Reconciliation for the Dead

by Paul E. Hardisty

  ‘Alone?’ said Clay.

  ‘I only saw one chute. I’ve been trying to find you, and avoid him. Not easy.’

  Clay clapped him on the back. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘How’s the boy?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  Clay led Eben back to where the boy lay. He was awake now. As they approached he pushed himself up onto one elbow, rubbing a hand across his face.

  ‘Still think it’s cholera?’ said Clay.

  Eben ran his hands through his hair. ‘I don’t know what to think anymore.’

  ‘Way out?’

  Eben pointed south. ‘A big draw through the dunes, inland to the sea. Ten, maybe twenty kilometres. Hard to tell. There has to be some sort of track or road there. It’s the only way through.’

  ‘Sunset soon,’ said Clay. ‘Better to travel at night.’

  ‘Walking in the dark with a friend, bru. Better than alone in the light.’

  Clay shook his head. ‘More Seneca?’

  Eben grinned. ‘Hell no. Something a blind person said once. Let’s go.’

  They took turns carrying the boy. Even so, it was slow going – the sand heavy around their feet, as if the dunes were trying to suck them in, the sun gone now but the sand throwing back its stored heat like an echo.

  In the end it was a lot further than twenty kilometres. More like thirty. By the time they emerged from the dunes into the broad gravel and salt-pan wash that Eben had seen from the air, it was day and the sun bore down on them like a curse. The dunes gave way to searing white alluvium and the flat, scoured braiding of river channels, so ephemeral as to be dead.

  By now, Eben’s canteen was empty, and there were only a few drops left in the dead man’s bottle. Whatever water they had, the sun claimed. Sweat vaporised from their bodies before it had time to bead. Saliva thickened in their mouths, viscous as tar.

  They trudged across the lifeless plain, still taking turns carrying the boy, the heat reflecting from the coarse white gravel, the shoals of pure-white sand and the slabbed beds of crystal halite. Clay wrapped his bandana tight around his face against the glare, leaving only a narrow slit for his eyes. Mirages appeared, flash floods shimmering across the plain before vanishing into the heat, only to reappear moments later as pools and lakes, shifting inland seas of indefinite proportion, ungoverned by laws of any kind. And in this landscape they were entirely separate, three souls alive in a world where nothing lived and everything was without thought or feeling.

  Scanning the ground before him, Clay felt as if his retinae were being seared away, his eye sockets welded shut. Heat came through the soles of his boots and up through the calluses and bones of his feet. The boy’s head lolled against Clay’s chest with each step, the rhythm of it steady with the crunch of his soles against the baked ground, the beating of his heart thin and fast in his chest, the air moving thin and hot through his lungs – all of it a trance state of sublimation, of things boiled away to residue.

  They stopped, threw up the parachute silk as a makeshift awning and huddled under the small patch of shade to rest. The boy was in bad shape. Clay patted his cheeks, tried to wake him.

  ‘He’s in some sort of coma,’ Clay whispered through cracked lips.

  Eben did not respond, just sat with his head between his knees. Clay watched the slow rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed.

  ‘You okay, bru?’

  No answer.

  Clay nudged Eben’s shoulder. ‘Bru?’

  Nothing.

  Clay checked his watch. Still six hours until dusk, until some respite from the sun. They’d seen no trace of the track Eben had thought he’d seen from the air, no sign of habitation or movement. Turning inland now wouldn’t help. Without water, they wouldn’t get far. They had to reach the track. Clay lifted the edge of the chute panel and gazed out across the shimmering plain.

  He nudged Eben. ‘Come on, broer. Let’s ontrek.’

  A groan from Eben.

  Clay pushed him, harder this time. ‘Get up, troop.’

  Eben turned away and curled up on his side, pulling the silk away with him.

  Clay made sure the boy was covered then sat in the full glare of the sun. ‘God damn it, Eben,’ he whispered to himself.

  He stood, brushed some of the sand from his trousers, hoisted his R4, looked back from where they’d come, the dunes now just a rumple of oxide red above the flowing silver-black mirage. He took a few steps, feeling the fatigue in his limbs, thirst clawing at him from the inside. He knew they needed to keep going, that every hour they rested here was another hour their bodies would be without water. The centre axis of the valley, if that’s what you could call it, was still a couple of kilometres away, judging by the apparent size of the far dunes.

