by Linda Ihle
“Nothing. This was in a small-minded, small town in Rhodesia. It would have been my fault. I would have been ‘asking for it’.” She formed the quotation marks with shaky hands in the air above her head. “He belonged to a family of five boys and two girls. The girls were OK and three of the boys. In fact, one of the three married a friend of mine and he was decent, you know?” Angela nodded even though Devin could not make her out. “The three bad boys were kind of like an Afrikaner Mafia, if you know what I mean. They were like a gang of goons, beating people up for no reason, molesting and groping girls at the dances and discos, forcing themselves on people. Total bullies. Most people were scared of them, even the guys. I didn’t know what to do. I knew my mother would not believe me - my mother dislikes me. Anyway, my first words to him were, “Am I pregnant now?” and he turned totally a whiter shade of pale.” She laughed, bitterly. “So after that he would try to pay me off to keep me quiet, you know, giving me stupid things like the comb he carried inside his sock - have you witnessed that fashion statement?”
“Yes, rather strange,” Angela affirmed.
“Anyway, first the comb, as if I were a whore. I was 12 years old for chrissake! Then he tried to give me cash and I told him to bugger off and leave me alone. I think he was terrified that I would indeed fall pregnant. and/or tell my father, who would not have hesitated to shoot the bastard. Thank god I didn’t. Finally, something must have happened that was reported and he disappeared from town. His father was a big, hardworking, proud Afrikaner. Attended the Gereformeerde Kerk in town, and was a strict disciplinarian, and generally respected, but he lost control of his renegade sons. There were some whispers, as there always are in tiny little towns, but one could never tell if the stories were embellished, absolutely true, whatever. They seemed to imply that he had interfered with an even younger girl, although I don’t think anyone knew about me. I’m pretty sure I was not the first girl he had molested. Anyway, the implication that we had a young paedophile in our midst must’ve got back to this arsehole’s father, and he disappeared.”
“Did they try to explain his sudden departure?”
“Ja, they said he’d gone on call-up and I used to hope every damn day that he would be shot dead or step on a landmine or fall down a mineshaft and suffer there for weeks before dying. Pretty gruesome, hey?”
“Warranted. Did he ever come back to your town?”
“No, not while I was still there anyway. And his two brothers who were his partners in crime suddenly became upstanding citizens. Coincidentally, a young Afrikaner girl who was about a year behind me in junior school also disappeared for about six months. We heard that she was being sent to boarding school in Gwelo, but she was back in Ukunkwe the following year, so I believe the whispers and reckon that he impregnated her. Shame.” Devin sighed and rubbed at her eyes. “You’re the first person I have ever told that to and you know what? I feel better.”
“It’s an awful story, Devin,” Angela whispered, reaching out and squeezing the woman’s thin, muscular shoulder.
“Thanks.”
Devin shifted closer to the aperture, cautiously, and carefully examined the parapet before putting her hands down on it. “Man, I really want to look over the top of this kopje and see what’s going on.”
“What if that snake is still close, though?” Angela asked.
“Maybe I’ll just take a chance,” Devin suggested as she crept farther out onto the ledge. She sat quite still and listened for the telltale, loud hiss. None came. The late-night air was cool and dew-laden, making the rock slick, so she rose carefully and stretched. Her feet and hands ached and her stomach rumbled noisily. The moon was more than one-quarter of the way down the eastern horizon; she guessed that the time would be around three-thirty or soon after. The sun would be getting up in less than two hours.
As she stood there, she turned her head toward the top of the hill listening for the men’s voices. She heard nothing though and the small hairs on the back of her neck rose. She squatted and crawled back into the cave.
“Did you hear their chopper take off again?” she asked Angela, who was sipping water from the tin cup.
“No. Why?”
“I can’t hear them outside. Jeez, I hope they’re not sitting quietly up at the top of the kopje, just waiting for us to climb up there.” She took the cup offered wordlessly in the gloom and gulped down the cool water. It was soothing, just as a ciggie would be right about now, she thought. “Damn, this water is good!” she exclaimed softly. “Hell, I could even give up…”, but Angela had grabbed her arm with one hand and her mouth with the other.
