As her fingers close round it, she steps out of his reach. Sindi doesn’t trust men, not even Joe Saviour, whom we’ve known since we were four days old. She sniffs at the neck of the flask. Her nose wrinkles but she takes a sip. It makes her cough. She hacks until she doubles over. The flask tilts in her hand. A drop of Loon Man’s golden brew splashes onto the road. One for the King.
“Watch it, that’s the blood of Jesus.” He snatches the flask as Sindi spits. The snail slides off the toe of his brogue, leaving a glimmering trail.
Sindi holds up her hands. “Sss_asorry, mm_man, sorry.”
She backs away and I watch, wide-eyes, expecting his fist, but he just throws back his head and laughs. He laughs and laughs like it’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened, gesturing at his toe with the open flask. He doesn’t spill a drop. At first, Sindi frowns at the sight of Loon Man playing the fool, but after a while his laughing catches and she smiles. I haven’t seen my sisi smile since . . . I can’t remember the last time. I hug my shoulders, wishing he’d stop. His laughing shakes me. It twists the world. It makes me fade and blur.
“Go away!” I scream.
The sudden silence throbs.
“We shouldn’t hang around, my child,” he says, pocketing the flask. “It’s not safe.” As he adjusts the lapels of his coat, the headlights of a passing car catch a copper gleam in his seams. Loon Man is a Believer, a tuned-in follower of the Black Preacher. “Joshua Piepper.” He holds out his hand and fires his name into the night. “First Disciple of the One True Church. Pure of blood, pure of spirit.”
“Loopy loopy Loon Man,” I jeer, motioning circles at the side of my head.
“Sss_aSindisiwe.” My sisi’s fingertips graze his.
He frowns as people do when they notice her stutter for the first time. “Sindisiwe,” he says, looking thoughtful. “Sindisiwe.” He repeats her name as if she and it are two pieces of a puzzle. Before he can fit them together, she turns her back on him and walks away.
“Where are you going, Sindisiwe? Wait. You don’t have to tell me. Looking at you, no offence, you look lost. You’re looking for a family. I’d say you’ve got no one – but seek and ye shall find, the Lord says.
“Tell you a secret,” he says when he catches up to her. “I can read people. It’s a gift. Praise the Lord for it. I look at you and I know, you’re heading for The Ascension. The Ascension of the Mothers for the New Mankind? Am I right? You know what I’m talking about.”
Silence.
“Okay, I understand, you’re nervous. And who could blame you, a young woman can’t know what to expect. You worry that you won’t be good enough. But I’m here to tell you, all God’s creatures are perfect, the Lord made you perfect and you are. Am I right, my child, you want to be saved?” He pauses and pats his heart. It takes me a second to figure out he’s checking for his flask. “Your name means saved. Sindisiwe, it means saved. Did you know that?”
They walk under an overpass. I hurry across the top, reaching the other side just as they emerge.
Loon Man is still jabbering. “I know I met you for a reason. The Lord sent you to me, so I could lead you to salvation. That makes me happy, for that is my purpose. Saving good girls and keeping them pure so they can be the Mothers for the New Mankind. So few untainted souls left in the world, so few.”
He looks up at me and frowns, as if remembering something. “You are pure? I mean, your blood, it’s clean?’ He clears his throat and answers for her: “Of course it is. I can see into people and in you I see a pure heart, pure blood, a pure soul.”
Sindi stops walking. She looks at Loon Man as if she’s only just seen him. “What did you ss_asay?” Her voice crackles like a badly tuned radio.
Joshua Piepper looks at the road. “I’m sorry,” he says, hunching his shoulders to ninety years old. “An old man can put his foot in it. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
Sindi narrows her eyes.
“My child, if you’ve got the sickness, don’t worry. The Lord has a plan for us all, have faith . . .” He trails off, sounding disappointed. “The Lord has a plan.”
She kicks the ground. “Before, what did you ss_asay?”
“Before?” He shrugs. “I said you should join our church.”
She shakes her head, her hands balling into fists at her sides.
“Calm down, child. All I said was that you have a pure heart and soul, nothing meant to offend.”
She blinks and the darkness, lifted earlier by his lunatic laughter, comes crashing down. In the faint moonlight I can just make out her eyes. Dead eyes. Colder than broken glass. “Soul.” She exhales the word, so quiet only my twin ears catch the sound.
“My child, where are you going?”
Sindi clutches a clump of grass to steady her balance and turns to face him. We’re already halfway up the embankment, but the old man hasn’t lifted his soles off the road. Ahead, the dark wheel of the off-ramp winds around the hill and disappears into the night, reappearing high above us as Voortrekker Road, bright with streetlights and straight as a runway.
“Let’s keep going, we can be at the church tomorrow morning. It’s not far, just past Nasrec in the old refinery. My people are on the move, I know we’ll get lucky and catch a ride. I foresee it. We’ll be there tonight.” Joshua Piepper pulls up the sleeve of his coat and brings his wrist close to his face. The eerie green glow of his watch light sinks deep crags into the flesh around his eyes. Loon Man the ghost.
The old man’s fresh, but we’ve been walking since dawn and it’s so late now I have to bend my neck all the way back to see Mama Moon. Soon, the sun’s going to creep over the horizon and people will begin to leak onto the streets. While the night still wraps us in her blanket, we can shut our eyes for few hours in peace.
Sindi raises her hand to wave goodbye. Loon Man twitches. He looks at Sindi, looks at me, checks his watch again, face glowing green. “There’s evil up there, my child.”
I glance over my shoulder, wondering where the crazy from this morning went. Nothing moves. The wind whispers against my skin. “Leave him, it’s cold,” I murmur.
“Sss_asomething bad on the road,” she tells him. “I s_asaw him this mm_morning.”
She turns and continues the steep climb. After a moment, he follows. No one wants to walk the road alone. There are people who do, but they’re sad and mad and talk to invisibles, warding off loneliness in the company of ghosts.
Loon Man’s nervous twitching stops when we step into the milky glow of the streetlights, as if he thinks light can protect him. We follow the road as it crosses above the dark highway towards the racecourse. In the distance, the neon sign of the Casbah Roadhouse sparks and goes out. There’s always something fresh in the bins at Casbah at closing time. Usually, we’d head straight there, but Sindi keeps going until she gets to the patch of grass by the racecourse gates. We once sat for hours on the concrete bench here, waiting for Mama and Next-Door-Auntie to win big so we could go home. They lost so much they couldn’t pay the taxi fare. That was the first time we walked the highway.
Sindi leans against that same bench and yawns. I wonder if she’s ashamed to go through the bins in front of Loon Man, or if she just isn’t hungry. For the first time since we left the townhouses this morning, she examines her hand. Already, the flesh around the wound is red and swollen. She prods the area, sucks her teeth.
“You okay, child?”
Sindi nods and puts her hands in her pockets. Joshua Piepper takes out his flask. He offers it to Sindi but her eyes are closed. For a while he sits sipping at it, staring at nothing. Sindi’s breathing slows, deepening the stillness. It’s so quiet that when he