Horst raised his gun but Willem held the barrel, hissing, ‘He’ll see the movement.’ Horst pulled the gun free, and so it was: the bull saw and he was coming fast, faster than it seemed possible for a beast that big to move, closing in as Fantastic and Stu yanked Charlie and we ran, scattering across the land. Truth and I both tripped, fell and lay panting in the grass, the bull racing past us. Fantastic and Stu dragged Charlie, their ankles snapping and rolling on the uneven ground, and Stu tripped but the bull passed him – locked in on the smallest of us: Charlie – leaving Stu in the absurd position of chasing the bull, screaming at it, with the trees swaying up ahead as if calling Charlie to safety. Fantastic gave Charlie a last push, then turned and stood his ground in the centre of the bull’s line, waving his hands to steal its attention away from Charlie. It was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen a man do. I watched Willem snatch the rifle from Horst’s hands, raise the gun to his eye and hold his aim so long I nearly screamed, ‘Fucking shoot,’ only to realise Willem had the bull, Charlie and Fantastic in his line of fire. A crowded shot. Finally, he squeezed and – for a beat – nothing. Then, as if a giant had swiped its backside, the bull jackknifed, the sound of the shot reached my ears, and its horns tipped and ploughed the earth. Willem ran, gun lightly grasped, and I caught up just in time to hear him whisper in the way you would to a dog, ‘Good bull,’ before he shot him in the head.
Horst arrived screaming, ‘Idiot! Not the head, not the skull! I want it clean!’
When Willem turned to his brother, I thought a fistfight would break out. Willem started shouting, ‘You put us all in danger, Eugene . . .’
But Stu’s face quickly stopped the brothers short. Even through his thick skin, Horst knew what had just happened, what had nearly happened; he knew he’d endangered Charlie’s life. But being the king prick that he was, Horst immediately began revising history. Joking and thumping Stu on the shoulder, he said, ‘Now that was a safari.’ I’m no clairvoyant but it was crystal clear that Stu was about to lose his job by throwing a sucker-punch at Horst. But before he had time, Charlie caught up with us, looking exhilarated, and we all jumped on board Horst’s revision train, making sure Charlie didn’t pick up on just how close he had come to being gored to death.
Truth glided towards us, pale as a black man can be, and Horst shouted, ‘Bet you don’t see that shit in the States, eh.’ It was clear that Truth had been in his own hell, his mouth speckled with dried spit, vomit on his trainers, his safari suit crosshatched with grass stains. He pulled the brim of his cap as low as it would go and Horst let him be.
I said to Charlie, ‘You just beat the hundred-metre record there, Chief.’ And Stu gathered him into a tight hug. ‘You were like lightning, son. Let’s not tell Mum what happened here, right?’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Charlie. And we all breathed a sigh of relief – realising Charlie had missed just how much danger he’d been in – as father and son went off to sit on a rock, where I saw Stu couldn’t stop touching Charlie, his head, his knee, his cheek, his back, touching and rubbing him as if to ensure he still had a living son and not a ghost.
Horst barked on about what a great day it had been but, with Charlie out of earshot, no one was playing Horst’s game any more.
When Stu returned, without hesitating, he hugged Willem and said, ‘Thank you.’
Willem replied, ‘It was not as close a call as it looked.’
‘Close as it could be without me losing my only child.’
Unable to ignore the force of Stu’s words, Willem nodded.
I went for a piss, expecting the panic to have boiled my urine blood-red, so was surprised when the normal seedy stream dribbled out of me. I zipped up and went to watch Fantastic butcher the bull so it could fit on the trailer, slicing open its stomach, slopping out its intestine. It’s something to watch, how clinically and swiftly a beast can be deconstructed into strange, bloody parts. The good stuff was loaded on the flatbed. All that remained was the shadow of blood in the dirt and the thick rope of guts and partly digested grass, which was left for the vultures.
