That all ended when Kyle’s father lost his job. Just as Kyle entered high school, the family had to move to an outbuilding in Greenwood Park. Kyle had lost all contact with Captain and Jimmy for over four years. Then, it had happened, and now he was back in Sydenham, to live with Captain and his mother in their cockroach-infested home until he completed his high school education in six months’ time. That was six months too long for his liking. It was not as if he did not appreciate them taking him in, but he just couldn’t help feeling that he was a burden.
“Did you hear about what happened last night, ek sê?” Captain asked.
“Nope,” Kyle responded. “What happened?”
“You check,” Captain began, sitting up. “You were still at your game, I think. It was about nine, and that druggie fuck Uncle Ronnie is high on buttons or whatever the hell he was smoking. He comes home, starts his shit, and started fucking up Aunty Jean. So Jimmy tries to stop him, and that poes goes after Jimmy. Now Nazneen and me just come back at that moment. This skybird sees me, and he tries to run. That old bastard actually tried to run.” Captain chuckled. “He looked like a wet, skinny chicken trying to fly. But I caught him, and I bloody thrashed him.” He smiled as he slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. “Now I don’t know if I knocked him out, or if he just passed out from being high. Hell, I didn’t even know if he was dead or not. But the cake just lay there – out cold. So I dragged him onto the road and left his ass there. I don’t see him there now, so I guess the bastard ain’t dead.” Captain shrugged. “Pity.”
This story was familiar to Kyle. Jimmy and his parents lived in the small outbuilding behind Captain’s house, and this type of incident occurred at least once a month. Uncle Ronnie would have too much to drink, or smoke some nasty drug like Mandrax, and beat up on his wife and Jimmy. Then Captain would step in, beat Ronnie up and kick him off the property, only to have Aunty Jean let him back in the next day.
Kyle knew this never-ending cycle annoyed Captain. He was the one who paid the bills in this place. He bought the groceries and paid the electricity and water. But when Aunty Jean welcomed her abusive husband back into the home, Captain’s mother would always defend her sister – even if Captain had reached his limit.
Captain wanted Uncle Ronnie off the property for good, and Kyle feared that one day his cousin would snap. That Uncle Ronnie would simply disappear.
“Seriously, Kyle, I’m getting sick and tired of that ballie. One of these days, bru, I will make sure that ballie does not come back. Mark my words. And I don’t care what Nick says. I’m telling you, Kyle, that ballie is Rumpels.”
Kyle chuckled at Captain’s words. There had been an eight-month period when they were ten years old when Jimmy and his parents had moved out of Sydenham to avoid debt collectors. They’d moved into a tiny flat in Newlands East, and Kyle could remember that he and Captain would visit on weekends. During that time, there was a spate of child rapes and murders, with bodies dumped in the sugar-cane fields and in the bush. The very same bush in which Captain, Kyle and Jimmy built camps, or where they played games. Nobody knew exactly where the monster got his name from, but all the local kids called him Rumpels. And Captain had been convinced that Uncle Ronnie, Jimmy’s father, was Rumpels. That changed when their friend Nick witnessed another man dumping a body and informed the police. A man from Newlands West named Perumal Vijay was convicted of the crimes, but Captain never changed his mind about Uncle Ronnie. He hated the very air that Uncle Ronnie breathed. Kyle had heard his cousin say many times that some people are a cancer – you just have to cut them out. And there was no person Captain wanted to cut more that Uncle Ronnie.
4
A sudden sizzle told Kyle that the water on the stove had begun to boil over. He hurried back into the kitchen and turned the knob to switch off the plate. Careful not to spill any of the scalding liquid on himself, he carried the pot over to the bathroom. Gently balancing it on the corner of the tub, he put the plug in the drain, then tipped out the steaming water. He returned the pot to the kitchen for Captain to use and hurried back before the water could cool too much. After a quick bath and a much-needed hair wash, he dried himself off. He put a small amount of gel from the large two-litre bottle he shared with Captain and Jimmy in his hair and combed it away from his face. After just two steps towards his bedroom, his hair slipped back into his eyes. In the room he changed into his school uniform. Grey pants, a white shirt and a navy-blue tie with the name of the school, Bechet Secondary School, embroidered on it. Finally dressed, he returned to the lounge to see that Captain was no longer alone, but talking to a smiling Jimmy.
Jimmy did not have the family’s dark eyes and black hair. His eyes were brilliantly blue and his brown hair flirted with being blonde. His skin was much fairer than Kyle’s and Captain’s as well. And his fair cheek was at that moment glowing ruby red and eggplant purple with a bruise – the result of fatherly love, no doubt.
“I hear you were at the club this weekend,” Kyle said, as he sat down to tie his shoelaces.
“Ja, I went with some friends from school, but I didn’t drink.” Jimmy spoke in a soft voice, as usual.
Captain’s eyes were glued to the television and the news. An attractive reporter was interviewing an old coloured man from Mitchells Plain in Cape Town. The wrinkles on his cheeks formed troughs for his tears to run through. He roughly wiped them away with the back of his hand. The man was talking about the growing drug and gang problem around him that had led to his eight-year-old granddaughter being caught by a stray bullet the day before. He spoke in Afrikaans, but Kyle managed to understand that he had called the police many times over the previous few weeks about a drug dealer’s house across the road from his own. But nobody ever came, and now his baby was dead.
“Did you go to church?” Captain asked Jimmy.
“Yup.”
“Are you lying to me? You know Father Matthews will tell me if I ask.”
Their younger cousin laughed. “I’m not lying. I was there.”
“Good.” Captain got to his feet and went to check on the water that was heating on the stove. As he walked into the kitchen he muttered something to himself, just loud enough that Kyle caught what he’d said. “This bloody country doesn’t care about bruinous.”
Jimmy followed him like a puppy. “Are you coming to school today?”
“Ja, but I will be late.”
“Do you want me to wait for you?”
“What for?” Captain scoffed as he walked into the bathroom. “I’m ducking first period. Not in the mood for trigonometry. But I’ll be there later. You, though, are not ducking nothing. You need to move your ass before you’re late.”
Kyle got to his feet. “Come on, Jimmy. Let’s get going before Mr Williams makes you pick up papers.”
Kyle removed the small diamond ring that had belonged to his mother from his baby finger and slipped it into his wallet. Jewellery was not allowed at school. Not after a boy was stabbed in the toilet for his gold chain a year earlier. “I’ll see you later at school,” he called to Captain.
They walked out of the front door and down the cement path. Cigarette butts littered the dry brown sand of the front yard. Kyle snorted. It looked as if Aunt May’s friends were hoping to grow cigarette trees. What irritated him even more was that on the table around which they always sat, drinking and smoking, there was a damn ashtray. And it was almost always empty.
They