Ishmael Toffee

by Roger Smith

  When Ishmael turns the kid is gone and he panics a moment before he spots her standing up by the door of the KFC staring at the TV that’s stuck to the wall.

  “That’s Daddy,” the kid says, pointing her finger at the TV.

  The door of the KFC is open and Ishmael can hear the news broadcast, hear the white man standing outside the big house telling how his child is gone.

  “And that’s me.” The child says as her smiling face comes up on the screen.

  The photo of the kid disappears and Ishmael sees his own mug shots, all gang chops and dead eyes—making him look like the worst thing ever born out of the Cape Flats. Then the white man is back, saying how Ishmael kidnapped his child. The father’s got tears in his eyes, begging people to help him, offering two hundred and fifty thousand for any information that gets his little girl home safe.

  Ishmael grabs the kid’s hand and he’s running again, dragging her with him, not hearing her moans and groans. His ears are still full of the white man’s voice. A quarter of a million.

  Jesus Christ, everybody on the Flats is gonna want a piece of that, and your ass, Ishmael my buddy, is gonna be fucken grass.

  18

  The TV people have packed up their bright lights and cameras and gone, and the journalists and photographers—with their shouted questions and flashbulbs—have sped away in their fancy cars. Most of the police have gone too. Just a few in uniform walking around the garden with dogs, and a Boer in a cheap suit who sits in the living room talking to Mr. Goddard.

  “We’ve had a tip off,” the cop says. “Cindy and this man Toffee were seen in Paradise Park, in the last hour.”

  “Where’s Paradise Park?” Mr. Goddard asks.

  “Out on the Cape Flats. Not a good place. But we’re sending in reinforcements and a helicopter. We’ll find her.”

  “This is a nightmare,” Mr. Goddard says.

  “At least we know where they are. And that she’s alive.”

  Earlier the Boer asked Florence endless questions and she answered the best she could. Taking him over every blessed detail of the day, until her head was spinning, then the cop shrugged her away like she was nothing and went off into the house to talk loud on his cell phone.

  She hears him now, saying to Mr. Goddard, “We’re monitoring your landline. And your service provider has given us surveillance access to your cell. If Toffee calls you keep him talking for as long as you can, do you understand?”

  Mr. Goddard mutters something and comes into the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of water from the faucet, drinking it down in one gulp, wiping his hand across his mouth. He looks tired and old, suddenly.

  The Boer cop and a colored in uniform stand in the yard outside the kitchen window, talking in Afrikaans, the radio of their car popping and crackling, words coming out jumbled and impossible to hear.

  Mr. Goddard comes up close to Florence, talking softly.

  “I want the thing you took,” he says.

  “What thing?”

  “Cindy’s underwear.”

  She stares at him.

  “Go and fetch it now or I’ll tell them,” nods at the cops outside the window, “that you were involved. That you helped that man.” Staring at her. “They suspect you, but I told them how loyal you’ve been. How much Cindy loves you.” He smiles, but there’s nothing nice in it. “One word from me and they’ll lock you up, believe me.”

  She knows it’s true, but for a mad moment thinks of getting those panties and showing them to the cops. Then she understands that it’ll never work. John Goddard had played his part of the suffering father all too well.

  “I’m waiting,” he says and goes back to the living room.

  As Florence walks leaves the kitchen and crosses the garden toward the wall where she hid the panties, she hears the cops talking beside their car, the babble of their radio following her into the night.

  19

  The girly lies sleeping tight against Ishmael, her breath on his face, her fingers gripping his hand. He can feel her heart beating against his chest as he sits in the dark on the floor of a broken down house built right beneath the dump, the stink coming in thick on the night breeze.

  There was still some light when they came on the house—carrying the scraps of chicken in the box and the Coke bottle filled with water from a faucet in a yard—and Ishmael saw the broken windows and the kicked in doors. Surprised at first that no homeless people were living there, until he spotted the gang tags. Didn’t need to read to understand them. Gang called The Americans. His enemy for as long as he can remember. Killed too many to count in Pollsmoor Prison.

