“Stand closer,” his father instructs.
Both boys move closer to the stove. Danie shifts closer too.
His father unbuttons Petrus’s shirt. The shoulder is bruised and swollen around the red mark. Isak stares angrily but the other boy avoids his eyes.
“Wife, the blades.”
His mother is busy with the pig’s head at the basin. She rinses her hands, covered in pink jelly, before extracting a blade from the orange packet.
Meticulously, his father goes to work, dipping the cotton wool in warmed brandy, cleaning the wound. With the new blade he scrapes around the mark, cutting the skin open over the lodged pellet. He presses on either side of the pellet and Petrus grimaces with pain. The pellet pops out, landing on the table, a tiny piece of lead that has caused all the trouble.
“Give the boy some bread.”
The bread is meant for Petrus. Isak watches his mother smearing the slices, then Petrus, consumed with self-pity, gripping the sandwich in his limp hand.
“Thank you, Baas.” Outa is satisfied with the outcome.
Petrus leaves with his grandfather and Isak’s mother calls Danie to the dining room for supper.
“Sit.” His father points to the kitchen chair.
It is only the two of them with the insignificant pellet and the pig head in the basin. Kalbas lies under the table and Isak rests his feet on the dog.
“The gun?” His father’s nostrils flare.
“It’s in the safe, Pa.”
His father picks up the pellet. “You can choose. It’s quite simple. Either the gun or a hiding.”
He cannot live without the gun. “The hiding, Pa.”
“Fetch.”
On the back stoep is a pair of his mother’s takkies. His hand fits into it. His father takes it from him and for a moment it looks like he has changed his mind.
“Down.”
Obediently, he drops over the chair. The red cars are pulled off his bottom, Isak clenches his teeth. At first nothing happens. The dog comes closer and licks his face. Then the takkie comes down and it is a thrashing like no other. The sheep dog retires under the table, whimpering.
It stops but he keeps his head down. Tears stream out of eyes. He bites on his lip, not making a sound. Eventually, the heavy tread of the man moves out of the kitchen down the passage, past the entrance hall to the lounge.
The soda machine gushes. Silence, then piano chords softly played fill the house with notes that ripple like water. The dog paws the boy’s arm. With effort he gets up, his skin burning and broken. Hobbling to the bathroom, he climbs up on the bath’s edge, turning his bottom to the mirror and the word Bata is written over and over in reverse.
He finds his way in the dark back to his bedroom. The piano becomes louder and louder like rain on a roof, on and on until it stops abruptly. The humming of the generator is cut off too as the last light is switched off.
Danie climbs out of the bed and opens the shutter. Light streams in from the sliced moon, a sliver of yellow melon hanging there amongst the stars.
“Boetie,” Danie peers over Isak, “did you have a nice birthday?”
Isak doesn’t answer.
The little boy digs something out from under his pillow, holding it out. A piece of meat, covered in cold gravy. He wolfs it down as the little boy watches with approval.
The moon settles on the mountain top. Together they lie in the brightness. Danie scratches his back with blunt fingers, while down at the river, the ducks honk, him still not knowing what the gun can do.
THREE
The scar has healed on his buttocks and the rain has come and the rain has gone, just as Oupa predicted.
Isak waits for his parents’ door to open and the radio to be switched on.
He feels the raised ridge of the strawberry mark on his skin. His father walks down the passage and his heart quickens but the steps don’t stop. Sounds of coffee beans being mashed in the grinder come from the kitchen. Then measured steps down the passage. He waits but they pass by.
Danie sleeps through the seduction of the pungent smell but he follows it to where his mother lies in her single bed, tight as a ball, exhausted by the long days in the pack shed. She faces the wall and the skin under her eyes is like the pith of lemons.
Isak climbs into his father’s bed. It is warm and the pillow stinks of cigarettes. His father lights up, one for him and one for her. Without looking, she reaches out for the cigarette balanced on the saucer. Her lips tremble as she draws, lipstick trapped in the creases of her mouth.
His father pulls back the curtains, letting in the light. She shies back onto the bed and Isak can see the mountain behind the leafless deltoidia. The organ ends and it is the news. They speak of gold and oil in the beginning and troublemakers in the end, especially the one in the Eastern Cape, then it is the weather report and his father stubs the cigarette in the saucer. Even his mother listens with interest.
* * *
Transvaal, Free State, Natal, then the Boland and the predictions remain the same as yesterday and last Sunday and the Sunday before. No rain now or next week, or the week after. It is as though the rain of a month ago never existed.
“Switch off.” His father locks the bathroom door.
They can hear him spit phlegm in the basin. Isak rolls onto his side, watching his mother’s face, the colour of chalk on cement. The DollyVarden is hers. On it stand wigs, blonde and red-haired, made from human hair, fitted on foamalite heads. He gets out of bed and sits on the stool with gilt legs. The mirror shows her tiny figure and the blue triangles in the corner of her eyes. Gingerly, he touches the wigs, wondering whether the women who gave the hair walked around with shaven heads, then he pulls one over his short hair, a wig with blonde tresses like Magdaleen’s.
“Isak.” His mother is frowning and the mirror skews her face and he pulls it off, arranging the wig on the faceless head.
Perhaps the hair comes from dead people, he thinks.
“Coming?” His father is dressed in his farm clothes with his moustache in a perfect line above his lip. Distracted he looks past them to the open window.
His mother’s nightie has slipped off her shoulders, revealing her breasts and she doesn’t seem to care him seeing.
The dog with the smiling face is waiting on the back stoep. Shed leaves lie still under the deltoidia. He sits in front of the bakkie with his father, the dog on the back and they drive up to the borehole on the ridge. No clouds in the sky, just bright blue that is wide and far, meeting the top of the mountains. Irritably, his father fiddles with the radio while old voices sing. The radio is turned off before they can complete the hymn.
So dikwels al voorheen
Het U vergewend hulp verleen
En van die skuld bevry
Hoe gou het ek nie weer u goedheid Heer vergeet nie
Die val en opstaan bring ’n diep verydeling.
In front of them is the borehole. The Lister machine runs dryly while the screeching rod only pumps up air. They walk to the edge of the hole. His father cuts the engine. There is silence. They both listen to the dog’s panting and the ringing of stone on stone as Isak tosses pebbles down the shaft.
For a long time his father stands at the hole. Eventually, he moves away to look over the farm. The flash rains of summer are already forgotten, just as his oupa had said.
Without a word the man with silver hair walks back to the Lister, disconnecting