Son of the Night Man

By John Duke

Raymond Hebbard, the son of the night man grows up an only child in a Victorian country town. His mother's love cannot protect him from his violent, alcoholic father. Raymond Hebbard is damaged goods. The boy is seen as an alien, a friendless misfit in the small community. The trauma Raymond Hebbard carries inside means that a fire is always ready to ignite in his chest and given the right circumstances it could explode and then beware those around him.
When his mother is close to death from a cancer, she finds Raymond an escape route and he moves to live with his Uncle Colin. Under his Uncle's protective wing Raymond begins to grow as a person and those around him can no longer see the son of the night man, just Raymond. Yet there is no sense of home for him, no sense of belonging. Eventually, circumstance and a new confidence see him challenge himself and he travels to the other side of the world, to a small village in the desert of Botswana.
Raymond has fallen out of the sky into the desert. He loves the warmth of the women in his compound and he grows to feel that this simple way of life is made for him. He finds a lover, he finds a friend. He discovers that no one can see his baggage, no one can see the son of the night man: neither in the school compound nor in the family compound. He is no longer the misfit, the alien.
But as his Uncle Colin liked to say, life is not always a picnic and the challenges thrown up by the presence of two other men in the village will severely test the son of the night man. The fire in his chest is still there and if ignited, he stands to lose all that life in the desert has offered him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Aug 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685834135

Book preview

There is only one inborn error:

and that is the notion

that we exist in order to be happy.

Arthur Schopenhauer

₪

Life starts with the inescapable reality of the coupling of your mother and father and all that they give you in your brain and in your flesh and in your bones and later you become the person you are, through things done for you and things not done for you and things done to you. You don’t get much of a say in this. And as I toddled down the beginning of the path that I will call life’s journey, my mother did her best to nurture me and her love for me was real, while my father didn’t know, or didn’t care that a man is not what he should be and must be transformed if he is to do good, be good. My father carried the burden of manhood and he treated me in a certain way so that almost thirty years into my journey I still struggle to escape who I am, who I have become. The son of the night man.

March 17 1987

I was back in Africa just months after shaking Goodwill’s hand in farewell and giving up all hope that Mabutsane could be the place to start a new life. Now the sights, the sounds and the smells of Africa were back with me again. I was in the Kalahari Desert where I had discovered so much. Not about myself. I knew enough about myself already. One thing that I did discover was that some people in this desert place could see a different man from the man I had accepted as me. And how they saw me and how they gave themselves to me caused me to see possibility even though I still carried the burden of my childhood experience. But life is not always like an old fashioned children’s story book with a happy ending and life in the desert, in Mabutsane, hadn’t worked out the way that I had hoped. So I had no choice but to return home.

One day, back in Australia, I held a letter in my hand and because of the words on those pages I was back in the desert and now I was suffering from dread anticipation. The constant hope that surrounds possibility meant that I had been arriving here, at this compound in my mind for so long and now I was in sight of my destination. The story that sits at the front of my mind, the story that Bendt told me, the letter he delivered to me has drawn me back here.

The headlights of the land cruiser said that I was there, the brush fence and above it the thatched rooves of the rondavels. The engine of the land cruiser died, the headlights faded. Goodwill said nothing at first. The morning light was climbing over the horizon. The sights, the sounds and the smells were back. The chooks in the acacia tree restless, the smell of the cooking fire, a cow bellowed.

 On the other side of the brush fence I heard a woman’s voice, Sahwali’s voice. I whispered her name inside my head. Sometimes when you want something to happen so badly you start telling yourself that it will not happen, that something will go wrong. Wrong place or wrong time. But I had come to the right place. Sahwali’s voice. An instant later I heard Benco’s voice. It had been almost half a year since I had heard those voices. I had always liked Sahwali’s sound very much. I had to admire her, all that she had been through, all I had learnt about her struggles and now I was smiling when I thought of her. Because I am a man it is the woman in her that I admire. Benco’s voice again and then that desert quiet.

But I had not come back to the Kalahari for Sahwali. There is another who I had come for, who had drawn me to the desert again by the words in her letter. I had said I loved her and this word love, alive in my head made me feel strangely uncomfortable. I could not hear her voice. This was the compound of her childhood. Yes, she had painted many pictures for me of that time, the time when she was growing up here in Kang and now she had travelled the full circle.

Most of us fall in love and so most of us know that you don’t choose who you fall in love with. Your brain is like another. It does its job and you are on auto pilot. Her eyes, her voice, her shape and then you are helpless. Because she is interested in me I am drawn to her. Then I love her. It is as simple as that. But now that I know what Bendt had revealed to me one night in a hotel in his country town, I might think that life’s journey had done a job on us, me and Margaret. That us is meant to be.