  Clay shuffled back to where Eben and the boy lay under the parachute silk. He was about to kick Eben when something he’d seen made him stop.

  There, on the horizon, snaking above the haze, barely visible – a thin weft of dust.

  A dust devil? There was no wind. He strained to see, fumbling in his vest for his binoculars. Raising the glasses, he scanned the abraded mirage of the horizon. Nothing.

  Clay pulled away the silk, kicked Eben in the side.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Clay said, rolling the silk up and stashing it in his pack.

  Eben stared up at him through narrowed slits. ‘Water,’ he whispered through swollen lips.

  ‘Sorry, bru,’ said Clay. ‘Gave the last of it to the boy.’

  Eben closed his eyes and dropped his head. ‘I can’t feel my legs.’ The words came out thin and cracked, as if over rusty wire.

  Clay reached down, threw the boy over his shoulder, and then grabbed his friend’s arm and pulled him to his feet. Eben swayed unsteadily. He was still wearing his Fireforce vest. Clay unclasped it and pushed it off his shoulders. Its twenty-five kilograms thudded to the ground, raising a puff of dust. They’d been taught never to lose their gear. This would have to be an exception. With the boy over one shoulder, and supporting Eben with the other, Clay started walking.

  They hadn’t gone far when he saw it again. A thin tendril of grey-white dust spiralling into the sky, closer than before.

  ‘Eben, look,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  But his friend did not answer. His eyes were swollen shut, cauterised by the glare.

  Clay strained to see through the shimmering distortions thrown up from the pan. But all he could see was the halite glare, the liquid mercury of the horizon and above it the cloudless sky. The dust devil was gone.

  He kept going. He didn’t have a choice. Keep going until the end.

  Eben’s steps were barely a shuffle now, his weight collapsing into Clay’s side, his boots dragging across the salt. Clay looked at his watch. Gone midday. They’d covered perhaps three hundred metres in the last ten minutes. He looked up.

  There it was again. That curlicue of dust.

  He eased Eben to the ground, then the boy, and reached for his binoculars.

  It was no mirage. No illusion come of hope and dehydration. It was a dust plume. He followed it. Whatever it was, it was moving. Fast. And it was moving inland, towards them. Clay estimated about ten kilometres distant, maybe more. It could only be one thing.

  Eben and the boy lay motionless on the hardpan. Heat poured from the ground, shimmering distortions that enveloped their bodies as if to assimilate them whole. Salt crusted their faces white, rimed their lashes. Eben’s lips were cracked, little red scars against the white. The boy was barely breathing. Blood trickled from his nose. Soon, the desert would claim them.

  Clay searched the horizon again, half expecting the dust devil to have disappeared. But it was still there, closer now, still moving towards them. It was their last chance. Clay covered Eben and the boy over with the parachute silk. Then he dropped his Fireforce vest and his R4 to the ground, and, reaching deep inside himself, he started to run.

  17

  Survive This

  After a few hun
dred metres, his body rebelled.

  There was nothing left. He’d lost too much fluid. His tongue seemed to have grown to twice its normal size. His mouth and throat were sand dry. Despite the heat, his hands and feet were dead-man cold, his system shunting its remaining fluids to the most vital organs. His body was starting to shut down.

  He gazed out across the mirage, the heat coming in waves now, roiling across the pan in great cresting breakers, sweeping all before it. For a moment he lost sight of the dust plume, and again doubted its existence in anything but his own mind. But just as quickly it was there again, much closer now, riding the surf. He stumbled forward, each step an act of will.

  As he went, mysteries emerged. Illusions spun in the torsion like ashes in the wind – blunt hallucinations that he knew he ought to recognise, ascribe some meaning to. But materialisation and disaggregation were coincident, their lifespans as brief as the agonised contractions of dehydrating cells, gone before they were born. And then, through the turbulence, a single black body, there, close to the ground – a dark, shifting planet.

  He staggered towards it, vision tunnelling down onto this single point, this pulsing dark attractor. But it wasn’t a planet. Of course it wasn’t. And even as he recognised it for what it surely was, in part of his mind it was a comet, an asteroid, hurtling towards him, its gaseous wake streaking skyward.

