Crime Beat

Boys by Michael Williams is the second of the stories out of the first-ever SA crime thriller anthology, Bad Company, edited by Joanne Hichens and published by Pan Macmillan. Williams, who began writing ‘crime radio plays’ for Springbok Radio as a student at UCT, is now General Manager for Cape Town Opera and has written libretti for several symphonic operas, as well as operas for young people based on African mythology. Not to mention his ten novels…

Boys by Michael Williams

Thurston Petersen knew there had to be a friend for him somewhere in this world; a ten-year-old boy who liked spitting in his hand and giving himself a hard-on. A boy who also thought the world was fucked up. Someone who would understand about Thurston’s plans to run away from his parents and about the terrible dreams he had at night. The faces of boys staring at him from a dark hole, their sad eyes filled with fear, their hands pleading with him. In his dreams his teacher made him do what he didn’t want to do. The dreams always made him wet his bed.
And why it was that when he woke up in the morning, with sun streaming through his window, the morning chatter on the next-door neighbour’s radio, everything was all right again? Why was it so easy to forget everything the next morning and pretend none of it had happened?
Thurston never understood why he always lost his friends. They would come and go through his life like the taxis speeding along the highway from Strandfontein, here the one moment and disappearing into the streets of Mitchell’s Plain the next, never to be seen again.
His uncle living in the backroom always had something to say to him, “Why don’t you go play with your friends, Thurston?”
As if he had a room full of boys he could choose from! As if friends were as easy to pick up as empties! As if friendship was something everyone had! Thurston knew that somewhere there had to be a boy who liked to swim in the brown waters of the quarry, who enjoyed the feel of skin against skin, and the drawing of secret patterns in the sand and drinking green cooldrink mixed with sherbet and saying fuck and crap and shit and jou ma se poes whenever he liked. He couldn’t be the only boy in the whole of Mitchell’s Plain without a real friend.
His teacher said the best place to find friends was at the Blue Moon café. Thurston wondered how his teacher knew where to find boys? He didn’t question him. Teacher was always right.
So he went to the Blue Moon café and hung around at the entrance, hands in his pockets, one foot up against the wall, looking, he hoped, as if he was waiting for a friend. At last, when he had the courage, he sauntered into the café, staring longingly at the cooldrinks stacked in the fridge and watched as a boy took out a can of Fanta Grape, split open the lid and drank the cooldrink as he walked up to the till. How he envied the way the teenager slapped a ten rand note down on the counter as if there were hundreds more of them in his back pocket. Thurston watched, jealous of the teenager’s confidence, hating how easily he swept the change into his wallet. He turned away when the teenager looked at him as if he was a pile of shit.
Thurston searched through the change in his pocket for a two rand coin to feed to the Destroyer. The teenager was there already, putting his money in the slot.
Standing beside the video game, watching, was a boy – the teacher had been right once again – a smaller boy, perhaps eight or nine years old. Thurston walked to the other side of the video screen and pretended to be interested in Kung-fu Jack’s high kick to the head of the Destroyer. He sneaked a look at the boy across from him.
Eyes like blue glass marbles.
He had seen him before. The boy was at his school but they had never spoken to each other before.
Thurston thought of smiling, but the corners of his mouth wouldn’t turn into a smile. He was too afraid he would be laughed at, too afraid the boy wouldn’t smile back.
They both watched the game in silence. The teenager jerked the stick to spin Kung-fu Jack into a full frontal attack: fists flying, knee kicks, head butts, finger jabs. Then the teenager swore and slammed his flat hand against the screen as the Destroyer killed him.
“Hey, Mansoer, you break my machine, I’ll break your head,” the shopkeeper shouted, looking up from the newspaper sprawled open on his counter.
“Jou ma se poes,” said Mansoer under his breath and winked at Thurston.
Thurston knew he should smile now. The boy with the marble eyes was looking at him, waiting for him to speak, but he didn’t know what to say. His tongue lay thick in his mouth. Mansoer scratched in his wallet for more change.
“Can I play?” the small boy asked.
“You got money?” asked Mansoer.
“No.”
“Well, tough shit.”
“I’ve got two rand,” Thurston blurted out, holding up the coin to the small boy as an offering.
“Thank you very much!” said Mansoer, snatching the coin from his hand and feeding it into the machine.
The Destroyer jerked into life. Eyes of fire emerged from the black screen. A tongue snaked its way out of a cavernous mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth. Loud plastic music filled the shop. Red lights flashed a warning. The game was on. Kung-fu Jack lived again.
“That’s his money!” the marble-eyed boy shouted. “You took his money!”
“Mansoer, leave the laaitjie alone. Mansoer!” The shopkeeper smacked the counter with a sawn-off broom handle. “If I have to get up from this chair and come over there, you’ll be bloody sorry.”
Mansoer kicked the machine and sneered at Thurston, “You fucking moffie,” he said sauntering out of the café.
Thurston was alone with the boy with the glass-blue marble eyes.
“You play,” offered Thurston quietly. “I’m no good at these games.”
“Okay.”
Thurston pretended to watch the screen but he stole glances at the boy. Could this be a new friend? Someone he could play with? The boy looked ordinary enough – his cinnamon-coloured skin, his black hair curling around his ears and those eyes, eyes bluer than any sea or any sky he had ever seen.
The Destroyer destroyed. The boy was not very good at the game and the machine died and was silent. Game over.
He looked up at Thurston and shrugged apologetically. “He gets me every time. You got any more money?” he asked.
“At home.”
“Shall we get it?”
Thurston nodded. “Okay.” He swallowed the word, knowing he should smile now, but there was nothing to smile about. The boy wasn’t really his friend. Not yet.
“Let’s go past my house first,” said the small boy. “I can steal some empties from the old lady next door. She’ll never notice.”
“Ja, okay.” Then Thuston said, “But why don’t we go for a swim first? At the quarry.”
Thurston was surprised by the smile that broke across the boy’s face as they left the Blue Moon café.
“Ja, that’s cool. It’s so hot. Good idea.”
“What’s your name?” asked Thurston shyly.
“Lance Cooper, but everyone calls me Coops.”
“Let’s go, Coops,” he said, giddy with happiness that the boy had offered him his nickname.
“Hey, where do you think you two are going?” shouted Mansoer as they walked quickly across the street. Mansoer pushed himself away from the wall and started jogging across the road after them. Thurston did not want to play with Mansoer. He had made a friend. Coops. This afternoon it was just Coops and him. He had to get away from Mansoer.
“We’d better run; he’s following us,” said Thurston, looking back and seeing Mansoer following them. “We’ll split up. You go that way and then I’ll meet you at the quarry. He’ll never catch us.” As Thurston ran he felt the wonderfully warm feeling of friendship. He and Coops were a team. They were doing something together and shutting out the rest of the world. Having a friend was so much fun.

