Dust Devils (22 page)

The fat woman stepped up to Sunday, lifted a heavy arm and slapped her across the face. Tears sprang from her eyes. She blinked them away. Determined not to let this rhinoceros see her cry.

"You are a little slut. Just like your mother. Now go into the hut and take off those clothes so I can burn them also. Then wash yourself of your filth."

The big man set Sunday down in the hut and Auntie Mavis closed the door from outside. A bucket of water stood on the floor. A dress like a sack, in some coarse rural fabric, was draped over the back of the sofa, flanked by a pair of outsize brown panties and a white bra. Sunday had never worn a bra and knew her small breasts would be lost in that contraption.

She stripped off her jeans, panties and T-shirt and kneeled down and washed her face in the bucket. The door opened and the fat woman took her clothes and slammed out again. While her face was wet, Sunday allowed the tears to come and she felt as if they would never stop, would flow down the hill and flood the parched and ugly town that festered in the valley below.

When Zondi awoke sunlight poked through holes in the drapes and he could hear the taxis honking for business in the main road. His body itched, his head ached and he was powerfully thirsty but he felt stronger than he had the day before. Less dislocated. He reached down for the plastic bottle of water beside the bed and emptied it. Checked his phone. No signal.

He took his toiletry bag across to the sink and lifted out a fresh bar of Roger and Gallet soap. Stripped naked and ran the single faucet. Cold water. The basin was stained and stank from being used as a urinal. An eroded chunk of green Sunlight soap lay beside the faucet, a stylized rising sun molded into the surface. Zondi had no intention of letting the soap anywhere near his skin, but he lifted it to his nose and smelled his childhood.

For generations this soap had been used to wash bodies and clothing and linen in rural South Africa. His earliest memories were of his mother carrying him on her back, held close to her flesh by a blanket. She would sing to him as she went about her chores. Her voice, the warmth of her body and the scent of the soap sending him to a place more peaceful than he had known since.

Unable to resist the temptation he scrubbed the bar of Sunlight under the water, forced away images of the countless assholes and groins the soap had visited, and lathered his body, feeling the bedbug bites like Braille beneath his fingers. Rinsed and toweled himself. He ignored the bottle of Hugo Boss cologne lying in his bag, not wanting to mask this smell that made him feel almost happy.

Zondi flossed, brushed his teeth and dressed in a fresh pair of Diesels and a linen shirt. Shook his Reeboks to dislodge any scorpion that had nested in them overnight and slipped them on. Zipped his duffel bag and left the room.

He locked the bag in the trunk of his car and crossed to the phone container. Vusi kept vigil over the telephones. He smiled and stood when Zondi entered, keen to sniff another banknote.

"These phones," Zondi said, pointing to the instruments. "Do they display their number if I call a cell phone?"

"No, sir. Nothing shows up."

Zondi nodded and took the phone farthest from the door, dialed M.K. Moloi's number. It was answered after two rings. "Moloi."

"You know who this is?" Speaking English.

"Uh-huh. Are you still in Bhambatha's Rock?"

Zondi had to hide his surprise. "Yes."

"At a pay phone?"

"Yes."

"Give me the number there and I'll call you."

Zondi read out the digits printed on the wall above the instrument. The line went dead and he replaced the receiver. Within seconds the phone was purring.

Zondi lifted it. "How did you know where I was?"

Heard a chuckle. "You're in Zululand, my friend. And you know how it is with you Zulus: you're either born an assassin or a spy." Moloi was a Tswana. Another breed entirely.

"What do you want?" Zondi asked.

"Your trip down there, it have anything to do with our canine friend?" Moloi had spent a few years at Harvard and there were traces of Boston in his accent. An affectation that had always irritated Zondi.

"No," Zondi said. His cards tucked close to his chest.

"Be advised that we have our eye on him."

"Who's we?"

"A faction that respects the rule of law." Another chuckle. "He was down in Cape Town for a few days. Taking care of business. Or rather a businessman. You getting me here?"

Zondi was. Ben Baker. A chink in Inja's master's armor that had needed to be secured. "Loudly."

"All I'm saying, good buddy, is that if you stumble over anything interesting you loop me in. It could be to your advantage."

"Sorry. I'm out of here today."

"Pity. Anyway, let's have a drink when you're home. Matters of mutual interest and all of that good stuff." Zondi was left with the dial tone in his ear.

He walked out and stood on the sidewalk, not seeing the dust and the filth and the goats and the taxis. Seeing lines that were being drawn up in Jo'burg and Pretoria. A battle was looming. No blood would be shed but it would be ruthless all the same.

Waking up was the worst. Dell hadn't realized how dependent he'd become on the warmth of his wife's body and the wriggling aliveness of the twins as they snuck in early and burrowed beneath the blankets to join their parents. He shut down the memory.

