next time,” he responded. “Hey, has Captain said anything to you about Tyson, about him coming out?”
Jimmy kicked at a stone on the sidewalk and missed. “Captain says he doesn’t care about Tyson being released from jail. The NBKs are a thing of the past, and he’s got the backing of Lazarus, so Tyson mustn’t come start any kak.”
“Have you met this Tyson?”
Jimmy nodded. “He’s a real piece of shit. A bully. Captain says that bullies are the biggest cowards of all. They’re loud and aggressive because they just want to intimidate you. Scare you. Like a dog barking. They want you to back down before the fight because they are actually scared to fight. Captain says that if Tyson comes out barking, he will show him just how hard he can bite.”
Kyle did not respond. This was the typically confident response he would expect from Captain. The history of the Godfathers had always left Kyle feeling somewhat in awe of his cousin’s strategic mind.
The Godfathers had formerly been part of another gang, the Natural Born Killers. Captain had joined the NBKs at the age of thirteen. Their leader, Tyson, was the meanest thug around. His nickname was Tyson because some people felt that he resembled the heavyweight boxer Iron Mike Tyson. But from the photographs Kyle had seen of him, the only resemblance was the bald head and perhaps the gold teeth. Maybe the name was more applicable to his personality and actions, rather than his appearance? From what Kyle had heard, Tyson was a cruel, sadistic bully who seemed to take pleasure in causing others pain. Besides his love of violence, he also had a love for other people’s property. He got arrested when he tried to hijack a Volkswagen Golf from two Indian men in Durban’s CBD. After being convicted, he was sentenced to five years in jail.
This was when Captain’s leadership qualities came to the fore. The NBKs unofficially split into two groups: the longer-serving gang members who were thirty years of age or older, and the new breed of teenage gangsters like Captain and his friend Spider. With the lack of leadership, the gang seemed on the brink of imploding, but Captain saw an opportunity and grabbed it with both hands. He had a bigger vision for the gang and for himself, so he left the NBKs and founded the Godfathers. He recruited the younger NBKs to his gang with his vision and his passion, and they bought in.
The older gang members scoffed at these “lighties”, but Captain had a strategy. The next step he took was to secure the contract with Lazarus Jones. Lazarus was the biggest drug dealer on the East Coast, and the NBKs used to do some work for him now and again – transport a bag of Mandrax pills or rough up another dealer who’d tried to sell in Lazarus’s area. But he did not use them often, as the NBKs were unreliable. Captain, though, saw that this relationship could be far more fruitful if it was taken more seriously, and he proposed that the Godfathers take care of all the selling, transporting and collecting of outstanding debts for Lazarus. Lazarus, of course, was hesitant to give such responsibility to a fifteen-year-old. But Lazarus knew Captain well, as his daughter was Captain’s girlfriend at the time. So he gambled on this ambitious kid, and that gamble had paid off. In the year and a half in which the Godfathers had done work for Lazarus, they had, according to Captain, increased his profits by over sixty per cent in the coloured and Indian communities of Durban. They were responsible for distributing and selling in Sydenham, Greenwood Park, Wentworth, Marianne Ridge, Newlands East, Newlands West, Chatsworth and Phoenix. And now Captain was also starting to branch out into black areas such as Bonela, KwaMashu, Lamontville, Umlazi and Ntuzuma.
Captain’s vision was to create an empire to rival the Italian Mafia he so admired from films, and it was bearing fruit for the Godfathers as well. Captain and his gang were making more money than they had ever dreamt of. In some cases, the Godfathers were earning over a R1000 a week each, which was more than some adults in Sydenham earned. Captain used that money to pay the bills at home, but he had also bought himself his baby, his blue Toyota Conquest.
But it was not easy being in a gang. Captain had been shot and stabbed already for his activities, but it was the stories of what he did to others who crossed him that Kyle found the most disturbing. Captain would not talk about it, though. The most he would say was that sometimes, some evil must be done for the greater good. Or he would repeat the motto their grandfather, a former member of Umkhonto weSizwe, had taught them: By any means necessary. Whatever his true feelings were, he kept them to himself.
Of late, Captain seemed to have entered a new level of stress and concern, and Kyle believed he knew why. Tyson was being paroled soon.
Kyle had his eyes fixed on the black leather of his shoes as he forced them forward. He could not shake an ominous feeling that buzzed around his heart.
“Hey, are you coming to Carmen’s party on Friday?” Jimmy asked excitedly. He almost tripped – he’d tried to kick another stone, but it was held firmly by the earth.
Kyle sniggered at his cousin’s clumsiness. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, come on, Kyle!” Jimmy groaned. He lowered his voice. “You never come out with us.”
“That’s because I don’t like y’all,” Kyle smiled.
“Don’t be like that. I will do anything. I will iron your clothes for a week, just come to the party.”
“I’m working on Friday.”
This was partly true. Kyle had a weekend job as a waiter at the little coffee shop in the Durban Playhouse where Charlie’s wife worked. But if he was honest with himself, he knew he was only using this as an excuse not to go. He preferred being by himself. He did not like or want to be surrounded by people, as they always made him feel uncomfortable. Like a stranger. He always wondered whether they knew what had happened to him. Whether they knew what had happened to his mother and his father. CNN could not compare to the Gossip News Network in Sydenham. Word spread faster than wildfire, and he knew that his parents had been the headline news a few months ago.
But he glanced at Jimmy’s downcast face. Jimmy’s eyes were filled with disappointment, and it tugged at Kyle’s heart. Then a small, mischievous smile snaked across his lips.
“Will Sarah be there?”
Jimmy’s face turned bright red with a vicious blush. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Kyle laughed. “Don’t lie to me. She’s gonna be there, isn’t she?”
With a shrug, Jimmy replied, “Probably.”
Kyle wrapped his arm around his cousin’s shoulders and tugged him closer. “Okay, check this out,” he started. “I will come by after work, for a few minutes. But only if you talk to her.”
Jimmy looked up, his eyes glowing with fear. He shrugged Kyle’s arm off his shoulders. “Come on now,” he protested. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. Why can’t you?”
“Because …” Jimmy searched for an explanation, but found none. “I just can’t.”
“Forget that nonsense.” Kyle wrapped his arm around Jimmy’s shoulders again. “Look here. You are a very good-looking guy, but more than that, you’re just a straight-out great guy. You are smart, you are funny, and if the girl can’t see that, then it’s her loss. Not yours. But you need to at least make a move, Jimmy. You miss a hundred per cent of the shots you don’t take.”
Jimmy tried to hide an embarrassed smile.
“Jimmy, it’s the only way I will be coming. All you have to do is talk to the girl. I’m not saying ask her out, but just talk to her … And then maybe, just maybe, you will get your first damn kiss. Finally! Do we have a deal?”
Silence.
“Jimmy, do we have a deal?”
Jimmy let a small, nervous smile spread across his face as they entered the wire gates of Bechet Secondary School, just in time to hear the school bell ring. “Fine.” He sighed hard. “We have a deal.”
5