The Power of One

At the end of supper, after Mr Stoffel had read the Bible lesson and concluded evening prayers, I waited for Mevrou outside the dispensary. She arrived a short time later. ‘Kom!’ Mevrou said as she brushed past me. I entered and waited with my hands behind my back, my head bowed in the customary manner.

‘Why is there blood on your shirt, Pisskop?’

I looking down at my shirt which was stained with Granpa Chook’s blood and a biggish spot where the stone had torn into me.

Mevrou signed and sat down heavily on a bentwood chair painted the same light green as the dispensary walls. ‘Take off your shirt,’ she commanded.

I hurriedly removed my shirt and Mevrou made a cursory examination of my stomach. ‘Ag, is that all?’ She prodded at the wound the stone had made and I flinched involuntarily.

‘Please, Mevrou, I fell on a rock.’ Mevrou removed the cork from a large bottle of iodine and upended it onto a wad of cotton wool.

‘Yes, I can see that.’ She dabbed at my wound and the iodine stung like billy-o and I winced and hopped up and down in dismay, wringing my hands to stop the burning pain. ‘Come, that’s not enough.’ She upended the bottle once again and dabbed hard at my tummy. This time I knew what to expect and, gritting my teeth and closing my eyes tightly, I managed to hold back most of the pain. ‘You can’t go getting blood poisoning on the train,’ she said, tossing the wad on the table. She retrieved the cork and pushed it back into the bottle.

‘What train, Mevrou?’ I asked confused.

‘Your oupa called long distance on the telephone from a dorp in the Eastern Transvaal called Barberton. You are not going back to the farm. He says Newcastle’s disease has made him kill all his chickens and he has sold the farm to a Mevrou Vorster.

‘What’s my granpa doing in the town called Barberton, Mevrou?’

My head was swimming, my whole world was coming apart at the seams. If Granpa had sold the farm to fat Mrs Vorster and was making telephone calls from some strange town in the Eastern Transvaal, where was Nanny? Without Granpa Chook and Nanny, life was not possible.

‘I’m not a mind reader. Maybe he got work in this place.’ She reached into her bag and held up an envelope. ‘In here is the ticket. Tomorrow night you will catch the train to Barberton. Two days and two nights. I will take you to the train.’ She dismissed me with a wave of the envelope.

I turned to go, and as I reached the door Mevrou called me back. ‘You can’t take the chicken, you hear?’ She looked at me smugly. ‘South African Railways won’t let you take a Kaffir chicken, not even in the goods van.’ She seemed pleased with this thought. ‘I will take the chicken, he will earn his keep even if he is only a Kaffir chicken.’

‘He is dead, Mevrou. A dog ate him today.’ I managed somehow to keep the tears out of my voice.

‘That is a shame, he was good in the kitchen.’ She rose from her chair with a sigh, fanning herself with the letter. ‘I’m telling you, man, a Kaffir chicken is no different from a Kaffir. Just when you think you can trust them, they go and let you down.

I had never owned a pair of shoes. At the time, in the Northern Transvaal, a farm kid only got boots if he had rich parents or if he had turned thirteen. That’s when the Old Testament says a boy becomes a man. A pair of khaki shorts, a shirt and a jumper when it was cold was all you got. Underpants hadn’t been invented. Even if they had been, Boer kids wouldn’t have worn them. More expense for what?

The day after Granpa Chook’s funeral was the last day of term. Everyone was up and packed long before breakfast. After breakfast Mevrou summoned me to the dispensary to tell me that after lunch we would be going into town to buy a pair of tackies for me at Harry Crown’s shop.

‘What are tackies, Mevrou?’

‘Domkop! Tackies are shoes only made of canvas with rubber bottoms. Don’t you know anything? Make sure you have clean feet or we will be shamed in front of the Jew.’

