CHAPTER SIXTEEN - ALEC
I was with a woman from the American South once. Long, long ago. Mississippi, I believe. Or South Caro-Bama or some fokken place. I remember her now, as I eat in my luxurious prison quarters, because I recall that she insisted on calling pap “grits.” I explained to her that the dish I enjoyed that she referred to as “grits” is, in fact, called pap. She thought “pap” sounded disgusting. I thought “grits” sounded disgusting. I was right. She was wrong.
I threw her over the railing of a bridge.
Not because of the grits thing. I’m not a lunatic.
It’s because she got quite hysterical on me, threatening to tell her “daddy” that it was I, the oke who was seeing his daughter, who stole the necklace he kept in the safe in his study. The family heirloom that dated back to the eighteenth century. I don’t know why I told her I took it. I was a teenager. Teenagers do stupid things.
I have always had complicated feelings about her accident. The necklace had actually been stolen by slave traders from an African village that was plundered sometime in the seventeen-hundreds. Through a long and circuitous turn of events that involved a Xhosa oke I was friends with and a story that had been passed along through the generations about some appropriated jewels, I found myself in the right place at the right time to make something resembling reparations to a greatly appreciative tribal chief.
I mean, I must be honest, I’m no great philanthropist or humanitarian. I had arranged for an appropriate finder’s fee, but still… stealing from the descendant of a slaver and throwing his daughter off a bridge feels like it’s doing God’s good work.
But that’s not why I did it either.
I did it because in the heat of her hysteria and threats, she turned to the backseat of the car I was driving at the time, where Christine and Danny were sitting, and called Christine a whore. In her piercing Ala-Tucky accent (or whatever the fok it was), she yelped at me, “Fuck you, you African piece a’ shit! And fuck this low-rent fuck boy and dirty little street whore you hang around with too!” She then leaped into the rear of the car and began striking violently at them both. She wasn’t even drunk. Or high. Just… herself.
I had not known Danny and Christine long at that point. We had only just begun our adventures together. So it was confusing to me that I found Misty’s particular verbal assault so personally offensive. But I did.
I always knew what Danny and Christine are to me. Always.
Now, in fairness to her—and I strive to be fair—Misty had just found out that I had no intention of bringing her along with us on our next departure and was quite emotional. So, the more mature, more patient Alec van den Berg that I am today might only have dragged her back into the front seat and, I don’t know, smashed her head into the dashboard or something equally non-lethal.
But being the hotheaded young Alec that I was at the time, I pulled the car over to the side of the road, got out, and dragged her from the passenger side. And—and even though through the gauzy haze of memory one can romanticize one’s recollections, I don’t believe I am—I honestly had no intention of harming her. I really did not. I had planned to just sort of abandon her there and then flee the country as swiftly as possible, assuming that there would be other ways to avoid ever dealing with her again.
But, unfortunately, Christine had not taken kindly to being struck and called a whore, and she got out of the car as well. Sweet, little, equally-hotheaded and unintimidated Christine who, though smaller and arguably cuter than Misty, was about five times stronger and more vicious. She went after the poor girl with a horrifying vengeance. Like the legendary Biloko—a dwarf-like creature that attacks the unfortunate and unsuspecting soul who passes by their lair in a hollow tree—Christine was on her.
And in the process of separating them, I wrenched them apart and lofted the dear girl over the guard rail of the bridge we were on at three in the morning.
We watched her fall into the river below, all three of us a bit stunned at the turn of events. The water washed her away and she struggled to stay afloat. But, truthfully, I didn’t even consider her for more than half a second before I had my hands on Christine’s shoulders, asking her if she was OK. She nodded, then started crying, and Danny and I sandwiched her between us, telling her it would be all right.
I wonder if, when I went over the falls, Danny held her in his arms in the same way and told her, once again, that it would all be OK.
No way to know, I suppose.
