The Triangle and The Mountain: A Bermuda Triangle Adventure (20 page)

“Can we turn around then?”

“Nope. It is still very stormy behind us. And there is
something else. There is another system to the north-east, the remnants of a massive
cold front.  I think that big wave of last night might have come from the cold
front. The cold air that we are experiencing also comes from there. And of
course there is now this tropical storm, which no one knows exactly where it
will go next. Hopefully you are right and it will die on the spot.”

“It would be very strange if it didn’t.”

“We take no chances. The way we’ll play it now is that we
will simply continue on this course, doing seven to eight knots over the ground
if we can as long as we have wind. We will continue toward the lee of Bermuda
and slip back to St Georges or Hamilton when all the vile weather has passed.”

“I suppose there is no other option,” said Madeleine.

“I’ve had breakfast, so I’m going to my bunk. Please make some
for yourself. If something changes, you’ll call me of course.”

Madeleine made an incomprehensible sound.

“Pardon me?”

“Don’t worry, I was just yawning.”

“Another thing. Use the engine if the wind dies away. Let me
show you how to start it.”

“Fine. I’ve got it,” said Madeleine, once she has identified
the start button and throttle lever. “Go to sleep.”

***

It was day four. Despite the hour it was still as dark as if
it was midnight. The light of the new day was slow in coming, if at all. Madeleine
looked around for any lights that would indicate other ships on their patch of
the ocean but there was nothing.

Her eyes fell on the soft foam-rubber cushions on the lee
cockpit seats. She decided that the temptation was simply too big. She curled
up on it and closed her eyes. The problem was that the tiredness simply did not
go away. She missed a full eight hours’ sleep and her deep worry about the
course that they were taking was sapping a lot of her energy as well.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Braam Malan stepped out of his office just as a twenty two
metre long articulated truck eased its way through the double volume gate of
the big yard. He always felt a bit like a farmer of old at the end of the day
when the herders brought back the cattle from a day of grazing. What had
happened out there? Was there any damage? Did they meet with any lions? His
eyes ran over the rig, looking for tell-tale signs of trouble, such as a shredded
tyre, a tear in a side-curtain or scrapes on the fenders. Everything seemed to
be in order. The driver was lucky, because he was a strict boss and quick to
let his employees know their mistakes. He believed in looking over his fifty
seven trucks and seventy trailers himself. There was a piece of farmer’s wisdom
in that as well. He father often used to say that the eye of the master kept
the oxen fat.

He took over the business from the old man. On the side-curtain
of the truck passing in front of him the name of the enterprise read AB Malan
& Son, Transporters. He was the son and his father changed the name of the
business shortly after he was born. They were both baptised Abraham Bernard.
The old man was called AB and he took the moniker Braam from a young age to set
the two apart. Transport was in their blood. The old man often joked that if
cut, he would bleed diesel.

The transport yard was on the edge of the town of Kimberley.
It was big, which allowed for trucks to turn around inside the yard without
backing and that was how it was supposed to be. The yard sported a fully
equipped wash bay, where a compressor purred away while a driver and assistant
were washing their charge with a pressurised hose. In addition it had a six
hundred square metre warehouse and a row of store rooms that housed sets of
tyres and spare batteries. When the last truck was in, he took a walk along the
line of buildings. Everything seemed to be in order.   

Force of habit took him beyond the borders of the truck park, over gravel,
soggy from the shower that fell earlier, to a house which stood to the one side
of the property. Malan senior was sitting on the veranda, from where he kept up
a watch on proceedings. Braam had tolerated this for so long that he did not
mind anymore. Senior was eighty five years old, for three years now a widower,
opinionated and quarrelsome, every year more so than before. At the end of
every day Braam took his seat next to the old man, shared the trucking news of
the day and got an overview of current affairs in return. Senior was an avid
news watcher. His main target was the government.

“Yes,” he said, “do you know what they’ve done now?”

“No,” said Braam. It was the usual introduction and it was
his usual response.

“They are putting the bloody electricity prices up. It is
getting so high now that it will kill off the mines and most of the industries
as well.”

“Fortunately we don’t use too much electricity,” said Braam.

“But our customers do,” said AB. “If everything slows down,
think how it will affect us. Maybe some of the mines will have to close.”

“Mmm, yes,” said Braam. “The mines that still survive around
here are all small operations. They could be affected. If they scale down it
means fewer loads with mining supplies from Johannesburg. You’ve got a point,
Dad.”

“Even the farmers will be affected,” said AB.

