Dust Devils (33 page)

Zondi awoke thinking of his mother's funeral. Saw dusty men clutching at frayed ropes, lowering her coffin into red soil that lay hacked open like flesh. An expensive casket, more than he could afford at the time, but still it had been scorned by his family.

Zondi sat up.
A coffin is a fucking coffin, man. You're sounding like the idiots in this valley.
The place was dragging him back.

He quit the bed, the doctor's sweat and Gitanes still clinging to the sheets. He showered and dressed. Packed his duffel bag. Left the room. Slipped the key under the Belgian's door and got out of there. Rattled away in the Ford, the town disappearing in his dust.

Telling himself this even as his hands turned the wheel, the Ford bumping off the main road, driving across the rutted earth to the place where he had buried his mother. Just over the hill from last night's bloodletting. Trying to push away flashes of the eviscerated old man, the burning truck, and the girl held captive in the convoy that drove off into the night.

Zondi stopped the Ford at the base of a hillock. Feet had worn a pathway up to a graveyard that perched on a fissured ridge, dry as chicken dust. He sat a while in the truck, waving away flies. As if he was waiting for something to tell him exactly what the fuck he was doing out here. Impatient with himself, he pushed open the door and walked up the hill to talk to his dead mother.

Zondi arrived at the top of the footpath. Stood lost in the vast fungus of white wooden crosses that grew from the dust. Evidence of the plague that had swept this valley. He wandered through the makeshift markers and the fresh red mounds, until he found a solitary headstone. His mother's. A small lump of badly hewn granite that seemed ostentatious among these pauper's graves. Years after her death, still plagued by guilt, he'd commissioned masons in Dundee to carve and place the headstone. He'd sent money down from Johannesburg and promised himself he'd visit the grave for an unveiling ceremony. He never had. Zondi was ashamed to see that his mother's name was misspelled.

He squatted down. Awkward. Waved a fly away from his head. Looked out over the sea of listing crosses. He'd done this, as a boy. Spoken to the ancestors. Talking to the ancestors was commonplace in African culture. No big deal. And not just out here in the sticks. In Jo'burg slick execs in silk suits – newly rich from black empowerment coups – drove their Beemers and Benzes across to the sprawling Avalon cemetery in Soweto, muted their cell phones and hunkered down to rap with the dead.

So there he sat. Not knowing where to start, or what to say. But knowing he needed something. Some help.
Think of it as a meditation
, he told himself. Like the Buddhists in their charnel houses. Opening themselves up to the notion of non-attachment.
You're dressing it up, man. You're Zulu to your bones. Just do it.

He closed his eyes. Felt a breeze on the back of his neck. Opened his eyes. Still sensed the coolness on his skin but the dust lay unstirred. That kind of breeze was a sign that the spirits were with you, or so the superstition went. He laughed. Unconvincingly.

Closed his eyes again. Heard something, almost like a footfall. Kept his eyes shut. Let it play out. Heard the rasp of a weapon being cocked. Opened one eye. Looked up into the dark mouth of a pistol and saw Robert Dell beyond it. Wild eyed. Dusty. Caked with dried blood.

The black guy stayed cool. Not stressing. "Put the gun down."

Dell kept the pistol on him. "Who are you?"

"The name's Disaster Zondi."

"You're bullshitting me."

"Would I lie about something like that?"

Dell had to concede the point. The guy was definitely city. Very Jo'burg in his Diesels and his designer shades. Spoke with that slightly Americanized drawl a lot of the black hipsters affected.

"Put that thing away, you're making me nervous," Zondi said.

Dell's arm dropped, then jumped right back up again, like it was on a spring. "Give me your gun."

"I'm not armed."

"Everybody in this fucking place is armed. Give."

Zondi reached for his weapon and held it out, butt first. Dell took the gun. Not sure what to do with it. Kept it in his left hand. Felt dizzy. Lowered himself down onto the headstone.

"That's my mother's grave you're sitting your ass on."

Dell stood. Swayed. Felt like an idiot. Jammed Zondi's gun into his waistband. Too many guns. "Are you a cop?"

"Do I look like a cop?"

"Maybe one of those overeducated types the national prosecutor recruited."

Zondi snorted. "Okay, I was. Not any more."

"What do you do now?"

"I'm on sabbatical."

"Down here in the ass-end of the world?"

"I'm on a mercy mission."

"The girl?

"Yes. The girl."

"And what's your interest in her?" Dell asked.

