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J.E. Batterson grew up in Johannesburg South Africa during the '80's and '90's. Stories from his short story collection Sjambok Stories have appeared in print publications Struggle, and BIGnews. He lives in Los Angeles, CA with his wife and son. He is currently at work on a semi-autobiographical novel: Adventures In Truancy. The Chickasaw Plum appreciates J.E. Batterson’s contribution to this issue. His short story, Jeremy appeared in the June Edition.

“Michael”

By

J.E. Batterson

It was a wet cold day. The rains had come in the night and stripped the branches of their leaves. The streets in this part of Johannesburg were carpeted by Jacaranda flowers -- small, trumpet-shaped flowers that signify the coming of autumn. The street-grids of intersecting avenues in this part of the city were covered with their purple petals so that you couldn’t see a single patch of asphalt underneath them.

These were the quieter streets, wide enough for Lorries, though none ever came this way. The neighborhoods here were built along a ridge, so that their northward facing windows looked down on the skyline and the Hillbrow Tower. In the summer, the view was magnificent, especially at sunset, when the sky became a fiery spectrum that did not cool until well after dark.

The houses were mostly older, built for the rich in the earlier part of the century, and were not much different than houses built for other European-style settings. The original inhabitants, those families who had built the city from a mining depot on the low-veldt into what it was now, had long since left for the Northern Suburbs and beyond. The neighborhood was today, as it was when they had left it. Though the neighborhoods immediately inwards of it had become cheapened, this was the old colonial core; the spine that the original architects had laid with precision and it was stamped with an air of quiet dignity. The spine of any animal is always left untouched. Even in the desert, after the sun, and the endless eons of heat have blasted the flesh away -- the skeleton always remains to remind us of what has been. It is the same way with cities.

Many of these old houses had been converted into apartments that were now occupied by students and artists. The whole neighborhood had a decidedly intellectual feel to it. Makeshift curtains hung in the windows, and most of the cars were of the kind you would expect students and artists to drive -- shabby old station wagons, and beat up Toyota trucks. On many of the big verandas, canvasses smeared with paint dried slowly in the dampness. Wafting down from windows, you could hear the melancholy notes of a cello.

Amid this quiet, Michael Parks ran down the steps of his apartment building, and into the street. He had the haphazard look of someone who is trying to do too many things at once. The hair on one side of his head splashed over his forehead in a wave. It was light brown, but this morning you couldn’t tell. It was still wet. His clothes looked thrown-on, and the buttons of his shirt were buttoned wrong.

Michael unlocked the door to his white, Mercedes 300D. It was a battered old beast that he had bought from a German expatriate who had had to leave the country quite suddenly. It had been in rough shape then, nearly five years ago. What had started as small patches of rust were now holes in the undercarriage. He could see the road rushing beneath him every time he drove the thing.

The engine sputtered the way Mercedes’ do when they are near death. It is a loud, finely tuned rattle, high-pitched but somehow well oiled. Even in decline, German engineering has a refinement to it. Eventually the engine rolled over, and Michael pulled into the street.

He was anxious today. Lately, he could not shake the feeling that he had been wasting his life. It was a feeling that he managed to subdue beneath a layer of other feelings, because if he really allowed himself to feel it, he would succumb to it, and he would become empty. His feelings over the years had become like the clouds today -- gray masses of equal pressure that were locked in combat; a colorless version of Franz Marc’s Fighting Forms. At least this is how it seemed to him, though he knew it to be a rather abstract explanation.

The Mercedes 300D’s engine gave a death rattle, and almost faded.

“Come on you old bitch! Not now!” Michael jammed the choke, and swore under his breath. “I’ve got to make my meeting!”

The rattle wound itself up into a steady hum; he had managed to breathe some will back into its engine. If only he could have that kind of power when it came to breathing life into his own inward mechanism. It was fitting that the car he drove so perfectly mirrored his life. Both were hulking wrecks that were in need of a major overhaul. The only thing that prevented total collapse, were the Narcotic Anonymous meetings he attended at regular intervals throughout the week. But the last few months had been hellish, and he had come very close to falling back into the darkness.