Goodwill’s who is special, who I might even call a friend has his eyes on me and then he speaks.

You go in first Raymond. Give them a surprise.

THE BIG PART

1

If you asked me that question, I would answer simply. My childhood was shit. I could choose almost any morning as I grew up to prove this. Mornings were the worst. When the crying of the night before promised more of the same. About the time when Hakebale and Sahwali were safe, growing up in their village, in their compound, early one morning on the edge of my town in Northern Victoria, at a time when I had just reached puberty, I stood in the junkyard of our back yard. On this morning the rising sun’s light painted the low hills a brilliant green. In the forest of forlorn car bodies, it was early frosty quiet, countryside quiet. There was a job that was mine, a job that my mother had somehow talked my father into letting me do. My father, with his silly smirk under his silly moustache liked to say, been down the backyard feeding the chooks again have you Raymond? Yes, I know.

That morning was not the beginning. Just another day on the straight predictable road that was my life’s journey so far. As I lifted the latch to open the gate into the fowl yard, Conrad’s crowing pierced the quiet. I remember on that morning I thought of the words Cockadoodle Doo, that’s what the children’s book said and my mother’s voice was in my head because she made the stories real when she gave every character a special voice. She looked at me and smiled and she was trying hard to make sure that I knew. A little repair job. Tender told stories that helped to keep my head above water.

In my other hand I carried a plastic container near full of layers pellets. As I began to spray the pellets onto the ground, I suppose Conrad was concentrating on my back and if I had turned and caught his eye at that moment I probably would have seen that he had the manner of a belligerent drunk in a bar about to king hit someone. Afterwards I told myself that I didn’t deserve this, as if life is about rewards and penalties that are deserved.

On that cold morning, the sneaky strutting Conrad struck, all wings and claws and spur, and the pain consumed me for long seconds. I hopped out through the gate, throwing the plastic container into the air. The place on my shin was already rising into a glistening silver mound. The pain from Conrad’s spur had ignited the fire in my chest and my brain sent a message to the trauma in my life and I could feel my strangely blue eyes that helped set me apart, grow in my head.

Against the timber board and chicken wire wall of the chook yard leant a steel fence picket. The fire in my chest was raging and in these moments of time I couldn’t question what I was about to do. The brain that I had grown from the damage so far on my life’s journey couldn’t work that way. When the fire was raging, the part of my brain that might reason with me would shut down.

I was in the chook yard again. Conrad stood his ground, his eyes steady. But Conrad was vulnerable because the steel picket was a club in my grip that smashed into his head. Now Conrad was lying flat on his stomach, his wings outstretched, his eyelids falling and rising over eyes gone smoky. His claws contracted and opened, his body shuddered. Powerless, his comb had lost its bright redness, and had turned a sick purple colour.

The back door slammed and my father had somehow picked up a signal and he was coming down the path, an agitated walk in his green overalls. His morning work about to start.

Put that fucken picket down. Do ya hear me?

That brain-dead tone, the muscles in his face barely moved. He had said his piece now and he might just let it play out, that was how he operated. So he leant against the body of an ancient silver Chrysler amongst his forest of useless cars in our backyard and watched and tried to look distanced. But that didn’t work and as he watched me, he must say something and he raised his voice a little.

Don’t be fucken silly.

My father’s voice disappeared into the cold air. Nothing in our family would change with talk. He had taught us that reality. So he did what he did. He ran a finger and thumb along his stupid sick droop of a moustache and readied himself by shaping his other hand so as to be able to hurt me. A way of responding to any hump in the road, a way of responding passed down to him too no doubt. In the journey of life every father is a man.

Of course, I ignored my father. I had no choice, did I? I didn’t deserve this did I? The rooster was as vulnerable as I was. The steel picket smashed into Conrad’s head twice more and now blood stuck feathers to its end and other feathers floated in the crisp morning air. I stepped back, shivered and dropped the steel picket and the fire in my chest had reached its peak and was slowly dying, its message weakening.

My father stood at the chicken coop gate now. So ugly I thought. The swollen nose, cerise turning purple veined. Blood shot eyes. The man who he had become in his life journey had no choice. Words that said nothing were about to be thrown at me. Everything was fucken.

What did I say to you, you silly fucken turd?

My father’s tongue was folded under and clenched between his teeth. He came at me. He grabbed my ear and twisted it with great force and then the back of his other hand crashed across my forehead. There is something especially wrong about a man who hurts his own. After he had hurt me, not a word was said. He walked off and pulled himself up behind the steering wheel of the green De Soto truck that matched his trousers. Shit needed to be carted. A little early morning tragedy, no big deal, nothing new. A bad start to another day. Another sad marker post on life’s journey.

