Dust Devils (9 page)

It was still dark when Sunday left her aunt's hut, creeping out so she didn't wake Ma Beauty who snored in the single room where they ate and washed and slept. Sunday had a blanket around her shoulders, to keep out the chill of the mist that clung to the hills like smoke.

The hut was halfway down a rocky slope, looking as if it had slid from the top, then lost interest. Sunday passed neighboring huts, walked past the chimney of the communal pit latrine poking up out of the fog, the stink of human dung heavy on the morning air. The sun tore an orange hole in sky and she saw goats and a few thin cows, legless in the mist.

She walked for two hours, her feet finding the paths that took her across a valley thick with a marijuana crop, over a dry stream and up another hill. It was fully light by the time she reached the top and the fog had burned away leaving a view over the valley.

The mud floor of her parents' hut lay like a tombstone on the crest of the hill. Part of one crumbling, fire-blackened wall remained, leaning like an old man in the hard light. It had been many months since Sunday had last been here. She sat down on the cracked floor of the hut where she had spent the first years of her life. Pulled the blanket around her shoulders as she remembered.

It was nightfall and her mother was cooking in the hut. Beans and maize meal on a paraffin stove. Sunday, five years old, sat with her, on the floor, paging through the photograph album with the beautiful white people on the cover. Her father was outside chopping firewood. Sunday could hear his axe splitting the timber.

Then she heard loud voices. She went to the door and looked out. Saw men shouting at her father. Saw a man lift a machine gun from under the blanket he wore around his shoulders. Saw her father lift his axe. Before her father could bring the axe down the man shot him. Sunday's mother ran out of the hut, screaming, trying to reach her husband. The man shot her and she fell, something wet and twisted spilling from her abdomen.

Sunday hid in the shadows. Watched the men kill her cousin, who came running from where he tended the goats. Watched them set fire to the hut, the flames leaping like dancing devils in the black night.

Then the men were gone. Sunday sat next to her mother, crying, looking on as the hut burned to nothing. Holding her mother's hand. A hand that was cold when the morning sun washed away the haze of smoke.

She saw the burned scrap of the photo album lying on the blackened floor of the hut. Held it to her chest as she walked down to town. She lost her way and it took her hours before she arrived at the police station. A giant man in a blue uniform scooped her up and sat her on the counter in the charge office. Listened to her story. Called other men.

They put Sunday in a white truck, sitting between two policemen. Two others in the rear, crouching under the low roof. She showed them where to go and they drove to the foot of the hill until they could drive no farther. She was told to wait with the fat policeman, who was happy not to be climbing. The other men walked up the hill.

It was very hot and the shadows of the aloes drew long black lines across the rocks and sand by the time Sunday saw the men return. Each sweating man carried a body on his back. They dumped the corpses of her mother and her father and her cousin on the sand. The bodies were stiff as boards, arms and legs spread wide like those of scarecrows.

The fat policeman took Sunday by the hand, walked her away and held her face to his soft belly. But she peeped out under his arm, smelling his sweat like old meat. And she watched as the men used rocks to break the legs and arms of her family, so they could fit their bodies into the rear of the truck.

Now, as she sat in the ruins of the hut, Sunday saw the face of the man with the gun, hot in the flames of the fire. The face of the man she was to marry in five days time.

"Bail denied."

Dell didn't understand what he was hearing. The words not penetrating the fog of grief and pain that he wore like a coat. Didn't realize things had gone badly wrong until he heard the kid lawyer's shrill voice.

"Your honor, this is absurd! Mr. Dell isn't a flight risk, and he's an upstanding member of the community."

The magistrate, a khaki-colored man with a snowfall of dandruff on the shoulders of his black robe, peered over his glasses. "That is my ruling. The State has requested that this case be transferred to the jurisdiction of the Cape Town High Court. Take it up with them if you want to appeal. Until then the accused will be held in custody at Pollsmoor Prison." The magistrate shuffled papers. "Next matter."

Pollsmoor. A prison where a hundred men shared a cell. Where gang rape and murder were commonplace. Dell turned to his lawyer, waiting for him to make this all disappear.

