Whitethorn (53 page)

‘I tell her, “Auntie, we can't! Dippie and me, we in the army now, military service, we'd like to help, but you understand, we can't just do it.”

‘Of course Auntie answers back, “
Ag
,
jong
, never mind military service, what I want now is some auntie service! Stoffie, now you listen to me! I'm not asking, I'm telling. When you were a little baby and your mother got sick with I-can't-tell-you-what because it's not a nice thing for a woman to get from a sailor, who do you think gave you my own milk from my own breasts? I got your cousin Bokkie, who is now in gaol in Port Elizabeth and always never complained when I asked him to do something, on the left one and you I got on the right one, both pulling and sucking like you think maybe this is a big tug-o-war for babies! No wonder I now got razor strops!” '

Stoffie turned to me and grinned. ‘So we take this tenton Fargo I'm servicing, and Dippie here gets us a forged vehicle destination pick-up consignment from a coloured guy, who's a second cousin twice removed like everyone else in District Six. Us coloured guys we got to stick together because we very far from home. We put some jerry cans of petrol in the back, and from another second cousin twice removed who works in the colonel's office we get a forged forty-eight-hour leave pass. Only this morning, when it's still dark, we leave the camp and go and get my auntie's furniture. Her husband, who a person has to refuse to call uncle, is fast asleep and snoring, just lying there on the planks of the front
stoep
, with the moon shining on his bald head. He's so drunk he can't get his key in the lock so the keys are lying where he threw them away on the front path. My auntie opens the door and says, “Don't step on him because you'll get a mess on your boots that smells to the high heavens and you got to wash it off later under the tap!” Then we only half an hour out of Pretoria and we stopped by the military police! Can you see now how it's no problem for a man to fill up his trousers with the creamy brown already digested, Tom?'

‘
Fok
! You can say that again, brother!' Dippie cried from behind the steering wheel.

During the course of the day I was to learn that Dippie did the swearing and Stoffie did all the explaining, although in the process taking great care not to use a single expletive.

We stopped for breakfast just outside Nylstroom, pulling into a side road. ‘We got a primus in the back and we'll make some coffee and have some breakfast, but first we got another surprise.' Stoffie indicated that I should follow him to the back of the truck, and when he let down the tailgate there was the surprise. Sitting in this big old lounge chair was a very small lady. ‘Auntie, we stopping for some breakfast,' Stoffie announced, adding, ‘This is Tom, he's coming with us.'

‘
Here
,
jong
, just in time, I'm telling you! All this jogging and bouncing, and for the last hour I need to go to the lavatory! Hello, Tom. Quick, Stoffie, or we going to have a terrible accident in our bloomers, you hear.' By this time Auntie had left the chair and was standing on the tailgate, and Stoffie picked her up and put her on the ground. ‘Some paper! Give me some paper!' the tiny, dark-skinned woman yelled.

Stoffie's hands started to tap all over his khaki tunic, and then his back pockets, then back to the top pocket of his tunic and he came up with nothing. At that moment Dippie came around to the back of the truck. ‘Paper! Auntie has to do number two!' Stoffie yelled.

Dippie did the same with his hands, but almost immediately came up with a piece of paper that was snatched from his hands by the desperate auntie. ‘More! This is not big enough, Dippie!' she cried. Dippie found another piece of paper and handed it to her, and she went scuttling off like a small rodent into the nearby bushes.

Then Dippie started frantically patting his pockets again. ‘
Fok
!' he yelled.

This particular ‘
fok
' had a definitely desperate sound.

‘What now, man?' Stoffie asked.

‘Auntie's wiping her arse on the forty-eight-hour leave passes and the vehicle destination pick-up consignment!'

I couldn't help myself and I started to giggle, then it was on for one and all, talk about laugh! Stoffie was thumping the side of the truck, and Dippie was bent over double and we're all howling with laughter when Auntie comes out of the bushes and asks, ‘What's the
lekker
joke, boys?'

