Nails in the Sky Read online

  A painting. A3 canvas in tempera paints. Precise lines wrapped around a sphere against a black backdrop. Dozens upon dozens of tiny letters and numbers circling one central ball, all of which radiated outwards, into the blackness that surrounded it.

  And, in the centre, for the first time, a single man, clearly defined, with arms stretched out. As she looked at him, her eyes tired and sore from concentration in class, it felt almost as if he were reaching out to her from within the painting. Stretching out his hands, as if to say, “Hey. Look behind you.”

  –

  A month later, Clark’s bus was pulling arduously up the massive hill just outside Grahamstown. It was late June, and he was on his way to spending five days with his brother for the Grahamstown National Arts Festival. Every year, for about a week at the end of June, hundreds of jugglers, drama troupes, jazz acts, honey makers, chilli picklers, revellers, campers, drunkards, band members, comedians, lost souls and banana cigarette vendors flocked to the streets of the sleepy little city to ply their trades and embrace the crisp winter atmosphere of the city’s festival.

  Attending had become a tradition for the brothers Van der Haar, though neither of them had ever caught a show there. It was easy to dissolve into the energy and spontaneity of the festival and all its fringe events. They would just go to be part of the great momentum of it all: visiting open-mic events at the Gaol; camping out in back yards after impromptu house parties; and walking the cobbled streets flat in search of entertainment which, with cafés, sideshows, soundstages, buskers, and Ginger the one-armed Albanian guitar player, was never far off.

  It wasn’t all electricity and hooliganism. He was well aware that, for the most part, they always ended up blowing the whole thing off entirely to vegetate and drink glühwein in the bracing cold that cut like a sabre through Alex’s apartment.

  He was excited, regardless. He’d bought a box of widowmakers from the fireworks and spices store back in PE, despite Cynthia’s protests. He had some serious sweet-talking to do at the time, but it wasn’t all his responsibility. Their mom had been practising her make-up sales routine on Cynthia, and she’d been cranky for days.

  Once he pulled into Grahamstown, he was disappointed it was raining, but relieved to see Alex waiting for him at the Bathurst Street stop. He wondered briefly who the strange girl with him was, but she’d left by the time he disembarked.

  –

  Waiting for Clark at the KFC, twenty minutes prior, Alex had his face pressed up against the inside of the shop’s front window. The rain came down outside, but it was just background noise to everyone by now. It’d been raining for days, along with the insane, unpredictable bouts of random sunshine so common to Grahamstown during winter.

  He was soaking in the limbo there, shutting his eyes and breathing in the hum of feet and business slacks shuffling by outside. He felt as if it had been years since he’d gotten to just sit somewhere and do nothing, on his own, with nothing but the sounds of the world around him. He breathed deeply. It had been such a busy semester.

  Slow and sullen as he was these days, he wasn’t surprised to see Sheila walk by. He was excited, though, and instantly forgot his mopey-faced reverie. He tapped on the glass to get her attention, and she stopped, and came inside.

  “Hey, playa,” she greeted, unexpectedly warm as she dropped into her seat. “How you keepin’?”

  They talked a while there, over a plate of fries yellowed by the sepia bulbs of the old building while they waited for Clark’s bus. Sheila told Alex she’d been prepping her thesis presentation on cumulative existential reasoning. Alex told her he’d been having a weird month. He was now having these strange dreams every other night, many of which he couldn’t even remember long enough to write down.

  “Well, what can you remember? There has to be something.”

  Alex frowned. It felt strange to be telling her about these dreams. Realistically, he barely even knew the woman, but, for some reason, she seemed to understand things about him that he wanted explained. The flower child nature of a person who could interpret dreams better than the guy who dreamed them was not lost on him, and he proceeded with caution. “The setting’s always pretty familiar. Specific. It’s, well...always in my history lecture at Eden Grove Blue.”

  “History? Like, three-oh-one, right? With...oh what was his name... Walker?”

