James Mcclure - Snake

As she lay strangling in a scarlet hurricane on the floor of the dressing room, she had to agree, for the first time in her life, that the no-good old drunkard had been right about one thing.

Then her top plate fell out and she grimaced up at the ceiling like a Halloween lantern. One in which a candle guttered briefly before the pumpkin turned a dull rust color, all mottled and nasty.

Monday morning in the morgue was hell for some, heaven for others.

The NCO normally in charge, Van Rensberg, was on sick leave after an industrial accident-as the compensation papers called it-that had given him septicemia, and his place had been reluctantly taken by Sergeant Jacobus Kloppers, recently returned from Rhodesia’s northern border.

Kloppers was having adjustment problems. First to the idea of being out of the firing line, which he had secretly not enjoyed, and then to the fact that his previous billet had been usurped by a Jew. He wasn’t particularly anti-Semitery, or whatever the word was, but it remained inescapably the Jewishness of the bloke that was causing the trouble. It didn’t seem long since he had seen a story in the papers saying, FIRST JEWISH RECRUIT GRADUATES AT POLICE COLLEGE, and now Trekkersburg had one all to themselves, with more press pictures to prove it. JEWISH CONSTABLE IN CHARGE OF BOOK OF LIFE, said the headline on a clipping his wife had posted to him, while the caption had been a lot of rubbish about loving your country whoever you were. But seeing that all white citizens had their Book was a most responsible job, Kloppers had argued on his return, not something to be left to a rookie. His superiors, however, whose enthusiasm for the new regulation had always seemed suspect to him, hadn’t seen it that way. Any fool could supervise personal particulars, they told him, not that Oppenheimer was anything like a fool, only very junior, and what they needed desperately, higher up, was a seasoned man good at paper work. Yes, hopefully as good at it as he was, and willing to work in quiet surroundings, largely on his own for most of the time. In effect, the candidate would be virtually in charge of a department. An important one. Run it his own way. Would he take it? Good! A very wise move. Only he must be careful and always wear his rubber gloves…

The bastards.

It wasn’t the Book of Life he held in his hands. Just the opposite, and woefully short on personal particulars it was, too In fact, Kloppers couldn’t even put a name to half his problems, and had given them labels marked with the letters of the alphabet for the time being.

They were everywhere. The fridge had been full by Saturday night, and so all four tables had been used up, with the leftovers going in the sink-two babies, Bantu-and on trays on the floor.

Kloppers felt again the mild panic he had known when given his first filing job in the office of a very untidy lieutenant. He just didn’t know where to start. But he did know there was far too much for the district surgeon to get through in one morning, and he’d have to arrange some sort of order of priority. There were no whites among them, so bang went his first theory. He could try going on down through the classes of citizenship-Colored, Indian, and Bantu-but that seemed like splitting hairs. He could, of course, divide them according to whether death was suspicious or accidental. Yes, that was it. Providing he could tell… Man, it was going to be a bugger. A nightmare. And Dr. Christiaan Strydom was bound to come chuckling in very shortly.

“ Ach, start with A,” he mumbled to himself, leaving his stuffy little office and almost tripping over K.

While his black assistant, N2134 Nxumalo, sat outside in the sun and baked comfortably in his constable’s uniform, charging up warmth against the chill indoors, and much enjoying this unprecedentedly slow start to the day. A great advantage of his position was that he was believed incapable of any initiative, and was expected to wait until he had been told what to do. Usually, old Sarge Van Rensberg would have had him running round in circles by now, threatening to take the bone cutters to his tondo if he didn’t get down out of his bloody tree and do some work.

“You’s a idle kaffir!” Nxumalo mimicked fondly, shaking his head at the memory of their four years together. Now, when this one could justly call him an idle kaffir, he didn’t. Mad!

And bad at his job, which Nxumalo felt he could have done blindfolded. Still, that was not his worry.

Nxumalo coughed and sneezed. The consequence of trying to laugh with a lungful of smoke. The funniest thing about his new boss, Kloppers, was that he obviously thought the weekend was over. That there would not be any more bodies landing on the doorstep to spoil his lovely lists. Whereas there would have to be one at least, if not two or half a dozen, to add to his troubles before nightfall.

He would see. It was the way.

His name had been Songqoza Sishanagane Shepstone Siyayo. Everyone called him Lucky. He was dead. Not all of him, but enough for a working definition.

If his blood still moved, this was thanks to gravitation rather than circulation, and the mass of cells still alive would be getting the news by and by, so it was only a matter of time. Although, with their communications center all shot to hell, this would possibly amount to no more than grim rumor before their own sudden disintegration began. Dust to dust, potassium to potassium.

Lucky’s other dependents were, however, being informed directly of his murder. And asked to come down without delay to the small store off the Peacevale road. Where parts of them would die also. Because, as swiftly as the bullet traveled, it would nonetheless take a little while to get around to them all and realize fully its powers of destruction.

Lieutenant Tromp Kramer of the Trekkersburg Murder and Robbery Squad straightened up, popped another peppermint into his mouth, and backed off three paces.

Death was never pretty, but this time it came damn close to it.

Lucky had died against the shelves that held his stock of sweets, up near the single dusty display window where the light was good. Now that the torn canvas awning had been raised, this light came pure and unimpeded from the sky and, by way of reflection, off the glaring dirt road and the paintwork of the two vehicles parked outside, to put a sparkle into each wide-mouthed glass jar.

By narrowing the eyes, a variety of colorful impressions was possible. The most strongly suggested of these-if the least appropriate-seemed the gem-studded wall of a fairytale cavern.

It was all there, from the uncut glow of fruit gums to pink pearls of sugar-coated peanuts, silver nuggets of foil-wrapped nougat, amber slabs of toffee brittle, jade lozenges in lemon and lime flavors, and, spilled out below, the penny trappings of playground sovereignty lollipop scepters and a great wealth of gold coins.

Over which twinkled a prodigious scattering of rock-candy diamonds and hard-boiled emeralds-and as many, if not more, blood rubies so thickly strewn that only the smallest pendants no longer glistened.

Amid which sprawled, like the errant guardian of a treasure trove who had just nodded off, a brightly dressed figure in brown sandals. The peppermints lay over him like a gentle fall of peach blossom.

In the ten minutes, Lucky’s skin color had lightened from plain to milk chocolate, he had begun to give off a sickly smell, and the surprised expression on his face had almost completely melted away.

“Christ, ja, but it’s hot,” said Kramer, turning to the white sergeant in khaki overalls at his side. The grease marks on the man’s flat, solid features made him think of a workshop manual.

“Not so lucky-hey, Lieutenant?”

“Better than cancer.”