The Quarry (7 page)

Later he ran into Harry. Harry worked with them sometimes. He was a large man with a black eye-patch and fingers that were thickened with rings. He had heard the news, he told Small.
‘Everybody heard.’

‘Where’s Valentine?’ Small said.

‘They got him.’

‘The
boere
?’

‘
Ja.
They took him down to the station.’

Small sat down on the kerb to consider this news. He held his head in his hands.

They were at the side of a road. The road was at the edge of the township. Behind them there were houses in geometrical rows and before them the veld stretched away. The sun came vertically
down.

‘
Wat moet ons nou maak?
’

Harry smirked. ‘
Ek weet nie wat jy moet maak nie.
Me, I’m not doing anything.’

Small started to cry. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

‘
Jy’s vol blare
.’

He picked at the leaves on his shirt. He stopped crying and Harry sat down next to him. They stared out over the grass.

‘Is it because of the car?’

‘I think it is.’

They sat in the sun. Time passed.

‘What about the
boom
?’ said Harry.

‘In the house?’

‘No, man. The other place.’

Small thought.

‘Do you think he will tell them?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why will he tell them?’

‘I don’t know.’

A wagon came past in the road. A horse was in the traces, its head down. An old man sat on the wagon with a frayed whip in his hand. He looked at them as he went past. There was dust.

‘It’s hot,’ Small said.

‘
Kom ons gaan kry ’n drankie.
’

They went to a room nearby. It was cool inside and there were wooden tables and faded prints on the wall. They drank beer. Harry paid.

‘Do you think he will say about the
dagga
?’

‘
Ek weet nie
. What do you think?’

‘Why will he say?’

Harry lifted one fist significantly and brought it down on the table. Both of them looked at the fist.

‘No,’ Small said.

They drank more.

‘Maybe we must go there.’

Harry smirked again. ‘And do what?’

‘Pull it up. Throw it away.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ Harry said.

Small set out for the quarry in the mid-afternoon. His shadow stretched out in front of him. He had never gone there in daylight before and he kept looking furtively behind him. But nobody else
was around and the landscape lay passive in the sun. Even the road was untravelled.

At this hour there was still light in the quarry. One side of it was in shadow but across the rock face on the other side the sun burned yellow and steady and the ground was hot to the touch. He
went down by the usual path and at first he walked in the light but by the time he had descended halfway he was overtaken by shadow and it was blue and cool at the bottom. The gnarled trees
crouched in their attitudes of stasis and the rocks lay inert and watchful.

Small spoke to himself and answered.

‘What smells like that?’

‘Like what?’

‘Can’t you smell something?’

‘No, man. Let’s hurry.’

He went through the defile to the bank of weeds. The plants were green and prolific. He knelt down and started uprooting them in handfuls, undoing the work that they’d done. He threw them
down in a pile on the ground that gradually mounted and swelled.

‘Will Valentine mind?’ he said to himself.

‘No,’ he said. ‘He’ll be proud.’

Then the bank was clear. The plants lay in a matted mass, wilting slowly in the air. He stood there a moment looking down at the bare soil, panting and sweating from his labour. His hands were
dirty with earth.

‘What are we going to put them in?’

‘We can’t leave them here.’

‘Isn’t there a bag or a packet or something?’

‘Look around. Maybe there’s something lying around.’

Small went back through the defile into the garden on the other side. The vine grew up along the cliff-face with its burden of intermittent flowers. They gave off a scent. But there was another
smell on the air that mingled with the scent of the flowers and it was redolent of decay and putrefaction and it was sourceless, this smell. He walked around a little. Then he came to the hole.

He stood at the edge, looking down. There was a pyramid of rocks. Nothing else could be seen but there was a stench on the air and flies were thickly clustered like grapes.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know what it is.’

‘Let’s go.’

He stood there. The shadow had reached the top of the quarry and the sky was cooling now.

