Facing the Son, A Novel of Africa

by M L Rudolph

  It only took a glance for Jean-Louis to recognize Matt was suffering. The concièrge sat quietly apart and said nothing. He respected the silence that moved in with them, and waited until the American noticed him.

  Chapter 40

  Deep wrinkles scored the old woman’s happy face. She wore a loose blouse and a long cotton wrap which limited her mobility as she carried a bucket of water and trotted after three barefoot girls. The girls scampered across the dusty grounds of this isolated village two hours northeast of Ouagadougou. They taunted the old woman. Laughing. Pointing. Running in all directions. Competing for her attention. At times daring, at times welcoming, the girls passed closely, then when the old woman turned on them, they darted away in delighted triumph.

  The old woman stopped and put a hand to her heart, catching her breath. After a moment, she narrowed her gaze to one girl, a gamine with her hair twisted into short antennas. With a long crooked finger, she pointed at this girl, and said, —You! She scuffed after the spirited girl, zigging this way and zagging that, sloshing water from her bucket on to the parched ground.

  The two older girls with their tightly braided hair and sparkling smiles could be sisters if not twins. They took advantage of the old woman’s single-mindedness and surprised her with passing slaps on her ample rump. After one loud frump on the folds of her wrap, the old woman stopped, turned, and threw the water at her tagger. A few fat drops hit the fleeing girl’s legs, but most of the clear liquid missed its target and splashed onto the thirsty earth.

  All the girls laughed at the game. The determined and pleasant old woman grinned to show her bad teeth, walked to a shiny new tap, and refilled her bucket.

  A chubby-faced boy with missing milk teeth ran out from between the nearby thatched huts, followed by a second boy in faded cut-offs. Other boys and girls followed. All the children arrived with one goal: Splash me, old woman. Over here. Throw the water at me!

  With so many children taunting her and screaming for attention, the old woman changed strategy and stood fast with her bucket. Too worn out to run after the children, she teased them by standing still.

  “Imagine what this means to her,” Jean-Louis said. “All her life, she walked to a well to bring water home by that bucket. And now look at her.”

  Matt followed the cavorting children with his eyes, barely registering Jean-Louis’s comment on the old woman’s joyous dance at the arrival of fresh water in her village.

  Matt watched silently, still raw from Melanie’s death, his shock giving way to a rage with no clear target.

  Karl couldn’t be the target, though he was the reason for the trip. Nor could the hospital and its treating physicians, though they could have done a better job predicting how long she had to live so Matt would have never left her. Nor could he be angry at Melanie for sending him. She acted out of love, striving to repair the damage Matt did. And he couldn’t direct his anger inward though he was probably the most deserving target for any number of bad choices he made: walking out on the marriage, fumbling his role as father, and more recently failing to navigate a foreign land. He reunited with Melanie only to gallivant away chasing after Karl with that damn letter rather than spend her last days at home with her.

  Since he hung up the phone with Annie, Matt had played what-if and what-now. There would be a funeral of course, which he would arrange. The ritual gathering of family and friends to celebrate Melanie’s life and pay respects. He would get home.

  And of course Karl would want to come with him. At least he hoped. Their separation and estrangement had been so painfully complete that Matt couldn’t predict how his son would respond. In his heart Matt believed Karl would react as a loving son, but he wasn’t sure. Paying respects to your mother should be automatic. But Matt worried that if he assumed how Karl would respond, the mere presumption could derail Karl. Send him into a fit of rejection.

  What? he could hear him. You expect me to go home for the funeral?

  But no. Matt shouldn’t doubt Karl’s response.

  But he did.

  Nothing turned out like he pictured it when Melanie handed him the letter back in April, her face flush with anticipation, her body wracked with disease. His goal, as much as he doubted its success at the start, had been to deliver the letter and coax Karl home to reconcile with his mother before the end. But now that the end had come, he wasn’t sure why he was here.

  Was it for Melanie or for Karl?