Saw Zondi's eyes flicker behind the shades. "She's the daughter of an old friend."

"Yesterday, at that Zulu village, the girl didn't act as if she knew you."

Zondi shrugged. "I was about to introduce myself, then you and your cowboy daddy came riding in."

Dell looked at him for a while. Trying to figure this out. "You know who I am?"

"Yes."

"Then you know what Inja Mazibuko did to my family?"

"I've got an idea."

"And you want to take this girl away from him?"

"Yes."

"Then maybe we're on the same side here."

Zondi shook his head, little flares of sun firing the rims of his glasses. "This isn't a fucking buddy movie, man." He stared out over the landscape, watching a dust devil spin and weave. Looked back at Dell. "What are you planning to do to Inja?"

"Kill him."

"Inja's a warlord. You think you can just waltz in on him and plug him?" Dell said nothing. "Do you even know where he is?"

"I can find him."

Zondi stared up at him, impassive. "That white skin of yours is like a beacon. You won't last till lunchtime." He stood and held out a manicured hand. "Can I have my gun back now?"

Dell thought about it, then gave him the weapon. Zondi started walking away.

"Where are you going?" Dell asked.

"To the wedding. You coming?"

Dell followed him.

Sunday saw her aunt, thin as a twist of root, dragging her crippled leg as she danced and howled around the cooking fire. Saw the old dog, wandering scrawny and proud through the smoke, beads layering his bony chest, his loins covered by a short skirt of skins, animal fur circling his upper arms and calves.

Saw the dignitaries from the valley as they stood in line to pay their respects to the dog, bowing before him. Men in traditional clothes or black suits stiff as cardboard. Married women in red hats and beaded aprons, Reeboks and Nikes sticking out from under their blankets if they were wealthy, feet bare and cracked if they weren't.

Saw the unmarried virgins, heavy brown breasts bare to the sun, sneaking envious glances at the bride, wondering how such a skinny thing had landed the wealthy and powerful
Induna
Mazibuko.

And Sunday saw herself sitting on the straw mat, face covered by the veil woven into her hair, a symbol of her servitude to the old dog. Felt as if she was looking down from high above the kraal, circling the sky with the vultures. Like she was already dead.

Zondi drove the Ford back toward the main road, Dell rode shotgun. Zondi sneaked a glance at his passenger. He looked like shit and stank worse. Gray stubble clashing with the bad dye job. Bruises of exhaustion beneath his eyes. Zondi had seen how Dell's hand had shaken when he'd pointed the gun at him. Worried that he'd pull the trigger without knowing it.

"Zondi?"

"Ja?"

"You believe the minister ordered the hit on Baker?" Dell asked.

"I'm a hundred fucking percent sure he did," Zondi said. "Baker was going to go public with a paper trail of all the bribes and payoffs in return for immunity from prosecution. Not even the minister could have dodged that bullet."

Dell stared out over the empty landscape. "So you people were watching Ben Baker for a while?"

This guy and his reporter's habit of asking questions were getting to Zondi. He wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up. Better yet he wanted to stop the Ford and throw him out. Leave his dead white ass behind. But some voice – surely to God not his mother's? – told him that he'd asked for help. And he'd been sent Dell.

Zondi looked at him. "Where are you going with this?"

The white guy stared out the window. "Baker and my wife were having an affair."

"I know." Dell watching him now. "She featured in our surveillance reports."

"For how long?"

"Maybe five or six months."

"Christ."

"Dell, did you love your wife?"

"Yes."

"Then let it go," Zondi said. "Baker bought people. That was his thing. Believe me, your wife wasn't the only one."

"I just can't see it, you know? Rosie and him. Hell, he wasn't even her type."

"Let it go, man. She fucked up. Strayed. She would have come home."

"Maybe," Dell said. "But she didn't have the chance to."

"No, she didn't."

They hit the main road and Zondi turned away from town. Saw a store sticking up out of the dust like a scab. Stopped the Ford a distance from the entrance.

"I'm going to get us something to eat and drink," Zondi said, cracking the door. "Stay here. And stay low." He stepped out of the car and walked away.

Dell almost fell asleep. His chin bumped his chest, jerking him awake. He sat up straight. Glimpsed a shape at his side window, reached for the gun. Saw a kid, face caked with snot and flies, whining in Zulu, holding out his hands like a begging bowl. Dell dug out the banknote the old man had refused and handed it to the boy. Mistake. Within seconds the Ford was mobbed by a crowd of begging children.