AUDIO BOOK - TWO FEET - THE SOUND OF THE HAGGIS (PREVIEW)

TWO FEET - FREE KINDLE DOWNLOAD

An inspirational journey.

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TAGLINE;

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 novella.

BRIEF SYNOPSIS;

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.  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 Swazi warrior Mabuza once said 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. And if anyone knows about navigating potholes, its young Mark —victim of a broken home, abruptly abandoned by his father, and struggling to deal with the loss. But under the guidance and protection of Mabuza, and others in his South African community, Mark learns to find solace and dream his way toward a brighter future—while adjusting to some unorthodox teaching methods along the way. Adventurous and inspiring, this film urges viewers to reflect on the concepts of childhood, family, and community.

AUTHOR’S BIO:

Mark was born in South Africa. He lived in Swaziland in the 1960's and returned there in the 70's. His unconventional life has led him to many parts of the world. He backpacked through Eastern Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Scandinavia ( a period that was the basis of his first screenplay and directorial début ) finally ending up in Washington D.C. working in the Australian Embassy. There he was smitten by the film bug and returned to South Africa where television production was in its heyday. Mark is now a recognised film director and lives in the United Kingdom. He is married, and has one daughter.

He is the author of The Bone Traders, a post apocalyptic story and Two Feet, a novella of his unconventional upbringing in Southern Africa in the 1960's.

YOUTUBE LINK FOR AUDIO READING OF CHAPTER ONE BY MILES ANDERSON

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emM80i4FNh4

TWO FEET IS SELF- PUBLISHED ON AMAZON BOTH AS A PAPERBACK AND AS A KINDLE DOWNLOAD. 

Sticks and Stones -- TWO FEET - on the road.

STICKS AND STONES

LISTEN AS YOU READ -- IT ADDS TO THE ATMOSPHERE !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Music by JALUKA and Johnny Clegg.

My sticks are ready.

I am ready to fight.

Mabuza is not happy. He is angry. I know this because he has been tugging at the grey pebbles of hair on the left side of his head like a dog scratches at a tenacious flea. He avoids my eyes when I look at him, especially when I am busy polishing my “donga”, my dlala ‘nduku, my playing sticks.

There are two sticks. One is longer than the other. The longest I will grip in my left hand to parry the blows and the shorter will be in my right for attacking. Both sticks I have chopped from the Wild Olive tree. I have soaked them in cooking fat that I have stolen from the kitchen. This, and many hours of sunbathing have helped harden the wood.

I am fighting Galpin. He is one of the many sons of the Induna (Chief) that lives across the Matsapa River. There was no throwing down of the gauntlet, no challenge. It is just an accepted ritual. We are both of age. It is our time.

He pointed at me. I pointed at him. We shook hands, and that was it. We will fight behind the General Dealer Store.

I think Galpin will probably go for my knees first. I have seen him fight before. Or he will feint a move to the left as the right stick goes for the side of my head.

I am prepared for this. I have stolen a dishcloth from the kitchen. This I will wrap around my head like a bandanna for protection. It is the norm. Galpin, will, of course, wear a traditional bandanna of local cloth. It will be embroidered with either a lion or a fleet-footed antelope.

My bandanna is embroidered with the word “Sunlight” which is a well known brand of soap.

I have been practising down at the dam, away from the eyes of the brood. My target has been imaginary, or I have taken to beating at the clumps of reeds that grow down there. I parry and thrust, sink low on my haunches, stab and defend. My enemy, in return, showers me with soft seeds that glisten like flakes of gold in the sunlight.

I have consequently made an enemy of the Cape weaver birds that are in the process of nesting amongst the reeds. I try to think of their angry tirade as applause.

“This is the game of children.”

“No. This is the game of warriors!”

“Pah!” Scoffs Mabuza, followed by a lump of phlegm to the ground. “There are better ways to be a warrior.”

“Like what?”

Mabuza taps the side of his head twice.

And with that, Mabuza went back to stabbing the garden fork into a weed infested flower bed and I am suddenly, briefly, wondering what you, Dying Father, would be telling me at this juncture of my life. The moment is fleeting. More of a spasm, then it has gone and shelved itself away amongst the other odds and sods that have briefly, over time, asked for reasons and advice, and then crept away scorned.

I think of decorating my sticks. Perhaps with a few coils of copper wire, like the great warriors of King Chaka’s people.

“Are you now a maiden?”

I am rebuked.

I trundle away to the dam in search of applause from the cape Weaver birds.

There are no noises of the night on the night before the fight. There are none only because I do not sleep. My calf muscles are taut as I lie on my bed, cramping with a nervousness that first began as something heavy in my stomach. A squirming something, not unlike that wriggly bastard worm, that is sometimes warm, sometimes cold. I think it is what they call fear.

Hurry dawn’s light.

My sticks are ready.

Watch me, Meneer Gerber.

