Dust Devils (16 page)

"I need to get my pay." The only money she had. The money that would get her to Durban.

"Pick it up tomorrow."

"Please, Ma . . ."

The old woman grabbed the flesh of Sunday's leg, her bony fingers pinching like a scorpion. "You! Where do you think you are, girl? In the city? That you can disrespect an elder like so?"

Sunday stayed impassive. Refused to show pain.

Her aunt put a hand to the wall and pulled herself to her feet, breath coming in gasps. "Now hurry, you. I want to go early to town so I can buy myself shoes for your wedding." Looked down her nose at Sunday. "That a girl like you should be so fortunate I will never understand."

So Sunday walked her aunt down the hill, having to put up with her moans and muttered oaths, supporting her weight as they negotiated the rocky path. As they reached the road a minibus taxi pulled up, and a couple of women waiting on the red sand climbed inside. The co-driver stood with his hand on the sliding door, urging Sunday and her aunt to hurry, slamming the door closed after them.

Ma Beauty squeezed herself into a seat, making room for Sunday. The driver was already gunning the engine when Sunday sprang up and pulled the door open, jumped down onto the sand. Closed the door after her. Watched as the taxi took off, her aunt's monkey face – mouth shouting soundlessly – disappearing in the spray of dust.

Sunday had never disobeyed the woman before and it left her feeling exhilarated as she ran back up the hill, sweating in the heat. She had an hour to pack her things and get down to the Zulu Kingdom. For her last performance.

Sunday stripped and washed herself. Dressed in her best white panties, ironed jeans and T-shirt. Then she packed all her belongings in a paper shopping bag. Another pair of jeans. Two T-shirts. Two panties. Her Zulu Bible. Placed the charred photo album on top of her clothes. Leaving behind her wind-up radio and her thin pile of dog-eared schoolbooks. She would have no use for them where she was going.

Sunday left the hut. She stood for a moment looking out across the valley toward where her family had been murdered. Saying goodbye. Then she walked down the hill.

Dell, wearing the dead man's clothes, was at the wheel of a white pickup. A Toyota double cab. Like a negative image of the truck that had smashed the Volvo over the cliff. He drove, his body on automatic. Willing the pain and grief away. Numbing himself. Each broken white line flashing by was a marker, taking him closer to the man who had killed his family.

His father sat at his side, a map spread across his knees, mumbling directions, the greenery giving way to flat semi-desert scrubland now they had crossed the mountains. Dell saw two brown kids running at the side of the road, waving at him, teeth shining, and he understood that his children would never reach that age. His knuckles turned white on the wheel and tears blurred the road until he wiped them away.

Back at the farm Goodbread had returned from the shower, wet hair sticking to his scalp. He'd checked that no laborers were in sight and he'd covered Dell's head with the blanket and taken him to the bathroom. Told him to shout when he was done.

The shower was as spartan as the room his father lived in. Unplastered cinderblock. No windows. A curtain smelling of mildew. A shower head that dribbled tepid brown water. It was the first time Dell had been in a shower since the morning of his birthday. Standing under the water, after he'd peeled away the bandage that bound his ribs, sluicing off the blood and the grime and the prison cells, made him feel closer to human.

He dressed in the khaki work pants, check shirt, and heavy brown work shoes. There was no mirror in the bathroom but he knew his transformation was complete. He looked like one of them. One of the white men he had spent his life fighting.

He shouted for his father and the old man covered his head again and led him back to the room. Dell shook the blanket off. "I'm not going to tell anybody where this place is."

Goodbread laughed. "That's what you say now."

"Meaning?"

"If we're captured they'll question you. And bet your ass they won't be polite. You'll tell them whatever they want to know, take that as gospel."

"And you won't?"

Shaking his head. "Reckon I've had more experience."

Dell sat down on the bed and stared at the old man. "I want you to be honest with me."

"About what?" Goodbread sat opposite him, on the sagging sofa.

"Why you're doing this."

"You're my son. They were going to kill you. I reckon I had but two choices: shut my eyes or get involved in your business."

"Bullshit," Dell said. "You're still fighting your old war, aren't you? You and that bunch." Pointing toward the house.

"My war is long over, boy."

"But you miss it, having a license to kill black men?"

"I have sent white, yellow, black and brown men, equally, to their reward. It was never the color of a man's skin that concerned me. It was the color of his politics." Goodbread fixed him with a stare. "That you chose to marry a dark-skinned woman and father a pair of mulattos never troubled me. But the fact that you embraced Marxism at a time when WW Three was a button push away, now that irked me mightily."

The old Goodbread in full flight. And it was too much for him. A coughing spasm shook him and he lifted himself from the sofa and went over to the faucet, drank water, fought for air. After a minute he composed himself and returned to his seat.

"What's wrong with you?" Dell asked.

"Had me a flu in the winter. Takes longer to shake when you're old." He lit a cigarette, hands trembling so badly he was in danger of killing the match. Sucked nicotine. Closed his eyes. Smothered a cough.

"Okay. Talk to me. What's your plan?" Dell said.

The old man opened his watery blue eyes. "It's real simple. We're going to take us a ride up to Zululand. Get our hands on Inja Mazibuko. Get him to confess to killing your family."

Dell stared at him. Shook his head. "You're fucking crazy."

