When your future means living in the past.

....when your future means living by the means of the past -- on the heels of  Mad Max, Mark Roper's novella and audio book offers an insight into a life after MOTHER NATURE has dealt her ace. A solar storm that has eradicated all access to media, energy and lifestyle as we now know it.

The Bone Traders is about time; a hero that delves into the skeletons of the past in order to answer the questions of his and an ageing community's future. 

It asks questions. It is a what if scenario and the answer is left to the reader to respond.

Read or listen to THE BONE TRADERS. Available on +Amazon Lovers Fan Page and Deal Watcher , iTunes and all audio book outlets. 

THE SOUND OF THE HAGGIS

...listen to a free excerpt from Mark Roper's imaginative coming-of-age novella, TWO FEET (available on Audible and Amazon) to hear the sound of the Haggis.

 http://www.amazon.com/Two-Feet-Random-Thoughts-Travels/dp/B00PJGONZ8/

The sound of the Haggis

Does a Haggis make a sound? Does a Haggis even have a sound? 

It does in Mark Roper's inspiring novella, TWO FEET -- it throbs and pants with agonising breaths; it curdles and farts; it resembles the guts, the insides, the organs of a dying man...Mark's father -- but, perhaps, his imagination has become too vivid?
Read and or listen for yourself as to how a young boy's vision of a departed father begins to mould into an untold landscape.
Available on +Amazon.com and +Audible

http://youtu.be/emM80i4FNh4

A free audio sample of the Haggis

TWO FEET - AUDIO BOOK SAMPLE - MARK ROPER

....Mark Roper's tale of an unconventional upbringing in South Africa in the 1960's is now available as a FULL Audio Book narrated by the credited actor, Miles Anderson -- on Amazon, Audible and iTunes.

The best reads of the year.

Two great novels stand-out for me this year -- stand-out amidst the tsunami of so-called celebrity authors, a cat named Bob or Charles or whatever and an avalanche of soppy, teenage "stories" about first love and disastrous parenting.
If someone out there can please send me the true definition of a "celebrity" please, please do.

My choice:

....to all those readers of this Blog, I wish you a great time over the festive Season and may 2015 be a bright light on your horizon.

Best Wishes.

TWO FEET - AUDIO BOOK SAMPLE - MARK ROPER

Mark Roper - The Independent Author Network

Mark Roper - The Independent Author Network

New Release of Audiobook

A FREE AUDIO SAMPLE

After the abrupt disappearance of his father, young Mark finds solace in an unconventional upbringing within a close-knit South African community during the 1960s in this unique coming-of-age memoir.

Under the vast African sky, a young boy is forced to come to terms with a whole new reality. Abandoned by his father, his new playground is the open plains, and his new family, a deeply-rooted local community with some seemingly unorthodox ways—among them, Swazi warrior Mabuza, and stern, religious Afrikaner Meneer Gerber. But Mark soon finds that this unconventional upbringing might be exactly what he needs to fill the emptiness created by his life-altering loss. While he imagines his father fighting for his life in a distant hospital, the boy learns to find solace and hope through the wisdom and traditions of his new community—including important lessons about life, overcoming obstacles, and how to walk with bare feet. This inspirational memoir documents Mark Roper’s unique adolescence spent in 1960s South Africa, and his struggle to move toward a brighter future after the abrupt disappearance of his father. With equal parts insight, emotion, and humour, Two Feet takes a candid look at the realities of family life, while evoking the adventure and curiosity of childhood.

The link below takes you to AMAZON.COM -- audiobook.


RELEASED TODAY FOR YOUR PLEASURE
http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Biographies-Memoirs/Two-Feet-Audiobook/B00PHD5KU0/

A sneak preview of TWO FEET

....A SNEAK PREVIEW OF THE AUDIO VERSION OF THE NOVELLA, TWO FEET, SOON AVAILABLE ON +Amazon.com.

