Cruel Crazy Beautiful World (21 page)

He thinks of Nina and how cool and crazy she’d been. If he survives this, he’ll go and see her in hospital.

On the horizon he sees a luminous hint of dawn. If the skull did not pop up out of the dark soon, they’d have to abandon their plan. It all hung on timing. Zulus always raided at dawn, Zero had said, to catch their foe out in that murky, eye-tricking time when it is no longer night and not yet day. And on this dawn of the day after Christmas, the gunmen would be doubly muddy-headed from boozing hard. That’s what Zero’s gambling on. For a few miles now there’d been a loaded stillness in the Benz. Zero had switched off the radio and Canada Dry had run out of jokes.

If he fails to find the skull, not only will he have put Zero and his crew out, but there was a good chance old Jonas would die on that damned farm.

And then the Benz’s headlights illuminate the skull: sinister and grinning.

– Whoa! The skull! Jabulani cries.

– Cool, says Zero.

–
Bang, bang
, goes Canada Dry.

Jabulani is amazed Ghost Cowboy left the ox skull hanging. Perhaps he wanted to lure Jabulani to a showdown.

Zero blinks to signal to the Cherokee. They halt maybe half a mile beyond the skull. They kill the lights and go by foot along the tar and then along the dirt road to the farm. After a mile or so the road becomes an avenue through high, raggedy bluegums. At the end of the tunnel of trees is the farmhouse, ghostly in this looming dawn. To Jabulani this is a rerun of Bloemfontein.

Zero goes over the plan: Phoenix is to go ahead to
defuse the dogs
with his darts. Zero is to swing round to the east through the veld so he’ll be silhouetted by the rising sun. Canada Dry and Dove Bait are to stay put on this road, hidden behind the bluegums, to cut off this escape route. Jabulani’s job is to swing west through the veld and somehow warn the Zimbabweans trapped in the barn ... before the bullets begin to fly.

Jabulani tiptoes gingerly through the veld, scared of cracking a stick or snagging on a tripwire. He hears a two-toned iambic grunt and halts dead in his tracks. Another porcupine? A warthog? Then he figures it was the choked-off bark of one of the Dobermann dogs. Then he hears a curt bark, followed by a yelp fading to a whine. The other dog down, darted. A deep voice – from the farmhouse? – tells the dogs to
voetsek
. Jabulani sucks in a draft of air, holds it.

Now he runs flat out over the bare veld behind the barn, his borrowed boots chocking against stones, chipping the hard husk off anthills.

As he runs, he recalls how a steenbok had somehow got into a tennis court at the school in Bulawayo and how the schoolboys had taunted it: gaping-eyed, bat-eared, jittery-footed and absurdly out of context. It was the most vulnerable thing he’d ever seen until now. He feels as if he’s haring across a firing range. He steels himself for the bite of a bullet. But no bullet is shot and now he’s up against the far wall of the barn, gasping for air.

– Hey, Jonas! he calls through the wood joints of the barn. Jonas!

– Yo! Jonas cries.

You can tell he thinks it’s a ghost or a hobgoblin come for him.

– Happy Christmas, Jonas. This is Jabulani.

– Hey, teacher! You survived! You fetched the police?

– No police. Just a few men.

How is he to describe them? Layabout vigilantes? Laid-back desperados? Tarantino types?

Jabulani hears sighs of disillusionment from the captives.

– But they are hard-core heroes.

There’s a rippling murmur of hope from the Zimbabweans.

– When you hear shots I want you to hack your way out this side of the barn. You still got that watermelon
panga
?

– I got it.

– Where will you go?

– I go home to my wife in Zimbabwe. I go home empty-handed but I am too old for this. I will bake bread again if there is any flour to be found.

– I will see you, Jonas.

Now the sun’s surfacing and Jabulani will be lit up the moment he juts his head round the corner. He puts his gun in his pocket and inches along on all fours to peek around. A bullet whizzes just over his head. Jabulani plucks his head back into the shaded lee of the barn. His heart beats frenziedly. Now he hears a volley of bemused shouts from the farmhouse and the muted murmurs of the Zimbabweans in the barn.

What happened to Phoenix? He took out the dogs, but how can a gunman be free to take a potshot at him? Perhaps Phoenix hadn’t seen him and the guy was zoned out on a deckchair by the pool or the tennis court until the dog barked.

