by Roger Smith
Benny Mongrel lived in a shack behind a narrow house. He unlocked the padlock on the makeshift door and stepped inside, his eyes adjusting to the windowless gloom. A stained mattress, a blanket scarred by cigarette burns, a three-legged chair, a primus stove, and a rusted tub to wash in. The corrugated iron room was barely big enough for him to spread his arms wide, and he couldn’t stand upright without his head touching the roof.
Once a day he was allowed into the bathroom of the main house to empty his slop bucket. A frayed extension cable snaked from the house, giving power to the naked lightbulb that dangled from a hook in the roof of his shack.
The place was a furnace in summer and flooded during the winter rains, but Benny Mongrel didn’t mind. After spending decades sharing prison cells designed for ten men with fifty others, the shack felt luxurious.
When he was released from prison, he had made a decision not to return to Lotus River, where he’d spent his brief youth. He had no family and nobody to call a friend, but he could have fallen in with the older Mongrels, who sat in taverns, drinking, smoking marijuana and tik, reminiscing, and planning the action that would send them back to the security of prison.
He never wanted to go back. Somehow he knew that a different sort of life was possible outside prison, even though he wasn’t sure exactly what that was. The only clue was Bessie. He missed the old dog during the empty, endless days. He couldn’t wait to see her at night, feel the reassuring sandpapery rasp of her tongue on his hand.
Benny Mongrel lay on the mattress in his trousers, his torso alive with crude prison tattoos: epaulettes indicating his officer rank on his shoulders, the words I dig my grave and evil one scrawled across his chest. Dollar signs, knives, and pistols. A Zulu shield, the emblem of the 28s.
It was too hot to sleep, and the relentless southeaster sandblasted Lavender Hill.
He thought about what had happened the night before. About those men who went into the house and never came back. The Americans. The 26s.
Benny Mongrel had killed more Americans than he could remember, in prison and out. The Mongrels and the Americans were kept apart in Pollsmoor. They watched each other uneasily in the corridors and across the exercise yard. Every now and then a new prisoner would come in, and one of the older gangsters would order him to kill one of the enemy, as an initiation rite. If he balked, he was gang-raped and made a wife.
Benny Mongrel had passed his initiation without blinking.
The last man he had killed had been an American, a 26, a year before he was paroled. There had been a half-heard word, an insult muttered as he passed. In prison this could not go unanswered. Benny Mongrel could have ordered a junior to do what needed to be done. But he preferred to do the work himself.
In the showers he slid the prison shank between the American’s tattooed ribs. He held the man close as he died, and as the light faded from his eyes he whispered what he always whispered, “Benny Mongrel say goodnight.”
He was back in his cell by lockdown.
The Americans and the other 26s were very quiet in the exercise yard the next day. Warders came and spoke to Benny Mongrel. He shook his head, shrugged. He knew nothing. They had tried to pry information from other lips, but men lived in fear of Benny Mongrel and knew it was better to stay silent or they, too, would hear a whispered goodnight.
What had happened last night wouldn’t just end there. No. He could sense invisible lines reaching out to the Flats, connecting to that house on the mountain. And to him, a Mongrel, a 28, who guarded the next-door house, just trying to lead a peaceful life.
Shit.
He sat up and took the knife from his pocket. He opened the blade and inspected it for imperfections. Then he reached under the mattress and found a scrap of sandpaper wrapped around a wooden block. With patient precision he honed the blade against the sandpaper.
After a few minutes he ran an index finger very softly down the blade. Beads of blood broke the surface of his skin. He wiped the blade, closed the knife, and slid it into his pocket.
Benny Mongrel lay back on the mattress in his shack and stared up at the tin roof, listening to the wind as it howled. Grit and dust blew in through gaps in the tin, and the corrugated iron rattled like gangs of manacled prisoners marching through Pollsmoor.