  Clay stumbled up the gravel shoulder and collapsed onto the hard-baked surface just as the vehicle flew past. He lay with his cheek against the road and watched it speed away in a cloud of dust.

  He closed his eyes. He’d been too slow.

  Coma beckoned. He could feel it. Feel his heart slowing. His breath shallowing. The scorching air so thin, a gasping partial vacuum. The final stage.

  He forced his eyes open. Wished to see the world one more time.

  And there it was, emerging from the dust. A vehicle approaching.

  And then a hand behind his neck, pulling him up. Water flowing across his tongue, down his throat. He clutched at the bottle, drank, spluttered, choked most of it back out.

  He opened his eyes. A face he would never forget. Kind, grey eyes. Deep, sun-cut lines. A big smile shining out from beneath a thick russet beard. Hair to match. And then that deep tenor, like Bach, so unexpected, talking to him in a language he could not understand, but which was so familiar.

  ‘Dankie,’ Clay rasped, in Afrikaans.

  The man nodded, smiled. ‘Ja, ja. Afrikaans.’ And then, in Clay’s own language: ‘Drink, then talk.’ He tilted the water bottle, and Clay drank.

  Finally, Clay wiped his mouth. ‘We’ve been lost for three days.’ He raised his arm, pointed back in the direction he’d come. ‘My friends are out there. Two of them.’

  The man nodded. ‘Can you stand?’

  Clay reached for the man’s arm. He pulled Clay to his feet. He wasn’t tall, but he was sturdy.

  ‘I am Jürgen,’ he said. ‘Come. We will find your friends.’

  Jürgen walked him to the vehicle. It was an old Land Rover with a roof rack loaded with gear. Three blond heads peered from the open windows, staring at Clay with wide eyes. Two children, a boy and a girl, and from the front passenger seat, a woman with an oval face and long hair braided in tresses that hung from the window and halfway to the ground.

  ‘My family,’ said Jürgen.

  Clay tried a smile, felt his skin crack as it stretched.

  Jürgen leaned Clay up against the front of the Land Rover. ‘How far are your friends?’

  ‘A couple of kilometres,’ Clay said, his voice barely a whisper. ‘Maybe more.’

  ‘In this case, we must detach the trailer,’ said Jürgen. ‘Wait here, please.’

  Clay watched as Jürgen disappeared behind the vehicle. The woman stared at him. Her eyes were the colour of water. Her hair shone like ripe wheat. He realised he was staring back, looked away.

  ‘We are ready,’ said Jürgen, opening the woman’s door. ‘Astrid, my love, please.’

  The woman stepped to the ground. She wore a short summer dress in some feminine pattern. Her legs were long and tanned the colour of springbok hide.

  Jürgen put a hawser-rope arm around her shoulders. ‘This is Astrid, my wife,’ he said.

  She nodded, smiled.

  ‘And I’m Otto,’ said the boy, fighting with his sister for space in the open rear window. ‘Are you a soldier? Is he is soldier, Papa?’

  ‘Are you not going to introduce your sister?’ said Jürgen.

  ‘I am Ingrid,’ said the little girl. She had her mother’s face and hair, the same long braids.

  Clay steadied himself against the vehicle, put out his hand. ‘I’m Claymore. Clay.’

  Jürgen’s grip was powerful. ‘Clay. Good. Now we know each other. Let us go and find your friends, yes? Before it gets dark.’ He helped Clay into the front passenger seat and closed the door. Astrid got into the back with the kids.

  Soon they were moving north, trundling across the salt pan. Out of the sun, Clay let the breeze flow over him, felt his body begin to stabilise.

  ‘Are you a soldier, Mister Clay?’ said Otto from the backseat. ‘He has soldier’s boots, Papa.’

  ‘Yes, I’m a soldier,’ said Clay. ‘A South African paratrooper.’

  ‘I told you so,’ said Otto. ‘It was me who saw you, Mister Clay. That’s why we came back.’

  ‘And very well done, Otto,’ said Jürgen.