He sat on the tailgate of the truck, eyes still gummed with sleep, scratching at his stubble, staring out over hundreds of roofless little cinderblock boxes that spread across the dry veld. Empty doorways and windows without glass. Anything of value looted and hauled away. A stalled housing development for the rural poor. Invisible when he'd driven the truck off the road the night before, so exhausted he was almost comatose.

He looked for Goodbread and saw the old man over in the scrub, crouching. Probably taking a shit. Used to bushwhacking. Dell reached back into the truck and found water. Had a drink. Rinsed his mouth and spat onto the sand. He hadn't brushed his teeth in a couple of days and his tongue felt like it was growing a carpet of fur.

He heard the chime of glass and saw his father walking toward him, carrying three dusty beer bottles in each hand. Watched as he set the empty bottles on a mound a few paces from the truck. Goodbread reached beneath his shirt, produced a handgun and cocked it.

All Dell knew about guns was that he wanted nothing to do with them. He'd never so much as touched one in his enforced stint in the military. Or since. Yes, he'd used his fists over the years. Not very well. And he once threw a half-brick at a cop during an anti-apartheid march. Missed. So, a pacifist. Kind of. Definitely no guns. Ever.

When his friends, aging liberals pissed off after endless burglaries and carjackings went and bought guns, he'd shaken his head. Flat out refused. Just like he refused to change his stance on the reintroduction of the death penalty. Murder by the state was still murder.

He heard the weapon firing twice in quick succession and two bottles exploded. Then the old man waved him over. Dell hesitated. "Come on, boy. I reckon it's time."

Maybe it was.

He walked across to his father. Goodbread held the gun out to Dell and he took it, feeling the surprising heft of the weapon.

"Shoot one of the bottles." The old man pointed a trembling finger at the empties on the mound.

Dell lifted the gun and aimed. Tense as he squeezed the trigger. Felt the compressed power of the thing bucking in his hands. Missed.

Goodbread said, "Use both hands and just imagine you're pointing a finger at the bottle. Squeeze the trigger. You're not jerking yourself off, boy."

Breathed. Relaxed. Lifted the gun and pointed it. Squeezed. Glass exploded. Arced the barrel to the next bottle and the next. Hit all four targets.

"Jesus," Goodbread said. "Either that's one hell of a piece of dumb luck or you're a natural, son." Smiling his death's-head smile. "'Least you got something from me."

Dell handed the gun to Goodbread, butt first. "So, you reckon you still a pacifist?" the old man asked, feeding rounds into the magazine.

Dell, back in the mortuary for a moment, said, "No."

"Bottles are one thing. You going to be able to pull that trigger when flesh and blood is in front of you?"

"Yes."

"You sure now? You not gonna get yourself all dizzied-up from turning the other cheek?"

"No."

His father held the loaded weapon out to him. "Then I believe this is yours."

Dell took the gun.

Zondi sat in an eating house on the main road of Bhambatha's Rock. His BMW was parked outside, gassed up and ready to take him home, starbursts of hard light kicking off the windshield, patterning the grimy ceiling of the diner. He was going to eat breakfast and then he was going back to Jo'burg. He owed a debt to nobody. Least of all a peasant girl he didn't even know.

The place was already doing good business, plastic tables full of noisy men busy with plates of food. Zondi ate maize porridge, spinach, potato and beans. The food was good, bringing back more memories of his childhood, and he found himself setting aside his plastic fork and eating with his hands, forming little balls with the maize and the gravy.

The room went quiet as if somebody had hit a mute button and Zondi looked up to see a group of men block the light as they stepped into the doorway. Recognized the skinny man surrounded by five of his crew, automatic weapons dangling from their hands. Vusi from the phone kiosk was prodded into the eating house by one of the gun barrels. His face slack with fear.

Inja swept the room with his arm. "Everybody out. Move! Move!" That big voice, coming from the runt of a man.

People were already standing up from tables, hurrying toward the door, toppling plastic chairs in their haste.

Inja's finger skewered Zondi. "Not you, my friend. You sit."

Zondi stayed where he was, hands on the tabletop, swallowing a mouthful of food. The staff left their stations, none of them daring to look Inja in the eye, and followed the last of the patrons out. One of Inja's men closed the door and in the silence Zondi could hear fat bubbling in a pan back in the kitchen.

Inja sat down opposite Zondi, shot the cuffs of his check sport jacket, put his elbows on the table. "Zondi."

"Inja."

Zondi hadn't seen Inja Mazibuko in the flesh in more than twenty years. Not that there was much flesh to see. The man was older, but if anything he seemed even more spare than he had as a teenager. His face gray. His eyes yellow and bloodshot. A white residue caked his cracked lips like scum on a pond.

"What are you doing back here?" Inja asked.

"Just visiting."

Inja sucked his teeth, nodding. Jerked his head toward Vusi. "He says you were in the phone shop with a fax of my wedding invite. Asking questions."

Zondi looked up at Vusi, who couldn't meet his eye. Saw the sweat rolling down the man's face. Listened to the fat spitting in the kitchen. Heard a meat fly circling somewhere behind him.