July's People (7 page)

Bam had not greeted him. Maureen was unbelieving to see on the white man’s face the old, sardonic, controlled challenge of the patron. —And where were you yesterday? What’s the story?—

July went on doing what he was expert at. The snap of twigs, the shuffle of a single paper fist uncrumpling itself (no cupboard full of old newspapers, here, everything that was worth nothing must be used sparingly), a word or two to keep Royce in bed—Little while, it’s coming nice and warm, you coming nice by the fire.—

—We were very worried.— Her implication was the flattery, ‘about you’.

—Where did you go?— Bam giving the man every chance to give a satisfactory account of himself.

—To the shops.—

He straightened up and wiped his palms down his trousers.

The shops! As if he had been sent round the corner for a pint of milk when the household ran short. The shops. The distance to the nearest general store must be forty kilometres. There was a police post there; certainly the Indian store would have a petrol pump.

Bam stepped through a minefield of words before he chose what to say. —Who drove the bakkie?—

—I got someone he’s drive for me. One time he’s working there in Bethal, for the dairy, he’s driving truck. He knows very well to drive for me. I’m bring paraffin, salt, tea, jam, matches, everything—when it’s stopping to rain you come with me, we fetch from down there.— And he patted the car keys in his pocket.

—Did you have money?— She knew it was impossible that
he could have made free of the still-thick swatch of notes, lying swollen as the leaves of a book that has got wet and dried again, in the suitcase on which Gina, cross and unaware of anyone, as she always was in the early mornings, was sitting.

—Is fifteen rand thirty-five.— So it was he would announce the cents owed him when he had paid, out of his own pocket, the surcharge on a letter delivered by the postman while the lady of the house was out.

—Bam, we must pay July.— She shooed Gina off the suitcase.

—We’ll pay. We’ll pay. Did anyone see you—I mean, say anything? Ask any questions? What’s happening there?—

He smiled and gave his customary high-pitched grunt of amusement when asked something obvious, to him. —Plenty people is know me. I’m from here since I’m born, isn’t it? Everyone is greet me.—

—Is it quiet there? No fighting?—

He laughed. —But they tell me at the mine there’s plenty trouble. People are coming home from there, they don’t want to stay, they say there’s burning, the houses, everything. Like in town. And the India’s coming too expenses. This it’s short, that it’s short. Sugar… Even box matches, you must fight for get it.—

—The mine?—

Bam answered her. —There’s an asbestos mine about sixty kilometres in the other direction—west. I suppose a lot of the men sign up to work there.—

—Some soldiers was coming by the shop. They tell me, last week. The India he’s run away when he see them.—

—So who keeps the shop open?—

—No—(he was amused)—when the soldiers they went, the India’s come back. He’s there, there, in the shop.—

The little boy Royce made a dash from the bed and gained
the pillar of July’s thigh. Holding on, leaning, in confused regression to babyhood, he stopped his mouth with his thumb and confronted his parents with the lowered gaze of some forgotten defiance. The black man lifted and carried the child back to bed. The parents were amiably given an order. —Just now when the rain is coming slow, I call you. I send someone, you come.— He put on the raincoat and was digging in the pockets. —Here, I bring for you— He tossed up in his palm and presented to her two small radio batteries.

—Oh how marvellous. How clever to remember.— He had heard her say it all when friends brought her flowers or chocolates.

He grinned and swayed a little, as they did. —Now you listen nice again.— It was the small flourish of his exit.

She considered the batteries in her hand; smiled at the well-meaning—not even a new battery would bring the voices from back there if the radio station should be hit.

—Put them where it’s dry.—

There was only the suitcase, and even that was stained with damp moving up from where it rested on the floor. —If we could find a couple of bricks to raise it on.— But bricks were a cherished commodity; in every hut, they were used to raise beds. Where was Bam to find bricks for her? She found her own solution. —Ask July.—

She was quite competent at making porridge, now. It was the little community’s own meal, grown by them and stamped by the women in big wooden jars. It looked more like bits of coarse broken yellow china than the sugar-fine grains commercially milled. It tasted better, too, than the packaged stuff, rough as it was. Everyone knew that; it was sold in health shops and eaten by white food-faddists with honey and butter… Salt! He had brought salt, at least. That was what had been missing, now she would be able to put salt in the water in which she boiled the meal.