  Clay scanned the flat, dry ground before them, heat haze rippling across it, distorting everything. It would be so easy to miss them. Twice he directed Jürgen towards some apparition, only to have it dematerialise. He looked back to the road, no longer sure of the direction he’d come. He’d been so weak, he hadn’t thought to take a bearing. Christ, they could be anywhere.

  They searched for almost half an hour. Every minute that passed, Clay knew, put his friends that much closer to the end. ‘I can’t see them,’ he said, running his hand across his face. ‘I don’t know where they are.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Jürgen. ‘We will keep looking until we find them.’

  They drove on.

  A short time later, Otto stood, hooked one arm over the seat and tapped his father’s shoulder.

  ‘What is it, Otto?’ said Jurgen.

  ‘There,’ said the boy. He pointed across his father’s shoulder. ‘There, Papa. Do you see?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jürgen, turning the vehicle. ‘Well done, son.’

  And suddenly, much closer than Clay had imagined, there they were. Eben and the boy, lying under the parachute silk where he’d left them, Clay’s R4 and Fireforce vest in the dust nearby.

  The boy was unconscious, Eben not much better. Clay and Jürgen carried Eben to the vehicle, set him on the ground in a wedge of shade thrown by the roof rack. Astrid carried the boy in her arms and laid him out on the back seat. She washed his face and then sponged water over his body, washing away the salt, dripping water into his open mouth. The two children had scurried into the Land Rover’s back cargo area and hung over the seat back, watching, whispering to each other.

  At first, Adriano did not respond, but Astrid continued her gentle work, and soon the boy’s lips were moving and she gave him water in tiny sips from a green plastic cup.

  Clay and Jürgen tended to Eben. Soon he was sitting up, back against the vehicle, drinking down cup after cup of water.

  ‘I have beer,’ said Jürgen after a while.

  Eben looked up at Clay through salt-crusted lashes, smiled. ‘Is this heaven?’ he rasped. ‘Am I dead?’

  Jürgen called to Otto in what Clay now knew was German. The boy rummaged in the back and scurried out to his father, holding three dripping tins.

  The Windhoek lager was ice cold. Clay’s throat burned as it went down, and his head ached from it, but it was wonderful.

  They squeezed into the Land Rover, the three men in the front, weapons between their legs, Fireforce vests at their feet, the woman in the back with Adriano and the children.
Soon they were back on the track, heading inland as the sun set behind the dunes.

  That night they set up camp in a copse of trees not far from a small village. Clay helped Jürgen pitch two big tents. Astrid and the children lit hurricane lamps and set out cots and bedding. Soon Jürgen had a fire going.

  Adriano was still weak, and Astrid insisted on getting him to bed right away. She sat with him for a long time, spooning Coca-Cola into his mouth, cooling him with wet towels. When the coals were ready, Jürgen broke out eggs, bacon and thick, dark bread, and started frying everything up in a big cast-iron pan. The smell of the food made Clay dizzy. He realised he hadn’t eaten for four days.

  ‘We farm near Windhoek,’ said Jürgen, passing a heaped plate to Clay, another to Eben. ‘We come here every year.’ And then to his son: ‘Otto, bring these gentlemen knives and forks, please.’

  The boy, who, since finishing his chores, had been orbiting Clay like a faithful pup, jumped up and quickly returned with cutlery and three more tins of beer.

  ‘We camp on the beach and fish, and we play in the waves and the dunes. It is very quiet.’

  Eben glanced at Clay. ‘You’re on holiday,’ he said, his vocal chords still taught.

  ‘Ja. We were on our way home when Otto saw you on the road.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried about SWAPO?’ said Eben. ‘They have been known to operate in these parts.’

  Jurgen smiled. ‘We can adapt to much, young man. But we will not compromise on our Skeleton Coast holiday.’

  ‘Live as brave men,’ said Eben. ‘And if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.’

  ‘I like this,’ said Jürgen.

  ‘It’s Cicero,’ said Eben.

  ‘Who is Cicero, Mister Eben?’ said Otto.

  ‘He was a Roman philosopher,’ said Eben, smiling at the boy. ‘He died almost two thousand years ago, but the things he thought and wrote live on.’

  ‘Mister Eben is an educated man,’ Jürgen said, turning to face his children. ‘All the world’s knowledge is there for you. Study hard, and you will honour yourselves and God.’