24

ROD THE SOD

BENJAMIN HAD BEEN IN TOWN PLEADING WITH the bank manager for just a tiny loan to keep him going till the end of his month’s grace – without success – and didn’t hear the news until noon. When he walked into the hotel lobby on his way to open the bar, he found a giant in sweaty khakis and jungle boots banging the bell on the desk and shouting, ‘Where is everybody, dammit?’

‘I’m here.’ Benjamin spoke from the shadowed doorway that led to the garages in the back yard where he had parked his elderly Beetle, still ticking from the hot drive.

‘Stand forth and be seen then, for fuck’s sake.’ The face that swung round was weather-beaten to a rubicund tan, peeling on the boxer’s nose. A mane of heavy blond curls tumbled about his shoulders. ‘I want a room, a cold beer and a shower. In that order.’

Benjamin came forward trying to hide his surprise. ‘D-double or single? Private bathroom?’

A huge fist crashed down on the counter and the register rose like a levitating guru’s mat and flopped down in a puff of dust. ‘Biggest you’ve got. Need space for all my stuff.’ He jerked his thumb at a tin trunk and camera cases strapped on a trolley by the entrance door. ‘Bloody Landy’s packed up and there doesn’t seem to be a garage in this dorp.’

‘It closed years ago. But there’s a guy who fixes cars at the bus and taxi terminus.’ It sounded feeble so Benjamin added, ‘He’s got two portable ramps and does welding. Maybe he could—’

‘Not my precious fucking Land Rover, he couldn’t. Best wheels I’ve ever had. Trouble is, spares for oldies are hard to come by. Five working days minimum for a call-out, the dealer said when I belled him on the satellite phone. Five days and the weekend! I’ll be scooped, man.’

‘Scooped on to what? Who are you?’ He seemed so fierce that Benjamin edged behind the counter for protection.

The fist uncoiled to beefy fingers which darted into one of the many pockets bulging from a khaki combat waistcoat. A business card was extracted and slapped down, raising another puff of dust. ‘Rod Greyling. Freelance photojournalist. Pan-Africa expert. Wars, epidemics, famines, massacres, riots, lion maulings, tribal exotica, you name it. I pay top dollar for good tip-offs. That’s why I’m here: first in line for the brown Madonna.’

‘The what?’

‘That vision the kid saw on her way home from school yesterday. I got a call early this morning and hit the road pronto. My agency laps up wacky religious items. Tabloids love ’em.’

Benjamin said in his flattest voice, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Keeping mum, are you? Trying to milk me for more bucks? Forget it, china. Got the details already from someone called Raylene.’ The fingers plunged into another pocket and pulled out a notebook open at a page full of squiggles. ‘Girl who saw the vision is Sweetness Moloi. She told Raylene and Raylene told a nun and the nun told a—’ He ran a horny nail along one of the lines. ‘Father Liam. And he phoned the diocese in Joburg. So the Catholics think it’s worth checking. Bingo.’

‘I haven’t heard any of this and I hear everything in the pub.’ Benjamin folded his arms, hoping to avoid obvious confrontation.

‘Nothing last night?’

‘No.’

‘This morning?’

‘I’ve been in town and haven’t opened up yet. I was just going through to the bar when I heard you—’

‘Performing.’ When Rod Greyling guffawed, a red slit opened up like a wound on a bull’s hide. ‘Used to getting my way, bru. Room key?’

Benjamin reached behind him for No. 8 – the honeymoon suite in its heyday, with its own bathroom and a reinforced queen-size bed. Pushing the wooden tag across the counter, he said, ‘No. 8’s up the stairs. Turn left at the top and it’s the corner room at the end of the passage. The shower’s over the bath. I’ll call Obadiah to bring your suitcases and make up the—’

The blond mane did an emphatic shimmy. ‘Nix to a porter. Always carry my own stuff. Cameras have to be treated like women, you know? But I’ll need a) to recharge my phone, and b) room service: big bag of chips and plenty of cold beers. You got Tusk? Coronas? Guinness, even?’ When Benjamin shook his head, he went on, ‘Black Label, then. Got a thirst on me like a randy camel.’

‘Will do, Mr Greyling.’ Heartened by the prospect of filling a room for at least a week and keen to match his guest’s bravura performance, Benjamin left the counter and stiff-armed one of the swing doors into the pub, sending it banging against the wall.

‘You mean Rod!’ boomed the voice from across the lobby where the giant was unloading his trolley. ‘No Misters. I’m known as Rod the Sod this side of the Zambezi and something a fucking lot worse further north. There’s a price on my head in Burundi.’

‘Rod, then,’ Benjamin called over his shoulder as the door rebounded. When he came back with an economy-size bag of chips and six ice-cold Black Labels on a tray, the tin trunk was sailing up the stairs on humped khaki shoulders as if it were a school satchel.

Jo hadn’t heard about the brown Madonna because she slept until after twelve. As she yawned into the kitchen for a cup of coffee after pulling on jeans and a T-shirt, she was met by a breathless Philomena who had questioned the nuns, checked on Sweetness, hurried Tsietsi off to school and rushed back in a state of jubilant agitation.

‘Jo-Jo, guess what? It’s true! She wasn’t telling lies. She saw her.’

‘Who saw who?’

‘Sweetness saw Ma-Jesu. On the way back from school. She told me last night but I didn’t believe her. This morning she went to the nuns, and the nuns told Father, and Father phoned Joburg and—’

‘Slow down, Ma Philo. I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.’ Jo had woken with swollen eyes and a pounding head and the sick feeling that her life was plunging into an abyss. She took Philomena’s hands. ‘Now tell me from the beginning. What exactly did Sweetness see?’

