Christ! I…."
"Don't worry, don't worry. We can get you all the credit you need. You can sign your name? Right, my mate." He spoke with earnest enthusiasm, like a religious zealot does when flogging Jesus on the street corner. Leaning forward, hands on the counter, belly resting on the scarred wooden surface, he said, "This is now serious business. There's plenty danger out there. You got to think about this logical and cool. This is our history we talking about, this is our destination, so help me God. If you're too shit scared to take your own history by the balls and examine it and say yes, this is my destination and this is what I got to do, then fuck it man, you nothing but a fokken moffie, and one day soon you'll be calling the kaffir "Meneer" and he'll be living next door. No man, you got to say, Not a fuck, over my dead body, and you got to fight, fight, fight. Ever since Jan van Riebeeck, way, way back… thousands of years… we been fighting the Hotnots and the Kaffirs. You know, I'm going to tell you something no word of a lie, and I'm proud of it. It's part of my heritation. My father, and his father too before that, they used to hunt bushmen, and that's the truth. Jus' like animals. They were vermin."
"I'm sure they were." Henry was shocked. "They must hardly have been human to have been capable of such heinousness."
The blue eyes regarded him uncomprehendingly for a moment, suspicion flickering just beneath the surface.
"I suppose you're telling me all this,” said Henry, “In order to illustrate some point or other. Maybe even then, back in those dreadful days of decimation and extermination, maybe even then there was the right gun for the right job. Is that where you're heading, Sir Fatguts?"
"The right gun for the right job! Just so!" He was grateful for the cue. "My father, he use to say to me, many times, Boitjie, you got to have…"
"Is that your name?"
"What?"
"Is that your name? Boitjie?"
"No, course not. What you think? We was a big family. He called all the sons Boitjie. Anyway, that's got fuck-all to do with anything. My real name is Gerhardus. But they call me Mike, or sometimes Okkie. You call me Mike."
Now Henry was beginning to enjoy himself. This was just the right situation to stimulate his senses, which he felt had become rather dulled of late. Everything was a surprise and he was delighting in the absence of logic and predictability. He breathed rapidly and his eyes sparkled. Mike continued.
"The style of killing my father enjoyed the best was using a light calibre rifle. His style was slow and cool, never in a hurry. The idea he had was never to fire unless he can place the bullet in a vital organ. You see, if you places a bullet correc' it doesn't matter what the calibre. But you got to have nerve for that, that's for sure. You get other okes completely different. Take my uncle Poeslap. Now, he think…"
"Your uncle's name was Poeslap?" Henry was staggered. "Jesus, man! Was he christened that?" (Poeslap is Afrikaans for cunt rag.)
"Allemagtig man! It was his nickname - everybody called him Poeslap, even his mother, even his wife. Something to do with his bokbaard, jy weet. Hy was ‘n rooikop. (Something to do with his beard, you know. He was a redhead.) His hair was red coloured. But what's all this name kak? I'm trying to learn you about rifles. Now, Oom Poeslap was always a bietjie bang (a bit scared), and he believed in the biggest bore rifle he could get hold of. A Rigby-Mauser double .577. He wired all two triggers together and when he pulled the back one all two barrels fired at the same time. But he always fired too soon. I don't think he got even one. Not even one. One time he went out to try catch them poisoning his sheep and when he come near the water he see them and fire, jus' like that, from three hundred yards. Of course he miss the Bushmen but hit one of his own sheep. My father told me he seen that sheep later and it was just about cut in half. Now my father was different. He got at least six that I know of, before they all run away to the Kalahari. His favourite weapon was a Lee-Enfield .275. He only fired when he got real close and were sure of a brain shot or a heart shot. He believed the best ammunition was the old round nose solid bullets. He sweared that was the best way to find the brain of a Bushman. You know, he said it was like shooting a springbok. When he come right up to the kill the body was still warm and soft and smelling just like a wild antelope; and, if the face wasn't taken away by the round nose, he saw the last light going out the eyes, just the same like when you shoot a wildebeest. He said they were wild and beautiful just like the wild animals but they was wragtig (extremely) treacherous and sly. I mean, he had to shoot them to protec' his sheep, didn't he? Ja man, my father learned me good lessons. It just shows you, you don't need a big calibre. You must jus' stay cool and calm, and take your time, like."
