Wabenzi

Jabu looked down the track, idly fingering the yellow-metal links around his neck. Dust blew, swirling in and out of the heat-haze. Two rack-ribbed dogs chased each other's tails. No bitches for miles, they bit their frustration out on each other. Why shouldn't they? Jabu thought. The dogs had disturbed his daydream of Jo-town; of owning a shiny black car and real-gold chains.

Daydreams and dust: all he would amount to, his mother said. Jabu looked down at his feet. The grubby canvas was no longer white. Metal shone through the eyelets and string wove through these uncertainly. When Sanele had worn these plimsolls, he'd had laces. Still, such things came to older brothers. Jabu sighed, kicked a stone through a pile of dust. It had taken a few minutes to scrape some dust into a pile, scrape it faster than the wind could carry it away. And now it blew with the rest, while the stone sat as a mute marker for futility. He looked back towards his home. Breeze block and corrugated iron – the best house in the village. Sanele had gone to Soweto, cousins came back to the village, from time to time, with tales of a Matchbox house and a car, but Jabu thought it unlikely. Elders deserved respect, but some brothers did not.

The dust gathered far down the track, driven by more than the wind. Jabu looked upward, there were one or two clouds, but he knew it wouldn't rain. And if it did, the rain would boil on the way down and nothing would grow and the dust would not settle. He wondered what they were were doing in the school. Not that he would go back. School was for girls and ten-year-old boys. Not for grown men of fourteen, everyone knew that. Jabu felt if he stared into the dust and haze something would happen. Anything. Maybe one day a big black car - with the badge, three metal rods in a circle, from the centre to the edge – would come for him. Like it had come for Sanele.

The cloud of dust was coming closer. A car was driving it forward judging by the noise. Presently Jabu saw a shape through the dust. It was black. When it came to a halt, the engine remained running. A darkened window hummed as it descended into the rear door. A man's head came out, his wide smile showing two gold teeth at the front. The sun glinted off these and the chains the man had around his neck. He was fat and sweating, skin as black as Jabu's own.

'Jabulani? Brother of Sanele?'

'Yes. Have you come from my brother?'

The man laughed,

'I will take you to him, Jabulani. Don't you worry.'