2

What are the chances? A white man, a lekgoa as most of us Batswana say and for us that word is not meant to be complimentary. He arrives in our village. To Mabutsane and my cousin leads him to come and live in our compound. A lekgoa, a person who always knows best. The boss who always finds fault with everything you do. That’s what most of us say. Yes, he might have been just another lekgoa to others in the village but in time I came to think of him as a good person, that’s how it started. He was polite and I would say he seemed like he was kind and my aunty always said that K is the most important letter in the alphabet. K for Kindness. His eyes, that strange blue, made me a little uncomfortable at first. For a little while it was in my head that he could be saying one thing and thinking another. I didn’t really know exactly how lekgoa did their thinking.

Time usually provides the answer. Soon I was sure that he was a good person. And in a matter of days I realised that I was feeling more than that he was just a good person. I don’t really understand how this happens. Maybe my circumstance made me want to hope without being really conscious of it. Maybe my circumstance made desperation the motivator. Somehow it seemed in a way that I didn’t fully understand, that this man was re-inventing me and this was enticing because a married Batswana woman had no right to think about finding another man and starting anew.

 The strangeness of a white man. Yes at first there were the unknowns about Raymond. Not like the Boer truck drivers whose walk and eyes left nothing for guessing. Somehow it seemed to me that Raymond wasn’t sure of how he should act, wasn’t sure how people saw him. But we learn something every day and a few days after he moved into our compound we began to talk, sitting on his stoop in the late afternoon sun. When we first became close, when we became comfortable together, the two of us began to tell each other about how it had come about that we were in the same place at the same time on life’s journey as Raymond calls it.

One afternoon I told Raymond how my father gave me the gift of the English language through his determination and example. By practice every day. My name is Hakebale, I am thirteen years old and I live in Kang. My family belong to the Bakgalagadi tribe. Our language is Setswana. So because of my father’s determination Raymond and I could share our experiences. I could paint pictures for him so that through our growing up he could know me and I could know him. So our words made sense to each other.

Raymond loved the pictures of the Kalahari of my youth. I gave him my father’s words. My father told us that out beyond the brush fence of our compound, out in the distance, near the Basarwa camp, the lions resting in the shade of the Acacia trees raised themselves up to their feet and swayed and shook with new life after rest and as the sun began to disappear below the horizon they began their journeys of the night.

 In my words to him, pictures of my childhood could grow in Raymond’s mind’s eye. It was late afternoon and Sahwali and I and our friends were playing the games of Kalahari children. Our laughter made little sound as it drifted off across the sand but the whiteness of our teeth spoke to each other. We girls were playing at long jump. I was Hakebale and you could see my spindly black legs stretching for distance and then as the side of my body hit the sand, my skirt of many colours sailed over my head so that the sight of my pants gave sound to laughter. I brushed the sand from my skirt and blouse and said with a firm but friendly confidence, I have jumped the furthest. I gave Raymond the words of that day. I have jumped the furthest. You have, my father said smiling. My turn now Sahwali said.

 Raymond did not meet me, the one who he must call Margaret, for more than twenty years after the days of the long jump. But when he did meet me, something happened between us and risks were taken and our worlds would change. A new world of possibility for us both. He wasn’t looking for me, I know that, because he didn’t know that I could exist. He says some people are special, it’s passed down, given to you by love and if you are lucky, you stay special. I walked easy at the start of my life’s journey. I was lucky. But now I need luck more than I can really hope for.

 On those days before my world changed, us girls played our games and laughed in the security of our compound. At the time, when we played happily in our compound I now know that Raymond was in school in the town of his birth and life was already cruel because everyone knew that he was one to be punished, not just an easy target but a necessary one. He told me about this, about a father so unlike mine. A father who had a lot missing in him. A mother who had made a big mistake, but Raymond says a mistake that any heart can make when a heart is full of hope. I now know about mistakes like that, but in my case my heart was not really involved.

I was lucky back then. If Raymond had been there in the village of Kang, in the Kalahari, in my compound on that day he would have seen my father whose name was Tabansi sitting in a large wooden chair in front of the door of his rondavel. Once a representative of the Botswana Advisory Council. Tall and wiry. If Raymond had been there in those days, he would have known that my father was proud of what he saw, of who he saw. Content in his own body in the warmth of the evening, newly washed and, thanks to my mother, his singlet white as white, his trousers pressed. Bare feet. Tired from a day at the kraal watching over our cattle, while all the time trying to hide from the power of the sun. He had done what everyone expected of him as a man and he could look anyone in the eye.

