Karoo Boy

by Troy Blacklaws

  – It’s just that I’ve never ridden bareback.

  – As long as you’re not scared. Horses smell fear, you know.

  – I know.

  I smile at Marika, and at the patchy horse, hoping she will not see, and he will not smell, my fear.

  – What’s his name?

  – Rogue, says Marika. Come on, before the sun comes up.

  I hoist myself up on to Rogue’s back and almost go over the other side, but Marika catches my foot.

  – Good. Just hold on.

  The muddy horse has wandered away. She whistles for him.

  – Hey, River, come boy, she says.

  He comes to Marika. She reaches for his mane and swings herself fluidly onto his back.

  I focus on sending happy signals to Rogue, so he does not throw me.

  – You don’t need to steer. Rogue will come after River.

  She clicks her tongue a few times, as if rattling off a string of Xhosa words, and her horse begins to run. Then Rogue, with much sneezing and farting, jerks into a run. I cling to his mane and dig my heels in. I am joggled to and fro on his back, my ass coming down hard on his backbone. This has none of the poetry of the cowboy films. I would be glad to trade for a longboard, or a bicycle. Marika heads for an anthill and hurdles it. I brace myself for the jump, but at the last moment Rogue sidesteps and I am flung forward. I loop my arms around his neck.

  – Whoooa whoooa, I call to him.

  I am as scared as the time I braved the baboons for the Kodak film. I feel Rogue’s shoulderblades under my hips and I sense how vulnerable I am compared to this animal rippling under me. I feel my hold slip. I know I am going to hit the earth hard. Rogue tosses his head to shake me off and I fall in a blur of tinted sky and pounding hooves and smell of horse. A hard thud and the world cartwheels and all I think is: the hooves, please God not the hooves against my head.

  Then the sky is still and I feel nothing.

  I hear Marika calling out:

  – Douglas Douglas

  Her head is upside down in the space of sky above me. The sun paints her skin orange. There is fear in her eyes.

  – Douglas. You alright?

  She scoops up my head into her lap. My shoulder begins to hurt.

  – I’m fine.

  – Jesus. I thought you said you could ride.

  She kisses my eyebrow and picks grass out of my hair, like a mother monkey searching for ticks on her baby. I realise I do not know the word for a baby monkey. Monkey cub? Monkey kid? Monkey pup? I hear bubbles making a warbling music in Marika’s stomach.

  On the kerb, by our gate, Marika stares scared eyes at me as if my eyes might roll up white inside my skull as a doll’s do when you tip it back.

  – You sure you alright?

  – Ya, I’m sure.

  What I am not sure of is whether to kiss her or hug her. After lying with my head on her lap, it is now too casual just to say: so long.

  – You should hug me, says Marika.

  I hold my arms loosely around her. My face is in her hair and her hair smells of green apples. Thoughts of Marsden and my father begin to filter through strands of apple hair and I bury my head in deeper in the hollow of her neck and squinch my eyes to keep tears from coming.

  I see Marsden on the beach, surfboard under his arm, turn to me and his skin is orange in the sun coming up over Hangklip and his teeth white as a cuttlefish or a seagull’s breast. Then my father walks out of the sea mist. He puts his arm around Marsden’s shoulders and says: the thing with you, Douglas, is your mind wanders. How will you ever play cricket for the province, if your mind wanders?

  – Hey, I hear Marika’s voice through layers of hair and memory.

  I let go, feeling foolish and ashamed, and wish her goodbye.

  – Totsiens, says Marika. She kisses me on the eyebrow again.

  Halfway across the road she does a hopscotch hop, skip and jump. Then she turns to see if I am smiling.

  And I am.

  white girls

  MARIKA AND I WALK down Delarey Straat to the Shell garage. Marika is in shorts and dirty white Dunlop tackies she has drawn blue daisies on with a pen. Butterflies dance in me as I wonder how Moses and Marika will get on, and what she will think of our rusty old junkyard Volvo.

  When Moses catches sight of us, he stands up from his Black Label beer crate and pockets his yellow handkerchief.

  – Ah, kunjani, Douglas. I see you have a friend. Kunjani, miss.

  He bows and Marika twiddles the hem of her shorts. It is the first time I have seen her unsure.