He had been an Art major at the University of Witswatersrand, when he had first met Alexandra Flock. She was two years his senior, a freckled redhead who wore her hair in pigtails, and always carried a copy of Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like. The book, she told everyone, was her reason d’etre. Michael had not wanted to talk to her at first. She was obnoxious, and liked to shout at people when they were walking to classes. He took her for a spoiled idealist from the suburbs.

“Fascist!” she had yelled at him one morning.

“Bugger off,” he had said, not knowing that those two words would lead to a relationship that would dominate his adult life.

“Hear that people? Another Roman comes to suppress me!” she had yelled, holding up her arms in a gesture of crucifixion.

“What’s your damage, girl?”

A few onlookers shook their heads in disgust. Thinking back, Michael should have taken their cue, and the insult. Sometimes it’s easier to just keep walking. Alexandria had approached him, sensing that she had snagged him in her little trap.

“Don’t mind the theatrics. It’s all bullshit. Part of the act, you know?”

“This is an act?”

“Just the dramatic part. I’m actually very serious about my beliefs.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Calling people fascists isn’t exactly the best way of introducing yourself you know?”

Michael was pissed at her that morning, but overriding this was his very real desire to speak to her. She was pretty sexy up close like this. He noticed she had brown eyes, and he was surprised to see that they were quite friendly.

“I don’t give a shit about these people,” she had said. “Yelling is the only way I can get anybody to stop. They won’t listen unless you get under their skin.”

“I’m one of ‘these people.’”

“No you’re not. You stopped. You’ve now become an invitee.”

Alexandra had thrust a rolled up paper flyer into his hand.

“If you come, I’ll let you buy me a drink afterwards.”

And that’s how it happened. A week later he had been cramped into a standing-room-only-bookstore, listening to Peter Mshloti, a Black civil rights leader, who railed against Apartheid, and the oppression of his people.

A month later, Michael was courting Alexandra, and Alexandra alone; handing out Free Mandela! Flyers on street corners, and reading Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like. At first he did these things so that she wouldn’t lose interest. She was very passionate about her cause. But eventually, he began to see the country as she did, and began to realize that what she believed made real sense for South Africa. He had always been sympathetic to the Blacks, and had grown up in a liberal home. His parents were typical South African liberals -- people who believed in equal rights, but who weren’t about to get their hands dirty, crusading in the streets for them. They voted for the progressives in Parliament, but when they came home at night, their food had been made, and their shirts ironed, and their gardens tended by Black servants.

He had gotten to sleep with Alexandra finally, and she had gotten a disciple. In the end, he still wasn’t sure who had gotten the better deal.

They had lived together for two years during which they organized student protests, and marched in them, and shouted obscenities at the police. They were very electric years, charged with violence that somehow did not touch them. It was in the air though, right down to the police surveillance van that was parked beneath their apartment windows at all hours of the night. Alexandra and Michael had spent those years not sleeping very much. Most nights, when the lights were out, they would creep into the living room and stare down at that van. Sometimes they would smoke cigarettes, but most often, they just watched. It was very somber. Michael had been so filled with fear that some nights, he would break into a cold sweat, and he was utterly paralyzed. He hated himself for this. Alexandra was always so calm. Not even the van elicited any sign of horror on her face.

“How can you be so calm?” He whispered to her one night in front of the windows. “Those bastards down there can break in here anytime they want. I’ll bet they come in for a look, when we’re not here.”

“You mustn’t worry about them. They can’t hurt us.”

“I don’t know how you can be so calm about it.”

“We’ve got to be bigger than ourselves. The well being of South Africa requires us to be that way.”

She spoke like a Confucian, and he had bought into it so completely. He blamed himself for being a coward, and he dug even deeper to find those reserves of courage that seemed so abundant in Alexandra.

Those years were not all bad. If they had been, Michael would not have been able to stand it. There were many breakthroughs in the Law. The protests had been like a great mirror that reflected the Whites own hypocrisy back in their faces. In increasing numbers, the Whites began to grumble about equal rights, and ethical treatment. It got so that the conservatives were pushed into an even more defensive stance. They grew paler, and their speeches more hateful, but that is the way with leaders who know that the general consensus is not with them. Many times, Michael and Alexandra were treated like royalty; whisked through the townships where most Whites had never been. There were late night meetings in township houses barely big enough to breathe in. There was whiskey, and dagga, and the haunting melodies of tribal singing. Those songs had not changed from the first singing; on northern plains when there had been no cities. During these times, they would hold each other. Around them, the sea of faces held the light of joy, and the whole mood of the country seemed ten pounds lighter.