Small climbed down into the hole. He stood there, helpless and looking. Then he reached out and took a stone from the pile and dropped it down heavily behind him.

‘What is it?’ Small said.

‘I don’t know what it is.’

Flies rose droning around him and the miasma of corruption was sweet. Small stood rigid, his body poised to run while he worked. He lifted the stones and dropped them. In time the truth was
uncovered.

‘
Jissus
. No. No.
Jissus.
’

He got out of the hole. He was sweating and his hands were shaking. He stood there, staring down. Then he got back into the hole and continued with what he was doing. He picked up the rocks and
he dropped them.

An arm, a shoulder were apparent.

‘I’m going to be sick,’ Small said.

He went faster and faster. Then he stopped. He leaned against the side of the hole and covered his face with his hand.

A pebble hit Small on the arm. He looked up. It was close to dusk now and the sky was dark blue in colour but it was still possible to see in outline against it the forms of three men looking
down. They were at the top of the quarry. It was Captain Mong and two others. They were standing very still and in their uniforms and caps they were like models of men. They stood there, looking,
not moving.

In the night there are torches moving and voices calling out in the dark. In the open gravel area at the top of the quarry there are cars parked with their headlights shining
and radios playing and men standing waiting and there are men at the bottom of the quarry, moving with lights among the trees and the boulders. Most of the torches are around the hole in the
ground. There are people in the hole, picking amongst the rocks, shouting out to each other. Photographs are taken. Yellow tape is tied.

At some point a stretcher is carried down the side of the quarry and assembled at the bottom. Then men in plastic gloves with cloths tied over their mouths and noses lift the white form from the
base of the hole and raise it hand over hand and lay it down on the stretcher. It is faceless, sexless, no longer human. It’s covered with a blanket. Then two men take the stretcher and
ascend with it, stopping every little while to rest. They come to the summit in time.

The body is placed in the back of a van and the van is driven away.

Some of the men stay behind.

When dawn breaks everybody has gone except for a solitary policeman who loiters at the bottom of the quarry. He is tired and bored and he slouches against a rock with his cap pushed back on his
head. He yawns and scratches himself and goes wandering around again, whistling to himself.

He stops for a while at the edge of the hole and peers into it. Rocks lie tumbled at the bottom and a few flies buzz aimlessly around. Something has happened here but he doesn’t know what
and he doesn’t particularly care. He has been left to keep watch.

In the café in the town the proprietor leaned on his dirty fridge while he counted change into the till. Late afternoon sun came in through the door. There were people
standing at the counter.

‘In the quarry?’

‘That’s what I heard.’

‘A white man?’

‘That’s what I heard.’

‘I heard a black woman.’

‘And they found him there? Burying it?’

‘Digging it up.’

‘Why would they dig it up?’

‘It’s what I heard.’

There was shuffling and shaking of heads. Someone else came into the shop.

‘Why did they kill her?’

‘For money.’

‘How many of them?’

‘Two.’

‘Four.’

‘Five,’ the proprietor said gravely.

‘Was it a white that they killed?’

‘These people. Jesus. These people.’

‘They should let them know how it feels.’

He stood behind the curtain in his room and watched the policeman at his bike. Captain Mong was shirtless again. He had his back to the man. He was crouched down on the
concrete, a soiled cloth in his hand, polishing. He worked with small violent motions, sweat oozing out of him like wax.

Then he stopped very suddenly, as if an idea had come to him. At first he sat very still. He leaned forward and breathed on the steel and brought the cloth up and rubbed where he had breathed.
He stood slowly and turned. He stayed there quite still with his arms at his sides, looking across the concrete to the house.

The man moved back behind the curtain with his spine to the wall. He was rigid and shivering and his eyes were opened wide. He stood like this without stirring. There was no sound from
outside.

After a while he knelt down at the window and lifted up the bottom of the curtain. The policeman was polishing again. He was crouched as before with his back to the man, his hand moving in those
small violent circles.

