Angel Boy

by Bernard Ashley

  Some chance! As he walked towards it, squinting his eyes now that he was out of the moonshine again, he saw the big entrance door with security locks as well as bolts. He tried it just in case – and as he looked through the crack, his body froze. Outside sat a street kid, the leader, the tribal-cut daddy. His head lifted from his chest as the door rattled.

  Oh, no!

  Leonard scuttled away from the door. They were waiting for him! They knew he was still in here! He turned and ran back into the courtyard. His stomach rolled with fear. He ran beyond the courtyard on to the battlements where cannon balls were heaped behind a line of black cannons, pointing out to sea. He went to the ramparts and stared down. And there on the rocks beneath him were two more street kids, crouching and staring silently up at him. His stomach seemed to eat his heart.

  Leonard Boameh had never felt so alone in his life. Shivering on the ramparts of Elmina Castle, he looked at the heavens – but he didn’t see God; he saw the same stars and moon that are forever blind to human suffering. And he crumpled. He collapsed there on the worn flagstones, and sobbed.

  But there was another exit from this place! There was the Door of No Return! Could that be opened from the inside without a key? And would the patrolling street kids be watching it? He pulled himself up from the flagstones and made his way, stooping, to the infamous door, pressing himself tight against the wall. He stared at the doorway. Its shape was hard to see against the moonlight sea, but there it was, firmly closed, its stunted bars letting just a glimmer of light in – and so small that only a cat could get through.

  There was no street kid beyond it, up at this level. There might be one waiting below – but for now, it was safe to try the door.

  It was locked. Of course it was locked. And although Leonard tried his head for size – because where a head and shoulders can go, don’t they say the body can follow? – there was no way that even a skinny kid could get out through here.

  He stood back. This way was hopeless, too; which meant there would be only one time to get out, and that was when people were around. Tomorrow. But how could he do that, with the fort guarded by the street kids? Even if he jumped from the battlements without breaking his legs or his neck, they would get him. He sank down on his haunches as he realised that these kidnappers were not going to give up on him. That rotten ten dollar bill had proved that he was a brother worth having…

  Chapter Eight

  Leonard spent the night behind the pyramid of cannonballs furthest from the fort entrance. Desperate to keep awake, he leant uncomfortably against them and tried to work out what to do. His one big hope would be that the young woman guide would be on duty the next day. She would listen and she would help him. If that didn’t work, he could try walking out of the fort with the visitors and dodging the waiting street kids, or persuade tourists of the trouble he was in. But would they be able to listen to him if the short-fuse guide was around? There was one other skinny hope – that a different guide altogether would be on duty tomorrow – but he was just going to have to find out.

  Next morning, the sun woke the seabirds first, terns krik-krikking in the distance, and the gulls screeching down where the fishing boats came in. Then light, rather than warmth, woke Leonard, who had slid into a fitful sleep despite himself. He stretched, remembered with a slam of his hopes where he was, then shut his eyes again so as not to look at the light coming straight at him. And as he opened his eyes to stare at the shadowed ramparts, he saw the sun’s after-image on his retina almost as clearly as the sun itself, blinding him to the stonework before him.

  And suddenly he had an idea. Where had that retina thing happened before? Not long ago. Where had he been blinded for a while, and what had he seen instead? It was where there were bars, a pattern of bright bars in a rectangle.

  His hyped-up brain quickly gave him the answer. It had been at the Door of No Return, where the light through the bars that first day had been so intense that he hadn’t seen the two backpackers standing against the walls beside it.

  So couldn’t someone else standing there be invisible too – until they could mingle in with the rest of the group? Couldn’t he make himself invisible for a vital few moments?

  Yes! That’s what he could do! If he could keep himself unnoticed and uncounted until that gate-door was opened, he could run out and get down to the beach.

  So long as no street kids were still waiting for him!

  But it was his best chance – although Leonard knew that wasn’t saying much; not much at all.

  Stephen Boameh had spent a day fruitlessly searching for his son; and on the second morning he was up at dawn to check the quarries and the roadworks again. But he saw nobody new, just the same overseers who had shouted him away the previous day.

  He telephoned the hospitals, and he telephoned the police; he telephoned the Blessed Wisdom Primary School, and he telephoned the homes of the friends from Leonard’s school whose numbers he could find. But he drew the same blanks as before. Nobody had heard anything about his boy.

  Nana wasn’t singing hymns today. She hadn’t been singing them the day before, either. Instead, she was praying. Her eyes when they were open were on the telephone; and her eyes when they were closed were on the picture of Jesus that she carried in her head – with him saying, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me.’

  Every time the telephone rang she jumped like someone scalded. But there was no news. And as the first day and night ran into the second day and night, and the third morning dawned, her thoughts and those of Leonard’s father began to take a sinister turn.

  Was Leonard never to be heard of again?

  Leonard waited silently against the wall by the doorway. From where he was standing, everything was bright and focused in the light coming through the bars of the Door of No Return. But his memory and his senses told him that it wasn’t the same the other way round. For a while he would be invisible to the visitors.