Michael veered onto the freeway. The Mercedes 300D actually seemed better at high speeds, so he cruised out into the middle lane, and sped up. Big rain splattered the windshield and roof making a dull, heavy sound.

Alexandra what happened to you?

Michael felt the old bitterness rise in his throat. He knew exactly what had happened, but he still wasn’t sure how much of it had been his fault. He had known that she had been spiraling out of control towards the end, but he had been so freaked out himself, that he’d had no way of confronting her. The idea of being alone scared him in places that he would never admit to. Confrontation was rebuttal, and Alexandra would not admit her mistakes. He knew there were other women from the student protests who would have taken him, but it wouldn’t have been the same.

Nietzsche once said that when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you. And that is exactly what they had done -- looked into the abyss. In it, they had seen the streets erupt in flames. They had seen the faces of their friends bloodied by shamboks -- a single piece of rubber, molded on one end into a handle -- and at the other, it tapered into a hard ingot of rubber that leaves marks when it is used. They had seen the dull looks on faces, as they were led bloodied into the back of yellow police trucks. They had heard the crash of glass, and felt the sting of rubber bullets. But always, they had escaped the worst of it. Many friends went missing in the abyss and never came back. Many resurfaced after long nights of inquiry, but they always moved away in its aftermath.

Michael couldn’t remember when Alexandra had first started using, but he couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been. He supposed it had been from the start. She carried a baggie of pills with her always. It was as integral to her character, as her copy of Biko’s book. He hadn’t complained. He was right there with her. The drugs made everything palatable. They staved off the worst of the feelings. They could bring you low so that you didn’t much care anymore, and your whole body felt parched and withered.

But the drugs also helped with the anxiety, so that on a good day, both of them would sit around the apartment and flip birds at the surveillance van on the street below. On these days they felt invincible. Mandela’s spirit seemed to radiate from Robbins Island, permeating their beings with a courage that was not their own. His spirit was the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, of Jesus Christ, and Buddha. His spirit was the spirit all great beings who suffered so that other beings could be free.

There was a loud pop! Michael felt the Mercedes 300D shudder violently, and he had to grip the wheel to stop it from jumping across lanes. Somehow he managed to pull onto the shoulder. Smoke was rising from beneath the bonnet.

He had gotten out, and lifted it up. It was hissing because the engine was overheated. A hot cloud of smoke puffed out as he opened it. Hacking, he put his arm over his nose, and leaned in to examine the damage.

“You old bitch,” he said miserably.

He prodded around with his finger, until he saw what the problem was. He had let the radiator run dry. Shaking his head, he slammed the bonnet down. He had been getting more and more forgetful lately. He supposed he deserved this kind of ordeal for being so stupid. Now he would be late for his drug-counseling.

The cars on the freeway passed him in the rain. The freeway here ran between steep embankments on either side. Muddy water coursed down their sides, flooding the freeway so that the cars had slowed to a crawl. Michael had only been outside for five minutes, and already he was drenched. He reached into the Mercedes 300D and turned on the hazard lights. They flashed bright yellow on the wet asphalt. He was about to lock the doors, but realized there was nothing to steal. If somebody wanted to steal the car, they would be doing him a favor. He approached the divider-line and stuck out his thumb. There was no way he could make it to the nearest petrol station in this weather without a ride.

The cars continued to glide past, oblivious to his existence. He looked up at some point. The clouds were black thunderheads, and the rain fell in literal sheets so that looking into it, you could see nothing else. There were no interstices between drops.

He continued hitchhiking, though nobody stopped.

At the depths of Alexandra’s drug descent, Michael had begun to have second thoughts. Many of his friends, fellow students from the university, and Black friends from Soweto, had been rounded up in a series of raids. Though the change they sought was peaceful, and the methods they employed to have their voices heard were peaceful, there was no peace in the hearts of conservatives; and they were the ones who controlled the police. Michael and Alexandra watched the ranks diminish. Those that had not been arrested did not show up to meetings. Phones were hung up on them when they called old friends. Usually there was no explanation given, but none was needed.

