Storm Warnings
Page 10
It is a dreadful smell, rubber burning. And a boy has not enough fingers for his nose to stop the smell burning the inside of his nose and his throat. Not if he wants to stuff his fingers in his ears too to keep out the noise. Musa asked his mind just then, ‘Which one shall I do? My nose or my mouth?’ And Musa’s mind said, ‘Your ears.’ So the smell got into his head, and most of the sounds were kept away, but through his fingers he could still hear them, muffled. Like he was dreaming, sleeping, but he wasn’t.
Musa doesn’t remember if he did sleep then, or if he dried like the grass and someone poured water on him and he uncurled. And there was a sound in his head, muffled still, like he still had his fingers stuffed into this ears — a humming, like noises, bad noises, had got into his skull and were rolling around like angry bees. But, Ogogo said, ‘You will remember your father. Good men and bad men are remembered, and your father was not bad, Musa.’
At night now Musa flies through the sky like a bird. He flies over the city and watches for the men who took his father. He has not found them yet. But his strong mind is helping him.
One day, when he does find them, he will do something amazing. More amazing than the goals of July Mahlangu. He will close his wings, for he will have them — big brown wings on his back, and he will fall out of the sky into the window of a hotel high over the city. And his beak will pierce the ears and eyes of the men who took his father. And there in the half-darkness, Musa will leave them shouting, unable to hear, and eyeless.
He will fly to the street then, and will shut the door of the hotel, and it does not matter that people are beating at the windows with their hands beseeching him, ‘Musa, let us out!’ And the street boys will bring tyres, rolling them, small ones from scooters, and big ones from tractors. All sizes. Bringing them to the hotel. All the boys in the city. All the boys in the world. Until the tyres are piled high as high round the doors and up to the first floor windows. Then Musa’s strong mind will call a woman passing by in her car to stop, to run away, to leave the keys. And with a pipe, the boys will empty the tank on the instructions of Musa’s mind, and the gasoline will be splashed over the tyres.
Musa can’t quite see what happens next. But it will be a great event, and will be in the newspapers, and he will be famous, and be invited despite his leg to play alongside July Mahlangu — for Kwa Zulu.
And the fighter sleeps as the smoke from another necklacing drifts across the town, and into the silence return the sounds of the day. The clatter of a bucket and the quiet bark of a sad dog.
Acknowledgements
Some stories have appeared in one guise or another in print or online. I am grateful to the following: Callum McCann, judge of Fish Short Story Prize, and the editors of: Art from Art Anthology (Modernist Press), and Fish Anthology 2009, .Cent magazine, Eclectica, The Café Irreal, Canopic Jar, Smokelong Quarterly, Flash International, Southword, Foto 8 and Notes from the Underground.
Thanks to those writers who were so generous with their support and endorsements: Peter James, author of the Roy Grace crime thrillers, Tania Hershman, author of The White Road and Other Stories, and Rusty Barnes, co-founder and editor of the marvellous Night Train magazine, and author of Breaking It Down. My gratitude to Julia Maenzanise for her help with ‘Maiba’s Ribbon’.
Thanks to my sons, Nick and Toby, and my daughter-in-law Nats for their patience and bemused approbation. And thanks too to my long-suffering husband Chris, who will soon be charging me for his recently-discovered editorial skills.
The greatest thanks for all to my father, ex-Sapper David Rees MC, without whom I would not have written these stories at all.