Two Hangmen, One Scaffold Book II: In The Hangman�s Shadow

Chapter 22

217 C Chapter 22 y 9 am on 11 December, Jasper was speeding on the seventyseven kilometre-stretch of smooth curves and even tarmac between Zimplats Platinum Mine and the carriageway farming settlement of Selous. He was hopeful his fiancée would return that day and wanted the Senator to find him waiting for her at the farmhouse. His business on the eastern edge of Turf Township and the border of Ngezi Game Reserve done, the mine had paid him handsomely for putting its staff members and their families out of danger. Assigned game wardens showed him the bushes and other intricate areas where each of the eight crocodiles had strayed. With Toshla distracting the reptiles, he gagged them with his rope to the amusement of fearful onlookers watching from a safe distance. Wardens and a group of volunteers, largely drunken men and jobseekers in abundance in the township, pulled the crocodiles into a mine dumper, which transported the animals individually to a farm less than two kilometres away. Now he was richer than he came. One thousand five hundred US dollars was a lot of money for a job that took him less than four hours yesterday afternoon. The payment was unusual. On other assignments, he had worked for mostly praise as a community duty. He supposed those who engaged him thought the thrill of catching the crocodiles was his reward. Except the occasional spectacular and droning three-trailer trucks, each hauling ninety tonnes of platinum ore to the smelter in Selous, which he came across and overtook, the state-of the-art highway barely had other traffic. The dog sat in the back, its mane flying in the wind. Jasper’s matching green sleeveless vest and cargo pants were soiled, evidence of a hands-on man returning home. B 218 His arms were a marvel to him and the public. More noticeable on them was the one word tattoo: LISA. On each arm, from the wrist to the elbow joint, the name stood out in calligraphic bold letters. On his deltoids were the initials LG, standing for Lisa Gororo. A casual observer could tag him a professional bodybuilder with a slight insanity for tattoos. His rippling muscles came from a strict regimen of empty-handed physical exercises, weightlifting, shadow sparring, running, and hanging upside-down for ages on cross bars and tree branches like a roosting bat, and of course, the obligatory tags of war with crocodiles. While his muscles were the leitmotif of young townsmen, the truth was that his primary muscles came from toiling in Triangle and Hippo Valley sugar plantations where he found employment after secondary school. For three years, he worked as a cane cutter paid per acreage. It was backbreaking work pleasantly interrupted by his sporting activities at the prestigious Triangle Sports Club, an elite but amateur decathlete club, where the plantation manager enrolled him because of his stamina. He went on to become outstanding in sharpshooting, archery, canoeing and cycling. Because he could hold the machete in either hand, allowing the blisters on the other relief from pressure, he developed his arms equally from oaring and sugarcane cutting. On the thick-veined arms, someone went on to engrave a permanent romantic reminder in the form of tattoos, which he saw as minibillboards on his person reminding him of his live-in fiancée: Senator Lisa Gororo. Whenever he thought of her, he re-lived their first intimacy on a rug by the fireplace in her lounge, when she threatened and raped him. Surprisingly, at sixty-one years old, panting with exhilaration, she had resigned herself to him and mooed her years of loneliness and erotic depravity, and he feared her excitement coupled with the sudden rush of blood in her veins could trigger a heart attack in her. Nevertheless, he couldn’t withdraw from her because she clung to him leechlike. 219 When the fire in him was next to searing, she moaned aloud in ecstasy, like one in an opium delirium: “Money, power and respect I’ve earned and commanded, but none of these catapulted me to this heaven of heavens.” He took it the gin in her was bluffing. He spent the night in the master bedroom of the farmhouse. During the night, she was awful. She told him she was a member of a special parliamentary committee tasked to probe irregularities in the mining sector. She said...