"But I'm not going to be hunting Bushmen. Not even buck." Henry had begun to perspire, and had to tell himself to stay cool and calm, and not allow himself to be overtaken by the funk he felt coming on. He was here to be entertained and educated. "I don't think I need anything like a…"
"Wag 'n bietjie, Meneer, wag 'n bietjie. Ek gaan jou verduidelik." (Hold it, Sir, hold it. I’m going to explain.) Let's say you comes home one day and you unlocks the door and goes inside. You hears something in the bedroom and there's a fokken coon just finish raping your wife on the bed. YOUR bed. He looks at you, you look at him. It's that fokken garden-boy you klapped (thumped) last week. You go for your 38 but he jumps straight through the fokken venster, glas en alles (through the fucking window, glass and all). More expenses! And he's up and running like a cat with its tail on fire. So what you do? Tell me." Henry shook his head. "I tell you what you do. You go straight away to your gun safe, you get out the Springfield MIA and you go out the front door, not the back. Out the back you got razor wire on the wall so you know he's got to go for the front. That kaffirboy will be running down the middle of the road, eighty, maybe a hundred yards away. Nice and steady and cool you line up your sights on the spine, you drop to the belt and you squeeze the five and a half pound trigger. He throws up his arms and falls flat on his flat kaffir face. Paralysed. Then you shout, "Stop, or I shoot!" and you fire a warning shot in the air. If he don't fall down you got another nineteen in the magazine and a range of four thousand one hundred and three yards. If you got him with the first shot, that's good. Now you got all the time in the world before the police come. You can skop (kick) his head and his balls just as much as you like. That's the advantage of the Springfield MIA."
He paused for Henry to express admiration and a desire to acquire such a useful weapon.
"Well, as I told you, I'm not married. I can see that this rifle could come in handy to a married man with an aggrieved ex-employee lurking in the shrubbery. But being a bachelor with…"
"God Allemagtig!" He swore and banged the counter in exasperation. With contemptuous hostility he glared at Henry. "Can't you use your fokken imagination? Don't you read the newspaper? Don't you ride down the street? Isn't this the Republic of South Africa? Jirra Jesus! Look man, I can't waste my time trying to educate you. You come in here for a gun. You need four guns, minimum - that's what I'm telling you. One of the guns you needs…” he stepped back, stooped and drew the fearsome thing out from under the counter, "… is a Springfield MIA." He worked the bolt, pointed the barrel at Henry's stomach and pulled the trigger click, click, click. "Rotating bolt, gas operated, semi-automatic, air-cooled, twenty cartridge magazine." He threw it down on the counter. "Take it or leave it. Aaargh!"
Henry was surprised at the fierceness of this peroration and noted with alarm that the sanguine complexion had darkened to apoplectic purple. Boitjie/ Gerhardus / Mike/ Okkie had made a strong statement when he said, "Take it or leave it." He had also added dramatic finality to his statement by simultaneously throwing himself into a chair behind the counter. What Henry heard as "Aaargh!" and understood to be an expression of enraged contempt, was, in fact, something quite different. It was a gasp of pain, enunciated as "Einaaa!" and quite easily mistaken for "Aaargh!" The pain was inflicted by the 38 Police Special in his hip holster when he chose to sit down with histrionic
forcefulness.
"Sir, allow me to take over where my colleague has left off." This was a younger man, taller and thinner, with a long narrow face and small bright eyes. His sales manner was smooth to the point of unctuousness. "Take it from me sir, and I'm being particularly frank with you, we really value the way you've come in here and made these serious enquiries. Lest there be any misunderstanding - my colleague's English is not quite what it should be - let me rephrase his last statement. He feels you should definitely take the Springfield and under no circumstances should you leave it. He is perfectly correct in insisting that every adult white male in South Africa should be required by law, for his own good, to own at least four appropriate firearms. It would be irresponsible for him not to do so. He has shown you this assault rifle, which you can use in situations similar to the one he has just described. You could say it is mainly intended for shooting people who are running away and are unlikely to try and defend themselves. Now this…" He turned and took down a piece of artillery from the wall rack. "…This is the latest technology in submachine guns. This is really beautiful."
At the sight of it laid on