"I'm on this, Mr. Dell. Don't worry," the boy said, looking shocked. "Hang in there."

Dell felt a hand on his shoulder and a uniformed policeman pulled him toward the stairs leading down to the holding cells. As he was hauled away Dell saw the plainclothes cop and the man who looked like a pimp standing at the rear of the courtroom. Theron said something to the black man and laughed.

Inja and the Boer were in the Mercedes, driving back toward Cape Town, the mountain and its cloth of cloud already looming on the horizon. Theron drove fast, weaving through the traffic on the freeway, forcing cars out of his way like a train with a cowcatcher.

"You spoken to your minister?" Theron asked. "'Bout my money?"

"This thing is not done yet."

"Jesus, you're like an old woman with a sore tit, you know that?"

Theron flew past a small Japanese car, the woman at the wheel a frightened blur behind glass. The Boer was using the car lighter on a Camel, speaking with smoke trickling from his mouth.

"I've organized that when Dell gets to Pollsmoor he gets thrown in with the 28s who're awaiting trial. You know the 28s?" Not waiting for an answer. "Cape Flats gangsters. The hardest motherfuckers you'd ever wish to meet. Few weeks back they killed a guy in a cell one night. Cut his body into pieces and fed it down the shithouse. Problem was, his fucken head got stuck and the toilet overflowed, sending crap and body parts down the corridor." Theron laughed smoke. "Talk to the minister. Tell him your Mr. Dell is dead meat, my friend. No loose ends."

Dell sat on the floor of the holding cell beneath the courtroom, jammed in with maybe twenty colored men. The older men huddling together, in fear of the young ones who stalked the cell, demanding money and cigarettes.

Dell had been the only white face in cells full of dark men many times before. But that was back in the eighties, when he'd been arrested for being part of illegal protest marches, and he was held with the other politicos. The general prison population had considered the political prisoners as part of an elite, and Dell had received major cred, as a white man who fought apartheid shoulder to shoulder with his black comrades.

But those days were long gone and now a white skin made you a target. The boy standing over him hadn't even been born when Nelson Mandela was released. A yellow-brown boy with a broken nose and missing teeth, crude tattoos coiling like snakes from under his clothes. "Hey, whitey, that's then a nice watch."

The black and chrome Swatch visible on Dell's wrist under the sleeve of his pajama top. His birthday gift from Rosie. The glass was cracked but the second hand ticked on.

"Gimme it." The kid held out a palm stained by years of meth pipes.

Dell looked at him, slow to react. Earned him a kick in the teeth with a dirty Nike. Dell's head smacked the wall and he tasted blood on his tongue. Something snapped inside him. The kid was lining up another kick. Dell grabbed the boy's shoe, tipping him backward so he sprawled into a group of men looking on.

There were shouts and cheers. "Yaaaw, the white man only wants to die!"

The kid was up and cursing, coming back at Dell, bringing three friends with him. Coming to get them some white meat. Dell with his back to the wall felt hands grabbing at him, then he heard the rattle as the cell door opened.

A white cop in uniform came in, shouting, "Stand still, you fucken rubbish!" The men obeyed. "And who is Dell?" Dell raised his hand. "Come, then. You going to Pollsmoor."

Laughter and jeers at that. "Hey, you better stop by the drugstore and get him some Vaseline. His white ass gonna be working overtime."

The cop had Dell by the arm, shoved him out into the corridor. Cuffed him. Pushed him toward the door that led out into the car park. Dell expected to be put into a truck with other men but he was led to a white Ford sedan, dented and without hubcaps. A man at the wheel and another sitting in the rear.

Something was thrown over Dell's head. A coarse jailhouse blanket. Stinking. He struggled, heard the car door open. He was propelled forward and landed on the floor of the car, wedged between the front and rear seats. The engine cranked. He fought to lift himself.

Felt a hand push his face down onto the floor, heard the man in the rear speak. "You just be still now, boy, or we'll be obliged to lock you in the trunk."

The voice that had been in his head right before the nightmare began. The voice of his father. Earl Robert Goodbread.