Roger Smith - Mixed Blood

“That’s my mommy,” the kid said, and started to wail again.

Zondi scooped him up off the counter. His suit would need to be cleaned after this. The child stank, and already he had deposited a smear of snot on Zondi’s shoulder.

“I’ll take this from here,” he told the woman.

“This child needs medical attention,” she said, anxious that her guest role in this little drama not end without the proper climax.

“I’ll take him to hospital, don’t worry.”

Zondi walked the kid out to his car, set him in the rear, and tried his best to secure him with the seat belts. He retrieved his laptop from the trunk and went online. It took him less than two minutes to find out that Jack and Susan Burn were fugitives from justice.

He didn’t know where Jack was, but he had a good idea where he could find Susan.

But first he had to find an ice cream.

Susan Burn lay in the recovery room, feeding her baby. A painkiller dripped into the catheter in her spine. She removed Lucy from her breast and lay with her cradled in the crook of her arm. Susan felt blank. Empty. Devoid of volition. Waiting for something to happen.

She became aware of voices outside the recovery room. The nurse’s voice, insistent, agitated, and then a man’s voice, emphatic. The door opened, and the nurse came in.

“Susan, I’m sorry, but there’s a policeman here. And he insists on seeing you.”

Susan sat up. The waiting was over. “Okay, bring him in, please.”

A tall black man in a dark suit came in. He carried Matt. She saw that her son was filthy, his light hair crusted with dried blood. When Matt saw his mother, he reached for her and started crying. Susan was beyond surprise. She held out her arms for her son.

The man gently placed Matt on the bed beside Susan. She hugged her son, staring at the man over Matt’s shoulder. The man turned to the nurse. “Leave us alone, please.”

“She’s just had a procedure. This is highly irregular.”

“I won’t be staying long.”

The nurse left, reluctantly.

The man showed Susan his ID. “My name is Special Investigator Zondi. Ministry of Safety and Security.” She nodded. “Is your name Susan Burn?”

She felt relieved. It was over. Finally. “Yes. Have you come to arrest me?”

“No. That’s out of my jurisdiction. I came across your son, and I wanted to return him to you. Get a positive ID on him.”

“What happened to him?”

The man was standing. “I’m going to leave you now. I’ll ask the nurse to take a look at your son and clean him up.”

“Where’s my husband?”

“I have no idea, Mrs. Burn.”

Susan was staring at him. “That’s it? You’re just going to leave?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Wait. Please tell me what happened. Where you found Matt.”

He looked at her. “I don’t know exactly what happened. My guess, and I could be wrong, you understand, is that your son was kidnapped. And your husband tried to get him back, but the boy was released out on the Cape Flats.”

Susan was processing this, through the fog of the painkiller. “Matt was kidnapped?”

“Yes. I believe so.”

“And Jack, my husband, tried to handle this on his own?”

“It seems that way, yes.”

“My son could have been killed?”

He nodded. “Yes. It was a dangerous situation.”

Susan felt Matt crying, his body racked by sobs. Then she felt an enormous and all-consuming anger, like a fire raging inside her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Zondi.”

“Mr. Zondi, I want you to help me, please. Help me to put an end to this.”

Zondi stared at her. Then he nodded.

Burn had found the distant Table Mountain through the smoke, and that led him to the freeway. He was on his way back into Cape Town. He had made up his mind; he was going to Sea Point police station to report the kidnapping of his son. He knew this almost certainly meant that the truth about who he was would emerge, but he didn’t care. He had to find Matt. If it wasn’t already too late.

As he came around Hospital Bend, the sprawl of city and harbor below him, his phone rang. When he saw Susan on caller ID, his impulse was to ignore the call. How could he face his wife now? But he answered.

“Susan. How are you?”

“Jack, I’m fine. We’re fine.”

“So it’s done?”

“Yes.”

“And she’s okay? The baby?”

“She’s perfect.”

“I’m glad, Susan.”

She interrupted him. “Jack, Matt’s here.”

He thought he was hallucinating. “What did you say?”

“I said Matt’s here. A policeman found him out on the Cape Flats.”

“My God, Susan, I’m so sorry…”

“Shhhhhh, Jack. Don’t say any more. Just come here. Come here now.”

“Okay.” He felt a heady rush of relief. His son was safe. His infant daughter was alive. His wife wanted him to come to their side.

“Jack, you’re coming here? To us?”

“Yes.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Carmen Fortune sat for a long while at the taxi stand, watching the minibuses hurtling in and out, the distinctive cries of “Caaaaape Teeeeeuuuuunnn” as the sliding-door operators urged her to board. She ignored them.

It was still light, only just gone seven, and the sun hammered the Cape Flats.

On impulse she stood and walked a block, until she came to the street where she had grown up. Protea Street. She hesitated, almost turned on her heel, before she gathered the courage to approach the house of her nightmarish childhood. A small, scruffy place surrounded by a sagging wire fence, no different from hundreds around it.

Carmen hadn’t been inside, or spoken to her parents, since her mother had thrown her out six years ago. Before she could stop herself, Carmen opened the front gate and walked up the short pathway and banged on the door.

The door opened a crack and she saw her mother’s face. She fought the urge to run.

Her mother glared at her, shocked. “What do you want here?”

“I want to see him.”

“You’re not welcome here. Go back to the street where you belong.”

Her mother was closing the door. Carmen pushed the door open, forcing her mother backward. Then she was walking down the corridor toward the main bedroom, her mother’s hands clutching at her back.

Carmen swung and faced her. “Is it true that he gonna die?”

Her mother wilted. “Ja. He don’t have long.”

“Then I have the right to say good-bye.”

Her mother said nothing, but she slumped in defeat. Carmen went into the bedroom without knocking.

A skeleton with gray skin and sunken eyes lay under a sheet on the bed. It took her a moment to connect this emaciated thing with the sweating, grunting weight that had pressed down onto her small body night after night.

It was the voice that did it.

“Carmen. You’ve come.” The voice was weaker, but it was still the one that had poured filth into her ears as he raped her. This was her father, okay.

She walked up to hionntood over him, staring down.

He tried to smile, revealing gums set into a mouth like a sinkhole. “Carmie, the good Lord has answered my prayers.”

“Ja? Has he?”

“I prayed that you would come to say good-bye to me before I go.”

Her father’s eyes were filled with self-pity and fear. He was not going easily to his final destination.

A clawlike hand was groping for hers. She slapped the hand away and pressed her face close to his. “Drop this God bullshit, you bastard. You think raping your own child for years, making her pregnant twice, and throwing her out of your house is something God is going to forgive?”