Emergency Data Law

Now that the UK parliament has passed the Emergency Data Law does that mean they have the right to read and check my letters?
If so, maybe they can make sense of my electricity bill +EDF Energy or the umpteen pages of crap relating to lounge suites, car insurance and window glazing that keep the postman busy.
Grumpy. Time to shake out the old Olivetti typewriter but I did recently hear that during the Cold War, the Russians implanted some gizmo in the golf-ball typewriters (remember them?) that were being used by the Americans in their Embassy. The gizmo calculated the rotations of the ball and the letters it was using -- how on earth they used that info is beyond my ageing brain -- all sounds like nonsense but it was something I heard -- just saying nowhere is safe. Carrier pigeon??????

Self publishing - costs and benefits

The costs and benefits of publishing your own books

An interesting article via the +BBC News on publishing your own book.

I don't know if I should weep or cry!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28268014

Any comments out there??? Your experiences as a self published author? This is an open Blog and feel free to comment!!!

Swaziland: King Mswati Snubs His Own Airport

Swaziland: King Mswati Snubs His Own Airport

...if only his father was alive today!!

Yet another African country falls foul to corruption -- a damn, damn shame. Back in the days we were taking sanctuary in Swaziland to avoid the apartheid mayhem -- now it seems the opposite.
The fact is, he didn't need an aeroplane in the first place.
Grumpy.


allAfrica.com: Swaziland: King Mswati Snubs His Own Airport

Please visit the following site to read how it USED to be in Swaziland or simply give the novel TWO FEET a read -- set in the 1960's it highlights the GOOD of the country.  Thanks.

When it was good...

Audiobook - Two Feet - Chapter Two

Free Audio chapter

Kindle Countdown -- low priced books

Mabuza once told me that if there are holes in the road you often travel, stop and fill them in, for this will help the man travelling behind you.

Was Mabuza my Madiba? Probably. This was South Africa, and we all needed guidance on what was a bumpy road. 


...the novella TWO FEET is on a Kindle Countdown for the next three days -- perfect stocking filler so I am told!!

 A compelling collection of stories reflecting an adolescent’s memories of an unconventional upbringing in Southern Africa during the 1960’s.

   Allowed to roam the veldt under the protective wing of the Swazi Warrior, Mabuza, the boy’s journey is merged with humour, witticisms, anecdotes and insights from having to navigate the potholes that are left behind by the abrupt disappearance of his father.   

   From learning how to walk with bare feet and how to deal with the unorthodox teaching methods of Meneer Gerber, the reader is transported into a boy’s world where dreams triumph over reality. Set beneath the bigness of the African sky, the stories are pivoted by the boy’s imagining of his father convalescing in a distant hospital, where a natural remedy might be the potion for us all.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Two-Feet-Mark-Roper-ebook/dp/B00D368NT8

A FREE chapter from the novella, TWO FEET -- enjoy.

A WORM UP YOUR BUM

 …I’d lie on my bed at night scratching and scratching at the thin, angry line that showed the worm’s path under my nine-year old skin. I knew it as a sand worm. The worm is microscopic, and it gets under your skin and begins a merry-munching - journey day and night. Yes, especially at night. (The Africans’ have a theory that it is heading for your brain so the best time to catch it, is when it makes its final dash across your eyeball). I’ve tried burning the wiggly-bastard with the fiery tip of a cigarette and even a candle flame. I attempted toasting it, but that didn’t work, so I tried sticking a heated pin in its squiggly path but all it did was squiggle to the left or right and keep going, heading for my ankle. It has two heads, so the German doctor in town mumbled through his nicotine stained beard. He gave me a salve, an ointment, to rub on, but this seemed to encourage the wiggly- bastard to double its rate of eating.