Misty managed to survive as well, it turns out. In my opinion, it’s less impressive than what I survived. She hadn’t also fought her way free from capture by a small army and then been shot by one of only two people in the world she believed she could trust, but still, I’m glad she made it.
Some years later, I believe I read that she and her entire immediate family were sent to prison for insider trading. Or something equally banal. Shame.
In any case, this bowl of pap and wors I’m finishing right now actually isn’t half bad.
I’m about to call for Liam to come take the dirty dish away when I look out the window again. The weather is clearing, and the sun is creating shadows across the great lawn outside. And there, from the corner of my eye, I see something that looks like… that looks like… that looks like people I know.
It isn’t.
Upon closer examination, I can see that it’s just some trees casting Christine- and Danny-shaped illusions onto the earth. But for a moment, it felt as if they were here. Or at least close.
I’ve been thinking about them more. Not more than any specific time. More than at any other time I’ve ever thought about them in my life, since knowing they were people whose feet trod the same earth as mine. It don’t seem fair, man. It don’t seem fair that Christine and I worked through all the struggle with Eliza only to discover that we hadn’t. That she was harboring a hatred close to her heart that I didn’t know about.
It don’t seem fair that Danny was back in both of our lives for less than a proper twenty-four hours before I was ripped away from him again. I wonder if he’s indeed with Christine. I wonder if they’re happy. I’d like that, I think. I’d like it if through me, they found their way back to each other. That would make me happy.
It don’t seem fair that I’m here in these silk pyjamas, enjoying a perfectly serviceable bowl of pap and wors while my baby brother is very likely dead at the bottom of a waterfall. Or, more likely, washed away somewhere, never to be seen again. If only he had found it in himself to talk with me, maybe… maybe… fok. At least maybe I could’ve killed him myself. That would feel just and right somehow. Better than the way it all went down, I reckon.
Eish, man. But when has anything ever been fair? Come along now, van den Berg. You’re starting to sound like other people.
All right. Enough of this kak. Time to go. I can’t claim to know what about today in particular is causing me to decide that I cannot stay here any longer, but something in the air—or more probably, something in me—is pulling me toward an exit strategy.
The time that I was at this estate before, it was so that I could rest after a near-death scrape. Somebody who knows me knows that. That’s why I’m here again, I have to assume. It’s some perverted commentary on my life that whoever has chosen to keep me alive has chosen this place to hold me hostage. It’s a fokken allegory. Or metaphor. Or some cocksucking thing. Whatever it is, it ain’t cute, and I’m done.
I think the part that I really can’t tolerate any further is not having answers. Staring down uncertainty does not make me uncomfortable. It fokken hacks me off, man. I refuse to believe that I denied Death her claim on me yet again for me to sit here in thousand-dollar sleepwear, wondering about what the hell is happening. I aim to find answers.
Now.
“Liam, man! I’m done, bru!”
It’s not the disarming him that hurts. That’s actually somewhat easy. He lets the rifle slide down his arm when he takes up the tray, and I’m not in optimal shape, but I’m still quite quick. No, what hurts is knocking him out with the butt of the rifle. Whatever it is that’s still pinching on my ribcage seems to tighten a bit. Or possibly tear. Not sure. Medical school was not for me, so I didn’t go. All I know is it stings.
I’ll need to be conscious of that as I make my way out of here. I’ve only seen about a dozen okes around the premises, but I’ve also only been around a limited amount of the premises. The good news is that this is my place. I bought it after having lived here with Eliza for probably a good month and a half. And until the day that she spoilt everything by getting pregnant—or, accurately, telling me she was pregnant…
Kak, man.
But until then, we had good fun in just about every corner of this citadel, so I should be able to sneak out through some of the less easy-to-spot passageways round the back. It would be a delight to free myself into the countryside sunshine while killing as few people as possible.
And, as if on cue, the rain starts pattering against the window again as I lean my head into the hallway to make sure no one is watching my door.
Yes, it would be a delight. It certainly would.
But, unfortunately, something niggling inside me tells me that this day is not fated to be a delightful one.