Between Kolgans Street and Strandloper Street stood a hill. A person could almost see the entire scheme from the hill. If only old Patrys did not decide to go and build his house there and on top of that build a high and mighty wall around it. After that, that hill seemed to belong to him alone.

People stopped going to visit after he made that hill his and also because of that heavy-tongued wife of his. She gossips about every living being in the scheme, or so the sisters at church tell me. Then there was the outside leventree. Everyone in Galjoen Scheme reckons that Patrys should ma rather have built himself a toilet inside because everyone in those days pissed outside or in a bucket that you had to Dettol and Jik to fix the smell. I mean, if he was going to show off his money, he might as well show off with an inside leventree. No one else had toilets in the scheme those days, so either he liked to piss outside or he built it for the queen.

But that is Patrys’s trick. He worries about no one. He is very to himself. He thinks he is better than everyone. His high and mighty tricks actually started when he bought that red Toyota bakkie in 1986 and started smousing. He, that is Patrys, made lekker money and all of a sudden the children wore new clothes and shiny shoes. But no one will forget that December when he came driving down the road with a big box on his bakkie. Because Patrys was a smouser, we all expected to see his bakkie with fruits and vegetables, but that day he had a big box. He pulled into his yard. I saw him ordering his two sons around, ordering them to help, even his wife helped. They knew the neighbours were watching, but they paid no attention to the curiosity. After they loaded the big box into the house we barely saw Patrys and his family outside. Patrys made a lekker profit because people wanted to find out what was in the box, so they would take more things on the book than necessary. He wouldn’t even tell the pastor’s wife. When she asked him what contraption was on his bakkie, he replied, ‘Husse met lang ore.’

Daleen, Patrys’s wife, and I wasn’t really friends, so I couldn’t just go to her house for a cup of tea without her knowing that I was there to fish out about what was in that box. Apparently after the big box commotion, neighbours heard voices from their house every evening at eight o’ clock when every one’s candles dimmed because in those days we mos didn’t have electricity and municipality toilets like we have today. Neighbours heard laughter and the new friends Patrys had in his house sounded like white people. The curiosity brought the entire scheme on its thorns because of the box and Patrys’s new friends that he entertained so in his house.

One evening Magdeleen, the pastor’s wife, couldn’t take it anymore and decided to call the Boere. She called me first, of course, asking can I come over, because she thinks that Patrys has finally done it, and clips down the phone. When I got to her house she was all shakes and nerves. She told me that she heard a big bang sound from Patrys’s house and then she saw Patrys reverse with his bakkie, tyres screeching out his yard. Magdeleen said she saw it with her own eyes, from her window. ‘My nerves can’t deal with this sin. I have to call the Boere,’ Magdeleen continued.

‘I’m sure it is nothing, maybe he went to get help,’ I tried to assure her.

‘No, I think he, you know,’ she used her thumb to draw a line around her neck to indicate what Patrys might have done.

It was about that time when Felisa Fluitjiebek came barging into the house to throw in her ten cents worth about the big bang she heard.

‘Now, what do you suggest we do?’ she interrupted. ‘It was that big revolver he bought. I’m telling you the sisters at church told me this. He kidnapped his family and then you know…’ Like Magdeleen just showed, she made a line with her finger on her neck from left to right.

Felisa Fluitjiebek was making everything worse and I didn’t like her very much. Ever since she started working for Pastor she thinks the sun shines out of her.

‘You ladies, I’m telling you, you are chasing ghosts,’ I said again.

But Magdeleen and Felisa Fluitjiebek wanted to hear of nothing. They were convinced Patrys committed a murder. Ai.

‘You ladies know g’n no one in this town has electricity, except for the Pastor and my husband of course, so maybe because of the silence, you maybe misheard the sound coming from there. Maybe Eileen let fall a pot or a baking tray,’ I continued.

A thing you must know about the people here in the scheme is that we go to sleep early. If the day goes to sleep, we all sleep and if something interrupts it, people lose their chickens, you know, like in they go bedinges. Why would Patrys go and kill off his family? He is a suurknol but not murderer. Nee uh-uh, I thought to myself.

Meanwhile, Felisa Fluitjiebek brought Magdaleen, now sitting in an armchair, some sugar water to calm herself.

‘When Pastor comes home from the meeting in Stanford he will have to pray for that family and why haven’t you called yet? Don’t just stand there with the phone,’ Magdaleen said looking at me like I was the person who mos killed someone.

I thought to myself, what the hell, just call the damn Boere, just to prove a point to these crazy women. We waited for quite a while for the Boere to come and later on the whole town was awake. The Boere can take their own time when it comes to scheme business.

When the Boere eventually came there, us three ladies were already standing with an oil lamp by Magdeleen’s gate while the rest of the street stood scattered in little groups anxiously waiting for the police to bring out a dead body. Because Magdeleen was so curious, she followed the young konstabeltjie to Patrys’s house. He didn’t seem to mind us walking behind him.

He knocked and heard steps towards the door, which then opened. He took the oil lamp I was carrying and lifted it up. We saw it was Eileen. ‘Excuse me ma’am, but there were reports of a crime taking place at this address.’

Eileen gasped with her hands over her mouth. ‘What crimes?’ she asked confused. ‘My husband has a licence for his smousing.’

‘Oh, so you’re the wife?’ He looked at me and then at Eileen. I was so embarrassed. The constable looked at her again very seriously.

Patrys’s wife with her big owl eyes looked at the konstabeltjie nervously and began telling him everything about the bang and the people and so on. ‘There was a cowboy programme on the TV and the cowboy shot the other cowboy in his glory. But the car battery was dying and we run the TV from it so Patrys ran out the house to go get a new one so that he could keep watching the TV. You see Mr Constable-Police, sir, it is his favourite show.’ She looked at the ground and looked like she was about to cry. ‘Please don’t arrest us. I promise we will put the sound softer. We didn’t know it was illegal.’

‘Your TV is not illegal,’ he assured her coldly.

The neighbours and I were shocked ash grey with what had happened. The Boere and the ambulance that came when all the commotion was done were probably dik bedonnerd too. But it happened. Nothing we could do about it.

I remember the konstabeltjie saying to Magdeleen, ‘I should be arresting you for wasting our time.’ But surprisingly Patrys’s wife came up for us saying that it was all a misunderstanding. We could have been in the tjoekie that night, God forbid.

Now every evening at six, half the scheme gathers at Patrys’s house on the hill. We laugh and drink coffee and watch cowboy shows and love stories on the big box.

I nogal feel bad for thinking such bad things of Patrys and his wife. He is actually really kind and giving. Always gives me half price on the potatoes. And Magdeleen and Felisa Fluitjiebek are bosom buddies with Eileen. It’s just Eileen this and Eileen that.

‘She is nogal really kind and boy can she bake doughnuts,’ Felisa Fluitjiebek tells me at the Sunday church service. ‘You should come with us next time.’ She winks at me.

‘Ag, I don’t know Felisa. I mean, I don’t want to be a nuisance.’

‘Ai no Dorie, we are all human, you must have a heart like the good Lord. They are very nice people and besides you are missing out on a lot.’

I watch Felisa walk up the hill to Patrys’s house, very eagerly too, to go and watch TV. I wonder for how long that is going to last.