  When he saw the meth pipes and the empty drink bottles he knew this is where they came, the gangsters, to smoke their drugs and rape females. He done it too, when he was a youngster. The homeless too shit-scared to come near, get their asses dead.

  Ishmael reckons they’ve got a few hours, him and the kid. Tells himself the gangsters will be busy now, that they’ll only come here late—past midnight. Pushes any doubts from his mind.

  Ishmael needs to piss and he slowly works his fingers loose from the kid’s. The girly says uh, uh in her sleep, but he gets himself free and he crosses to the door and does his business, staring out into the night.

  He knows he can’t just hide his ass here. He has to do something. Not used to this—having to make a decision. Years in prison take that away from a man: how to make up his mind. Always some fucker in a uniform ready to do that for you, all you gotta do is listen. And in the cells it’s the big men in the gangs coming with the orders.

  But, looking over at the sleeping child, knows he’s got to get her out of here. Somehow.

  As Ishmael crosses the room he sees a thin piece of glass like a blade lying on the floor, catching the spill of orange light from the big towers Tin Town side. He grabs the glass and goes back to where the kid lies. He found a stub of a candle earlier—put it in his pocket—and he fires it up now, knowing he’s taking a chance. But he needs some light for what he’s going to do.

  Ishmael uses his shirt and tries his best to scrub away the dirt—and something thick and dark he doesn’t care to name—from the glass. When it is as clean as he can get it, he gently shakes the child’s shoulder.

  “Missy?” She grunts but sleeps on. “Cindy!”

  Now she opens her eyes and he sees the fear in them until she recognizes him. “Ishmael.” She sits up, blinking. Stares at the dirty room. “Where are we?”

  “It’s okay. We just visiting.”

  She wipes at her eyes and her long white hair frames her face. Ishmael takes a handful of the hair and lifts it. She says, “Uh, uh,” and shakes her head, pulling the hair from his hand. Grumpy like an old lady.

  “Cindy, I gotta cut it. The hair.”

  “Why?”

  “Because people gonna see it. There’s nobody out here with hair looks like that.”

  “And if they see it, they’re going to catch us?”

  “Ja.”

  “And take me back to daddy?”

  “If they catch us, yes.”

  She looks at him and nods. “Okay, then I’ll sit still. I promise.”

  And she does, not moving as Ishmael saws away at the hair with the broken glass, blonde curls falling onto her shoulders and onto the floor beside her. He hacks at the long hair, until in some places her scalp shows through pink where he’s gone too close. By the time he’s done it’s a short as a boy’s, and her head looks small and soft on her skinny white neck.

  She picks up a curl of hair and holds it to the candle. “It’s like my mommy’s.”

  “It’ll grow back.”

  “I know.”

  But she’s crying for the first time today, and a big tear runs down her face and hangs there forever before it falls and hits the filthy floor.

  Ishmael drops the glass and sits beside her on the hair lying like freshly cut straw, and she grabs him and holds him, bawling. He’s surprised at how strong she is, as if she’s ha
nging on for dear life.

  Then Ishmael hears the loud car with its banging music, hears the fire works popping of the exhausts as it comes on. The car is close now and he catches the beat of the bass bins, not a song as he would call it, more like a fuck you. A challenge.

  And he knows it’s them. The Americans.

  He smothers the candle and by the time the engine and the music cuts he’s moving fast, carrying the kid, saying, “Ssshhh, quiet now,” into her ear, hustling his ass through the empty kitchen to where the back door was. Gone now, chopped up for firewood, just a barred safety gate in the doorway.

  Ishmael pushes at the gate and it doesn’t budge. Hinges rusted. Pushes again. Nothing. They are trapped and he curses himself for not seeing this earlier.

  Fucken idiot.

  The only two windows are high up like in a prison cell, and too small for him—or even the kid—to get through.

  “Poof, Ishmael, it’s smelly,” the girly says.

