I was too deeply shocked to react. I think I would have eaten the shit when the message finally made it through my disconnected brain. But at that moment all the wires were fusing.
‘Een… twee… drie!’ he counted. The Judge reached three and I remained with my hands held out in front of me, quaking with terror. He made a gurgling sort of animal sound deep in his throat, then, grabbing my wrists, he forced my hands into my mouth. My teeth were clamped shut in fear, and the shit was rubbed all over my lips and teeth and the rest of my face. Some of it must have got onto the Judge’s hand because he released my wrists and wiped it through my closely cropped hair.
Then he grabbed the tree trunk about two feet above my head, his body straddled over mine. First he tried to shake the tree. Then he began beating at it with his clenched fists. Suddenly he threw his head back so that he was looking directly upwards into the tree.
‘Heil Hitler!’ he screamed.
In the tree high above the Judge Granpa Chook’s anus opened, and from it dropped a perfect bomb of green and white chicken shit straight into the Judge’s open mouth.
Granpa Chook had waited until the last day of term to give his opinion of the Nazi Party. As usual it was short, accurate and to the point.
The Judge spat furiously, bent double, racing round in circles clutching his throat and stomach, hawking and spitting and then finally throwing up. He raced for the tap and filled his mouth and spat out about six times. Then he stuck his index finger into his mouth like a toothbrush and rubbed his teeth and gums, took more water and spat and spat.
‘Run, Granpa Chook! Run, man, run!’ I screamed up into the tree.
But Granpa Chook had done enough running for one old Kaffir chicken. Sitting squawking up there amongst the purple jacaranda blossom he sounded as though he was laughing his scraggy old head off.
‘Please run, Granpa Chook, please, please run! The bastard will kill you!’ I screamed, oblivious to the shit on my face and in my hair.
Granpa Chook hopped onto a lower branch and then, to my horror, flew onto my shoulder and gave my ear one of his famous Granpa Chook kisses. I grabbed him, intending to throw him on his way, but as I lifted him from my shoulder there was an explosion of feathers in my face. Granpa Chook let out a fearful squawk as he was blasted from my hands and fell to the ground. The Judge stood a few feet away, his empty catapult dangling in his left hand.
‘Run, Granpa Chook, run for your life!’ I pleaded
Granpa Chook tried to get up from where he had landed but the stone from the Judge’s powerful catapult had broken his ribcage. He made several more attempts, each time falling back onto his wing. I think he knew it was useless. After a while he just sat there, looked up at me and said, ‘Squawk!’
Danie Coetzee ran over and grabbed Granpa Chook. I managed to kick him once, but then he held Granpa Chook triumphantly upside down by his legs. Granpa Chook beat his wings furiously, the pain must have been terrible. Quite suddenly he stopped and I thought he must be dead. But then I saw his bright, beady eye trying to find me from his upside down position.
‘No blêrrie Kaffir chicken shits on me! Hang him up by the legs next to Pisskop,’ the Judge commanded. He was still doing little dry spits and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Two stormtroopers slung a piece of rope over a branch and Granpa Chook soon hung upside down just beyond my reach and at about the level of my head.
‘Please, sir. I will do anything! Anything you ever ask! Anything you want! Please don’t kill Granpa Chook!’
The Judge, his eyes cruel, bent down and looked into my face. ‘Now we’ll see who’ll cry,’ he grinned.
I was seized by panic. ‘Kill me!’ I begged. ‘Please kill me. But don’t kill Granpa Chook!’
The Judge butted me on the forehead with the heel of his hand and my head slammed against the trunk of the jacaranda, leaving me dazed. ‘Ag, shit!’ he exclaimed, some of the shit on my face had rubbed off onto his hand. Then he wiped his hand in my hair once again.
‘You’re shit and your fuckin’ Kaffir chicken is shit. Did you see what he did to me? Me, Jaapie Botha! That fuckin’ chicken shit in my mouth!’
Still dazed, I tried another desperate tack. ‘I’ll tell Mevrou!’ I shouted, trying to sound threatening.
‘Mevrou kan gaan kak!’ (Mevrou can go to shit!) The Judge spat on the ground, this time with a proper, not a chicken-shit spit. He turned to the stormtroopers. ‘Prisoner of War Kaffir Chicken Rooinek will be executed, two shots each!’ He moved to take his place in the shooting line as the rest of the stormtroopers loaded up their catapults.
I sloughed the last of my camouflage. ‘I’ll tell Mr Stoffel about how I did your arithmetic for you!’ I screamed at the Judge.
I heard the soft ‘pfflifft’ of his catapult at the same time as I felt the stone slam into my stomach. The pain was terrible, it seemed to be happening in slow motion as though the stone had a life of its own, gnawing at my gut, burning and squirming through my intestines and into my back. A vicious, determined, alive, eyeless thing. The shock to my system was enormous, my eyes bugged out of my head and my tongue poked out in involuntary surprise.
‘Fire!’ A series of dull plops tore into the fragile bones of Granpa Chook’s breast. The first stones had set the rope swinging, but the stormtroopers were expert shots and their second shots also tore into the funny old body of that upside-down chicken. Spots of blood dropped into the dry dust and among the fallen jacaranda blossoms, the rope swinging so that no two drops landed in the same place. Granpa Chook, the toughest damn chicken in the whole world, was dead.
A tiny feather drifted towards me, it was one of the soft downy ones which grew at the very top of Granpa Chook’s scrawny legs. It stuck to a piece of shit in my face. The Judge walked over and untied the rope from around my waist and I dropped to my haunches at his feet. He placed his bare foot on my shoulder.
‘What are you, Englishman?’
‘Dog shit, sir.’
‘Look at me when you say it!’ he barked.
Slowly I looked up at the giant with his foot resting on my shoulder. High above him I could see a milky moon hanging in the afternoon sky. We had got so close, Granpa Chook and I had got so close to making it through to the end, just a few more hours.
I spat at him, ‘You’re dog shit! Your ma is a whore!’
He pushed violently downwards with his foot, sending me sprawling. Then he let out a howl, a mixture of anger and anguish. ‘Why don’t you cry, you fucking bastard!’ he sobbed and started to kick blindly at me.
The stormtroopers rushed to restrain him, pulling him from me. The Judge allowed himself to be led away and we were left alone behind the shit houses under a white moon set in a flawless blue sky.
I untied the broken body of Granpa Chook and we sat under the jacaranda tree and I stroked his bloody feathers. No more gentle African dawn folding back the night, no more early cock-a-doodle-doo to tell me you are there, my loved and faithful chicken friend. Who will peck my ear? Who will be my friend? I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. The great drought was over, the inside man was out, the rains had come to Zululand.
After a long, long while, when the crying was all out of me and the loneliness bird had entered to build a nest of stones in the hollow place inside of me, I carried Granpa Chook to the orchard and laid him in the place I had made for him to keep him from the rain. Then I climbed through the window into the dormitory to fetch my new red jumper, the one my mother had knitted in the concentration camp and Nanny had fixed.
I gathered as many rocks as I could find and then I pulled my red jumper over Granpa Chook’s body, his wings poked out of the arm holes and his long neck stuck out of the head part and his feet poked out of the bottom.