Shooting Butterflies (13 page)

‘
Tiri Tose.
We are together.'

A burden shared was a less heavy one.

He thought of their final argument and what he had said to Buffel.

He remembered the pain as Buffel had hit him in the face, but he hadn't struck him back. Buffel thrived on violence, and Shilo now knew that to feed the monster made him worse. So he had talked to him instead.

‘You can't go around killing children.'

Buffel had laughed. ‘It will save Impendla's soul, I have to do it this.
Nyamhika Nehanda
herself guides me on this mission.'

‘No, Buffel, sickness guides you. You began to enjoy the killing too much, and when the war stopped you needed to stop too. You didn't.'

‘But she can save him, she can save him, Shilo! And you helped her! You helped her escape so that the voices now cry in my head, and I can't silence them.'

‘You are sick, Buffel. You are sick. You need to go to
Ingutchini.
I cannot help you anymore. I cannot stand by and watch this. I almost shot you by the dam the other day. I am a black man in a country that still has a lot of white rules, and I would have gladly died in prison for shooting a white man, because what you are doing is wrong. She is just a child. Buffel, you have to see that.'

‘No, it is what
Mwari
wants. It will save Impendla,' Buffel shouted.

‘You know that I was brought up in the Shilo Mission. I believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The one God. I can't help you if you choose to believe in the Shona God, Buffel, I can't stay here anymore.'

‘If that is what you must do, then go. Leave me. You are fired. Never darken my doorstep again. I'll get your pay drawn up.'

It was still hard to remember that just moments later, Buffel had thrown his pay in the dirt, and then he had beaten him some more in his rage. And when Shilo had walked away down the farm road towards his
ikhaya
, Buffel had got into his
bakkie
to get past him. He had thrown petrol on his
ikhaya
and burnt his humble home down.

‘Still leaving, Shilo? Now you have nothing.'

‘Yes, still leaving,' Shilo said as he had walked away again.

This time Buffel didn't follow and didn't do anything but stand on the spot for a long time.

Shilo soon melted into the bush, determined that this time, he was gone for good.

This time Buffel wouldn't find him and bring him home like a stray dog.

The price was high, but he was happy to pay it. He had covered his tracks. He had doubled back, he had watched Buffel try to track him, and slept in antbear holes to smother his scent and to lose Buffel. And after a week, Buffel had given up. He wasn't at his farmhouse, but he hadn't tried to track him anymore.

At last he had earned his freedom.

Freedom from a monster.

He lifted his head at the ticket vendor behind the small barred window. ‘One ticket to Umtali.'

‘You have to go to Bulawayo, then to Salisbury, then to Umtali.'

Shilo handed over the money from his wages.

The ticket master held out his tickets. ‘This one takes you to Bulawayo. When the conductor checks your tickets, give him this one only.' He put the second ticket next to the first. ‘This one, it goes to Salisbury. Don't give the wrong ticket to the conductor. This last one,' he put the third part of the ticket down, ‘this takes you to Umtali. Get something warmer to wear before you get there.'

Shilo grinned at him.

‘You keep those somewhere safe, make sure there is no hole in the pocket you put them in, understand?' The old ticket vendor had probably been doing his job for many years, sweeping the station, and now in the new Zimbabwe, he'd been promoted and was in charge of the ticketing. He was proud of his job.

Shilo looked down at his own clothes. The blue overalls were damaged at the knee and had seen tidier times. Anyone would mistake him for a vagrant farm worker.

He took the paper ticket in his right hand. ‘
Siyabonga kakulu Madala
,' he said to the older ticket vendor as a sign of respect. ‘I will look after them.'

‘Travel well.'

Shilo looked at the man sitting in the cubicle. His face was lined deeply by the sun and years of living. He had the look of old age, but the dark eyes that sat in that bald head still looked at him with intelligence and understanding, but more, with compassion.

He was early, the train wasn't for another hour, but Shilo hadn't known how long it would take to walk from his hiding place in the bush to the train station. He hadn't seen any sign of Buffel following him so he'd decided that today, he'd catch the train.

He sat on the bench and waited, closing his eyes. He'd hear the train coming from miles away and feel it when it got close, so for the moment he rested.

He saw white sands and an ocean so blue and clear that the silver fish darted from seagrass clump to seagrass clump to avoid being seen. He could almost feel the wind on his face as the dhow cut through the water, skimming towards the island.

The sound of a soft step nearby startled him and he jumped up, pulling back a fist ready to strike. But it wasn't Buffel, just the old man from the ticket office who stood in front of him. He quickly dropped his arm, and his fighting stance.

The old man smiled at him. ‘I had this in my office.' He handed Shilo a hand-knitted woollen jersey that had seen better days. ‘Just in case. You will need it more than me in Umtali. It is cold up in those mountains.'

‘Thank you,
Madala.
Thank you.'

The old ticket vendor nodded and shuffled back to his little booth that sat on the edge of the concrete platform, back into his little work place, with a ceiling fan that defied its age and continued to swirl the already hot air around the small room, as the sun beat down on the red corrugated iron roof.

Shilo stared after him and wrapped the jersey around his hands. That single item of clothing was now his only possession, other than what he wore. Buffel had burnt down his
ikhaya
and all his possessions in it. He'd nothing now to show of their days together. Snorting, he corrected his thinking.

He'd nothing to show for his thirty years on the earth. Well, except a bank account, that he no longer had a bankbook to access.

But he was alive.

