Read Online Whitethorn by Bryce Courtenay - Free Book Online

‘Your dog is orright, you hear. Now turn around.’ I was trying not to blub as I started to get up but the tears and the sobs just came out by themselves. ‘No! Stay on your knees. Then turn around, Voetsek .’
    â€˜Please don’t kill her,’ I choked, turning to face Fonnie. That’s the moment I got the biggest shock of my life. Fonnie du Preez had removed his shorts and staring at me was his enormous cock, fully erect.
    â€˜You like my snake, hey, Voetsek ? Suck me.’
    â€˜No!’ I cried.
    â€˜You licked Pissy’s arse, that’s far worse, man!’ Fonnie exclaimed.
    â€˜I don’t want to, Fonnie,’ I said tearfully.
    â€˜I got no more patience! Suck me, or this time your dog dies, for sure!’ He held Tinker by the rope and she was again yelping for her life, the whites of her eyes were showing and her legs were kicking. My little dog couldn’t take much more and her legs were going slower, unable to kick because she was choking to death. I heard Pissy cackle, ‘It tastes lekker , Voetsek . . . jus’ like boerewors .’ (It tastes nice, Voetsek . . . just like farmer’s sausage.)
    Blubbing my heart out, I took Fonnie du Preez’s huge cock between my lips.
    All of a sudden I heard this roar of anger, ‘Mina bulala wena !’ Fonnie turned suddenly and his cock jumped out of my mouth and, at the same time, Tinker dropped at my feet. I saw a pair of black arms lift Fonnie off the ground and hurl him so that he seemed to take off into the sky above me. Fonnie’s body arched, arms flailing, one coming down to try to break the fall as he crashed into the side of the big rock. I turned around in time to see him slide down the face of the rock, with blood streaming from his nose and head. He hit the ground like a rag doll, rolled over onto his stomach and then lay quite still. I thought he must surely be dead. I grabbed hold of Tinker and held her to my chest, crying and sobbing and shaking like billyo, kissing her soft little neck with the piece of rope still tied around it. She shivered and shook in my arms and started to lick the place where the whitethorn had ripped open the skin on my arm. I don’t know how long we remained like that, Tinker and me. I was too frightened to look at Fonnie du Preez’s dead body with blood all over his head and in his hair.
    Then Mattress bent over me. ‘Come, Kleinbaas,’ he said in Zulu. He was panting and I could hear the air being pulled into his nostrils and out like an angry animal. He lifted us both up and carried us away, leaving Fonnie du Preez just lying there with his bare arse facing us in the late afternoon sunlight. Flies were already buzzing around his head like the big sow when she was feeding her piglets. Pissy Vermaak was nowhere to be seen. I rested my head against Mattress’s broad chest and just blubbed and blubbed like a little kid.
    I can’t remember all the detail of what happened after. Mattress took me and Tinker to Meneer Botha and told him what he’d seen. He hadn’t seen the arse-licking part so he could only tell the part he’d seen. I must have still been in a state of shock and words couldn’t come out. But I need not have worried because the first thing Meneer Botha said was, ‘You don’t say anything, you hear!’ He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Look at me, Tom!’ he demanded. I looked up into his eyes which were fierce and frightening and he squeezed my shoulder so it hurt. ‘ Stom ! If I hear you told somebody, you in big trouble, you hear?’
    What? Was he mad or something? Did he think I was going to walk around and tell everyone that I had Fonnie du Preez’s cock in my mouth or that I’d kissed Pissy Vermaak’s arsehole? Sis , man, imagine that! I may have been only six, nearly seven, but I wasn’t a complete nincompoop. It was bad enough being a rooinek, but if I told, everyone