  “Sshhh, Cindy,” he whispers as he puts the child down. “You walk behind me now, see?”

  Ishmael leads her back to the front room where he can already see car headlights throwing men’s shadows black as bats up against the broken window glass.

  20

  Footsteps coming up toward the front door. Young men laughing, and a girl too, giggling all high pitched. Ishmael wonders if she knows she’s gonna get dipped and ripped. Maybe she wants it.

  The only way out is through the window with the broken glass in it. Glass enough to cut a man bad.

  Not even thinking now, Ishmael pulls his T-shirt out his jeans and holds the child against his body, covering her best he can with the shirt. She fights and wiggles like a cat and cries like one, too.

  Ishmael grips her to his chest and runs at the window hitting it with his shoulder and feeling the broken glass give way, some of it slicing him on the face and the head. But they’re through, landing hard on the dry sand.

  The wind is knocked out of Ishmael and he rolls, protecting the girly with his body, expecting a bullet anytime.

  Ishmael jumps to his feet like his legs are springs and, holding the kid who still struggles to get free, he runs toward the dump rising away like a hillside in the wash of streetlight.

  Voices shouting after him: “Stop! Stop fucker!”

  As he hits the slope he hears a whine and a pop and something sings past his head. Gets his short legs pumping even faster, powering his way on up into the darkness.

  Ishmael slows as the slope gets steeper and the junk under his feet gets softer, him sinking to his knees, having to lift each foot high like he seen them do in the snow on TV. He can hear men behind him, getting closer. The kid weighs a bloody ton now and that’s the God’s-honest truth.

  Ishmael pushes on with the last bit of strength in his muscles, heart ready to be puked out his mouth, and they’re over the top and onto the flatland of garbage stretching away forever toward the light towers of Tin Town. Ishmael sucks air, wants to stop. Can’t. The child is dragging on the ground, kicking and fighting at him from inside his shirt. He braces his legs, leans back and lifts her higher, locking his arms around her body and staggers on like he’s carrying a barrel of beer.

  He looks over his shoulder and sees one of the Americans coming up over the edge, the light towers throwing his shadow long enough to fall on Ishmael like a tree.

  “We fucked, missy,” he gasps, his legs cramping to a standstill under him.

  Then he hears a mad roar and a clatter as a helicopter, blades sending the garbage into the air in a twister of shit, rises like a big mosquito over the edge of the dump, a disc white as a dinner plate rushing over the landfill, hunting them down.

  Ishmael spots a mound of trash piled up around a car wreck and he dives at it head first, saying “sorry, missy,” as they land and roll and he feels the soft, rotting garbage welcome them, letting them sink away under the car just as that beam slides on by.

  21

  Cindy has to pee. It feels like she has a big bag of water inside her tummy and it wakes her. She lies next to the little man, can hear him snoring like a beehive and feels his body hot like when she used to cuddle her old dog who died.

  She sits up, careful not to bump her head on the big piece of tin that covers them. They have slept on rubbish and she can hear her mommy’s voice: poof, Cindy, this smells to high heaven.

  Cindy feels a drop of pee on her leg and she shakes the little man. “Ishmael,” she says. “Ishmael!” He grunts and groans, but he doesn’t wake up.

  There is blood dried on his head like blackberry jam from where the window glass cut him. He was very brave and he looks soft and peaceful so she leaves him and crawls out on all fours, until she is clear of the tin.

  They slept on top of the dump and all she can see is stinky garbage except for a jet plane like a sliver bird that sinks down low and disappears as if the trash ate it. She is shy to make a pee so close to the little man, so she walks on, her feet sinking into stuff like old porridge. Yuck.

  She goes behind a mountain of black plastic bags split open and spilling out stuff that is even more stinky. She sees a pink piggy head staring up at her, flies crawling all over it like a walking black carpet.

  She runs away from the piggy and hides behind a pile of shiny Coke cans and pulls down her jeans and her panties and sits, careful not to let her butt touch the ground and lets go, watching a puddle grow between her feet, moving so she doesn’t splash her sneakers.

