He remembered that they’d passed a petrol station before they stopped and there would be water there and food, but then he remembered he didn’t have any money. What had happened to his parents’ money? Bernard would have it because he was the boy’s uncle and guardian, because the boy was his parents’ sole heir, because he was too young to be trusted and then he began to wonder what Bernard might have done with the money, which was his money, not Bernard’s to spend on beer or the new truck he bought after the boy came to live with him. Was the truck his inheritance? Bernard had never said anything about the money but the boy knew there would’ve been some, even a little, from the sale of the house, and money from his parents’ insurance — he knew there was insurance, he had heard his parents talk about it. All that money had gone somewhere.
He started walking away from the campground to the open fields and took off his shoes. In the distance a group of men were walking in the other direction like they were half-drunk or exhausted or just couldn’t care where they might be going. He wanted to run and join them, but knew he could not. There was nothing those men might do to help him.
His father had always been busy with the work he was doing, which was important work that was going to save everyone, and because it was important the boy had forgiven him for being away so much. His father most often wore shorts, even on a rainy winter day, and he said a house constrained him, so first thing after kissing the boy’s mother he would pick up his son and carry him outside, lying down on his back and placing the boy on his chest facing him, either lying stomach against stomach, or with the boy’s short legs straddling his ribs, under the fig tree in the small back garden. What has my boy done today? At first the boy could only laugh, but as he grew older, he would say, I ate breakfast or I read a book or I played with Sandra, the girl who lived next door and was the same age as him. When he got older still he would tell his father about the books he’d read and about his friends at school and his teachers, and his father would say, You’re getting too big to lie on top of me, you’re going to suffocate me, and the boy would press all his weight into his father and the man would gasp and they would both laugh. After ten minutes of this comfort, which was the best medicine for loneliness and a perfect balm for cuts and small traumas, he would lift the boy from his chest, place him on the ground, and walk him back inside the house.
Sitting at the edge of the field the boy watched until the sun started to go down and the clouds over the mountains were turning red. He felt dizzy and his eyes were scratchy in their sockets and his tongue was furred and heavy. He helped himself up and went back into the campground where Bernard was still asleep and he thought of kicking him. He’d stopped snoring but the boy could see he was still breathing and he was sorry for this because all he wanted was for Bernard to go away. How nice it would be if he died in his sleep. The boy sat down next to him for a while, watching him breathing and wondering how long they would stay like this the two of them. This was not the life his parents had promised him. This was the life that insurance was supposed to protect him against.
When it was dark the boy got back in the truck and turned over the engine. Bernard moved in his sleep. The boy put the truck into gear and accelerated. He was afraid that starting the truck would wake Bernard but then the wheels were on top of him before the boy knew it and before Bernard knew it. The branches of the half-dead tree were scraping across the windshield and the truck collided with the ablution block and it trembled and rocked away from the truck towards the field and almost collapsed. The truck was the boy’s inheritance. He was only taking what was his. He didn’t think what he was doing.
He reversed, rolling back over Bernard and then up toward the road and there was less crunching than you might have thought. It was a big truck and Bernard was only a small man, hardly bigger than the boy but so much stronger. The boy was moving the truck forward and then back. For a moment he thought he might have only pushed Bernard into the earth and he switched on the headlights and Bernard looked like he still could have been sleeping except for the rose at his lips and the strange way his arms and legs went like a spider.
The boy turned off the truck and left the keys in the ignition and the headlights on and walked through the yellow light to look at Bernard and said, Bernard? Bernard? Are you okay? But Bernard didn’t say anything. The rose turned into red bath bubbles at his mouth and his eyes were open but couldn’t see when the boy put his hand in front of them. If they were open then maybe he did wake up. The bodybuilding magazine was torn on the ground next to him. The boy leaned over and felt for a pulse like his mother had once shown him, and felt for Bernard’s breath and listened for a heartbeat, but he knew that Bernard would make no more noise and the boy was happy and then he was surprised at being happy and cried and shouted and stamped the ground. He couldn’t think of anyone left in the world that cared about him.
He sat down next to the man and put Bernard’s left arm in his lap and held it for a long time, pressing his fingers against the dead wrist and looking at the hairs that went gold in the headlights. Bernard wore a signet ring on his pinkie. The boy stroked the man’s arm. He could see the wallet in Bernard’s jeans and took it out and counted the money and then took the ring off the finger and the gold watch and removed the new leather boots that were too big for the boy though he knew he would grow into them soon. The jeans and shirt were ruined so he left those and put the magazine back over Bernard’s face. He folded Bernard’s arms in a cross over his chest and straightened his legs. There was no one to see him do it except for a crow in the tree and even she was asleep.
The driver’s seat in the truck was wet and the boy saw that his pants were also wet and he stood outside drying off for a while and looking at the wind pick at the magazine and the hair that was sticking out underneath. He put Bernard’s watch on his own forearm and the ring on his right ring finger and the wallet in his front pocket.
Bernard had no family apart from the boy so no one was going to miss him, only maybe his friends and the people he worked for. But here was a problem. The boy could drive but he had no licence and if someone saw him driving the truck they would call the police and if the police caught him they would stop him and look at Bernard’s licence and know that the boy was not the man and the truck was not legally the boy’s even though Bernard was his mother’s half-brother. It was too dangerous to walk back to the petrol station alone after dark so the boy decided to sit out the night in the cab of the truck and figure out what to do in the morning, knowing already he was going to have to give up his inheritance if he was going to live.
He turned off the headlights and locked the doors and watched the clouds begin to cover the moon. He’d still had nothing to drink since the night before and his tongue and teeth were moving against him. Every few minutes he switched on the truck lights to be sure that Bernard was dead.
Sam
Another weekend. Greg is free from work, so we decide to drive out of town for a picnic. He knows a place, one of the old wineries between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, where there are tables with views of the mountains.
‘And they have chickens,’ he says. ‘Dylan loves to see the chickens, don’t you my boy?’
The drive from the city to the winelands, forty-five minutes, takes us past the townships and the airport. Going back and forth between Greg’s house and Clare’s, it’s easy to forget where I am. It might be San Francisco, with a few more beggars on the streets, a few more people trying to sell fruit or trinkets or newspapers or offering to wash your car windows. At one intersection near Bishopscourt, at the turn-off to Kirstenbosch, half a dozen men sell identical mixed-media depictions of township life: canvas paintings with miniature tin shacks affixed to the surface to create a rough bas-relief. I’ve never seen anyone buy one.