Dance of the freaky green gold

Chapter 1

"A re you all right, Rick?"

That was my mom, trying to get through to me from the driver’s seat of her grey 4 x 4 Colt while speeding like crazy down the long hill into Nelspruit. But what could I say? The hurt of what had happened was still so raw inside me that I wasn’t able to speak just then. It felt like an invisible cord, stretching from my brain to the town where I had lived all my life, was doing its best to hold me back. But it wasn’t succeeding. It was just stretching… stretching… stretching…

My mom sounded even more uptight when I heard her voice again. "Didn’t you hear me, Rick? I said, are you all right?"

I still found it impossible to squeeze a reply through my tightly zipped lips.

Look, we’ve been through this so many times, my mom said grimly while taking her eyes off the road and glaring at me. "It was bound to happen, and now it has happened. I just had to do it, see, and there’s nothing I can do to change anything now, is there, Rick?"

I shut my burning eyes. The only person in the world I badly wanted to have with me right then was my dad. Nobody else.

My mom suddenly gripped the steering wheel so hard that her knuckles turned bone-white. Look, Rick, I’m only trying to help you, okay! But let me tell you something – this is going to be much harder for me than for you and Susie.

If the 4 x 4 hadn’t been travelling so fast right then, I would have jumped out onto the road and run all the way back home as fast as I could go. But then the truth punched me in the guts once more – we didn’t have a home to go back to anymore!

When my mom spoke again, I could hear hot tears of anger pouring into her voice. It was your father’s fault. Cheating on me all the time while he was on those so-called business trips of his! How could he have been such a —. She stopped short and, with closed eyes, took a deep breath. Okay, so I did what I had to do, and who can blame me?

I sat staring ahead of me, thinking only civilised thoughts about my dad because I knew he wasn’t nearly as bad as Mom was lately making him out to be.

Don’t just sit there, Rick, she continued. Say something… just… anything!

That was when I saw a traffic officer stepping out from under a bright red African flame tree and thrusting out a wide hand, which clearly meant STOP.

Tyres screeched on the tarmac and the stench of burning rubber slammed up my nostrils. A hooter blew furiously from somewhere in front of us. An angry driver waved his fist at my mom and shouted a couple of rude words at her while she swung sharply to the side of the road, stopping in a cloud of swirling reddish dust.

My little sister, who was still fast asleep on the back seat, woke up and started to bawl like a piglet being slaughtered.

Oh please be quiet, Susie! my mom said while pressing the button on the door next to her. The little motor whined softly as the window slid down, and she spoke to the cop, sounding very aggressive. What on earth’s the matter, officer? You nearly made me have a serious accident.

The traffic officer frowned while raising the peak of his cap a little higher on his dark brown forehead and peered through the open window. He first looked at me, then at Susie and then at our luggage stacked in the back of the 4 x 4. When he said something at last, his deep voice sounded polite but firm at the same time. It seems you’re not planning to arrive alive at your holiday place, ma’am.

My mom gave him a surprised look. Holiday? We are definitely not going on any holiday. And what have I done wrong anyway?

Red traffic light, ma’am. Your driving licence, please.

She shook her head, made a loud clicking sound with her tongue, and while she searched around in her handbag a lock of her hay-coloured hair tumbled over her flushed face. Here it is. Let me tell you, I passed the test for my driver’s licence ages ago – and with flying colours too.

The officer examined the little plastic-covered card, and asked my mom a few questions, like her postal address and things like that, which he wrote down on a pad of forms. Then he took a leisurely walk around the 4 x 4 and wrote some more things down. Susie started whimpering and my mom told her to be quiet: Shush, Susie!

When he came back to the window he handed my mom the form he had torn from the pad.

Her bright blue eyes opened wide as she read what he had written down. Then she took a very deep breath, which must have filled her lungs almost to bursting point. Where do you think I’m going to get that kind of money from?

The whiteness of the cop’s teeth suddenly disappeared behind the darkness of his lips as they clamped shut.

Sensing more trouble coming, my mom quickly backtracked. Look, I’m sorry officer. You don’t know what I’ve been through lately. First, having to divorce my husband. Then losing the good job I had here in Nelspruit. And now being forced to take my 15-year-old son and my four-year-old daughter to go and live in a miserable little dorp up on the Highveld, right in the middle of nowhere! I really don’t know how we’re going to survive up there. Something like this won’t ever happen again, I promise you. Please – cancel the ticket and let me off this one time. I beg you with all my heart. Please, officer.

His teeth again showed briefly. Sorry, ma’am.

Please, officer… she tried once more, but he was already walking back to the tree without looking back.

My mom stepped on the accelerator and drove off, clearly very upset; again someone hooted as she went through the next red light down the road too.

Never … never will this town see me again! she shouted when some other driver also had the audacity to hoot at her.

The lush greenery of Mpumalanga sped by on either side of the road, and the stabbing heartache of never again being able to see any of my mates back there in the town hit me like sharp hammer blows. I could feel the invisible cord tied to my brain stretching to its limit and suddenly snapping. And that’s when I felt my own tears spilling down my cheeks, tasting like lukewarm seawater in the corners of my mouth.

My mom drove on and on. For a long time neither of us spoke until, sometime later, we reached the top of the escarpment where the Highveld started. That was when she let out a long, drawn- out sigh that came from somewhere deep inside her body. Well, I suppose we’ll just have to calm down and make the best of things once we get there, won’t we, Rick?

I could feel my hackles rising again. How am I going to do that, Mom? I’ve lost all the friends I’ve ever had. I’ve got absolutely nobody left now.

Well, you’ll just have to get used to it for a while, she said quietly. Look, I know Uncle Bert can be a bit of a pain in the neck sometimes, but he’s not so bad, is he, Rick? After all, as you already know, he has a very responsible job at the Ashby power station.

Just hearing my uncle’s name again was enough to turn my stomach into a cauldron of boiling acid. If there was one person on this planet I never wanted to see again, it was Uncle Bert!

Sensing my negative attitude, she continued. "Where else could the three of us have gone to, Rick? After all, Uncle Bert is my brother, you know… and that’s what one’s family is there for, isn’t it? He’s the only blood relative we’ve got left, and so I phoned him in sheer desperation the other day – and thank goodness he agreed to give us a roof over our heads for a while!"

That did nothing to pacify me. I kept my thoughts to myself, all the while gazing at the rows of khaki-coloured maize stalks stretching as far as the eye could see on either side of the road. It looked so different up here on the monotonous flatness of the Highveld, and for a moment I found myself wondering what could have killed off all that maize.

Didn’t you hear what I said, Rick? my mom spoke again. Why don’t you talk to me?

I took a deep breath and spat the words out like bitter lemon pips. Uncle Bert hates me, Mom! He always says such crazy things. He’s going to be just the same again as he’s been all the other times we’ve been to visit him. It’ll be like those times when Dad used to go there with us. And Dad also thinks Uncle Bert’s a lunatic. He said so often enough, didn’t he?

From the corner of my eye, I saw her lips trembling; it was quite clear that she was very distressed and close to tears. Oh Rick, please don’t make things even more difficult for me now.

I don’t really know whose fault it was that things had turned so sour between my mom and dad. All I know is that I was completely devastated when my mom had said the divorce had come through. I had always got on very well with my dad, although, to be quite honest, I didn’t really see much of him. He was always travelling all over the country as a