Like it Matters (15 page)

“However much it is plus the money on the back seat is more. Onthou bra, that’s not your cash in the backpack there.”

“A bit of it is.”

“Ja, okay, a
bit
. In elk geval, jy ken nie vir Derek nie,” he said.

And then Dewald launched into this whole, long thing about Dingy Derek—that’s what he kept calling him—and how he knew him from school, but then he didn’t see him for years, and then all of a sudden he runs into him in Kalk Bay, and it turns out Derek grew up to be a meth cook. Apparently Dewald gave him some stuff—Derek was itchy because he’d fucked up his batch—and now he was going to sell a shitload of the new batch to us as a kind of a thank you.

Except here we were planning to rob him.

I tried to tell him, “Dewald, I don’t know about this—”

But he just said, “I’m going back to the car. We’ll talk there.”

And I really thought that’s what I’d do—I’d lie there on the tar just a bit longer, try get myself feeling brave, then go to the car and fucking
make
him see we couldn’t do this

But when I climbed in, Dewald was sitting there with guns and fucking latex gloves.

Everything started whorling, I started seeing black spots—I closed my eyes and sucked my teeth. I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs.

It took a long time but I managed to say, “No. No guns.”

“Bra, how the fuck else you rob somebody? You want us to get physical? Hier,” he said. “Kom nou. Just hold the thing, get used to it. We only got half ’n hour.”

“I’m not touching that thing. I’ve seen this movie, Dewald. Someone dies, the rest of them go to jail. Every time. Fuck this,” I said.

I opened my door, but then he grabbed my arm with a grip like a hunting trap. “Eddetjie. You know this kind of thing happens, bra. All the time. What’s he going to do? Call the cops? Call his people? I checked, he got no people.”

I started to say something but the sound of Dewald’s phone ringing drowned it out.

He kept his grip on my arm. He took a deep breath and brought the phone up to his ear, but before he answered the call he sat forward and looked at himself in the rear-view mirror. He kept looking in the mirror while he spoke on the phone. He said, “Hey … Ja … Ja … Cool,” and that was it.

He let his breath out. He said, “Okay. Dis too late now, Eddetjie. He’s on his way. He’s coming, and you better believe
he’ll
have a gun.”

For the next ten minutes, I tried to reason with him by talking through a couple of different scenarios where some of the very vivid fears I had played out. Like what if Derek knew a dodgy cop? Cooks normally do. Or what if he ended up shooting Dewald first? Then
I’m
standing there with my fucking finger on the trigger?

It wasn’t any use, though, he was saying anything just to shut me up.

I was quiet for a while, and I tried to remind myself that my game was longer than his. I had beautiful plans for the money that was going to come out the other side of this thing …

Tonight’s just a river—

A fucking dark river you’ve got to cross

And she’s there—she’s there on the bank, Ed …

Eventually, he pretty much forced the gloves onto my hands and then he picked up one of the guns, a black one with a clip, some kid at school used to have a bb gun that looked similar.

He shoved it into my palm.

It was so heavy my other hand had to help catch it.

He said, “Nou luister. That baby is ready to go. D’you know what ready to go means?”

“Okay, I’m going to say one more thing,” I told him. “You know in cowboy movies, Dewald, how there’s always one scene where an old dude will tune a guy like,
Don’t bring a gun if you can’t go all the way with it, sonny?
Something like that? Well I can’t go all the way with this. I know I can’t.”

He said, “Bra, wait till you got one pointed at you. You’ll empty the clip—”

And then a message came through on his phone.

He said, “Fok. Okay.”

“What? Is it Charlotte?”

We’d bought her a phone earlier that day in case of emergencies. I suddenly wanted to call her very badly

But then Dewald put his hand on my shoulder.

He left his gun in his lap and he reached his other hand over and put it on my face. He leaned forward. It was almost like he was going to kiss me.

“We got five minutes,” he said. “You ready, Ed?”

He was staring at me. He had both his hands on my face, and with our eyes locked like that, I could tell, I could see he wasn’t ready yet, either.

Everything felt like it was about to crack right through the middle

And from some dank recess of my being, this valorous thing crawled up and made a home in my stomach

And I said, “Okay, Dewald. Just tell me, okay? Look at me, look at my eyes. I’m asking you just to tell me, please. I know you from Grahamstown, right? That house with the cow skull? You were calling yourself TJ.”

He’d looked almost sick when I started talking, but by the end he was just smiling.

He said, “Ed, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I kept staring at him, and inside I was thinking,
Come on, just tell me

And what I realised right then—it was wonderful—I real- ised she had made me scared to die.

Dewald moved his hands off my cheeks and put them over my eyes. He started speaking to himself, this soft, breathy whispering sound. Wind blowing in long grass.

“Jesus,” I said. “Dewald, are you praying?”

“T
HERE
, E
D, GO THERE
,”
HE SAID

And he pushed me in the back, over to the other side of the road.

“Then when he gets out the car, we chat a bit. Then you come out behind him with your gun. I’m only going to pull mine when he’s looking at you.”

There was a high, whining sound in my ears and I couldn’t get rid of it.

I willed myself to keep thinking about Charlotte, that feeling—seeing her that morning in April when I was so close to letting go.

She saved you once, Ed, let her do it again.

From where I knelt in the cold earth, very faintly, I could see headlights coming down the road. Then I could hear a wheezy engine, tyres on the tar, then dust was getting in the headlights, sweeping through the trees—

I looked the other way, and from my low angle I could see about half of Dewald, standing there in the road with one arm waving and the other shielding his eyes. The yellow light washed over him and then stopped moving. The bakkie was right above me, idling like a tractor. I could almost touch it. I smelled diesel and I could see fumes curling in the brake lights.

