Norman Rush - Mortals

“We should go and get into the Cruiser, be on the Cruiser. We have a right to be there, through me,” Ray said.

He was trying to convey something important. The Cruiser was going to be a luxury vehicle, compared to the two battered bakkies they might be trying to find a place in or to the two huge lumberous Bedfords that apparently constituted the rest of the witdoeke fleet. He was trying to convey that there was a tide in the affairs of men and that they had no choice but to swim along with it.

And there was the question of what would happen to Kerekang if koevoet caught him. He would be dead, and this fight was going to end in defeat for Kerekang and his cause. Because this … revolt, this effort to tear up the status quo, had been doomed from the start. But maybe Kerekang could be preserved to fight another day, and to achieve that would take special skills, extracting him, getting him out, getting him away from what he had been caught in, a subject his wife’s boyfriend would know nothing about.

“Everybody is going to want to be on the Cruiser,” he said to Morel.

“Come on,” Ray said to Kerekang. He was trying to push, to create a moment, a feeling they should all get aboard.

“Kevin, my man, help me with Comrade Wemberg, please rra,” Ray said.

Kevin looked to Kerekang for instruction. Kerekang nodded. That was good. He was approving what Ray wanted.

There was another thing. Ray wanted Kerekang to be on board, on the Cruiser. If he could arrange that he could relax. He could sleep. He could lie back someway and wait, asleep, for the next place they were going to, but he could sleep knowing that when they came to a halt Setime, his friend Kerekang, would be there. There would be a campfire and they would be able to sit down and talk.

Kevin had summoned help and Wemberg was being stowed less tenderly than Ray would have liked in the back of the Cruiser, along with three wounded men, walking wounded, they would have to be called, who were joining Wemberg there.

He was going to volunteer to ride in the back, out in the truck bed. He thought that they might not allow that because they would want him inside in comfort to show their appreciation. But either way would be all right, either in the cab in the rear seat or in the sun and jolting around. The sun was not at its worst in any case and there would be twilight soon, and then blackness and stars.

He was yawning too much, thinking of rest. And it was catching. Kerekang was yawning.

Ray said, “Rra, let’s go together in my Cruiser. And the doctor, of course.”

There was a frenzy going on. Canned goods were being tossed into the bed of the truck. The wounded men were shielding their heads with their arms. Labels on the canned goods were charred and falling off or absent altogether. People were being profligate with the water drum. They were crowding around to drink from the spigot projecting over the side and they were wasting water. It would be a lottery with the blank cans. Some would get pilchards and some would get lichee nuts.

“I want to talk to you,” Morel said to Ray.

“We can’t, man. We have to go,” Ray said.

The cab was occupied or almost. There were two witdoeke in the back seat of the cab already, and there was the driver. Ray wanted Kerekang to be in the Cruiser. He said so to Kevin. He said it urgently. He knew what he himself was going to do. He was going to climb into the bed of the truck and wedge himself in, lying down as best he could among the wounded and his dead friend. And Morel had to come because he might be needed especially to help Kerekang, who was in frightening shape and who might be helped to recuperate by a medical doctor, the only one in this part of the wilderness.

He took Morel by the hand and pulled him toward the Cruiser.

“We’re going with you,” he said to Kevin.

Ray pulled hard on Morel’s arm. He knew what he was doing. Morel wanted to go back to peace and also to getting ahead of him in speaking to Iris and warning her and letting a screen go up. It was a problem, and it was too much of one, but there he was.

Morel had jerked himself away from Ray. He was entertaining hopes of a different outcome, still, Ray thought. The man wanted to go to Iris, embrace her, warn her, embrace her and get together with her to figure out how to deal with the man she was married to, the spy. It was a paranoid notion and he knew it, except that it might be true, and didn’t the agency act on ideas of things that might happen, that might come true, all the time, and stop them from happening?

Ray led Kerekang to the Cruiser. No one objected. He helped him into the front seat. Mokopa was the driver, which seemed wrong. It was wrong to have a one-eyed driver if there was an alternative. Ray’s legs were shaking at the prospect of being able to lie down flat in whatever conditions for long enough to sleep, with nothing being asked of him.

He got Kerekang seated.

He turned to Morel with the idea that he would ask him to volunteer to drive. But Morel was looking disaffected and adamant in some way, and he was marginal, gray in the face, strong as he was, and he was a strong specimen, but he was drooping and fighting not to show it. It would be better to have a one-eyed driver than someone who could fall sleep at the wheel.

“Come get in the back with me,” he said to Morel.

Morel was still trying to think of his own alternative, Ray could tell. But there was none.

“This is the best idea, come on,” Ray said.

The truck bed was filling up with fighters. Others would want to lie down too. Ray got to the tailgate of the Cruiser but was too weak to pull himself up into the madding crowd who had gotten there first. He didn’t want to reveal that. He tried to look pensive. A problem was that he had his bundle to protect. He couldn’t bear to let go of it.

Morel was helping him up. And he was mounting the tailgate himself, so the decision had been made.

It was good Morel was there. He was clearing a space next to the wall of the truck bed. He was being rough about it. He was pushing wounded men over. No one was objecting. It was because he was a doctor.

There was shouting and ululating as the fighters packed up. Some were filing off on foot, not many. Presumably there would be a rendezvous with the people in the vehicles, later. He hoped they would be all right, the ones going on foot. The Basarwa at least would be all right. They could live on nothing, they knew how.

They were a convoy of five vehicles, two big Bedford trucks, two pickups, and the beautiful blue Cruiser. They were actually moving, all of them. A whining sound came from the burning hotel. The fire was stupendous.

He had a space to lie down in. He would be all right. Next to him was the dead body of Dwight Wemberg, wrapped in a blanket, his face not showing. Morel was not lying down. He was nearby, sitting on a crate. He was being watchful.

“Rest if you can,” Morel said, taking his bundle from him and placing it under his head. It was not the greatest pillow in the world but it was better than having his head bouncing on the metal. Morel was doing everything he could.

Ray wanted food. It was ridiculous but he believed that if he asked Morel to get him some he would do it.

No one knew how hungry he was. Iris could look at him and tell if he was hungry whether he said anything or not. That was because she was attuned to him. He wanted a meat loaf sandwich, her meat loaf. She had once put raisins in a meat loaf, in the spirit of experiment, early in their marriage, when she had been cooking more than she did now, because now they had help in the kitchen. And the raisins had been a terrible idea, but he hadn’t said anything, and then the next day she had caught him prising them out of the slab of meat loaf in his sandwich. And she had made him promise that he would always tell her the truth about food she prepared. And after that, he always had. He should tell Morel that story. He didn’t know why, unless it was to remind Morel to tell her the truth. She enjoyed the truth.