I thought of banging my back against the van, of screaming loudly, of doing anything to attract attention. But then I thought attracting attention might turn out to be the worst mistake I ever made. Besides, Dumani had promised to cut my throat if I did that again. And, besides — most important — I had just thought of a plan.
The gangsters returned to the van after about half an hour or so later. All the while I had been roasting in the back of the van. I was so thirsty I could drink my own urine. They sounded cranky. They hopped into the van and drove off. They were arguing loudly over something. I wished they would fight like the first time they’d captured me, hoping I’d be able to escape again if they did. But then I thought that my plan was fool proof enough.
I edged closer to the window that separated the cab from the tray of the van and listened attentively.
“We can’t lose him this time!” one was saying.
“We won’t lose him. You just have to keep your mouth shut and we won’t lose him.”
“How will we lose him if I talk?”
“Because your gums are annoying me. And your breath stinks really badly. So if you keep talking I may lose it and rough you up real bad and our victim might escape.”
“Dumani, I’m looking forward to losing you. You’re really annoying. Very annoying. I told you that doctor is interested in me. I even introduced you to her. And guess what: you go behind my back and destroy my relationship with her.”
“Thabang, she was never interested in you. She told me so.”
“Why the fuck did you go and ask her? It was none of your business.”
“The fact that you told me about her in the first place means it’s my business, isn’t it?”
Thabang clucked his tongue in annoyance.
For a while there was silence.
Then Dumani finally said, “As soon as we get paid, Thabang, I don’t want to ever hear from you again. I’ll delete your number and I hope you do the same.”
So there was money involved. I could take advantage of this fact and make my plan even more fool proof. I decided to risk my neck a little.
“Hello!” I yelled as loud as I could. The two stopped talking.
I said, “I need to tell you something.”
One of them said, “Huh?”
“Open the window and I’ll tell you.”
“Don’t open the window you fool!” said Dumani just as Thabang was about to do so. The car swerved off the road slightly because as Dumani said this he took a backward glance.
“Let’s hear what he has to say. He can’t escape,” said Thabang. He opened the window.
“What?” said Thabang. He smelt of a lethal combination of tobacco, bad breath and alcohol, and his eyes were red.
“Do you know you guys could make a lot of money from me? I…”
Thabang guffawed and said, “We know. That’s why we are taking you to Damon.”
I wondered who the hell Damon was.
I decided these guys were dumb enough to fall for anything I said to them. So I said, “Oh, so you work for Damon! What a waste of your time. Damon doesn’t pay. Just see what happens the minute you drop me off. He probably promised you wealth, didn’t he?”
Thabang suddenly looked serious. He said, “How do you know?”
I affected a faux laugh and said, “Because I’ve worked for him before. He doesn’t pay, he is a crook. But I pay.”
Dumani stopped the van. At first I was scared, thinking the reason for stopping might in fact be to give the other goon a chance to deliver the lethal promise he made to me earlier on. But he didn’t. He turned my way and said, “Pay for what?”
I licked my dry lips, swallowed hard and said, “I have lots of cattle, and I give away some of them to good people. You’re bad people, we all know that. But I can choose to ignore that and assume you’re good people who were turned into bad people by poverty. You look poor, there is no doubt about that, that’s why a loser like Damon can use you like this. From what I’ve heard, he has reported the very people he had sent to bring somebody to him before to the Police. You know what happened to these people? They got arrested and now they are languishing in prison for attempted murder — or even murder! Meanwhile where is Damon? He is relaxing and looking for more losers like you who will undoubtedly end up in prison because of him! He is using you! He knows I’ve lots of cattle. Obviously he cannot eliminate me himself. So he decided to use gullible guys like you instead.”
I had their undivided attention now. I must say, I don’t know where I got the guts to talk like this. I guess when your life is on the line you are capable of anything. I could see the desperation in their eyes. Their hunger for wealth was plastered right on their ugly faces. I knew how they felt because I had that hunger too. My dream was to be a rich farmer with thousands of cattle. Right now I had six. One could die any time because it had been unwell lately and had lost considerable weight.
They didn’t say anything. I could see what could have passed for a smile building up on Dumani’s face. But you could never know with drunk people. You could never know whether they were crying or smiling.
“So, it’s up to you. You can go ahead and deliver me. Or you could unbind me and I give you five cattle each,” I said and swallowed hard.
They thought for a while.
“Excuse us for a minute,” Dumani said.
They filed out of the van, went to stand underneath a tree and held a discussion. At times it would seem like they were on the verge of an argument. Finally they came back to the van, tracked over to the back, opened the canopy and heaved me out.
Dumani said, “Five cattle are not enough.” “Okay, ten each then.”
“No. We’re saving your life here. First, how many do you have?”
I pretended to think deeply and count in my head then said, “I’d say about one thousand.”
Dumani guffawed and said, “A hundred cattle wouldn’t do much harm to the numbers then. Fifty cattle each wouldn’t be a bad idea considering that we’re saving your life here.”