  After a drive on graded roads to the village two hours north of Ouaga, Matt caught sight of the International Harvester truck that told him his search was over. He recognized Karl’s name in block letters scrawled across a piece of masking tape affixed to a clipboard on the dash. According to the water tag woman, as she explained to Jean-Louis, earlier today the tall American and his fellow foreigner drove their jeep west to explore the location of their next dig.

  Madaadi had steered him to within miles or maybe minutes of Karl.

  A shirtless and barefoot native boy ran past. The reddish earth clung to his lower legs, arms wide and head down imitating a bird coming in for a landing. Eyes alight in simple joy. The only world this boy knew was now awash in fresh water, his life forever and immeasurably improved. The boy spun around and aimed for the heart of the crowd assembled at the new pump where a pair of goats had sniffed out the moisture and begun lapping at a puddle. The boy tilted his arms as if banking toward the animals and zipped past them, slapping one beast on the rump, then ran into a young woman, likely his mother, and grabbed her legs, laughing, sharing the happiness of the moment.

  How many moments like this had Karl and Matt shared but forgotten? Matt couldn’t recall any such times with his own father. His memories tended more toward punishments suffered than the tender touch. As far as his father was concerned, he remembered being whipped once for “acting up” at a grade school pageant, driven home without an inkling he’d done anything wrong, led by his mother to the musty basement, then told to lower his pants and lean over his father’s lap. You know, his father said many years later when Matt asked what he’d done to deserve the spanking, I can’t remember, but whatever it was, I’m sure you deserved it. That bare-assed whipping was one of Matt’s stubbornest memories of his dad. Because it hurt? No, the physical pain was forgettable. Because it was unconnected to any crime.

  Why did that one memory, among the full sweep of his childhood, stand out?

  Matt’s father must have shared many a tender moment with him. But the hell of it was that Matt didn’t remember those times. They hadn’t stuck. Only the severity of the punishments, the constant fear of retribution, stayed with him. The dreaded musty smell of the old basement.

  Was that how Karl remembered Matt?

  Was that how Karl remembered his mother? None of the joy but all of the pain?

  Would Matt’s presence here dredge up the old resentment, or might the sight of him be cause for perspective and forgiveness? Matt hoped for enlightenment, an opening in the fog of silence. But as soon as he felt any optimism, he talked himself out of it. Karl was an adult. And Matt wasn’t sure what to say to him. How goddam pathetic was that?

  The commotion around the new pump gradually subsided. The old woman took her bucket and returned to one of the small mud homes to sit on a bench in the shade. A few children still traipsed through patches of quickly drying mud. One boy amused himself by handling the arm of the pump, especially when a goat got too close and he could send a chute of water into the astonished beast. But even that exercise grew old after a while, or perhaps it was the smell of roasting meat coming from within the village that drew everyone away.

  The rhythm of village life absorbed the new appliance. The lowering sun drew the shade beyond the edges of the square mud homes.

  Matt watched a goat wander toward an adjoining field and felt out of place and out of time, uprooted from everything he knew, wondering if he’d made a mess of being a father and a husband, the only two roles that really mattered. His throat was dry and
his limbs hung heavy; he returned to the Mercedes to sit comfortably out of the sun and within a few minutes the exhaustion of grief overwhelmed him with sleep.

  Sometime later, among the lazy murmur of late afternoon, the distant growl of an approaching vehicle stirred the village to life.

  Matt woke up thinking of his mother’s death, how he’d been told over the phone by his mother’s neighbor, a widow herself, a Mrs. Bornholm, whom he’d met only once. She merely stopped by for afternoon tea. The door was open. Mrs. Reiser lay on the floor in the kitchen with the handle of a broken teapot in her hand.

  Mrs. Bornholm dialed Matt’s phone number, written in bold numbers on the desk calendar, immediately after she called the hospital. What else did Matt want her to do?