So in the end you, Feet, on the advice of Mabuza, took me across the swollen Matsapa River to visit the Sangoma, the witch doctor. He’s as wise as the combined occupants of a zoo and has a skin as gnarled as a sun dried Granadilla. He lived in one of three beehive huts surrounded by a sad maize crop and had the plume of the Sobhuza bird, as red as a plum, glued to his forehead with what looked like candle wax. He stank. He stank of cow shit and some crappy white man’s skin cream that the maidens recently started to apply to whiten their black skins. He had soft hands and the whites of his eyes were an ancient, scroll-like yellow.

I sat on the ground in front of him and raised my barefoot off the hot, red earth so he could get a good look at the wiggly- bastard. The Sangoma, not in the least perturbed, looked at my foot and crawled back into his hut, his withered buttocks for all to see. Inside the murkiness of his abode, I could just see the shapes of an assortment of dried leaves, herbs and roots hanging from the rafters. I could smell through the usual aroma of wood smoke, the sweetness of marijuana. I glimpsed the pinkness of a child’s doll lying on the floor near the arched doorway. It was naked, and its limbs had been darkened by fire. Then the Sangoma appeared in the doorway, so I dropped my gaze, feeling guilty for looking into his world.

On his knees, he gestures for me to raise my foot. This I do, and he cradles it in his, alarmingly, soft hands. He then spits on my foot; a huge projectile of phlegm that splatters right on target right where the worm crawls. I wince as the liquid slides off my flesh like egg yolk and plops onto the dry soil. But I know he’s watching me so I try to keep eye contact as he rubs the phlegm into my skin, over the worm’s track, and while he is doing this, I’m wondering why that baby doll is in the hut and why its limbs are singed? Then the Sangoma pulls out the rusty needle he has between his teeth and aims it toward you, Feet, toward you, you wiggly- bastard worm. I tense and my toes curl, awaiting the stab of the needle. Nothing happens. I open my eyes as I sense further movement from the Sangoma in front of me. He is digging deep into a leather pouch that is around his waist, tied amongst the braided leather strips and beaded thongs. He removes a chipped, white shirt button tied to a piece of thread and in my nine year old brain I’m imagining that he is going to sew that button onto my flesh.

My stomach lurches but the Sangoma doesn’t sew button to flesh. Instead, he swings the button like a pendulum over the worm’s phlegm covered path. My stomach and feet relax whilst the button swings left and right. I think he’s hypnotising the squiggly bastard. Then the Sangoma sneezes. I can feel the twin, moist streams of his hot air on my foot. Suddenly, the button stops swinging as if frozen in midair by an invisible force. The thread it hangs from has gone as tight as a fishing line with a decent sized tiger fish on it. Then the wise old man, as quick as a flea can jump, stabs down with the needle, right beneath the poised button, right into the worm’s trail. I yelp like a puppy, not because of the pain but because of the abruptness of his action. He drops my foot unceremoniously and puts out his soft hand. I see there’s a speck of blood on my foot as I hand the Sangoma the coins. He stands and shuffles off between his huts, scattering the wretched, half plucked chickens as he goes and I understand this as being my cue to leave.

So we do, Feet, heading for the river’s bank where the muddy water slides between the stepping-stones that brought us here in the first place. I notice that the fluffy seed pods on the reeds by the water are bursting like snow-flakes in the breeze, and that the green and yellow Cape Weaver birds are in full harmony as the males make their upside down nests; a harmony that may falter to a frustrated twitter when their wives examine the nests and begin to tear them apart if dissatisfied with the construction or location.

That night, and every night since, there has been no worm, no itching, no wiggly movement. For a few nights, I was still wondering about that singed, child’s doll back in the Sangoma’s hut. I had pink flesh. I had singed my own flesh to be rid of the wiggly bastard.

Now you can understand Feet, why most Africans never sit with their bums on the soil; why most squat on the heels in what may be construed as a rocking motion. It’s so you don’t get a wiggly bastard up your bum, Feet.
THE HOME OF MABUZA

There's a salad on my head

THERE'S A SALAD ON MY HEAD.

