Karoo Dusk, by Johan Vlok Louw

Karoo Dusk, by Johan Vlok Louw. Random House Struik Umuzi. Cape Town, South Africa 2014. ISBN 9781415206805 / ISBN 978-1-41520-680-5

Vlok Louw s novel is filled with youth cars and guns. Karoo Dusk is an uppercut to the chin its prose as evocative as the Karoo landscape of its setting.

Johan Vlok Louw  

We cross a small white-pillared bridge spanning a dry rivulet with poplars on its banks into town proper. My pa turns into a Caltex one stop. 'I'm going to ask for directions - you want something to eat?' 'Why don't you just phone the station?' I ask. He looks back at me, says, "Cause I'm not working yet, ne.' 'Oh.' 'Besides, wouldn't we need the keys?' 'Reckon.' 'I'll phone once I've had something to eat - what do you feel like?' 'So ja.' 'Ja?' 'I don't feel like anything.' 'So - you'll want something anyway, I think.' We get out and he walks over to the cafe-cum-restaurant they have in there. It's all very busy on the forecourt, cars being filled, families over there framed in windows. I don't like standing in line, so I'm happy to give it a miss. I wait at the car. Down the street are cafes and a butcher, curio shops and a tuisnywerheid. rooms painted in white on court green. Trees in round cement silos and old beggars stomach-pointing at passing cars, money-signing. spur, beares, other franchise logos. Banks. At least not a total backwater, I'm thinking. I-me-city boy stand in the sun. I span my arms above my head, stretch. Yawn. Down Main Road cars are slowing, snake-tailing. An eighteen-wheeler tall ahead is smoke-stacking and turbo-whooshing. From behind me a bright-yellow tour bus goes by. Sweet hot diesel stink. Two coloured boys in rags with a bucket come up to me. 'Car wash?' says one. 'Not likely,' I say. Jeez, they're only dirty, hey, snot-nosed too. 'Beste was, ne, Meneer,' says the other from deep inside his throat. Best car wash ever. 'Ne?' 'Quick quick.' 'Issie my karrie - shoo.' It's not my car. 'Geldjie?' 'I don't have change.' 'For bread?' 'Ek het nie fokken geld nie - fokkof nou voor die polisie kom.' 'The police, Meneer?' 'Ja - hy' I point to my pa. They watch him strut the forecourt in jeans and r-shirted boep, Styrofoam takeaways. (Skedaddle. Gone.) 'Car-wash kids?' 'Ja.' 'Gomkoppe.' 'Most likely'. We stand there eating cheeseburgers. Afterwards he lights a Camel, blows smoke. 'So ja,' he says, sighs. I fold my arms and lean against the bug-splattered, road-grimed Ford Ranger in which my ma's still asleep with her head propped up against a pillow. 'Ja ne.' Later we're waiting at a traffic light next to this hotel off left at a four-way stop. It's tomb-like quiet inside the Ford. Indicator tick-a-tacking. Then a Beares furniture store with big loudspeakers on the pavement goes boom-booming. Another garage to the right, Shell, two tour buses and a couple of minibus taxis. Hiluxes. e20s. The hotel has one of those long, pillared front stoeps running round it. I see wrougbt-iron tables and chairs. Some road-weary couples at the tables between potted plants. On the gabled roof leading to the first-storey landing, they have a big old sign up: the masonic. Below it: all of it taken care of. Opposite is an old double-storey block of flats with wide balconies and decorative trellis work. It even has a few spires up to the sky. There's a high-walled courtyard at the back with a leafy fig tree - gnawed branches visible above. And some coloured girl in too-tight-of-everything high-heeling. Click-clack, click-clack. Parading on the balcony. [...]

This is an excerpt from the novel: Karoo Dusk, by Johan Vlok Louw.

Title: Karoo Dusk
Author: Johan Vlok Louw
Genre: Novel
Publisher: Random House Struik
Imprint: Umuzi
Cape Town, South Africa 2014
ISBN 9781415206805 / ISBN 978-1-41520-680-5
Softcover, 13 x 21 cm, 240 pages