From my secret mango tree, I watched the kids leave the hostel. Parents arrived in old pick-up trucks and mule carts. Some kids left on donkeys brought to the school by a farm servant. I watched as the Judge left in a mule cart. He made the black servant sit on the tailboard, then he jumped up into the driver’s seat, took up the reins and the whip and set off at a furious pace, whipping at the mules and making the whip crack like a rifle shot. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. As my mother used to say, ‘Good riddance of bad rubbish.’

Finally everyone had gone and I climbed down from the mango tree and crossed the school playground. It wasn’t the same without Granpa Chook. The sun felt the same. The little green grasshoppers still couldn’t make it across the playground in one hit. The day moon, made of skimmed milk, still hung in the cloudless morning sky. But it wasn’t ever going to be the same again. I saved the need to grieve for a later time. I had enough on my mind with the prospect of going to town to buy a pair of shoes and catching the train. I’d never owned a pair of shoes and I’d never been on a train, never seen a real train. Two nevers in one day is enough to fill anyone’s mind.

After a lunch of bread and jam with a mug of sweet tea, I hurried to meet Mevrou in the dispensary, stopping only long enough to give my feet and legs a good scrub like Mevrou said. The same shower which had been dripping that first night when I thought I was in a slaughter house was still sounding drip, drip, drip, like a metronome. Funny how little kids can get things mixed up like that. It all seemed such a long time ago; I sure had been a baby then.

I had been waiting at the dispensary a few minutes when Mevrou arrived. She was wearing a shapeless floral cotton dress and a funny old black straw hat with two cherries on it. A third wire stem stuck up where a cherry had once been. In her town clothes she looked not unlike fat old Mrs Vorster, except younger and with a moustache.

The town I knew to be about two miles from the school. ‘Maybe we could visit the railway station as well as Harry Crown’s shop?’ I suggested tentatively.

‘It is enough that I do this for you, Pisskop. What do you want? Blood from a stone? Tonight I must do it all over again for you. There is nothing at the station to see, only sleeping Kaffirs waiting for the train.’

For the remainder of the journey we said nothing. Mevrou walked three paces ahead of me all the way to town. Her huge shape sort of rocked along, stopping every once in a while to catch her breath. The early afternoon sun beat down on us. By the time we arrived Mevrou was very hot and bothered and her special smell was worse than ever.

Harry Crown’s shop was closed and nothing much seemed to be happening in the main street. Mevrou took a large red doek from her basket and proceeded to wipe her face. ‘Everyone is still having their lunch, we must wait,’ she explained. With great effort she climbed the five steps up to the stoep of the shop and sat down on a bench beside the padlocked door. ‘Go and find a tap and wash your feet,’ she panted.

I crossed the street to the garage which had a sign that read Atlantic Service Station. It had two pumps outside a small office and workshop bay. Just inside the bay was a tap. The whole place smelt of oil and grease. I washed my feet and walked back across the road on my heels so as not to dirty my feet. Half a dozen Africans were asleep at the far end of the verandah where there was a second entrance to the shop. Above this entrance was written ‘Blacks Only’. I wondered briefly why whites were not allowed to enter.

Flies, flying heavy in the heat, settled on sleeping eyes and every now and again a desultory black hand would come up and brush at them, its owner seemingly still asleep.

One black man with his left eye missing remained awake and sat with his back against the shop wall. His cupped hands and mouth concealed a Jew’s harp which twanged an urgent rhythm.

‘The Jew is late, who does he think he is?’ Mevrou said impatiently. She half turned and addressed the African playing the Jew’s harp. ‘Hey, Kaffir! Where is the baas?’

The black man jumped to his feet, removing the tiny harp and placing it in the pocket of his ragged pants. He said nothing, not understanding Afrikaans.

‘Do you work here? I asked him in Shangaan.

‘No, small baas, I also, I am waiting. The big baas for the shop will be here soon I think. When the hooter goes for the saw mill he will surely come.’

‘He doesn’t work for Mr Crown, Mevrou.’

Just then a hooter sounded. We were familiar with the saw mill hooter, which blew at one o’clock and again at two.

Almost on the dot a big, black Chevrolet drove up and parked outside the shop. It was the most beautiful car