Dust Devils (36 page)

Zondi pushed the door open, feeling the twisted little man give way. A match flared and he saw his uncle's face in the glow of a paraffin lamp. The old man lay on the floor. Two mats and thin blankets thrown down in the midst of the tools and car parts. The room stinking of sweat and weed.

"What is this?" the old man asked.

Zondi drew his pistol, pointed it at the hunchback. "Go and sit by your father."

His cousin slunk over to the old man and sat down. Zondi's uncle shook his head. "You dare to do this in my house?"

"Shut up." Zondi kept the gun on them, walked backward out the door, called across to the truck. "Bring him in."

Dell dropped the tailgate and he and the girl lifted Inja out of the rear of the Ford. Dell taking him round the shoulders, the girl grabbing his feet, carrying him into the room. They laid him on the floor, groaning, eyes closed, in the circle of light from the lamp.

Zondi heard the suck of his uncle's breath when the old man recognized Inja. "Are you mad? What hell are you bringing upon us?"

The old man stood, edging away from Inja, ducking under the length of plastic rope that stretched across the room with an overall, a T-shirt and a pair of briefs pegged to it. Zondi tugged the T-shirt free of its peg and threw it to Sunday. "Keep that on his wound."

The girl hesitated a moment, then she knelt and pressed the T-shirt to Inja's stomach. Zondi reached down and grabbed the blanket off his cousin's bed. Still warm from the man's body. He threw it over Inja's nakedness.

"Dell," Zondi said, pointing to the wash line. "Take down the rope. Cut it. Tie these two up."

Dell unknotted the rope and clipped it into four pieces with the lineman's pliers that lay beside a hammer on the floor. He must have recognized the older man as the threat, because he went to him first. Zondi's uncle tried to fight, broad-shouldered and strong as a bull.

Zondi stepped forward and kicked him in the kidney. Not at all ashamed at how much pleasure it gave him. "Old man, you keep still or I will shoot you."

His uncle stopped struggling, sank to the floor, muttering about the vengeance of the ancestors. Dell tied the old man's hands behind his back. Roped his ankles. The little hunchback didn't put up a fight. Sat staring into a dark corner of the room while Dell tied him.

Zondi crouched beside Inja who lay still as death. Touched a hand to his throat. He could feel an erratic pulse. Zondi stood and walked to the door. "I'm going now. Don't let him die."

Sunday squatted beside the dog, pressing the cloth to his stomach. Waiting. The white man, his face and arms painted black, streaks of dark color running over the pale skin of his chest, sat against the wall. Staring at nothing. Like he had in the cave. The gun on the floor beside him.

"Girl." She looked up. The old man calling to her in Zulu. "Girl, I know you. You are Ma Mavis's child."

"Shut up," the white man said.

"Take the gun from this white bastard. Free us. We are your people. This man will only do you harm."

"I said shut up."

"Listen to me girl, or you will pay for this."

The white man picked up a fistful of cotton waste from the floor, black with oil, and walked across to the Zulu. The old man tried to twist away, shaking his head, shouting, but the white man shoved the cotton into his mouth and left him looking like a foaming animal.

While the white man had his back to her, Sunday let go of the T-shirt and reached across for the saw blade that shone on the floor beside Inja's foot. Lifted the blade and laid it across the throat of the dog, ready to hack into him.

She felt a hand on her arm. Gripping her. The white man lifted her arm away from Inja's neck and twisted her wrist. The blade fell from her fingers and clattered to the floor. He shook his head, saying something to her in his language. He pushed her away gently, lifted the bloody T-shirt and pressed it against the dog's belly.

Sunday sat, the veil falling across her eyes. She reached for the blade again and the white man tensed. Then she took off the hat and lifted the blade, sawing the veil away from her hair. Freeing herself. The white man watched her, his arms trembling with the waves of convulsions that came from the dog.

Zondi knocked at another door. This one opened to reveal the Belgian doctor, her hair mussed, face creased with sleep. "Disaster Zondi," she said. Zondi glimpsed bare skin as she stepped back into the darkness of her room. "I thought you had fled."

He followed her in and shut the door. "I need your help."

The doctor crossed to the bedside lamp and warm light washed her nakedness. She stood watching him as she lit a cigarette, shaking the match dead. "My help with what?"

"With an injured man."

"Injured how?"

"He's been stabbed. In the stomach."

"Then bring him in."

"I can't."

"And why not?"

"Because there'll be people looking for him. This would be the most obvious place."

She stared at him, expressionless, sucking on the cigarette, cheeks hollowed by the inhalation. Spoke around smoke. "You're trouble, aren't you, Disaster Zondi?" He didn't bother to reply.

The Belgian dropped the cigarette into a coffee mug and it whispered as it died. She unearthed a pair of panties from the clutter and stepped into them, her breasts hanging heavy.

"I'll be outside," he said.

