Out of Shadows (7 page)

“Dad?” Ivan had been itching to ask. “The farm's not going to be taken, is it? You know, by the government.”

“Why the bloody hell would they do a thing like that?” came the gruff response between mouthfuls.

Ivan shrugged. “To give it to the blacks. Ian Smith isn't leader anymore, so who's to stop them?”

His dad met Ivan's gaze with the closest thing to a smile I thought I was likely to see.

“Blacks can't farm. It's a ridiculous idea; I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.”

“But if Mugabe wanted to,” Ivan went on, “could he?”

Now Mr. Hascott put down his fork.

“Look, my boy, Ian Smith might not be our leader but that doesn't mean blacks can just walk onto someone's land and take it. This is ours; we have title deeds. My grandfather bought it perfectly legally and the law is there to protect us. The Kaffirs may have won the war, they've got Mugabe, but this farm still belongs to us and will be ours until we decide to sell. Which we won't. Okay? This is our land.”

Yet again, my dad's voice haunted me about whose land it had been in the first place, but no way was I even going to think about saying it this time. I made myself get rid of the thought.

Ivan wouldn't let go. “Surely it's only legal if Mugabe says? He's in charge. He can do what he wants.”

“Don't be so bloody stupid. He made an agreement when he took over this country: He's not allowed to take it.”

“But he said—”

Mr. Hascott had started to take up his beer bottle and cut Ivan off by dropping it.

“Since when have you been a bloody expert in politics? You're boring me now.”

“He said he'd give them land if they won.”

“That Mugabe said a lot back then. Their sort will say all sorts of shit to get what they want.”

“Language, please.” Mrs. Hascott tried to intervene. “We have a guest.”

Only Mr. Hascott shot her a glance that made me go back to wishing I hadn't been invited.

“He said he would, though.” Sometimes I didn't know if Ivan was trying to make things worse or was just unaware. “He said the whites had stolen the land from the Africans and it was their right to take it back. He
promised
. How do you know he won't?”

“He won't.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“
How?
”

“Because if even one Kaffir steps onto my farm screaming land rights I'll slot him with a bullet.” Mr. Hascott stabbed the air. He probably didn't know he'd started to shout. “You see if I don't.”

“And fifty?”

“Enough.”

“A hundred? Five hundred?”

“You're pushing your luck, my boy. This farm will stay in this family for another hundred years, I can promise you that.”

“Ian Smith said the
country
would stay white for another
thousand
, only that didn't happen because we lost. Besides, what if I don't want it? Are you going to leave it to Steven and his long line of children?”

Mrs. Hascott gasped and put her hands to her mouth. Mr. Hascott was on his feet, chair crashing to the floor. He undid his buckle and ripped the belt from his shorts.

“You dare bring that name into my house.” His voice hissed. “I
told
you, I won't have it. That boy is dead to me. Get to your room.”

Ivan didn't go. Not straightaway.

“You're scared, aren't you?” he said, perfectly calm, his face a picture of serene clairvoyance. “You're scared because
you think it's true—what he said. I heard it on the radio, but you said it was just Kaffir-loving journalists scaremongering. But Mugabe really said that about culling the whites and you think he still might.”

Mr. Hascott threatened a hand to his son's face and stopped just short.

“
Go to your room
.”

Ivan went, and all at once there was just me and Mrs. Hascott. She tried to smile but it wouldn't quite work.

“Ivan does push his father. He's turning into a young man so quickly, I think we forget.” Her voice quivered out of control. Then: “Steven is Ivan's brother. He left home some years ago to live in South Africa with his . . . 
friend
.”

She started crying. I didn't know what to do.

Much later, I crept in to see Ivan. He was lying facing the wall, knees curled to his chest, sniffing. I didn't go close because I knew what it was like to have other boys see you trying not to blub.