Jack
A simple plan. Fantastic went off to track for a hunting group and in the excitement of the returning safari, I was to slip out and hand over the case. The time alone was torture. Crouched in the bush, about a mile from the safari lodge, my hands slick with sweat. Reviewing the damage done to the case, I tried desperately to fix the fliplocks. But every time I pushed them down they yawned back open. I squeezed chewing gum into the slits to glue them. A pathetic solution but it would buy me time, even a few seconds. He’d hand over the money, take the case, start to check it and I’d bolt. Surely he wouldn’t shoot me in front of a group of tourists? My stomach boiled. The anxiety was a feeling well known to me. I experience it moments before all my major mistakes. Even when my dumb head was too slow to figure things out, my body was forever warning me exactly how much trouble I was in. Even as a kid I remembered this cold dread. The time I dismantled Dad’s watch. As dirt-poor farmers, that watch was the only object of any worth in our lives. Probably cost more than our house. It lived in its own box, a golden oyster wrapped in tissue. I twisted off the screws, prised a knife into the gap and shucked it open as springs and cogs spewed out, rolling and vanishing under furniture like silvery ants. I knew in the instant after the fact that I couldn’t fix it. The harder I tried to get it back together the more pieces I snapped, lost, broke. Knowing it was broken was bad. But the waiting, waiting for my father to come home and beat me, my guts churning endlessly over themselves, that was the feeling I had now.
And this would end in worse than a beating. This guy Willem was an ex-soldier with a rough reputation; he’d make me pay. Would he kill me? You can’t be sure what a man will do until the time comes.
I waited until I saw the minibus vanish into the bush, driving a few feet from where I crouched. When it returned with the kill, I took a breath and walked down the road, following in its dust. I assumed a few people would be there, maybe a party of three hunters. So I was stunned to see a large group, big men with walkie-talkies, tall girls in tight jeans laughing and smoking, people standing around with mobile phones, one guy even had a film camera. I nearly turned and ran but in the distance Willem had spotted me. He jogged over, pulled me into the fringe of the bush. ‘Yah, you made it, howzit, Jack? Everything go well? Let’s have a gander?’
I held out my hand and he nodded. ‘Sure, sure, here.’ He handed over a fat white envelope, tied with elastic bands. I tore the edge, saw the notes, and he said, ‘It’s all there, eh. Good job, Jack. Come on, come on.’
I handed over my backpack and said quickly, ‘Just keep my pack, I don’t need it.’
He looked at me, then looked back to make sure we were a safe distance from everyone. Their voices travelled over the bush to where we crouched, and for a moment it seemed as if he might just turn and go. Then he pulled his case out of my backpack, squatting down, saying, ‘Let’s just check the chemicals didn’t leak, eh.’
As I watched his thumbs turn the locks, my tongue swelled and filled my mouth. I reached into my pocket for my knife. The heat of the sun pressed down on me, something fragile in the centre of me snapped, my heart thumped so hard the world shook, and Willem’s face reared up so close I felt his spit against my cheeks as he was forcing the case and backpack into my hands, hissing, ‘Fucking act calm, hold this, I’ll deal with this, act calm!’ And there, walking towards us, with his wire-brush beard and Hawaiian shirt, was an Irishman I used to sell weed to when I lived in Bwalo. I’d never have thought I’d be so happy to see that old drunk again. He used to buy a bag of weed then stay for days and smoke half my supply for free. Well all was forgiven as he stumbled towards us waving, his face surprised and happy, shouting, ‘Jack! Fuck! Who’d have thunk it! Jack the lad,’ then he was all over me, hugging me, and I gave him an almighty hug back and shouted, ‘Shit, Sean. What the hell you doing here?’
‘I’m trying to interview some poptart,’ S
ean replied. ‘More’s to the point: what the hell are you doing here?’
‘I’m just on a bush trek, you know,’ I said.
With his hand still on my shoulder, Sean stood back and stared at me, acclimatising himself to the coincidence. I watched as Sean took in the scene, weighing up what he was seeing. Me clutching a backpack. Willem standing in the bush with a tight smile scratched over his face. Sean muttered, ‘Wait a minute here . . .’
Willem’s fists curled and for a horrifying moment I saw Willem leaping on Sean, beating him unconscious then dragging his body into the bush. Panicked, I said, ‘Sean, listen, um . . .’ but then Sean interrupted, he let go of my shoulder and he did all the hard work for me. He tapped his nose, winked and whispered in a tone heavy with implication, ‘I get you, Jack. You mean you’re out cutting some bush?’