  – My pa does not want me to talk to blacks. He says blacks smell, and they rape white girls if they catch them in the veld. That’s why he does not want me out by the reservoir.

  Moses bows his head. I feel like burrowing under the earth.

  – But I’m not scared, says Marika.

  Moses tilts his old, scrubby head and looks deep into her eyes. I look up and down the road, hoping a motorcar will turn in for petrol, but nothing happens. Across the way, Ou Piet Olifant sits on the steps of the Rhodes Hotel, his head under a newspaper.

  – Well, that is a something, Moses nods.

  I sigh with relief.

  – You okay? Marika asks me.

  – It’s just the sun. I need a drink. Do you want a cooldrink? A Coca-Cola, or something?

  – A Fanta.

  I fiddle in my pocket and find a coin among the coral seeds. One rand. As I go over to the icebox, I hear Marika say to Moses:

  – You do not smell bad. Only of tobacco.

  Moses finds this funny and laughs as he tips up a box for her to sit on.

  – You know, my father does not let me drink fizzy drinks ’cause he thinks it is rude for a girl to burp.

  I hear Moses laugh again.

  I come back, ice-cold Coca-Cola and Fanta in hand, to find Marika sitting on the Black Label beer crate, sunning her bare legs. I remember Bessie Malan ranting: It is a crying shame the way the government lets blacks look over the railing at the white girls in the Muizenberg pool. No wonder they run around raping them. I wonder if Bessie changed her tune after the vagabond jumped the railing of the footbridge to save her. And I wonder how Marika can go on about blacks raping one moment and then kick off her Dunlops in front of Moses the next.

  They laugh. I wish I had kept Moses to myself. I tap my Coca-Cola three times before tugging at the ring pull. Moses winks at me as I mimic his trick. Marika glugs down the Fanta in one long gurgling, gulping go. She burps, then flamingoes on the can with one foot. She taps the sides of the can with her fingers and the can concertinas flat. She picks it up and frisbees it over the jagged sharkteeth glass of the junkyard wall.

  – Cool, hey?

  – Cool, I say.

  Though Oom Jan can crush a Coca-Cola can in his fist, I have never seen this trick before.

  – Where do you come from? Marika asks Moses out of the blue.

  – I come from the Transkei, Mandela’s land.

  – Did you ever assegai a man?

  – Zulus stab with an assegai. Xhosas throw a spear. But I never killed a man.

  – Pity, says Marika. I want to know how it feels.

  – Who would you want to kill?

  – Meneer de Beer, the teacher who makes us cut up lizards and other animals. Maybe Douglas told you about him?

  – No.

  Marika glances at me accusingly.

  I shrug.

  – I would love to assegai De Beer. And there is another man I would like to kill.

  I stare at my sandals.

  – I have seen men die, says Moses.

  Marika is transfixed.

  – It was on the mines. We heard the cries of the Zulu young men coming to make war. The young Xhosas went for their sticks from under the roof. We old men did not stop them, for their blood was on fire. They ran up to the wire. Some of the young men had guns. The police did not come until they lay in blood, Xhosa on this side and Zulu on the other. It is
not something for a young girl to see.

  Across the road, a rickety old Land Rover parks outside the hotel. Ou Piet Olifant comes out from under his newspaper. A man with a white goatee, khaki topi and khaki bermudas climbs out, as if climbing out of a Tintin comic. Ou Piet Olifant, all teeth, pulls out a chair for him. The goatee reminds me of the Kentucky man. I wonder if Kentucky will come to Klipdorp. Just a whiff of Kentucky would whisk my father back from the far shores of Malindi, and we would be a family again, squabbling over drumsticks and wings.

  Thoughts of Kentucky go west as Joost cycles by. A pigeon flies after him. I laugh at the frantic flapping of the bird. Then I see the fishing gut glint in the sun. He has strung the bird to his saddle. Sometimes it flaps above his head, then it falls and the tar plucks a tail feather.

  Marika jumps up and runs after him, yelling:

  – Let the bird go, you bastard.

  He pedals faster, the pigeon bobbing in his wake. Marika flags, then kneels in the street.

  I run up to her. A feather flowers from her fingers. Her tears dot the tar.

  A white, tail-finned Studebaker runs up onto the kerb and the door swings open. Marika’s father jumps out, his brylcreemed hair slicked into grooves, his foot tapping.

