Roger Smith - Mixed Blood

Ronnie September and Cassiem Davids came upon them next, sometime after eight in the morning. They were both eleven years old, in their school uniforms, but they had no intention of going to school.

They headed across the open veld, sucking on illicit cigarettes, putting as much distance between themselves and their homes in Paradise Park as they could. They were going to jump a taxi and head for Bellville to play arcade games.

It was Ronnie who saw the white Nikes sticking out of the grass. He stopped and pointed. “Check that, man.”

Cassiem stared. “Those is Nikes.”

“I know that. You think I’m stupid?”

The two boys edged closer to the body of a short, skinny man, only partly covered by black garbage bags. Boys their age who grow up on the Cape Flats are no strangers to dead bodies, but the stench was fierce.

“Look, there’s another one.” Ronnie was pointing to where the body of a tall man spilled from the torn bags. He ran a discerning eye over the lanky corpse’s outfit. “His clothes is shit, man.”

“God, but it stinks.” Cassiem was covering his nose with his hand.

Ronnie sucked on his cigarette and stepped closer to the small corpse. The dead man lay on his back, the jagged slash in his throat gaping at the sky. “Yaaaw. He was cut, hey?”

Cassiem was looking over Ronnie’s shoulder. “Those pants is nice. Diesel.”

“It’s full of blood, man.” Ronnie stooped a little lower. “Maybe he got a phone.”

“I’m not putting my hands in there.”

Ronnie was eyeing the shoes. “That Nikes is brand-new.”

“I saw them first!”

Ronnie gave his friend a shove. “So, you gonna take them off him? Do it then!”

Cassiem said nothing, took a step back.

Ronnie shook his head, disgusted. “My little sister got more balls than you, man.”

“Ja, okay, then let me see you do it. Come.”

Ronnie eyeballed his friend. He’d always kept a safe distance from the bodies he had seen before, watched as cops or paramedics had shoveled tm into bags and carted them away. This was different. Shit, this was fucken disgusting.

But he looked down at his torn and scruffy running shoes, inherited from his brother. There was no way he was ever going to afford a pair of Nikes like these.

Ronnie took a deep breath and knelt down and pulled loose the laces of one of the shoes. He almost puked from the stink. He untied the other shoe. Then he tried to get the shoe off. The corpse had bloated and stiffened, and the shoe was tight on the foot. Ronnie was tugging, and that set the dead man’s head lolling back, the wound opening even wider, and a fat white worm crawled out.

It was too much for Cassiem, and he spewed his breakfast of egg and leftover mince curry onto his shoes.

Ronnie wasn’t giving up. He tugged again and finally managed to get a shoe off, falling onto his butt in the process. Then he attacked the second shoe and separated it from the dead man’s foot.

Ronnie stood, triumphant. He held the shoes up in front of Cassiem, dangling them by the laces. “Gottem.”

“They fucken stink.”

“Yours stink, and you aren’t even dead yet.”

Ronnie walked away from the bodies, Cassiem tagging after him. Ronnie sat down and pulled off his old shoes and threw them as far as he could into the bush. He slipped on the new Nikes.

“They fit perfect.” He stood, lifting his trousers to his ankles, flexing his toes.

Then he grabbed Cassiem by the tie and pulled him close. “You keep your fucken mouth shut about this, okay?”

Cassiem nodded. Ronnie was already walking toward the road. Cassiem shot a look back over his shoulder at the red socks sticking out of the garbage bag; then he followed his friend.

Burn fetched Susan from the clinic shortly before noon. She looked pale but composed as he helped her into the front of the Jeep. He lifted Matt into the back and belted him into the car seat.

Susan didn’t look at him as they drove. “Where are we going?”

“Home. To the house.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to go back there, Jack.”

“Susan…”

“I mean it. Not after what happened.”

He said nothing, then realized that his knuckles were white on the steering wheel. He forced himself to relax. “Where do you want to go then?”

“I don’t care. A hotel. Anywhere but that house.”

He pulled over and stopped. An almost absurdly beautiful expanse of sun-washed ocean and mountain spread out below them. Neither of them was looking at the view.

“Susan, it’s important that we don’t do anything out of the ordinary. Anything that could attract attention.”

“You mean like kill a couple of locals in our dining room?” She was furious, two red spots touching her cheekbones. Susan shut her eyes briefly and took a breath, her hands resting on her swollen belly. She looked over her shoulder at Matt, who was staring at his parents anxiously.

Susan reached back and caressed Matt’s hair. “It’s okay, Matty. Mommy and Daddy aren’t fighting.”

Burn, watching in the rearview mirror, saw an uncertain smile touch his son’s lips. Susan turned to face forward again, staring down at the ocean below.

“Baby, you need to relax. Please.” Burn tried to take her hand. When she pulled it away, he noticed that she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. “Where’s your ring?”

She looked at him. “Jack, did you hear a word I said yesterday? About going home?”

“Of course. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”

“I meant what I said.”

“I know you did. And I understand.” He had to get ahold of himself, force himself to keep it together. “All I’m asking for is some time. To organize myself.”

“How much time?”

“A couple of days. A week at the most. Until then, we need to keep up our usual routine.”

She was looking at him, intuiting something. “What’s going on, Jack? What’s happened at the house?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s happened.”

“Don’t lie to me. Please.”

He nodded. “Okay. Those… those men left a car in the street, outside the building site. It must have been reported. A cop was around asking some questions.”

“Jesus, Jack.”

“It’s fine. He went to every house in the street. It was just routine.”

She was shaking her head. “So he’s watching the house?”

“No, I haven’t seen him again. I told you, it was just routine.”

Susan turned slightly to face him, her eyes searching his face. “Three days, Jack. Three days, and then I’m contacting the consulate. Are we clear on that?”

“Yes.” He started the car and pulled back onto the road.

His wife had become his enemy.

Berenice September carried shopping bags into her small house. She worked as a cashier at Shoprite, and she’d used her staff discount to buy supplies for herself and her three kids. Like many women on the Flats, she was a single parent. Her useless bastard of a husband had left her for a young slut and then got thrown under the wheels of the Elsies River train.

Good riddance.

Her eldest boy, Donovan, was doing fine. He had a job and brought some money into the house, and her daughter, Juanita, was too young to be any trouble. But it was her middle one, Ronnie, who reminded her of her late ex-husband. He had that same fuck you attitude. She would have to watch him.

Ronnie came slouching in while she was preparing supper, heading straight to the room he shared with his brother. She yelled after him. “Hey, come here.”

He hovered in the kitchen doorway. “Ja?”

“What time is this?”

He could never resist consulting the huge Batman watch on his skinny wrist. It was a Hong Kong rip-off but still his most treasured possession. “It’s ten past five.”