A HOSPITAL SOMEWHERE SOUTH of Bloemfontein.
Outside: A Karoo roadside dorp. One of the far-apart, dud towns that bead the N1.
Inside: White walls. A grey lino floor. A skew crucifix. A dog-eared Bible. A lone gecko. No flowers.
The pain hauls Jabulani out of a morphine haze.
His hand is wound in layers of white cloth. A red poppy stains through.
Out the window of the hospital Jabulani sees jacaranda flowers flicker. A jet stream zips across a blue sky. Swifts sew up the pain of the world with invisible gut.
A white policeman has a curt word with the young black policeman at the door. He shuffles into the room and shuts the door behind him. His faded grey-blue uniform is the sole colour accent in the room, other than Jabulani’s blood. It’s as if he just walked into a black-and-white film.
The name on his uniform: DE LA REY.
Jabulani has a hazy memory of learning that a De la Rey was a Boer hero of the war for freedom from the English.
– Doctor tells me a bullet took just a pig-ear chink out of your left hand. Cowboys and Indians, hey?
De la Rey mimics a boy’s way of shooting: bang bang.
– Hardly chipped a bone. What are the chances of that?
The policeman’s antics draw no smile from Jabulani.
– That V of skin between your thumb and finger is gone ... just where you’d lick the salt off before taking a swig of tequila.
– I’ll have a scar.
– Let me tell you, man. No one rides for free.
De la Rey lifts his shirt to reveal a messy scar in the drum-skin vellum of his beer gut.
– This was a bowie.
Perhaps feeling he’s detoured from duty, De la Rey lets his shirt fall. He takes a notebook out of his pocket and a pencil from behind his ear.
– So, tell me. What kind of gun shot you?
– A revolver of some kind.
– And the guy?
– He has flowing white hair and albino white skin. They call him Ghost Cowboy.
– Where you from?
– Africa.
– Cocky, hey?
– I am from Zimbabwe.
What’s your name?
– Jabulani Freedom Moyo.
He records Jabulani’s name in a plodding, square hand.
– Profession?
– Teacher.
– A teacher, hey?
– English.
– Where’s your passport?
– They took it.
– Who took it?
– Ghost Cowboy and the marijuana men.
De la Rey laughs.
– This is South Africa. Not Colombia.
– This Ghost Cowboy is no phantom. He shotgunned down a beautiful woman who picked me up in her Pajero.
– Beautiful?
– She was. He shot her at a Shell up the road. And he killed a petrol jockey called Othello.
– Othello?
– And now he’s hunting me.
Again the policeman laughs.
– You sound as if you smoked some of that marijuana.
But this time he jots a few words in his notebook.
In a bid to justify Jonas’s faith in him he tells his story, culminating in the Shell killings.
– You a Tarantino flick junkie?
– If you check it out you’ll find her and the petrol jockey shot. And perhaps the man in the kiosk.
– Perhaps?
– I just heard the shot. I never saw him go down.
– I heard on the radio there was a shooting. I’ll check it out. This Pajero chick. You learn anything about her?
About Nina-for-now? That she was a crazy live-wire girl. That she loved Nina Simone. That she smoked grass. That she had me in her mouth and sent me floating.
– Just that she’s from Cape Town. What will happen to me?
– Maybe they deport you. Maybe they jail you. Maybe they put you in the dock as a witness to this shooting. Maybe you lucky again and they hand you asylum papers ... but that’s a long shot.
Just then a blackbird pecks at its refection in the windowpane. The comical futility of this duel has the two men smiling at each other. Again the policeman feels he is letting himself drift into too matey a mode with this outlander. His smile fades out.
– So. Tell me. Why are you in this country?
– I lost my job. Times are hard under Mugabe.
– Ja. It’s a pity. It was a paradise. I went fishing in Kariba one time. And I saw the Victoria Falls. Most amazing thing I ever saw. The smoke that thunders, you people call it, hey? But can you imagine how Livingstone felt? To be the man who discovered them.
– They’d been found before.
– Fact is, your country’s fucked up now. And you can hardly blame Livingstone for that. Look, I feel for you, man ... but you can’t just waltz across the border.
He swings his hand in the air, as if to draw the borderline with his pencil.
– I was once in your shoes. I went to London when South Africa was still a bastard in the eyes of the world. I was on a tourist visa and forbidden to seek a job. I went from pub to pub ... but they just shunted me on. I tell you, the line between me and the beggars in the Underground became thin as fishing gut.
The policeman pockets his notebook and pencil, abandons his bid to stay focused.
– I was staying with other South Africans, see, so I had a roof over my head and I never starved. But being put down again and again plays havoc with your ego, hey. In the end I boarded a plane home to South Africa. I never told folk this end that I didn’t find a job overseas. I never told them London beat me down till I cracked. I tell my wife and my sons it was the cold and the quirky ways of the English. So I will stay in this town till I die. Here I’m a hero. I draw my gun on whoever holds up the 7-Eleven. I shoot them dead if I have to. Like I did that bastard who stabbed me.
– I am scared of the things ahead.
– But you have something going for you I never had.
– I do?
– Ja. You’ve read books. You have studied.
– You never read?
– Not deep books. Just crime. I’m reading a hard-core crime novel now. You find yourself rooting for the killer in a land where justice is a joke. He goes after the kind of men who think fucking a virgin will cure you of The Virus. He’s my hero, that bloke.
– You are not a stereotypical policeman.
De la Rey laughs.
– I got one of my men posted by your door. His job is to prevent you from running away while I verify your story. And to fend off ghost cowboys.
Again he forms an imaginary gun and goes bang bang.
– If I find this Shell story happened the way you tell it, I’ll look into this marijuana farm shit. Either way I may have to handcuff you. You catch my drift?
He walks up to the window.
– I reckon a man’d survive falling out this window. With a bit of luck.
It’s not hard for Jabulani to get the hint.