"You got a better idea?"

"Yes. I call my lawyer. Get some media attention. Work this thing out."

Goodbread wheezed a laugh. "Oh, you've got their attention, boy, don't you worry. But there's one thing I know for damn sure . . ."

"And what's that?"

"Stick your head up and there's no way in hell you'll live long enough to talk to no media."

Dell tried to find an argument. Failed. "And you think we'll be able to capture Mazibuko?"

"Yessir, I do. He'll tap into his informer network. Ask questions. Get the answer that I've already put out into the wind: that we're across the Namibian border. He'll know damn well I have connections up there. Last place he'll expect to see us is in his own backyard."

"And if we capture him, what do we do?"

"I reckon that's when we call in your media."

Dell sat and watched his father smoke. Saw the tremor in his hand. "Level with me. What are our chances? An old man and a fucking pacifist?"

"You still calling yourself that after what they did to your kin?" Dell said nothing and Goodbread took a long drag on his cigarette, the ash flaming red. Then he shrugged and sighed smoke. "Well, could be they shoot us down like dogs long before we get there. Or maybe Mazibuko and his crew are sat waiting with their AKs hot and ready to go. Question is, do you want to die knowing you did nothing? I surely don't."

So Dell had let himself be led out to the truck, covered with the blanket until they were a half hour away from the farm. Then Goodbread had pulled over. Let Dell drive ever deeper into the brown landscape, the road unspooling ahead of them.

They rounded a curve and Dell saw three police vehicles parked on the shoulder, cops in day-glo vests standing in the road. The sparse traffic in front of their truck slowed. "Fuck."

"Easy," Goodbread said. "They're only pulling taxis over."

It was true. Dell could see a couple of minibuses at the roadside, the cops questioning the drivers. "What if they stop us?"

"They won't."

"You going to start shooting?"

Goodbread laughed. "Got nothing to shoot with, boy." Dell looked across at him. "Too risky to be on the road with unlicensed firearms this close to Cape Town."

They were up to the roadblock now. A brown cop wearing a bib with orange and lime green chevrons looked at them with sleepy eyes and waved them on. Dell accelerated, watching the cops shrink to nothing in his rearview.

"So, we're going after Mazibuko unarmed?"

His father spoke as he lit another cigarette, "We'll pick us up some ordnance on the way. Don't you fret about that." Sucking smoke.

"What makes you so sure he'll go home? Inja?"

"Because, boy, he's getting married this Saturday. Taking him a fourth wife, in the Zulu way. Already posted out the invites." Smiling like a skull, his old man's yellow teeth too big for his face. "Reckon he has a surprise wedding gift coming down the pike."

Inja's mood was as sour as his stomach. He stopped the rental Volkswagen near the wind farm, the giant propellers slicing the morning sun. He opened the door and shot a hot jet of puke onto the sand. Wiped the sweat from his brow, slugged back half a tin of lukewarm Coke. Burped. Finished the Coke and threw the can out. He had a map open on the seat beside him, directions scribbled on the page. He oriented himself and drove away.

Inja hadn't slept. He'd taken a taxi from the shack where he had eaten the sheep's head to a cheap hotel near the airport. Then he had spent late into the night on his phone, the Motorola heating up his ear like he was sitting too close to a fire. Worked his way through his contacts in the police and the netherworld that linked cops and criminals like connective tissue.

Spoke to black men who had worked as cops during the apartheid era, who still lived in fear of reprisals for collaborating with the Boers and were eager to find favor with Inja and his all-powerful chief. Traitors who had links with the kind of people who would hide the white man and his father.

Finally, just after dawn – his throat dry from threatening and cajoling – Inja had been given an address. A farm two hours outside Cape Town where Goodbread had been seen. His informant telling him the local cops had checked the place out and found no sign of the escaped man. Local cops Inja wouldn't trust with a cow dead ten days.

As Inja followed the narrow asphalt road that carved its way through the unfamiliar green landscape his phone rang. He answered it, wedging it between shoulder and ear as he drove. He grunted a few times and hung up. Some good news. His men back in Zululand had taken revenge for the taxi that had been ambushed. Killed a rival driver the night before outside Bhambatha's Rock. The brother of an old enemy. Good news, yes. But he should be at home, commanding his troops. The situation needed his guiding hand.

Inja overshot the gate to the farm. Reversed, crashing through the gears, then set off up a rutted sand road, his guts banging up against his ribs. Puke rising again. He reached for a spliff in his top pocket. Fired it up and hit it hard. The drug settled his stomach. Slowed things down. Gave him time to steady himself for battle.

Inja saw black men out in the fields, small specks in overalls. A red tractor rattled in the distance. He approached the house, an old stone place with a porch. He stopped at the rear, sat with his doors closed and windows wound shut, waiting for the farm dogs that he knew would appear. And there they were: two ugly beasts. Jumping up against his door, yellow teeth snapping, jowls leaving spit smeared across the window glass. Trained by these whites to tear at his black flesh.

He heard a man shouting commands in Afrikaans and the dogs retreated from the car, growling, Inja's scent in their snouts. He wound his window down an inch.

"Ja?" the Boer asked, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, hands on hips. A big man, about thirty, but already a gut swelling over the belt of his khaki shorts.