At this appeal to reason, Skeletor slid back to his seat. He looked over at the driver’s side and said, ‘I don’t need advice from anyone. And if you think that I’m going to—’
He was cut off as the truck shuddered over a rough patch in the road.
Thomas kept his eyes on the mirror, trying not to think about what would happen if they hit another pothole. With the truck rattling from exertion and the dust cloud drawing ever nearer, he found his hand reaching for his pocket. He had wanted to wait for the right moment, but this might be his last chance to read the letter.
‘Sealed road up ahead,’ Maxwell said, and a second later the truck shook over a seam and onto tarmac, and their ride suddenly became smoother.
Without the handicap of the dust thrown up by their own tyres, Thomas could now see exactly what was chasing them: a wide, white saloon car, a rattling soapbox on wheels, of a vintage even older than the truck. And it was gaining on them.
‘I’m going back outside,’ Skeletor said, heaving up his assault rifle and turning to the window.
‘Wait.’ Keeping his gaze on the mirror, Thomas gripped the Bob Marley T-shirt, made a bunch of it in his fist, and pulled.
In the front seats of the Cortina sat a man and woman. They were laughing. Neither of them was really watching the road. Their attention seemed to be on something in the back seat. All of a sudden a face appeared between them, making the couple burst into another fit of laughter, their car swerving from side to side.
‘Let go, surfer boy. You’ll ruin my shirt.’
‘Wait, man. Please.’
The Cortina came right up close to the truck, filling the mirror. Thomas could now see that the face between the couple belonged to a little boy. He was playing peek-a-boo with his parents, disappearing back and forth behind their seats. He was the reason the driver wasn’t paying attention to the road, why he had come so close to the truck and not noticed the maniac in the Bob Marley T-shirt that had earlier been hanging out of the window.
‘Surfer boy, I’m going to count to ten. If you don’t let go by then, I’ll kill you.’
‘It’s a family.’ Thomas pulled harder on the shirt, twisted the fabric. ‘Not terrorists. The only thing they’re guilty of is dangerous driving.’
Skeletor crushed up against Thomas for a look through the rear-view mirror. ‘That’s what they want you to think.’
A great peel of laughter erupted from Maxwell. ‘Aish, Skeletor! Not every black man is a communist.’
In the mirror there appeared an orange blinking light, diluted by the sun to a pale shade of yellow, as the driver indicated to overtake.
Veering the pickup truck to the gravel shoulder and still smiling, Maxwell let the car through.
Thomas and Maxwell waved at the family as they passed. The parents waved back and the little boy made faces. Then Thomas noticed that Skeletor wasn’t joining in.
He was staring straight ahead and grinding his teeth, stewing in his frustrations. ‘Slow down,’ he snapped when they were back on the road. ‘Do you want us to hit a pothole?’
The Cortina sped off into the borderland.
Once again, they were alone on the road.
Chapter 4
They settled in a restless silence; Skeletor clipping and unclipping the mag of ammo from his rifle, Maxwell stern again, his eyes peeled for obstructions, and Thomas left in the middle with only the engine noise and the air rushing in through the vents to keep him company. As the landscape floated by on either side, an unrelenting emptiness broken every now and then by a distant kraal or herd of scrawny goats scrounging in the sand, he felt his hand straying again and again to the letter in his pocket, touching it to reassure himself that it was still there, that it was real. He really should have read it the night before, because now he could barely restrain himself from ripping it open like a Bar One chocolate and devouring its secrets all at once. But he knew what Skeletor was like. The sight of a pink envelope would only provide him with ammunition.
‘You can’t stop thinking about it, can you?’
Realising he had been caught staring at Skeletor, Thomas tore himself away from his thoughts and focused on the bony face sneering back at him. ‘Sorry?’
‘I said,’ Skeletor hissed, ‘you can’t stop thinking about it.’
‘About what?’
‘Catch a wake up, surfer boy.’ Reaching into his pocket, Skeletor pulled out his own letter, the secret message from the Major. He waved it under Thomas’s nose. ‘The reason we’re here in the first place.’
‘Oh, that,’ Thomas said, doing his best to ignore the folded piece of paper intruding in his personal airspace. ‘Not interested.’
‘Don’t play innocent with me.’
He may not have known the details, but Thomas had a pretty good idea what was inside: dates, times and co-ordinates, the whens and wheres of a helicopter or artillery strike. The message was a death warrant and he wanted as little to do with it as possible. ‘Bru,’ he explained carefully, ‘you’re the one who got us into this. So whatever’s in that message is your problem, not mine.’
‘That’s right, for my eyes only. Don’t you forget that.’ Satisfied, Skeletor slipped the message back into his pocket but not before rapping Thomas on the nose with it. ‘I know what you souties are like – always sticking your snouts where you don’t belong.’
Thomas sighed. He was wedged between Skeletor and Maxwell as tightly as the mortar between two bricks, his shoulders crushed into his torso, his knees battered from every unexpected gear change. The winter sun now loitered directly over the windscreen, beating down on his jeans, the heat making his shirt stick to his back, acting as a catalyst for the sweaty stench brewing up between the three of them, a smell that clung to his face like a mask, made him feel queasy. But all of these discomforts he could have handled if it wasn’t for Skeletor. They were only a few hours into their journey and already Thomas was sick of him. Why did Skeletor have to insult him constantly? If it wasn’t ‘surfer boy’ it was ‘soutie’, the name that Afrikaners like Skeletor gave to English-speaking South Africans like Thomas, who, it was said, had one foot in England, one foot in South Africa and their testicles dangling in the sea between, giving them a salty tang. He had a few insults of his own for Skeletor, but he didn’t want to share them, lest it start a fight.
Turning to Maxwell, who was staring resolutely ahead, Thomas tried to spark a conversation. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’
‘Listen to you,’ Skeletor said, ‘you sound like a child.’
Thomas turned back to his tormentor. ‘I just wanted to know, bru.’
‘Stop calling me that. I’m not your brother.’
‘Then stop calling me “surfer boy”.’
‘You have blond hair, you’re lazy and you come from Durban by the Sea. In my book, that makes you a surfer boy.’
‘But I don’t even surf.’ The sea scared Thomas. From an artistic point of view, he appreciated its changing moods and expressions, but he didn’t like to get too close. What frightened him was what lurked beneath the surface, the finned and toothy things that would punish him for being where he didn’t belong.
‘Then what would you prefer? Moffie? Soutie? Slapgat?’
‘Just leave me alone.’
Skeletor slammed his elbow down on the soft flesh above Thomas’s knee. ‘You started it. You were staring at me.’
Maxwell issued a loud, throat-clearing rasp that silenced them both. ‘I need one of you to read the map.’
‘I told you,’ Skeletor snapped back at him, ‘I give the orders around here.’
‘And I told you,’ Maxwell said, ‘that I don’t know the way from this direction. So I need a navigator – unless you want me to pull over and do it myself.’
‘No, don’t stop. I’ll take care of it.’ Skeletor looked to Thomas.
