The Watermelon Story

Ron, Jamie and I were walking back from the little town of Wolseley where we had found a public telephone nearest to our camp site at Simondium in the Western Cape. My mother had insisted that I phone home every day.

It was a still summer evening, the sky darkening as we walked, but cool enough for me to pull my rugby jersey over my head. It was long-sleeved, white, with a broad sea-green band running across the chest. We strolled the few miles back to our camp without a care in the world, along a quiet country road, where double-strand barbed-wire fences marked the cultivated farmland on either side. The thin fencing was no bar to us when we came across a field laden with watermelons, lying in neat rows, ready for harvesting.

We decided to harvest a few for ourselves. The first one was not quite ripe, but the second, which we had opened by the simple expedient of dropping it on a rock, yielded a tasty dessert. Demolished in short order, this led to one more. Satisfied, we crawled through the wire, and continued our comfortable stroll. By now a low moon rode under a cloudless sky. There was little traffic. A lone car passed us.

We slept well, snug in our blanket rolls. For good measure, I had draped my jersey over my blankets as an added layer against the night air. The next time I saw it, it was held wide apart in the hands of a police sergeant who had just kicked me awake.

“This yours?” He said. I nodded. “Wore it last night?” I nodded again.

He jerked his head towards an open truck parked near, a constable at the wheel. “Come on, the three of you. Into the bakkie.” We were under arrest.