Read Online Cruel Crazy Beautiful World by Troy Blacklaws - Free Book Online
Authors: Troy Blacklaws
Tags: General Fiction
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peacock flaps up towards the stars, tail feathers on fire.
The gunmen let the Zimbabweans out of the tobacco barn and yell at them to form a line from the pool to the farmhouse. No chance of saving the gazebo. They focus on dousing the farmhouse thatch before the flying sparks can catch.
Jabulani sees slopping buckets jig from hand to hand. He sees the flaming peacock fall out of the sky: a phoenix scattering firework feathers.
He slides down the far slope of the roof and jumps.
Then he runs hard along the rutted dirt road.
A porcupine darts across his path, rattling his quills like a shaman shaking bones and shells.
After maybe two miles, he comes out onto the tarred road, where he finds south by the stars and runs again.
Lost in this bushman rhythm, he hears the screams of the flaming peacock looping again and again through his head.
He hears the sound of a motor and turns to peer into blinding headlights. He fears it may be from the farm but it is not the low throb of a Landy. Gambling on it being a stranger, he holds out his thumb.
The headlights polaroid the skull of an ox spiked on a pole. He saves this image in his mind.
A woman alone in a Pajero. She winds down the window. Nina Simone’s voice floats out, mingling with smoke from a jay held in peace-sign fingers.
– Where you heading?
– Cape Town.
– You dig Nina?
– Huh?
– Do you love Nina Simone?
– I love her.
– Well, hop in then.
She hands the glowing joint to him.
He sucks deep and long.
– There’s an icebox at your feet.
He cracks a can of Windhoek Lager.
They ride the wake of flaring headlights through an indigo universe. For a long time no words mar the giddy high of escape.
The grass and beer put him in a forward, flirty frame of mind.
– I thought lone white women never pick up black men.
– It’s crazy. I ought to be manhandled .
She laughs, winds down the window to fillip out the butt of the jay.
He sees deep down her zaftig bosom.
– But this Marley magic fucks with your head, hey? she shouts over the whine of the wind.
– It does rather.
She winds up the window.
– You from Zim?
– I am.
– I thought so. You looked shit scared. The proverbial rabbit in the headlights.
Now he laughs at this pigeonholing of Zimbabweans. It feels good to laugh. He has not laughed freely since his life began to unravel half a year ago.
Nina’s voice is a viscous, velvety red wine.
– Mates of yours?
Headlights fare in the rearview. He swivels his head and squints into the glare. The safari Land Rover bullets into focus. Ghost Cowboy rides shotgun. His long white hair flames in the wind as he draws a bead on the Pajero with his long gun.
– If we survive, I want you to fuck me. Deal?
A shot zings over the roof of the Pajero.
Jabulani instinctively ducks. He senses this isn’t the moment to tell her he hasn’t yet been unfaithful to Thokozile.
– Tell me your name.
– Call me Nina, for now. Yours?
– Freedom.
He always tells white folk his white name. They want a pithy Western handle to call you by, rather than your African name.
– Freedom? Cool! So you and me, Freedom, we find a motel, yeah?
In the rearview Jabulani sees the gun spark just before the rear window implodes.
– Yeah?
– Yeah.
She foots the gas hard and the Pajero shoots ahead. Zoned on marijuana and the thrill of outfooting the hunter, she yips at the gecko moon.
The beams of the Pajero fall south like dying shooting stars.
At dawn they are far south of Johannesburg, that hard, hazardous city of gold-seekers that they’d skirted in the dark. And now the N1 cuts an unflinching blue line down to Cape Town.
A lone woman carting boxes and a pot on top of her turban surfaces out of the dancing haze on the tar. She dangles a live chicken swinging beak-down from her hand.
And further on a cart made from the plundered corpse of an old pickup follows on the heels of a sagging, dusty donkey.
And yet further still an old rag-and-bone
The gunmen let the Zimbabweans out of the tobacco barn and yell at them to form a line from the pool to the farmhouse. No chance of saving the gazebo. They focus on dousing the farmhouse thatch before the flying sparks can catch.
Jabulani sees slopping buckets jig from hand to hand. He sees the flaming peacock fall out of the sky: a phoenix scattering firework feathers.
He slides down the far slope of the roof and jumps.
Then he runs hard along the rutted dirt road.
A porcupine darts across his path, rattling his quills like a shaman shaking bones and shells.
After maybe two miles, he comes out onto the tarred road, where he finds south by the stars and runs again.
Lost in this bushman rhythm, he hears the screams of the flaming peacock looping again and again through his head.
He hears the sound of a motor and turns to peer into blinding headlights. He fears it may be from the farm but it is not the low throb of a Landy. Gambling on it being a stranger, he holds out his thumb.
The headlights polaroid the skull of an ox spiked on a pole. He saves this image in his mind.
A woman alone in a Pajero. She winds down the window. Nina Simone’s voice floats out, mingling with smoke from a jay held in peace-sign fingers.
– Where you heading?
– Cape Town.
– You dig Nina?
– Huh?
– Do you love Nina Simone?
– I love her.
– Well, hop in then.
She hands the glowing joint to him.
He sucks deep and long.
– There’s an icebox at your feet.
He cracks a can of Windhoek Lager.
They ride the wake of flaring headlights through an indigo universe. For a long time no words mar the giddy high of escape.
The grass and beer put him in a forward, flirty frame of mind.
– I thought lone white women never pick up black men.
– It’s crazy. I ought to be manhandled .
She laughs, winds down the window to fillip out the butt of the jay.
He sees deep down her zaftig bosom.
– But this Marley magic fucks with your head, hey? she shouts over the whine of the wind.
– It does rather.
She winds up the window.
– You from Zim?
– I am.
– I thought so. You looked shit scared. The proverbial rabbit in the headlights.
Now he laughs at this pigeonholing of Zimbabweans. It feels good to laugh. He has not laughed freely since his life began to unravel half a year ago.
Nina’s voice is a viscous, velvety red wine.
– Mates of yours?
Headlights fare in the rearview. He swivels his head and squints into the glare. The safari Land Rover bullets into focus. Ghost Cowboy rides shotgun. His long white hair flames in the wind as he draws a bead on the Pajero with his long gun.
– If we survive, I want you to fuck me. Deal?
A shot zings over the roof of the Pajero.
Jabulani instinctively ducks. He senses this isn’t the moment to tell her he hasn’t yet been unfaithful to Thokozile.
– Tell me your name.
– Call me Nina, for now. Yours?
– Freedom.
He always tells white folk his white name. They want a pithy Western handle to call you by, rather than your African name.
– Freedom? Cool! So you and me, Freedom, we find a motel, yeah?
In the rearview Jabulani sees the gun spark just before the rear window implodes.
– Yeah?
– Yeah.
She foots the gas hard and the Pajero shoots ahead. Zoned on marijuana and the thrill of outfooting the hunter, she yips at the gecko moon.
The beams of the Pajero fall south like dying shooting stars.
At dawn they are far south of Johannesburg, that hard, hazardous city of gold-seekers that they’d skirted in the dark. And now the N1 cuts an unflinching blue line down to Cape Town.
A lone woman carting boxes and a pot on top of her turban surfaces out of the dancing haze on the tar. She dangles a live chicken swinging beak-down from her hand.
And further on a cart made from the plundered corpse of an old pickup follows on the heels of a sagging, dusty donkey.
And yet further still an old rag-and-bone
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