Killer Country by Mike Nicol Page A

road. Amazing they’d not brought out every cop along the way. Amazing they even got home without an accident.
    He grinned to himself, stared down the long road. Once he thought about the old man in a dressing gown waving around the big rifle. Not scared at all. Had to be admired for not being scared at all. The sort of Afrikaner, Manga’d heard tell, inhabited the dry regions. Leftover types.
    He drove on for half an hour drumming a refrain against the steering wheel, something from Boom Shaka, regretting every moment he’d forgotten his player. Eventually Manga tapped Spitz on the shoulder. ‘Captain. Hey captain, we can both listen to that.’
    Spitz slipped back the headphones, said, ‘What is the matter?’
    ‘Your music.’ Manga pointed at the iPod lying in Spitz’s lap. ‘Plug it in, we can both hear it. Some kwaito, hey!’
    ‘My music is not kwaito.’
    Manga grinned. ‘Come’n, man, stop kidding me, get the tunes.’
    ‘There is nothing on here.’
    Manga glanced sideways. ‘No kwaito.’
    ‘No kwaito.’
    He shook his head. ‘Everybody listens to kwaito.’
    Spitz made to wire himself again. Manga reached out and stopped his arm.
    ‘Hey, hey. You move too fast. So tell me what’s the music. Lemme hear it.’
    Spitz stared at him. ‘This is not your scene.’
    ‘What’s my scene? Captain you don’t know what’s my scene. Let’s have it. Open up. Gimme some names.’
    Spitz reached for his mineral water, swallowed a mouthful. ‘You have heard of M Ward?’ He got a negative from Manga. ‘Steve Earle? Woven Hand? Jesse Sykes?’
    ‘Niks.’
    ‘Like I said to you, it is another scene.’
    ‘It’s music. Music’s music. Spin it DJ Trigger.’
    Spitz tensed, waved his finger. ‘Not that name, okay? Not that name.’
    Manga took both hands off the wheel, held them up in surrender. ‘No problem.’ Gripped the wheel again, the car arrow-straight on the road.
    Spitz replaced the water bottle in the holder. ‘Understand me?’
    ‘Hey, captain, leave it. Move on.’
    Spitz let kilometres go by, then moved on. Scanned his iPod, selected David Eugene Edwards with Sixteen Horsepower, got the leads plugged into the car’s sound system, bringing up the slow guitar thrum of ‘Hutterite Mile’ and Edwards’ ancient voice. Sat back, the swamp gospel filling him. 
    A minute into it, Manga held up his thumb. ‘Okay, that’s sharp, captain.’
    Spitz pursed his lips. Gave a quick nod.
    Manga kept to it for two tracks. At the end of ‘Outlaw Song’ said, ‘Uh uh. Not my scene. Something else, captain.’ He made a fist, pumped his arm. ‘More vooma.’
    ‘I have no music with vooma,’ said Spitz. ‘I have badlands songs. Motel blues. Lamentations.’
    He tried Johnny Cash singing about a guy getting hot for a thirteen year old. Next Jim Kalin’s tale of a girl caught on a high mountain. Her screams under the driving chords and banjo pluck.
    Manga pulled the plug. ‘Stick with it, captain,’ he said. ‘I’m notthere. I’m nowhere in that country.’
    Spitz smiled. He pointed at the landscape. ‘What country do you think this is?’
    ‘For Boers,’ said Manga. He ran his tongue over his teeth, let a couple of kays run past before he tried a new line. ‘Tonight, we get some chicks?’ giving Spitz a sideways glance, seeing the man’s unmoving profile. ‘In the township I know a place, they have virgin specials. Little girls. Tight.’
    ‘No,’ said Spitz.
    ‘No! Captain, your mama’s so far away she doesn’t exist.’
    ‘I have no girlfriend.’
    ‘So what’s it, man? You don’t like girls?’
    ‘I like women.’
    ‘No problem. We get you a woman.’
    ‘Tonight a movie would be better.’
    ‘Hey, captain, captain. On the town. Okay, porno. Porno’s good.’
    ‘No, a movie. In a cinema. Big screen, Sensurround.’
    ‘Huh!’
    ‘In my collection I have three hundred DVDs.’ 
    Manga shook his head. ‘Three hundred! What for? You’ve seen it once, you’ve seen