He wonders if Zero has got to the farmhouse yet.

Now Jabulani hears another shot. He figures Phoenix got the sniper. And then follows another volley of shots. Perhaps one of the other gunmen has gone down. There’s a fermata of surreal silence, before the world explodes with gunfire.

Now he hears the roar of a motor. The army troop truck. The sound of the motor fades slightly. Then he hears shots and the motor cutting out. That’d be Canada Dry and Dove Bait waylaying the truck.

He takes another look round the corner. No one shoots at him. As he edges along the wall of the barn he hears the staccato sound of Jonas’s
panga
blade biting into the wood of the barn and the muddled voices of the Zimbabweans.

At the far end of the barn he looks out onto the farmyard. Phoenix is hiding behind a tipped wheelbarrow, drawing all the flak from the farmhouse. Two dogs and a fallen gunman lie bleeding in the dust. Another gunman is in the swimming pool, tinting the water red.

Jabulani draws his gun. He sees Zero walking along the roof of the farmhouse.

Ghost Cowboy comes out of the house, holding a knife to the throat of the young black girl Jabulani howled for. Ghost Cowboy has a handgun in his free hand. They head towards the zebra-striped Land Rover.

Shots from Ghost Cowboy’s gun spark off the barrow.

They dance a weird, spinning waltz, Ghost Cowboy and the girl, over the yard. She’s got this white Rolling Stones T-shirt on with the image of that long, red, lolling tongue. The knife cuts a gill slit in her skin and blood filters out till the outlines of the tongue blur.

Jabulani draws a bead on Ghost Cowboy but dares not fire.

The hinges of the Land Rover door whine a high note. Ghost Cowboy flashes a defiant smile at his foes. At that instant of fuck-you cockiness Jonas jumps out from behind him like some mad samurai Puck. He swings his
panga
down through the albino’s head to his eyes. There’s a hiatus of horror before blood flows profusely and the girl’s cry skirls to the sky.

Then the girl falls and a gut shot from Zero or Phoenix fells the cowboy. He kneels in the dust, the
panga
blade jutting out from his forehead, blood masking his face. He lets the knife go, turns the gun on himself, but his hand quivers too violently and he just shoots off an ear.

He’s still alive when half a dozen Zimbabweans who did not skedaddle into the veld converge on him. They snatch the gun out of his hand, draw the
panga
blade out of his head and toss him over the wire to the crocodiles. Somehow he finds his feet again. Blood-blinded, he capers haphazardly till he falls into the pond. No killing frenzy follows, no deadly, scaly torpedoes zoom in on him through the water. The crocodiles have learnt long ago that there’s nowhere for their prey to go.

Jonas hovers over the girl, dabbing up the blood with a hanky, soothing her with motherly clickings of his tongue.

Canada Dry and Dove Bait rumble up in the troop truck in time to see a giant crocodile dawdle-hobble along the rim of the pond. To see it catch Ghost Cowboy’s flapping forearm in its jaw, toss its head up and tug off the arm as you might pluck a drumstick from a chicken, or pull a Christmas cracker apart. Another flick of its head and the arm’s gone.

– Far out, chirps Canada Dry.

Jabulani fires two shots into Ghost Cowboy to end his pain. Each of the shots jigs his torso to and fro in the shallows.

The Zimbabweans stand hat in hand. Despite all he did to them, they bow to a man who died so macabre a death without crying out.

Jabulani’s eyes pan the farmyard. The carnage reminds him of the ending of Hamlet.

The girl revives.

Dove Bait stares longingly at her. You can tell he wishes to have her as a memento.

– Pity about the guy in the pool. It’s a beautiful day for a swim, chirps Canada Dry.

– You and Dove Bait fish him out, Zero commands. Chuck all the corpses over the wire to the crocs.

– And the dogs?

– Shoot them, Canada. Then they too go over.

– But ... but they’re
innocent
.

– How so?

– They’re just dogs.

– You have a gift, jokes Zero. If I’m ever in the dock I’ll call you to get me off the hook. Fact is, they’ll starve otherwise. This way they won’t feel a thing.

– Not my old dog, begs Jonas. Let him go with me to Zimbabwe.

– Just the darted dogs, says Zero.

The Zimbabweans don their hats again.

– Phoenix. Get these Zimbos to give you a hand loading this truck to the hilt with marijuana.

