Thembinkosi again heard Nozipho’s scratching behind him.
88
Moses looked around one more time. No faces in the windows. Good Lord, someone had just been shot out here. And not all that far off, there’d just been… just been… a massacre. The people should all be staring out their windows. Were they hiding? Or were they really all still at work?
From somewhere, he heard footsteps approach. He also heard a car. No, make that two. He quickly jumped back behind the wall he’d been using. Flipped around as he crouched down. One eye above the top of the wall. Just in time.
An entire army came around the corner. First the cops on foot with a dog, two police cars, followed by a couple of security vehicles. A bakkie, too. Don’t think about it, Moses told himself. Don’t think about the chap who’d tried to run him over earlier. Then two Polos. Behind the security cars came the guards. Two of them in civilian clothing.
Too many for Moses. Many too many. If he was lucky, he might manage to slip away. He turned onto his stomach and crawled along the wall until he reached the shadow of the house.
“We got him,” someone cried.
Moses gave a start, but then realized that they meant the other man. The dead man.
More crawling, dragging himself through a dry bed. Holding back a cough. More voices behind him. Chaos.
“Finally.”
“But who was that in the house?”
“…escaped…”
“…won’t rob anyone else…”
“…ran away…”
“…didn’t have to end like this…”
“…a job here…”
“…the police…”
“…their responsibility…”
“…heard a shot…”
“But who shot him?” a woman’s voice asked.
Everyone fell silent. The dog barked.
Moses turned back, knelt down beside an ornamental bush, and watched the scene. The people in the cars had now gotten out. They were all gathered in a circle around the body. Nobody said anything. A police siren briefly chirped somewhere in the distance. The people in the circle studied each other. It wasn’t clear if they were searching for a hero or someone to blame.
One of them turned around. Then another. Slowly, the whole group turned to face the direction from which the dead man had just come.
Moses could see their bodies tense up. Still no one was saying a word.
And right on the edge of his line of vision, Moses saw the white man come to a stop. Club in the one hand. The other hand empty.
He stopped, legs spread. Began to hit the club into his other palm.
“I took care of the kaffir,” he cried.
89
Thembinkosi raised his head and looked through the splintered door. Where the window had been… All that remained were a few remnants of the wooden frame. He carefully stood up. Nobody outside was looking into the room. Instead, he heard people moving around the front door.
“We have to get out of here.” Nozipho was looking out of her half of the wardrobe. “They’ll do the same thing to us.”
“Yes. But where?”
Someone was slamming into the front door. They heard a cracking sound. They didn’t have much time to figure out a solution. Nozipho’s voice was right against his ear. “I know where…”
“Where?”
“There’s only one place!”
“No!” Thembinkosi cried. “No!”
“Yes. Take your shoes off.”
“Why?”
Crash. The front door was starting to give way.
“Let me try,” a voice outside insisted.
“Do it. Take them off.”
Nozipho was already holding her shoes and standing in her socks in High Voice’s blood. She stepped over him and onto the bed where she began to put her sneakers back on.
Thembinkosi loosened the ties on his leather shoes, yanked them off, and copied Nozipho’s movements. On the bed, he stuck his blood-soaked stockinged feet back into his shoes.
“Jump!” Nozipho said.
When he hesitated, she gave him a little push.
The door was splintering under someone’s shoulder.
Thembinkosi leaped over Deep Voice and landed in the hallway. His feet made a squishing sound in his shoes.
“One more time,” came from outside.
Nozipho spread the bullet-tattered bedspread out so their bloody footprints were out of sight, then she also jumped.
“Go!” she urged as she wiped away a drop of blood that had spurted out from Thembinkosi’s shoe. “Go!” She now shoved him hard.
The front door broke apart. Someone tumbled into the lounge. Nozipho quietly opened the door to the garage, pushing Thembinkosi inside. She shut the door and hurried over to the freezer. She held the lid up and waited.
When Thembinkosi didn’t react immediately, she said: “We don’t have a choice.”
“And don’t even think that you’ll be lying on top of me,” she added a second later.
90
2:53:17
“I took care of the kaffir,” the white man yelled.
Legs spread, smug, a trace of a grin on his ugly face. Jay-Jay Dlomo held Nkosi tightly against him and said nothing. Nobody in the circle made a sound. But the dog wanted something. Dlomo could sense it. Nkosi couldn’t speak, but made up for that in his ability to run and jump and bite. Jay-Jay knew this dog and adored him. He had molded him into his own image as much as you can do that with an animal. And Dlomo was completely certain the dog was feeling what he was feeling right now. Loathing. Loathing toward the white idiot. How arrogant he was. How he stood there waiting for something to happen. Dlomo slowly leaned down. He caressed Nkosi’s head and murmured: “Go ahead.”
The dog trembled and strained against his leash. With his thumb and forefinger, Dlomo pinched the ring on the harness. Nkosi’s tugging was rewarded. He didn’t even need to pull to verify his freedom. He availed himself of it instantaneously. One, two, three, four leaps and he was within striking distance of the white man. Everyone’s eyes were on the dog. Only the white man was watching Dlomo. And Dlomo was gazing into his eyes. Hopefully, he’d had time to realize how closely triumph and defeat were linked. Nkosi was airborne. His legs were extended into the spring, his jaws wide. In anticipation of warm flesh. White flesh. Do it, Nkosi, Dlomo thought.
2:53:25
Stevie van Lange had just reached The Pines as the shooting started. Ugly affair. It was the company’s responsibility to prevent things like this from getting out of hand and blood being spilled. And God knew blood was flowing. Now that jerk was standing here. A loser in the new system. Not every white had been able to maintain their previous standard of living. Of course. Regardless, no one needed to talk like this. Sometimes it was necessary to kill someone—this was a violent country, after all. But not because of skin color. Skin color was no longer a factor. But nobody was arguing against what the jerk had said. The dog handler leaned down slightly. A low growl from the dog. Like a warning. Stevie automatically reached behind his back and under his shirt. The animal only needed a few strides to launch himself. Stevie was already cocking his pistol. A stabilizing step backward with his right foot. Focus. Track the dog with both arms. Fire. By the time the dog reached the white man, all of his energy had already drained away. He took the man down and then remained on top of him.
2:53:37
White people had lost their freaking minds. Yolanda Baker wanted to blast the jerk’s head off of his shoulders. Reached for her holster, while nobody said a word.
The way he was standing there. But then the dog startled her. She momentarily loosened her grip on her gun. A good practice she’d spent long enough drilling. Grab your gun, release your gun, grab your gun again. The dog was already in the air when she noticed the other white man was aiming his gun at her. She pulled out her service pistol as swiftly as she could and cocked it. Registered that the young white man wasn’t aiming at her at all. He was tracking the dog. But she had already shifted gears. Yolanda Baker could no longer stop the motion sequence she had trained for so often. In the miniscule acoustic interval between the white man’s shot and her own, she thought: Just stop, pull your weapon up. But she couldn’t manage that in time. She shot the man in the chest. The fountain of blood out of it was the last thing she saw.