Dust Devils (10 page)

First his cell phone signal went missing in the hills. Then the pine forests were strangled by dry veld, and the wide road – white lines vivid on the smooth black asphalt – gave way to a narrow track of cracked tar and potholes. Finally the blacktop dwindled to nothing and the tires of Zondi's BMW drummed on sand corrugated from drought, a cloud of dust pursuing him.

He pulled off the road, left the air-conditioned cabin and stepped out into heat so dry that when he inhaled it seemed to microwave him from within. Looked out over the valley spread below him. Once he had called it home.

This place, with its red hills and craters of erosion like axe wounds in the flesh-colored soil, reminded him of a corpse. The corpse of the boy Zondi and Inja Mazibuko and the others had killed, in sight of where he now stood.

Zondi had left the valley not long after the boy's death. Made his way up to Johannesburg where he had found himself in other mobs that had dispensed street justice to suspected informers and collaborators. But he'd always stayed at the rear, an observer, feeding on the rush, but never striking the killing blows. And he'd been back here only once, to bury his mother. Sixteen years ago.

And what the fuck are you doing here now?
he asked. Got not reply.

Zondi saw a man pushing a bicycle up the hill. Part of a car fender, mangled and twisted, lay across the saddle and handlebars. A boy of maybe ten walked behind the bike, supporting the weight of the metal, stopping it from dragging on the ground.

The man, in a torn brown shirt and old suit pants, was sweating, urging the boy on. The child was shoeless and Zondi remembered when his own feet had been immune to the heat of the sand and the sharpness of the rocks. He saw the boy's hands were bleeding from the sharp metal slicing into his flesh. The child kept his head down, following his father without complaint.

The man pushed the bicycle up to where Zondi stood. Stopped, sweat patterning the dust on his face. He leaned the bike against a thorn tree and approached Zondi with his hands cupped.

"A cigarette please, brother."

Zondi told him he didn't smoke. The boy looked at him, taking in the BMW that pinged as it cooled. Taking in Zondi's city clothes and Diesel sunglasses. Zondi reached into the car and came out with a plastic bag containing fruit and two cans of Coke. He didn't normally drink the stuff but he'd felt tired on the road and had used the caffeine rush to stay awake.

He held the bag out to the boy, who looked at his father. The man nodded. The child wiped his bloody hands on his shorts and approached Zondi with his head bowed, not looking him in the eye. The boy extended his right hand, gripping his elbow with his left hand in the African way, and took the bag. He muttered his thanks and retreated, never showing his back to Zondi.

"When last did it rain?" Zondi asked the man.

The Zulu laughed. "Can a dry old woman remember her wedding night?"

These fucking people
, Zondi thought.
Everyone a poet
.

The man said, "Are you going through to Greytown, brother?"

Zondi shook his head. "Bhambatha's Rock."

"You are with the government?"

Zondi opened his car door. "No. It is my home."

The man said nothing but Zondi could see the disbelief in his eyes.

Zondi started the car, thought about throwing a U-turn and getting the hell out of there while he still could. But he released the brake and drove down toward the jumble of small buildings and sprawling huts, iron roofs sending back the sun like signal mirrors.

Sunday was late. Running across the veld toward the cultural village, her tennis shoes slapping the hard pathway, the betrothal beads rattling in her bag like a curse. She ducked into the gate, under a pair of crossed elephant tusks and a sun-bleached sign written in English. Passed a small bus, red with dust, the driver sitting behind the wheel reading a newspaper. A handful of sweating white people flicked through postcards in the shade of a reed gazebo. She saw Richard, in his skins and plumage, his fat belly leading him toward her.

Sunday sank to her knees. "I'm sorry, father. The taxi was late."

"Stand, daughter, stand." She got to her feet and risked a glance up at him. He had never called her that before, used the term of respect. "Is it true that you are to marry
Induna
Mazibuko this weekend?" Respect and something else in his voice. Fear.

She nodded. "Yes, father."

"Then it is not fitting for you to do the maiden's dance. You will demonstrate the loom weaving and help with the beer ceremony. And make sure you wear your betrothal beads, do you hear me?"

"Yes, father." She bobbed and turned and hurried away to change.

How the word
induna
had flowed off Richard's tongue. Headman. Advisor to the chief. A man feared in these parts. She knew the old man by another name. Inja. Dog. That suited him far better. Like one of those scavenging mongrels down in Bhambatha's Rock, blue tongues panting, skinny ribs poking through mangy fur. The thought of his hands on her body made her want to vomit.

Then she saw something that cheered her. The small car belonging to Sipho, the AIDS educator from Durban was parked in the shadow of the bus. There was no sign of Sipho, but she knew he would be in the vicinity, handing out the English papers nobody here could read.

Sunday sleepwalked her way through the next hour. Sat on a grass mat, her breasts covered by a bib of skin, as befitted a betrothed woman. The beads clutching at her throat. She weaved cloth on a wooden loom as the whites took their photos, her fingers moving automatically, braiding the colored strands, her mind far away.

Later she helped to serve traditional gourds of beer to the tourists. The men and women sitting in separate groups, according to custom. The women pretended to sip, grimacing. The men drank the beer and smacked their lips as if they were enjoying it, but looked as if they wanted to spit it out. Richard, as always, threw back a full gourd of the mud colored liquid, patted his belly and burped, flashbulbs exploding as the tourists captured him to take home with them to whatever country made these pink people.

