Spirit watch

Spirit watch                 
                                                                    By Sharon Maria Moemise

The sounds of Ahomo-Trofo's  "Lumumba" banging in the background amidst encouraging whistles and laughter reverberates through the streets of the township in the backdrop of a small mining town called Randfontein. It's a chilly Friday late afternoon  and the smell of coal stove smoke in the air is almost overpowered by the cigarette smoke in the slanting shack where all the noise come from. Women and men gyrating and weaving to the music through the throngs of people still pushing their way into the already packed shack. The shack serves as a shebeen or unlicensed tavern where, every weekend, folks come to enjoy spending their weekly wages and where men meet women or the other way round. It being Friday, the noise is expected and everyone is just happy that it's the weekend. The music stops for minute while people scream "encore!"  Suddenly the momentary silence is broken by the sound of women screaming. People start running and others fall over each other to get out of the room. Somewhere on the floor a man is lying, blood gushing from his face. Everyone stops to stare at the man who tries to get up and run away. He makes it to the grass mound in the street where children are playing. I'm one of those kids watching in shock the man who stumbles very near to where I stand rooted to the spot. 
He almost gets away when more that five other man, yelling at him in Zulu suddenly pounce on him with knobkieries and sticks. I know the Zulu language because my cousins, from my mother's side of the family, visit us during school holidays and they speak Zulu. That's how I learned the language. They start beating him despite his screams of pain. Everytime he tries to get up, another blow fells him down while the men take turns beating him, all the time yelling: "We're gonna kill you!" in the Zulu language. People are screaming and shouting, though no one tries to stop the men with the knobkieries. Every Friday or weekend night, people fight and then someone gets in between the fighters to stop it. No one is stopping this fight, though. I wonder if it's because the attackers are too many. I try to run away, but it's as though something or someone pushes me down by my shoulder. I watch in horror as the knobkieries land on the man's head leaving marks and blood in its wake. The sound the blows make as they come in contact with the man's head is enough to stay in my mind forever. The man on the ground reaches out, like he's trying to embrace someone, his face a bloody pulp, and then he stops  moving. The attackers continue to beat and kick his motionless body, oblivious to the fact that the man is no longer moving.  What seems like a very long while later, it grows quiet around me. I look up and the sky abruptly changes color. It seem like rain but nothing happens. The clouds start to wildly swirl around in the sky and a sudden darkness comes over the town. A cloud of red dust settles where the man lies motionless, then blows as if pulled up in the sky, giving an almost orange effect. I look around to see if I'm the only one seeing it. Everyone seem stunned at the sudden darkness. Suddenly people start to walk away, others running, encouraged by the change in the sky. I just stand there, staring at the people, hoping that one of the grown ups would stop and help the man. No one even looks at him. It's as if they came, they saw and they conquered. When no one is left, I find myself alone in the street, looking at the man, hoping he'd get up and follow everyone. I guess I'm hoping that all this is just a bad dream.
A sharp icy wind suddenly sweeps past me, it's incessant howling emanating from where the man lies. For a moment I'm wondering if he ran past me, but he is still lying there, very still. I go down on my hunches to keep watch over him. I'm silently daring him to get up and walk away, but he just lies there. I'm immediately overcome with worry about the men with the knobkieries. What if they return? I'm chilled by the icy wind that suddenly start blowing around me. The street lamp above the old dilapidated beer hall goes on.  Suddenly I don't feel so cold anymore. Not a soul can be seen in the street that was filled with lots of people and so much noise earlier. It's as though something eerie and almost haunting is lurking somewhere, watching over the town
I hear my brother shouting my name from a distance. It was almost time for dinner and I'm sitting in the darkened street, watching a man whose lifeless body is just lying there on the grass. As I walk home with my brother, he reprimands me for sitting alone near a " dead" person. He worries that I'd get nightmares that night. I look at him, stunned to the core. I know I've heard about death before. I just never realized that I actually witnessed it and sat so close to it that chilly Friday afternoon. The nightmares never came, and  the memory of that chilly Friday late afternoon when I was only nine years old, never left either.  

The end.