Madhlozi Moyo WE HERE

Brief Synopsis
Dumaza visits Mulrooney farm under unclear circumstances, and makes discoveries that immediately put him in great danger. He cannot escape the danger that he faces as his car has locked its gear. Meanwhile, Sandy is battling a bothersome past while trapped at Mulrooney. Will the two make it out of the paranoid place alive?
“Homo sum, et nihil humani alienum puto.”
“I am human, and I consider nothing human to be alien.” - Terence



The intruder

A traveler who happens to be visiting Mulrooney for the first time faces a difficult task of having to accept that both the place and its name have anything in common, for there had once existed in the not so distant history of that place a rather careful tendency to give such names as Brambleberry, Marlborough, Bath, any odd sounding English name to those places that were generally well looked after, while those names in the vernacular were usually maintained for the average and poorly backgrounds, according to that general plane. The traveler also faces a discouraging task of ascending a steep rise of land, which gradually loses gradient as it eases itself into a uniform slope before it materializes, finally, into a flat plateau that gives a semblance of rest to this traveler’s now weary knees, should he be approaching the place on foot. Any high hopes that the traveler has concerning the place are dashed down as the chance visitor discerns the prevailing squalor of what was once a fairy- tale of a place. The groaning iron roofs announced high levels of disturbance and abandon, and the chance visitor may vow at once that the little compound has long been deserted, or the population wiped out by a sudden plague, giving the inhabitants barely enough time to clear up or carry away such obstacles as old tires that littered the one and only dusty street of the little, town- like place. Mulrooney was just another average place where women still passed salt to and fro across their hedges, and the men still smoked and spat together in those small, compact groups of theirs, not in answer to a craving, but for the simple need to socialize and keep together, as if afraid that something terrible might happen to their compatriots while they looked away. Sharing on a variety of subjects, too. On the other hand, being this isolated place that she was, Mulrooney was also prone to exhibiting some extraordinary traits that could only be ascribed to her removal from our concept of an average, everyday human society. Perched on the shoulder of an ancient plateau in the direction where the sun sets, the little compound of Mulrooney resembled the last hours of a night of debauchery, the last kicks of a dying civilization. The rude squalor that characterized the small place very easily reminded one of a withering flower- these being some of the frames of reference by which the good reader/ listener shall acquaint himself with the place Mulrooney * * *

A droning sound was heard in the direction of the river, and a pair of lights gradually revealed a small car that coughed and choked up the steep and slightly curving road. It skipped a gear and spurted like a choked child, performed a few more theatrics before shivering itself to a seemingly irrefutable halt.

“Aw! Come on Babes, don’t you play up with me now!” the only man inside the car cursed, groping a familiar hand beneath the steering wheel to try and restart the engine. It gave a feeble whine before fizzling out again. For a few seconds, everything was silent and still, then after a few moments the man got out and walked around the car as if to see whether it was still in one piece. It looked fine. He clasped and unclasped his hands and cracked at his knuckles that were now numb, thanks to the horrible bumpy road upon which he had been driving during the last part of that day. When he got to the car’s bonnet, he yanked it open and bent inside, touched a small pipe or cable in the labyrinth of that old engine before slamming it shut once again.

To a woman called Sandy, crouching in camouflage against the setting darkness, it seemed that the default was of the expected type, basing her judgment on the brevity of the time utilized in addressing the fault, otherwise the man was an exceptionally good mechanic, which was not the case with our man here. A twig snapped nearby, and the man felt a fictitious warm breath caressing the small of his neck. He spun around and almost swore that a stump of wood a few meters into the gathering night was a crouching human being. Sandy was relieved when the man did not come to investigate the snapping twig.

A colony of crows who had their home in a gigantic marula tree nearby got annoyed with the proceedings and raised into the dark sky cawing and flapping their wings wildly, their white chests mingling with the little stars that were taking their positions in the sky like toy soldiers. Crows made him creepy. He lurched into the small car and slammed its door shut. He cranked the engine and, after a few whines and a cloud of smoke that rose against the reflection of the car’s tail lights, he had the engine running again. We are off! He heard himself say as he shifted through the gears in a last bid to get somewhere- which happened to be the crown of the plateau ahead. He did not quite like the way the car’s gear- lever shuddered at number three, but ignored it since that was Babes’ proper gear for tackling such slopes. He narrowed his eyes on the approaching bend and felt grateful for the ease on the gradient of the slope. Although the evening was fine, he felt his raw palms sweating to the jerks of the steering wheel. A sign- post revealed the name of his destination:

SIMBA FARM
WE HERE!
Behind him, the crows drew a few ineffective patterns in the sky before coming back in ones and twos to resume their positions of sleep. Back on the surface the man’s prayers, or his oaths, rather, were being answered and slowly, very slowly, both car and man made their ascent and nosed into a merciful slope, finally on the flat top of the plateau and at the same height with the compound of Mulrooney or Simba. Even in that darkness, the place promised this funny and undignified look about it that could only belong to a farm- a farm as opposed to other real places that have the magic of being able to look old and beautiful at the same time. It was common knowledge that Simba, or Mulrooney Farm as we shall know it, was a young place.

She could have been a temporary affair, as everything else about her seemed to suggest: from the rude structures which were randomly lined up on both sides of the dusty road, all the way down to a stray cat and a couple of old tires, ephemeral. Time was definitely not an issue in such a place, and it could as well be tomorrow or the following year, and that’s what our traveler needed, a place away from time.

He sighed deeply, for the remaining course was of a merciful gradient, if at all. Since the tiny dusty road led nowhere else he allowed his car to coast down into an open space, all the way until he pulled up in front of a wreck of a place that had some attributes of brick and light about it. He cut the engine, and maneuvered to disengage the gear into the neutral point.

The gear was stuck.