I am to be a man, Dying Father.

I am The Sunlight Boy. 

I pedal away from the house as it sleeps. I have managed to put my two sticks down the back of my shirt. I am a Samurai on a bicycle, off to defend what? This I do not know. It is a tradition. So that must be it. This is my rite.

I take the tar road to the General Dealer store. The road is void of traffic. There is cow shit on the rise, and I dodge it. The tarmac shimmers like a snake’s skin in the dawn’s light. A slight mist envelops the pineapple fields to the left and right. The plants stand aloof and sharp. It is a hostile plant for reasons only Nature must know.

I ride the road and avoid the potholes.

Mabuza stands at the turn-off to the General Dealer. I see him from a distance, and I ease off on the pedals. He stands where the red dust meets the tarmac, where the old meets the new. His chest is bare. He wears a loincloth, his tin cup attached to a riempie (thong) of leather about his waist. He holds, loosely, a knobkerrie (wooden club) in his hand. As I approach him, he nods once and breaks into his customary trot to cross the road.

We say nothing.

I pedal after him, his warrior gait light, and he barely rustles the red sand beneath his naked feet from its slumber.

The tailor with the milky eye is setting up his sewing machine on the porch of the store. There is not much activity yet. The Store is still closed. A hen with a clutch of chicks works the soil close to the wall where I park the bicycle. The hen fluffs her feathers and the chicks respond like sharks to offal. I remove my sticks from under my shirt and from my trouser pocket I pull out my Sunlight bandana.

I think of the reeds and the angry Weaver birds as I wrap the dish cloth around my head. I fold in the corners. I bounce a stick off my scalp. Numb and dumb.

Mabuza is watching, but he is not.

Behind the General Dealer Store where the grass is well trodden, Galpin stands with a small group of people. I recognise some of them from the kraal. His father, the Induna will referee. That was already decided.

There is only Mabuza behind me, and he is yet to speak to anyone.

Galpin and I square-off. There is no ritual or celebration. It is straightforward.  He attacks and I parry; the Wild Olive wood in my hand shuddering on contact and sending electric shivers down my arm.

He feints left and the next second I am on my knees. The pain comes later. It is a quick blow to the area behind my right knee. I stand up.

....and will the Sunlight Boy win? On his road to adulthood...read Mark Roper's inspiring novella to discover the consequences on +Amazon.com 

http://www.amazon.com/Two-Feet-Haggis-Mark-Roper-ebook/dp/B00UVUQRH4/

AUDIO BOOK - TWO FEET - THE SOUND OF THE HAGGIS (PREVIEW)

AUDIO BOOK - TWO FEET - THE SOUND OF THE HAGGIS (PREVIEW)

TWO FEET HEARD IN THE CLOUDS

Mark Roper - The Independent Author Network

Mark Roper - The Independent Author Network

Are we in or outside of the Asylum?

 A CHAPTER FROM MARK ROPER'S NOVELLA, TWO FEET.

The Eastern Cape Government School is situated alongside the Eastern Cape Government Lunatic Asylum.

I have only just realised this because, now that I walk with bare feet, I am left alone to enjoy my break-time. I am, momentarily, ignored by the over-aged for their class farm boys.

The smell of the long-drop will no longer bring tears to my eyes and my under-teenage backside will no longer be booted, and I will not be forced to travel in the spinning innards of a garbage can.

I walk the earth as they do.

I am a fledgling member of the barefoot club.

I now walk with bare feet upon the same, drought stricken Kikuyu grass that the over-age for his class farm boy they call Pisskop does. I can see Pisskop now on the playing field as he selects a team to play touch rugby with. Pisskop is fourteen and is the hairiest bastard in the school. Pisskop has shown everyone his pubic hairs. That is why he is called Pisskop. He also owns a .22 rifle, and they say he can shoot a hovering Kestrel out of the sky three-times-out-of-three. That’s a lot of hovering Kestrels to die in one day I wanted to say, but I did not for fear of having my head forced into the long drop.

Pisskop’s feet are ingrained with the colour of the earth; red. He does not wash. When he gets on the school bus every morning, he is always scratching his groin or picking at his feet. I look out of the window of the bus trying not to look at Pisskop because he gets angry if I look at him.

But I am happy to walk the same earth as Pisskop because I am left alone to my own devices.

Around me the game of touch rugby is being played. Dust is being raised off the barren field by the players' naked feet and there is a lot of shouting and the occasional sound of a wet thump as the leather clad ball is kicked high up and over.

On the other side of the high, wire fence that separates the school, is the lunatic asylum. This, it seems, is common knowledge. I can see an inmate sitting on a fallen, blue gum branch. Behind him is the shape of the Government built asylum. It has a corrugated tin roof that is painted red and has a long veranda. There are iron bars across the windows behind which I can see the faint glimmer of mosquito mesh. I can see other pyjama clad inmates roaming about on the veranda. Some are not roaming at all. They are simply standing as if they are waiting for something or somebody.