“Hush,” she whispered. “Listen.” She released her grip on Devin and shrank back again, distancing herself from the doorway. All Devin could hear was the rush of blood in her ears. She shook her head and edged back toward the aperture, head again cocked as she strained to hear what Angela had heard. The night and all its creatures were still. Not even a breeze stirred.
Devin pulled the AK-47 off her shoulder and cradled it casually but firmly in the crook of her right arm. A pebble dislodged from the top of the kopje stumbled and rolled down past her, bouncing with a donk off the parapet stone and into the brush beneath. Lightning flashed along the mounting purple clouds at the eastern horizon, followed by a low rumble of thunder. She shrank back, more concerned about the pebble than the approaching storm.
And then she heard it: a vehicle was approaching across the plain she and Angela had traversed the prior afternoon. The headlights appeared, bouncing drunkenly as the car lurched across the veldt. Judging the shape and distance between the headlights, the rickety creaking and groaning of the struts, and the sound of the straining engine, Devin whispered, “It’s a Land Rover.” The vehicle turned to the southeast tracing the foot of the line of hills, rumbling over hidden rocks and bouncing violently into troughs and holes hidden in the long grass, its brake lights winking on and off as it continued its laborious trek, before disappearing from their line of sight. As the lights disappeared, a cascade of pebbles and dirt avalanched down the kopje. Someone or something must have been standing up there; maybe if it was Jan, he had been signaling to the jeep. Devin shivered and crawled backward farther away from the aperture.
Back behind the kopje, the straining engine could be heard again coming back toward the northwest. The driver had found a way around the outcrop of rocky hills, or maybe he was directed. Devin began to rise, gesturing to Angela to do the same. As they rose, a woman screamed, drowning out the noise of the engine and protesting body parts, the sound piercing rock and dirt and tree, stabbing into heart and throat and gut.
30.
Julia woke with a start, heart pounding, eyes playing tricks as she struggled to see in the pitch black darkness of her room. Shadows shifted and pounced. Sighs gasped from her cupboard as the doors bulged and buckled, filling the room with the sound. Terrs! Terrs are in my room! She held her breath and lay very, very still. Maybe they wouldn’t see her. Maybe Charlie would take care of them, wave his wand and pooff they’d disappear. As her heart rate slowed and the gush of adrenalin abated, the sounds and spectres vanished and she reached under her pillow for the tiny green penlight torch Devin had given her. ‘To keep the spooks at bay,’ she had said. Julia shoved the switch hard with her thumb and trained the light upon her travel alarm clock. It was closing on four o’clock. One more hour of sleep then up to make tea, she thought.
Lightning illuminated the night outside the curtained window and about six seconds later thunder boomed. Already the steady patter of rain was audible, splattering on the asbestos roof and soaking into thirsty dirt. I hope it’s not raining still when I have to go to school. I want to ride my bike. The smell of the rain upon the parched earth wafted in through the open windows, wrapping itself around and through the burglar bars, reaching her and enveloping her in its familiar caress. From the passageway came the sound of Butch scratching himself and Maude hastening across the linoleum toward Julia’s room. Maude did not
care much for thunder storms and would seek refuge under the sheet and light blanket on Julia’s bed. She arrived within seconds of the thunderclap and Julia raised the sheet for her to go under. She settled with her head resting against the girl’s warm belly and commenced a loud purring.
“Where are you, Charlie?” Julia whispered, taking great care to speak so softly that her mother would not hear. Her mother tolerated no such ‘nonsense’. Julia gazed about the small room seeking, hoping for the small glimmering pillar of light and mist that she called Charlie. He was nowhere to be found tonight, but that was OK. She had had a pretty good conversation with him yesterday afternoon and he had assured her that her Devi would be alright. She twisted slightly, careful not to disturb Maude and, as lightning split the sky and thunder roared, she drifted back to sleep.
