LONG STREET, CAPE TOWN.
Yet another day of stalking his fortune and eluding Ghost Cowboy.
Crook hand hidden in his pocket, Jabulani doffs his hat to fellow Zimbabwean interlopers with his good hand. He licks the smell of coffee out of the air. His bones click and catch after another night in the paper bin in a courtyard behind a bookshop.
He’d put a coin under the lid to let a draft in: a fusion of sewer and gas and rat and rotting fruit. A gecko slid through the crack and skittered elusively among the scrap paper and flat boxes. He dreamed it was rats in the roof again and that he was in Thokozile’s arms. He was so sublimely happy in his dream that when a dog toppled a reeking bin at dawn, Jabulani swung his lid up to curse him. His hand found a Canon ink cartridge and he flung it. It hit a wall, spitting out flecks of magenta. Then he fell into yet another dream: this time of his old cat swinging from a string. His cry yanked him out of this fitful dream, scattering gulls that haggled like fishwives over spilt junk.
Now the jangle of church bells in his ears reminds him of his school in Bulawayo.
In his mind he sees Panganai and Tendai in school, hiding their scabby shoes under their desks, borrowing paper from others, dodging questions about their father. Then he sees Thokozile scavenging for their tuck.
Just as something wild in him wants to howl against the injustice of things in this world, a pigeon lands on his head. He interprets this as yet another good omen.
Then the pigeon flaps away to land on the roof of an old green Benz.
He filches a newspaper and a stained, floppy banana out of a bin. He stands in a shaft of sun in front of a bookshop reading the paper and letting the fragrant banana melt on his tongue. He reads stories of rage and blood shot through with the cocky call of the pigeon.
He feels snide eyes glide over him as fancy folk go by. A man in white flip-flops eating a dangling-skinned banana like a monkey, yet reading the Cape Times as if he has a job at a desk in one of the tall buildings that scratch the sky overhead.
To avoid sliding into gloom he drops the banana skin (hoping one of the smug men in fine flannels will wipe out) and focuses on the pigeon again. This comical, moth-eaten bird croons as if he’s the Bono of birds. You can tell he thinks he’s the thing all girl birds dream of.
He hears glass clink and looks up from the paper to see a man in a parrot-vivid Hawaiian shirt and snakeskin boots putting a box of whisky into the boot of his Benz.
The pigeon flies off.
His eyes are about to revert to the newspaper when he sees, out the corner of his eye, the sun glint off the blade of a knife. Somehow time warps out like a tape left too long in the sun. Jabulani sees a hand follow that blade out of shadow.
The wind tugs at the falling newspaper.
By the time the newspaper lands, Jabulani’s dived the knife-guy down. He hits him low and hard.
The knife spins through the air.
A head bangs into a hubcap.
Zero jumps at this cymbal boom. He draws his Colt 45 and swings it wildly.
A woman drops to the pavement, wailing: No shooooot!
Then Zero sees all. Him on the pavement at his feet. Out cold. Blood slipping from a slit in his head. And him with white flip-flops and one hand bound up like a boxer’s.
Zero pockets his cowboy gun and helps the now jibbering woman to her feet.
– Sorry, mother. Sorry.
His voice calms her fears. He puts money in her hands. She shuffles on, mumbling to her god.
Jabulani dusts off his shirt and studies his hand where the blood inks through the cloth again.
Zero flicks the knife-guy over with his foot.
Just a boy. Maybe as young as Jero.
His eyelids flutter. His finger dabs at the slit. Then his eyes pop out white as pool balls at the sight of the blood. Then he’s gone all lopsided, skedaddling along on all fours like a darted monkey.
Zero laughs.
Jabulani’s amazed.
– Why’d you let him go?
– Jail will just further fuck him up. And I’m not in the mood to put him in the boot. I need time to think this out.
His hands shake as he lights a Camel.
– I’m fazed, I tell you.
– You want one?
– Ta.
– I always thought there was a hoop of luck around me.
– Maybe I’m your luck.
In a café on Greenmarket Square:
ZERO: You saved my skin.
JABULANI: Forget it.
ZERO: You crazy? How can I forget the fact that I’d be gone if not for you?
He pans his eyes over the market as if to encompass all the things he’d be gone from.
ZERO: I want to help you. You have a job?
JABULANI: I’m looking for a job.
ZERO: You have papers?
JABULANI: No. Just my wits.
ZERO: That’s tricky.
JABULANI: I’ll find something.
ZERO: Where are you from?
JABULANI: Zimbabwe.
ZERO: I am sorry for you. Zimbabwe’s fucked.
Just then a Zimbabwean drifts by, offering spindly giraffes to café-goers.
ZERO: It’s a fucking diaspora.
Jabulani just nods at this bald fact.
ZERO: What kind of a job?
JABULANI: I’d love to teach again. But after being put down and spat at in this town, that feels like a pipe dream. I’d wax your Benz. I’d be your coffee boy. I’d carry your whisky crates. You see, I need to wire money to my family.
ZERO: So, you’re a teacher.
JABULANI: English.
ZERO: English teachers are two a penny. It’s hard to find a post. But perhaps I can rig a job for you somehow. The way you decked that guy! Your instincts are honed, man. From now on you’ll shadow me wherever I go. And I’ll deal with the paperwork.
JABULANI: I need a place to stay.
ZERO: I said wherever. My son’s just shifted out. You can stay in his room. He loves books ... books by South Americans and Indians.
JABULANI: And your wife?
ZERO: She no longer reads.
JABULANI: But how will she feel about having a stranger under her roof?
ZERO: You’ll see.
A beat.
JABULANI: I wonder what he was after. That guy. Surely he wasn’t going to lug a crate of whisky down the street after knifing you.
ZERO: I’ve seen stranger things.