  When she’s done she doesn’t have anything to wipe herself with, so she just stands and pulls up her panties and her jeans. She’s very thirsty and the sun burns through her short hair because she took off her cap when she slept.

  Cindy looks around. Everything looks the same. Brown and dirty. She can’t see where they slept and she can’t see Ishmael. There are people like black crayon drawings far away, picking things up from the ground, and she knows they mustn’t see her, so she runs and hides behind an upside down stove, the empty oven open like a mouth. She sits with her back against the stove and holds herself and says, you must be a big girl, Cindy. You must be a big girl and remember where you left the little man.

  So she stands and looks and looks and then she sees something she remembers: a dirty yellow bulldozer, parked on top of a mountain of rubbish, and she knows if she walks that way she will find Ishmael.

  Cindy sets off, keeping her eye on the dark people outlined against the sky, making sure they are not getting any closer. Watching them so carefully that she nearly steps on a man’s feet. Bare feet, with pink underskin, joined to black legs with funny curly hairs on them like the steel wool Flo uses to wash the dishes.

  When Cindy hears the animal moans she tries to retreat, but it’s too late and she slips on something messy and ends up on her hands and knees in the wet trash, looking at the man who lies on his back, staring at her around the side of a lady who is sitting on top of him, bouncing up and down on the man, her dress flapping and flopping.

  The lady stops bouncing and turns and Cindy can’t help it—she screams. The lady has an orange face swollen like a pumpkin and only one eye. Where the other one should be is just a big, dark hole with skin pulled into it like a sausage tied at the end.

  Cindy screams herself to her feet and runs, flying across the garbage, and she hears the lady shouting but she runs on, around a big mound of rotting trash and straight into hands that grab her tight and cover her mouth and shut off her screaming and her air.

  ●

  Ishmael lifts the child off the ground and whispers into her ear. “Sshhh, now, missy. Sshhh now.” She sees it’s him, and she quits struggling and he takes his hand away from her mouth. “You okay?”

  She nods, gasping. He lowers her, but keeps a hold on her hand, kneeling down till he’s the same size as her. “Did anybody spot you, Cindy?” She nods. “Who?”

  “A horrible lady and a man.”

  Ishmael searches the landfill and sees only the scavengers over on the airport side
. But they must make quick, now. He pulls the child along and they hurry back to the shelter he found for them the night before. They can’t stay here. Too exposed.

  He gets her under the tin and wipes his hand in the earth, finds something wet and sticky, rubs his fingers in the sand until they are muddy, then he pulls her to him and smears the dark paste on her face.

  She creases up her nose and shuts her eyes tight, going, “Uh, uh” through her closed mouth.

  But he hides enough of that white target of a face and when he shoves the cap on her head and pulls it down low, she looks like just some other dirty colored kid.

  “Gimme your hands,” he says, and she obeys. And he smears dirt on them too, till they are the same color as him. “Okay,” he says, sitting back on his heels. “Now, you no more Cindy, okay? You Bobby.”

  “Bobby?”

  “Ja. Boy’s name. I need to call you, I gonna call Bobby. You get that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  He takes her by the hand and they come up from under the tin like rats and he checks to see they’ve got no company before they take off across the rubbish.

  “Ishmael, I’m thirsty. And hungry.”

  “I know. Me too. I’m gonna sort that, okay?”

  She nods and he lets her hand drop. Feels her fingers groping for his. He stops, puts a hand gently on her cap. “Boys don’t hold hands. Okay, Bobby?”

  “Okay.” She nods and smiles up at him. “I can be a boy.”

  “I know it. Now come.”

  He takes off again, the kid at his heels. No water. No food. No money and fuck-all idea what to do next.

  22

  The gate buzzer won’t stop drilling into Florence’s head as she tidies up the living room, clearing away the empty wine bottles that show how Mr. Goddard spent his night.