Chapter 4 - Stop Talking

CHAPTER 4: STOP TALKING

The road up Kgaswane was all switchbacks and no streetlights, his bakkie taking the bends from memory. Palesa rested her hand over his on the gearstick — light, testing — and he turned his palm up and held it, changing gears with her knuckles folded into his.

"You're quiet," he said.

"I'm looking."

"At the dark?"

"At you driving."

He smiled at the windscreen and said nothing, and the nothing was comfortable, and the comfortable frightened her more than anything had all day.

At the top, the world fell away. Rustenburg lay scattered below in amber and white, lights coming on in twos and threes, the mine headgear strung with stars of its own. The cold went straight through her coat.

He took off his jacket and hung it on her shoulders without asking. Just like that, she was wrapped in him — woody cologne, clean cotton, that mineral something underneath, still warm from his back.

"There." He pointed past her shoulder, close enough that his breath touched her ear. "That cluster of lights. That's my shaft. Four hundred men underground right now."

"Were you ever scared? Down there?"

"Every day." He said it simply. "That's the job. Being scared carefully."

She turned to look at him and found him already looking at her.

Other women closed their eyes when a man leaned in. Palesa never saw the point. You miss things.

So she watched him all the way in.

"Tell me to take you back," he said, a breath away.

"No."

"No, don't tell you — or no—"

"Khotso."

"Mm?"

"Stop talking."