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/

TWO FEET HEARD IN THE CLOUDS

Free Audiobook - The Bone Traders

...listen to a FREE sample of The Bone Traders -- soon to released in its entirety on +Amazon.com and +iTunes.

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Is God a Mechanic #2

...and then there was light! The conclusion of the short story from the novella, Two Feet, where Meneer Gerber and all see eye-to-eye. Sort of.

FEEL FREE TO COMMENT -- or better yet, read more of Mark's scribblings in his novella, TWO FEET available as a link on this site to +Amazon.com. Either as a Kindle download or in paperback.

Available at Amazon.com

****

A question I never asked:

“Daddy, how do I switch this on?”

*****

A question I never asked:

“Daddy, how do I switch this off?”

*****

If God’s vehicle was a re-vamped, super-charged, gun metal grey, 1966 F-100 Chevy, He drove it into our lives early one morning.

If God’s vehicle was a re-vamped, super-charged, gun metal grey, 1966 F-100 Chevy that was meant to raise sufficient dust to asphyxiate both bird and insect, it was doing a damn good job of that, too.

We seldom had visitors. If a car was seen or heard navigating the pot-hole ravaged road toward the house, it would draw the brood out onto the flaking, thirsty lawn. From here we would view its approach. Mabuza stood poised nearby with his garden fork. The cloud of advancing dust would be watched with some trepidation.

Mostly, the occupants of the cars were men wearing jackets and ties and carrying briefcases and brown, official type folders. They were in search of you, Father, as were we. They were men from distant cities, perspiring uncomfortably, their flesh rebelling at the sun, hunting down debt like we sometimes hunted the King’s buck.

“Vultures,” is what my older brother described them as.

“Rooineks,” is what Pisskop would have called them.

The moment these men got stiffly out of the car, my younger brother would yelp like a puppy and hurry away, probably to the dam which was his place of solitude. My elder brothers would stand mutely, ready to do battle, keeping our dogs at bay.

I stood alongside my mother, always slightly to the rear. I would find solitude in the ant-lion (Myrmeleontidea) holes in the dust, or watch Mabuza from the corner of my eye. He stood ramrod, like a warrior on a cliff awaiting an Induna’s call to battle.

My mother always said “shit” under her breath as she walked forward. Her conversations with these men would be animated, but brief. They would try, with a mix of honey and tar, to cajole the documents into her hands, but she heeded Mister Kelly’s advice, and kept her hands behind her back. Small hands, dirt engrained hands that had once boasted of diamond rings and the scent of expensive oils and nail polish.

“If you take the papers, they take everything. Do you understand, Missus? Never take the bloody papers!”

These men, often through sunglasses, would glance askew at us children as they talked with our mother. I wonder now how they perceived us; we were white children, barefoot, not in school, and our hair was long, way too long for those years. Perhaps our physical appearance was suffice for them to realise that what my mother told them, was the truth. Was there sympathy behind those sunglasses? I seriously doubt it.

There was nothing left to surrender, repossess or sell. Speak to Mister Kelly. Here is his telephone number. No. No forwarding address. Their father’s present whereabouts remains unknown.

Like disgruntled bees leaving a dying blossom, these men would return to their car, reverse, and drive away, soon obliterated in a cloud of dust that had never quite settled.

God’s vehicle pulled to a stop with the sound of an impulsive lion, sending a tremor under our waiting feet. Muffled, chrome exhausts coughed a victorious expletive as they died, sending startled pigeons flapping from the trees.

Barking dogs, momentarily, go mute.

For a change, my younger brother did not move. Instead, he stopped frowning, a gesture that had, recently, become as common on his face as a red- tick to the hide of a cow.

In the rear of the F-100, amongst the tool boxes, winches, chains and scaffolding pipe, sat four labourers. They all wore blue overalls and wellington boots. Their smiles were open and broad, eyes alert and expectant to their new environment.

The driver stepped out. He was short but muscular. He wore khaki shorts and a short sleeved shirt. His skin was tanned; a farmer’s tan, his forearms and legs bred a thick mesh of wiry hair. A veldt hat with a sweat stained band was perched on a balding head. His eyes were a light blue, his moustache neatly trimmed, his feet encased in worn but expensive veldskoens and khaki socks. In his breast pocket, he carried a packet of Springbok cigarettes and a box of lion matches.

“Good morning,” he said to all of us. “I’m here to help with the borehole?” Out came the cigarettes: A flash of a match, a puff of smoke. “Mister Kelly asked me.”

“Oh,” said my mother and stepped forward. Her hands were not behind her back. “Oh,” she repeated.

My brothers walked forward; sucked toward the glory of the F-100, whose metallic colour bounced back the sunlight like a granite boulder fends off a rifle bullet, like a blue-fly to a pile of elephant dung.

Mabuza tugged my shirt sleeve. I looked up into his face. I saw the Mabuza grin: big, white teeth and gums as pink as the fruit of a ripe pawpaw. He patted me on my shoulder and danced his skinny thong clad backside toward the F-100,leaving me standing amongst the ant-lion holes, with a butterfly fluttering somewhere in my young, vegetable starved stomach.

*****

Dear Meneer Gerber,

How are you? I am fine.

I am sorry to be writing this letter to you in pencil, but I have no ink or pen.

I am writing this letter to you to tell you that the borehole pump is fixed.

He came to fix the pump driving a very special super truck that shone in the sun like the silver of that box you have for your pipe tobacco. It made the sound of thunder too. Like the sound we hear in the late afternoon when the vultures are high in the sky and the kopje is standing alone against an army of black clouds, Meneer.

He is from the same valley that I can see from our garden. In the valley, pineapples, oranges and avocados grow. There is always water in the valley, Meneer. There are small canals there, and it is always green even when it is so hot the dogs don’t want to walk and the bees are angry. I think the water is called irrigation, Meneer.

He fixed the pump quickly. He had four labourers working with him, and they sang a song as they made the winch system and pulled the broken pump from deep out of the ground. He is not like Mister Ford from Ford Farm who just sits and watches his labourers work and says rude things to them. He worked all the time with the chains and tackle, and it was good to see the mud and the water at the end, Meneer. It was thick mud from deep under. He said it was a good sign because it meant that there was still a lot of water down there.

He is very strong, and from his truck he took out a brand new pump. My mother did not know what to say, so she went to make us all some tea, even for the labourers. She did not have any cake, so he said he will bring some next time. My mother looked shy, and when she laughed she sounded like a little girl.

Now we do not have to carry Mister Kelly’s jerry cans up the hill anymore, Meneer. My mother thinks the radish plants and maybe the carrots will survive, but the cabbages are no good. I am sad for the cabbages.

I am sorry I cannot attend class. The men took the red Mini-Imp, so we only have the bicycle.

 Yours Sincerely

M.

*****

 Dear M

I am happy to hear that the borehole is fixed.

I am also very sorry.

Yours Sincerely

Meneer Gerber

*****

 Dear Meneer Gerber

Thank you for your letter dated....................

I do not understand why you are sorry.

Can I do my History test from home?

Yours Sincerely

M.

*****

Dear M

I am rwitting with the typwriteer at hte in the office.

God moves in a mydsterious way
His wonders to pergform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upoon the strorm.

Deep in unfathoimable mines
Of nevbyer failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sov’reign will.

Did He ring the caske? Cake? Did he bring the cake for your mother?

Cphter 4 of the history book. Write an esay. Essay.

God Bless you.

 Meneer  Gerber.

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!!!