Sunday changed into her day clothes, stuffed the beads in the bag and hurried out to the car park. Sipho sat beside his car, beneath a tree, writing in a book. It was hard to believe he had the sickness. He seemed so young and healthy and his eyes shone when he looked up at her, smiling.

"How are you, Sunday?" He stood, pocketing the notebook.

She gave him a shy smile. "I am well, thank you."

"Are you going to the road?"

She nodded and he opened the car door for her. "Let me give you a ride."

Sunday hesitated. It wasn't proper for a betrothed woman to be with a man unchaperoned, but when she saw nobody was watching she ducked into the car. Sipho closed the door and came around and got behind the wheel.

When he tried to start the car it made a sound like a sick animal. Then the engine caught and he laughed. "One day I'll have something better."

They bumped out onto the sand track that led to the main road where she would find her taxi. This was the third time Sunday had driven in a car. She knew minibus taxis, of course, but only twice before, on church trips, had she been squeezed into the rear seats of old cars, the flesh of the aunties at her side overflowing onto her like brown jelly. To sit up front, alone with a man, was a new experience for her.

"I hear you are to be married this weekend?" Sipho glanced across at her.

She nodded. He saw her expression and said nothing more.

"When are you going home?" she asked.

"In two days. I'm just here to finish my project. I don't think I will be coming back. I'm needed in the city."

Sunday's heart sank. She hardly knew this boy, but the idea of not seeing him again was too much to bear. As if all hope would leave with him. Before she could stop herself she spoke. "Take me with you to Durban. Please."

He was staring at her. "Are you serious?"

"Yes. If I marry this man my life will be over. Please, Sipho."

"But what will you do in Durban? It's not like here."

"I'll do whatever I need to do. Please. I beg of you."

He put his hand on hers for a second. "I will be here in two days. Same time. If you still want to go, you can come with me. If you change your mind, that's okay."

"I won't change my mind."

They were at the main road. Sunday wished they could turn right and drive out of the valley now. Drive to Durban and a new life. But he stopped the car and she climbed out.

"You're sure of this?" Sipho asked.

"I'm sure."

He waved and pulled away, and she watched as the red road swallowed the little car.

Driving. No idea where. Or for how long. Dell lay under the blanket, hearing the tires on the blacktop. They had left the town behind. No more bleating horns and yelling taxi drivers. The car was out on the open road, moving at a constant speed.

The man in the rear didn't speak again but it was his father. For sure. Dell could smell him. The same smell that had come from the clothes that hung in the bedroom closet of the house he grew up in, heavy with nicotine and booze and something indefinable. The smell of his father. He and his mother left behind in Durban while Goodbread was away killing people. First in Vietnam, and then in a bush war that had brought the superpowers to the ass-end of Africa, lured by Angolan oil.

Goodbread had been part of the CIA's covert "black ops" in Angola until Jimmy Carter had pulled them out. Then he'd joined up with the South Africans, who had their own reasons for trying to bring Marxist Angola down.

Dell lay feeling the vibration of the car but hearing the chatter of a helicopter, back in 1988, in the rear of a South African Air Force Puma, fighting nausea, watching the chopper's shadow skim the yellow dunes of the Namib desert. The seats had been removed and Dell sat on the floor, his head throbbing with stale booze and avgas.

Two South African crewmen upfront and five men in the rear with Dell. An Angolan with one empty eye socket. A feral looking Afrikaner. A child-size bushman as wrinkled as a tortoise. A Cuban prisoner of war. And Earl Robert Goodbread.

Since midnight, when Dell – up in South West Africa reporting on the last days of the bush war – had run into his father in a beer hall in Windhoek, he'd heard Bobby Goodbread holding forth in Portuguese, German and Afrikaans.

"Languages are like goddam viruses, boy. I just pick them up," Goodbread had told him on one of the rare occasions he'd been home when Dell was a kid.

And now he was speaking Spanish to the Cuban MiG pilot who had been shot down and paraded before the media in Windhoek. The Cuban sat with his back to the chopper door, staring into his lap, his hands cuffed before him. Goodbread, wearing faded brown fatigues, crouched beside him. At fifty he was tanned and muscular, good looking in a craggy Clint Eastwood way. White teeth exposed in a
fuck you
grin.

Dell caught the word "
niños
" above the smack of the rotors. This got the Cuban looking up and he nodded, mumbled in Spanish. Dell thought he heard "
dos
." The prisoner held his cuffed hands level with his head, then a little higher, showing the height of his two kids. Trying out an uncertain smile. He was dark-haired, with an almost pretty face. Bruised around the left eye.

Goodbread said something and pointed at Dell. The Cuban said in English, "This is your son?"

"
Si,
" Goodbread said.

"Okay. I can see it."

Goodbread laughed. Dell shut his eyes. The night before he'd been out drinking with a guy from the
New York
Times
, knew it was time to leave when the beerhall started spinning and the correspondent lost his tongue down the throat of hooker who looked like Grace Jones. As Dell pushed through the crowd he felt somebody grip his arm. Turned and looked into his father's face.