. In Canada, people would gather around if they saw money falling on the floor. In Africa, they seemed to run away from it. But we had little piracy in Canada, and an effective police force. Here, it was the opposite.
The money cleaned up fairly well, though some of it was definitely stained. And it was terribly wrinkled. We’d have to find a way to iron it, to flatten it. We stuffed it into the bag with the towel, and started back towards the coal dock. Now the walk seemed endless. We were dragging our feet. When we reached the sub, we hopped into the water, opened the hatch, climbed in, submerged to the bottom of the harbour, dried off with the towel, and went to sleep.
Tomorrow, we would buy a car.
Chapter Fifteen
WE WERE WAITING for Los. He had gone to buy a car. He said that, if I came, the seller would see I was from another country, and expect twice the money. That made sense to me, so I stayed behind. But that was a long time ago. He should have been back already.
I was sitting on the grass above the train tracks, watching the sub and watching the harbour, trying to think of better places to hide. Hollie was lying beside me, chewing a stick, and stretching in a way he could never quite do inside the sub. Seaweed had been gone since yesterday, which was typical whenever we visited a new place. He was probably hanging out with other birds. He was a sociable bird. Little Laura was inside the sub, probably carrying small pieces of Hollie’s rope and wood into her cage. Eventually, she would have enough to make a nest.
While I had made pancakes, Los had flattened out the rand by fitting it between metal plates, then pressing it in the vise in the stern. The money came out flat and crisp. Now, he was gone with the whole stash of it wrapped tightly in a rubber band, hidden inside a sock. For hours, I had been expecting him to show up with an old car. It felt like we had been waiting forever.
We had counted fifty thousand rand, give or take a couple of thousand. That was about ten thousand US dollars, or a little more in Canadian dollars. That was a lot of money in South Africa, especially to someone who didn’t have any. The thought that maybe Los had taken the money and was never coming back kept sneaking into my head, and I had to chase it away. I trusted him. He was my friend now. Besides, it wasn’t as though I had earned the money. I had stolen it. And the thieves and murderers I had stolen it from had surely stolen it from somebody else. Just because I had taken the money, didn’t make it mine. It didn’t make it Los’, either. As I stared across the water and watched the freighters make the awkward turn at the mouth of the harbour and head out to sea, I wondered if I should have given Los just half of the money to buy the car. Why did I give him all of it?
A few more hours passed and it began to seem less likely that Los was returning. Now I started to worry that he had been seen with the money and robbed. What if he had been attacked and was lying in a field somewhere? Probably that hadn’t happened. Nobody knew he was carrying it. He certainly didn’t look like someone who would have money. And he wouldn’t have walked around waving fifty thousand rand in people’s faces. He was too smart to do that. I’m sure he would have separated a small amount from the bulk of it and gone looking for a good deal on the car. Probably he had to wait for a seller. Then, he had to test drive several cars, and negotiate. And then it probably took them forever to draw up a bill of sale. Yes, that would take some time.
But it was seven hours ago when he left, almost eight. That was a really long time. Maybe he had been told about a good deal out in the country, and had to walk there. I stood up, stretched, and danced around a bit to shake the stiffness out of my legs. We had been sitting on the ground all day. What if Los had simply bought the car hours ago, for five thousand rand, then realized he still had forty-five thousand rand in his pocket, no real connection to me, and no reason to come back, or not a good enough one? I began to wonder how long I would wait. It had been all day already. Twilight would be falling soon. Places that sold cars were most likely already closed.
I decided to wait until dark. If he wasn’t back by then, I would know he had taken the money and gone and wasn’t coming back. Maybe he didn’t even buy a car with it. Maybe he just kept walking.
An hour after dark, I stood up again. I was trying not to feel like a fool. So I had waited one whole day? So what? So I had trusted someone with a bunch of money, and he took it? Big deal. It wasn’t my money in the first place. And I learned a lesson: you can’t always trust people. Sometimes your gut feeling is just wrong.
But we were friends. And the thought that a friend might have cheated me upset me. I tried not to let it, but it did. I realized now that I really believed in Los. I believed in everything he had told me about global warming and wanting to save the earth. He inspired me. It would be too disappointing to think that he had just been making it all up. He couldn’t be. He had built and flown his own plane. He certainly wasn’t making that up.
Then a car came by, and I, foolishly, got my hopes up. A few cars and trucks had passed during the day, but it was never him. Besides, I was waiting for the sight of an old car. All of the cars had been newer ones. It was time to go back to the sub. What was I waiting for?
And then . . . I heard the sound of a motorcycle. And I saw a motorcycle. And it had a sidecar. And it was Los.
I jumped to my feet. Los came off the road, over the train tracks, and right up the hill. Hollie jumped behind me. The motorbike was dirty, noisy and old-fashioned. But it seemed to run well. Los was beaming. “Alfred. Isn’t it great? It runs perfect. It’s got lots of power. See?” He revved up the motor until it roared. His eyes were wild and wet.
“I thought you were going to buy a car.”
“Naaaaaah! A car wouldn’t take us where we need to go. Jump in! I’ll take you for a ride.”
I looked closely at the sidecar. “Do you think it’s safe? It won’t fall apart?”
“Of course it’s safe. You worr
y too much, Alfred. Jump in.”
I picked up Hollie and climbed into the sidecar. I looked for a seat belt, but there wasn’t one. There weren’t any helmets, either. “Hold on, Hollie.”
“Ready?”
“Okay. But don’t go too fast, okay?”
Los put the bike in gear and off we went. It was always a shock to me how fast vehicles drove on land after I had been at sea. We went down the hill and onto the road. We drove to one end of the coal dock and back. Hollie stood up on my lap. He loved the wind in his face. “Don’t go too far from the sub,” I yelled over the noise of the engine.
“Hah! You are the captain of the submarine, Alfred. I am the captain of the motorbike!”
He turned onto another road and we were suddenly riding alongside an open-pit mine. Then, he made another turn and we were cutting through farms. Richards Bay had something of everything. On the way back to the water, we left the road altogether and drove across open ground. It was bumpy, but the motorbike seemed able to go anywhere. I could see now why he chose it. “How much did it cost?” I yelled.
“Ten thousand rand!” Los pulled the bag out of his shirt and dropped it onto my lap. It was still full of money. He had bargained well.
“What took you so long?”
He looked at me, and then looked away. I think he didn’t want to answer. But he did. “Because I’m black.”
“Ohhhh.”
“None of the car sellers would talk to me. Apartheid is over, but sometimes you wouldn’t know it.”
“Who sold it to you?”
“An old lady whose son died.”
“Oh.” Now I felt sorry I had doubted Los. And what if I had returned to the sub and left already? He would have learned he had been wrong to trust me. Thank heavens I had waited.
We rode the motorbike back to the pizzeria and bought three large pizzas. We ate one and took two with us for the next day. On our way back to the coal dock, I saw a gang on a street corner and, for a second, I thought they might be the pirates I had seen before. I wasn’t sure. They weren’t carrying knives or guns. But a chill went up my spine. Was it them? Would they hang around on a street corner in a place like this? They stared at us as we went by. But I was staring at them. Maybe I was just becoming paranoid.