Congratulations !
You have been awarded points.
Thank you for !
- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Character Based
- Published: 01/06/2016
Ride On Time
Born 1978, M, from Cape Town, South AfricaThe wager was made sometime around noon.
"So that's the deal. If I'm right, twenty bucks. If you are, same. Get it?"
Sam Sithole was still a little hesitant about his friend's proposal, but it was clear something had to be done to counter the slow day. He had been convinced that the clouds would break, but if anything, they were only getting heavier.
Sam could not remember when last Durban had experienced such a miserable Christmas Day. Even the beachfront gulls, usually so quick to risk the elements for a discarded morsel, were hunkered together under any spare awning, resolute in their sullenness.
He imagined that he and his fellow rickshaw puller cut an equally wretched sight, in spite of their impressive beadwork and headdress.
Dumisani Bhengu had arrived an hour earlier than Sam, expecting that a few fervent tourists would want to mark the occasion of Christ's First Coming with a ride in one of the city's most famous attractions.
The solemnity of the religious holiday meant that a puller would never set any records, but past experience had shown that he could at least rely on a few curious out-of-towners to meet his daily quota.
This deluge, however, had already put paid to even the most modest ambitions. Five hours the men had been confined to their wooden shelter, staring blankly at the green tarp half-covering their rickshaws. No other human save for a few metro police passed by, and even they barely noticed them.
To the law, they must have looked like those desperate people who trawl casinos all night, dressing up in the finest apparel their meagre salaries could afford in the hope their appearance could change their luck.
"So you got it, Sam?" Dumisani asked again, concerned his friend might renege on the terms of their bet. "If I get a local customer, I win. If you get a foreigner, doesn't matter where - England, Germany, even DRC - you get the twenty bucks."
"Yes, man. Local, you win. Foreign, I win," Sam answered sharply.
On a day when neither man had earned a cent, it was somewhat reckless that they were going down this route, but Sam knew Dumisani would not relent. That made his mood even darker, surpassed only by the morose canopy in the sky above.
Satisfied with this result, however begrudgingly the accord might have been reached, Dumisani immediately began rifling through his rucksack and emerged with a bedraggled twenty rand note.
"Money on the table, bra," he instructed his adversary, fanning the cash centimetres from the surly brow. "Need to know you're good for it."
Sam and Dumisani's friendship was not of any grand design. Now thirty and twenty-seven years old respectively, they had been thrown together as children, just as their fathers before them had.
Running rickshaws on Durban beachfront was the family business for both the Sithole and Bhengu clans, which meant a kind of enforced kinship had existed between them for decades.
Like all brothers, the bond shared by Sam and Dumisani was founded on equal parts love and loathing. To the older Sam, the younger man's demeanour frequently bordered on the obnoxious, but often he found it best to acquiesce for the sake of tempering the cajolement.
He drew from his wallet one of the three twenties he had left, and placed it alongside Dumisani's crumpled note on the crate they used as a makeshift table.
"There. Now can you keep quiet? This rain is bad enough without having you in my ear."
Dumisani grinned contentedly. "Whatever you say, bra."
Like prize fighters returning to their corners, the two men settled back in to what they had been doing previously; Dumisani thumbing away at the keyboard of his BlackBerry, and Sam scanning the soccer pages in a discarded copy of Isolezwe.
As the lunch hour came and went, the men inadvertently moved closer to one another as the rain continued to lash down, whipping pockets of cooler air into their sanctuary. The divide stood only as long as the environment would allow, and the need to huddle together for warmth transcended any passing acrimony.
Dumisani reached behind him for an old red blanket, and without a word draped the thick wool over their legs, bare except for their traditional ankle adornments. There was no one around, so taking a few minutes to restore themselves to a normalcy would not make one bit of difference to anyone.
Close the eyes for a moment, allow themselves to be immersed in one another's body heat, and drift, drift, drift...
"WAKE UP! I SAID, 'WAKE UP!'
It was not so much the metro policeman's menacing tenor as it was the string of drool swinging from Dumisani's maw onto his exposed arm that jolted Sam back to consciousness.
Indeed, his haste to rid himself of the offending saliva was such that the officer's barking hardly registered. It was only after a few seconds that he realised something else was afoot.
"Yes, sir," he said, finally regarding the dumpy officer who clearly was not happy about drawing the Christmas shift.
"Do you even know what's going on in front of you?" the beer keg asked in that baleful cop way, as if everyone who didn't know the answer deserved to be put away for life.
Sam rubbed his eyes. At first, he didn't know what to make of the scene playing out on the seat of his rickshaw. The tarp had fallen to the ground, exposing something only nature could have ordained.
"What are they?" he asked the officer, whose stare remained the picture of contempt.
"Well, I'm no bird expert, but I think what you have here are a pair of frisky Egyptian geese. And they seem to have made a love nest of your rickshaw."
For the first time that day, Sam smiled.