There is a bed on the veranda but no-one lies on its black striped, piss stained mattress.

There is a smell of boiled cabbage and human shit wafting in the breeze; a smell that not even the scent of the nearby blue gum trees can defeat.

The inmate sitting on the fallen branch is pretending to be a tea-pot.

The game of touch rugby has turned into a brawl, and I watch Meneer Gerber, who teaches Judo, Hygiene, Mathematics, English, Geography, Science and Divinity, weigh in with his cane and the boys, including Pisskop, scatter leaving the main culprit at the mercy of Meneer Gerber. The Culprit tries to get to his feet. Already his nose is bloody. Meneer Gerber gives the Culprit two quick strokes with his cane across the back of his legs and the third somewhere across his spine because he’s trying to turn away and run.

“Are you blerry stupid, man, or what!?” Meneer Gerber shouts at the bloody nosed, now goose-stepping Culprit. “Answer me! Hey!?”

“Nee, Meneer!” (No, Sir)

“You are blerry stupid!”

“Ja, Meneer!” (Yes, Sir)

Meneer Gerber walks away, already reaching for his pipe that he always carries in the pocket of his khaki coloured safari-suit along with a copy of a Superman comic that he reads to himself when he’s meant to be teaching us.

The Culprit wipes his bloody nose and stands alone on the barren playing field. He is rubbing his legs and wincing against the pain of Meneer Gerber’s bamboo cane. Pisskop and the other children have wandered away.

“What the blerry Hell you looking at, Rooinek!?”The Culprit shouts at me.

I look away.

I am a Rooinek, a red neck, because I speak English and during the Boer War all the English were called Rooineks. This is because the African sun burnt their pale skin which was from England, where there is not much sun at all, a rose red.

The inmate has his arms pointed over his head. Slowly he bends from the waist, dips, and pours. In a semi-circle, one cup, then two, then a third and a fourth. Then back to the first cup.

I wonder what blend of tea he thinks he is pouring.

Meneer Gerber is the only teacher that speaks English. That is why he teaches only the Rooineks of which I am one. I think there are less than thirty in the school. The Rooinek class consists of students of all ages: eight to twelve years old. Most are the children of farmers whose forefathers came on the ships in the 1820’s, but I think Max’s parents own the cafe where you can buy bread already sliced, so he is not the son of a farmer. Meneer Gerber is a knowledgeable teacher. During every lesson he makes us read a chapter from a textbook whilst he smokes his pipe and reads a Marvel Comic book which is usually a story about Superman.

I wonder if the inmate at the Eastern Cape Lunatic Asylum also serves sugar and milk with the tea that he is pouring.

Near the end of the class, Meneer Gerber will occasionally ask us questions on the chapter we have just read. There are usually twenty questions, sometimes less. If we get less than sixty-percent right, Meneer Gerber calls you to the front of the class, and he canes you. Usually it is three or four strokes across the backside, or he gestures for you to put out your hands, palms up and touching, and canes you there. This is the most painful. Especially if you need to continue writing with your pencil a few minutes later.

I wonder for whom the inmate is pouring tea.

Meneer Gerber does not allow any questions to be asked about any subject, especially Divinity. This is the only subject we do not have a text book about because Meneer Gerber can pretty much recite anything he wants from memory when it comes to stories about Jesus and God and Mary and Joseph and Moses. That is why I wrote earlier that he was a clever teacher.

I wonder why the inmate smiles the way he does as he pours his tea. It is a slight smile, almost soft as if he is being tickled by a feather. It is the smile I think, of a sleeping child. It is the same smile the Herd boy wears on his face when he is smoking that tobacco that has a seriously sweet smell.

Meneer Gerber has told us eight to thirteen year old Rooineks that we are all no better than Judas because of what we did to the Boer children and women during the Boer war. Meneer Gerber says it was we Rooineks that tied the women and children to the front of the trains so the brave Boers would not use dynamite to blow up the train line. Meneer Gerber says it was we Rooineks who built the first concentration camp and not the Germans. He insists that we Rooineks will always walk with guilty souls under the eyes of God and that because it is God’s Will, most of us will be cast out to sea before we become men and that we will spend eternity questioning our guilt.

I wish I can, but I am afraid to, ask Meneer Gerber the question about who created God and who was God’s father, but we are not allowed to ask questions, especially in Divinity class.

The inmate has stopped pouring his tea as I hear the school bell ring. He now sits with his hands folded in his lap. He looks calm. As if he is waiting for something or somebody.

Or maybe he is simply waiting for the kettle to boil.

 I wonder, dying father, as you rest on that thin bed with the rusty springs, listening to the creaking of the tin roof above and the distant cry of a child, if you would have had the answers to my questions.

I wonder how you would have answered those questions.

Would you have sat me on your lap and smiled as I asked my question?

