Petrus felt he was a very fair man and after a few sips of branderwyn in Koos Van Rooyans voorkamer, he would tell Koos just how fair he was to his workers. Like the time he caught one supposedly stealing mielies and he had spent several hours discussing the merits of being being fair. After the earnest discussion the supposed mielie thief to this day finds it difficult to use his left arm and still walks with a limp.
His father had taught him the valuable lesson of not showing weakness to his workers. A lesson Petrus sensed his mother was quietly and very deeply disturbed by – "women" thought Petrus " do not understand these very complicated matters". Petrus was a wonderful student of his fathers lessons and as his stress levels grew his ability to be fair and not show weakness increased. All his workers had experienced lessons in being fair, only those desperate enough to stay, put up with these lessons. Whilst metering out his special brand of fairness on his farm workers, he would hear his father’s words. "you must not be weak, you must pull out an example and let the sjambok and the boot speak to all present."
Petrus was returning from Koos’s voorkamer when he noticed a sinister shadow prowling around his parent’s grave site. Being a big man and afraid of nothing, Petrus leapt off his horse, scaled the wall of the graveyard and apprehended the grave robber. The man’s accent was unknown to Petrus, he was possibly a migrant worker , definitely not a worker from the area. The pot of fresh flowers he was stealing was evidence enough. Fuelled with brandy Petrus let loose at the vuilgoed desecrating his parent’s graves. The big man never retaliated and as Petrus’s blows smashed into him he slowly sagged to the ground. Petrus’s boot struck home time and again, whilst the man quietly begged for mercy. When Petrus’s sense of fairness was appeased he tied the man up and dragged him behind his horse a short way from the grave yard.
The next morning Petrus went to go see his prisoner. The man was an old man, big., an inch taller than Petrus and wider at the shoulder. He was lying on his side with his shirt ripped open at the back. Petrus noticed his flawless skin but his eye was now drawn to the unmistakable duiker print birthmark on his right shoulder. Petrus slowly and apprehensively looked across to what he could see as the lovingly well-kept grave of his mother.
Suddenly the beautiful colourful flowers now strewn helter skelter, looked completely out of place, in contrast against the sombre ghostlike, white washed gravestones.
