Kingdoms of the Radio: Zongo Khumalo 3 [ficção]

UNFINISHED DOCUMENTARY, KINGDOMS OF THE RADIO  |  1995

It had been a couple of years since I’d been back north, but I thought I knew every place there was to know. That’s one of the things that made me want to leave in the first place. I had directions and a map to Garissol from Mrs. Chaves, but they didn’t really make sense. Where she had drawn the road to the old ranch, there was only a solid wall of brambles. I knew that the fuckers grew fast in the county, but this looked like virgin territory.

Enrique had a couple of big old machetes in the back of his bus from a harvest, so we decided to try and see what, if anything, was on the other side of the blackberries. We had spent so much time trying to find a road that seemed to no longer exist that the sun was starting to go down behind the tall trees. I guess if we hadn’t still been a little wired, we probably would have waited until the next day.

It was pretty rough going, but we did start picking up signs of an old wagon road deep in the thicket. I found it incredible to think that maybe no one had been out this way since the very first cars drove up the coast. The very thought sent a chill up my spine, especially since the next thought was, “Why the hell not?”