Would you have felt proud even if my question was a stupid one?

Would you have been impatient with my youthful curiosity?

I wonder what questions you ask yourself now as you await the afternoon visit from the Indian doctor from Calcutta and the nurse from Abuja, Nigeria.

I think, as the flickering flame of the paraffin lamp beside your bed attracts a disorientated moth, you are asking the same question that I feared to ask Meneer Gerber.

Do you want to warm up your heart?

Take a listen to a preview of Mark Roper's warm and emotional story of a young boy finding his true journey. Narrated by esteemed theatre actor, Miles Anderson, this poignant story is guaranteed to add heart.

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

TWO FEET - AUDIO BOOK SAMPLE - MARK ROPER

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.

Is God A Mechanic?

Read and listen to extracts on this web link:

An extract from Mark Roper's inspiring novella, TWO FEET -- now also available as an audio book on +Amazon.com and +Audible as well as +iTunes.

IS GOD A MECHANIC?

Meneer Gerber, our teacher, once said we were all marching forward on God’s road. (I have seen Meneer Gerber smile once when he was talking with the headmaster’s wife. His teeth were very white).

He said that God was our engine that was driving us on.

God was our petrol fuelling us around the bends and up the hills and down the hills.

God was a powerful motor vehicle and we were his passengers.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God wore a crash helmet, as the racing car drivers do that I had seen pictures of. But I did not.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God’s car, as it zoomed along, also left behind clouds of red dust that asphyxiated bird and insect as it travelled. But I did not.

I wanted to put up my hand and ask if God’s car had any gears, especially a reverse gear. I was thinking that a reverse gear would be a good idea for God’s car because if there were any mistakes to be fixed, God could just reverse over the mistakes and then drive forward again. This way He could repair the mistakes and make certain they never occurred again. But I did not ask.

I wanted to put my hand up and ask if God’s engine ever broke down. But I did not.

But I should.

Was a submersible borehole-pump not a part of God’s engine?

I won’t ask.

But if God was in control of an engine, any engine, then He would know how to repair it?

But I should ask.

A borehole was an engine. It had an engine, a pump. It was buried deep down in the shaft after the drilling machine – Clunk! Clunk! Clunk! -- had driven away leaving mounds of red clay and diesel and black oil stains on the grass. Yes, a pump engine that sucked the water from down there where it was quiet and still and dark. Immersed in the bowels of the earth, where the sun didn't shine and where the water was sweet.

I won’t ask.

I will.

Will not.

Will.

I raised my hand.

“Meneer?”

Meneer Gerber had his feet up on the desk. He twisted his feet and separated them so he could get a view of me. He remained lounging back in the wooden chair that often creaked with the sound of a timid fart. He looked at me between his polished shoes.

“I did not ask a question, boy.”

“No, Meneer.”

“Then what the bloody Hell do you want?”

“You are in deep kak (shit), Rooinek!”That was Pisskop’s whispering voice. He sat at the rear of the class, but his words were like rifle shots in my burning ears.

Stand up, Feet. Make me stand. Please!

I stood on shaking knees trying to focus on Meneer Gerber’s shoes that partly hid his face. I was deeply flushed. I felt as if I was rolling in a field of stinging nettles. The soles of Meneer Gerber’s shoes were worn thin, and there was a patch on the left shoe. I spoke to the patch.

“Dust, Meneer. There is only dust now because the borehole engine has broken. In the vegetable garden where my mother is growing radishes, beetroot, cabbage and carrots so we can sell them at the road shop. (Breathe, chest in and out) Mister Kelly, he says the pump is old and worn, and he showed us the remains of some rusty pieces (cheeks hot, so hot)...so... so now there is no water, Meneer because of the pump so we...we are carrying water now from the dam in Mister Kelly’s jerry cans. (Bare-feet now sweating on the wooden floorboards and toes curling) We use a pole, Meneer, so we can carry the water on our shoulders, you see? But the grass on the hill is dry Meneer, and we are often falling and (hearing a dry chuckle from Pisskop)...and Mabuza is helping with some rope to pull the jerry cans up the hill, and my mother, she is really trying to show the water the way to find the vegetables. (No breath any more. Sucking in air) Meneer, but it is not enough water without the borehole engine so...so...I...the plants are dying in the dust so I...so I...was thinking that maybe God because he knows engines, Meneer, can fix the submersible pump?”

Meneer Gerber abruptly swings his feet off the desk. He sits slowly upright in the wooden chair that makes a farting sound. He does not lose focus of me.

I remained standing. Sweaty, naked feet glued to wooden floorboards. A strong smell of chalk suddenly, a waft of Pisskop’s sour body odour. I sense movement from Max, the baker’s son, seated behind his desk. It is more of a nervous squirm, like someone waiting for a film to be projected.

“You are in deep, deep kak (shit), Rooinek,” whispers Pisskop from out there amongst the blurred faces.

