The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2009

36 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 9 molten gold at sunrise and blue-black above. “Pretty,” I said. He turned to look. His head and neck were so black that I couldn’t tell where his hair left off and his skin began. He nodded, looking at my dusty jeans and the sleeping bag I had pulled around me. He rubbed his arms with both hands. “Are you on the thumb?” “Yeah, hitching, but not getting anywhere. No way I could get out of here last night.” I shivered uncontrollably. “God, it’s cold.” “I think this is the coldest night of my life.” “Put this around your shoulders.” I gave him an end of the sleeping bag. He took it, but not so eagerly that I would know he wanted it. “Where are you going?” “Hopetown. Going home.” “Oh, I saw that on the map. That’s after Kimberley, just across the Orange River.” We talked. He told me about his jobs in the big city, about his bosses, about the months and years he’d been away. Maybe he’d go back after a few months or maybe to the mines. “You miss your mother’s cooking?” I teased him. “Oh, I want to eat and eat.” He closed his eyes, smiling, and sniffed the air as though he already smelled the food on the stove. The road was absolutely quiet. I kept watching it, wait- ing for a car to break the monotony. It looked like a two- lane country road back home, although it was a main road between Cape Town and Johannesburg. When the store opened he took out some money, gave it to me and asked me to buy him a sandwich. “Why don’t you get it yourself?” I said. “I don’t see any signs.” “No signs,” he agreed, “but it’s best to be careful.” I looked over at the store. It was a grocery store, like a mom and pop place back home. “This is still the Transvaal,” he said. “I don’t know the shopkeeper. He might not like it. It’s just a little store.” I went and got him a hamburger. I got one for me, too. They were like hamburgers used to be when I was small. They were thick and juicy and on real bread, with lettuce, tomatoes, onion and mayonnaise, cut and wrapped by the shopkeeper’s wife in white wax paper for about 40 cents each. We ate the hamburgers in the morning light, and the dusty wind blew grit in our faces until we fixed the sleep- ing bag to keep it out. We stayed sitting with it around us until the first car appeared. We split up, and Joshua went by himself about a hundred feet up the road. Hours passed. The day turned clear and breezy with a hot sun mounting in a blinding sky. Vultures soared high above us. Every so often a car would whiz by, or maybe a truck, and then the road would get quiet like nothing would ever move on it again. Finally, a blue Vauxhall stopped. A young couple sat in the front seat, the man in his Sunday suit at the wheel. “Get in,” he said, clearing some things from the front seat to the back. I got in and told him I had a friend who needed a lift. He looked around, but he didn’t see who I meant. “Over there,” I said, pointing to Joshua. He still didn’t see Joshua. Then he said, “You mean that kaffir?” He ac- celerated hard and drove away. We didn’t talk much after that, but they took me into Kimberley. I had a look at the big pit, which is so deep it makes you gulp — full of green water way down there at the bottom and probably lots of undug diamonds — and the museum, which houses relics of the boom times in the 1870s and a railway car that be- longed to Cecil Rhodes. I had ice cream in the snack shop. Lots of “whites only” signs. Apartheid was doomed, I thought; but until then, you had to keep to your side of the line. You were one thing, or you were the other. Next I got a ride outside of town with a man who worked at the mines. He took me only about 20 miles. Then a boy in an ancient Ford out for a Sunday spin with his friends brought me to the Modder River. I walked through the town and about two miles more until I thought I was past the local traffic. It was afternoon. The road was dead. The country was parched grass as far as I could see and mostly flat. It was hot. I headed for a tree I saw in the distance, the only tree for miles. After a while I could see someone standing near it, but it was still a long way off. It wasn’t until I was nearly there that I rec- ognized Joshua. He was just as surprised to see me. He’d had luck with rides, he said. I had thought I would never see him again when that guy had driven away. Morning seemed a long time ago, but we both remembered the cold and the fire and the ham- burgers and the cold, gritty wind. Do you have any white friends? I asked him. (Hell, I thought, did I have any black friends?) He said he knew F O C U S