Sandpiper Drift

Koppies, muted brown and dusty, fell off in gentle folds on both sides of the steep road they'd just ascended. Even with her sunglasses, Monica found the warm summer daylight achingly bright as she climbed out of the rental car and hopped onto a large boulder for a better view."Henry, you have to see this!" she called to the cameraman shooting the footage for the story she hoped would be her entree into television journalism. Henry was asleep on the back seat.Below lay a small town that was almost hidden from view by great swathes of colorful flowers."Bougainvillea!" exclaimed Henry, joining her on the boulder. "Like I've never seen them before."Cerise, burnt orange, brilliant pink and sunshine yellow, they billowed over fences, walls and gates, weighed down veranda roofs, scaled tree trunks to take up residence in the branches and crept along telephone lines. What appeared to be a main street was lined with palm trees, as well as the persistent bougainvillea. With the sun reflecting off the green, blue and deep red tin roofs, the whole town had a bright glow, almost like a halo."I feel as though I'm in a glass-bottomed boat looking at a coral reef," said Monica, and Henry murmured in assent.The sight was unexpected, especially as, since leaving Cape Town, they'd spent an hour and a half passing stubby clumps of reeds with small brown florets and shrubs with thin, leathery leaves. "Fynbos," Henry had explained, reading aloud from Monica's guidebook. It literally meant "fine bush" in the Afrikaans language.On the western edge of the town a pile of rocks signaled the end of land and the beginning of the Atlantic. Large, jagged and precariously balanced, they were a sign that the ocean was not always this placid. Before Henry had fallen asleep he'd told her that less than a few hundred yards off the coast many wrecks lay covered in seaweed -- breeding grounds for tuna, snoek and the great white shark.On the northern edge of the town a lagoon stretched inland in the shape of a giant horizontal question mark. The tide was out and the mudflats surrounding it glistened in the sun.Monica and Henry got back into the car, and as they began the descent past limestone outcrops, Monica opened her window just an inch to breathe in a grassy, lemony scent that was unfamiliar but quite pleasant. More than two years ago she'd been attacked by a carjacker, shot and left for dead. Like a stubborn stain, she could not erase from her mind the vision of those mirrored sunglasses and the drops of sweat sliding down the man's shaved head. The limp she had been left with in her right leg was a constant reminder. He had not been captured and she'd given up all hope that he ever would be. Her anxiety seemed silly in this bucolic place -- after all, she'd been carjacked in Soweto, a sprawling dormitory town adjacent to Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa -- but it was almost involuntary, like her heart pumping blood.The main street of the town was flanked with open ditches carrying streams of fast-running, clear water. Storefronts faced outward, their display windows shaded by tin roofs that covered the entire sidewalk. Potted pink and orange geraniums stood sentinel at uniform intervals. Outside the Lady Helen General Store, two white-haired men lounged on a bench, reading newspapers, a scruffy dog at their feet. A little farther along, a woman sat straight-legged on a blanket, rows of beaded jewelry and hair ornaments spread out in front of her. An infant lay cradled in her lap, nursing under a light, crocheted shawl."That's strange," said Henry, shaking his head. "There's no litter."He was right -- not even a single cigarette butt. The town gleamed like a much-loved home.It seemed to Monica that many of the stores housed art galleries. Watercolor renderings of the local landscape dominated the displays, but there were also vivid abstract works, folk art, curvaceous stone sculptures and black-anDel Fabbro, Vanessa is the author of 'Sandpiper Drift', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373785650 and ISBN 0373785658.