Think:  mother on hands and knees in dust whispering to rivulet of tepid water. Solution: God repairs pump. Result: mother not necessary to be on hands and knees in dust whispering to tepid water.

“Are you...”His voice is shrill with pain, like the sound a rugby player makes when he is kicked between the legs. He coughs then again speaks.

“Are you are asking me if God is a bloody mechanic, boy?”

I am I suppose, so I nod, and my head feels heavy, and I know the gesture makes me look like a dumb child with his bare feet glued to a wooden floor.

I am soon bent over with my head in the corner. Above my head, just a few inches away, is a small book shelf. It carries two heavy books – the A-Z of African Wildlife and Fauna and the A-Z of Places of the World. There is a layer of chalk dust on the books. They are not a part of the curriculum so are never read and are left to gather chalk dust.

When a child is bent over in a corner of a room, and he is given a caning, his first reaction is to recoil, is to lift up his head. That is what the bookshelf is for. When you recoil, you slam your head into the bookshelf. This way Meneer Gerber gets you twice with one blow. This way the A-Z of African Wildlife and Fauna and the A-Z of Places in the World also have some use.

I look down at my two, bare feet as Meneer Gerber lands the first of six strokes. He will land the second stroke half an inch above the first, and then the third will strike where the first landed. He is a master of his craft.

I wonder if God will try the reverse gear for me.

*****

A question I never asked:

“Daddy, how do I switch this on?”

*****

A question I never asked:

“Daddy, how do I switch this off?”

...for the conclusion of this chapter and to read the full Novella, please visit http://www.amazon.com/Two-Feet-Haggis-Mark-Roper-ebook/dp/B00UVUQRH4/

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/

FREE AUDIO SAMPLE - THE BONE TRADERS

My name is Dog.

I am a simple creature: I eat from a simple carcass. I ask for no more or less. I am good.

I fly your sky. From a height I witnessed the beginning of the end.

In my simplicity I do not profess to know your sciences, your mathematics, your nucleus, atoms and fusion.

 From aloft, riding a thermal, I experience the detonation.

My wings are buffeted by the shock waves that precede the wrath.

My body is pummelled.

I close my eyes to the whiteness of the light before I begin to spiral away.

Toward what and where, I do not know.

Only time will tell. 

AUDIO SAMPLE ON AMAZON.COM

FREE AUDIO SAMPLE

Visit READROPERBOOKS for extracts from his novella, Two Feet and other selected writings.

Free Short Story - A coffin afloat

...a free short story. To read collected stories, read Two Feet by Mark Roper or visit his website. And feel free to comment. 

Stories by Mark Roper

A COFFIN AFLOAT

By Mark Roper

When I was sixteen I lived in Swaziland. It is a small, mountainous country tucked between the Northern borders of South Africa and Mozambique. In my time, Swaziland was a true monarchy, but from what I now understand I don’t think even the present King knows what the country’s political status is. Corrupt comes to mind, but I digress, which I have a tendency to do. I apologize.

My stepfather had rented a farm. It worked oranges, avocados, cotton and grapefruit. As my stepfather was nearing bankruptcy, he went off in his Volkswagen station wagon to sell cheap, American cosmetics and so-called organic house cleaning products and left me to run the farm. But that is not what this story is about, though it will, at some point in time, deserve a telling.

Across the fence, the neighboring farm was called Paradise Caravan Park. It was not Paradise. It was anything but. It tried to offer traditional dwellings to wandering tourists – six beehive shaped huts lit by a single bulb with sleeping mats on the floor. Spend the night as a Swazi does I suppose the logo would have read if there had been an advertisement. Unfortunately, the huts had been thatched with immature grass so the cattle came from across the river and, nightly, would chew into the structures, much to the alarm of the few foreign visitors. The pool was green. It was occasionally visited by crocodiles and getting a crocodile out of a swamp-like swimming pool is not easy, I can tell you. But, again, I digress.

P, who was a few years older than I, looked after Paradise farm. His parents Mister and Mrs. J. managed the caravan park. P had a very, very large Afro even though he was white. He occasionally wore mascara which collected the day’s dust when he was riding the tractor. P and I became comrades in arms – we tried to run our farms even though we both knew that an orange or an avocado was a fruit you ate and not how it was meant to be cultivated: such as it is, in a faraway place somewhere in Southern Africa.

Mister J died in hospital. It was rumored then, and now, that he had been anechoic for twenty-four hours before anyone noticed. This was no fault of Mister J’s family, but of the hospital staff. He had been admitted a week prior for an extreme case of piles and a capitulating kidney. What was meant to have been a brief visit to those not so sterile wards was, alas, the end of Mister J’s journey: such as it is, in a faraway hospital somewhere in Southern Africa.