***

The old slate quarry had a swimming hole so deep that none of the neighbourhood boys had ever touched its bottom. Thurston played with Lance Cooper among the rocks until they were both sweating. He liked his new friend, he liked how soft he was to touch and how his eyes – those blue-blue eyes! – grew wide when he showed him how big he could make himself. He was only sorry that he accidentally hurt the boy by touching him too much. His new friend started crying and wanted to go home and everything was going sour.
That was when Thurston said they should go for a swim.
“It will be all right with a swim. Everything will be all right after a swim. Come on, come feel the water. It will be fine. Please don’t cry anymore,” said Thurston.
Coops liked that idea. It was hot and the water was cool.
“Let’s see if we can touch the bottom,” Thurston said, climbing up the rocks.
The boy did not go home; he followed Thurston and climbed up the side of the quarry. Perhaps it will be okay after all, thought Thurston.
Thurston knew that the swimming hole was as deep as sin – he had warned other boys never to swim there – yet it was Thurston who, after Lance’s third failed attempt to touch the bottom, had suggested the stones, a few flat, round stones in the pockets of his gym shorts.
“When you get to the bottom you take the stones out and you’ll shoot up to the top,” Thurston said, offering a stone.
“Will it work?”
“Of course it will,” he said, stuffing stones into the boy’s pockets, until they bulged into hard blocks on either side of his thin legs.
They stood on a ledge above the swimming hole looking down onto its still, brown surface.
“There’s an old car down there,” said Thurston.
“A car?”
“An old Chevie.”
“What colour?”
“Brown.”
Lance laughed. Thurston seldom made jokes.
“You going to jump?” challenged Thurston. “Or are you shit-scared?”
“You’ll follow after me?”
Thurston nodded.
“See you later!”

