Scribbling the Cat - Alexandra Fuller [45]
“I told her, ‘He’s dead, man. He can’t feel it.’ I told him, ‘Sorry, Dad,’ but he would have understood. He would have done the same thing if he was in my position. He was practical that way, you know. A very practical man.”
K handed me another photograph. “And that was Luke.”
This picture showed a dark-skinned child with white, peg-shaped baby teeth and blond, almost white, hair. His eyes are nearly closed with laughing and his head is thrown back. His bare stomach is muscular and his stocky legs look powerful already. He is dressed in shorts; no shirt, no shoes, no hat.
“My son,” K continued. He swallowed. “Five years old.”
I looked at K.
K said, “We were at a braai—me and the ex and Luke and”—K breathed out—“the little chap came and found me at lunch and he told me, ‘Dad, I have a headache.’ ” K’s voice faltered. “My boy didn’t whinge for nothing—he wasn’t that type of kid, you know. He was a tough little guy. And independent. One minute he’d be in the garden playing and the next minute gone. I’d go looking for him and there he was running down the road, barefoot, no shirt, off to go and visit his mates. . . . He had so many friends. He didn’t care—young, old, honky, gondie. Everyone in the whole town loved that child. So, anyway, I put him on a towel in the shade and I gave him some cold water. By three that afternoon he was in a coma.” K took a shuddering breath. “Dead in a week. Meningitis.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.”
K said, “No. It was . . . That was when the Almighty finally got my attention. That’s why I don’t ignore Him now. Even though . . . sometimes it’s tempting, of course.
“When Luke . . . when he . . . when he passed, that’s when I stopped dopping. I promised God that if He’d give me another chance at a child, I’d bring that child up . . . I wouldn’t drink, I wouldn’t fight.” K’s voice broke and tears shone on his cheeks. “Oh shit . . . oh shit. He was a beautiful boy. You can see for yourself, can’t you? He was an angel child. But . . . He was perfect. I wasn’t good enough for him.” K shook his head. “If I get another chance . . . If God gives me another chance—if He sees it within His gift to give me another child—I won’t mess it up. I won’t fuck up again. I’ll bring the child up for His glory.” The torment in K’s voice, the suffering that he exuded, expanded into every corner of the little room, pushing out air and breath. “But that was it. Luke was the only one. We couldn’t have more kids. It was as if . . . All those people I destroyed, all those lives . . . The Almighty was showing me what it was like to lose a child.” Now K was crying so hard that his voice could hardly tear through his throat.
The little cement cell seemed to close in on us. I put my hand lightly on K’s arm and murmured something and to my surprise I suddenly had the man hanging from my shoulder, his face buried on my neck, his mouth open against my throat in anguish. I was almost pushed off my feet. “Here, sit,” I said. “You must sit.” I steered K to the bed and his legs folded under him. I knelt on the floor and put my hands on his knees. “What can I do? Jesus, I’m sorry. I had no idea. . . .”
K shook his head. “If you think about it, it makes sense, doesn’t it? What else could He do? How could He have done anything else with me?”
I said, “I don’t think children die to punish their parents.”
Then suddenly K was shouting at me through his tears, “Okay, then you explain it! You tell me why I’m here alone! You tell me why He punishes me every fucking day. Every day I wake up and I think of that child. Not . . . a . . . fucking . . . day . . . Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . .”
Now I was crying too. “I know,” I said.
“No!” K sobbed. “You don’t know. How can you know? Have you lost a child?”
I shook my head. K blurred in my tears, as if he had been washed into something impermanent and shimmering on the bed.
“Then you don’t know. You have no idea.”
“No.”
Dispatch had come to the door, which was as far as he dared, and was lying with his head on his paws, ears flat. Sheba and Mischief were confused,