The air is as hot as ironed laundry in the shade of the Jacarandas. It is summer in Johannesburg. The suburban street is quiet save for the distant hum of the main road. A dog walks alongside a child on a tricycle which squeaks as she peddles on the sidewalk. I parallel park in a space between a bakkie and a sedan and begin to roll up my window when a calloused crocodile stump penetrates the disappearing gap of the window and lunges blindly towards me. “My Baas!”, hisses the weathered, pock-marked face spraying the window with saliva like a cobra. “My Baas!”, crows my assailant quivering and groping – the stench of his hand beguiling me. “I am Johannus”, he announces from the floor where he now kneels, perhaps beneath my car. “I will look after you, and your car”, he shrieks licentiously, now facing the window with his pathetic, beggarly eyes leering straight at me.
I hear a grey Lourie call from the canopy of trees above the street and reach for an uzzi which has been modified and loaded with 5 cent pieces. I empty the first round into his chest which fragments and splutters before collapsing under the weight of the contribution. “My Baas”, he offers one more time overcome by cunningness and depravity. “No”, I reply, addressing him for the first time. I empty the second round into his head which explodes with a final smirk and soils the nearby wall with copper-streaked blood.
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