Free Karoo Boy by Troy Blacklaws Page A

blind eye to such disregard for time.
    He bids me to bend over his desk. My hands rest on piles of unmarked essays. Two cuts. Just a friendly reminder.
    To keep from crying I reel off all the sea fish I can think of: hottentot geelbek kabeljou galjoen snoek dassie zebra zeb

shotdown birds
    I SIT ON THE veranda of the Rhodes Hotel with my mother. The floor is waxed a deep red, as if stained by ox blood. My mother sips her gin and tonic and fans herself with the menu. The skin under my knees sticks to the pink plastic chairs and I feel beads of sweat run down my calf into my sandals. My mother frowns at me when I slurp up the last of my Coca-Cola through the straw. My slurping is the sound of a cappuccino-mixer in a café. I finger out the block of ice and put it in my mouth. If I were alone I would bite the ice, another thing my mother hates. I just let it melt in my cheek.
    Across the street is the Shell Garage. The black man who waved the yellow handkerchief at me the day we came to Klipdorp is there, sitting on the same upturned beer crate. His eyes pan as cars go by, as if he is watching a game of tennis. The afternoon sun slants down on his white hair and he mops his forehead with the handkerchief. There is no shade under the canopy that juts out over the pumps from the garage building. I imagine it is still hot enough for the petrol to flame without a match.
    A Ford bakkie pulls in, with four black men standing on the back. The petroljockey jumps up, pockets his handkerchief in the ass pocket of his faded red overall. He is nimble for an old man. The name sewn in yellow on the back of the overall is Jim . He touches his forehead to greet the white driver, who is alone up front in the cab. Then he goes around the back of the bakkie to unreel the petrol hose. There is upbeat banter as Jim fills in the petrol. I catch the Xhosa word: ewe .
    The black men are all in the blue overalls of farmboys, but the youngest of them has unbuttoned the top of his overall and tied the sleeves around his hips. I see the grooves of his hard, washboard stomach. The young man does a gumboot jig on the back and the others all laugh at his jaunty antics. The white man bangs the window, and waves his fist at the young man, as if to say: Don’t you get too cocky, boy.
    The young man bows his head, turns away, then widens his eyes in mock fear for the others to see. They kill themselves again. The white farmer, sensing he is the butt of the joke, climbs out of the bakkie and stands there on the bulky legs of a rugby prop, his veldskoens apart. He wears one of those khaki cowboy hats with a fake leopardskin band around the brim. The laughter dies, like shot-down birds. I can just make out the black of a comb, sticking out of his long socks like a scorpion wanting to crawl out of a crack. My father always said to me: You can tell an Afrikaner a mile away by the comb in his socks.
    The bulky farmer swings his fist at the young man, who tugs his head out of range like a boxer. The farmer loses his footing for a moment and his leopardskin hat falls to the tar. The farm-boys avert their faces in shame. Jim picks up the hat and dusts it off with his handkerchief. The farmer snatches his hat out of Jim’s hands. I feel awkward witnessing this with my mother beside me. It is the squirmy feeling I get during a sexy scene in a film when my mother is watching with me, that I am partly to blame for what is happening on screen.
    – Men can be such bastards, my mother says.
    I had thought it was a certain kind of man who was cruel, but my mother’s words make me feel there is something in all men that is shameful.
    Then the farmer digs out his wallet, curved from sitting on it in the bakkie all day long. He licks his fingers before counting out the rands. Jim fingers the buttons of his hipbag, like the buttons of a trumpet, to give the man change. There is no tip for Jim. The farmer taps a pipe against the sole of his boot, so the dead tobacco drops out.