Now?

When?

If he dealt drugs, why’d Derek drive such a shit car?

The bakkie coughed and rattled like it was going to shake some parts loose, that’s all I could hear. I moved out from behind the trees on all fours, and I crouched down on the bank with my eyes about level with the tar. I could see Dewald, he stood in silhouette just to the right of the headlights, the rucksack at his feet. Behind him, the stripes on his car were glowing. The door opened and Derek got out of the bakkie

And that was the moment the whole thing took another fucking turn.

Ja, he was tall. He was probably one of the tallest people I’d ever seen, but—and it sounds weird—that wasn’t really what you noticed about him. I mean the actual tallness.

What you saw, really—all you could see—was how it wracked him. He was bent and hunched and crooked, he stood with his chin almost resting on his chest, he had wild hair and he was wearing a long, loose coat. He looked like a fucking scarecrow, heartlessly assembled and roughly stitched, made absolutely without care.

He shuffled over towards Dewald with his arms out, these lopsided, kinked things like tree branches—I think he was trying to hug him—but Dewald pushed him away

And just when I needed to move out, I felt myself getting squeamish

And I’m not sure why I did it—

I was panicking—

But I looked down at the gun and I saw it was exactly like one of those
BBS
, it had a button on the side of the stock that you pushed, and I pulled out the clip

And the fucking thing was empty.

I gasped, loudly, and then something Dewald said earlier resounded from a corner of my mind.
Bra, wait till you got one pointed at you. You’ll empty the clip.

A great white light, like a neon lotus flower, started blossoming between my eyes

And I stood up and I reeled into the road

And when I blinked away all that brightness, I saw Dewald had his gun out and he was pointing it at Derek. Derek was close to the bakkie—the engine was still idling—and he stood there with a nest of elbows and hands hanging above his head, and a piss stain spreading across his jeans.

And then it all happened so fast.

I heard the shot—it was flat and clipped and hollow, it was nothing like I would’ve imagined—and from where I was standing, as he ducked into the bakkie, I saw Derek’s shoulder jerk and spasm like if you yanked a string on a puppet, and a dark spout flew up into the moonlight. He fell into the bakkie, and then there was another shot that went in through the windshield. The bakkie was screeching and then it leapt forward. There was another shot through the windshield and I saw that one explode Derek’s head, his chest fell forward onto the hooter, and that must’ve been the last thing Dewald heard before the bakkie smashed into him

And he fell back, all the way, and bumped against his car and landed face down on the road. The hooter was still going like a battle cry, and the bakkie wasn’t stopping—Dewald tried to crawl under his car but I heard the wheel go over him and then the bakkie crashed into the car and that headless thing fell out the open door and bounced on the road. The engine stalled and then there was almost nothing, just a quiet, ragged, steaming sound coming from the bakkie. Something like dying breaths.

I knew I couldn’t be out there very long, but I had to just sit down on the tar for a while. With my back turned on everything. It didn’t feel like I was breathing, more like I had a giant moth beating around in my stomach.

There were always going to be two bodies, Ed.

You’re lucky.

You’re lucky you’re around to see them.

I hauled myself up and I turned slowly to my left, towards Dewald’s car. There he was still, pinned under the wheel of the bakkie.

Spread out.

Definitely dead.

I went round to the uncrushed side and I opened the door. I grabbed Dewald’s pouch off the driver’s seat and put it in my pocket. The bakkie’s headlights were still shining into the car and I caught sight of myself in one of the windows—and god, I could’ve done without that.

I saw the bandana lying under the passenger seat and I picked it up and wiped down everything I might’ve touched before I put the gloves on, the outside of the car as well, even the smashed-up bonnet. When that was all done, I turned and faced the road.

The body on the tar was lying in a massive pool of blood. A wide, thick pool, shining darkly under the moon.

I saw the rucksack lying behind the bakkie and I forced myself over there. The bag had tyre marks on it, but it was okay, it was still closed and everything, and I lifted it and put it on my back.

I went to the bakkie, round to the passenger side, and I pulled open the door. I heard blood flow out the cab and splash onto my shoes—I felt that warmth on my shoes—but I still grabbed the bag that was lying under the seat and then I slammed the door.

Bending over, I felt the gun dig into my gut and I took it out my jeans and put it away in the bag with the drugs.

I knew I needed to get moving, I knew I had to go, but one thing was still bothering me.

I still felt like I was dreading something, some final revelation.

Two guns for two bodies.

I got that. A deal gone bad.

But then, surely, two cars as well?

So how was he going to get home?

I went back to the wreck and I bent down under the wheel and stuck my hand into Dewald’s pocket.

I got his phone.

He had one new message, and I sort of knew it’d be from her

But I couldn’t look right then—

I just turned the phone off and put it in my pocket, made sure I still had the pouch, got the bags sitting better across my shoulders and then headed for the woods.

I had one last look back at the scene.

As if on cue, the bakkie let out a long groan and the headlights went out.

The moon flared above me.

That hot, bright colour.

A gas ring turned on full.

A
T FIRST
, I
FELT SO WEIGHTED DOWN
I could barely move forward.

I kept bumping into trees and then staggering badly, and every cricket, every owl—every single thing—sounded like sirens on the wind.

I got Dewald’s pouch out of my pocket and I found the pipe and put the lighter under the bowl and I got a bit of smoke out of it.

Then I went on pretty much like before, except it felt quicker