Aftrekplek

Single track tar road, Zimbabwe 1984

Her hair whipped around her face, strands stiffly matted with sweat and dust. All the windows were open, hot air buffeting around the car interior as it sped along the unfolding ribbon of road. Leaning listlessly against the window edge she watched the landscape move by, red roadside edges and thorny scrub blurred with speed while the smudge of distant mountains slowly dropped backwards out of view.

Progress was regularly marked by squat lumps of whitewashed stone counting down the kilometres – to what? Not their destination as she knew that was still two days away but to some dusty settlement along the route that would quickly disappear and the countdown begin again.

Telegraph poles flashed past in a quicker marking of progress, their looping wires occasionally decorated with the purple and turquoise of a lilac-breasted roller.

And this is what she was looking for. Her head lolled back but her eyes were fixed to the lines stringing the poles together. Twelve of the bright little birds since they last stopped. Her parents were talking in the front and although the noise of the turbulent air sucked away their words she knew by her mother’s tone that a lunchtime stop was being negotiated.

Please let it be soon, she thought, wanting to stop before the next bird and an inauspicious odd number. Alison liked even numbers, their paired symmetry making her feel safe and satisfied. An odd number, and especially thirteen, would leave her anxious and restlessly fidgeting until the car was repacked and they could move off again.

She sat up, pushed the legs of her sleeping sister aside and pulled herself to the edge of the seat so she could see through the gap between her parents and out through the windscreen. Sensing her presence her father inclined towards her, eyes staying on the road.

“How many, Ali?” he shouted.

“Twelve. Can we stop soon?”  He chuckled and flashed an understanding look over his shoulder.

“Keep your eyes peeled for a lay-by then.”

He knew this was why she’d shuffled forwards. A view through the front of the car making it easier to spot a tree in the distance, the widening arc of gravel hard shoulder that would hold a circular concrete table and its curved benches.

Instead, a solid block loomed on the horizon growing larger as it moved towards them and they towards it.

“Ooh, another one!” Shouted Dad, gently braking and manoeuvring the holiday laden car so that the near side wheels remained on the road and the offside rattled onto the hard shoulder, gravel pinging into the bush. The bus roared past them, blaring its horn in thanks for the extra room. Piled high with suitcases, trunks, bales, bicycles. Alison spun round to watch it disappear behind them and a goat stared back at her. Nestled between two giant blue plastic bags on the rooftop, it faded from view as the bus was swallowed by its wake of dust.

Realising the car had continued to slow, she turned back round as it pulled off the road and gently came to a stop in the meagre yet welcome shade of a giant acacia tree. Silence. Or an absence of the roar and pressure of air in her aching ears, replaced by a hum of peace. New sounds slowly wormed their way through. The constant buzz of crickets from the dry yellowed grass that stretched into the distance, the soporific call of a dove somewhere in the branches above them and the pops and clicks of the car slowly cooling as a heat haze shimmered above the bonnet. Alison pushed up the seat in front of her and stiff legged, scrambled out of the open passenger door, the smell of hot tyre rubber joining that of the dust and distant wood smoke.

Her mother was already opening the cooler bag on the concrete table, left clean by its previous occupants. Sandwiches in the familiar blue Tupperware, hard boiled eggs accompanied by salt and pepper in little twists of greaseproof paper, oranges kept cool by the freezer block. But it was the bottles of Coca Cola she was waiting for, the chilled glass immediately covered in condensation. Dad reached into his pocket for the penknife and its bottle opener and she ran over as the first hiss was released.

“Aftrekplek,” he said.

“What?”

“We’re in South Africa now. It’s an aftrekplek, not a lay-by”.