So we try to stop laughing and Stoffie, who is the serious brother, says, ‘Auntie, come show me where you did your business, we got to get back the paper!' And now Dippie fell on the ground holding his stomach, rolling around, and I've got tears running down my face and my tummy is hurting from laughing. Stoffie had his forehead pressed against the side of the truck again, and his back was shaking, and he was beating the side of it with his flat hand – bang, bang, bang. ‘Oh, ahh, oow, ha, ha, ha, ha, haw, haw, haw! Oh, shit! Ha, ha, ha, haw, haw, haw!' It was the only time he said a swear word all day.

After Stoffie and Auntie came back, Stoffie explained it wasn't too bad. They'd found a small stream and the ‘you know what' was all gone, but the ink with their names and forged signatures on the official forms were washed away as well. But the papers would dry on the dashboard on the way to Pietersburg, and if you looked carefully you could maybe see where the writing originally was. When the paper dried it could be better. I was beginning to wonder what it was in my life that made shit paper play such a big part in it.

Then Auntie lit the primus stove and she brought out a big basket and we had eggs and sausage and bread and butter and she made coffee with Nestlé condensed milk in it and the whole thing was simply delicious, the best there could be. We stopped again for lunch. This time it was cold meat and bread and hard-boiled eggs and cold roast potato and milk tart and
koeksisters
and more coffee with condensed milk, all stuff from Auntie's big basket.

After lunch we were riding along, and so far Stoffie and Dippie hadn't asked me any questions about why I was going home. I mean, it's not every day you see an eleven, almost twelve-year-old boy hitchhiking all over the place, yet they'd kept their curiosity to themselves. I decided that while I would have liked to keep the reason to myself, they had shared everything about themselves and it was only fair that they also knew something about me.

‘Stoffie, you and Dippie haven't asked why I'm going home all the way from Johannesburg?'

Stoffie seemed to be thinking for a moment. ‘
Ja
, in life everybody has a story but they don't always want to tell it. It's you business, Tom, you don't have to tell it.'

I reached into my shirt pocket and fished out Doctor Van Heerden's letter and held it out to Stoffie. ‘The reason is in there,' I announced.

‘What's this?' Stoffie asked, drawing back slightly, but not taking the envelope I held out to him.

‘A letter, it says why I'm going home, will you read it?'

Stoffie hesitated. ‘Letters are very private things, Tom.'

‘
Ja
, but I'd like you to read it,' I insisted.

‘
Fok
, we can't read, man,' Dippie suddenly said. ‘Until the army, we both
fokken
juvenile delinquents!'

‘We can only write our names,' Stoffie said quietly. ‘In the Boys Reformatory we learned our trade, him driving trucks, me a mechanic. We did it so we could steal cars better, but we didn't do much book learning.'

I was taken aback, and in an attempt to recover, asked, ‘Can I read it to you?'

‘
Ja
, man, we'd like that. I admit we a bit curious to know.' Stoffie grinned, trying to put me at ease. ‘You see, Dippie and me, we experts at running away, man.'

I read out Doctor Van Heerden's letter and when I'd finished it, I looked up to see that Stoffie was crying and Dippie suddenly pulled the truck to a halt at the side of the road. ‘
Fok
!' he said, his head was turned away from me and he was looking out of the side window.

After about four hours on the road and half an hour after leaving Potgietersrus we hit a police roadblock. Dippie saw it first. ‘Police!' he cried out.

‘Quick man, Tom, get under the dashboard,' Stoffie commanded. There was plenty of room in that big Fargo and all I had to do was to sit hugging my knees. I was suddenly very frightened. I heard Stoffie say, ‘There's four cars and a lorry stopped, and they searching the cars!'

‘
Fok
!' Dippie cried.

But then a miracle happened. As we began to slow down, we suddenly picked up speed. ‘Hey, man, he's waving us through!' Stoffie shouted happily.

