J.B  had always liked his father when he was young. And then when he was fifteen, something had gone wrong between them one day, and he had hated him like he was not his father. But still, he was not the type of man you would like when you first met him, although he would easily have fit to stand behind a pulpit, delivering a holy sermon. But the sooner you knew of his altering and sad life history, the better. For in his life history (which he was passionate to talk about if you showed a slight interest) entailed of occurrences that would have crushed him had it been not for his character in strength. Two of his best friends had once mentioned his father in a rather insulting manner some ten years ago whilst they in a pub in Vulindlela called The Mad Tavern, where they had been drinking their sorrowful lives away. And J.B had responded. And he had responded very well; by cracking one of the man’s right cheekbone, and skull to almost a pulp, using two of his Carlings Back Label empty beer bottles. Those who knew his father, and the fogging history between them, knew better than to mention him to J.B when he was around their midst. He had told most of his friends in Vulindlela some time ago, but unfortunately, the other two bums had not been there. “You never talk to me about him. That past, is past.” he had said. And when J.B said something, it stuck for good. And the township of Vulindlela knew that. So those who had seen him bashing the unfortunate friend inside The Mad Tavern that night ten years ago, and those who had heard him mention the statement about not mentioning his father steered completely out of his away. In Vulindlela, it was either J.B got his way with things, or the rest of the people got nowhere with their business. Most men would flash a fake smile or two, or throw in a conversation that did not even have the word father in it when J.B was with them. “J.B is a mean mother fucker,” they said. “Push the wrong button, then you’ll wish you’d never been born.” And that word went round like a merry-go -round in Vulindlela, around all the pubs that he had visited, around all the people that knew him, around those that loved him, hated him, despised him and those that thought highly of him and those that did not bother themselves about him; like a crazy steaming firestorm. If you wanted your longevity to stand a better chance, you were better off staying far away from J.B as possible. Why he was passionate about his father remained a mystery in a shroud, and J.B never dared to tell anyone around him about his father. No, that part of his life remained enchanting, and he liked it like that. To have a small nook of his life remain unknown, even to his very best of best friends, the people he trusted more than anyone in his life. The people he regarded as Family.

Now, as he sat in the moving car, he stared at the blank road in front of his eyes. This empty road had once been his life, and he had traveled that trajectory, and had also learned the tricks of the trade along the burden of that bitter sojourn. It had been a long and mean time for him, and he had felt the thorns on his brow, scratching, eating and etching at his face and eyes every time he tried to squint and figure out what lay ahead of his life.  At fifty, he shouldn’t have really bothered to fight for anything. He should have been a settled man by now, with a wife to hold at night, and laughter of children in his house. Life began at forty, so the adage claimed, but he was already ten years into that life, and so far, all he could eat was still the shit he had eaten when he was still in the Liberation War. He stopped at a robot intersection, the only one in Vulindlela, and waited impatiently. He scratched his arm while he waited, then looked at his watch, and coughed slightly. A dry bitter cough, one filled with no spittle at all. The dim green light blinked at him, and he put his foot slowly on the pedal, and the Mazda agreed, and it slowly crossed the empty street.

At fifty, he still was an unhappy guy. At fifty, he still had no laughing children inside his house. At fifty, he still had to work hard to get the woman whom he would say loved him. At fifty, he still had to wake up alone and make and eat breakfast alone in the kitchen. At fifty, he was still a slob, miserable, a man who had yearned for everything and had earned nothing. A man who had tried to please his past but had rediscovered his angry side of life. An unhappy man. A man who had still tried to evade the sad, sordid and battered past that life had brought to him, but had been invaded by a ridiculous present. He stared at the road, forced that cough again. ‘This is a shit life!” he said to himself.

He was twenty, barely out of the bondage of peer pressure and sexuality of adolescence, when the country became embroiled in a colonial battle with its enemy; and he had enlisted with enthusiasm when he heard that the Call Up was finally coming to Vulindlela. And then he had encountered the horrors of his life. Blood had spattered around him like soup from The Mobile Kitchen. Brains and bones had splintered right across his very eyes. Bullets became shrapnel of human skulls. He had seen men wish they had never been born as they saw their disembodied body parts floating aimlessly amidst the machine-gun and

AK-47ed riddled air. He had seen strong men wither and die idle in the dustless horizon like a sorry sight of unwatered plants. These were the killing fields, and they were being grown in them. War had a funny thing that came with it. It drained the soul of a man like a thirsty water sponge, and then shriveled him out to a crude nonentity, and rejected him in a dreary oblivion, an empty solitude where he stayed alone, soulless, feeling empty and battered. J.B had become onely in a crowded planet.

With the war, he had taken more Morphine than his body could take. Painkillers became a daily dose to all those unanswerable prayers. He learnt to step over unmarked graves without feeling remorse, knowing for sure that some of the men who had families waiting for them out there were interred within those blood soiled graves. These things had become the only solace. And then the women had come, old and young alike, and he had ravished them like they were rag dolls that needed to be rid off. “These are the sworn enemies. Destroy them!” They were told. And they did.

But one day, it finally became over, and the chains were broken, and the celebrations followed and everyone seemed to be finally eating from the breasts of the mother country they had so valiantly fought for. “The land that we fought for is finally ours!” the soldiers said, amongst embering silent fires somewhere in the lion growling and owl hooting forests. For J.B, and the rest of the men who had really been in the heat of the war, the real shit soon followed. The bad dreams, those movie-like nightmares that haunt you until you call the name of your mother in the dead of the night had come to visit. And it seemed that they had not just come for the holidays only. Those apparitions were determined to stay. It was like living your life by continuously staring at the barrel of a loaded gun. The naked dead bodies of the men you had killed, the spirits of the countless women and children you had raped. They all came back to you one way or the other. There was no way about it. It came to him like over-speeding, derailing and screeching runaway train, and it had the habit of making him wake up in the dead of night, in a cold and uncomfortable bead of sweat.

J.B looked at the rear view. Still it was calm, with no one in sight. The time really did not allow for anyone to be moving around. Eleven fifteen p.m. The average man in Vulindlela was busy sleeping a beer sleep somewhere close to his irritated woman at this time. He opened the glove compartment and the small gun fell onto the car floor. He picked it up, studied it for a second, and then put it back there, before taking out a tube of cigarette instead, which he lit it with the car lighter, and then closed the glove compartment. Contentedly, he inhaled deeply, and the smoke made him feel at ease at once. Thank goodness for the guy who had brought up the idea of making the cigarette those many years ago. It embedded the idea that necessity was indeed the mother of all invention. The thought of his visit crossed him again. He put it aside. Two minutes later, he inhaled deeply again.

Ahead, just round the dusty road, the shadow of his father’s house appeared on the dark horizon.