“He can take care of me right here,” Grant muttered thickly. “If you think I’m going anywhere with you tonight, old man, in Hasie Viljoen’s truck, you don’t know Sharkey’s son.”
After reading
| 1. | Why does Grant suspect that something bad has happened to his father? |
| 2. | Oom Daan says of Sharkey, “And strong! Sjoe! He was the best kind of skipper you could get.” Notice that he uses the past tense. Suggest a reason for this. |
| 3. | We can tell that Grant is deeply hurt when Oom Daan tells him his father has gone to Lüderitz. |
| 3. a) | Why is he so upset by this news? |
| 3. b) | What news causes him further pain? |
| 4. | According to Oom Daan, Sharkey was not given a permit to continue fishing for a living. |
| How, then, does he earn money to support himself and Grant? | |
| 5. | Grant yells, “He must have drunk too much and gone mad!” Do you think he deserves to be cuffed for saying this? Explain why or why not. |
| 6. | Answer the questions on the following figures of speech. |
| 6. a) | “… tiny hermit crabs of fear were scrabbling around inside him.” |
| How does this metaphor help us to imagine what Grant is going | |
| 6. b) | “Sometimes a minister can be more slippery than a harder.” |
| What does this simile tell us about Oom Daan’s attitude towards politicians? |
Before reading
| 1. | Grant seems determined not to go to Cape Town. What would you do if you were Grant? |
| While reading | |
| 2. | Why was Grant so sure that Sharkey would not easily sell his house? |
| 3. | What amazing discovery does Grant make about his father’s financial position? |
2. A tool of the trade
Grant walked past the hardware store and turned left into the gravel road where nothing had changed in the last fifty years. Other parts of Langebaan had changed since the people from the towns had “discovered” it and started building huge white mansions that greedily gobbled up the strandveld, the grassy banks adjoining the beach.
But not in Grant and Sharkey’s street; it was still the same there as ever. And so was their house. And that was something to be proud of, Sharkey always said.
There it was, solid and reliable, squatting low, as it had in the face of wind and the grate of sand for as long as Grant could remember. The kitchen door was never locked. Grant pushed it open and went inside. They didn’t have a fancy stove in their kitchen – just a gas burner and a small bar fridge that Sharkey had once swapped for some of his famous whalebone carvings. Next to the fridge was a rough wooden shelf, perfect for cutting fish on. They ate fish most nights.
Grant didn’t switch on the top light in the sitting room. It was just a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling by a cord and he didn’t feel like its interrogative presence in his thoughts right now. Instead he sat in the gathering gloom eating slices of the fresh bread that Tant Lisbeth of the Beach Café had given him and trying to figure out what to do.
And then he noticed something. Why had Sharkey left his knife behind? He would never usually leave home without it. But there it was, lying on the kitchen shelf, as if Sharkey had just popped outside quickly to see which way the wind was blowing.
And why would he want to sell the house? How many times hadn’t Sharkey said these words when out-of-towners came snooping around: “This house belongs to me and my boy. It’s not for sale.”
Hurry, he told himself, conscious of the impending arrival of Oom Daan in Hasie Viljoen’s truck, but his thoughts and movements remained slow and heavy. He roamed through the house, from the kitchen through the living room and into the small, low-ceilinged bedroom he shared with Sharkey.
He was just about to leave the bedroom when he heard a strange noise, an electronic buzzing sound that seemed to be coming from under Sharkey’s bed. He crawled under the low, single-bed frame and looked about. There was nothing there that could make such a sound, only an old pair of shoes.
Then a thought occurred to him. He felt about for the ridge marking the trapdoor that was cut into the wooden floor. His fingers found it. He tucked them under the rim of the panel and pulled. He wriggled a bit further under the bed and reached his forearm into the secret hiding hole that only he and Sharkey knew about.
The first thing his exploration unearthed was his knife, the one Sharkey had given him on his thirteenth birthday. Grant forced the picture of his father’s face out of his mind. He felt around a bit more. His fingers encountered another object, smooth and cold to the touch. He pulled it out, together with his knife.
Grant stared at his find in bewilderment. That noise had come from Sharkey’s cell phone, the one Oom Daan had been looking for. The phone indicated that a message had just come through.
Sharkey always carried two things with him: his knife and his cell phone. They were the tools of the smokkel trade Sharkey ran, the illegal fishing and trapping of crayfish he did on behalf of some hotels in the area.
Sharkey hadn’t wanted a cell phone at first, but after Oom Daan had told him that he’d missed out on R200’s worth of business one day just because Oom Daan couldn’t get hold of him, he relented and accepted one of Oom Daan’s fancy mobiles. Now you wouldn’t catch him without it.
So why would Sharkey leave home without it? And why was Oom Daan so keen to get hold of it? Grant squirmed back out from under the bed and went into the MESSAGES inbox of Sharkey’s phone. Maybe the message was from his dad. Oh, he hoped so.
It wasn’t; it was from FLASH. Sharkey didn’t keep a traditional bank account like most other people did. He relied exclusively on his cell phone cash transaction provider, FLASH.
Grant opened the message and read it. Impossible! He stood up. He couldn’t have read right.
Your FLASH account has been credited with R50 000
Grant sat down on the bed, trying to grasp the significance of what he’d just read. Despite his old-fashioned ways, Sharkey was on the cutting edge when it came to banking. Whoever ordered fish or crayfish from the Beach Café simply deposited money into Sharkey’s FLASH account. The account number was the same as his cell phone number. When Sharkey wanted to use that money, he simply downloaded it to Oom Daan’s FLASH account. Oom Daan then either gave him cash out of his till or Sharkey bought food and other provisions from the Beach Café with it. He never downloaded the virtual money in his FLASH account into a normal bank account like most other people did.
Grant was very sure that it had never held anything more than about R200 or R300 at a time – the price of a few fish or crayfish. Where had such a huge amount as R50 000 come from? And why did Sharkey need to go to Lüderitz to work if he had R50 000 sitting in his cell phone account?
Then a horrible thought gripped him: Oom Daan knew about the money and he wanted it for himself. Then he had another thought: he knew Sharkey’s secret code. If there really was R50 000 in Sharkey’s FLASH account, he could get to it, use it to travel to Lüderitz and speak to Sharkey himself, face to face.
Yes, he would hide out tonight amongst the dunes, and tomorrow he’d head straight for Lüderitz – wherever that was.
He shoved the cell phone into his pocket. Right now, he needed to get going. He raced back to the kitchen, grabbed his fishing bag off the hook and tore through the house, throwing whatever he thought he’d need into it. He hesitated before the whalebone carving that had stood on the table next to his bed for as long as he could remember – the small seagull Sharkey had made for his young wife as a present when Grant was born. Why take a useless little carving all the way to Lüderitz with him? Then he remembered how the rich people had raved about what they called scrimshaw and been more than happy to swap a whole fridge for it. He threw it into the bag.
As he stepped onto the dusty road he heard the deep diesel rumble of Hasie Viljoen’s truck in the distance. Not a moment too soon.
After reading