Their relationship too had atrophied. You can only coexist with someone in fear for a very short time. After this period expires, the membranes between such people cease to exist, and the weight of the fear doubles for each respectively. You would think that it would make the fear less oppressive with two people to share its weight. But it doesn’t work that way.

Michael would sit awake those nights by the windows. He wondered why it was, that they had escaped. Why was everybody else being rounded up? Why were they left untouched? It was a question that wouldn’t go away. It didn’t make any sense.

Alexandra had started sleeping a lot. She had abandoned him. When she was awake, she was very far away. She would sigh heavily and wouldn’t eat. Her looks had diminished too. Her face had a sickly sheen to it, and her eyes were listless. She didn’t want to talk much either, and even in the daylight she looked anemic.

“You’ve got to eat, Alexandria,” he would tell her.

“I can’t. I’m not feeling well.”

“Just a few slices of apple.”

“I can’t. I’m not right, Michael.”

She did smile sometimes, but it was rare. Sometimes she would raise her fist in the air in a salute, but it was a small fist, and her arm trembled.

It was during the summer that he had asked her. The morning was well lighted, but the heat had not yet crept into the house. They had been lying on the couch together. Her head was on his shoulder, and he had felt the old familiar feelings.

“Don’t you think it’s strange that we haven’t been arrested?”

“You mean you don’t know...Michael, where have you been?”

“I’ve been right here.”

“I thought I told you.”

“Told me what? You’re not making any bloody sense, Alexandra.”

Alexandra had pushed herself off of his chest. In that moment, she was her old self. Her hair spilled down over her shoulders, and the pain dissipated from her face. He felt urges he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

“That van isn’t watching us. My father is a ranking member in the Police Force. That van is there to protect us.”

When she had told him this, he felt as if he had been punched in the gut. Had everything been a sham? Had he and countless others risked their own freedoms to crusade for Human Rights, while this White Fraud who walked among them, got to play savior and destroy herself with drugs? She was a spoiled idealist after all, and he realized the fear had been so heavy because he was the only one carrying it for the both of them. What fucking reason did she have to destroy herself? What reason? Michael would never again ignore a first impression.

Overwhelmed with rage, he had slapped her across the face.

“How dare you!” he had said coldly, and pushed her away.

He left her on the floor in a disheveled heap, and he had stayed away for several days. He spent the time in a seedy motel in Hillbrow. He had popped so many pills, that he had had a brief episode in which he heard footsteps on the roof, and heard policemen conversing outside of his window. He had crept to the door in horror, and flung it open, but there was nobody outside. When he lay back down, the voices resumed, and at some point, Michael had gotten down on his knees and prayed for forgiveness. When the morning came, he vowed to get help. He knew he was out of his mind.

He had returned on a Wednesday afternoon. It was a lazy day with the sunlight falling in through the branches of the Jacaranda trees. Somehow something felt wrong though. There was a hushed pall over the neighborhood. Michael dismissed it as paranoia, and marched up the front of the apartment steps. He had heard a shout behind him, and turned to see a White policeman getting out of the van. He ran to Michael very quickly.

Michael had been waiting for this moment for a very long time. He had never seen the policeman before. The van had tinted windows so that you couldn’t see inside. He had made this policeman into a monster in his head -- a foul-breath Afrikaner with a penchant for beatings and torture like all the rest. The man running towards him was completely different, and Michael realized how wrong he had gotten it.

“Mr. Parks!” the policeman said in an English accent as he approached.

He was no older than Michael, with an open friendly face and a concerned demeanor that Michael didn’t know how to take.

“Can I help you, sir?” Michael had asked.

“I’m afraid I have bad news, Mr. Parks,” said the officer. “Alexandra...your girlfriend...she passed away last night.”

The words moved over him without effect.

“Passed away? What do you mean, hey?

“Overdosed. I’m really sorry, man. We found her early this morning. We took her to hospital, but it was too late.”

Michael searched the policeman’s face until those words had sunk in.