  The shock of receiving the news from someone he barely knew left a nick on Matt’s heart. Mrs. Bornholm hadn’t done anything wrong. On the contrary, she’d reacted with swift efficiency and showed concern for her old neighbor, as well as for Matt’s feelings. Maybe there was no good way to receive the news of a parent’s death; it would always sting, no matter who told you. You’d remember where you were, what you were doing, and the tendency to shoot the messenger would be strong, if only to eliminate the flesh and blood manifestation of the message.

  Now that Matt faced telling Karl that his mother died, he struggled with how to break the news. His inclination had always been to give Karl the space he needed to work things out on his own. If they were still at home and had a normal relationship, Matt would have opted for a straightforward sympathetic delivery, then backed off to give Karl room to breathe and time to grieve.

  But they weren’t at home. They didn’t have a normal relationship. And how much more space could he give his son? Horizon loomed empty in every direction.

  Matt felt for his passport pouch and reached inside to touch Melanie’s letter.

  The approaching vehicle grew louder, a cloud of reddish earth billowed under the glaring afternoon sun. Matt got out of the car and shaded his eyes, looking directly west until he caught sight of a jeep bounding over the top of a knoll, barreling toward the village. Matt walked toward the arriving jeep, trying to make out the details of the passengers behind glinting reflections and roaring dust clouds.

  He could picture Karl working the stick shift, as he’d taught him now ten years ago in the old Corvair. He jammed the car through the gears, and pounced on the clutch, jerking forward with little concern for the strain on the car. Then there was that time Karl nearly crashed at a gravel intersection outside of town, narrowly missing the corner of a cornfield at fifty miles an hour when he downshifted into a fishtail and skidded beyond a John Deere tractor in front of him. Looking out for the other guy suddenly took on meaning.

  Visibly shaken, Karl said, “Dad, I get it.” And until now, Matt had been left with the impression that because of that near miss, Karl “got it.” But watching the jeep fly over the crest of the knoll then bounce and swerve on the unpaved road, well, if that was Karl behind the wheel, he hadn’t learned.

  The jeep ran right up to the entrance of the village and skidded to a halt within a hundred feet of Matt who continued walking with his hands up to shield his eyes.

  “Moment of truth, monsieur?” Matt heard Jean-Louis say from somewhere.

  A thin young man with long blonde hair jumped out the passenger side. Not Karl. Not the build, nor the height, nor the mannerisms.

  The driver stepped out; yes, that was Karl. Karl’s height, Karl’s lanky build. He stood with his hands at his belt and cast a long shadow toward his father.

  Sun at his back, it was impossible to see his face, make out his reaction. He stood like that first day of nursery school, hands on hips, scrutinizing the new social dynamic before him. Unwilling to jump into the mêlée, he preferred to stand back and take the measure of the place before he made up his mind how to engage. That was always the way Karl took on a new role, a new assignment, a new experience, first taking time to learn what he could about the people involved before making his entrance. Such was his cautionary approach. An approach Matt considered a sign of Karl’s intelligence, showing he was too smart to jump into something without first assessing the consequences of his actions. Pretty impressive for a five year old, Matt remembered telling Melanie.

  Was that what Karl was doing now? Assessing his father? Considering how to approach the man in front of him?

  A young boy naked to the waist took advantage of the distraction and ran out to the truck and pulled himself up onto the bed among the drilling equipment. One of the mothers yelled at him to come down. A game of cat and mouse ensued around the truck bed.

  Karl stood stock still beside the open door to the jeep as Matt continued walking toward him.

  “What are you doing here?” Karl’s voice was serious, his eyes, his expression, hidden within his silhouette. No mention of his father’s now rugged khaki clothes or his new beard. No curiosity at how his father came to be standing here two hours northeast of Ouagadougou.

  “Your mother,” Matt said. “She’s….” He choked on the word. “Dead.” Not at all how he wanted to say it, but Karl’s standoffish reception got him right to the point. Then he fumbled it. Everything was wrong. The place. The dress. The mood. The circumstances. The goddam sun in his face so he couldn’t even make out more than Karl’s silhouette. Was that a smile, a smirk, a grimace, a scowl? Nothing about this moment was how it should be.

