Whitethorn (23 page)

‘What you got there under your foot,
Voetsek
?' he growled.

‘Nothing,' I replied fearfully.

‘You lying, man! I seen something.'

‘It's just a piece of old paper,' I protested, thinking fast.

‘Move your foot and let me see this piece of paper,' Japie demanded.

‘I think it's money,' someone said. ‘A ten-bob note!'

There was a gasp from everyone standing around and then Japie gave me a great push in the chest. I went arse over tit into the mud and then there were seven boys diving at the pound note sticking out of the mud. Talk about a scrum!

All of a sudden there were bodies everywhere fighting and kicking and rolling over each other. Gawie Grobler managed to get the pound note but the others were onto him like a pack of mad dogs.

‘Stop!' It was Meneer Frikkie Botha who'd suddenly come up. Everyone stopped and got up with their clothes covered with mud, and we all stood with our hands behind our backs the way you were supposed to in a line-up.

‘What's going on, hey?' he asked.

‘Nothing, Meneer!' we all chorused.

‘So nothing's going on and all of a sudden you all fighting and rolling around in the mud?'

We all looked down at our feet and remained silent.

‘This nothing that's going on is all of a sudden going to turn into six of the best for everyone if somebody doesn't tell me what this is all about,' Frikkie Botha growled. He turned to Japie Betzer. ‘Japie, I saw you push Tom, here! Why?'

‘It was nothing, Meneer. We was just playing,' Japie mumbled, not looking up.

‘I see, playing in the mud for nothing, is that it?' He looked around. ‘You think I'm stupid?'

‘No, Meneer!' we all chorused again. He looked at me sternly. ‘Tom, why did Japie push you?'

I was in the deep shit. If I told Frikkie Botha about the pound note I'd be up in front of Meneer Prinsloo in a flash. If I told Meneer Prinsloo that I'd received the pound note from Miss Phillips he'd ask to see the letter that was floating in little pieces down the Limpopo River. If he believed me, which was very unlikely, he'd write to Miss Phillips who'd tell him about the four black feathers and how she'd won the Easter Bonnet competition at the Rand Easter Show. I was suddenly between a rock and a hard place and my Great Shiny-Feather Robbery would be exposed and it was Pretoria for sure, possibly not the reformatory, but hanging by the neck until I was stone dead.

‘I said the Union Jack was a nicer flag than the
vierkleur
, Meneer,' I lied. The
vierkleur
was the flag of the Transvaal Republic before the British defeated the Boere in the Boer War. In that part of the world it was a sacred ensign. People kept it in a bottom drawer for one day when the Boere would rise up and defeat the
verdomde
English and restore the sacred God-given flag to its rightful place outside every police station in the land.

Suddenly Frikkie Botha's large hand landed on the side of my head and lifted me off my feet so that I landed back in the mud. ‘You said what?' he growled. ‘You better take that back, you hear? Stand up, man!' he yelled. I stood up. ‘Now say you sorry to God!'

‘Sorry, God,' I said.

‘No, man, look up to heaven and go down on your knees and bring your hands together and say sorry to God for sacrilege and dishonour to the true flag.'

Back into the mud I went with my ear stinging and my head ringing. ‘Sorry, God for sacrilege and dishonour to the true flag,' I said with a small sob and a sniff.

‘Now say sorry to Japie Betzer,' Frikkie Botha commanded.

I rose to my feet. ‘Sorry, Japie,' I said in a small voice. Japie nodded and grunted.

‘And that's not all, tonight you go and see Mevrou who is going to make you wash your mouth out with soap because what you talking is blasphemy!' Frikkie Botha turned and stormed off, you could see just from looking at his back that I was now the enemy.

After Frikkie Botha had gone Japie Betzer and the other bigger boys demanded that Gawie Grobler hand the note over. Gawie's nose was bleeding and his lip was split from the fight to get at the note in the first place.