“Oh Jesus!” he had said, and sat down hard on the stoop. Somehow it was the only thing his body could do at the time. The policeman put a hand on his shoulder in a surprisingly tender gesture.

“I’m very sorry, Mr. Parks.”

Michael had buried his head in his knees and allowed himself to grieve. When it was over, he had looked up to find the policeman still standing over him.

“Please...take me to her. I want to see her.”

Michael was so immersed in these memories that it took him several seconds to snap out of them. A black Land Rover had stopped on the freeway, and its horn was honking. Michael dashed towards it, and climbed inside.

A White gentleman with graying hair sat behind the wheel.

“I saw your hazard lights...what happened? Did you run out of petrol?”

“I forgot to put water in the radiator,” Michael said and closed the door.

It was nice and warm inside.

“Thanks for stopping.”

“No problem. I’ll drop you at the Petrol station in Four-Ways.”

“I appreciate that.”

The man eased back into traffic.

“That’s quite ironic on a day like this. Running out of water, I mean,” said the man.

“Jaa, I know. Bloody fool I am.”

“Ag man, don’t worry about it. It’s happened to all of us.”

The rode in silence for some time.

“You going to vote in the Referendum?” the man asked Michael.

“Jaa. What about you?”

“I think so. We’re going to have a lot of problems if we don’t ease up a little bit. Besides, the Blacks should be allowed to vote. At least that’s what I think.”

“Jaa, me as well,” Michael said.

“I just hope they stop blaming us for all their problems,” the man said. “Hell, the majority of the violence is Black-on-Black. They need to get it right.”

“Jaa, they do.”

The Blacks would have to stop blaming the Whites for all of their problems. It was a belief he had come to hold in the subsequence of Alexandra’s death. Certainly the Whites had a lot to atone for, but many of the problems that faced South Africa now would require the active participation of all. He had become less idealistic in the passing years. He had stooped seeing the Whites and Blacks as monolithic exclusivities. Neither one was all right, nor the other, all wrong. There were people, period. South Africans. Much of the violence that that ravaged the country, was a result of tribal incongruities and blood feuds passed down along the generations. That they had been promoted by White authority was unquestionable. But when Michael had asked himself if he thought that the bloodshed would have lessened without Apartheid, he discovered that he did not know the answer.

Africans are a poetic people, and sometimes this poetry assumes a malignant form, and makes them unbeautiful. They are some of last indigenous bloodlines of the earth, and their future is uncertain. They would have to sort it out themselves. Michael had grown doubtful that he could do anything else. He had done what he could, but he had limits now. That there was even going to be a referendum meant that it had not all been a waste. The protests, and the marches, and the nights of fear, they had all helped in the shifting of the paradigm. But now it was up to the Africans as to how they would govern themselves.

He realized now that this was a very White attitude, but he no longer fought it. His parents were delighted. To them, it meant he had grown up.

The man dropped him at a petrol station at a four-ways intersection. Michael thanked the man and went into the station for some bottled water. A few minutes later, he emerged with a plastic bag filled with bottles of water. The rain had let up. The clouds began to clear so that there were spaces in the sky where patches of blue shone through. The sun was very high and small in the sky, and it gave off a weak heat.

Michael began the hitchhike back to his car, but again, nobody was stopping. He didn’t mind as much though. At least it was pleasant. He marched down the onramp onto the freeway going west. If nobody picked him up, he could walk all the way back in less than an hour.

After Alexandra’s death, Michael had spent the summer in rehab, and had finally pieced himself back together, though he wondered if he would ever quite be the same. He abandoned his involvement in street politics. He had finished up his degree, and kept to himself. He had been relieved to hear that many of his friends from the student body organizations had been set free. Most of them were now running for office, or working at startup social organizations. A few of them had drifted into the art community. He saw these friends at gallery openings and the occasional bar around town, but it was never the same. Their context had changed; they were now like everybody else, waiting to see what happened next. They avoided mentioning the past. The past was always too painful.

He took a flat in the old colonial core, and was still living there now. He’d had three shows that opened to mixed reviews, although he had gotten a very good write-up in the Johannesburg Star. He had taken a job teaching art to township kids. It didn’t pay much, but it gave him the space he needed to paint. He enjoyed their enthusiasm. They teased him good-naturedly, and in their drawings, he saw the hope of reconciliation.