“To a point I agree,” said Braam, “but it simply means the
price of beef, mutton and maize will go up. It will not affect us, I think. Our
trucks will still run to Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg with their products
as before. And as far as prices are concerned, we get a lot of free stuff from
the farmers.”

“I see more and more farmers are now buying their own trucks
and trailers,” grumbled AB.

“Quite frankly,” said Braam, “I don’t mind too much if they
run in their maize themselves. I have fifteen grain carriers and when do we use
them? Only in May and June. For the rest of the time it is capital sitting
there.”

“We have to provide a service,” said AB. “The same farmers
give us their cattle and sheep to transport.”

“Then why are we seeing more of them buying their own trucks
now?” asked Braam, countering his fathers’ earlier logic.

“Prices,” said AB. “But they will learn. Once they’ve made
their sums they will see how expensive it is to run a truck at today’s fuel
prices.”

“And driver salaries,” said Braam. “I suppose they will come
back.”

“They will,” said AB, “but transport will always be a hard
business. Up and down all the time. We thought we were out of it when the new
government came in but just look where we are now. We are the biggest in
Kimberley.”

“We were fortunate that the railways collapsed. That created
a massive demand for trucking.”

“I see on the news that all these unused railway tracks are
disappearing bit by bit,” said AB. “They simply steal it, overhead wires and
all and cut it up for the recycling trade.”

“And now the trucks are destroying the roads,” said Braam.
“I’ve never seen it so bad.”

“They don’t care,” said AB. “They drive on the few well
maintained highways from the office to their homes and they don’t see how bad
things are in the rural areas. If they don’t start repairing roads soon, we
will have even more problems.  No wonder the economy is going down.”

Braam’s cellphone rang and he looked at the number. “Yes, Skhosana?
What!” he exclaimed. “What about the spare? Oh, you used it this morning. I’ll
get the mechanic out there. Take the wheel off so long.”

He speed dialled another number. “Two blowouts in one day
from this truck,” he said to his father while the phone rang. “He said he went
over a series of potholes and bang went the tyre.”

“Did he roll the truck?”

“No, he’s my best driver.”

The recipient of the call picked up.

“Magnus,” he said, please take two trailer tyres to number
fifty one. It’s standing on the R31, thirty kilometres from here. Help him put
one tyre on and leave the other one as a spare. Make it quick. He’s pulling a
load of sheep that must be at Cato Ridge by five o’ clock in the morning.”

“It’s never been this bad,” said AB, “even in my days.”

“It makes me furious,” said Braam. “Only the tyre companies
make money. You must see how old whatshisname, Fred from Firestone, smiles when
he stops here. We always have business for him.”

“I saw you had some other visitors today as well.”

“Ah, yes, the guy from Nissan was here. He showed me a
catalogue of the new UD four forties.”

“You are not thinking of buying, are you?”

“Not really, but it does not do harm to look. They are light
on diesel, comparatively speaking. All fully automatic. That’s the thing,
nowadays. The computer basically drives the truck and decides what gear is the
best.”

“Don’t believe a word!” fumed the old man, visibly irritated.
“American trucks are still the best for this country. A Cummins engine, Fuller
box and a set of Rockwell diffs have proven their worth here. Remember we have
the toughest stretch for trucks in the world. From Durban to Johannesburg the
stress on the drivetrain just never stops. You need the toughest of the tough
to survive here.”

“Yes, they’ve served us well,” said Braam. “I remember the
Eagles you had when I grew up. You could not kill these things.”

“They were wonderful trucks,” said AB. “Do you remember
those trips I made into Africa, sometimes two weeks at a time, sometimes for longer,
driving myself?”

“I remember,” said Braam. “You only had five then.”

“But they were good trucks and what was important was that
you could fix them on the road yourself, even when you were deep in the Congo.”

“The last of the breed were the N Fourteens,” said Braam. “I
was sorry to see them go. After that came the computers. How much money have I
not paid to a guy who came out, flicked a switch and billed me two and a half
thousand rand? How can you charge me so much? I asked. No, he said, he paid a
hundred and forty thousand rand for his diagnostic equipment. He has to recoup
his costs. That’s why I bought one myself.”

“How much have you paid again?”

“A hundred and twenty.”

“Plus a mechanic.”

“Yes, plus a mechanic. But it keeps us going. Magnus is not
bad.”

“Automatic gearboxes and computers,” sniffed AB. “I still
say a good driver is your best guarantee to get mileage out of a tank. In my
days we didn’t even have the eighteen speed manual boxes you have now. We
learnt on the Fuller crash boxes. If you were a new driver you watched until
the revs got to one thousand five hundred and then you changed. No synchros for
us. You learnt yourself like that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. You sat by me until I no longer needed to look
at the rev counter. I could hear when the engine was ready to change. You
taught me how to miss a gear when the going was easy and how to time my stops
with traffic lights to economise on the diesel.”