A mattress had been thrown down on the floor and Small sat on it, cross-legged, waiting. It was late afternoon. He got up and went to the door and looked out through the bars
into the passage. He couldn’t see anything. He came back and sat down on the mattress again.

He spoke to himself and he answered.

‘They taking a long time with him.’

‘Same as with me,
broer.
’

‘Is it the same?’

‘It’s the same, man.’

Then silence. Small lay back on the mattress. A fly was buzzing near the ceiling somewhere and the sound was thin and persistent. Small pulled at his hands and touched twice at his hair.

‘It’s not the same,’ he said.

There were footsteps in the passage outside. Then a jangling of keys. Small sat up on the bed and he was as stiff as an idol. The door opened and Valentine came in and the door closed behind him
again. The footsteps, the metal keys receded.

Valentine stood there. He was looking down at the floor. Then he went to the edge of the bed and sat down. His hands hung down between his knees.

Small took one of Valentine’s hands. Valentine pulled it away. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said.

In appearance the two brothers didn’t look like each other beyond the eroded blue tattoos on their arms. Small was a tiny man with a hairless freckled body and a high voice that came out
of his nose. He moved in an agitated way. Valentine was the elder by almost ten years and his complexion and his manner were darker. Pale scars ran across one cheek but otherwise his surface was
intact.

‘Did you tell them?’

‘
Ja,
I told them.’

‘What?’

‘I told them everything that happened.’

Valentine lay back on the bed with one arm across his face. His feet were still on the floor.

Small also lay down.

The fly was buzzing near the ceiling still, its drone like a voice without words.

Small started to cry. His sobs were high-pitched and muffled with a thin edge of hysteria to them. He cried like a child. Valentine turned his head to look at him, then rolled his head the other
way.

Small stopped crying. ‘Who is he?’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘That man, that minister man.’

Valentine sat up. ‘He’s not a minister,’ he said.

He stood at the front of the church and waited for the congregation to file out. He was wearing the black robe with the holes burned into it and he had a bible in one hand and
he stood next to the altar, waiting for the church to be empty.

Then everybody had gone except for a single figure near the door. It was dark in that corner and only when he stirred and stepped forward could the minister see who it was. He looked at the
policeman.

‘How long were you watching?’ he said.

‘Ten minutes or so.’

He nodded. The church was lit with candles. He moved from one to the other, blowing them out as he went. Thin trails of smoke rose up behind him. When he came to the last one he picked it up and
walked with it towards the policeman. His face was lit in orange from below.

‘Did you want to talk to me?’ he said.

The policeman nodded. ‘
Ja,
’ he said. ‘I’ve got something to ask you.’

They stood there for a long moment. The minister watched the face of the policeman. Then he blew out the candle and set it aside on a chair.

The policeman said: ‘I’ve got a body in my care. It must be buried.’

‘Yes?’

‘Will you do it?’

‘Oh,’ the man said. ‘Yes. Is that all?’

‘
Ja,
that’s all.’

They continued to stand without moving. They were very close to each other and the man could feel the breath, the heat of the policeman. He moved a little away.

They went out of the church together. He closed and locked the wooden doors behind them. The red motorbike was standing in the centre of the plaza, burning silver in the moonlight, and both of
them stood staring at its shape.

The silence went on too long and neither of them had moved.

The policeman said, ‘Do you want to go for a ride?’

They walked towards the motorbike in tandem, their heels striking simultaneously on the concrete.

‘Where are we going to?’

‘Just for a ride.’

He waited for Captain Mong to get on. He turned the key and kicked down and it started.

He got on to the seat behind him. He had his bible down the front of his shirt. He put his arms around the policeman and pressed his chest to his spine and enclosed in this unlikely embrace the
two men moved forward together. The bike went across the plaza and out at the southern end and they rode without speaking through the dark streets, between the houses.