The doctors in the rehabilitation clinic had told him that he needed to do something that got him out of the house every day. They told him that he needed to focus on others, so that his own moods and cravings did not ravage him. So far they had been right. He felt goodwill towards his students, and they gave him hope. They had been so serious at first. When they had first been introduced to him, they had looked stunned, sitting in rows in a cramped classroom. Their faces were uncertain, and their eyes wide. They had never had a White teacher.

One student in particular had impressed Michael so powerfully, that he had been in the process of helping him get his work to galleries -- that’s how good he had been. He was a Matric named Justice. He had a face that betrayed nothing, and the build of a laborer. When he picked up a charcoal and began to draw though, his genius was undeniable. His drawings were of township life; its faces; its every angle. In one of them, Nelson Mandela dressed in a suit, stood in front of an American Cadillac. In the background, there was nothing but a Soweto street. It was rendered with such stunning precision; it was like looking at a photograph. It wasn’t that this drawing had been better than the rest, but it had resonated with Michael very much.

There was no question that Justice would be recognized for his talent.

Justice didn’t say much, but he showed up each week with a new set of drawings he would hand to Michael for comment. Most of the time, Michael had nothing to say. The boy was a superior artist; he needed no guidance.

“You can show these, Justice,” Michael told him. “They’re magnificent.”

“Mandela,” Justice replied, and pointed at the drawing.

“Mandela.”

Michael had asked another student interpret, and when Justice heard that Michael was gong to help him get his work into galleries, the boy had wept. It was a joyful weeping, and he had not been embarrassed.

“I can free to draw,” he wept. “I can free to draw.”

And then, without warning Justice had stopped coming to class. A week passed, and then another. Michael had received a letter from a gallery in downtown that wanted to exhibit Justice’s work. Michael had been very excited to tell him, but he had not shown up. He had asked around school, both teachers and students, but nobody knew where he was.

Michael was sitting in the teacher’s lounge, when the Zulu teacher, Ms. Nkomo, had approached him. She was fairer skinned, and usually she smiled, but today she was pulled tight with exhaustion. Little lines showed around her eyes. Michael had thought about her many times, but had never had the nerve to get beyond the small talk. She was very beautiful.

He knew right away that something was wrong. Ms. Nkomo kept swallowing rapidly. Eventually her words had come out very softly.

“Michael...something terrible...Justice...he has been killed last week.”

The news hit him like a slap in the face. In the townships, violence is a daily occurrence. It comes without discretion, and Michael knew it had come and swallowed Justice.

“No,” Michael had said. “That’s not right!”

“It’s true. I heard it from my cousin. She knows the family.”

“Please tell me you’re...oh Jesus Christ!”

“His mother’s shebeen... Justice tried to stop the men from stealing beer. One of the men had a gun...”

“God damn it!”

Michael had stormed out of the teacher’s lounge. He had locked the door to his classroom. He pulled out the drawings that Justice had handed him just a week ago. He spread them out on the desk. He chewed on his lip and stared down at the charcoal renderings. His whole face felt numb. Tears ran down his cheeks.

“Of all the people, you take him?” Michael sobbed into the empty spaces. “It is such a waste! It is so fucking pointless! What is it that you want from me? Fuck you!”

The next thing he had remembered was being helped out of the classroom by a paramedic. He was led to an ambulance, and laid down on a stretcher. Somebody put an oxygen mask over his mouth. Ms. Nkomo had stepped out of the crowd of Black faces and held his hand. He could remember the tear-streaks on her face, and the clean vibrant smell of her skin.

“It’s better for him in heaven, Michael...he is free.”

He had spent a night in the hospital. A doctor came and told him he would have to start taking better care of himself. His blood pressure was high, and if he wasn’t careful, he would have a heart attack.

The phone rang that night in his room. It was Ms. Nkomo.

“I wanted to check on you,” she said.

“Thanks. That was quite a spectacle today.”

“You mustn’t worry. You’ve got to be brave.”

Justice had been gunned down for a bottle of beer. He felt choked up, and he could feel tears.