Many full and glorious clear moons prior, Mister J had told all and sundry that when he was to snuff it and was to become fodder for many invertebrates, he wanted to be buried on a hill outside the town. He had chosen it. He had visited it on many occasions to seek sanctuary from his wife, Mrs. J. It wasn’t much of a hill: more of a grassy lump, a knoll. But it did require a bit of a trek to gain access to its rounded peak. It was a knoll wanting and waiting to be a hill. However, the view from the knoll, in those times, was spectacular: it offered a panoramic view of an undisturbed, inhabited veldt. Miles upon miles of waving elephant grass crisscrossed by meandering game paths and the occasional smoke signals from a cluster of distant, grass woven huts. Mister J had chosen his resting place well. His head would face to the West, his feet to the East.

The funeral was on a Saturday. It was well attended. Mister J had many friends, even though his recent, and final, attempt of breeding the New Zealand white rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) for the tables of the locals had become an item of dinner and bar gossip. An ill wind had torn through Mister J’s self-built hutches and had sent a few hundred rabbits scampering off into the stormy night to mate, one presumes, with the local leporidae, the consequences of which, I'm quite certain, have deposited a breed of rabbits yet to be reckoned with. But, yes again, I digress.

The coffin was simple. It had brass handles. The local farmers had secured a labourer or six to haul the casket up the path to the peak of the would-be hill. Mister J was buried and Mrs. J, adorned in her usual purple attire, wept politely as her husband was buried amongst the awaiting invertebrates. The sun began to set in the West and we all trekked back down the would-be hill.

A month later Mrs.J. asked her son, P, to drive her to the grave of her late husband so she could pay her respects and place a bunch of flowers. P invited me and, as I had been quite fond of the deceased, agreed. P drove the Ranchero without its canopy on that day. Mrs.J. sat between us. She cradled a bunch of yellow blossoms that smelt of musty honey. She wore purple – even her nail and toe varnish was purple. It had been raining heavily over the last few days, and the day in question was warning of further downpours. P, as usual, drove the Ranchero as if the world and its problems were up his arse. P wanted to be David Bowie and that transition was somehow not working for him and he was frustrated. Perhaps he needed a haircut, but I never told him that.

The Heavens opened up as P slid the Ranchero to a jaw breaking halt at the side of the dirt road alongside the hill that wasn’t quite a hill. The rain hammered down. We sat in the cabin of the vehicle and waited. P leant forward and looked out of the side window nearest to me. He peered through the deluge toward the hill.

“Shit,” he said.

I looked. “It’s the coffin,” I said.

Mrs. J leant across me to take a look, too. She screamed. “Argh!” she screamed. Then she fainted. Her head went forward into the bunch of flowers she was holding. Just like that: as if she had been KO’d by a heavyweight.

“She’s fainted,” I told P.

He started taking of his anorak. “That’s okay. She’s been doing that a lot lately,” he replied. He made a pillow out of his anorak and leant his mother’s head back onto it. “Oooh Aladdin Sane,” he started singing, his shade of mascara a matching purple to his mother’s toenails. Bowie soothed him so I let him sing.

Reddish brown rivulets of rain water were cascading down the hill toward our stationery vehicle.

“We can’t leave it like that,” I said. “It’ll wash away and bugger off down into the valley.”

“Shit,” responded P.

A quarter of the oblong shape of the casket protruded, like a tired obelisk, on top of the hill. Mister J’s feet were now pointing toward Heaven: towards the stars. It was a semi-flaccid and macabre silhouette against the brooding clouds. Globules of mud dripped off the coffin like warm ice-cream and even through the rain smeared window I could see the water bubbling about the base of the wooden box. Mister J, it seems, had been buried atop of an underground stream and now with the heavy rains, the stream was claiming its territory. The coffin had become a cork. It had, simply, popped out of the ground.

Mrs. J began to snore. When she exhaled, her breath stirred the tired petals of the yellow blossom she still clasped.

P and I were drenched with seconds. We slid and clawed our way up the hill toward the coffin. The mud sucked on our shoes and the rain flattened P’s Afro so that it looked like a badly knitted tea cosy. His mascara began to run and I wondered (seriously I did) what Bowie would have said. We reached the coffin that protruded like a drenched, inert, wooden missile.

The rain pelted down. P’s mascara became tears, so I thought. “We have to pull it out,” he told me.

“And then?”

“Load it up.”

It was his father in there. His mother snored in the cabin of the Ranchero, her breath infused with the scent of a yellow flower. “Pull”, said P.

So we pulled. We grabbed the coffin by its brass handles and heaved against the suction of the mud as the rain poured down and the scent of Africa’s earth bubbled in our nostrils: a scent like no other. We slipped and fell as we grappled with the wooden box and the dull thud of Mister J’s inert body within the casket was audible above the sound of the rain: like dull, sullen thunder.