Then he turned to Willem and said, ‘Will? Why didn’t you tell me you worked with Jack? I thought there was something suspicious about you.’ He thumped Willem gently on the shoulder, like they were old drinking buddies.
‘What? No,’ Willem protested. ‘We don’t, I don’t know this man . . . I just noticed this idiot crawling out the bush and I came over to check.’ Willem actually pointed at my face like a schoolteacher reprimanding a child. ‘You should not be walking around a safari park. Dangerous place to be.’
Everything we did and said felt stiff and false. I checked Sean’s face to see if he was buying it. He didn’t believe it for a moment. He waved Willem’s lie away, saying, ‘Sure, Will, sure, your secret’s safe with me, buddy. Hey, far be it for me to stop a bag of gold making it across the border. So long as you share. Don’t worry, Will, you got the right man for the job. Jack of all trades, master of none, isn’t that right, Jack?’ and Sean shook his head and shouted up to the sky, as if talking to God, ‘oia, man! Only in Africa would you of all people pop out of the bloody bush. Hey, come back with us on the bus, plenty of room for one more. We can catch up on old times.’
That was when I realised Sean was the saint who had come to save me. I knew if I stuck to Sean, and held on to the backpack, then at least I could postpone giving it to Willem. In town, when everyone got off the bus, I could simply leave it under the seat for Willem to take away. I would be long gone before he got to his room and opened the tampered locks and saw the torn false top. I already had the money and now I just had to sit tight in the bus, stick with the safety of the crowd, and I knew I’d live through this. Grabbing Sean’s shoulder, I said, ‘Bloody good idea. Thanks, mate.’
As we walked, Sean ran ahead to tell Stu about the crazy coincidence, giving me time to whisper to Willem, ‘I’ll leave it under my seat when the bus gets to the hotel.’
Willem seemed to have gathered his nerves and, looking straight ahead, he said, ‘Good, good, just stay calm.’
On the bus, drinking beer with Sean, for the first time in days I had just allowed myself to relax a touch when I felt the vehicle shunt to a stop and watched soldiers surround us. They weren’t much to look at. Little more than stoned teenagers. One of them wore a pair of Bermuda shorts instead of army slacks. But even these untrained youngsters would know, the moment they saw it, that the long-range rifle in my case had nothing to do with shooting buffalo, and in Africa was used only for one very specific purpose.
Sean
Heat had cast a drowsy spell on the party but the arrival of the kill gave them a jolt. Dancers circled the trailer, prodding the carcass, saying, ‘That’s so disgusting.’ I marinated my shot nerves in cold beer. And as the adrenalin left my body and the beer slowed my brain, I thought my mind was playing tricks on me when I spotted a man wandering out of the bush. Not just any man, now. But a man I knew. A man from my past. He wore snake boots, olive shorts, a grey shirt, and his hair was still curled up in a grey quiff.
For a surreal second I watched the man give Willem a bag. Though I was shocked to see this old friend of mine, I wasn’t surprised in the slightest by what he was doing. I knew the fella from way back. He had lived in Bwalo and we’d become friends. I say friends. He was my dealer and I was his best customer. As good a grounds for friendship as any. He was that rare sort of dealer who delivered. Spent a lot of time around my place until I met Stella, who told me she didn’t want some ‘no-good stoner’ in her house. I explained that was difficult, seeing as she was engaged to a ‘no-good stoner’, but she refused to see the logic.
Jack was the first poor white African I ever met. Decades ago poor whites didn’t exist; now there was a whole underclass of them, fallen through the cracks of a society that no longer favoured their fair skin. Jack and his wife Sally had lived day-to-day in Bwalo and Jack’s ‘couriering’, as he called it, got them by. Then one day, as too often happens with good dealers, he just upped and vanished. I jogged over, snuck up on Willem, placed a finger into the small of his back and whispered, ‘Don’t move a fucking muscle.’