31.
The woman’s scream echoed and scratched through Devin’s very being. She grabbed Angela’s hand and pulled her back into the niche alongside the doorway. Both women sat close together shivering, shocked by the sound, stunned that it would have found its way over the hill and into this cave. Another cascade of rocks and dirt fell past the cave opening followed immediately by something heavier, something tossed over the edge. They could hear its rolling, bumping passage down the side of the kopje, onto and over their erstwhile fire, bouncing off the parapet, and crashing through the brush below. Angela clasped her hand over her mouth as tears streamed down her cheeks. Her other hand was firmly gripped in Devin’s.
“Die vark is dood (the pig is dead)!” a man crowed from the top of the hill, directly above and a little to the north of the cave opening.
“Ja, and long live the pig, ek se!” answered another voice. Devin recognized that rasp as Jan’s – the man they had heard earlier. The urinater. “Ja, and she lived long on the end of my cock, hey!” He laughed uproariously and Devin’s blood ran cold.
Why the hell are they throwing a dead pig off the kopje? she wondered. Shit, sounds like something out of Lord of the Flies. Typical damn hairy back rock spiders, screwing animals. God, that’s so sick. Shame, man, poor thing.
“Hey, boet,” Jan said in Afrikaans, “this is where I told you I thought I heard the funny noises, but then we thought it was just the monkeys. I smell piss over here.”
“You pissed down there, boet,” the other man responded. “You’re smelling your own piss. Maybe the vark pissed herself on the way down?”
“I’m going to check anyway before Fanie finishes getting all the stuff loaded,” Jan responded.
“I’ll laugh my bloody balls off if there’s a leopard down there,” the companion responded, “or even maybe a ‘uge snake.” He cackled in anticipation.
“Hey, Jan! Karel!” A third voice called from the other side of the kopje. “Wat makeer (what’s the matter)?”
“Niks nie (nothing),” Karel yelled back, and still in Afrikaans, “we’ll be there now now.” To Jan he remarked, “Maak gou, ou (hurry up).”
The women could hear Jan’s slip-sliding descent down the hillside toward the parapet, and then the soft shush of his veldskoens on the parapet rock. The world held its breath and silence reigned as he knelt at the opening and peered into the blackness which was the cave. He cursed as he rested his hand in a puddle of what he assumed to be his own urine, captured in a small indentation in the parapet. He raised the hand and sniffed at it. Even in the weakening moonlight he could see that it was too thick and viscous and dark to be urine. “Kaffir brains,” he muttered and hastily wiped his hand in what he perceived to be dirt at the edge of the parapet. The sand was extremely warm. Puzzled, he pushed down harder into the dirt and his splayed palm encountered a bed of coals, some of which still glowed red hot beneath the black. “Shit! Eina!” he yelled. “What the hell is happening here?”
He rose from his knees swiftly and hit his head hard on the top of the rock doorway into the cave. The pain thrust him back to his bare knees and the assault on his skull rendered him unconscious. He pitched forward into the cave opening where only indistinct blobs making up his head and shoulders were visible to Angela and Devin. Devin moved so quickly Angela barely felt her leave and then she was astride the man’s shoulders and raising his head to get to his throat. She paused, knife in hand, thoughts rushing. How will his disappearance be explained? The others would come looking for him. She was pretty sure that the ‘pig’ carelessly tossed off the kopje was probably not a pig. That what these men were doing on the other side of the kopje was well beyond the boundaries established by lawful, civilized societies.
“Goddamnit!” she muttered.
From above, Karel called, “Hey, Jan! Hey, Jan? Wat makeer?”
She hopped off his shoulders. “Help me drag him out,” she ordered Angela who swiftly obeyed. They pushed and pulled the small man out onto the parapet. “Shove him off the edge,” Devin whispered into Angela’s ear. Lightning forked violently to the north, followed quickly by a cracking clap of thunder. A cloud obscured the moon as they pushed Jan off the edge of the parapet. Karel, distracted by the lightning, saw and heard nothing of the dislodgment of Jan, but the sound of his friend crashing down the hillside, following the same path taken by the ‘pig’ they had tossed over, drew his attention.