“Nowadays if you give a crash box to a driver he will run
away so fast you won’t see him again.”

“It’s easier now to drive a four hundred and eighty
horsepower horse than my pick-up. I think I must have another look at the new
fully automatic Freightliners.”

“What engine?”

“We’ve had Cats and Detroits now for a while, mixing it with
the ISX Cummins. I cannot really say there is a difference. Maybe I must let go
some of the older high mileage ones.”

“Who was that other chap that I saw coming there? He stayed
quit a long time.”

“Ah, he was from the Transport SETA. Came to speak to me
about training my staff.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I basically just listened. It is about getting the money
back that we pay toward the skills levies. But to be honest, I could not
understand head or tail. It was a paper for this and a paper for that. You have
to wait so long for this and so long for that. After two hours I was no further
than at the beginning. Fine, I had a few calls in between, but after two hours
I told him to come back when he had something simple that I could understand
and which did not involve a whole truckload of paperwork. All I can remember of
the whole thing is WSP.”

“Sounds like a rugby team. I’m so glad we gave them a hiding
this year.”

“Yes, but that was only once. The moment their Super Rugby
players came back, we lost again. We must stop having our best players
poached.”

“So you continue to pay the skills levy?”

“It’s the law. What else can I do? I pay two percent of
payroll every month and I get nothing for it, but I’d rather just continue.”

“That’s the intention,” said old man Malan, angry again.
“They are just like the insurance companies. Nobody can understand what they
are talking about. Meanwhile they get rich on your money. This is corruption, I
tell you.”

“Institutionalised robbery,” agreed Braam. He flapped open
his iPad, opened a live satellite map and typed in the numbers of the broken
down truck. “Ah, there he is,” he said. Next, he punched in another set of
numbers. It was for the mechanic and showed him exactly where he was travelling.
He pressed a button and connected. “Hey Magnus, I see on the tracker he is
forty kilometres from the city centre. You have another twenty to go.”

“So, how are Magda and Laetitia?” asked AB.

“Just fine,” said Braam.

“Too fine, if you ask me,” said AB. “You spoiled them both
and you still do. The one is close to forty and the other one is thirty five.
Neither one has a husband. When is this going to change?”

“Nobody is good enough, they say.”

“Bollocks.  They just pull up their noses for nothing. You
pay them too much. Where in this town do you find two women who earn thirty
thousand rand a month for doing office work? Nobody wants them because most of
the men don’t want a wife who makes more than him and who drives a Porsche on
top of it all.”

“Believe it or not, but they actually want an increase,”
said Braam. “And they say you and I are the reasons why they cannot find
husbands. We are putting off the men because we are too difficult.”

“What nonsense! It is simply too bad that you don’t have a
son who can take over. I hoped for a grandson but now that seems not to be
happening either.”

“I still have hope,” said Braam.

“Time is running out,” Malan senior. “You are also not
getting younger. In five years you are sixty five.”

“Yes, it went fast.” He grabbed for his phone, because it
was ringing again.

“Slowly, slowly,” he said. “Where are you? But you should
know every pothole on that road by now. Do what you can to keep the animals off
the road. I will send Magnus through just now.”

Braam took his stocky frame off the chair and stomped off
the veranda. He shook his fist. “Will it never end?” he asked, looking up.

“What happened?” asked his father.

“My number twenty two just rolled with a full load of
cattle.”

“How did it happen?”

“The driver said he went through a pothole that took the
whole front left wheel of the truck and caused it to roll over. He said the
rain of this afternoon filled it up which is why he could not see how deep it
was. I asked him how he could not know about it since he does that route every
two days. He said it just got deeper since he had last seen it.”

“It sounds like he is alive.”

“They both are.”

He phoned the mechanic again. “Magnus, we have twenty two
rolled on the R357. I will give you the exact position in a minute. Drop off
those tyres as quickly as you can and then go help twenty two. I will be there
myself.”

“Shouldn’t you call the ambulance?” asked AB.

“No, the driver and the assistant are both unhurt. I suppose
they were strapped in.” He dialled another number.

“Gert, bad news. My driver just hit a pothole and rolled the
truck, fifteen kilometres from your gate. No, I don’t know what the situation
is with the cattle. Yes, I know the price of cattle. I have GIT insurance for
the load. We will sort you out. My driver and assistant are there and they
sound all right but they will need help with the cattle.”