Bevan and the Bird
By Kimon de Greef Monday 26 September 2010 It's a perfect evening and Bevan's walking down the beach, a spliff and a quart of beer in his hand. There's no wind and the sea is flat, and he's up to ankles in cool, clear water. His jeans are rolled above his knees and his shirt is unbuttoned, and even though the sun has almost set it still feels warm against his chest. He lifts the joint to his lips and takes a deep drag, listening to the crackle of the flame as it slowly burns its way towards his face.
His four small dogs are with him, running in circles and barking whenever the gulls fly by. The puppy keeps trying to drag huge heaps of kelp over the sand but gets nowhere. He looks at it tugging away and smiles. He loves his dogs, they keep him sane. He got given the puppy just a week ago and he can already see it's going to be a lekker dog. His mate found the thing sitting in a box on the slipway at Hout Bay harbour, and the first thing it did when he picked it up was nibble his ear.
Bevan takes a swig of beer and feels the bubbles pop against the roof of his mouth. He feels so free out here, the beer even tastes different. When he drinks in town he feels lazy and lethargic; on the west coast it makes him want to run up sand dunes and chase his dogs. He quickly swallows the last of it, drops the bottle to the sand, and sets off after the puppy. It sees him coming and scrambles to get away but he grabs it and lifts it high above his head. The other dogs surround him, twisting and barking, and he dumps the pup upside down in front of them. They pounce and it yelps, squirming free and racing away down the beach.
Bevan sits for a second, short of breath. His heart kicks in his chest. He takes another drag and holds it in as long as he can, coughing as he breathes out, surrounded in a cloud of smoke. He feels his skin prickle with delight and rocks his head back to look at the wide open sky. Two birds circle above him, dots in a blue dome, and he imagines being there with them and looking down.
It's his third time in Elandsbaai. The first time he was sixteen years old and came for a week, surfing the point every day with his friends, completely stoned. There was nobody else in the water and they had every wave to themselves. He remembers getting one that took him all the way past the rivermouth and onto the beach, with a frothing muddy barrel at the end that felt about ten seconds long. They camped on the point and ate mussels twice a day, and when they left they took a photo of themselves standing on the roof of the car. He has that photo still, stuck in a box somewhere, and decides he's going to look for it when he gets home.
They came again a year later, fresh out of matric and with faster cars. The waves were kak so they dropped acid and climbed the mountains instead. One afternoon Bevan swears he found bushman paintings up there but the other guys didn't see them, they were trying to meditate on some granite boulders and didn't want to be interrupted. Bevan never really got the whole meditation thing. He sat in front of the paintings and watched the eland grazing, and when a lion came to eat them he chased it away by shouting as loudly as he could.
On the way home from that trip his mate Carl rolled his car and died. He'd been driving alone because he'd been fighting with his girlfriend. She drove home with Bevan, and when they found the car with its wheels spinning in the air outside Veldrif she collapsed, so Bevan had to sort the whole drama out with the cops by himself.
He opens his eyes, unaware he's been reliving the memory. The sun has set and the sea has turned a deep shade of gold. He finishes the joint and stands up, feeling strange, like he's just remembered why he never came back for twenty years. That's ridiculous, he thinks, I'm at peace with that stuff now. He feels shaky but it's probably the beer. It's cold all of sudden and he wants to be in his tent, so he whistles for the dogs and starts walking back down the beach.
He hears the puppy barking from behind the dunes so he whistles again, but it doesn't come. Annoyed, he goes to see what the problem is. He finds the dog standing over an injured gull with its wing in its jaws, growling and dragging it backwards over the sand. He shouts but the dog doesn't let go, so he reaches down and tugs it free, holding the bird in his hands. The bird looks at him with a small black eye. This bird won't live, he thinks, watching its wing flap uselessly at its side. I should help it, I should set it free.
He twists its neck and feels it crack, and drops the animal to the ground. The first stars are out and he walks across the sand, like he's walking through a desert, with his four dogs following behind.