I stood and looked at the pictures on his wall. There weren't many. On one side, a shot of a massive waterfall spewing torrents above the words
VICTORIA FALLS IS SUPER
, while in the near corner I spotted photographs of white troops in combat gear, smiling and pulling V-for-Victory signs for the camera as they headed for the bush. In some I recognized a leaner, fitter Mr. Hascott with a bullet belt around his chest, a huge gun in one hand, and with a young Ivan riding on his shoulders.

“I hate him,” Ivan croaked, making me jump slightly.

I wasn't sure if he meant his dad or Mugabe or Greet.

The silence came back so I moved back to the door.

“Check you tomorrow,” I said.

“
Ja
,” he said.

My eyes sprang open
. The soft predawn light stroked the curtains and I struggled to distinguish the strange shapes of Ivan's brother's room. I'd been dreaming that the war was still on and that the gooks Ivan had put into my head were crawling outside the house; only I was back at school in Selous and trying to run away to England, racing against lots of Nelsons wearing camouflage and carrying guns, and to my side, boys were cheering for their houses as they always did.

“. . . Come on, Willoughby . . .”

“. . . Go, Heyman . . .”

“. . . Show us that Burnett spirit . . .”

“. . . Selous is the
best, best, best
 . . .”

Then I woke properly.

Ivan was standing at the foot of the bed. He threw me a tracksuit.

“Here. You'll need this, it's chilloes out there.”

Outside, by the garages, he hooked a small rucksack onto his
back and asked if I'd ridden a motorbike before. I lied and said I had, so he nodded me to one of the off-road bikes in there.

I copied what he did and kick-started mine into life, but then stalled it four times in a row. He turned his bike around and came back. I thought he was going to shout but instead gripped my clutch hand until it hurt then released it.

“Do it slowly,” he said.

We rode. Out of the gate and onto the farm roads. I felt a whole new exhilaration as the cold air blew into my face. The track was blood red and bumpy, on either side the fields remained obscure and uncertain as the sun struggled to breach the horizon, and by the time it eventually got there we must have gone miles.

We turned a corner and headed up a steep hill toward a kopje as big as a house—rock balancing on rock like magic and looking like it could topple and roll down on us at the slightest puff of wind. How many people must have gazed with wonder and thought the same on first sight?

We got off our bikes, and as night peeled away the ghostly landscape came to life under a golden mist: cattle, maize stalks, ostriches, blankets of tobacco leaves . . . Ivan must have seen this a million times but even he stayed quiet as it emerged into view. A Lourie bird began to screech its familiar cry of “G'way,” while above, the black and white of a fish eagle swooped low and then out to the almond-shaped dam.

“I fucking love this place.” Ivan spoke perhaps more to himself than me. “I'll never let them take it.”

Then, nearby, a lone antelope emerged through the trees—a kudu, fawn in color with thin white stripes down its sides. Young and nervous, it paused with every step, ears twitching, scared by its own sounds. When it was twenty feet away, it suddenly became aware and stood rigid, looking right at us.

Ivan had very slowly and very carefully taken off his pack and extracted a semiautomatic handgun. It glinted dully.

He clicked the safety. I'm not sure I'll ever forget the look on his face.

The crack split the morning in two. It made me jump even though it wasn't as loud as I'd expected, and to my relief the kudu was already springing away among the branches.

Ivan was kicking his bike back into life.

“Come on!”

We hurtled down after it, twigs and thorns whipping my skin. I tried to keep up, but then a clearing came out of nowhere and I came face-to-face with a barbed-wire fence. I jinked left, panicked, and almost sent myself flying over the handlebars as I grabbed the front brake. The bike slid and ended up on its side.

“
Get up!
” Ivan yelled, and he slowed past me.

But I couldn't right the bike on my own so now he was really mad. He looked about and the kudu was nowhere in sight.

Ivan parked up at the edge of a tobacco field to squeeze a few frustrated rounds off at some rats, only they were all too quick and he ended up screaming at them.

He jammed the gun into my hand.

“You do it if you think it's so easy.”

The gun was light and fit surprisingly well. The kick wasn't what I'd imagined, either, almost nothing, but I'd never fired anything before and my first shot went wild.

