Rachel's Blue. Zakes Mda

      RACHEL’S BLUE

      Zakes Mda

      Kwela Books

      Acknowledgements

      I would like to thank the following for their inspiring feedback: Elelwani Netshifhire, Jim Shirey, Spree McDonald, Black Porcelain and Melisa Klimaszewski (The Sculpture Climber of De Moines).

      1

      Old hippies never die, an old song suggests, they just fade away. Actually, they just drift to Yellow Springs where they’ve become a haunting presence on the sidewalks and storefront benches. Some in discoloured tie-dyes, strumming battered guitars, wailing a Bob-Dylan-of-old for some change in the guitar case. Others just chewing the fat. Or giving curious passers-by toothless grins, while exhibiting works of art they have created from pine cones and found objects.

      Jason de Klerk is too young to be one of the baby-boomer originals, though he puts a lot of effort into looking like them. He was drawn to Yellow Springs after dropping out of high school, and in that town he fell under the spell of a faded hippy called Big Flake Thomas with whom he busked at the public square or gigged at the Chindo Grille when no act with at least some regional profile had been booked. The master’s fat fingers strummed and plucked on an Appalachian dulcimer, while the acolyte furiously beat a conga drum, and then blew his didgeridoo. He carried the latter instrument with him everywhere he went, slung on his shoulder, almost touching the ground and peeking just above the top of his head. In the evenings in the tiny bar of Ye Olde Trail Tavern – reputed to be Ohio’s second oldest restaurant, in operation since 1847 – Big Flake took the acolyte on some nostalgic trip to an age of free love and flower power. After a few beers they staggered home under a cloud of Mary Jane. The master got high; the acolyte got stoned. And it happened like that every day. Until one day Big Flake Thomas was taken ill with pneumonia and passed on without any fuss or argument.

      For Jason, Yellow Springs died with the big man. He loaded pieces of his life in his old Pontiac – and these included his mentor’s fretted dulcimer, the tumbadora and the didgeridoo – and drove back home to Athens, another county famous for its ageing hippy community. But unlike Yellow Springs, here the hippies have melted into the hills, emerging only on Wednesdays and Saturdays to sell their organic produce at the farmers’ market.

      It is at the farmers’ market that we meet Jason loitering among the marquees, his didgeridoo on his back. People occasionally stop to admire the black, white and yellow lizards painted on it by an unknown Australian Aboriginal artist. Unless, of course, it is one of those ersatz products of some factory in China. He never really reflected on its pedigree since he received it as a gift from one of Big Flake Thomas’s buddies, who’d lost interest in the instrument with creeping age.

      Jason walks past a busker, a clean-cut man on a stool playing a guitar and singing some country song whose lyrics are on a music stand in front of him. It must be the man’s own composition because Jason has never heard it anywhere before. He is selling CDs of his music. Jason would like to do that too. As soon as he gets settled he will cut a CD of some of the songs he used to play with Big Flake Thomas. It will be a wonderful tribute to his mentor, and it will also earn him a few bucks. But he will need a guitarist for that. Or at least a dulcimer player. A tumbadora and a didgeridoo on their own will not sustain the kind of performance he has in mind, let alone the recording. He has the big man’s dulcimer as a keepsake, but he never learned to play it. To make it in the busking world he needs some strings. But there is no sweat about that. Someone is bound to know some adventurous guitarist, or even a banjo or mandolin player, who would be willing to dabble in experimental sounds with him.

      After a few stalls of beets, kale and zucchinis, and of candles made from beeswax and shaped into angels by a beekeeper who is also selling bottled honey, Jason stops to listen to yet another busker. She is strumming her guitar and singing “Oh My Darling Clementine”. Though her floppy straw hat covers part of her face he can see at once that she is one of those rural Ohio girls who look like milk. He concludes that it is not for her voice – rather airy and desperate – that her open guitar case is bristling with greenbacks. It is for her strawberry blonde bangs peeping out from under her hat, and her deep blue eyes, and her willowy stature, and her brown gingham prairie skirt, and her bare feet with tan lines drawn by sandals, and her black T with “Appalachia Active” in big white letters across her breasts – the entire wholesome package that stands before him. She is trying hard to make her voice sound full-bodied and round, but she was not born for singing. She loses a beat to say “thank you” after Jason deposits a single, and then she hurries to catch up with the song before it goes out of control.

      At that moment Jason recognises her. Rachel. Rachel Boucher from Jensen Township, about ten miles or so from his Rome Township. She has grown taller and has matured quite a bit since they did Athens High School together. She was a crush, once. And for a while it looked like it would be actualised. There was a period when they spent lots of time together. To him each moment was a date; at least that’s how he bragged about it to his buddies. To her it was just hanging out, and that’s what she told the yentas – as the Yiddish-speaking maths teacher from Germany called the notorious gossipmongers – with whom she shared the lunch table. He was a class clown and therefore was popular with other boys. He would have been popular with girls too, what with his soft eyes and friendly face – even when he thought he was scowling it looked like a smile. Girls, however, kept their distance because of his rich odour – a result of his estrangement from either shower or bath.

      Rachel was the brave one who risked snide remarks for his company and jokes. “One day we gonna see you on Saturday Night Live,” she used to tell him. Until the ribbing got to her – especially from Schuyler, the yenta queen who had taken a shine to her – and she began to have excuses when he asked her out to Movies 10 or some such place. And then one day he saw her and the yentas at the cafeteria. His tray was loaded with pizza, Tater Tots, Bosco Sticks and milk. He smiled when he saw Rachel, but the smile froze on his lips when he heard a stage whisper: “Here comes Jason. I hope he doesn’t sit at this table otherwise I’ll gag.” It was Rachel. This stunned him. Of all people, not Rachel! But he soon recovered and walked with an exaggerated swagger to join a bunch of loud-mouthed jocks at the table opposite. Jocks are inured to body odours; they live with them every day.

      Jason was facing Rachel directly, and he shoved his middle and index fingers into his mouth and pretended to gag. The mindless jocks laughed boisterously and did likewise with their fingers, even though they didn’t know the reason for the apery. They thought Jason was just teasing the girls, and imagined it was a good idea to join in the fun.

      That’s when she became aware that he had heard her. If only she could shrink herself to invisibility. She was ashamed for trying to impress the yentas at Jason’s expense. She did not know what possessed her to utter such words about a friend who, truth be told, she would find attractive if it were not for the little matter of hygiene. Her cruelty had been a result of trying to assure Schuyler that there was nothing between him and her, hoping that the yentas would stop referring to her behind her back as “that girl who dates the stinky kid”.

      Unfortunately there was no chance of her disappearing or, at the very least, of taking her words back. They had registered with Jason, and on subsequent days his bearing made it clear that he did not want to have anything to do with her. At one point she thought she should explain to Jason, and even apologise. But he was not interested in any explanation. He did not need her as a friend. For the remainder of their junior year not a word passed between them. Jason dropped out even before the senior year was over, while she stayed to complete high school.

      Strange that he never thought of her again. But now it all floods back as he listens to her croon Oh, the cuckoo! in the manner of her mountain people. It is obvious that she does not recognise him behind all the beard, even though her eyes are fixed on his. Jason is not surprised by the fact. It’s been more than five years and he has since lost his boyish looks. What can be seen of his face has been sculpted into rugged lines by the severe summers and winters of Yellow Springs. His flaxen mane is an unintended disguise; it is braided into three ropes that hang down past his shoulder under a fawn embroidered kufi kofi hat – another inheritance from Big Flake Thomas. Red and green glass ornaments pretend