"Foreign customers. Just in time for Christmas, too," he said, collecting the two notes from the crate.
Ride On Time(John Harvey)
The wager was made sometime around noon.
"So that's the deal. If I'm right, twenty bucks. If you are, same. Get it?"
Sam Sithole was still a little hesitant about his friend's proposal, but it was clear something had to be done to counter the slow day. He had been convinced that the clouds would break, but if anything, they were only getting heavier.
Sam could not remember when last Durban had experienced such a miserable Christmas Day. Even the beachfront gulls, usually so quick to risk the elements for a discarded morsel, were hunkered together under any spare awning, resolute in their sullenness.
He imagined that he and his fellow rickshaw puller cut an equally wretched sight, in spite of their impressive beadwork and headdress.
Dumisani Bhengu had arrived an hour earlier than Sam, expecting that a few fervent tourists would want to mark the occasion of Christ's First Coming with a ride in one of the city's most famous attractions.
The solemnity of the religious holiday meant that a puller would never set any records, but past experience had shown that he could at least rely on a few curious out-of-towners to meet his daily quota.
This deluge, however, had already put paid to even the most modest ambitions. Five hours the men had been confined to their wooden shelter, staring blankly at the green tarp half-covering their rickshaws. No other human save for a few metro police passed by, and even they barely noticed them.
To the law, they must have looked like those desperate people who trawl casinos all night, dressing up in the finest apparel their meagre salaries could afford in the hope their appearance could change their luck.
"So you got it, Sam?" Dumisani asked again, concerned his friend might renege on the terms of their bet. "If I get a local customer, I win. If you get a foreigner, doesn't matter where - England, Germany, even DRC - you get the twenty bucks."
"Yes, man. Local, you win. Foreign, I win," Sam answered sharply.
On a day when neither man had earned a cent, it was somewhat reckless that they were going down this route, but Sam knew Dumisani would not relent. That made his mood even darker, surpassed only by the morose canopy in the sky above.
Satisfied with this result, however begrudgingly the accord might have been reached, Dumisani immediately began rifling through his rucksack and emerged with a bedraggled twenty rand note.
"Money on the table, bra," he instructed his adversary, fanning the cash centimetres from the surly brow. "Need to know you're good for it."
Sam and Dumisani's friendship was not of any grand design. Now thirty and twenty-seven years old respectively, they had been thrown together as children, just as their fathers before them had.
Running rickshaws on Durban beachfront was the family business for both the Sithole and Bhengu clans, which meant a kind of enforced kinship had existed between them for decades.
Like all brothers, the bond shared by Sam and Dumisani was founded on equal parts love and loathing. To the older Sam, the younger man's demeanour frequently bordered on the obnoxious, but often he found it best to acquiesce for the sake of tempering the cajolement.
He drew from his wallet one of the three twenties he had left, and placed it alongside Dumisani's crumpled note on the crate they used as a makeshift table.
"There. Now can you keep quiet? This rain is bad enough without having you in my ear."
Dumisani grinned contentedly. "Whatever you say, bra."
Like prize fighters returning to their corners, the two men settled back in to what they had been doing previously; Dumisani thumbing away at the keyboard of his BlackBerry, and Sam scanning the soccer pages in a discarded copy of Isolezwe.
As the lunch hour came and went, the men inadvertently moved closer to one another as the rain continued to lash down, whipping pockets of cooler air into their sanctuary. The divide stood only as long as the environment would allow, and the need to huddle together for warmth transcended any passing acrimony.
Dumisani reached behind him for an old red blanket, and without a word draped the thick wool over their legs, bare except for their traditional ankle adornments. There was no one around, so taking a few minutes to restore themselves to a normalcy would not make one bit of difference to anyone.
Close the eyes for a moment, allow themselves to be immersed in one another's body heat, and drift, drift, drift...
"WAKE UP! I SAID, 'WAKE UP!'
It was not so much the metro policeman's menacing tenor as it was the string of drool swinging from Dumisani's maw onto his exposed arm that jolted Sam back to consciousness.
Indeed, his haste to rid himself of the offending saliva was such that the officer's barking hardly registered. It was only after a few seconds that he realised something else was afoot.
"Yes, sir," he said, finally regarding the dumpy officer who clearly was not happy about drawing the Christmas shift.
"Do you even know what's going on in front of you?" the beer keg asked in that baleful cop way, as if everyone who didn't know the answer deserved to be put away for life.
Sam rubbed his eyes. At first, he didn't know what to make of the scene playing out on the seat of his rickshaw. The tarp had fallen to the ground, exposing something only nature could have ordained.
"What are they?" he asked the officer, whose stare remained the picture of contempt.
"Well, I'm no bird expert, but I think what you have here are a pair of frisky Egyptian geese. And they seem to have made a love nest of your rickshaw."
For the first time that day, Sam smiled.
"Foreign customers. Just in time for Christmas, too," he said, collecting the two notes from the crate.
- Share this story on
- 1
COMMENTS (0)