  – Wat maak jy in die straat? Waar is jou skoene? he barks at Marika.

  Marika points at the garage, where her Dunlop tackies lie beside Moses’s Black Label crate. Under the cobra gaze of Marika’s father, Moses stands up.

  Marika’s father snatches Marika’s arm and he rattles her as if he wants to free a fishbone caught in her gullet.

  – I told you I don’t want you hanging around kaffirs, or Cape Town kaffirboeties. Hoor jy my?

  – One day I will go to the black township, Marika shouts at him. You can’t stop me.

  Marika’s father backhands her across the cheek. Her head flicks to the side. She faces him again, eyes defiant.

  – I want to see.

  Marika flinches as he lifts his hand again. He changes his mind.

  – If you ever go to that damned Salem, that black hell, I’ll beat you till you beg for mercy.

  He says it slow, and in English. He wants Moses and me to catch each word. Then, as an afterthought, he mumbles:

  – Haal jou skoene.

  Marika goes to fetch her tackies. Moses picks them up and hands them to her. Then she comes back. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. She wants to say something to me but her father is revving the motor of the red-eyed Studebaker as if he is at Kyalami, waiting for the flag to drop. I stand there as the motorcar roars away. I feel sad that Marika did not see the Volvo, for though she still looks boxy and rusty, she is to carry Moses and me to the sea.

  Moses and I go to the junkyard. I begin to sand the boot, while Moses jacks up the jeep to skive the deep-grooved wheels.

  platanna zone

  A SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN the backyard. The pepper tree props up a lazy sky. The neighbouring field is empty of rugby boys. Hope is kipping in the dark of her khaya. In the Karoo there is no water to spare for cooling the roof, so she has covered it with fanned palm leaves, held down by stones. The sun has sapped the leaves dry. I can just hear her ragged snores escaping the khaya dark, mingling with the clucking of cooped chickens. Chaka has burrowed into the cool sand under the pepper tree. My mother is painting.

  I slide a brick under my longboard under the pepper tree. I stand on it and seesaw until I find my feet. I close my eyes.

  I am riding a wave at Llandudno. I see shark-shadow kelp and rocks like dead seals under me. It is a good steady break and I bob and dip to pick up pace and stay with it. The Atlantic shouts in my ears and salt stings my eyes, but my mind is clear, as if a gust of wind blows through my head. It is a kif, tuned feeling and I want the wave to curve forever, before it barrels.

  A volley of barks shoots me out of the sea and leaves me stranded in the Karoo, surfing the dry buffalo grass. Chaka clangs his claws against the fence. And beyond him, reaching her hand through the wire, is Marika. Chaka’s bark catches in his throat as he smells her hand. His stub of a tail twitches and then his ass begins to swing. So much for my ferocious hunter dog.

  She stands there barefoot, in a flowery cotton dress. She saw my jiggling songololo as I hopped across the rugby field. She saw me tumble from a horse. Now she sees me surfing a brick. I want to say something, but the words to justify all my jackassing do not come.

  – You want to surf all afternoon, or do you want to come cycle out to the reservoir with me?

  I hop down from the longboard.

  – I thought your father didn’t want you going out there.

  – My father is out of town.

  – I said I’d give Moses a hand with the car.

  – Why do you always hang around him? Do you like him more than me?

  I teeter on the brink of truth, then mouth a lie.

  – No.

  It does not convince her.

  – Anyway, I’m going, she pouts and spins on her heels.

  – Wait, I’m coming. I jus’ want to tell my mother.

  I skip inside.

  – Mom, I am going cycling with Marika.

  – That’s nice, Dee. Don’t be late for tea, says my mother, dabbing oil at the canvas.

  My heart is a flurry of birdwings beating against my ribcage. Surely she senses my high, but she goes on dabbing, eyes fixed to the canvas. Maybe she will glance up when the brush runs dry. But no, her eyes do not stray from the canvas, while the brush forays to the palette, twirls, muddying sunflower yellow with red, then flits back.

  Dab dab dab. Flit. Twirl. Flit. Dab. The endless ritual of a mother bird spitting juiced goggas into yellow-rimmed, gaping pink beaks.

  Outside again, I squint into the sunflared glare to make sure Marika is still there.