  Karl brought a hand to the back of his neck and looked at his boots. He appeared rough and gaunt. His frayed and untucked work shirt hung loosely on his long torso. The thumb on his left hand was wrapped in tape and gauze, worn grey with dirty sweat. His cheekbones prominent within his unshaved face.

  Matt walked up to him. Karl was his son, dammit. If ever there was a time to bridge the estrangement, this was it. Matt moved to hug him.

  Karl stepped back. “When?” He looked up, stern behind his dark glasses. Unapproachable.

  Matt lifted his hands to his eyes again and turned, squinting to angle the sun away from his line of sight. Karl looked taller. How long had it been? Too long if he had to stop and count. There was a boy inside that man that Matt had loved and still loved as deeply as he loved his own life. Matt flashed for a second to Karl the baby sleeping in his crib, then back to this man standing before him. He hadn’t known the baby and he didn’t know this man. If only he could rewind and edit out all that went wrong.

  “Just talk to me,” Matt said.

  Now that was a scowl on Karl’s face.

  “How’d she die?”

  Matt hardened. If this is how it had to be…. “Lung cancer. Very sudden. More or less untreatable from the moment she learned about it.”

  Karl directed his dark glasses at his father.

  “She learned in February,” Matt continued.

  “Did she…?”

  “Suffer?”

  Karl nodded.

  “Physically, she dealt with it.” And she put on a lively telephone persona, Matt thought. “Emotionally. She talked about her feelings more than her physical pain.”

  Karl put his hands on his hips again, as if erecting a fence, and scuffed at the dirt in front of him.

  “She tried to contact you through the Peace Corps. They said they got the message through to you. Did they?”

  “I thought you were just trying to get to me. I didn’t think it was a real emergency.”

  “You didn’t…!” Matt caught himself. No head butting, Melanie said. The image of battling mountain goats flashed before his inner eye. “That’s too bad,” he said calmly, “because she wanted to see you more than anything else these last couple of months.”

  Matt now knew the journey wasn’t about Karl; it wasn’t about Matt. It was all about Melanie. She deserved better from them both. Matt left her, and Karl had too. Karl may not have thought he did. He may have thought it was only temporary, until he felt like getting back in touch, or he may not have thought at all about what he was doing. Maybe he on
ly wanted to be left alone to become a man on his own terms without the interference or involvement of his parents – lack of contact made it impossible to guess – but no matter how long he meant to wait, it was all over now.

  “She wanted you to know she loved you very much. I think you know that, but it was important for her to tell you in person. She also wanted me to come because she thought you and I were both too stubborn to take the first step.”

  “What first step?”

  “This,” Matt said and spread his arms. “So she sent me to get you. That’s the long and the short of it. Only she wasn’t supposed to die before we got back.”

  “She died while you were gone? I thought you meant that’s why you came.”

  Matt shook his head. “She promised to wait ‘til we got back.”

  “She what?”

  “It was her little joke. Said as long as she had you to look forward to, she refused to die.”

  “And that’s what you were supposed to tell me?”

  “No….”

  Karl turned on the jeep and kicked the door shut. Kept his back to Matt, face to the sun.

  “That’s what she told me. You should be happy she was still able to joke. It’s all she had left, Karl. A little humor and the thought of seeing you again.”

  “And you? Where were you in all this?”

  “I was there. Believe me, I wanted to stay with her but she wouldn’t have it. One week. That’s all we thought it should take to track you down.”

  “So then what?” He whipped around. “What do you want from me?” He was clearly hurting. He wouldn’t show it in front of his father but he radiated pain like heat off the desert floor.

  How many times had Matt dreamed about Karl asking him exactly that? What do you want from me? The simplest question with the simplest answer: Open up. Be my son again.