‘Someone grabbed it,' Gawie sniffed. ‘I haven't got it anymore.'

‘You lying, hey,' Japie said threateningly, and several of the bigger boys closed in on Gawie. ‘Hand it over, man!'

‘You can search me,' Gawie protested. ‘It's God's truth, I'll swear it on a stack of Bibles. Someone took it out of my hand!'

‘Open your mouth,' Japie said. Gawie opened his mouth and Japie put his dirty forefinger inside and rummaged around. ‘Pull out your pockets' was the next command. Gawie did as he was told. Still no pound note.

‘I'm telling you, man, I haven't got it,' Gawie sniffed back the blood coming from his nose. The back of his hand was red from wiping the blood away.

‘Take off your shirt and shorts,' Japie said.

Gawie soon stood naked in front of all of us. ‘I swear on my mother's grave,' he said, clearly upset.

‘You haven't got a fucking mother,' Japie sneered as he shook Gawie's shirt and then his shorts. Still no pound note.

It must have occurred to Japie that if he found the pound note he'd have to fight the two other big boys for it, because he turned around to them. ‘We going to search everyone, you hear? When we find the ten bob, we each,' he pointed to the two bigger boys, ‘going to get two and sixpence and there's two and six left. So all the small guys here get sixpence, even
Voetsek
because he saved us from Frikkie's
sjambok
with his Union Jack story that he made up, but it's still blasphemy.'

My pound had turned into sixpence if it could be found, except that it might turn into a shilling because it was really a pound and not ten bob. Sixpence was more than I'd ever owned before the pound came into my life and a shilling was even twice that. You could get twelve suckers for a shilling, so maybe it hadn't turned out all that badly after all.

But then came the surprise. Everyone, even Japie Betzer, took off their clothes and we could search anyone we liked, but the pound wasn't found. People started digging around in the mud and lifting any small rock or piece of wood that was lying around, but we found nothing.

‘I told you it was an old piece of paper that must have blown away,' I said triumphantly, and I added accusingly, ‘but no-one would believe me.'

Japie gave me a clip behind the earhole, fortunately on the opposite side to Frikkie Botha because he was left-handed. ‘Why do you only make trouble all the time,
Voetsek
, saying that about the Union Jack. You just a fucking
rooinek,
you hear?'

There I was with a couple of thick ears and my first fortune lost, disappeared into thin air.

That wasn't the end of the Great Shiny-Feather Robbery because that night when I went to have my mouth washed out with soap by Mevrou, there on her embroidery table was a copy of
Huisgenoot.
On the cover of the magazine was this big picture of Janneke Phillips smiling and wearing a beautiful hat with four Black Orpington feathers sticking out of it. The words under her picture said ‘
Die hoed wat die Rand
Passfees Wedrenne gewen het
. The hat that won the Rand Easter Show races.'

Now I knew I was
really
and
truly
in the deep shit. The evidence of the robbery was there for all the world to see. The four feathers stolen from Piet Retief's bum were on the cover of the biggest Afrikaans-speaking women's magazine. This was long-cane Prinsloo territory and with Pretoria thrown in. I waited for the dreaded words to come.

But nothing happened except that Mevrou made me wash my mouth out with Lifebuoy soap. ‘This is from Meneer Botha,
Voetsek
. He told me what you said about the beloved
vierkleur
, the true flag of our noble
volk
!
Sis
, man, you should be ashamed! Under that same flag they killed 27 000 Afrikaner women and children. So from me comes castor oil because the
sjambok
is just too good for you!' I had to drink three big spoons of castor oil and I shit myself silly for two days afterwards. At the end I could hardly stand.

As far as the magazine cover went, I'd clean forgotten that neither Mevrou nor Meneer Prinsloo had known Janneke Phillips. While the cover was proudly drawing-pinned on the school noticeboard by Meneer Van Niekerk, not a single kid from The Boys Farm made the vital connection with Piet Retief's missing bum feathers. To them, a feather was a feather, and as far as they were concerned, the world was full of black shiny feathers in hats worn by ladies.

