ZACHARIAH [gently]. How can that be?
MORRIS. Listen, Zach. Do you remember the songs she sang?
ZACHARIAH. Do I! [He laughs and then sings:]
‘My skin is black
The soap is blue,
But the washing comes out white.
I took a man
On a Friday night;
Now I’m washing a baby too.
Just a little bit black,
And a little bit white,
He’s a Capie through and through.’
[Morris is staring at him in horror.]
MORRIS. That wasn’t what she sang to me. ‘Lullabye baby’, it was, ‘You’ll get to the top.’ [Anguish.] This is some sort of terrible error. Wait . . . wait! I’ve got it . . . Oh, God, please let it be that I’ve got it! [To Zachariah.] How about the games we played? Think, Zach. Think carefully! There was one special one. Just me and you. I’ll give you a clue. Toot-toot. Toot-toot.
ZACHARIAH [thinking]. Wasn’t there an old car?
MORRIS. Where would it be?
ZACHARIAH. Rusting by the side of the road.
MORRIS. Could it be the ruins of an old Chevy, Zach?
ZACHARIAH. Yes, it could.
MORRIS. And can we say without tyres and wires and things?
ZACHARIAH. We may.
MORRIS. . . . and all the glass blown away by the wind?
ZACHARIAH. Dusty.
MORRIS. Deserted.
ZACHARIAH. Sting bees on the bonnet.
MORRIS. Webs in the windscreen.
ZACHARIAH. Nothing in the boot.
MORRIS. And us?
ZACHARIAH. In it.
MORRIS. We are? How?
ZACHARIAH. Side by side.
MORRIS. Like this?
[He sits beside Zachariah.]
ZACHARIAH. Uh-huh.
MORRIS. Doing what?
ZACHARIAH. Staring.
MORRIS. Not both of us!
ZACHARIAH. Me at the wheel, you at the window.
MORRIS. Okay. Now what?
ZACHARIAH. Now, I got this gear here and I’m going to go.
MORRIS. Where?
ZACHARIAH. To hell and gone, and we aren’t coming back.
MORRIS. What will I do while you drive?
ZACHARIAH. You must tell me what we pass. Are you ready? Here we go!
[Zachariah goes through the motion of driving a car. Morris looks eagerly out of the window.]
MORRIS. We’re slipping through the streets, passing houses and people on the pavements who are quite friendly and wave as we drive by. It’s a fine, sunny sort of a day. What are we doing?
ZACHARIAH. Twenty-four.
MORRIS. Do you see that bus ahead of us?
[They lean over to one side as Zachariah swings the wheel. Morris looks back.]
Chock-a-block with early morning workers. Shame. And what about those children over there, going to school? Shame again. On such a nice day. What are we doing?
ZACHARIAH. Thirty-four.
MORRIS. That means we’re coming to open country. The houses have given way to patches of green and animals and not so many people anymore. But they still wave . . . with their spades.
ZACHARIAH. Fifty.
MORRIS. You’re going quite fast. You’ve killed a cat, flattened a frog, frightened a dog . . . who jumped!
ZACHARIAH. Sixty.
MORRIS. Passing trees, and haystacks, and sunshine, and the smoke from little houses drifting up . . . shooting by!
ZACHARIAH. Eighty!
MORRIS. Birds flying abreast, and bulls, billygoats, black sheep . . .
ZACHARIAH. One hundred!
MORRIS. . . . cross a river, up a hill, to the top, coming down, down, down . . . stop! Stop!
ZACHARIAH [slamming on the brakes]. Eeeeeoooooooaah!
[Pause.] Why?
MORRIS. Look! There’s a butterfly.
ZACHARIAH. On your side?
MORRIS. Yours as well. Just look.
ZACHARIAH. All around us, hey!
MORRIS. This is rare, Zach! We’ve driven into a flock of butterflies.
ZACHARIAH. Butterflies! [Smiles and then laughs.]
MORRIS. We’ve found it, Zach. We’ve found it! This is our youth!
ZACHARIAH. And driving to hell and gone was our game.
MORRIS. Our best one! Hell, Zach, the things a man can forget!
ZACHARIAH. Ja, those were the days.
MORRIS. God knows.
ZACHARIAH. Goodness, hey!
MORRIS. They were that.
ZACHARIAH. And gladness too.
MORRIS. Making hay, man, come and play, man, while the sun is shining . . . which it did.
ZACHARIAH. Hey—what’s that . . . that nice thing you say, Morrie?
MORRIS ‘So sweet—
ZACHARIAH. Uh-huh.
MORRIS. ‘—did pass that summertime
Of youth and fruit upon the tree
When laughing boys and pretty girls
Did hop and skip and all were free.’
ZACHARIAH. Did skop and skip the pretty girls.
MORRIS. Hopscotch.
ZACHARIAH. That was it.
MORRIS We played our games, Zach.
ZACHARIAH. And now?
MORRIS. See for yourself, Zach. Here we are, later, and now there is Ethel as well and that makes me frightened.
ZACHARIAH. Sounds like another game.
MORRIS. Yes . . . but not ours this time. Hell, man, I often wonder.
ZACHARIAH. Same here.
MORRIS. I mean, where do they go, the good times, in a man’s life?
ZACHARIAH. And the bad ones?
MORRIS. That’s a thought. Where do they come from?
ZACHARIAH. Oudtshoorn.
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