“Why does this always happen?”

“You can’t ask this question. It is Africa. God has a plan,” said Ms. Nkomo. “The family has asked if you will come to the funeral.”

“I’ll come,” Michael said at last.

The funeral was depressing. It was held in a township cemetery. Small mounds of dirt rose from the ground. Crude wooden crosses were lashed together above them. A young priest wearing glasses, stood at Justice’s coffin. It was nothing more than a pine box. He spoke in a very dignified tone, and his Anglican robes fluttered on the wind. There were only a handful of people at the burial. Justice’s family dressed in Polyester, and a few teachers from the school. Ms. Nkomo stood beside him in sunglasses. When the sermon was over, and the first shovel-full of earth had been tossed onto the box, Justice’s mother had wailed, and fallen to her knees. Michael noticed that Ms. Nkomo was crying behind her sunglasses, and he put an arm around her.

“It’s alright,” he whispered.

But he knew that it was a lie.

Michael reached the stalled Mercedes 300D. Nobody had stopped to give him a ride, and he had been walking for almost an hour. After he filled the radiator, and closed the bonnet, he had climbed back inside. His clothes were drenched through, and he could feel a cold in his chest. He tried starting the engine several times, but it had rolled over and died.

“What a piece of shit!”

He opened his door and used it as leverage to get the car rolling. Whenever it died like this, he could sometimes get it going again if he got it moving fast enough. He pushed the Mercedes 300D with all of his strength. The car began to roll faster. When it was going at a good clip, he hopped behind the wheel again, and jammed the choke home, and turned the key. The car jerked violently, as though he had hit the brakes. He bumped his head on the wheel pretty hard. It was hard enough to make him cry out.

“Fuck!”

A shadow fell across his face. Looking up, he saw a group of Africans. They were dressed in shorts, and one of them carried a soccer ball. Michael rolled down his window.

“Do you think you guys could give me a hand?”

The Africans shared a look. It seemed that none of them understood much English.

“It’s broken...the engine is broken.”

When Michael saw that they didn’t understand, he had made a gesture, as though he were breaking an imaginary stick in half.

“Broken,” he repeated.

The Africans nodded their heads. They understood.

“Your car...scorocoro!” said one of the Africans who was tall and thin like a reed.

“Scorocoro! Scorocoro!” the group consented, and started grinning brightly.

Laughter broke out amongst their ranks.

A little confused, Michael noticed that the Africans had walked behind the Mercedes 300D, and had taken up position. They began to push the car. Their faces strained, but eventually the car was rolling at a very nice speed again. The Africans let go of the Mercedes 300D, and it sailed down the freeway shoulder. This time when Michael jammed the choke, and turned the key, the engine roared to life. He hit the brakes, and revved the engine to get the petrol flowing.

“Thank you!” He said with his head sticking out of the window.

The Africans ran to him. Someone gave him a high-five. Michael gave them what money he had; a five Rand note, and a couple of Rand coins. The Africans stared at the money like it was buried treasure.

Michael left them standing on the shoulder, waving after him. For the first time in over a year, the past seemed like a distant island. The pain of Alexandra’s death; the pain of Justice’s death receded down the long corridors of his memory, and they no longer hurt him. His emotions were not colorless masses of equal pressure; they had assumed some color. The skies above the freeway were blue. In the distance he could see the massive cumulonimbus clouds roaming towards the horizon.

He was not surprised that the Africans had helped him push his car. Even after all that had happened to them, most of them could still forgive. Their souls were filled with strength that Michael only dreamed of possessing. But he knew he would have to dream, because the dream, like the men that had pushed his car, was what kept the country moving forward. The dream was the push he needed, so that he would not stall like the engine of the car.

After the weekend, when classes had resumed, he had bumped into Ms. Nkomo rushing between classes. She had become quite shy around him lately, and he knew that she liked him. He was going to ask her out one of these days.

“What does scorocoro mean?” Michael asked Ms. Nkomo.

Her face had brightened at the question.

“Scorocoro...it means a broken car. No, that’s not right. It means a car that needs a little push,” said Ms. Nkomo.

The Chickasaw Plum - Volume IV - Number 10 - October 2007

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