As an update, have you tried buying a tube of toothpaste recently? Before I comment, let me know your thoughts -- I don't know about tooth decay, but selecting a tube of toothpaste is rapidly becoming brain decay. 

Had a quiet chuckle a few days ago. Stumbled into the local supermarket come pharmacy to purchase a bottle of shampoo. Liquid soap in a bottle it used to be known as. Not any more -- I surveyed line upon line of misshaped bottles -- green, yellow, amber, gold, dark...upright and not upright. Bulbous and lean, some bending toward being phallic shaped. 
So I began reading the ingredients and that's when I chuckled which probably confused the platinum blonde beside me, because he hurried away with a toss of a curl. I can only presume I had interrupted his blissful moment of wondering what next to anoint his scalp of dead keratinized cells with.

Avocado and passion fruit, honey and almond, wild herbs and strawberry, lemon zing with a dash of grapefruit (natural no less!), raspberry with mint and selected herbs from India, (mint??) rose petal and, wait for it, tea. Give me/us a break here -- we are talking about washing our hair, not dumping the veggie garden on our head, are we?? Mango juice with wild African honey? I do not jest. Let me ask: Who went out there and did this experiment? Who woke up one morning and squashed a mango and  added bee vomit and announced that he had created a shampoo? Who? 
Plonker. Or we are for even believing him.

Perhaps none of this surprises you.  Does me -- as a farm kid I grew up with all those ingredients so imagine if I'd wandered off into the orchard, into the fields, mashed up a few strawberries, squashed an avocado or two, and dumped and massaged them into my scalp? Then rinsed. 

It would have been straight jacket time, I tell you. Or I'd be quickly associated to smoking the same green stuff the tractor driver was hourly participating in -- Back in those days, a bar of Lux soap did just fine even though it may have just been used to clean one of the mutts. I'm still showing a full crop of hair just in case you are wondering.

P.S. I bought the green one -- I think it is lime intoxicated with the fumes of an African swallow's fart or something or other. Not quite sure, but it seems to goad well with the bees out in the garden -- I'm a fair attraction.

Bring back them old days.

So here's an extract from TWO FEET about shopping -- hope you enjoy. Comments appreciated. 

EXTRACT FROM THE NOVELLA, TWO FEET:

This was a good road. It had a few hills and a few potholes, but pedalling was easy especially on the way to the Store. I’d park the bike outside the Store where the hulking overhead diesel drum was positioned, and then walk across the dry patch of red earth where the chickens fed, and climb the few concrete steps onto the porch of the building. Here, a Cobbler and a tailor worked. The tailor had a milky eye and his left leg would furiously pump the plate on the floor to make the sewing machine rattle. He looked as though he was riding a bicycle to nowhere. The Cobbler, who wore a white shirt and a tie, had a tiny anvil and a mouthful of little black tacks that protruded from his lips like snakes’ tongues. Beside him were heaps of shoes that I thought would never cover a person’s feet or tread on a road again. But they did.

There is always a group of people gathered on the porch. A mother feeding her baby on her bosom, her head bent low over the infant to keep away the flies, an old man leaning on his cane peering from beneath the brim of his recently purchased hat, and another woman tying up her cash in a piece of cloth that she would thrust down her blouse for safe keeping.

The business of shopping was a muted, respected affair by customers in the Store. An aisle was approached with caution, almost in awe, bare feet scuffing on the concrete floor. Canned goods were held carefully in both hands, and the picture on the label was studied with the intensity of an art scholar. A bar of wrapped, Lux soap was sniffed and smiled at, and the bulky bag of Hullett’s refined, white sugar, stroked and prodded.

At the rear of the store, alongside gardening implements and paraffin lamps, shoes for men and women, made in Taiwan, beckoned. The shoes were never tried on for size but measured against the foot, the brightness of the shoe’s plastic alluring. The appearance of high heeled shoes would cause much stifled giggling.