It began to rain. Great scattered drops splattered, slowly joined forces and the downpour began in earnest. Karel cursed and muttered as he scrambled down the hillside, to the left of the cave. He was fully illuminated by a seething flash of lightning, cringing, head between the knees, waiting for the thunder, then on he went, heading for the area where he figured Jan would have landed. “Bliksem! Stupid fucking bastard!” he yelled as he made his way down.
Once he had passed the cave entrance, Devin and Angela used hands and sticks to sweep the remains of their fire off the parapet and down over the edge of that rock onto the steep side of the hill. Glowing embers were quickly extinguished by the pelting rain. They watched over the edge the flickering descent of Karel rushing to the aid of his friend Jan. They heard him call out Jan’s name and, then, silence. Lightning struck close by sending a rain of pebbles off the edge of the hillside. It appeared that Karel might have found Jan and was carrying him to safety. But the scrabbling, panting ascent was being undertaken only by Karel. He had left Jan down there to die.
He squealed and cursed again as the lightning flashed and the thunder pounded, but made it back to the top of the kopje in no time. The last they saw of him was a strobe-lit shadow hurrying over rocks and thorn bushes, before disappearing back down the other side, perhaps to the waiting helicopter and the Land Rover and that massive, stinking form the women had seen and smelled what seemed like a lifetime before.
“Well, let’s hope that Jan is no longer with us on this earthly plane,” Devin quipped, shivering with cold and drenched to the bone, hands shaking as she reached for her stash of cigarettes.
“Here, put my shirt on,” Angela offered, stripping off the blouse and handing it to her. “I’m a bit more used to the cold than you are.”
“Thanks.” Devin took the blouse and hung it around her shoulders, then with quavering hands lit a cigarette.
“Won’t they smell it?” Angela asked.
“They’re not coming back up here, not with all this lightning. They may be rock spiders, but they are not that stupid.”
“And what’s with that thing they threw off the hill?”
“They were calling it a pig,” Devin told her, “but I think it was probably a person, and I think it was probably the source of that scream that nearly made me poop my one and only precious pair of underpants. Jeez!”
“You think they killed a woman?” Angela was aghast.
“I can pretty much guarantee it. They’re not security forces, more like SAP – so-called South African Police – or mercenaries or just good old poachers, and they’re up to no bloody good back there.” She nodded toward the other side of the hill even though Angela could not see her face. Her cigarette tip glowed as she sucked on the filter. “We’ll lo
ok when the rain slows and the lightning’s gone. No more sleep tonight, anyway, hey. That chopper is not going to leave in the middle of a storm and now those okes are one short with whatever they’re loading onto the jeep and the chopper.” She shook her head. “Shit, anyway. At least we’re warm and dry in here and not sitting under any trees.”
Outside the rain pounded upon the parapet rock, sluiced down the sides of the kopje, and washed away all signs of any human intrusion in their little cave. The lightning flashes slowly dissipated as the storm marched onward. At the bottom of their kopje, a last stab of lightning illuminated a grotesque scene, a flash from a nightmare only men could conjure. The women would see it all in the impending glow of the false dawn, already a yellowing bruise on the eastern horizon.
32.
“Come on, Angela,” Devin whispered, as the rain dissipated to a gentle guti, “let’s see what’s down there.”
“In the dark?”
“We’ll be OK. Moon’s coming out again. Let’s go before those arseholes head back over this way.”
She left her cargo on the parapet and, swinging the AK-47 onto her back, carefully and slowly made her way down the kopje, to the right of where the bodies would have landed, and found a place to relieve herself. She could hear Angela doing the same and realized she was still wearing the woman’s blouse. She pulled cautiously at a clump of grass, taking care not to cut her hands on it, and used it to clean herself.