By Any Means
Kurt Ellis
Human & Rousseau
In memory of Luke Cafun
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them …
Prologue
The year 1992
The top half of his forehead was noticeably lighter in complexion than the lower part of his face. A clear brown border had been made by the Stetson hat he always wore. A hat that was placed over his right knee at that moment. He was sitting on a concrete step, his forearms across his thighs.
The three boys sat cross-legged in front of him, two of them with eyes dinner-plate wide and paying close attention to everything he did. The third, a little younger and fairer-skinned, was more focused on a line of ants trooping past. They called the old man Oupa.
Oupa’s fingers worked skilfully, squeezing and rubbing together the green grass that was in the palm of his left hand. He had three fingers on his right hand – he was lacking the pinky and the ring finger. With his thumb he ground the weed further into his palm.
His eyes did not leave his hands when he said: “I am not happy about all of this, boys.”
The two boys lowered their eyes to the ground.
“School is important,” their grandfather continued. “Education, my boys. Education is your ticket to a better life. That is what we are fighting for. That is what I gave these up for.” He showed them his mangled right hand. “So that you can go to school. Not like me.”
His scarred and three-pronged hand slid down the side of his perch and grabbed hold of a sheet of newspaper. “The only use newspaper is to me is to roll up my zol in and to smoke.” He tore a strip of paper from the sheet and formed a green line down the middle of it with the grass. He licked the edge of one of the sides and rolled the paper over.
“Me, I can’t read a word. I don’t know numbers from letters, my boys. Ask me what is one plus one, and I will say it is apple. But that is okay. It is not my fault, because I wasn’t given the chance to learn proper. And it was not what God wanted of me. I had to go fight against that bastard Verwoerd and his people. I had to hold a gun and not a book. But you have the chance. To go to school and to learn. And to be intelligent. But for you boys to duck from school, for even one day …” He finally looked up and shook his head at them. “That is not on. That insults me. That insults every single one of my comrades that died for you. Education is important. That is why I buy these books in there.” He gestured to the shed behind him. “I can’t read a word, but I will buy as many books as I can get. Any book. I don’t care what book, but I will buy it. Dumb people get sweet fu …” He checked his language. “Sweet nothing in this world.”
Their grandfather placed the home-made cigarette between his lips and patted his brown pants, searching for matches.
“You know what?” he continued. “Look around you, boys. This is the world I am giving you. It’s not much. But you can make it better. I know you three can.” He found what he was looking for, opened the box and struck a match. He put the flame to one tip of the newspaper and pulled deeply on the blunt. When the paper caught fire, he blew sharply on it to extinguish the naked flare, so that all that was left was the soft glow of orange embers.
He sighed. “You are better than this. Smarter than this. And you must look after each other, because no one else will. If someone hurts one of you, the other two must destroy that person. You fuck them up. You hear me?” The three boys nodded. “And never back down. Never. Not from anyone or nothing. If something is not right, you say so. But don’t you dare ever back down when things get hard. You just need to get harder.” He pulled on the marijuana cigarette and shut his eyes, savouring the smoke in his lungs. “Yup. This is not much that I am giving. But you can change it. You can make it better.”
Their grandfather leaned forward, closer to them. So close that they could smell the dagga on his breath. “My children, your parents suffered because I was not here. I’m not happy with … But it isn’t their fault. It’s mine. Because I was too busy crawling through mud and bush in Botswana and Swaziland to be a proper father.” He slowly shook his head. “I was not the parent they needed. But you boys …” He smiled. “You boys are where the changes is going to happen. You will be the generation that sorts everything out. You have to be. I know there isn’t a lot of good role models around you. And me …” he shrugged. “I’m not gonna be around forever. But you don’t need role models. You have yourself. You know what is right or wrong in your heart.” He stabbed himself in the chest with his finger. “That is where God speaks to you boys. And you must listen.” He let thick smoke ooze from his nostrils. “But above all, you must do better than this. You must succeed, by any means necessary.”
1
The year 2000
The wind was warm. It whispered to him. And if he inhaled deeply enough, and if he really concentrated, Kyle could swear he smelt the scent of the ocean on its breath.
He was walking down Sparks Road, alone, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets, his head turned down to the earth. A black cap pulled down low over his brow. He loved that cap. It allowed him to disappear into the shadows. Away from the judging or pitying looks of people.
His eyes were glued to the pavement ahead of him as he softly whistled the tune of a song by the Bee Gees, “How deep is your love?” It had been his mother’s favourite.
The tarred surface of the road glistened from the heavy rain that had fallen earlier that evening but which had now eased into a light, warm drizzle. A devil’s rainbow in the middle of the road caught his attention. When he was younger, he’d been told by older kids that this was a rainbow made by the devil himself, and that if he walked over one, he would die. He had since realised it was just an oil patch reflecting the different hues of the spectrum. He shook his head slowly and smiled a wry smile. He was such an idiot to have believed them.
He was limping ever so slightly. Pain spread dully from his left knee with each step he took. This was the result of a fierce and hostile soccer game earlier that day. A game in which he had performed exceptionally well at the heart of the Villa Park defence, which he had marshalled as captain of the team. He just hoped that he had done enough to impress the academy scout from Birmingham in England. Charlie, his coach, thought he had.
The sound of nearby voices drew his attention. Kyle took his eyes off the toes of his tackies and looked up in the direction of Butcher Road. There, in the park that lay like an island amidst a sea of roads, stood a group of six men: six husbands tasting the bitter lips of their mistresses, the beer bottles. Their drunken banter drifted on the warm wind and caught his ear. They shared tales of wives who did nothing but complain, and stories of children who treated them with scant respect and who were getting up to all kinds of mischief. Kyle glanced at his watch. It was thirty minutes past midnight. In the morning, these men would be gone, but their beer bottles and their zol pipes would remain, like proud memorials amongst the rusted swings and merry-go-rounds on which the children played. And he knew that the next evening these men would return, and do the same. And the same the evening after that, and the evening after that.
There was a gunshot in the distance, followed by a chorus of barking dogs. It was actually a quiet night. Perhaps that was why he had struggled to fall asleep.
He continued down Sparks Road and crossed over Randles Road, which bisected it. He walked past the doctor’s rooms and into the passage between the bottle store and the video rental shop. Cautiously, so not to hurt his knee any further, he climbed the stairs of the block of flats. The stench of urine set his nostrils on fire, but he wrestled down the urge to vomit. Finally, he reached the graffiti-emblazoned wooden door at the top of the stairwell and pushed it open into the now unfamiliar smell of fresh air.
He