  “See, that’s the thing.” Alex swallowed, the conversation taking a direction he wasn’t expecting this early in the morning, let alone with her—Sheila, the annoying harbinger of all the stupid, philosophical-dead-end crap in his life. Ten minutes at this crummy restaurant, though, and he was about to tell her stuff he’d never told anyone.

  “It’s not Walker’s class,” he said, finally. “At least, well, not the way I remember it.”

  “How do you remember it?”

  Alex sighed. “I remember it being Albion de Villiers’s class.” He sat back in his seat and waited, as Sheila went quiet. He could feel it coming. Would she prove him wrong?

  “I’m not sure who that is, Alex.”

  He exhaled through puffed up cheeks and smiled. “Yeah, I’m getting a lot of that lately.”

  “Have I met him?”

  “I don’t think you’d know if you had.”

  She seemed to be thinking the subject over, taking her time with the nothings being said at their table. “You’re saying I should know him, but I don’t?”

  “Feel free to diagnose ‘crazy’ in your assessment.”

  She grabbed a fry and chewed, thoughtful. “Well, you know, it could be more me than you.”

  What? Alex looked up from the table. “What do you mean by that?” Did she know something?

  “What does it sound like I mean?”

  All of these games. He pressed on. “Like your memory?”

  Sheila sneered at him. “Stop being weird.”

  Alex wouldn’t let up, “No, what do you mean? I mean, things are a little messed up right now.”

  “No doubt.”

  “And I’m just looking for answers that nobody seems to have. And you’re saying you know something about this?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Well, then what, Bizzaro?”he snapped, louder than he should have been. He realised it after the words were already out of his mouth.

  A few people at tables around them adjusted their seating and turned their heads to look at them. Sheila was looking dead into his eyes, and Alex knew he’d overreacted.

  “Look, maybe I’m just saying memory isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.”

  Alex raised his voice, unexpectedly. “What the hell does that mean?” This was nothing like him, all of this drama, but he found, as he spoke, that he’d opened something and, now, could not stop it.“Why are you being so cryptic? Do you know about my dreams? What makes a person disappear like this? Oh holy shit, why does nothing make any sense around you?”

  Sheila smiled at him, the sharp angles of her cheekbones pulling up around her heavy-lidded eyes. He’d never noticed her nose freckles before. Why did realising this make him so uncomfortable?

  “You’re getting mighty worked up, there, champ. It’s sexy on you. Say, where are those idiot friends of yours today?”

  He thought about scrubbing out his eyes and ears with bleach. She was changing the subject. And he was too worked up to stop her eloquently, or at all. Alex conceded the now obviously dried-up point of the discussion and explained how he was here to collect his brother.

  The pair walked out to the bus stop a few minutes later, as the Translux rounded the far end of Bathurst Street and came trundling up to the Frontier Hotel, Grahamstown’s oldest getaway establishment. In the crowd around them mingled the ski-jacketed, luggage-wheeling festival goers who would filter out into the greater city over the following week. Alex asked if Sheila wanted to meet his brother, but she excused herself as the bus pulled in, a large shadow collecting above the clouds as she left.

  –

  The
festival was systematically rained out over the next five days. The Great Field’s carpet of wood chips lay soaked and soggy and only walked on by festival goers with exceptional commitment to the home goods, preserves and second-hand crap on sale. Still, Clark and Alex made the best of it. They threw fireworks off the Monument wall at one of the Dance Squad Union’s terrible drum and bass parties. They stuck around on the cannonade wall afterwards and lay out the fiction of a hypothetical Godzilla flattening the tiny valley town, the wannabe city sprawled at their feet.

  Alex brought the gang out to support Clark at an open mic at the Cloud Lounge on High Street. On the third day of festival, Crink pointed out Sheila standing outside the Albany museum, thronged by festival goers on their way to and from shows. They themselves were on their way to a one-man show about a man who sold toothbrushes to the rich. Ruth had insisted. They crossed the street to say hi, but Sheila disappeared before Alex could catch up to her.