Zondi walked down the corridor, toward the pay phone mounted on the wall near the entrance, scrolling his useless iPhone for a number with one hand, searching for coins with the other. He dialed, looking at his watch. 2:00 a.m. Ringing.

Fucking answer
.

"Moloi." Crisp, alert.

"You know who this is?"

A moment's hesitation. "Yes. Give me your number."

'No time. I have the animal we were discussing."

A quick backwash of breath. "You have it where?"

"Near its home. It's injured."

"Badly?"

"Yes. But there's a chance."

"Can you get it to Dundee at daybreak? I can have a chopper in place."

"Why not land here?"

"Too dangerous. Can you transport the animal?"

"I think so."

"Do it then."

The phone was dead in his ear. He hung the receiver back in the cradle, turned to see the doctor walking toward him, dressed in Levi's and Nikes, a man's white shirt unbuttoned over a gray top.

She said, "I need to pick up a trauma bag. Wait for me in the car park."

Zondi nodded, watched her walk away. Wondered who the shirt had belonged to.

Dell heard the rattle of the Ford. He beckoned the girl over to keep pressure on Inja's wound, drew the pistol and stood by the door.

Feet on gravel then a knock and Zondi's voice, "Open. It's me."

Dell unlocked the door and Zondi motioned him out. The truck was parked hard against the side of the building and Dell caught the sheen of pale hair through the windshield.

"How is he?" Zondi asked.

"Same. The girl tried to cut his throat, though. With a hacksaw blade."

"Jesus." Shrugged. "She has her reasons." Zondi looked toward the truck, then back at Dell. "I don't want the men in there to be able to ID the doctor. Help me get them outside."

Dell followed Zondi into the room. He checked that the girl hadn't tried to kill Inja again. She had not. She knelt, pressing down on the T-shirt, which was sodden with blood.

Zondi laughed when he saw the old man's mouth overflowing with cotton waste. "And this?"

"He was hassling the girl."

"Big on the oral tradition, this old fucker."

Zondi took the old man under his arms. The Zulu writhed and twisted. Zondi gave him a short-arm jab to the abdomen that quietened him down. Dell lifted the old man's feet and they carried him out into the dark, dumping him on the sand by the car wrecks, where he had no view of the room. They went back for the hunchback, who was as light as a child. Left him lying a few feet from his father.

Zondi crossed to the Ford and opened the passenger door, said something that Dell couldn't hear and the woman slid out. Zondi led her into the hut, a canvas bag with pouches and zippers slung from his shoulder.

Dell stood in the doorway, saw the doctor crouch beside the trauma bag, unzip it and remove a pair of white surgical gloves and roll them onto her hands. Find a penlight, click on the beam and reach across to Inja. She said something to Sunday in halting Zulu and the girl moved away, staring at the blonde woman.

The doctor pulled the blanket aside and lifted the T-shirt off Inja's abdomen. Played the penlight over the unconscious man's flesh. Intestine bulged pink and wet from the mouth of the wound.

"With what did she stab him?" the woman asked in her accented English.

"A knife," Zondi said.

"Be more specific."

Zondi questioned the girl in Zulu and she whispered her replies. "She says it was a kitchen knife."

The doctor felt for Inja's pulse, prodded his abdomen, moved the beam up to his face and lifted his eyelids, examining his pupils. She opened his mouth, inserted her fingers. To free blockages to his airways, Dell knew. Remembering his medics training. A lifetime ago.

"How long was the blade? Was it smooth?" the doctor asked.

Zondi spoke to the girl again. She held her index fingers a few inches apart. Then drew a squiggle in the air.

"A steak knife, then." The doctor's gloved fingers back on the wound. Index finger disappearing inside Inja's body, probing. Her face impassive.

"What do you think?" asked Zondi.

"I think he needs to be in an operating room." She slipped her finger out of the wound and wiped her hands on a square of paper towel. "Tell the girl to boil water."

Zondi spoke to Sunday, who crossed to the paraffin stove. She removed a blackened pot from it, caked with offal. Took the pot and a plastic bucket of water and went out the door. Dell heard the splash of water as she washed the pot.

The doctor reached into the bag and found a stethoscope, the chrome diaphragm beaming an ellipse of light onto the scuffed wall as she brought the tubes to her ears. She placed the bell on Inja's chest. Listening. A strand of her blonde hair falling across her face. She was beautiful, Dell realized. Wondered where Zondi had found her.

The girl returned and lit the Primus stove. Placed the pot of water on the purple flame. Retreated into shadow, watching.

The doctor lifted a silver space blanket out of the bag, kept it folded in a rectangle and placed it beside Inja in the light of the paraffin lamp. Removed a series of items from the bag and arranged them on the blanket. Pressure bandages. A scalpel. A plasma drip. Scissors. Tweezers. A bulb syringe. Surgical tape and gauze.

"I'm going to need one person to assist me," the doctor said. "Not the girl, because I don't have enough Zulu."