The Road and the End[1]
I shall foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.
I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.
The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.
The dust of the traveled road
Shall touch my hands and face.
The place of the Lion
Trees climbed, rocks thrown and stubbed toes; that’s the memory mosaic laid on the dusty streets that spider-veined across a godforsaken town deep in the Northern Cape Province. Depending on how your blood flows, this was South African heartland or backwater. Either way, it is an arid and harsh land, where tough men bleed dirt to raise the oversized Afrikaner cattle; and somewhere on the flighty fringes the indigenous Bushmen dwelled too. The little town called Taung[2] was the town where my mother cried me into being: place of the lion in the local vernacular. The red dirt of my youth later yielded the famous Taung skull[3] and slabs of marble; amongst other things. The cradle of mankind.
We played Cowboys and Indians in the streets. I preferred being the Outlaw to being the Sheriff. We swam in the river when it was in flood, rolling old burnt-out car carcasses into the swollen river and drifting downstream for miles. I remember playing chicken with the goods trains and jumping off the train bridges into the river below because that was the rite of initiation to the gang of the week. I remember a wizened old black man working as a night-guard sharing a meal from paint-can pots with two little white boys over his konka[4]. I remember lighting a cracker so close to a sleeping black mama that it burnt a hole in maybe her only town dress. I don’t remember much else of the first ten years; except, perhaps the pivotal memory of an innocuous game of hide-and-seek in the oat fields.
Tommy and I hid so well we couldn’t be found. Eventually we got hungry and sneaked back into the house to face our irate parents. We thought it was fun, and recreated the strategy the following night. My brother stepped out into the dusk and called out that we’d better come out because they were all going to the drive-in. We sprinted from the fields to great hilarity and was swiftly introduced the concept of an anti-climax. Somehow, seeing a movie twice or reading a book twice smelled like wheat. Apparently, not long after Mandela won freedom, Taung built a casino. What a way to celebrate.
The rich. Middle class. Day light. The Prices. Pride. Poor white trash. Apartheid. Blacks. That was the order of things; I suppose we were fortunate. My greatest shame was never having a car; bigger than not having a sheets on the bed or butter for the bread. There weren’t that many rich people around anyway, so we felt pretty normal. We went to school barefoot, carrying our little brown-box suitcases filled with little more than a lunchbox and a couple of pencils. The difference between black and white could be measured by how far you lived from school or whether you rode in a bus or walked the frosty tracks.
I secretly admired the black kids who might walk up to 10 km each way, setting out in the dark with their bare feet crunching on the frost, and returning again as the sun was setting. At night they would be found doing their homework by a single flickering Price’s candle. It was an image that white parents used to caution their own children to study hard because those dedicated little kaffirs[5] were going to one day have our jobs if we did not show the same dedication. In ‘94 it all came true, but they did it by burning down the schools, not attending them.
If not bussed, white kids walked a click or two – occasionally even cycling to school. I had to cross dozens of train tracks to get to the town side where the school was located; the same tracks on which the little life of one of my brothers was crushed by a locomotive. I never got to know him except for the small green blazer my mum kept in a cupboard. His name was Trevor.
White kids were often threatened by parents to ‘better pull up our socks’ because if we are so lazy and the black kids are so conscientious, it wouldn’t be long before they’d be running the country. The way it turned out was a bitter irony indeed.
The primary school only had three teachers, and its motto (directly translated) was: We desire. We can. We will. I was smart, I was white and I was on top of the world – and believed that I could do anything – as epitomised by the motto. Apartheid only became a sin much later – and we were all raised with the implicit idea that we were better than ‘them’. If you weren’t too smart, you could get a job on the Railways or in the Post Office. If you were smart, there were always government bursaries that would enable you to study. Reward for being white. Success was my birthright and I dreamed that one day I would have a fridge that always had something to eat in it, and I would own a car.