People—black people—would certainly have seen him at the store, in possession of the yellow bakkie.

—So he turns up there as if the millennium has already arrived.—

She was stirring the meal thickening on the Primus. Spoon dripping in her hand, she looked at Bam, considering what could be done for him rather than what he had said. —But jam will be good—a dollop of jam with this…— She stirred as if to shift their energies. —He did bring things.—

T
here was the moment to ask him for the keys. But it was let pass.

They stood in the midday sun and watched, over at the deserted dwelling-place, the yellow bakkie being reversed, bucking forward, leaping suddenly backwards again; kicking to a stop. July was at the wheel. His friend was teaching him to drive.

After days of rain hot breath rose from everything, the vegetation, the thatch, the damp blankets of all patterns and colours hung out over every bush or post that would spread them. Submission to the elements was something forgotten, back there. You shivered, you had no dry clothes to replace wet ones. The hearth-fire that filled the hut with smoke was the centre of being; children, fowls, dogs, kittens came as near to it as the hierarchy of their existence allowed. The warmth that food brought—blood chafing into life—came
from it, where the clinkers of wood, transparent with heat, made the porridge bubble vigour. Bam and Maureen had longed for cigarettes, for a drink of wine or spirits, their children had craved for sweet things; but in the days of rain, the small fire they never let die satisfied all wants.

A shimmer of heat like a flock of fast-flying birds passed continually across the movements of the vehicle. He was getting the hang of it.

When the lesson petered out he and his friend sat about on their hunkers—too far away to make out what they were doing; just talking, no doubt, July stimulated and eager to communicate, as everyone is when acquiring a new skill, the stages at which mastery eluded or came to him. Walking back through the valley, he waved jubilantly when he was near enough to recognize and be recognized.

—I would never have thought he would do something like that. He’s always been so
correct.
— Bam paused to be sure she accepted the absolute rightness, the accuracy of the word. —Never gave any quarter, never took any, either. A balance. In spite of all the inequalities. The things we couldn’t put right. Oh, and those we could have, I suppose.—

Gratitude stuffed her crop to choking point. —We owe him everything.—

Her husband smiled; it didn’t weigh against the keys of the vehicle, for them.

Oh, she didn’t deny that. She was setting out the facts before herself, a currency whose value had been revised. It was not only the bits of paper money that could not supply what was missing, here.

—I’d give him the keys any time. I could teach him to drive, myself—he hasn’t asked me. All right—someone has to get supplies for us…—

—As long as the money lasts.—

—The money! We’ll be out of here, with plenty of
money.— Habit assumed the male role of initiative and reassurance—something he always had on him, a credit card or cheque-book. She would not look at him, where it had passed from him, and remark his divestiture.

July’s wave had been innocent. He came with their supply of wood—all still so damp, the whole settlement was hazed bluish from everyone’s cooking-fires, once more established outdoors. Bam spoke up with independent pleasantness. —You shouldn’t bother. I’ve told you. I can chop my own wood. You mustn’t do it.—

—The women bring the wood. You see all the time, the women are doing it.— It was an issue not worth mentioning; he was enthusiastic about his prowess with the vehicle. —You know I’m turning round already? I’m know how to go back, everything. My friend he’s teaching me very nice.—

—I saw. You didn’t say you were going to learn to drive. You never said you wanted to learn.—

—In town?— He was affable, deprecating his own ability, or reminding that they knew he had known the limits of his place.

