Gunship Over Angola

‘Run for your lives!’ shouted Brian Swart, and someone else screamed, ‘The mad fucker’s got a gun!’

Holding on to our loot for all we were worth, we dashed for the sanctuary of the riverine foliage, but there was suddenly a loud bang and my back and legs felt the excruciating sting of a thousand hornets.

Dramatically, one of us (I admit it may have been me) screamed, ‘I’m hit!’

‘We’ve all been hit, you silly shit!’ trumpeted Tula Billett. ‘The bastard just shot us with coarse-grained salt!’

Apparently, this non-lethal deterrent had been used effectively and frequently on would-be peanut liberators in the past. Explaining the welts on the back of my arms and legs to my mother as I prepared to shower that evening – ‘Got attacked by a swarm of bees, Mom’ – produced a disbelieving response.

But, as the sins of the father shall be visited upon the sons, I stored the events of that day in the recesses of my mind and plotted my revenge against Christo Jnr.

For more than two years all my carefully hatched plans came to naught as Christo dodged every move I made like a skilled chess master. Try as I might, I could not pin him down. At one stage I even pretended to fancy his sister and hid in the hedge with her at his front gate, hoping to trap him. But blood is thicker than water, and when she realised what I was planning, she gave me up and thwarted my dastardly scheme to wreak my revenge on her brother.

Then I got a break.

At Valhalla Primary School, where I was the head boy at the time, the principal tried to encourage good behaviour. Each week, the best-behaved student would be allowed to leave school an hour early the following Friday. Months went by before I finally managed to be chosen as BBS (best-behaved student) and was rewarded with the prized early Friday departure. Christo, who was already at high school in Voortrekkerhoogte, travelled home by bus each day, but I had never managed to reach his stop before he’d disembark and run for home, successfully dodging our inevitable confrontation time and time again.

But the extra hour that I’d earned that particular Friday gave me more than enough opportunity. I waited in delicious anticipation, hidden in the bushes behind the bus stop, for a full 30 minutes before his bus, with a squeal of brakes, stopped with a jerk and Christo disembarked. As the bus departed and Christo began the usual two-minute carefree saunter towards his home, I stepped out from my hiding place and said something like ‘So, we finally meet, Dutchie!’

As quick as a flash he turned and scarpered, and I just barely managed to clip his heels with my outstretched foot, which caused him to sprawl headfirst into the dirt and devil thorns on the roadside. Cornered, he got to his feet and raised his fists while his lower lip quivered, tears only seconds away.

I suddenly realised that he was substantially bigger than me, and that should he decide to turn aggressor I might end up on the receiving end. So, to keep the initiative and him off balance, I aimed one at his nose but missed and split his lip instead.

Bellowing like a stuck pig, he broke free and hightailed it for home with me running behind him roaring invective and insults like a seasoned sailor. Occasionally I managed to connect my foot and his bum until he finally made it to his house and scurried inside like a rat diving into a sewer.

With the swagger of a man who knows he’s won a long-anticipated battle against a superior-sized enemy force, I strutted my oh-so-self-satisfied way home. Revenge is so very, very sweet, or so I thought… The time to savour my hard-earned victory would not last long.

Reaching our house at 58 Viking Road a few minutes later, I decided to reward my Herculean effort with a doorstep-sized slice of French polony jammed precariously between two eye-wateringly large slices of fresh Boerstra’s bread, dripping with butter and All Gold tomato sauce – a veritable feast in my part of the hood! I had just sunk my teeth into my giant sarmie when, without any warning, I was yanked out of the kitchen, lifted clear off the ground and pinned to the wall outside, my feet dangling a full six inches off the floor.

All I could see in front of me was a hand, the fingers like bunched pork sausages, balled into a fist, cocked and ready to smash my 11-year-old face to a pulp. The other hand had me by the collar and was shaking the bejesus out of my slight frame. All the while, a high-pitched porcine squeal emanating from the hand owner’s fat lips tore into my ears in a screeched warning that he was going to batter the life out of me and feed my jellied remains to the pigs.