At first, keeping an eye on the war torn PSYOPS Captain hadn't been that hard. Ensuring no children lived on the farm had been easy. Accompanying him everywhere he went had not been difficult. But since the Tara visit, when he'd begun to kill again, it had become a living nightmare. Such an innocent catalyst to bring the monster out again. Such an insignificant event, yet the results were horrific.

Almost a month after her father's funeral, Tara had visited Whispering Winds for the last time. Buffel had informed him they were going hunting, which was nothing new. But Shilo had known the moment they went to cross through the strands of barbed wire, and onto the neighbouring farm, that this wasn't a normal hunt.

They were hunting humans.

With a sickness in his stomach, Shilo knew he just couldn't live this life anymore. Couldn't continue to put his own life on hold while he watched over a monster who could emerge at any time. He had dreams of his own. For a year he had protected the children on Piet Retief from the monster by ensuring they were moved away. There had been no killings. Then a single child had come into Buffel's orbit, and the monster inside Buffel had awoken and wouldn't be pacified again. They were out hunting the girl.

They had concealed themselves well in the bush, and even the kudu that passed them had not flinched, nor even scented their presence.

But Shilo wasn't a killer. Although at that moment he had wanted to kill Buffel before he unleashed his wickedness into the world again, his conscience wouldn't let him. His Christian upbringing was strong, and murder condemned a man to hell.

Killing during war was different, that was kill or be killed, and Sergeant Riley had said to them that they would be absolved from those sins by God. He had believed his sergeant.

But murder of a unit member. His soul would belong to the devil. Eternal damnation.

Instead he'd attempted to stop the killing. Yet he was mindful that if Buffel suspected him, he would show no such mercy and would cut his throat without a second thought.

Shilo had removed the firing bolt from Buffel's .303 that night while Buffel slept. He wanted desperately to throw the bolt as far into the bush as he could, so Buffel would never be able to use his rifle again. If he did that then Buffel would know that he had tampered with it, but if when they got back to Piet Retief homestead, he could drop it on the floor where Buffel always cleaned his weapons, or lay it on the bench, Buffel would find it, and think that he had messed up while cleaning his weapon the last time before putting it away, and hadn't reassembled it completely before he stored it in its soft case. An easy enough mistake to make. Carefully, Shilo had put the bolt into his sock in case Buffel patted him down. It was a risk, but it was one worth taking to save the girl's life.

Buffel continued to snore, unaware that a unit member was betraying him by sabotage.

In the morning Tara had ridden towards their hiding place on her horse, her blonde hair shining in the bright African sun. She'd swum in her clothes in the dam on Whispering Winds. The young white man, Gabe, had been with her and the horse boy, Bomani.

But Buffel had surprised him.

When the girl came out of the water, and began weeping, he hadn't even reached for his weapon to line her up in his crosshairs of his sights and kill her. Instead he'd continued to watch her through his binoculars in fascination as she cried.

‘She's not ready yet. She's still too young. She needs to blossom. She's still like a boy when you look closely. She's yet to become a woman,' Buffel said.

Shilo had hung his head in relief, silently sliding his own .9mm back into its holster. Having had no sleep the night before, worried about what was about to occur, he had eventually come to the decision that he would not allow the murder to happen. Surely the God who was all forgiving would forgive him if he shot Buffel if he shifted the rifle from its open carrier to line her up. Because he knew that if Buffel didn't get to shoot her with his rifle, he would take Shilo's and use that. And Shilo hadn't sabotaged his own weapon in the bush.

Enough was enough.

Like a sick dog, he had been about to put Buffel out of his misery before he hurt another child. He had decided that in this case, murder was justified.

He would save the child.

Tara, Gabe and Bomani had remounted their horses, and ridden off, not knowing that Tara had dodged death from Buffel's hands a second time.

But it was just as Shilo was beginning to breathe normally again, and his heartbeat had begun to slow as they walked back to Piet Retief, that Buffel had knelt in the riverbed, next to a set of deep old prints.

Buffel had fingered the prints as if trying to assess them, and then he had looked at Shilo's feet.

He'd known that Buffel knew – they were his prints.

When he'd covered up his tracks from saving Tara the first time, he'd laid false trails and used the leaves to cover up his run through the bush when he realised what Buffel was about to do. In a hurry to return to the house, he'd neglected to cover those in the riverbed. And there had been no rain to wash them away since that fateful day.

His secret was out.

Now Shilo needed to save his own life.

He couldn't go to the police as men from the once feared PSYOPS unit had been integrated into normal life and were everywhere. He knew one was a judge. He knew one was in the police force. They had been elite once, now they hid in clear sight of everyone, but each held their tongues and kept their secrets. Kept the unspoken vow never to reveal the atrocities they committed in the name of freedom and national security.

A few of their unit had fled south and been absorbed into the Recces in the South African Defence Force, knowing that there they would be untraceable and safe from any prosecution.

Buffel had simply returned to his farm, Shilo with him.

No one, except Shilo, really knew the monster that had been unleashed during the bush war years and who now lived within their community.

And Shilo was leaving that monster in the community, unguarded.

Even as he sat on the railway bench, he fought a war within his own conscience. Should he go back to Buffel, or continue walking away, saving his own soul?

He jerked upwards and alert as he heard the train whistle at a siding further up the track. Soon Shilo could feel the train as it approached. It vibrated through his feet and up into his heart. He smiled as the train driver blew the whistle and the train slowly came to a stop.

No one got off the train. Shilo opened a carriage door and climbed inside.

Slowly the train pulled out the station, gaining momentum as it laboured on the steel tracks with its heavy carriages dragging behind.

Shilo sat down in a spare seat. He let out a deep breath and turned his head to watch the siding slide by and silently prayed that he'd never again have Buffel's face darken his life.