That still wasn't the end of the matter. It was now school holidays and three days later when at last I wasn't running to the shithouse every ten minutes, Gawie Grobler approached me. ‘
Voetsek
, why don't I meet you maybe down by the creek where you always take your little dog?' he said, and then added, ‘I'll be waiting there after lunch, you hear?' While he'd made it sound like a suggestion I had no option. He was two years older than me and you daren't disobey when you're at the bottom of the pecking order. Not that Gawie would have done anything, he wasn't the physical type and won his respect because everyone knew he was the cleverest boy at The Boys Farm. Maybe I was getting nearly as clever, but, of course, that didn't count. I forgot to say it was a Saturday and we had an hour off after lunch.

I was surprised at his knowing about the creek and a bit worried. Kids always think they do things unobserved and me going down to the creek with Tinker was one of those things. If Gawie had said the big rock I would have been
really
worried. You see, that's where I kept my growing library of Miss Phillips' books. At first they went under my bed where we were allowed to keep things, then Mevrou found out they were written in English and all of a sudden she made a new law that said we could only have our schoolbooks there and three other personal things. Things such as your catty and a pocket knife if you had one, which I didn't, and maybe a ball or a top or a tin where you kept things like marbles you'd won from the town kids or other things you'd found. There was also this rule among the boys that you couldn't steal something from your own dormitory, and even people like Pissy Vermaak didn't ever. ‘It's like our home,' everyone agreed.

I had to find a new place to put my books and all the letters and her exercise corrections and marked essays Miss Phillips had sent me. It was quite a pile, I can tell you, and my library was growing week by week. So I went and collected some old paraffin tins and I put my books and papers in them and hid them under the big rock. Ever since what happened at the big rock everyone thought it was a bad-luck place and stayed away. Not that very many people went there in the first place. I had it all to myself and I gave it a new name, the library rock. If Gawie Grobler had suggested we walk to the library rock I would have been very worried.

The part of the creek Gawie chose to go to was good. This was because the swimming hole was further down a bit and was the best place to catch
platannas
as well as shoot bush doves in the big blue gum trees
.
It was the place where I had found Tinker floating in a sack and it was a part people almost never went to. But Gawie, who was also a quiet type and very clever, must have observed Tinker and me going for walks. The reason he would have suggested we meet at this place was that he probably didn't want the other kids to see me with him. The thing about me saying I liked the Union Jack better than the
vierkleur
had spread all around the place and I was an even bigger untouchable than before. I have to say this for Gawie Grobler, he tried to explain to everyone that I only said it to save them all from a certain
sjambokking
by Frikkie Botha. But people still said, ‘Never mind that,
Voetsek
still said it, and that's because in his heart of hearts he believes it, so it's still blasphemy.' Sometimes in life you have to choose your words very carefully, even when you have to find them in a hurry.
When Tinker and me got to the creek Gawie was already there waiting. ‘Howzit?' he said in English, much to my surprise.

‘
Ja
,
goed dankie
. Yeah, good thanks,' I replied politely in Afrikaans.

‘I suppose you wondering why I asked you here?' he said in Afrikaans, because I don't suppose he spoke English very well, even though we'd both passed the exams. I didn't reply. ‘It's about your books,' he said.

The shock I felt was worse than the clout Frikkie Botha gave me at the water pump. The inside of my mouth had gone dry. ‘My books?' I said at last, my voice close to a whisper.

‘Can I read them?' he asked.

‘They English,' I said.

‘Yes, I know,' he replied.

‘But you are an Afrikaner?' I asked, puzzled.

‘
Ja
, I know I can't let anybody see. I thought I could read them with you when you go down to the big rock where you go and read by yourself.' He paused. ‘We could go separately to that rock and then read together and talk about the stuff that's in them, like we do with the Afrikaans books at school.'