The weighing of maize meal, sugar or flour by the Store’s owner was a solemn affair, the customer having ordered it, not by weight, but by what he or she could afford. As the grocer’s scale shifted on its fulcrum, so would the head of the customer, as if mentally trying to balance the brass contraption by telepathy. When the scale righted itself, the customer would do likewise with his or her head. Then the maize or flour would be poured into a paper bag and fastened with cello-tape. Whatever money the customer had was offered to the store owner as payment. It was accepted that the store owner would count out what was needed, and the balance be returned. A sticky sweet or two always concluded the transaction.

Free Chapter - the deaf can hear.

Here's a free chapter from the novella, THE BONE TRADERS #Amazon in which Joe meets up with the geriatric Hunters and solves a hearing problem. Hope you enjoy and, as always, feel free to comment.

Joe's website

Salvaged wind generators and the crooked, rotating blades of wind pumps greet The Sow as it transports Joe down the street in Erasmusville.

The midday sun is flat and ferocious. The few villagers that remain keep under whatever shade they can find. They stand glued to their spots like toy soldiers, basking in the half-light.

Joe climbs out of The Sow, the weary dust trail settling immediately like a tired mongrel. Joe makes for the crooked gate.

“Danya?”

His voice rings loud in the sullen silence of the village. “Danya...It’s me.”

Charles appears from a corner of the house, his shotgun levelled at Joe’s stomach. “Hiiiiii,” he teases, managing to curl his lips. “It’s me,” he adds, offering an exaggerated, womanly wave.

“So I see,” responds Joe. He hasn’t looked Charles in the eyes. Not yet.

“I’m going to shoot your balls off,” Charles informs him.

Joe takes out his cigarette case. “No you’re not.”

Charles giggles and sniffs. “I am, too.”

“Is Danya here?”

“You’ll never know.”

Joe now looks at Charles as he pulls a match from his coat pocket.

“Don’t look at me. Okay? I’m going to shoot your balls off...I SAID DON’T LOOK AT ME!”

“I’m not looking. Not really. Not yet.”

Then Joe lights the match, passing his hand over it, as he always does. The match flares. He lights his cigarette.

Charles has witnessed this. He is silent. “Holy crap,” he finally whispers.

“Is Danya in the house?”

Charles wipes his nose, and then nods, a little too eagerly.

Joe cautiously opens the door.

Sampson stands in the hallway, his shotgun aimed at Joe. The big man grins, his hearing aid prominent.

“You killed Dog,” Joe tells Sampson.

“I did what?”

Charles has moved behind Joe where he can see Sampson in the hallway.

“Shoot him. Go on. Shoot him,” Charles tells Sampson.

Sampson cocks his head. “What you say?”

“I said shoot him,” Charles yells.

Joe hasn’t shifted his position in the doorway. He exudes calmness. “You killed dog. You did. I know. Why?”

Joe is staring at Sampson now and already Sampson is wavering; his facial expression taking on the pallor of a man sick at sea.

“Just who or what the shit is Dog?” Charles asks.

Joe stares at Sampson, boring into him. “Dog was the bird, my bird.”

“What you gonna do, Sampson? Huh? Huh?” Charles asks Sampson, loudly.

“I don’t know...what you going to do? He’s looking at me again, Charles.”

Joe hasn't flinched.

“Hef - Hef he said to kill the bird. To make it go quiet,” Sampson finally admits, incapable of breathing regularly now.

“People like you started the senseless rot and the violence. People like you who should have cared.”

“I can’t hear you?”

Charles is dancing on his feet with nervousness. He knows it has all gone horribly wrong, that both he and Sampson are sinking in the quicksand Joe has managed to plant.

“I asked you where is Danya?”

“He lit a match! Oh shit...with his hand!” Charles sniffs from behind Joe, his eyes darting left and right.

“Where is she?” Joe again asks, this time louder, but still in control.

“Sky took her.”

“Took her where?”

“He said we were to meet at the canyon at sunrise...afterwards.”

“Afterwards...?”