The last words that Lance Cooper would ever speak echoed faintly in the quarry as he jumped, arms flailing, his small, slender body falling rapidly through space, entering the water as cleanly as a pin, and disappearing.
The brown water of the swimming hole was always still. Warm, too, like bath water. Thurston knew that once Lance began sinking, his ears would ring with the pressure. He knew the water would become increasingly cold. The darkness would seize him in an icy grip that would force the breath from the boy’s body. Then the thought of being alone in a liquid tomb would hurry the onset of panic. Lance would experience a desire for light, air, sky, so overwhelming that he would turn frantically, kicking furiously, his lungs contracting, his body rejecting the darkness and striving to break through the water, up, up, up into longed-for sunshine.
Would the thought of his mother and her warm hands tucking him into bed flash through his mind as he lost consciousness? Would he think of his father? A favourite pet, perhaps? Or would he think of his new best friend?
Thurston sat on the ledge, dangled his legs over the side, and observed with interest a slight disturbance on the water’s surface – was it air from Lance Cooper’s lungs? Thurston wondered idly what drowning felt like, the fear, the futile clawing, and the deadly intake of water.
He emptied his pocket of stones. He held the last stone and rubbed it thoughtfully between his fingers. He threw it up into the air, watched its arc, its rapid fall, and the water below swallowing it as swiftly as it had done Lance. The brown water soon become still again.
Thurston stood up and clambered down the quarry wall to where his clothes lay. He never considered jumping in after the boy. It was time to go home. Supper would be on the table and he dared not be late. He knew the punishment that awaited him if he was late. He dressed hurriedly, looking once over his shoulder at the water.
Had Coops reached the bottom, he wondered?

***

The local police made some effort to find Lance Cooper. The station commander of Philippi sent one of his constables to interview the child’s parents and a few of his friends at school. Yes, they had sent Lance off to school, said the distraught parents. No, they had not accompanied him to the school, but his teachers reported that Lance had been at school that day. He was an average pupil, said the principal and no, he didn’t think there were problems at home. After school his friends had seen him walk towards his house and no, none of them had played with him, or had seen him ever again. Coops was a lonely boy. It seemed he didn’t have many friends.
When it was Thurston Peterson’s turn to be interviewed he shook his head in response to all the questions put to him. He stood before the policeman, smiling, concerned and eager to help. He was fascinated by the policeman’s revolver; once his father had allowed him to hold a similar weapon. He remembered the grave weight in his hand, the oily feel of the handle, the black hole of its caw.
“So, Mr Petersen, you are the teacher of the Grade Four class? Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Lance Cooper was not in your class?”
“No. It’s a big school.”
“Did you see Lance after school on the day he disappeared?” the policeman asked, for the twentieth time that day.
Thurston’s head moved slowly from side to side.
“Do you know if there was any problem with the other boys in the playground? Any bullying? Is there anything you might think of that could be a reason for his disappearance?”
Another slow shake from Thurston.
“And you don’t know where he could have gone?”
A slow, sad shake.
“Well, if you remember something, you will let us know?” ordered the policeman, standing up and wondering, now that it was almost four o’clock, whether he shouldn’t go straight home and not bother about returning to the police station.
He would file the report tomorrow. Pass the case on. Forget it soon enough.
“If I think of anything, of course I’ll let you know,” Thurston fingered the policeman’s card, then asked, “Have you ever killed anyone with that?” pointing at the revolver on the man’s belt.
“Yes, I have,” said the policeman, startled by the question.
Thurston Peterson asked then, as if in awe, “What did it feel like?”

Postscript: Each month an average of fifteen children are reported missing in the Cape Town area alone. Ten of these fifteen are usually found, but in each month five children between the ages of three and fourteen disappear. They are misplaced. Lost. Absent. Gone. In the Western Cape Province each year sixty children disappear without trace. Their faces appear momentarily, if at all, in local newspapers, on notice boards at shopping centres and police stations, and then they are forgotten, erased, by adults engrossed with their adult society, which has little time or patience for the inconvenience of missing children.