He spread out his blanket, lay down and rolled himself up in it. It was so dark in the wheelhouse that it made no difference whether he kept his eyes open or closed them. The ground was hard and lumpy beneath his back and he could feel the grit of sand between his skin and the blanket. But he felt more comfortable lying down than he had been standing on his thorn-punctured feet. I must get them into salt water tomorrow, Grant thought. Like every Lagooner, he knew that the sea was the best healer.
He went back over the day’s events. It had been one of the worst days of his life. As bad as the day his mother had died. She’d been ill for a long time. Grant had got used to her being thin and white, used to her weekly trip to the hospital in Vredenburg. So he hadn’t thought much about it when she’d left in Hasie Viljoen’s truck that Friday. Only she hadn’t come back that time. Sharkey had – white of face and tearful.
“You’re all I’ve got left,” Sharkey had said, hugging him close. “You and me and this house, that’s all we’ve got.”
Grant stared up into the blackness. Why didn’t he take me with him?
Chapter 6
Grant woke to the cry of gulls and the gentle slap of surf on sand. Something was digging into his back. He rolled over and was momentarily confused. He wasn’t in his narrow wrought-iron bed in the low-ceilinged bedroom he shared with Sharkey.
With a rush, the recent events returned. He was in the wheelhouse he’d stumbled upon the night before. And he was there because Sharkey had left him. The journey he’d embarked upon with so much certainty the evening before now seemed impossibly difficult to accomplish. Panic and sorrow crushed him in a dual embrace.
He sat up and fumbled for his bag. He felt around until he found the little carving he’d brought with him. He held it until his courage returned. Steadily, the sorrow abated. In its place, he felt a deep sense of peace come and settle upon his heart like a seagull landing on shore’s edge. He opened his eyes. Through the wheelhouse door he could see dunes and rocks and a piece of clear, high West Coast sky. He was not afraid any longer. He knew he’d made the right decision.
He stood up, testing his stiff limbs. Not too bad, considering all he’d put them through the night before. He picked up the blanket and shook out the sand. No wonder he’d dreamt he was sleeping on rocks; there was a rusty piece of wheelhouse door sticking out of the sand just where he’d laid his blanket.
He lifted a foot and examined it. It was red and puffy. The sooner he got his feet into the sea, the better. He stepped out of the wheelhouse and deeply breathed in the wild West Coast air. It was heady with ozone, delicious. He walked gingerly down to the sea and winced as he waded in. Not only was the salt burning his thorn wounds but the water was icy cold as only the Atlantic could be.
He stood in the shallows and turned his back to the sea. He looked left and right, up and down the beach. It was not a beach he was familiar with.
Not that he was complaining – the further away from Langebaan village, the better.
Grant decided that he’d risked exposure long enough for the sake of his feet and hobbled back to the wheelhouse on his heels, trying to keep the most badly affected parts of his feet away from the sand.
Somewhere along the way the night before, he had developed a vague plan. He would hide out by day, and by night he’d keep travelling in the general direction of where he thought Lüderitz was. But now that Sharkey’s phone had died, with the money on it, the only money he had, he wasn’t too sure if his plan would work.
Besides, there was another problem.
I suppose I could walk all the way if I had to, he thought to himself, but not now, not on these feet. He hoped that Wheelhouse Bay, as he’d dubbed his camping site, was far enough from Langebaan to keep him safe for one more night so that he could rest and bathe his feet throughout the day.
He stepped back into the wheelhouse and surveyed his options. The best place to sleep would be on the smooth sand just right of the entrance. He spread his blanket out there and hung his fishing bag over the hole in the wall. That was about as snug as he could make it. He knew that the wind would blow up later in the day.
A tremendous rumble issued from his stomach. Beans or bokkom? By the time he’d opened the can with his knife – painful millimetre by painful millimetre – and eaten the beans from it, the sun had risen quite high in the sky and it was beginning to get hot in the wheelhouse. He longed to go outside and let the slight breeze play over his face, his body, but he was reluctant to leave the cover of his sanctuary. He looked about him. Nothing but sand and bits of rusted metal; not even a shell or a crab to amuse himself with. Not even a piece of wood he could whittle with his knife.
Grant lay down on the blanket and before long began to feel extremely tired. He was contemplating whether or not he should allow himself to fall into the soothing, narcotic arms of sleep, when he was startled by a most unwelcome sound.
A dog was barking, and quite close too.
“Hey, Hond, wait for me,” a voice called.
Before Grant even had time to jump up and look for a hiding place, a big, brown dog scrambled down the dune and into the wheelhouse followed closely by a small, brown boy.
The boy’s eyes widened in astonishment, then they narrowed in suspicion. His cheeks grew taut. There was silence as the two boys sized each other up. Then the small boy spoke fiercely, “Dis my skip hierdie en ek is die skipper!”
“Captain! Ship!” Grant snorted, and then he remembered his own mistake the night before and said no more. Instead he stared at the boy in what he hoped was a fierce, uncompromising way.
The small boy was unfazed. “Well, it is a ship, and it’s my ship, and that means you get out.”
“I won’t.”
“You will.”
“I will not!” Grant scrambled to his feet, planted them firmly about half a metre apart and crossed his arms. He was tired of running away. He may be no match for Oom Daan, but this little boy he could deal with if he had to.
“Then I’ll throw you out,” said the small boy valiantly, “and I’ll skop you into the sea. Come outside and fight like a man,” he yelled, leaping out of the ragged doorway and beginning to dance about with raised fists.
Ordinarily Grant would not have allowed himself to be goaded into such a mismatched fight by the obviously idle threat of being kicked into the sea – but these were no ordinary days. He lost no time in leaping out of the doorway and lunging at the boy. The boy, though smaller than him, was wiry and fast and he side-stepped smartly. He dodged this way and pranced that. He made a lot of whooping noises and scattered punches in the air.
Grant lunged after the boy repeatedly – gingerly, because of his feet – but he always seemed to end up with handfuls of sand. Eventually he managed to grab hold of the small boy’s arm.
The boy let out such a piercing scream that Grant let go at once.
“Ha, ha, ha!” the boy crowed, and was off again, leaping from rock to rock, pulling faces. The dog seemed to think that the fight was a game, because he too skidded about on the sand, barking and spattering saliva on Grant from his long, foam-flecked tongue as he jumped up at the boy and Grant in turn.
Grant was getting more and more frustrated and was