  Which was probably for the best, given that, on the fourth day, Alex and Julie ended up having an argument over whether he should get in touch with Sheila and have her come over for dinner with the group and Clark.

  “So, why was it such a big deal to have her come over?” Clark asked as he and Alex walked through the Village Green later that afternoon. The weather had just started becoming nice again, and they were out looking for a hookah pipe among the knickknacks on sale from vendors not put off by three straight days of driving rain.

  “I don’t know, man. She’s never been the jealous type. I’ve got dozens of friends who’re girls.”

  Clark smiled sarcastically at his brother. “Aside from Ruth?”

  “Well, no. None besides Ruth.”

  The two were standing in their scarves and fleece jackets at a stall inside the long tent where a Rastafarian named Koosh was selling jewellery made from tyres.

  “You bredren from around here?” he asked, eyeballing the brothers from behind his table.

  “I’m local by design, but he’s from Port Elizabeth.”

  “We’re both from Port Elizabeth.”

  “Hmmm. Lot of pretty women in these parts. I’m from PE myself. Well, Kingston, Jamaica at first, but y’know how the world can change a thing like that, no?” Koosh came out from behind his table and leaned against a support cable. His accent was a strange, drifting caramel Creole, heavy and scratched with smoke and the day’s dealings. “Of course, you know what the difference is between college town women and regular women, right?”

  Alex frowned, turning a bike-tube bracelet over in his hands. “What’s that, man?”

  Koosh gave the pair a knowing grin and tapped the side of his temple. “All that thinking you kids do over here.”

  “Heaven forbid.”

  Koosh leaned in close towards Clark, making him instantly uneasy. “These women. There’s no heart to any of them. Just scheming and theories and bullshit. You got a girlfriend, kid?”

  Clark shot back, without thinking, “No, you wanna go out sometime?”

  “Smart.” Koosh chuckled as Clark took a step back. “You’ll probably fit in well here. Lots of smart people everywhere. Just remember, kid, that there’s no substitute for a real life.”

  The pair bought a set of bracelets and said goodbye to the shop owner.

  “And stay away from college women, brother. They’ll only hurt you.”

  Sitting outside in the struggling sun, they worked at a pair of ice-cream cones while a man juggled his two young children on a stage he’d designed to slowly go up in flames. There were roughly twelve people standing around, stomping out cigarette butts and sipping Slush Puppies.

  On Clark’s last day, everybody in the group gathered to send him off. They high-fived as he stepped onto the bus, everybody waving as the vehicle pulled away. The slope of Bathurst Street rolled down and away from them under mounds of trash and fast food wrappers, the wrought streetlights looking old, weathered and sullen in the settling dusk. Alex smiled, but watching the bus round the corner and disappear out of sight filled him with a slow moving terror he couldn’t explain.

  He waited by his phone for Clark to check in from PE. In true Clark fashion, he forgot to call until two days later.

  9. Eight Feet and Five Seconds from the Earth

  Chuck Daedalus hated his cellmate, Karl. He didn’t care if he was justified or not, some people just made him want to shit Legos. Here was a dude who was, surprisingly enough for a jailbird, a complete and utter wallflower—weird, stodgy, and quiet, like he wanted to fade into the furniture.

  Striding into their bare-assed prison cell, Chuck couldn’t help but love the fact that, despite his efforts to fade into the background, all he wanted to do was smack the stupid off of this man’s face. He was nattering on about the government again. He was always talking about the old government, scribbling down lyrics to Creedence Clearwater Revival songs in notepads he stole from the prison therapist’s office.

  Chuck barely even registered what he was saying, simply responding whenever the feeling took him. He knew this sob story, this week-ass whining. “Aweh, Karl, apartheid, apart love, I get it, I get it.”

  As Chuck flopped down on the cot in the corner, Karl flipped between pages and worked furiously at his ritual. Whining on and on with stories he’d told Chuck a million times before in the last month. He had the rhythm of it down, so much so that, without thinking, Chuck chimed in with the band’s name, “Creedence Clearwater Revival,” in unison with Karl, at the climax of the story.

