‘Bad, man, big bad,’ says Sonnyboy.
He looks round to see if anyone’s coming. Then he unzips the bag and feels around among papers and rags. He holds open the bag for Lambert to look.
‘Fuck!’ Lambert says.
In the bag, on top of dirty rags and newspaper, lie a revolver and a pair of binoculars.
‘Jesus fuck!’ he says. ‘Where you get that kind of stuff, man?’ He puts his hand into the bag, but Sonnyboy grabs his wrist hard and takes out the hand again. He zips the bag closed.
‘Right,’ Sonnyboy says. ‘You think about it. Think, man, it wasn’t easy, I tell you.’
‘That’s too expensive for me, man. Just look at me!’ And he points to his clothes, his perished boxer shorts. He lifts up his arms so the kaffir can see the holes in his green T-shirt. ‘I’m also poor, you know!’ he says.
‘But you’re not hungry, man. You are not hungry like I am,’ says Sonnyboy, rubbing his stomach.
‘Well,’ Lambert says, and he doesn’t know what gets into him, but he says to Sonnyboy, right there under those scrappy trees, among the rocks, across the road from the dumps: ‘I’m hungry for love, man; now that’s a really bad thing, man.’
Sonnyboy looks at him. ‘Hey?’ he says, and he looks away. Then he looks back at him. ‘Shame,’ he says. ‘That’s bad, man.’
‘But I’m getting a girl, you know.’
‘Yes?’ says Sonnyboy, looking like he doesn’t believe him.
‘Yes, my father’s getting a girl for me on my birthday, for a whole night. I want to make everything nice, so maybe she stays with us forever.’
‘’Strue?’ Sonnyboy smiles a little smile, but Lambert can’t work out what that smile means. ’Cause of the shades. This yellow kaffir from the Transkei mustn’t come and laugh at him now. He must know his place, yellow or not. He must know what he is and who he is. To hell with Hotnot tricks.
‘Where you got those things in any case?’ he asks, putting a bit of attitude into his voice.
‘Oooh,’ says Sonnyboy, ‘here, there, everywhere, boss!’
‘I see.’ He nods slowly at Sonnyboy.
Sonnyboy nods slowly back.
‘How much?’ he asks.
‘Hundred,’ says Sonnyboy.
‘Too much,’ he says.
‘Eighty,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘Have a heart, man.’
‘I haven’t got eighty,’ he says.
‘What have you got then, man?’ Sonnyboy sounds impatient. ‘Take it out, let’s see,’ he says. Suddenly it looks like he wants to get up and walk off.
He knows he must play his cards carefully now. He wants that gun, that’s for sure. He’s not so sure about the binoculars, but he knows they’ll come in handy, sooner or later.
‘I’ve got fifty,’ he says, feeling in his back pocket for the NPs’ fifty-rand note.
‘Ag no man!’ Sonnyboy protests. ‘What do you take me for? This stuff here’s worth a few thousand!’ He reaches out for Lambert’s fifty.
‘Tough!’ Lambert says, pushing the note back into his pocket.
‘But a hungry man is a hungry man,’ says Sonnyboy.
‘You said it,’ says Lambert, ‘and beggars can’t be choosers.’
‘Don’t come and look for shit with me!’ says Sonnyboy.
‘I’m not looking for anything,’ he says. ‘I’ve got something. Six free meals, fifty bucks each.’
‘That’s nothing!’ says Sonnyboy.
‘No, ’strue’s Bob. For the Spur, six tickets. I was lucky. The Spur had a birthday. I won them.’
‘Spur, hey,’ says Sonnyboy, ‘birthday, hey?’
‘Yes, man, the eatplace, Spur. Spur Comanche, Spur Blazing Saddles, any Spur. You can go too. In town. Blacks and Coloureds can go too, now. This is the New South Africa, remember. In Melville too, I swear.’
‘Hmmm,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘How many did you say?’
Lambert feels in his back pocket. He feels past the fifty-rand note until he finds the tickets. Then he unfolds them. Pop’s luck is still rolling here today.
‘Tear on the dotted line,’ he says to Sonnyboy, counting them out. ‘Six, there’s six here. Here, take a look, man. Fifty rands’ food on each ticket. You can eat for a week, every day a T-bone.’
T-bone, Lambert thinks. And what will Pop say when he hears about this deal of his? ’Cause it was Pop’s luck that day with the pudding at Spur, not his. He never has any luck with this kind of thing. But today he’s getting some luck. He must just play his cards right here. He folds the tickets up and puts them back into his pocket.
‘I give you four tickets. Fifty rands and four tickets,’ he says. ‘And I’ll keep two tickets for myself. I also fancy a T-bone some time. My girl too. I’ll take her for a T-bone, if she wants to stay. ’Cause the first night we’ll just eat snacks in my room. I thought of everything. I’ve got a list. Cheese dips, fish dips, crinkle cuts, salt and vinegar chips, the works.’
Sonnnyboy laughs.
‘What are you laughing at, hey? Hey?’ He also laughs a little.
Then they both sit and stare out at the world in front of them. Lambert thinks about his deal. The shadows are getting long. Almost all the loose kaffirs at the gate have gone home for the day. The fixed kaffirs inside the gate are taking off their gloves. Any minute now they’ll close the gates. A wind starts up, blowing plastic bags and loose dirt across the dumps. The bags blow up against the wire fence. Some of them get stuck under the fence. Others snag on the razor-wire on top of the fence. The lateafternoon sun shines gold on the rusted containers inside the dumps.
‘Do they work proper, those things you’ve got there?’ he asks after a while.
‘Sure, man, sure!’ says Sonnyboy. ‘I’ll give you a demo.’ He unzips his bag.
Then he pushes out the revolver’s round magazine. ‘Click,’ and he clicks it back into the middle. He spins it, ‘rrrrt’, with his finger. ‘Click-click-click’ he shoots, inside the pink bag.
‘Satisfied?’ asks Sonnyboy.
‘Now the binoculars,’ he says.
Sonnyboy takes out the binoculars and sets them. He looks through them for a long time. Then he passes them to Lambert, laughing a funny little laugh. He points to the dumps.
‘You see that container there, hey? The one, two, three, four, fifth one from this side. Now look there, on its side, number five, what can you make out there?’
Lambert lifts the binoculars to his eyes. The wire and the plastic bags rise up into his vision. Then he finds his bearings. He sees the light of the sun shining on things. It looks gold. Then the first container, the second, the third, the fourth. Through the binoculars, their sides look like aerial photos of the land taken from very high up. Lines and cracks and bare patches. Plains and dams and bushes, other countries, all spray-painted in gold. Then he gets to the fifth one. It looks like mine dumps and koppies, with thick rows of shapes and blocks, some in crowded rows on top of each other, and others in loose, mixed-up strands. It looks like the aerial photo of Jo’burg on the Chinese calendar in their lounge.
‘Read,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘Read to me what you see there.’
Lambert looks on the side of the container. He reads out aloud. ‘CTR 517. Municipality of Johannesburg TPA.’ The letters are stencilled on to the container in white.
‘Right,’ says Sonnyboy. ‘Now go down to the right. Just a bit. Now what do you see there? It’s small. Do you see it? Then read, brother, read that line for me.’
‘One settler, one bullet,’ Lambert reads. The letters have been scratched with a nail on to the rusted side of the container. He lowers the binoculars. This yellow kaffir’s jiving him in a big way now. That’s what he’s doing. He’s a cheeky mixed-up fucken kaffir, and now he’s screwing me in the ears, Lambert thinks.
‘I’ll knock the shit out of you, kaffir,’ he says to Sonnyboy.