Saving my life, my ass! You were going to get me killed for ritual purposes and now you have the guts to tell me you’re saving my life. You’ll get your fifty cattle each in hell.
I pretended to be shocked. Fifty cattle! Then I said, “Okay.”
“Deal?”
“Deal.”
We shook hands.
They pulled from the van and took their time untying me. I could see they had some doubts in regard to untying me. But they needed not to because I wasn’t going to run away. I looked around to gauge where we were. Bokalakeng, a cattle post that’s not too far away from Tsebeyatonki. My plan was unfolding too well for me to be that stupid.
As soon as I was free I asked for water. They said they had none, but I could have some of their alcohol. I said no, I was fine, I needed something that would quench my thirst.
Thabang said, “So we go and get the cattle now?”
“They are at the farm. We can’t go there because everybody may become suspicious. I have a manager and numerous herdsmen. I have security.”
“So how are you going to give them to us?”
“Not to worry,” I said, searching my pockets. “Where is my cell phone?”
They looked at each other. Then Thabang went to the cab, looked and found my cell phone. I had two bars of battery, and one bar for network. That should do.
“I need to ring my manager and tell him to dispatch the cattle to a place where I can collect and give them to you.”
They smiled at each other.
Keep smiling you bastards. You won’t be smiling for much longer.
I walked away from them. Thabang followed me and said, “Hey, are you trying to run away?”
I smiled at them and said, “Why would I? You guys just saved my life. Besides, I’ve realised that no matter where I go, you guys will always find me.”
“We don’t have time to chase you around anymore. If you run, this time we will hack you to d
eath first before we deliver you.”
“Okay, tie my legs together then.”
I didn’t mean it, but the bastards bound my legs together.
“Okay, I don’t want you to listen in on the conversation. I’m sure you know I can’t run away with bound legs.”
They walked back to the van, arguing in hushed tones.
I didn’t ring my manager because I had none. Instead I made one more desperate call to the Chief.
“Now let’s go and find a shebeen,” I said after my phone call, which I’d followed with an SMS giving more details.
“A shebeen? What about our cattle?”
“Do you know how many cattle you can load into a truck at a time? Not many. So, a hundred cattle will take a while to transport. But you guys will need to organize transport for yourselves to send the cattle to the Botswana Meat Commission or wherever you want them taken. Let’s go so I can buy you some beer.”
Miraculously I still had my wallet. It didn’t have much in it, but it was going to do. Guys like these, they probably drank homebrew which didn’t cost much and came in high quantities and high alcohol levels anyway.
I entered the shebeen very cautiously. I looked around, making sure I didn’t see a familiar face. There was none. I wasn’t worried about what was in the newspapers. The newspapers were too far from here. Even if they were accessible, most of these folks at the shebeen probably couldn’t read anyway.
“We need to sit by ourselves so that when it’s time we can just go,” I said.
They agreed.
I led them to a secluded spot somewhere close to the entrance of the shebeen.
I ordered two large mugs of some whitish homebrew. They gulped these down like it was water, at the end of which they commented on how good it was, which, in other words, meant they needed more. I ordered more. They drank slowly this time. I offered to buy them third mugs although I could see they were already drunk. They didn’t refuse, but they slowed down the pace of their drinking incredibly. This didn’t worry me because I had got them to the stage I wanted them to be.
Thabang was imagining how he was going to spend the proceeds of selling fifty cattle.
Say, for argument’s sake, he sold them to the BMC for, say, three thousand and five hundred pula each. He took out his large Nokia and found the calculator. He couldn’t see properly because the booze was starting to get real serious inside his system. He jabbed at the phone keypad: three thousand and five hundred times fifty. Hundred-andseventy-five thousand pula!
Hundred-and -seventy-five thousand pula!
He would rent a nice little house up in Gaborone and invest the rest. Unless of course that little doctor suggested he move in with her, in which case he would live in Lentsweng with her. While she was out working at the hospital, he would be running the business. He wasn’t sure what sort of business as yet, but he knew an idea would come up. Just go with the flow, you know. He wasn’t worried about what Dumani claimed the doctor had said. He knew she liked him. Dumani was just being jealous. Dumani didn’t have the smell. Thabang had. So no way could she be interested in Dumani.
He smiled to himself and took a sip of hooch. He had had a variety of this particular booze before, but it wasn’t as good. This one made him see the future from a different angle. A future with the nice little doctor. A future during which his belly would grow larger, proving to the world that he is a rich and satisfied guy who is married to a young doctor that owns a hospital. In fact, he might use the money to build a hospital for her, and he could work the tills. She would be impressed. He wondered if they had tills in hospitals though. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was getting there. One step at a time Thabang, that’s how it’s done.
Dumani wanted the hundred cattle to himself. Thabang didn’t deserve even a single one of them.
All he had done so far was sleep and annoy Dumani. Dumani was trying to think of ways he could swindle Thabang out of his share, but the booze wasn’t allowing him to. The world was spinning. He had been in this state before and knew how to take care of it: drink modern beer. Modern beer always sobered him up when he was drunk from homebrew.