There must be a definite difference when you take the trouble to be a bed-kneeling boy when you pray to God, because His hand was definitely guiding me. First Gert and David in the jeep, then finding Dippie, Stoffie and Auntie in the army truck, now this narrow escape from the police. In church the
Dominee
would sometimes say, ‘If you got faith in God, then He's going to have faith in you. With God, you understand, it's not only a one-way street.' Although, in this case, I was hoping for it to be a one-way road, with me being the one to get to the end safely.

Ten minutes or so after leaving the roadblock, Stoffie told Dippie to pull over. ‘We don't know if that's the last roadblock, Tom, so I think you better get in the back with Auntie. If we is stopped, then hide behind some furniture or get in the wardrobe at the back and let Auntie do the talking. She was on the game when she was young and beautiful, and knows more about talking to the police than anyone in South Africa, you hear. Take it from me, when she's finished talking their ears will want to go on a holiday from listening.'

I couldn't help wondering what sort of a game Auntie played when she was young and beautiful. It must have been a pretty rough sort of sport, like wrestling or boxing, because she was not very pretty any more. But, of course, I knew women can't wrestle or box, so it was a mystery. Perhaps, I decided, when I got in the back with her she might tell me. There were two of these big lounge chairs, and Stoffie and Dippie arranged them side by side in the back of the truck. Auntie seemed pleased. ‘It's nice to have some company, Tom. Sitting here alone, I'm nearly breaking a world record for
stom
and I'm not a person that doesn't like to talk.'

Lucky I was a good listener because she started up and never let off. Talk about talking the hind leg off a donkey! She told me her whole life story in District Six in Cape Town where her people had lived for 300 years. ‘Maybe, who knows, even the same street,' she said. ‘In the Cape it's not like up here, you understand? Down there a coloured person is not a black and not also a white man. But everyone knows some hanky-panky has been going on a long time now, so we in the middle, not the one and not the other, also in the olden times some Malay thrown in, so in the Cape we got some respect, you hear. Up here in Pretoria they ignorant
boeremense
, and they show no respect for a person. When you on the game you soon learn it's the
boere
who always wanting it. They think because we brown and not black and we don't have peppercorn hair that it's not such a big sin to play with a coloured woman.'

Try as I might I couldn't guess what sort of game involved policemen as referees and was obviously played by coloured women mostly against the
boere
. How could a game be a sin? The
Dominee
said gambling was a sin, maybe it was some sort of gambling? If I could have got a word in sideways, I would have asked her to explain the rules of this mysterious game. But then she got onto the topic of Frankie Bezuidenhout, who turned out to be the person lying on the front
stoep
with the moon shining on his bald head. He was the subject that took us all the way to Pietersburg, and not once did Auntie have a good thing to say about him. ‘
Ag
, Tom, my sister Elsie says that washing the sheets and towels from the hospital is not always nice work. “Ha!” I said to her. “Never you mind that, Sissie! With Frankie you don't need a hospital! You can't tell me about dirty towels and sheets and the mess that comes from inside a drunk! This time it's not my own blood, you hear? No more black-and-blue!” ' She turned to me and placed her forefinger on her nose and pushed, and it practically disappeared into the soft flesh of her face. ‘Once it was straight and I was beautiful, now it's mashed potato!'

I must admit that while I think I'm a good listener, there was a point, like the paintings in the art gallery, when you can't take in any more. I knew we were getting closer and closer to Tinker, and my mind became totally occupied with getting to her before her little heart finally broke. So I didn't hear some of the stuff about Frankie Bezuidenhout, which was more than you could find in a book about one person. One thing was for sure, I wouldn't have liked to be married to him, but on the other hand, maybe he did some of his black-and-blues just to shut Auntie up. Talk about a talking machine!

It was getting late in the afternoon when we reached the outskirts of Pietersburg and Dippie pulled over to the edge of the road. Stoffie came to the back of the truck. ‘Tom, we safe now, man, come sit in the front again, we wondering where you living in Pietersburg so you will show us, hey?'