  “Fokkin’ right, bro, Creedence.”

  He carried on, regardless, Karl. He always did—Chuck had so little time for him, but somehow he always pushed past that. He’d already started, why stop now? “Fokkin’ stole the whole collection out from under me.”He spoke in rhythms and cadences and structures so structured and formal and predictable that they came out like old songs to Chuck. All of his stupid little stories and complaints, like a first grade math problem, Chuck didn’t even need to pay attention to anymore. He waited, and listened with his ears shut tight, savouring the hum, the idiotic and unrelenting patter of this man’s inane prattle. Oh, how he loathed to hear him speak.

  -

  As Charles Daedalus closed his eyes, later, after Karl had stopped yammering, he could still hear that idiot’s pencil scratching around on his pad out there. He’d be there, that sack of shit, scribbling until his hand cramped up. It was just a small mercy he’d given up talking about himself for the night.

  Chuck smiled to himself, and clenched his hand around a sharpened toothbrush handle he kept under his pillow. He listened as Karl started scratched and scribbled again, and waited for him to go to bed.

  –

  It was a weeknight and Ruth was drinking Black Labels at the Gaol with Lucille, a lecturer in training at the history department who’d just completed her four-month fellowship. They were discussing the history of the feminist movement, and Ruth was trying to drunkenly reconcile the role of men in the world.

  “It’s just, the second anybody says this, it’s like a massive joke. And I get that... I mean the entire social battlefield has been man-central since the fucking twenties. Before that. Always. But...but they’re fucking ridiculous.”

  “Men?”

  “All men! There’s...there’s no need for them, Lucille. When was the last time anything really good happened to you directly because of a dude?”

  Lucille didn’t want to bring up her mother’s insemination, but it seemed to be the obvious answer. Although, maybe not.

  “And they’re stupid! And they never study, or go to rallies for anything important. It’s all fucking Starcraft and spicy food and beer and bullshit with these assclowns, man. And this isn’t about removing them or something Borgian like that, but I’m pretty sure we’d all do fine without them.”

  “I-I mean,” Ruth stammered around sipping her beer. “I guess it’s not that they’re useless, but...but they’re just so...so...”

  “Eloquent and well spoken?”
<
br />   “Frustrating. They can’t do anything right. Not even when it’s in their best interests.”

  “Ooh, so I take it we’re talking about specific boy persons?”

  Ruth sneered, sipping down the dregs of her drink and getting up from the table. “What would it matter if I was? You want another beer?”

  Lucille got up, slung her bag over her shoulder and circled around to hug Ruth. “Sorry, pooks. I’m teaching in the morning. I gotta chuck.”

  –

  135km away, in Port Elizabeth, Clark and Alex’s mother was watching TV with Cynthia in a living room half filled with ladders, colour swatches and brushes. These were the remnants of a day spent painting the same old peeling back wall for the millionth time since they’d moved in. They had the lights out and Clark’s grandfather’s old blanket over them.

  Cynthia asked her mom about the night she was born, unexpectedly, as children were wont to do.

  “What would you like to know?”

  “Was it hard? Were you scared?”

  Her mother smiled and flipped the channel over to SABC3, where Max Shrek’s shadow was slowly creeping up a staircase in Nosferatu. “It was a long delivery, I can tell you that. Twenty-one hours you took. I guess you know by this stage that there were some complications. The doctors were worried.”

  “My heart.”

  “Exactly. And you were breech.” Her mom was yawning, but with that same warm smile that always seemed to make everything better.

  Cynthia wished her mom wouldn’t look like she wanted to go to bed already. She didn’t feel tired at all. She egged her on, hoping to prolong their moment on the couch forever.

  “Oh my goodness,” she said, warmly.“I remember. You know they said your heart was twice the size it should have been, and that the longer the birth took, the worse it would be for you, sweetie. Oh, but when you came out, everything was wonderful. You were so tiny, but strong. And the voice on you—I knew that you’d be with us forever. You were our little miracle.”