The southeaster blew itself out with a last violent gust, and then all was still. The city, purged of smog and filth by the wind they called the Cape Doctor, took on an almost hallucinogenic beauty. A cappuccino froth of white cloud floated on top of Table Mountain, and cars carrying tanned bodies and surfboards streamed down to the beaches.
Burn and Matt drove along the beachfront, past the tourist mecca of Camps Bay until they came to a small beach known only to the locals. Burn, Susan, and Matt had stumbled onto it during a walk, and it had become their favorite place to swim.
The beach was accessed by a steep path from the road above, too steep for most people’s liking. Burn and Matt walked down, holding hands, Burn lifting the boy when the path fell away too sharply for him to keep his footing. Burn was dressed in shorts and a cotton shirt, his feet in sandals. He carried a cooler and a beach umbrella. Matt was wearing his baggy swimming trunks, a bright T-shirt, and rubber flip-flops. They emerged through the bush onto a small beach surrounded by boulders, the azure ocean washing the sand. They were alone.
Burn jammed the umbrella into the sand and opened it, arranging towels in its shade. He stripped down to his swimming trunks. “You want to go in for a swim?” he asked Matt.
The boy was playing with a toy truck in the sand, absorbed. He shook his head.
Burn took a plastic bag from the cooler and went down to the water. He waded in, feeling the sharp bite of the icy Atlantic. No matter how hot the day, the water in Cape Town was always cold. At first, used to the temperate Pacific, he hadn’t ventured beyond his knees. Then he had grown to like the chilling sting, followed by the thawing when he went back into the sun.
Burn kicked out and headed toward a clump of rocks, towing the plastic bag with him. He untied the bag and took out the knives he had used to kill the two men. One by one he allowed the knives to si between the rocks into the deep water. He paddled a little farther and released the gun he had taken off the short man’s body, watching it slowly tumble out of view.
He had kept the tall man’s weapon: a snub-nosed Colt. He knew it was a risk, keeping the gun, hiding it in the closet in the bedroom, but it made him feel secure somehow. Like he would be able to fight back.
Against what, he didn’t know.
The water was starting to chill him, stinging his head and balls, but he forced himself to stay in a while longer, diving down until he touched the undulating kelp on the bottom. Then he floated to the surface and swam back to the sand. He waded out, gasping from the cold, feeling the sun on his body. Matt was under the umbrella, playing.
Burn dried himself. He took a plastic bottle from the cooler and started to smear high-protection sunblock into his son’s skin.
“Matt?”
“Yes.” The boy was still playing with his truck, not looking at Burn.
“Look at me.”
Matt dragged his eyes from the toy to his father.
“Last night, those men …” Burn was finding this as difficult as he knew he would. “They wanted to hurt Mommy.”
Matt stared at him. “Why?”
“They were bad men. And I had to do what I did to stop them hurting Mommy, or you or me, do you understand?” Burn held his son’s gaze, the clear blue eyes that reminded him so much of Susan’s. But without the shadow of mistrust that had entered hers.
“Yes. I was scared.”
“So was I.”
Matt hesitated. “Those men … they’re not coming back?”
Burn shook his head. “No. They’re not coming back.”
Matt nodded. “Are they dead?”
Burn stared at his son. “Yes,” he answered. “They’re dead.”
The boy nodded. “Okay.”
> Burn rubbed the sunscreen into Matt’s face, avoiding his eyes. Matt was wriggling, anxious to escape. “Matt, it’s okay if you feel scared. If you need to talk to me or Mommy.”
“No, I won’t be scared again. Not if they’re not coming back.”
“Matty, look at me.” The boy squinted up at him. “You know you can’t talk about what happened last night to anybody but Mommy and me. You understand?”
Matt nodded. “Yes, Daddy.”
Burn felt sick, making his son an accomplice. He rubbed in the last of the sunscreen and took his hands away from his son’s body. Matt found a sudden burst of energy and sped off to the water, running in until his toes were chilled, then running out again, laughing.
Burn lay on his back, propped up on his elbows, watchiht="0es son play on this idyllic beach. Still battling to process the violent detour his life had taken.
