Free Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace

between them until the bell rang and we filed into the dining hall.
    Inside, we discovered the school prefects were still mad about the rugby. Up at Top Table, Portis, the Head Boy, didn’t say grace but made the whole school stand while he told us what a bunch of spoofless faggots we were.
    â€œWhere was the support?” he wanted to know. He played on the wing and had scored a disallowed try. “You guys need to learn some respect.”
    He made us stay standing until the prefects had finished eating so that we only had a few moments to eat our meal before prep. What we didn’t realize right then was that this punishment would go on all week.
    Nelson started to avoid me, and now and again I’d catch him staring at me, his face bunched with a lost and sorry frown because he didn’t know what he’d done wrong. I wanted to try and explain, I really did, but even in the dorm Ivan seemed to be watching, checking to see what I was doing, so it was far easier to ignore him.
    One afternoon I spotted Nelson sitting on his own in the common room, crying quietly. I decided to finally break the stupid silence when some boys from another house came rushing in and stopped me.
    â€œThere’s been an accident,” one gulped with excitement.“On the main road just outside the school. It’s not serious but you can see it from the fence.”
    When he said it wasn’t serious, he meant no white people were involved. You could spot the carnage straightaway. A bus full of people had been going one way and an army truck the other, but most of the buses in the country had chassis that were so shot they crab crawled with their front wheels virtually rumbling off the tarmac while the rear jutted out in the middle of the road. The army truck—a Crocodile, which was an ugly bulk of angled metal and jagged edges and virtually indestructible—had come around the corner too fast, plowed straight into the side of the bus and ended up on the grass. The bus had stopped being a bus altogether.
    Wailing filled the air. A couple of passersby and police cars had stopped, but no more than that, and even though the ambulance had arrived it could only carry two at a time and it was twenty-something kilometers to the hospital and back.
    One of the older boys spotted the soldiers who’d been in the Crocodile by the edge of the trees, their guns slung casually over their shoulders. They were big men, and the only thing they seemed concerned with was finding a light for their smokes. They called over a small man in a policeman’s uniform, demanded some matches, and then sent him away without looking him in the face. The policeman looked happy to be going the other way again.
    Why weren’t
they
doing anything to help? I wondered.
    As though answering the question, the older boy pointed out the crimson berets tucked into their waistbands.
    â€œFifth Brigade,” he said. “Mugabe’s
special
troops. Evil bastards.”
    A small commotion sparked farther along the line as a boy from our year called Pittman started to climb the fence. Ivan was egging him on the loudest, while for once, I noticed, DeKlomp wasn’t by his side and had retreated, looking small and pale.
    This Pittman guy got up and over, and, with a huge grin he started to creep through the thin trees to where the soldiers were squatting. None of them had seen him.
    â€œDon’t,” came De Klomp’s thin voice behind us. “He mustn’t. Make him stop.”
    I don’t think anyone else heard him, and when I looked he’d turned and was heading quickly back toward the house.
    Now Pittman was really showing off, jumping and mimicking a gorilla. When his foot found a pinecone the noise crackled like fire, and the next thing we knew the soldiers were all up and rushing toward him. Pittman started to run, his face suddenly a portrait of complete fear, but they were quick. The front soldier knocked him to the