Sheep magazine archive 1: issues 3-9

their orders to hide behind and whole families were uprooted – to
be scattered in their homelands. Umfons had stayed. The date on
the Dunlop calendar on the wall, today’s date, was heavily ringed.
Her smile shone as she noticed the sun already above the horizon,
wobbling in the heat haze like the egg yolk she’d just broken in the
frying pan. She started singing and woke the boys.
54
Umfons was already on the train, his awkward posture in the
crowded carriage dictated by the expensive, but ill-fitting new suit,
so obviously admired by his fellow passengers that they made extra
room for him, so’s he wouldn’t create new creases. He was going
home, he’d told them, although he’d lived all his life in the city and
this was his first trip to the Transkei. Good natured banter broke out
in the carriage as the sun warmed the sleep from the occupants’
eyes, the distantly familiar clicking of his mother’s Xhosa, now
all around him, brought back childhood memories – the slick
smoothness of the Zulu he had lived with for so long now seemed
ugly by comparison. Friendly suggestions on what to do when he
and Priscilla were alone together again were sheepishly laughed
off by an embarrassed Umfons, he enjoyed the attention but now
he wished he could become just another anonymous passenger
again. Someone started singing and he was happy and relieved
to join in. He stared at the unchanging, flat, barren plain as they
pursued their straight course, occassionally small boys would
appear from nowhere to wave and shout as the train trundled by.
His thoughts dwelled on the way things were; as a black man he
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 7