  Along Mimosa Road Marika curves from one kerb to the other. I laugh at her, but I am too shy to mimic her. Besides, after falling from the ladder and from a horse, even something as instinctive as riding a bicycle seems charged with unforeseen risks. I keep an eye out for waylaying stones and potholes.

  We turn off Mimosa into Reservoir Road. We cross two roads and then the tar gives out, and we are beyond kikuyu yards and yapping dogs and maids skindering over fences as they peel potatoes or unpeg clothes from the wire.

  Down the dirt road, through jackalwire Karoo, I follow Marika, a weaving mirage. I am shadowed by a twang of guilt for jilting old Moses, perched alone on his Black Label beer crate under the mossie wire and the yellow fan of the Shell sign.

  Stones, ploughed aside long ago, lie along the fence. Occasionally there is a Coca-Cola can among the stones, or a scrap of plastic snared on the wire, like some lonely flower. A hawk in a mimosa swivels its head as we go by and then turns its gaze to look for a flicker of life among the dead stones.

  Dust filters up from the road and I taste it in my mouth.

  Marika brakes to watch a leopard tortoise wade across the road.

  Marsden and I get my father to stop Indlovu to pick up a dune tortoise on the Strandfontein road. We call him Tennessee, as he has a yawing, lopsided way of walking, as if he has sipped my father’s Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey. One day Tennessee is gone. Marsden and I reckon my mother freed him. But my mother says no, and Chaka has long ago given up hoping to lick him out of his shell. Turns out Hope turned Tennessee into soup for a visit from some long-lost Xhosa brother from the Ciskei. We dig Tennessee out of the bin. Hope stands there, head bent in the shame of being caught out. Marsden and I spin for him. I call heads, but Van Riebeeck does not land face-up.

  Marika sits on her heels like a peeing girl and folds her hands on her lap. She shifts her heels to crab along after the tortoise.

  – You know I meant it when I said I would assegai De Beer for killing animals in his class.

  Though I have given little thought to the cruelty of it, I mouth:

  – Ya, it’s so inhuman.

  I had thought Tennessee’s death sad becaus
e I knew him, but I never had qualms about shooting guineafowl on Oom Jan’s farm with Dirkie.

  Chaka runs to the fallen bird and bites the head. He flicks the screeching bird until it hangs limp from his grinning gob. Dirkie runs up, tugs the bird away, and lops off its pink and light-blue head with a bowie knife. He drops the head as a tip for Chaka. Chaka trots after us with the lurid head cigarring from his lips.

  I choose not to tell Marika. Instead, I swear:

  – I will never dissect an animal in his class.

  She looks up at me and squints her eyes, as if to say:

  – We’ll see.

  I think of Meneer de Beer’s long cane and wonder if lizards count as animals. What about moles and rats? Surely Marika does not think it cruel to kill rats? Maybe I can offer to dissect a rat instead of a rabbit if Meneer de Beer calls me forward to bend.

  We cycle on again, the zing of cicadas stinging my eardrum. Potholes carved out by long-ago rains. Not far along the road Marika drops her bicycle in the dust. The front wheel spins the sound of a fishing reel. She goes up to the fence to study the skeleton of a lizard hanging on the wire.

  – A jacky hangman, she says.

  A jacky hangman butcher bird barbed it to dry out in the sun and never came back for it. Maybe a farmboy potted the bird off a telegraph wire. Surely spiking a lizard on barbed wire is just as cruel as stabbing a lizard with a compass? But Marika says:

  – Isn’t it beautiful?

  I nod, though I’m not so sure.

  Marika lifts her dress to take a screwed-up tissue out of her white panties. She unfolds the tissue and then gingerly unhooks the skeleton. She wraps it in the tissue and lays it in the flat-kit pouch that swings under her bicycle seat.

  I wonder if she just wears white panties on weekends, or if she sometimes secretly wears white underneath at school.

  – I once found a snakeskin in the veld, she says. You can come and see it sometime.

  – Thanks.

  I have never cared much for dead animals. The elephant-foot stool always gave me the creeps. But my eyes begin to scour the veld beyond the fence for snakeskins and skeletons in the hope of finding something for her. I remember how I used to search the rocks for periwinkle for my mother. Guilt flinks like a fish through a deep, murky pool in my mind.