  As he heard the first party coming round the fort, the voice told him the identity of the guide. It was the big man who had tried to grab him the day before. Leonard’s pleasant young woman had let him down: she wasn’t at work today; and his skin-thin hope shrivelled.

  He was now standing where the deepest shadow seemed to be; near enough to the door for the contrast to be strong – bright sunshine and deep darkness – but not so close that the light spilled on to his body. He stood, and he waited; he knew from before that once the tourist party was in the courtyard, it would be about fifteen minutes before they reached him, before all their eyes were staring at that terrible door. He stood as still as he could. And he wondered if his school shirt might be too bright, even in the darkness; so he took it off. He held it behind him, and he waited, and waited…

  At last they came.

  ‘Here we’re comin’ to the in-famous Door of No Return…’ This man didn’t have the quiet, reverent sympathy of the young woman.

  ‘Jus’ down by here…’

  It was a good-sized group, about fifteen of them, a mixed pick-up from the entrance. They came shuffling and focusing their cameras into the small space – a squeeze for camera-carrying tourists, but big enough in its day for slave-stripping and branding.

  ‘Here was where they wen’ out, an’ never come back.’ The guide unlocked the door with a key from his pocket. ‘These are the steps they were taken down.’ He stood aside to let the group see, their eyes hooded against the bright sun.

  Some took photographs, some stood still, some touched the bars, some stepped outside – and, unseen, Leonard slid away from the wall, tried to mingle among the visitors and, seeing a space between two photographers whose eyes were focused on their lenses, he made his move. If he could just squeeze between –

  ‘Boy!’ The guide growled like a mastiff and grabbed at Leonard. ‘You back here, are you?’

  People stopped, they turned or twisted – which was just movement enough for Leonard to slip between two tourists and go head-down for the doorway.
The guide grabbed at him again, but only got his shirt – and Leonard was away, jumping down the rough steps to the beach. His eyes were on the stones, and they were everywhere else for a sight of one of the street kids.

  He leapt from the bottom step and ran on sand, then gravel and then grass as he raced to where the fishing boats clustered, where men and boys were sorting the morning catch, all sweat and nets. He was grateful not to be in his shirt, because he didn’t stand out, he was just one more bare-skinned boy by the boats. But without the money in its pocket any more.

  He turned to look back at the fort. And what he saw sank him as if he were running over shifting sand. Two street kids, the father and the tall, fast mother, were sprinting after him across the grass shouting, ‘Stop! Angel Boy! Stop!’

  Leonard ran even faster. He wove between the boats, he jumped a mound of nets, he cracked a shin hard on a crate of fish, and he made for the houses up beyond the football pitch. If he could knock at someone’s door…

  But they were cutting him off. A quick look round told him that the street kids knew where he was heading. The tall one was running to his left and would get him as he came out from between the boats.

  Like a trapped roebuck, Leonard turned, ducked back, thought of heading for the sea and swimming; but he’d be exposed out there – and these kids from Elmina would have grown up swimming. As he ran, he stooped so as to be less easily seen, skinning himself between boats and fishermen and nets.

  He took a last desperate chance. On the water’s edge was a bigger fishing boat, with empty nets lying jumbled in the prow. He grazed his belly slithering over the boat’s side and crabbed himself awkwardly under the black nets.

  There he lay, taking great gulps of fishy air. He balled himself as tight as a boy could, his head on the bottom planks of the boat, smelling the sea-salty wood. He muttered the prayer he hadn’t been able to call up the night before:

  Our Father, which art in heaven…

  How long? How long would it be before they found him? They knew where he wasn’t, so they must know where he was. It would only be minutes before they came through the boats and searched him out. He told himself he was in for a beating and a yank back to the street-kid life – if they didn’t kill him instead...

  ‘Angel Boy! Angel Boy!’ His heart stood still as he heard them getting nearer. ‘We’s comin’! We’s goin’ to find you, Angel Boy!’

  Chapter Nine

  The voices were close by. The kids were only seconds away from pulling up the mound of net and finding him. Above the voices of fishermen he heard hands grabbing and scrabbling at the sides of the boat he was in – and now, with a stomach-lurch, he felt the rocking of the vessel, and the movement in her. They were here! Getting in!

  ‘Angel Boy! We’s got you!’

  He knocked his head in the sudden push of the boat, and a pick-up of motion – and a great drenching through the nets before there was a different sort of movement, like the swell of a wave.

  Suddenly Leonard realised. The boat had put out to sea. He pulled the net away from his face to look around him, and saw two muscular men oaring, one steering in the stern, and two others coming towards him for the nets.

  ‘What you doin’ here, boy?’ The first was big and gruff, like the guide from the fort. The others looked round from their rowing and steering. They tutted, muttered, made noises in their throats. ‘You bin stealin’ our snapper?’

  They looked fierce, they rowed out to sea even faster. He looked pleadingly at them. Would they throw him overboard? Would they hold him under the water and drown him? Did they think he wanted to steal their fish?

  ‘Well, what you doin’, scramblin’ around these nets?’

  Against the slap of the waves and the creak of the boat and the hard rowing, Leonard shouted, ‘I ran away from home! But only for the day…’

  The man was listening. ‘And…?’ he said impatiently. ‘What then?’

