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in a distant town (beyond the range of her shame). I sat-and-stood, sat-and-stood among men who murmured cricket scores, fiscal figures and horse tips while the rabbi intoned monotonously. I saw a fly wing into the gaping mouth of a snoring old man and I giggled until my mother scowled at me from the shadows.
    – I lost my faith in God ... long ago, Hunter sighs.
    I sense that the thing that wiped out her faith is too deep and raw to reveal offhandedly.
    At that moment the hobo’s dog stalks a chip packet scudding across the cobbles. He traps it underfoot and licks the salt off.
    – How does he survive, that dog?
    – That dog? Moonfleet? Folk drop scraps as they go by.
    – Moonfleet . Far out. Hey, by the way, do you have an amber with a spider caught in it?
    – I have ants trapped in amber.
    She rummages in a printer’s tray, then puts a honey-yellow stone in my hands.
    I hold it up to the sun. I squint at the filament of an ant fossil.
    – How much is it?
    – It’s for a girl, isn’t it?
    I feel my cheeks colour at being caught out.
    – Your girlfriend?
    – No. Just a girl. I don’t know her name yet.
    – Just a girl? I see. I tell you what. I’ll trade this for that turquoise whale. It’ll perk up my old caravan no end. It’ll pick up the colour of my everlastings.
    I picture Hunter’s lonely life in a caravan shared with mute stones and tacky dry flowers.

8
    A FARM SOMEWHERE SOUTH of the Limpopo.
    Two Dobermann dogs come walloping and hollering out of a zinc-roofed farmhouse. Claws scuttling over stones, tails whipping wildly.
    A peacock flies up into a giant bluegum, calling kaaaaow , kaaaaow .
    The gunmen yell at the dogs.
    The cowed dogs sniff at Jabulani’s feet.
    Behind the farmhouse is a long row of barns, like marooned boxcars on a desert siding.
    Followed by yapping dogs, the gunmen frogmarch Jabulani past a fenced-in pond where crocodiles V their jaws to stay cool. They blind-eye white chickens dangling dead from a wire.
    – Ever since they taste Zimbos they gone off chicken, jokes the one with a scar slanting south-east from his left eye.
    His sidekick laughs.
    A door slides on rails. Jabulani is flung to the sawdust-covered floor. He hears the wounded call of the peacock over the yapping of the dogs. He smells smoke and the snuff of dry tobacco. As his eyes focus in the slats of slanting light, he sees he’s not alone. An old black man is stirring a smoking pot of pap cooking over a fire drum. The furrowed vellum of his forehead is caught in a shaft of dust-dancing sun.
    Jabulani imagines he’ll see tobacco hanging bat-like overhead. Instead, a bare beam runs from one end of the barn to the other. Steel bunk beds line the walls. Grey jail blankets with footnote white lines are folded into squares.
    An old, sagging-skinned bloodhound lifts raw eyes out of a concertinaed jowl to peer at the stranger.
    – Where am I?
    – This is hell. You’ll wish you never crossed over.
    – Hell?
    – We’re slaves, man. You, me ... the others out on the lands.
    – Others?
    – The other fugitives they caught.
    – But they can’t just round up men like cattle.
    – When they have the guns they can do what they want. There’s no higher law out here.
    The old dog farts, as if to underscore his words.
    The old man spoons some pap into an enamel bowl and hands it to Jabulani.
    – I am too old to dig holes, so I cook.
    Jabulani forms the pap into a ball in his fist and wolfs it down.
    – It’s good.
    The old man nods. He scoops water from a deep drum into an enamel yellow mug from a long row of such mugs hanging on nails. This too he hands to Jabulani.
    Jabulani swigs the cool, sweet water in gasping gulps, washing the pap down.
    – Your dog is old, notes Jabulani.
    – They wanted to shoot him. Half his teeth have gone. They taught him to hunt down fugitives. To hunt you and me.
    The old man offers his hand to the dog and laughs as the dog licks it.
    – Some hunter, hey?
    Jabulani laughs. It feels