See, the thing was, fifty cattle might not be enough to get him off to where he wanted to be. He wanted a lavish life full of women. He wanted to be able to afford all those women he saw at that nightclub in Phakalane. He wanted to live in a nice house. He wanted to migrate to South Africa at some point. Fifty cattle were just not enough. He definitely had to find a way of swindling Thabang and Ngano — that was his name, wasn’t it? He would come back later, find Ngano and make all sorts of threats until Ngano parted with a further three hundred cattle.
He took a sip of his beer and smiled.
There are many ways to make money. You just have to find the right people.
Guys like these, it was easy to read their body language. I could tell they were calculating their profit. I almost felt sorry for them.
“I’ve to make a call, guys,” I said, standing up. They whirled around drunkenly at the same time and looked at me.
Thabang said, “Don’t try to be smart, young man. We have you surrounded. When I went to piss earlier on, I told a few men around here to be on the lookout for you. You try to run, believe me, you’ll be hacked to death.”
It was hard to tell whether he was telling the truth or just bluffing. It didn’t matter: I had no intention of running.
“Don’t worry, I won’t,” I said with a faux smile.
I had too much on my mind. I only had to hope that my wife, children and mother were still fine.
I made a quick phone call. Things were going according to plan. On second thought I decided to give Modiri a quick call and tell him where I was at. But his phone went unanswered. I just hoped they hadn’t killed him.
An SMS arrived after about two hours of our being at the shebeen.
The cattle are here.
The message was from “Manager.” I showed it to the two dumb guys I was with. They couldn’t hide their grins.
“Time to go then,” I said, sounding like a school teacher.
“Go where?”
“Where the cattle are. They’ve been delivered to the chief’s place in Tsebeyatonki.”
They brightened up, finished their beers and stood up. I led them to their van. They had serious problems with balance.
“Dumani, I think you’re too drunk. I’ll drive,” I said.
They didn’t give me any hassle. They trusted me now, it was obvious. There was no reason for them not to.
I jumped onto the driver seat. Dumani jumped in, followed by Thabang. There wasn’t enough space for the three of us, but my two passengers didn’t seem bothered by this. They were belching fumes that would make a skunk eternally jealous.
I started the car. It coughed and spattered before the engine started. I eased it into gear one and stepped hard on the accelerator. Eventually I turned onto a narrow path that I suspected led to Tsebeyatonki. Thabang fell asleep as soon as we found the tarred road leading from Tsebeyatonki to Lentsweng. There wasn’t any conversation between Dumani and me. The guy was battling an oncoming blackout. I just hoped he wasn’t going to vomit on me.
I
parked in front of Tsebeyatonki conference centre. Dumani nudged Thabang. Thabang woke up with a start and a fart. He had pissed
himself.
Dumani said, “We have arrived.”
Thabang said, “Where?”
Dumani said, “Where the cattle are.”
Thabang stretched and looked at the front of his
trousers. He seemed surprised to see the wet patch that was expanding in front of his trousers, but quickly assessed the situation as not being too bad. Probably he had shat himself before, so this was nothing.
“So what’s next?” said Dumani in a slurry voice. I said, “We wait here. The cattle are over there,” pointing to the chief’s kraal.
They both looked and smiled drunkenly.
Fifty cattle, my foo
t! Over my dead body.
Thabang said, “What are we waiting for?” “For one of the herdsmen. I don’t want to raise any suspicions.”
Just then the man I was waiting for arrived: Modimonthuse the headman. He walked over to me and said, “Why do you need a hundred cattle? You know the manager will not be impressed.” As planned.
The two goons either didn’t realize Modimonthuse was the head of the village, or they simply had never seen him before. I had never seen them before, so the likelihood was that they hailed from somewhere else.
“Not too loud. I’ll explain to you,” I said and winked. “Give me a moment.”
I excused myself and led my two dumb passengers away. I whispered to them, “Look guys, this is my manager. I’ll have to tell him the truth, or else he won’t cover me when the manager inquires.”
“What truth?” growled Dumani.
“About why I really need the cattle. About everything. And you tell him everything too, or else you won’t be able to get your cattle.”
They seemed to think for a while, but it was obvious booze was getting in the way.
“Okay, no problem,” said Dumani. Thabang didn’t seem to care.
“Okay then, we will need somewhere to sit. Let’s go inside the conference centre.”
I beckoned to the headman. I could see he still had some doubts, but he came to join us all the same. It took a lot of convincing to get him on my side. Initially he had hung up on me when I rung. I had sent him an SMS, desperately explaining that I had proof that I was being set up. He argued and told me to stop calling him. When I finally dropped the name Damon he had softened up and got interested in my plan. He immediately told me he had heard of Damon and hated the guy. That’s what brought him on board my plan. And now he was here, witnessing for himself the sort of dumb villains I had been forced to hang out with while I put my plan into effect.
The dumb guys shook hands with him like he was a lost friend. Why would they not? He had brought them fifty apiece, or so they believed. Stupid bastards.
The Other Four Page 25