Within minutes of Rod’s disappearance through the main door of the Outspan Hotel with his trundled baggage, the Land Rover was stripped of its water bag, wing mirrors, spare tyre, extra petrol cans, roof rack and tarpaulin. As usual, the marauders took their booty to the shack where Smart Fikile and the Lucky Boys hung out, but they were still in a stupor from their white pipes the night before and the items soon disappeared into various back yards. By the time they heard about the crippled Land Rover and had come to their senses enough to stagger there for more loot, another gang had fiddled open the driver’s door, jacked it up on piles of bricks and stolen the back tyres, radio, tape deck, CD player, seats, steering wheel, battery, toolkit, first-aid box, door handles and ashtrays before trashing all the windows with the wheel spanner.

Such lost opportunity made the Lucky Boys wild. ‘Gotta show those fuckin’ mshozas,’ Smart swore, furious at being denied the pickings. ‘We’ll klap the Outspan tonight.’

‘But there’s better takings on Saturday night, Chief,’ one of them objected.

Smart gave him a backhander across the face. ‘Shuddup! I say tonight, okay?’

‘Okay, sharp,’ the others agreed with prudent haste.

As the objector clapped a handful of cotton waste over his bloody mouth and slunk out, they began to prepare their weapons for the sortie. One was a sawn-off shotgun, two were homemade pistols, and they would all carry flick knives. Smart’s z88 Parabellum, with its serial numbers filed off, had been obtained from a bent policeman. With a magazine in its belly, it could be fired fifteen times in rapid succession.

Into this hotbed of religious turmoil and robbery rolled the silver-grey official Mercedes bearing Deputy Director General Hendrik Ossewa, attended by his personal assistant and a minion to write the notes.

‘Derelict vehicles all over the place. It’s to be expected in a black spot,’ Hendrik remarked when he saw the shattered remains of the Land Rover tilting off its piles of bricks.

‘Won’t be a black spot much longer, I hear.’

Hendrik swung on the personal assistant. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Someone in the canteen. I can’t remember who.’ The grape-jelly eyes quivered with the acknowledgement that he had been discussing confidential matters with a person outside the Department. His uncle, Minister waYozi, would not be amused.

‘Listen, this relocation plan is top secret, you hear?’ Hendrik gave him the fisheye. ‘Let one more word slip about our tactics and you’re out on your backside, seuntjie. Uncle or no uncle.’

‘Ja, meneer.’

The forbidden response escaped before he could rein it in. As Hendrik’s face darkened, the donga at the beginning of the tarmac strip caught the Mercedes suspension off guard, jarring the three-pointed star on its bonnet slightly off centre.

Eddie’s liver was more cirrhosed than anyone realised. Jo began to worry about his prolonged, snoring sleep and went to check on him, then hurried back into the kitchen. ‘Ma Philo, we’d better call the doctor for Dad. He looks and sounds awful.’

Philomena gathered her into a consoling hug. ‘Shame, lovey, it’s no good asking Dr Ugh. Last time Mr Eddie went to him, he was told not to come back any more.’

‘Why? Doctors can’t just wash their hands of patients.’

‘You know why. He said your father was a waste of time and good medicine.’ She rocked the distressed girl as she had since she was a baby.

‘Good medicine, what a joke,’ Jo mumbled into her familiar shoulder. ‘The man’s a disgrace. He should be struck off the medical register.’

‘Ah, no! He helps our people.’

‘With muti and curses?’

‘With their sickness and bruises and forced babies.’ Philomena hoped Jo didn’t ask her to be more specific. She would not yet fully understand the problems of the poor and powerless.

But her mind was on her father, whose deterioration had shocked her. ‘Would the doctor come if I went across to the clinic and asked him as a special favour?’

‘He’s not there this morning, Jo-Jo. It’s his day for the town clinic. Just wait until Mr Eddie wakes up, eh? Then you can talk.’

‘What if he doesn’t wake up? He’s all I have.’

Philomena was still trying to absorb the news that her daughter – her daughter! – had seen a vision of such importance that people were coming to see her all the way from Joburg. The nuns were scurrying round the ex-garage cleaning up and putting fresh flowers and new candles on the hydraulic altar. She was dying to know more about what had happened. She said, ‘Shall I go back up the road and ask Sister Dineo to come and see him?’

‘Would you, Ma Philo? He could be in serious trouble.’

‘Straight away, lovey.’ Squeezing courage into Jo’s hands, she left.

Jo checked on her father again and finding him still out cold, went through to the store to consult Khanya. He had only given the bare details of the failing business in his letter. It was time to face the reality she’d avoided for too long. Her father was an alcoholic, the trading store was in dire trouble, and she had blown any chance of becoming a doctor by just scraping through her June exams.

Greg passed Philomena on his way to the café for some fresh bread for lunch. Cassie lay dozing on their bed in the midday heat and once more he’d have to shift for himself. He was getting damn sick of bread and cheese, bread and Marmite, bread and jam – though at least the bread was fresh from Tex’s oven. It’s the one affordable luxury left, he thought. The breadwinner shall live by bread alone. Ha bloody ha.

Half an hour later, miserable with yeast-induced bloating after bolting more than half a warm loaf too fast, he sat hunched over the computer feeling even more sorry for himself than usual. He and Eddie were among the last people in Crocodile Flats to hear about the brown Madonna.