“See? Useless Pommie.” Ivan's face was red.

My second went nowhere, too, and when Ivan began to laugh I didn't want to play anymore. I was about to hand the gun back when a gray flash caught my eye. I didn't even think. In a single movement I spun and squeezed and the thing scurrying across the road more than twenty feet away lifted into the air.

My stomach swirled with disgust and excitement as the rat thumped back onto the dust. Ivan's mouth stayed open but the laughter had stopped.

He grabbed the gun and changed the clip.

“Do that again.”

I felt like I was floating. I took aim, pressured the trigger, and another rat rolled out of the world.

And another.

“Jeez, Jacklin. This is your first time?”

“
Ja
,” I said, absurdly proud.

“Well, where the bloody hell were you during the war? We could have done with you. You should be in the school rifle club.”

I thought now was a good time to approach what had happened yesterday.

“Your old man was pretty mad last night, hey?”

Ivan snatched the gun back, stamped his engine back to life, and shouted over the revs.

“My old man hates two things in life: blacks and queers. My boet's a poof, okay? But if you tell
anyone
there's a faggot in my family you're dead.”

Now we just seemed to be going wherever, and Ivan stopped to take potshots at anything: birds, mostly, a few lizards, a snake . . . He missed them all. I was allowed a go at a bullfrog and obliterated it from fifteen meters. Ivan was getting fed up and I could see the clouds over him getting lower and lower.

We finally started heading back to the house when Ivan stood on his brake and slew to a stop. He stared at the ground with wild eyes.

“Look,” he pointed, and I saw clear imprints of antelope hoofs cutting a path. Alongside, droplets of blood. “I
did
get it.”

He abandoned the bike and darted off road. The kudu must have been close; the blood was still fresh. Ivan was making a mad, charging cry. We scampered over rocks, around ant mounds. Low acacias grabbed my clothes with thorny fingers. I wanted to stop only he just kept going.

And then he
did
stop. All at once, crouching low, he put his finger to his lips and pointed to a wall of bristle grass.

“On three.” I could barely hear him. He held the gun tenderly against his cheek. “Then watch me kill.”

His pupils were dilated and black.

“One . . . two . . .”

If he said three I didn't catch it. He burst through, pouncing in an explosion of leaves and twigs.

What met us on the other side wasn't a dying animal struggling to make a last bid for freedom. It was one of the workers in blue overalls crouching over an irrigation pipe, his tightly curled hair all bumpy and uneven, and with a cigarette rolled from newspaper between his lips. He jumped, spinning as we came, eyes wide and white against his chocolate skin. It was Luckmore, the tall, thin bossboy. I remembered him instantly as the one jumping out of the way of Mr. Hascott's pickup.

“
My weh!
” he yelped. His face was so surprised it was almost funny. Then everything seemed to turn to stone when he saw the gun right in his face.

His cigarette went limp and tumbled to the ground.

A nervous laugh: mine. No one else joined in. Ivan kept holding the gun. I became hyperaware of everything.

The chill air.

The smell of the worker's cigarette.

The bead of sweat hanging over Ivan's eye.

His finger, tightening around the trigger.

He's going to do it
, I thought. For that brief moment, I was sure he really was.

There was a crisp snap of wood. Over the worker's shoulder, the kudu gazed out from the bushes, limping. Ivan shifted his aim and fired a single shot. The worker dropped and covered his head with his arms.

The kudu's legs had buckled. Ivan walked over to it, gazed down with thin lips, then shot it again, and didn't stop until the magazine was empty.

“We came through the bush
and this guy's just
there
, and I swear he almost
kakked
himself.”

Ivan and I told the story together, he perched on the table in the middle of our study room with me beside him. Everyone circled around us and listened intently, desperate to hear what happened next. It felt good, although Simpson-Prior was laughing too long and too loud, which I found a bit irritating, and when he coughed Mazoe orange juice through his nose I knew he was just trying to get attention for himself, and that perhaps Ivan was right about him.