With the coffin above ground, we stared at it. I looked down from the crescent of the hill toward the parked vehicle. Mrs. J was asleep; her head nestled in P’s anorak like a child in her comfort blanket. Out in the valley, the rain moved in waves, sheets, as it does in Africa. Cloaked in mud and water, the wooden box squatted defiantly.

“We can’t carry it,” P said. “It’s too heavy.”

“Uh-uh,” I agreed, the mud sucking at my heels as if it were a disorientated octopus. “We can slide it,” I offered.

A coffin, in mud and rain, is not a sled. From what I can fathom, the sled originated either in Holland or in Canada, but not in Africa. That is because they had snow. We had mud. Pushing a casket, downhill, even with the assistance of a deluge of rain and free running water, was no easy task. The box, weighted by old man J’s body, had a mind of its own. With P on the left and me on the right, we tried to guide the casket down the hill. It slew left and right and, at some point, even tried to overturn itself. In order to stabilise what was now becoming a projectile, P planted his weight onto it. He sat on the top of the coffin. He weighted it down. He sat on the body of his dead father and used his feet to guide, to stabilise the muddy projectile. This enabled me to steer it from the rear toward the awaiting vehicle, where Mrs. J was, alas, coming out of her stupor.

I can presume the sight of two men, one her son, sliding down a muddy hill, one astride the coffin containing her deceased husband, the other bent over like a hunchback, was suffice to knock her out again. She fainted, her head dropping forward into her bunch of flowers.

“All this fainting can’t be good for your mother,” I told P.

“It’s her medication,” he replied. “Anti-stress tablets.” P dug in his heels and brought the coffin to a halt near the Ranchero. Still it rained; still the mud clung to our boots and hands and P’s mascara ran down his long face in ink stained tears.

Between us, we carried the coffin to the rear of the vehicle. P dropped the tailgate and we managed, on the third attempt, to load the casket as if it were a medieval battering ram. The tailgate just managed to close with some argument as the wooden box wasn't a perfect fix. We managed to rectify this problem by putting the toolbox under the head of the coffin so it was raised, so it leant upward in the rear of the Ranchero. We slid our way back into the cabin.

“Where are we going to take it?” I asked P.

“The morgue I think.”

Mrs. J woke up a few minutes into the drive. The rain was thinning. We rode in silence. Then she looked over her shoulder through the small window that was there, looked back to where she could see the propped up casket that rattled against the metal toolbox.

“I hope he’s not getting wet,” she said. “He hates being wet. That’s why we left England.”

Copyright Mark Roper 2014.

Tea for Two - a short story

TEA FOR TWO

The Eastern Cape Government School is situated alongside the Eastern Cape Government Lunatic Asylum.

I have only just realised this because, now that I walk with bare feet, I am left alone to enjoy my break-time. I am, momentarily, ignored by the over-aged for their class farm boys.

The smell of the long-drop will no longer bring tears to my eyes and my under-teenage backside will no longer be booted, and I will not be forced to travel in the spinning innards of a garbage can.

I walk the earth as they do.

I am a fledgling member of the barefoot club.

I now walk with bare feet upon the same, drought stricken Kikuyu grass that the over-age for his class farm boy they call Pisskop does. I can see Pisskop now on the playing field as he selects a team to play touch rugby with. Pisskop is fourteen and is the hairiest bastard in the school. Pisskop has shown everyone his pubic hairs. That is why he is called Pisskop. He also owns a .22 rifle, and they say he can shoot a hovering Kestrel out of the sky three-times-out-of-three. That’s a lot of hovering Kestrels to die in one day I wanted to say, but I did not for fear of having my head forced into the long drop.

Pisskop’s feet are ingrained with the colour of the earth; red. He does not wash. When he gets on the school bus every morning, he is always scratching his groin or picking at his feet. I look out of the window of the bus trying not to look at Pisskop because he gets angry if I look at him.

But I am happy to walk the same earth as Pisskop because I am left alone to my own devices.

Around me the game of touch rugby is being played. Dust is being raised off the barren field by the players' naked feet and there is a lot of shouting and the occasional sound of a wet thump as the leather clad ball is kicked high up and over.

On the other side of the high, wire fence that separates the school, is the lunatic asylum. This, it seems, is common knowledge. I can see an inmate sitting on a fallen, blue gum branch. Behind him is the shape of the Government built asylum. It has a corrugated tin roof that is painted red and has a long veranda. There are iron bars across the windows behind which I can see the faint glimmer of mosquito mesh. I can see other pyjama clad inmates roaming about on the veranda. Some are not roaming at all. They are simply standing as if they are waiting for something or somebody.

There is a bed on the veranda but no-one lies on its black striped, piss stained mattress.

There is a smell of boiled cabbage and human shit wafting in the breeze; a smell that not even the scent of the nearby blue gum trees can defeat.

The inmate sitting on the fallen branch is pretending to be a tea-pot.