  ‘I’ve been captured by street kids. They were by the boat – they said I’ve got to stay with them…’

  ‘Stealin’ fish?’

  ‘No! Begging. At the fort.’

  The man was bracing himself with strong arms between the two sides of the boat. His muscles looked awesome. Quickly, Leonard told the man his name loud enough to be heard by the other fishermen, and he told them his address and phone number, and everything that had happened to him.

  They seemed to be thinking it over. The man near him unscrambled the nets, untwining Leonard’s arms and legs and trainers. The others went on rowing and steering, but they shouted out their opinions.

  ‘We got a street kid here with a high tale…’

  ‘No better than the rest. Run off from the quarries…’

  Row, row, row, slap, slap, slap, creak, creak, creak. Mutter, mutter, mutter – and spit.

  Leonard was crying again. Nobody in the world believed him. They were going to dump him out at sea, or take him back to the street kids who would be waiting – who knew that he was in this boat.

  ‘Please! Please help me!’

  The man with the long steering oar suddenly pulled it in and came along the boat. He was clearly the man in charge. He looked at Leonard’s feet. He reached out and twisted one, and stroked its trainer, and nodded, appreciating its good make.

  ‘Your name! Again!’ He clicked his fingers into Leonard’s face.

  ‘Leonard Stephen Boameh.’

  ‘Where from? Up-country? Cape Coast?’

  ‘Twenty-one Liberation Road, Cantonment District, Accra.’

  The man was trying to trick him into making a mistake, because Leonard had said this already.

  ‘Your father name?’

  ‘Stephen Boameh. He drives for the Nile Hotel.’

  ‘The Nile?’

  ‘On Nsawam Road.’

  ‘You go to school?’

  ‘The Blessed Wisdom Primary. Accra.’ If only he still had his school shirt!

  ‘You got learnin’ then?’

  Leonard nodded. ‘Some.’

  The man rubbed at the stubble on his face, still staring Leonard in the eyes. ‘Then you tell me some learnin’.’

  Leonard stared back. ‘What sort?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Jus’ let me hear you’re no urchin – that you got teachin’ inside of you…’

  Leonard blinked, red light through his eyelids. What could he say? Recite a times table? Go through the countries that made up Africa? Say a psalm? This was the sort of test no one prepared you for in school. But suddenly he heard his own voice against the slapping and the creaking of the boat.

  ‘‘The beginning of wisdom is knowing who you are. Draw near and listen.’’ That was what the woman guide had said to him at the Door of No Return.

  But it wasn’t enough. All it did was draw the man nearer to Leonard to listen, as if it had been an instruction. ‘Get on with it!’

  Leonard’s head was blank. It was as if he had never learnt anything. But he had! Where had he been these last days?

  ‘Elmina Fort, St George’s Castle, was built in 1482,’ he declared, remembering his teacher and the woman guide, who in his head were suddenly rolled into one person. ‘Its name – Elmina – comes from the word for “old mine”. At first it was where gold and other stuff were traded, until the slave business started. Then millions of slaves were traded instead…’

  That should do it – and the man was nodding. But, ‘Street kids learn that stuff for tourists,’ he said. ‘I want real learnin’ learnin’, boy. Proper reciting or scientific facts.’

  Leonard didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t think of any scientific facts. He cast around desperately, shaking his head, but all he could call up right now was Nana’s singing, the words of the hymns from her constant wailing. So he quoted her favourite, but tried to say it with meaning, more like a poem he had learned at school.

  ‘‘What a friend we have in Jesus,

  all our sins and griefs to bear!

  What a privilege to carry every
thing to God in prayer!

  O what peace we often forfeit,

  O what needless pain we bear,

  All because we do not carry everything

  to God in prayer…’’

  He winced as he finished, but the helmsman was nodding. Leonard cleared his throat to begin on verse two.

  ‘Amen!’ the helmsman said. And he rubbed Leonard’s head like Nana did when she was pleased with him.

  Dear Nana! Dear boring Nana who couldn’t dive for the ball when she was in goal. Had she just saved him?

  ‘You ain’t no street kid – they never see the insides of a Christian church…’ The man turned around and signalled to his crew. ‘We’re takin’ this boy back, we’re findin’ the p’lice, an’ we’re returnin’ him to his father.’

  The other fishermen muttered and moaned, but they turned the boat around and took it back to Elmina Beach, where they pulled it up on to the sand. With a terrible stomach lurch inside, Leonard saw them: the street kids, still there. They must have watched the boat returning, and right now they were hovering near – but not too near – like wolves waiting to strike the weakest calf, but keeping their escape runs open.

  Leonard stared at them, and moved closer to the helmsman.

  ‘An’ you can lose your sinnin’ bodies!’ the man shouted at the kids. He lunged towards them, and they ran back a few metres like wolves from a lion.

  ‘You want this boy?’ he shouted at them. ‘You come to Brekoso police station an’ ask the constable for him…’

  The street kids watched them go before sloping away. It looked as if they had lost their Angel Boy. But hungry creatures will wait days for their prey. Those hungry street kids hadn’t given up yet. Not by a long way had they given up…

  Chapter Ten