A detour that began two years back when Tommy Ryan knocked on his door.
He and Susan had just moved into a new house in the Valley when Tommy arrived, carrying a kit bag and wearing his killer smile only slightly dimmed by years of hard living and dubious dentistry. It was more than ten years since Burn had seen him.
After Desert Storm Burn had taken his discharge and moved to L.A., where he’d found work in the booming security industry. Tommy stayed on in the marines for another couple of years, then drifted into a series of jobs that never lasted, judging from the infrequent cards, always with different postmarks.
Susan hadn’t taken to Tommy Ryan. Burn sensed that when she looked at Tommy, Susan saw a fun-house reflection of her husband. The Jack Burn who might have been if things had worked out badly for him. But she’d done her best to hide her feelings, and made up a bed in the guest room for Tommy without asking how long he intended to stay. She laughed at Tommy’s jokes and pretended to enjoy the war stories. But Burn noticed that Susan avoided Tommy, spending her time with Matt, who was hitting the terrible twos head on.
Tommy had a gift. Bragged that his bullshit detector was more accurate than any polygraph. One night over a couple of beers, he asked Burn if he was happy and didn’t buy the answer. After a few more beers, Burn told him the truth: he was strapped for cash. His security business was less than a year old and not yet showing a profit. Renovations on the house had cost more than he’d planned, and Susan hadn’t worked since they were married.
His old buddy smiled that famous smile and offered a solution that was typically Tommy. Why didn’t they go down to Gardena and play poker? Tommy reminded Burn of the handle he’d worn back in the marines: Lucky. Earned because he’d cleaned up at every poker game he’d played.
“Jesus, Tommy,” Burn said. “We were playing for beer and smokes.”
“The cards are still the same, bro. ’Cept now you’ll take dollars from the suckers.”
And he did. He’d walked into the casino with two hundred dollars and was up two thousand by the time they quit.
Tommy laughed as they drove home, dawn already touching the San Gabriels. “What did I tell you? You haven’t lost your magic, man.”
The next day was Susan’s birthday, and Burn was able to buy her the pair of Italian shoes he knew she secretly coveted and take her to dinner at a fancy restaurant. They drank wine and laughed, almost like when they were dating. Then she paused a moment, her face suddenly serious in the candlelight, and asked if he could afford this. Susan was the daughter of an alcoholic gambler who had disappeared when she was ten, and Burn knew how she would react if he told her where he’d got the money. So he looked her in the eye and lied to her for the first time. Said business was good.
What else could he do?
He and Tommy went down to Gardena a couple more times. Tommy, of course, had introduced Burn to the other players as Lucky, and the name stuck. Each time he played, Burn lived up to the name. Sometimes he won big, and sometimes hiwinnings were modest, but he always left with cash in his pocket.
Cash that made things that little bit easier around the house.
After two weeks Tommy started looking restless, and he packed his kit bag and hit the road, leaving a trail of postcards from San Diego, Baja California, Fort Lauderdale, and then Chicago, where he had family.
Over the next two years Burn had carried on making those secret trips down to Gardena. Where he was Lucky.
Until his luck ran out.
Carmen Fortune woke alone in her bed. As she always did, she kept her eyes closed as if she was still asleep, listening for any sound of her husband. The way Ricardo Fortune started the day was an indicator of the treatment she could expect. If he was still passed out when she awoke, his body stinking of booze, tik, and other women’s juices, she knew she had time to put some distance between herself and him. He would drag his body from the bed after midday, demanding food. If he didn’t have any tik, he would be irritable and his fists would talk.
On the rare occasions he was up before her, it meant he had a job to do. Gang-or drug-related business, which meant that he was too preoccupied to bother with her. He would dress, clean and load his pistol, then slam out of the apartment.