The game of touch rugby has turned into a brawl, and I watch Meneer Gerber, who teaches Judo, Hygiene, Mathematics, English, Geography, Science and Divinity, weigh in with his cane and the boys, including Pisskop, scatter leaving the main culprit at the mercy of Meneer Gerber. The Culprit tries to get to his feet. Already his nose is bloody. Meneer Gerber gives the Culprit two quick strokes with his cane across the back of his legs and the third somewhere across his spine because he’s trying to turn away and run.

“Are you blerry stupid, man, or what!?” Meneer Gerber shouts at the bloody nosed, now goose-stepping Culprit. “Answer me! Hey!?”

“Nee, Meneer!” (No, Sir)

“You are blerry stupid!”

“Ja, Meneer!” (Yes, Sir)

Meneer Gerber walks away, already reaching for his pipe that he always carries in the pocket of his khaki coloured safari-suit along with a copy of a Superman comic that he reads to himself when he’s meant to be teaching us.

The Culprit wipes his bloody nose and stands alone on the barren playing field. He is rubbing his legs and wincing against the pain of Meneer Gerber’s bamboo cane. Pisskop and the other children have wandered away.

“What the blerry Hell you looking at, Rooinek!?”The Culprit shouts at me.

I look away.

I am a Rooinek, a red neck, because I speak English and during the Boer War all the English were called Rooineks. This is because the African sun burnt their pale skin which was from England, where there is not much sun at all, a rose red.

The inmate has his arms pointed over his head. Slowly he bends from the waist, dips, and pours. In a semi-circle, one cup, then two, then a third and a fourth. Then back to the first cup.

I wonder what blend of tea he thinks he is pouring.

Meneer Gerber is the only teacher that speaks English. That is why he teaches only the Rooineks of which I am one. I think there are less than thirty in the school. The Rooinek class consists of students of all ages: eight to twelve years old. Most are the children of farmers whose forefathers came on the ships in the 1820’s, but I think Max’s parents own the cafe where you can buy bread already sliced, so he is not the son of a farmer. Meneer Gerber is a knowledgeable teacher. During every lesson he makes us read a chapter from a textbook whilst he smokes his pipe and reads a Marvel Comic book which is usually a story about Superman.

I wonder if the inmate at the Eastern Cape Lunatic Asylum also serves sugar and milk with the tea that he is pouring.

Near the end of the class, Meneer Gerber will occasionally ask us questions on the chapter we have just read. There are usually twenty questions, sometimes less. If we get less than sixty-percent right, Meneer Gerber calls you to the front of the class, and he canes you. Usually it is three or four strokes across the backside, or he gestures for you to put out your hands, palms up and touching, and canes you there. This is the most painful. Especially if you need to continue writing with your pencil a few minutes later.

I wonder for whom the inmate is pouring tea.

Meneer Gerber does not allow any questions to be asked about any subject, especially Divinity. This is the only subject we do not have a text book about because Meneer Gerber can pretty much recite anything he wants from memory when it comes to stories about Jesus and God and Mary and Joseph and Moses. That is why I wrote earlier that he was a clever teacher.

I wonder why the inmate smiles the way he does as he pours his tea. It is a slight smile, almost soft as if he is being tickled by a feather. It is the smile I think, of a sleeping child. It is the same smile the Herd boy wears on his face when he is smoking that tobacco that has a seriously sweet smell.

Meneer Gerber has told us eight to thirteen year old Rooineks that we are all no better than Judas because of what we did to the Boer children and women during the Boer war. Meneer Gerber says it was we Rooineks that tied the women and children to the front of the trains so the brave Boers would not use dynamite to blow up the train line. Meneer Gerber says it was we Rooineks who built the first concentration camp and not the Germans. He insists that we Rooineks will always walk with guilty souls under the eyes of God and that because it is God’s Will, most of us will be cast out to sea before we become men and that we will spend eternity questioning our guilt.

I wish I can, but I am afraid to, ask Meneer Gerber the question about who created God and who was God’s father, but we are not allowed to ask questions, especially in Divinity class.

The inmate has stopped pouring his tea as I hear the school bell ring. He now sits with his hands folded in his lap. He looks calm. As if he is waiting for something or somebody.

Or maybe he is simply waiting for the kettle to boil.

 I wonder, dying father, as you rest on that thin bed with the rusty springs, listening to the creaking of the tin roof above and the distant cry of a child, if you would have had the answers to my questions.

I wonder how you would have answered those questions.

Would you have sat me on your lap and smiled as I asked my question?

Would you have felt proud even if my question was a stupid one?

Would you have been impatient with my youthful curiosity?

I wonder what questions you ask yourself now as you await the afternoon visit from the Indian doctor from Calcutta and the nurse from Abuja, Nigeria.

I think, as the flickering flame of the paraffin lamp beside your bed attracts a disorientated moth, you are asking the same question that I feared to ask Meneer Gerber.

Read the novella, TWO FEET at +Amazon.com  for more.