hums under his breath.
Never late, worse luck
“And then, what happened when you got to the other side?” I ask.
“No,” Benjamin says, and he starts to laugh. “Before we even used to leave the house, my mother was already on the phone to Grandpa in the dorp to tell him, the vlei was coming down and we had to get to school, so there he was, waiting for us in the Vauxhall on the other side of the bult.”
“Jissis,” Wilfred says, “you know how Grandpa always drives that bladdy Vauxhall of his?”
He and Benjamin stare at each other.
“Oh ja, I know.” I roll my eyes.
“That road mos sommer turns into mud when it rains, and the cars and the bakkies – especially the tractors – they make all those deep ruts?” Benjamin scowls.
I nod.
“Ja, and Grandpa mos doesn’t care – he just puts his foot down … It’s bladdy scary, man, driving with him.”
“Ag,” says Wilfred, “Benjamin’s sommer talking kak, man – it’s not so bad!” He smirks at his brother, and flinches when Benjamin moves to stand up.
“No, jissis,” Benjamin hisses. “Are you looking for a klap, hey?”
He stares at me. “You know how Grandpa drives – the way he flicks that steering wheel of his?”
I laugh.
“Ja,” he continues. “Grandpa just drives wherever he wants to on the road – he thinks he’s driving in the bladdy veld, man!”
Wilfred sits forward on his chair, nodding and smiling. “When he used to drive us to school after he picked us up, we used to sit the whole way to town with our hands in front of our eyes. Sandra and Rochelle used to cry sometimes, they were so scared we were going to have an accident. They were sure Grandpa was going to kill us all.”
“Ja, Wilfred,” Benjamin nods. “Now you’re singing a different tune, hey?” He looks at me. “But what Wilfred says is true. Grandpa always got us through, and we never had not one accident, hey – and we weren’t ever late for school, either!”
Wilfred looks glum.
“No,” he mutters. “Never-ever, worse luck!”
He drops his hands on either side of the seat under the arm rests, wriggles back on the old garden chair, and stretches his freckled legs out in front of him. The soles of his feet are black with dirt. Benjamin pushes himself off the wire chair; the backs of his legs, his shorts, and his T-shirt are crisscrossed with the imprint of its wire pattern.
“Jiss, but these chairs are bladdy uncomfortable,” he says, “I can’t sit here anymore.”
He walks across the tiled floor and sits down heavily on the low wall running the length of the stoep. He swings one leg over the top, straddles it, and shifts his bottom back until it touches the pillar behind him. Sighing, he lifts the other leg onto the wall, bends his knee, and clasps his hands around it. He turns and stares out at the beacon on top of the Grootberg opposite. The heat hangs heavy in the early afternoon. Benjamin turns back towards the stoep, glances briefly at me and swings his other leg up onto the wall in front of him. He drops his chin on his chest and twirls a long green grass stalk between his fingers. When he speaks, his words are muffled, and I have to lean forward to hear him.
“Ag,” he sighs, “I suppose boarding school’s not really so bad.”
“My father says he doesn’t want Rochelle to go away to boarding school,” Wilfred says suddenly. “He says she must stay here at home by him – she can go to school in the dorp.”
“Ja,” Benjamin says. “He says it’s because she’s still a baby, but we know it’s because she’s his favourite.”
“His popsie,” I smile.
“Ja, my popsie?” Uncle Leslie says when he sees her, his voice high with love.
The afternoon heat presses down on the old trees and the crumbling kraal walls, the sweet water in the spring that gives Boesmansfontein its name. Finches weave between the calabash nests swinging from the tips of the willow branches. In a high poplar tree, a dove repeats itself over and over. A cow bellows for its calf, long and deep. Sheep bleat in the veld behind the house. The corrugated-iron roof ticks above our heads.
We sit, quiet, on the stoep, contemplating our places in our respective families – the ones we occupy accidentally, by the grace and the time of our birth, and the places we wish we had, and long for.
10.
A tiny rubber ring
“You’re not marrying him until I’ve met him,” Uncle Leslie shouts down the phone. “I’ve got to vet him first. Make sure he’s suitable.”
“Well, I think he’s eminently suitable,” I shout back.
“What does your mother think?”
Allan brought her flowers the first time he visited.
“She likes him a lot – so does my father.”
“What’s he do? What’s his profession?”
“Allan? He works in his grandfather’s factory.”
“A factory worker?” My uncle’s voice vibrates with suspicion.
“Don’t worry, Uncle Les – he’s a chemical engineer, and he works in his grandfather’s factory.”
He grunts. “What kind of factory?”
“They make enamelled pots and pans – lots of things … It’s a big factory.”
He grunts again. “Long as he can support you.”
An eventful journey
The Free State veld lies bleak and beautiful along the sides of the tarred national road. The sky is pale with cold. Crows hop from one clawed foot to another as they watch our progress from their perches on the barbed-wire fence posts. Streambeds run dry under flat bridges. Subterranean storm drains cross from one side of the road to the other like giant nostrils. Tumbleweeds blow in the wind.
We drive past lonely towns where Pegasus, that flying horse, paws the empty air above Mobil petrol pumps, and giant scallops tower, yellow and red, over air-pressure hoses and the fuel bowsers of Shell garages. We idle through quiet main streets past old men slumped on greasy pillows and wooden benches, dozing in the shade of fretted stoeps. When they hear us coming, they push themselves up with arthritic hands on their creaking knees, or lean, straight armed and stringy against the railings, their biceps thin and corded beneath old woollen jerseys, their stares following us as we drive past, back onto the national road.
Dusty tracks lead away to distant ridges. Telephone poles cradle birds’ nests between white porcelain bobbins, and barbed-wire fences – almost invisible to the untrained eye – divide and run crisscrossed across the veld, delineating boundaries outlined by tumbleweed blown and caught against them.
The land is flat to the far horizon. Small thorn trees and weeping willows grow along watercourses. A small wind drives waves through the winter grass. Crows cough. Ewes call, plaintive for their lambs, and those that are barren, bleat into the wind.
“Slow down, Al,” I say. “Look over there!”
A faint scrawl of clouds moves across the sky. The air is opaque with dust. Near a rocky outcrop above a flock of sheep, two black-and-white Border collies crouch low on a grass slope, their eyes fixed and waiting for their master’s command. The farmer, in stained sheepskin coat and blue flannel shirt, stands near the fence line along the main road. We watch him point his finger. He purses up his lips, and through the open window, we hear his whistle, shrill, sharp and short. The dogs leap onto the backs of the sheep,