—Here. Here.—

He leaned forward confidentially, using his hands. —Is no good someone else is driving the car, isn’t it? Is much better I myself I’m driving.—

—If they catch you, without a licence…—

He laughed. —Who’s going to catch me? The white policeman is run away when the black soldiers come that time. Sometime they take him, I don’t know… No one there can ask me, where is my licence. Even my pass, no one can ask any more. It’s finished.—

—I’m still worried that someone will come to look for us here because of the bakkie.—

—The bakkie? You know I’m tell them. I get it from you in town. The bakkie it’s mine. Well, what can they say?—

Only a colourless texturing like combings from raw wool across the top of his head from ear to ear remained to Bam— he had begun to go bald in his twenties. The high dome reddened under the transparent nap. His eyes were blue as Gina’s shining out of dirt. —Is it yours, July?—

All three laughed in agitation.

—They hear me. They must know, if I tell them I take it from you.—

A wave of red feeling—it seemed to flash from Bam’s fine pate to her—sent her backing them all away at a warning. Again, she gained foothold, spoke from there. —Martha’s given me something for the children’s coughs. She makes it out of herbs—at least, she showed me some plants she was boiling—

July’s eyes at once screwed up. —What? She’s give you what? That stuff is no good. No good.—

—But she gave it to the baby. Your baby. That’s how I could show her I wanted something for Gina and Royce—Royce never stops, all night, although he doesn’t wake up.—

His face was flickering with something suppressed: annoyance with his wife, irritation at responsibility—he was not a simple man, they could not read him. They had had experience of that, back there, for fifteen years; but then they had put it down to the inevitable, distorting nature of dependency—his dependency on them. —That medicine is no good for Royce. You don’t give that for Royce. You give it already?—

—No, I thought tonight. I thought maybe it’s something that makes you sleepy—

—It’s—you know… It’s not for white people.—

She was smiling as if he knew better. — Ju-ly…your baby is given it. Don’t tell me it can do any harm.—

—What do they know, these farm women? They believe anything. When I’m sick, you send me to the hospital in town. When you see me take this African medicine?—

—Well, all right. But even in town plants are used for some cough medicines. It might have helped. I haven’t anything to give him.—

—Me, I’m try next time I’m go to the India shop.—

Bam put an end to an academic argument. —There won’t be medicines. Grandpa Headache Powders, maybe.—

—No, he’s right, they’ll quite likely have some sort of cough syrup, think of all the chest troubles rural people get, living like this. It’s possible.—

—Royce he’s coming warm enough in the night? I think I bring blanket I got there in my house.—

She shook her head, smiling thanks. Swiftly, she placed—not a request, an assumption. —I’m going to put the rubber floor-mat from the bakkie under where he sleeps.— Her hand was out.

—I wanted to fetch it this morning, but you’ve kept the keys.— Bam did not raise his voice; had never shouted for him, back there. The white man (Bam saw himself as they would see him) would walk out into the yard, reasonably, when there was a reproach to lay at the door of his room, where his friends, so well-dressed on their days-off, sat gossiping.

—Who will go to the shop to get things for you? Who can bring your matches, your paraffin. Who can get the food for your children? Tell me?—

She always took on the responsibility of assuming herself addressed; she was the one who understood him, the way he expressed himself.

—
Of course.
I’ll bring them back to you.—

—Tell me?—

—Of course, yes of course.—

He looked at her, looked away. —Tomorrow I’m go get medicine for Royce. That child he’s sick.—

He turned around in the hut a moment as a man does when he forgets what he is there for. Falling in step with some pattern
chanced upon he began to push about the small, crowded, darkened space, dragging and shaking things into a private order.

They stood there while his obsession swirled about them. They looked neither at him nor at each other; at least they did not allow themselves to be driven out along with the fowls, the nuisance of whose droppings was equalized by the benefits of an assiduous scavenging for the insects who shared the hut.

There was in his dark profile, the thrust of the whites of his eyes suddenly faced and away again, the painful set of his broad mouth under the broad moustache, a contempt and humiliation that came from their blood and his. The wonder and unease of an archetypal sensation between them, like the swelling resistance of a vein into which a hollow needle is surging a substance in counterflow to the life-blood coursing there; a feeling brutally shared, one alone cannot experience it, be punished by it, without the other. It did not exist before Pizarro deluded Atahualpa; it was there in Dingane and Piet Retief.

A sudden leaping, punching broke the air outside.