No Turning Back Read Online Free PDF Page B

accepted. Another boy was sitting on the ground near the fire. Crouching down near him and stretching his hands out toward the warmth, Sipho recognized Joseph in his army jacket. Joseph lifted one hand and waved it toward him.
    “So you came with Jabu! That’s good,” he said. His voice was slightly hoarse and slurred. Inhis other hand he was holding something, which he brought up to his face. He took in a couple of sharp breaths. Then unexpectedly Joseph pushed the plastic bottle toward Sipho.
    “Here,” he said. “Take some. You’ll feel nice. With iglue you won’t be cold, you won’t be hungry.”
    Sipho put out his hand to refuse. “I don’t like it,” he said quickly.
    It was a lie. He had never tried it. When the glue pusher had been expelled from his school, his mother had made him promise her he would never use the stuff. By some good luck his stepfather didn’t hear about the incident. He would probably have beaten Sipho just as a warning. That would have made Sipho so angry that he might have gone deliberately to look for some. But as it was, he hadn’t gone around with a crowd that “smoked.”
    Joseph withdrew the bottle. A thin, wet trickle running down from his nose glinted in the firelight, until he roughly swept his sleeve across his mouth. After inhaling from the bottle again, he looked at Sipho through half-open eyes.
    “It’s okay,” he said, pausing to cough as if trying to clear his throat. “But me, I’m having a good time. I have a nice, nice garden with lots of flowers. It’s sunny…and hot…and I can sleep the whole day.”
    Tumbling over sideways, Joseph curled himself up and in an instant seemed to have fallen asleep. Sipho looked into the shadows, examining Joseph’s “garden.” The ground was rough and covered with tall grass except where it had been cleared. The fireplace was in the middle of the clearing. It was made of bricks covered with a metal grid, on top of which the sausages were now sizzling. A little distance away was a tree. It was difficult to see in the dark beyond the tree, but Sipho imagined that must be the part that the hoboes used when they came.
    “Hey, new boy! Are you going to buy sausage from me? Only two rand each.”
    Vusi called out to Sipho from across the fire. He was holding up a sausage on the end of a knife. Vusi had taken more than two rand from him at Checkers. If only Sipho dared tell him “You owe me that!” Instead he pulled out the change he had left in his pocket. He was not used to money coming in and out of his pockets like this. That morning he had started off in Hillbrow with less than two rand and here he was, after a day of earning and spending, with just over two rand left. Enough for the sausage! Tomorrow he would have to earn what he needed for tomorrow.
    Biting off a small piece of meat to eat with each chunk of bread, Sipho savored the flavorwhile listening to the news pass among the gang. Lucas and Vusi had gone to Rosebank. Lucas had wanted to buy new shoes, and by midafternoon they had each earned over thirty rand pushing carts, parking and washing cars. It must be some kind of fantastic place, thought Sipho, where people had so much money to pay malunde. Perhaps Jabu would take him there. He might even be able to earn enough to buy the little rhino!
    “Do malunde sleep there?” he asked aloud.
    Lucas shook his head. “The police swat us like flies in that place. They say they are keeping it clean.”
    After eating, most of the boys lit up stompies except for Jabu, who pulled out a full-length cigarette. Grinning, he boasted how he had slipped it off a table at the back of the bakery. The manager must have been about to smoke it when they arrived.
    “He’ll catch you next time!” said Thabo.
    “Hayi! No!” laughed Jabu.
    The manager had been so busy that he probably wouldn’t be sure where he had left the cigarette.
    With the fire dying down, Sipho felt the cold night air seeping in. However tightly he folded