– That’s a lot of dope, chirps Canada Dry.

– Leave space behind the cab for whoever wants to catch a ride down to Cape Town.

And to Jonas:

– You get to ride in that funky, zebra Land Rover. You and your dog. Just ditch it before the border.

– Daughter, you come home with me, Jonas says to the girl.

Dove Bait looks gutted.

Jabulani, aside, to Zero:

– You want to ferry a cargo of dope down the highway?

– I feel lucky, tunes Zero.

A crow flies up from roadkill: a fluffy, flat scab that was a jackal or a dog.

Jabulani interprets this as an ominous sign.

The news at noon:

RADIO
: An earthquake off the island of Sumatra in Indonesia was felt as far as India and Myanmar. The force of the earthquake registered as high as nine on the Richter scale. A tsunami triggered by the earthquake has devastated the coastlines of Sri Lanka and India. The Thai islands of Koh Phi Phi and Phuket have been hit hard and the lives of scores of locals and holidaymakers have been lost. A run-up of fourteen metres was reported in Cape Coral, Thailand.

Zero’s verdict: This is radical, man.

– How come such things always happen in Asia or Africa or somewhere poor?

– That’s a good question, teacherman. You got me.

At that moment Zero sees a spinning blue light up ahead.

– Fuck. Roadblock.

– I thought you felt lucky, says Jabulani.

Zero just glares at Jabulani. His mind’s spinning. He has something to trade but that’d just be shooting himself in the foot. And it’d be wiser to kowtow and bow his fool head than to haggle hard.

A spindly young policeman signals their convoy to a halt with his rifle.

In his mind Zero inventories the contraband they have on board: an arsenal of unlicensed guns, a hijacked army truck loaded to the hilt with dope to send him on a high for as long as Mandela spent in jail, a looted jeep, nine illegal aliens, and then there’s Phoenix, a wanted killer.

Zero winds down his window.

YOUNG POLICEMAN
: Your licence.

Zero winks at Jabulani. So far so good. His licence is valid.

YOUNG POLICEMAN
: You travelling in convoy?

ZERO
: Yessir.

YOUNG POLICEMAN
: But we are not at war now.

ZERO
: Hijackers, madmen, baboons, aliens.

YOUNG POLICEMAN
: Funny. What do you have in the truck?

ZERO
: Just shit.

YOUNG POLICEMAN
: You being cocky?

ZERO
: No.

The policeman calls on his radio. Before long another, older policeman saunters along.

Jabulani ducks his head to stare at his feet.

DE LA REY
: You called me over?

YOUNG POLICEMAN
: This coloured’s acting white.

De la Rey peers into the Benz and studies Zero, then Jabulani.

DE LA REY
: Freedom, my man!

Jabulani tilts his head to look De la Rey in the eyes.

DE LA REY
: You travelling again?

Zero’s gobsmacked.

JABULANI
: Just seeing the country.

DE LA REY
: It’s a beautiful country, hey Freedom?

You can tell the young policeman feels let down.

YOUNG POLICEMAN
: Sir, this coloured told me they got
shit
in the truck.

DE LA REY
: Just be cool, sarge. I have this in hand.

He studies Zero’s licence.

DE LA REY
: Tell me, Zero Cupido, that
shit
of yours you say you got on board, is it good shit or bad shit?

The sarge wiggles a finger in his ear as if hoping to free it of wax.

ZERO
: Good.

DE LA REY
: Sarge, let them go. This Zimbo called Freedom’s a teacher. He’s a good man.

The sarge slinks off, sulking at being put down in front of a coloured.

DE LA REY
: Hey Freedom, you heard that Pajero chick survived?

JABULANI
: I saw it in the papers.

DE LA REY
: I radioed folk up north to track down your marijuana farm. They never found it.

JABULANI
: I think perhaps I imagined it after all.

DE LA REY
: I thought so. Maybe you doped too hard? Funny thing is that chick’s gone too. No longer in hospital. Magically healed, maybe.

JABULANI
: That amazes me.

DE LA REY
: Makes you wonder if she wasn’t some kind of fairy godmother, hey? You go now. Stay off that drug. And have a good trip.

To Zero this sounds paradoxical, but he just nods ta to De la Rey and fires up the Benz.

In the rearview Zero sees the Cherokee and the troop truck following. And he sees old De la Rey waving as if seeing off his kin on a long journey.