Free Out of Shadows by Jason Wallace Page B

he’d just gone, snatched by the night in a way that seemed completely unnatural. We sprinted after him, and it was only when I realized Ivan wasn’t alongside me anymore that I noticed the blackness ahead. But before I had time to question it everything had suddenly gone, and like in a dream I was floating in nothing for what seemed an eternity as cold air and silence carried me. Then I was falling. Just falling. I could taste my heart in my mouth. With armsspinning and legs kicking, I went down into the abyss, faster and faster until at last I landed.
    My final thought was that I would surely die, but the surface gave way and I kept on falling, down and down, sucked from beneath as freezing water filled my mouth and nose.
    When I erupted back to the surface, something pale bobbed in front of me and I knew straightaway it was De Klomp, face down and unmoving, and without another thought I’d flipped him onto his back. His shoulder and face were bleeding, he must have clipped the rock face on his way down.
    â€œ. . . are you doing? Can you see him?” Ivan was shouting from way above. “Jeez, man,
talk
to me . . .”
    I held De Klomp under the chin and paddled him to the other side. I was glad to hear him groan as I dragged him up the slope.
    â€œDad?” he kept saying. “Dad, is that you? Don’t go in there, Dad.”
    He was trembling. For whatever good it would do, I took off my sweater and laid it over him.
    â€œDad?” He curled into me.
    I felt embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say so I just answered as any thirteen-year-old schoolboy would.
    â€œShut up, you idiot, I’m not your old man. You should be glad, your folks would kill you if they found out about this.”
    At which point he came around. I could see his eyes focus on me, then he rolled away and started to sob. How was I to know that it was completely the wrong thing to say because, actually, his folks wouldn’t do a thing to him seeing as someone had already killed them?
    We walked back through the dark mostly without speaking, Ivan guiding De Klomp with his arm around his shoulder andme always slightly behind. Every now and then De Klomp let out a sob and Ivan let him pause.
    â€œI understand, Bru. I understand.”
    But
I
didn’t.
    We’d set off again when De Klomp was ready.
    Ivan’s caring, fraternal exterior was a side I hadn’t seen, but I kept my distance because none of it was for me. This was between them; I wasn’t part of it. Ivan wouldn’t even turn to look at me so I was certain the steely quiet was fury with me for having made De Klomp cry like that.
    We took him to the sanatorium for the night. Fortunately it was Sister Lee on duty, who was a soft touch, and we told her De Klomp had slipped and knocked his head and fallen in the pool. It never even occurred to her to ask what we’d been doing there at this time, in winter.
    Ivan and I went slowly back to the house together.
    â€œYou can’t blame him for blubbing.” It was a relief to hear him speak to me again, like being released. “He’s not a poof; it’s because of his time in the war. Greet’s a bastard.”
    â€œYou think what he did brought it back to De Klomp?” I asked. “The war, I mean?”
    â€œThe war doesn’t
come back
, Jacklin, because it never goes. It’s part of us. And we’re reminded of it every day: Nothing works, you can’t buy anything, and the blacks walk around like they own the place.”
    He hesitated. I didn’t dare hurry him.
    â€œKlompie’s folks were religious nuts. You know, real God-botherers, and they worked at this pentecostal mission up in the mountains beyond Nyanga, so far east they could have opened the window and pissed over the border. When the gooks started to come over on their raids, the police tried to get them to move, but the nuns tuned, ‘No way.’ They had God on