The fear on Willem’s face was priceless. I spilt my beer, laughing. ‘Only joking, Willem. Relax.’ Willem stood speechless, as Jack and I fell into that funny sort of shouting conversation that occurs in the midst of a coincidence. And all that ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ ‘No way! What the hell are you doing here?’ meant it took me a while to spot Jack trying to hide his backpack. And when I finally twigged and busted the two of them, they laid on this hammy shtick, the very worst schoolboy acting, with Willem so freaked out I had to say, ‘Don’t worry, Will, your secret’s safe with Sean.’
As we chatted, I considered how slim the chances were of bumping into Jack again. Though it had to be said that Africa is a coincidence-rich continent. Once in a bid to finish my book – and escape Stella – I’d travelled in buses and leaky boats to the most remote part of Bwalo, walked three hours to the only guesthouse, sat at the bar and who was the only other fella there: a Cork schoolfriend I’d not seen for ten years. Needless to say no writing was done, only heavy drinking and sweet reminiscing.
So we walked back to the minibus and I said to Stu, ‘Look who it is? OIA, man!’
Stu shook his head in mild amazement. ‘Wow. Nice to see you again, Jack. It’s been a long time.’
When I asked if it was all right if Jack hitch a ride back to town on the bus, Stu nodded. ‘As long as you can handle a vomiting pop star and a load of hot dancers.’
Jack laughed and we both sat together. I tried to get Willem over to sit with us but he gave me this bruised look. I responded with a big obvious wink to assure him I wasn’t the sort of man to stop a sweet bag of the green getting over the border. Weed was not a major issue in Bwalo; it was semi-illegal, generally tolerated by a police force and army who themselves thrived on a healthy diet of the stuff.
When Jack asked how I’d been, I shook my head and said, ‘Jack, you wouldn’t believe the time I’ve had. One calamity after another, man. As if each new disaster is trying to top the last. You know?’
‘I hear you, man,’ said Jack. ‘Oh, yah, I hear you.’
It was hard to talk properly because the bus was so loud and Horst was standing in the aisle, swigging beer, impressing everyone with tales of his great kill. Willem didn’t even contradict Horst, so I thought the least I could do was set the record straight. Horst looked off into the middle-distance and said, ‘Yah, you really have to admire the spirit of the beast. My dad always said, if you don’t respect the thing you kill, it will kill you.’
‘Did your dad also tell you lying is a sin?’ I shouted, but Horst and his enthralled audience ignored me. I suppose, to outsiders Horst cut an impressive figure. A leathery brute with his shirt stained by blood and dirt. Bel, who sat behind, leaned over and whispered, ‘What an ego. And I thought Truth was bad.’
‘Horst is nothing more than a liar and a racist,’ I said.
Bel flared her eyes, then asked the incendiary question that every tourist eventually asks, ‘So is there actually much . . .’ her voice dipped to a whisper ‘. . . racism here? It seems so peaceful, I haven’t seen anything really . . .’
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br /> I pointed to Truth sitting up the front and replied, ‘Well, look, Bel. The only black man on this bus who’s not a servant or a driver is richer than God. So, yes, there’s still racism. Bwalo is better than some but still worse than many. Personally, I don’t believe that cultures ever integrate. They grate at each other until one wears the other down.’
My timing wasn’t the best. Having finished up his glory story, Horst had been eavesdropping, and he sneered, ‘What bullcrap, Sean. You’ve integrated with Stella.’
Refusing to take the bait, I just said, ‘Great safari story there, Horst, you should write a book one day.’ But the bugger got me again: ‘I’d write a better one than you.’
Jesus, I was being slaughtered. Bel gave me a sympathetic look, Jack smiled awkwardly, and before I could muster a comeback, the bus stopped and Horst grumbled, ‘Bloody checkpoint,’ waddling up the aisle. Jack tensed up so tight I whispered, ‘Easy, Jack. Horst knows these fellas, no problem. They won’t dare search us.’
Having said that, I had my own cold sweats to deal with, speculating as to whether Josef had already put me on a blacklist. Watching the red-eyed soldiers climbing on board, I considered if this was the moment my charmed life turned tragic: the moment I was handcuffed, beaten and deported. I’d made enemies in my life with just as many men as women but this was the first time I’d offended an entire country. So I lowered my head as Stu bribed them with beers but they were persistent. And suddenly I realised, as the air tightened around my throat, that they were actually going to search the bus.
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