But there was no sound when she woke up. All she could hear was the rasp of Uncle Fatty snoring on the sofa. Carmen got out of bed and parted the frayed curtain on the window in the bedroom. The glass was broken, shattered by a rock thrown by one of Rikki’s many enemies, and half the window was boarded up with a Castle Lager box. She looked out into the street, at the spot where he usually parked his red BMW. There was no sign of it. Carmen relaxed.
She went through to the living room and kicked Uncle Fatty in the ribs with her bare foot. He grunted and rolled over, his scrawny frame covered by a filthy blanket. Fatty, whose real name was Errol, was the brother of Rikki’s mother. He had worked for the council for years until he was pensioned off with lung problems. He’d always been a drinker, but when he retired he went from gifted amateur to pro. He gladly handed over his pension to Carmen, wanting only a constant supply of cheap wine and a roof over his head.
Carmen checked on Sheldon. He was in his cot next to the TV, sightless eyes open, hands moving. He had survived another night. She smelled that he needed to be changed. She would deal with that later.
Carmen had three abortions before Sheldon was born. Two were babies from her own father. He’d started coming into the room she shared with her two baby brothers when she was seven. There was no way, in the tiny house, that her mother could not have known. Carmen had fallen pregnant the first time when she was eleven.
Her mother had beaten her, called her a whore, and taken her to the clinic. Her mother had never said a word to her father; she had just quietly hated Carmen. When Carmen got pregnant again a year later, her mother threw her out of the house and Carmen went alone to the clinic.
By the time she was fifteen, she was carrying the child of some guy from the neighborhood, Bobby Herold. The Mongrels kicked Bobby to death in front of her eyes, the day she went to the clinic for the third termination.
Then she met Ricardo Fortune, and it happened again.
Amazingly, he had married her. The skinny little bastard strutted around like a king, Carmen and her swollen belly like a trophy at his side. Then Sheldon had arrived, and the beatings had followed not long after.
Carmen made breakfast. Uncle Fatty dragged himself from the sofa, walking around the apartment in stained briefs. She slapped a plate of baked beans and egg in front of him.
“You better wash today. Your ass stinks.”
He said nothing, pecked at the food. His toxic engine could only be kick-started by his postbreakfast drink.
Carmen fed Sheldon. She couldn’t face changing him now. He wouldn’t know the fucken difference. The downside of Rikki not being there was that there was no tik to take the edge off the day. She would have to go and score.
She washed herself and dressed in her best jeans and blouse. She tried to discipline her coarse hair with a clogged brush, cursing Gatsby for breaking her mirror. Fat fucken boer.<
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When she heard the knock at the door, she assumed it was one of Rikki’s useless connections. She yanked the door open, ready to give them a mouthful, when she saw Belinda Titus, the social worker who dealt with Sheldon’s case. They usually met at Social Services when Carmen went in once a month to collect Sheldon’s grant.
“I’ve come to check on your son, Mrs. Fortune.”
“You didn’t phone, nothing.” Carmen blocked the door.
“That’s the point of an unscheduled inspection, Mrs. Fortune. Please let me in.”
Carmen stepped back.
Belinda Titus was only a couple of years older than Carmen, also from the Flats, but she carried herself with an air of superiority.
“She thinks she shits ice cream” was how Carmen described her to Rikki in one of their rare conversations. The social worker, by her manner and the way she looked at Carmen, made her feel like trash.
Belinda Titus stood looking around the dingy apartment, wearing a pinched expression on her face. Uncle Fatty chose that moment to emerge from the bathroom, still wearing nothing but his filthy underwear. He looked at the two women, stayed mute, just sat down on the sofa and stared into space.
The social worker walked across to the cot where Sheldon lay. She moved aside the sheet covering him, and her nose twitched. She looked up at Carmen.
“Mrs. Fortune, this child is in a disgusting condition.”
“I was about to change him.”
“That’s the least of it. Without even examining him, I can see he has bedsores. And look at this bedding; it is shocking.”
Carmen felt herself coloring, felt the anger rising. She battled to control herself. “I tole you. I was gonna clean him and change him.”