Sampson fiddles with his hearing-aid: anything to avoid Joe’s presence. “After...after us...Charles, not me...was going to make it so’s you...you know...”

“No I don’t know...”

“Don’t tell him anything Sampson,” Charles yells from the background, his boots stirring the dust.

Sampson eyes the floor. “So’s you can’t breed no more,”  e tells Joe.

Joe steps closer to Sampson very quickly. “You killed my friend,” he says on the move, and then he slaps Sampson’s ear, the one without the hearing-aid. He slaps it with a full hand, palm in, and the blow rings out like a pistol shot.

And as Sampson yelps like a struck puppy, Joe is already striding off, past Charles and toward The Sow. Charles dodges out of Joe’s path, his feet numb with nervousness, and the shotgun as useless as the sudden air in his bowels.

Sampson, clasping his head, staggers out of the house.

“Sky is going to kill us...Sky is going to take our balls,” Charles whispers as he watches The Sow transport Joe away, not even wanting to question or deliberate the silence of the auto mobile. 

“Screw, Sky...”says Sampson.

Charles looks at his friend. “What did you say?”

“I said screw Sky, why?”

Before The Event, the breaking of dawn was a slow unveiling, like a chameleon changing colour, a chrysalis to butterfly – a slow realisation that day was impending.

This is the pace, the crawl, that realisation spreads across Sampson’s face. He pulls his hearing-aid away from his ear. He looks at it. He looks at Charles.

“Charles,” Sampson says quietly. “I can hear. He’s made it so I can hear.”

Mark Roper - The Independent Author Network

Mark Roper - The Independent Author Network

What's in a quote?

The home of Mabuza

+Paulo Coelho (dare I have the gumption to mention the master on this site!) often, if not always, writes about a person's journey -- be it spiritual or physical. One of his preferred quotes is:

"...on your journey to your dream, be ready to face oasis and deserts. In both cases, don't stop."

For those few avid followers of this Blog, you will have noted the occasional quote by and reference to Mabuza, the warrior from the novella Two Feet.(Random thoughts,Random travels). Certainly not in the same vein as Coelho, but Mabuza rambles on about life's journey and the road we all travel. So who is this Mabuza? Well, we ALL have a Mabuza I think, we all knew and maybe still know a Mabuza. He's that inner voice, that childhood imaginary advisor that we silently listened to. Or wished we had listened to! In the case of Two Feet he was solid and present, perhaps not as proficient, but no matter how he voiced it, it made sense.

Mabuza never wore shoes and I doubt he ever had. The soles of his feet were broad and flat. The heels of his feet were criss-crossed with minuscule, dust-congealed ravines that were a memento to the roads and paths he had journeyed.

Mabuza wore a pair of grey, white man’s shorts that hung below his knees and an old man’s short-sleeved vest. Around his waist, he’d tied a braided, leather rimpie (thong) and attached to this belt was a small, cheap, clasp knife and a handmade leather tobacco pouch in which he kept his little tin of snuff tobacco.

Mabuza’s teeth were as yellow as a newborn chick, but the whites of his eyes were as clear as recently ground maize.

Mabuza was a tall, stringy man, whose peppercorn hair was beginning to show speckles of grey, his nostrils were flared, and his belly was showing signs of too much maize beer.

Mabuza would always squat over the ground for fear of the wiggly-bastard worm, and he could do this for a very long time without shifting a muscle, even when he inhaled the snuff tobacco off his extended finger, or ate from his plate of maize porridge with bent fingers.

*****

Mabuza once told me that if the spoor of the man ahead of you is heavy and fat, you are following a sullen man.

*****

Mabuza once told me that if the spoor of the man ahead of you is light and thin, you are following a happy man.