I lost my father at the age of eleven. We were never close – he was an alcoholic. I don’t remember much of Hedley Seaton Price to muster any kind of emotion. The memories I have are regrets. Much later I learned why he drank, but I did not know then and that is my only excuse. We went to the drive-in once; the only time ever I can remember. At some stage he needed to go the toilet – probably to sneak a drink. I was instructed to accompany him – maybe even bribed with a lolly. I kept my distance because he was drunk. We preferred him drunk, because the delirium tremens was scary. I skipped on the gravelly slope and watched him navigate the undulating ridges that allowed the vehicles to get their noses slightly raised for a better view. My father slipped on the gravel and fell. He struggled to get up. I pretended that I did not know him and skipped ahead. It was the first time I know of that I would disappoint someone who (probably) loved me. The broken boulders by the road shall not commemorate my ruin. Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I can’t remember the movie. I can’t remember anything about that night. I can’t remember how we got there because we did not own a car. I don’t know if he knew what I did. I never told anyone. One day when I need my kids I will probably find out if karma really exists.
What I did learn was that it pays to withhold judgment.
Bigger Steps
We moved to a bigger town, Vryburg (Free Town). The new primary school had the motto ‘Carpe Diem’ later made famous by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. Carpe Diem – Seize the Day. As we were running around playing rugby and generally trying to score a girlfriend, the country was burning. Deep in a place called Soweto, which I had never heard of, trouble was brewing. Thousands of black kids and their parents had a different goal – to make the country ungovernable. Unrest started breaking out in the black townships.
The abiding memory of my two years at the ‘Carpe Diem’ school was a fistfight with another boy called Ian – and I’ve never liked the name since. The scrap lasted both breaks of that school day. I sported a lovely purple shiner the next day, but to my great satisfaction he did not even come to school for a few days. Or at least one day; achievements tend grow like fishing tales, and I must at least try to be accurate.
Mum remarried – third time lucky she must have thought – and we moved again; this time to Swartruggens (Black Ridge) a few hundred kilometres north in Transvaal province. The stepfather was a struggling farmer with a drinking problem. Much later I learned there was a word to describe people who always pick the same old loser; and initially I wondered why I was cursed with a co-dependent mother, but eventually realised that we’re all victims of our genes and our destinies. And much later, that it wasn’t really about me after all.
Different face, different place, same result: motherless, fatherless. I avoided the step-family as much as I could. For some reason – never questioned and never explained – mum only made the move to the farm eighteen months after me. I wasn’t alone; I had places to go and people to meet between the covers of countless books. Such were the bedrock of relationships to be. Mum was never the same again. Or maybe it was me.
Despite an alcoholic father and stepfather and despite an undemonstrative mother; or maybe because of it all, I was drawn – or driven – to spirituality. Maybe it was just another rebellion and eventually I would grow weary.
As a teenage boy I feared the developing hairy palms and abstained for eighteen months of my early adolescence. I consulted the Bible to discover no references to spanking the monkey, contrary to what adults were warning. Onan seemed to be the only transgressor, but upon closer reading, it seemed the punishment was for failing to obey instructions. That flamed my nascent scepticism about biblical interpretations and adult infallibility. It also marked the beginning of orbital love affair with divinity. I had attended a handful of Catholic services with my best friend Tommy during my pre-teens, but after my father’s funeral, I did not grace the inside of a church for at least the next seven years.
****
High school was a blur. I gained a few years and not much else. I lost my virginity; that I remember. I lost faith, I don’t quite remember how or why. I wanted to be a writer, but Mrs Ernst’s non committal response to my tentative teenage manuscript was the easy out to those aspirations. My plans to be an Advocate[6] were equally easily derailed by my sister’s opinion that it wasn’t a great job. Those who find me argumentative should blame her Miss Ernst. Twenty years later I had to decide whether I wanted apply for Law or finish my doctorate. Ego won. On such whims life turns.
[1] Carl Sandburg
[2] Taung later became famous with the discovery of the Taung skull – an important link in the archaeological puzzle the evolutionists are piecing together.
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taung
[4] Usually a metal drum with holes punched in to serve as a fireplace
[5] Derogatory term commonly used to describe the black population in South Africa during the Apartheid era.
[6] Barrister
drdennisprice 
Wish i had the space to reply as i would like to straighten a few out regarding your story.