kagablog

From The Life of Henry Fuckit, 1950-2015

“My father, and his father too before that, they used to hunt bushmen, and that’s the truth. Jus’ like animals. They were vermin.”

“I’m sure they were.” Henry was shocked. “They must hardly have been human to have been capable of such heinousness.” The blue eyes regarded him uncomprehendingly for a moment, suspicion flickering just beneath the surface. “I suppose you’re telling me all this in order to illustrate some point or other - maybe even then, back in those dreadful days of decimation and extermination, maybe even then there was the right gun for the right job. Is that where you’re heading, Sir Fatguts?”

“The right gun for the right job! Just so!” He was grateful for the cue. “My father, he use to say to me, many times, Boitjie, you got to have…”

“Is that your name?”

“What?”

“Is that your name? Boitjie?”

“No, course not. What you think? We was a big family. He called all the seuns Boitjie. Anyway, that’s got fuck-all to do with anything. My real name is Gerhardus. But they call me Mike, or sometimes Okkie. You call me Mike.”

Now Henry was beginning to enjoy himself. This was just the right situation to stimulate his senses, which he felt had become rather dulled of late. Everything was a surprise and he was delighting in the absence of logic and predictability. He breathed rapidly and his eyes sparkled. Mike continued.

“The style of killing my father enjoyed the best was using a light calibre rifle. His style was slow and cool, never in a hurry. The idea he had was never to fire unless he can place the bullet in a vital organ. You see, if you places a bullet correc’ it doesn’t matter what the calibre. But you got to have nerve for that, that’s for sure. You get other ous completely different. Take my uncle Poeslap. Now he think…”

“Your uncle’s name was Poeslap?!” Henry was staggered. “Jesus man! Was he christened that?”

“Allemagtig man! It was his nickname - everybody call him Poeslap, even his mother, even his wife. Something to do with his bokbaard, jy weet. Hy was ‘n rooikop. His hair was red coloured. But what’s all this name kak? I’m trying to learn you about rifles. Now, Oom Poeslap was always a bietjie bang and he believe in the biggest bore rifle he can get hold of. A Rigby-Mauser double .577. He wired all two triggers together and when he pull the back one all two barrels fire at the same time. But he always fired too soon. I don’t think he got even one. Not even one. One time he went out to try catch them poisoning his sheep and when he come near the water he see them and fire, jus’ like that, from three hundred yards. Of course he miss the Bushmen but hit one of his own sheep. My father told me he seen that sheep later and it was just about cut in half. Now my father was different. He got at least six that I know of, before they all run away to the Kalahari. His favourite weapon was a Lee-Enfield .275. He only fired when he got real close and were sure of a brain shot or a heart shot. He believed the best ammunition was the old roundnose solid bullets. He sweared that were the best way to find the brain of a Bushman. You know, he said it was like shooting a springbok. When he come right up to the kill the body was still warm and soft and smelling just like a wild antelope; and, if the face wasn’t taken away by the roundnose, he see the last light going out the eyes, just the same like when you shoot a wildebeest. He said they were wild and beautiful just like the wild animals but they was wragtig treacherous and sly. I mean, he had to shoot them to protec’ his sheep, didn’t he? Ja man, my father learned me good lessons. It just shows you, you don’t need a big calibre. You mus’ jus’ stay cool and calm, and take your time like.”

“But I’m not going to be hunting Bushmen. Not even buck.” Henry had begun to perspire, and had to tell himself to stay cool and calm, and not allow himself to be overtaken by the funk he felt coming on. He was here to be entertained and educated. “I don’t think I need anything like a…”

“Wag ‘n bietjie meneer, wag ‘n bietjie. Ek gaan jou verduidelik.” Let’s say you comes home one day and you unlocks the door and goes inside. You hears something in the bedroom and there’s a fokken coon just finish raping your wife on the bed. YOUR bed. He look at you, you look at him. It’s that fokken garden-boy you klapped last week. You goes for your 38 but he jumps straight through the fokken venster, glas en alles, more expenses, and he’s up and running like a cat with its tail on fire. So what you do? Tell me.” Henry shook his head. “I tell you what you do. You goes straight away to your gun safe, you gets out the Springfield MIA and you goes out the front door, not the back. Out the back you got razor wire on the wall so you know he’s got to go for the front. That kaffirboy will be running down the middle of the road, eighty, maybe a hundred yards away. Nice and steady and cool you lines up your sights on the spine, you drops to the belt and you squeezes the five and a half pound trigger. He throw up his arms and fall flat on his flat kaffir face. Paralysed. Then you shouts, “Stop, or I shoot!” and you fires a warning shot in the air. If he don’t fall down you got another nineteen in the magazine and a range of four thousand one hundred and three yards. If you got him with the first shot, that’s good. Now you got all the time in the world before the police comes. You can skop his head and his balls just as much as you likes. That’s the advantage of the Springfield MIA.” He paused for Henry to express admiration and a desire to acquire such a useful weapon.

“Well, as I told you, I’m not married. I can see that this rifle could come in handy to a married man with an aggrieved ex-employee lurking in the shrubbery. But being a bachelor with…”

“God allemagtig!” He swore and banged the counter in exasperation. With contemptuous hostility he glared at Henry. “Can’t you use your fokken imagination? Don’t you read the newspaper? Don’t you ride down the street? Isn’t this the Republic of South Africa? Jirra Jesus! Look man, I can’t waste my time trying to educate you. You come in here for a gun. You needs four guns minimum - that’s what I’m telling you. One of the guns you needs…,” he stepped back, stooped and drew the fearsome thing out from under the counter, “… is a Springfield MIA.” He worked the bolt, pointed the barrel at Henry’s stomach and pulled the trigger click, click, click. “Rotating bolt, gas operated, semi-automatic, air-cooled, twenty cartridge magazine.” He threw it down on the counter. “Take it or leave it. Aaargh!”

Henry was surprised at the fierceness of this peroration and noted with alarm that the sanguine complexion had darkened to apoplectic purple. Boitjie/ Gehardus / Mike/ Okkie had made a strong statement when he said “Take it or leave it.” He had also added dramatic finality to his statement by simultaneously throwing himself into a chair behind the counter. What Henry heard as “Aaargh!” and understood to be an expression of enraged contempt, was, in fact, something quite different. It was a gasp of pain, enunciated as “Einaaa!” and quite easily mistaken for “Aaargh!” The pain was inflicted by the 38 Police Special in his hip holster when he chose to sit down with histrionic forcefulness.

Ian Martin’s controversial novel Pop-splat is now available from http://www.pop-splat.co.za.