*****

...and as we are in quote mode here today, here are a few quotable links:

http://thinkexist.com/quotations/journey/

http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/30-funny-travel-quotes-to-make-you-smile/

The Bone Traders - Free Chapter

Dog's Home Page

DYING TO MEET THE DEAD

The sound of the crowbar Joe uses to shift the rock echoes in the canyon. He is sweating and he’s removed his shirt. Nearby, a small fire burns over which roasts a dead rabbit. A can of pineapple and a water canteen show that a meal is due.

Dog preens himself as Joe digs the crowbar deeper beneath an obstinate rock.

“...not idle chatter. No, Dog. Looking and wanting something,” Joe mumbles to Dog. “Why come to me like a blue-fly to a mound of dung?  A man has a problem where he is and what he does, he makes a change, right?  Every road has a detour; go left, go right, go straight. That is his choice.” Exasperated, Joe sits down on a boulder, wags a finger at Dog. “Just don’t make it my problem. Especially that sort. Sky - who is called Sky? Isn't there enough sky? There’s nothing but negative oozing from him like an old car battery. Just like this place, Dog. Negative.”

Joe lifts his head. “Come on! Speak to me!” He suddenly shouts.

Dog ruffles his feathers as Joe’s words echo in the canyon. Then silence.

As if in abeyance, a sod of chalky earth topples near to where Joe was digging.

Joe hears the movement of the falling sod of earth, looks to it. He grins. “Apologies for the shouting, fine stuff,” he tells the soil.

Joe drops to his knees and begins digging with his bare hands. He soon reveals a glimpse of black material. It is wedged like a layer in a sandwich. He pulls at the material. It won’t budge so he gives it another jerk and applies more strength. He leans back on his heels.

The material suddenly gives and pops out the hole. Joe falls back on his backside. Attached to the remnants of the material are the well preserved, skeletal remains of a human hand.

 You can barely recognise the colour of this material, but you finally do. It is the colour of the clothing worn by the armed, mounted Border Patrol.

Dog reacts by flapping his huge wings, the downdraught causing a cloud of dust.

I am Dog. We both seek a carcass.

Joe collects himself and kneels alongside the remains. There’s an edge of excitement to him as he blows away the dust, scrapes away the congealed soil, revealing more of the fingers and the wrist bone. 

Joe rocks on his haunches and looks at Dog. “It’s time for my silence now Dog. But you listen to me now and listen well, my friend. If I don’t come back, you eat me true and clean. You hear me, Dog?  You finish me before the worms do. True and clean is what I ask for.”

Dog stares and offers a blink from hooded eyes.

He seeks his for a different reason. 

Joe takes a deep breath. “Good, Dog -- good. Yes, before the worms get me and before the Priest gets to me.”

From his trouser pocket, Joe pulls out a strip of leather -- it is plaited, like a fake dog’s bone -- and he puts it between his teeth, and chews down on it so it becomes an extension of his mouth. He gets comfortable on his haunches, settles his feet on the ground, ensuring his boots grip the earth’s crust. He’s planting himself.

Joe bites down on the strip of leather with force. 

 You are able, through the gap between the two boulders, to see the man who is hunched over what you mistakenly think is a pile of garbage, of plastic. Out of the corner of your eye you take notice of the size of the bird that sits as stoic as a statue.

You see the naked back of the man. His shoulders are broad and glisten with sweat. You inhale quickly as you see the muscles on the man’s back tense and ripple. You hold your breath as those same muscles remain taut. Your reaction is alien to you and you are confused by it.

You shift your position silently for a better view. Now you see that his hands are hovering over what you think is garbage, plastic. Every sinew in the man seems to be working. He rotates his body and his chest suddenly expands with a breath of air or is it shock? That thing between his teeth – he is gnawing on it, his jawbones set rigid.

You are trying to hold your own breath.

There is a tremble to his hovering fingers.

You exhale and ‘yelp’ simultaneously as the man is suddenly thrown backwards as if kicked by an invisible horse, a something. You clutch your mouth to stiffen any further noise as the man is slammed against the ground.

There he remains motionless. 

MY NAME IS DOG