 My father had a heart attack and died long before Raymond arrived in the Kalahari and on the day that he died our cattle had strayed and they found him lying in the sun and the thornbush. On his side as if he was asleep. He was missed by most people as good people are. On that day, for the first time I understood that life was full of surprises, but in truth, in life we should never be surprised.

 If Raymond had been there on the days before my father’s death he might have heard my father say please fetch me a glass of water my daughter. I would have smiled at him and run to the water drum. You are a good girl, he would say as his hands enclosed the pewter mug. When Raymond and I began to talk together each Sunday I told him how much I loved my father. Everyone said he was a good man. Raymond said good men have special children Margaret.

We sat on his stoop and I gave Raymond more pictures. The fire in the cooking enclosure brightened as the sun quickly disappeared. My mother circled the large wooden spoon around and around inside the blackened pot hanging from the tripod. Maybe goat stew. A quiet content at the end of another day. Sahwali and I watched the stirring as we sat on our small wooden stools, our dresses pulled up between our thighs, bare feet burrowing in the sand and soon Boipelo our mother, whom everyone calls Ma said our meal is ready. We bowed our heads and my father offered a prayer to our lord.

We came together, in our compound in Kang, the four people who were family, around the fire to eat and not many words were spoken because no one had been born in the village that day and no one had died. No one had lost a cow or a goat to a lion. It hadn’t rained. But then my father did speak and he said that a pastor from Gaborone was coming to our church soon and it would be a special day for the family. When we had finished our meal and the darkness descended, the kerosene lamps moved around the compound until every job was complete and the rondavel doors closed one after another and the lamps died. Raymond would be able to see it all in his mind’s eye because he was here in the desert, living in a compound just like that one, with me and my family.

I told him that in the cool of the morning I hugged my mother goodbye and I put my arms through the leather straps of my school bag and walked with Sahwali to school in our crisp clean school uniforms, hand in hand, through the sand and thornbush, and Sahwali chased a lizard and she tripped and fell over in the sand and we both laughed because we were loved. The two of us looked back over our shoulders, the sun beginning its journey and watched as our father, carrying his big blue umbrella, opened the brush gate of the cattle compound, his long day before him. He sensed our eyes on him and we returned his wave.

Raymond could imagine us fading into the desert distance as we approached the compound which was the school and the Principal and teachers, pointers in hand, were waiting for us, blackboards on wooden legs in the shade of the big tree. Raymond knew what the noise and movement of young people coming together would sound like because he is a teacher. Sahwali and I were safe and happy at this school and the most important lesson for us, our father said, was to learn how to speak English.

When Raymond had become one of us, while Kefentse was away in Zambia, Ma would tell Raymond about life in Bechuanaland, the challenges and the joy of being a mother as she and Raymond repaired our washroom wall together. She told him that I was not the most beautiful girl when I was young, but I was smart and my English was very good and I was sensible and I stood out as special even if I didn’t know it. Hakebale as I was christened could run the fastest Ma said. Could sing like no other. I could make everyone laugh. I knew right from wrong, I was taller than most other girls. I will always be very proud of her, Ma said and then I know that quietness would come over her because now she would always feel sad for me.

3

If you are the only child, then all the shit falls to you. Yes my mother and father only had one child and there could be a number of reasons for that. One day like many, I sat in my pyjamas and dressing gown on the lino floor in my bedroom. The plastic prairie settlers were under attack and they had circled their plastic wagons as Sitting Bull and his band of plastic Indians swept toward them across the vast plains. My father raised his voice a little as he passed in the hallway.

You need to grow up. You are too old to play with that crap.

He didn’t stop and I didn’t look up. He always just glanced off my existence. I had the plot all worked out because coming over the hill in the distance were the plastic soldiers of General Custer and the settlers would certainly be saved. I could see it all. No one would be scalped. I would do some good.

 A car pulled up in our driveway. Out of my bedroom window I saw the police car. I moved away from the window and sat on my bed. I didn’t need to be a witness. I waited for it to happen because it had happened before. It seemed to take so long for the knock on the front door. I heard my mother’s voice. Yes her husband was home. They needed to speak to him about a matter, about something that happened in the hotel last night. Just a moment my mother said.

Bruce.

I have never been able to understand how my father saw the world, how making a run for it could have been a useful strategy. I guess that acting and thinking were two separate spheres for him. Uncle Colin always said don’t forget half the people on the planet have below average intelligence. There was the noise of the back door slamming and I heard Conrad crowing as if sounding the alarm. I sat on my bed and then I heard the shrill shouting of conflict and the kinds of words that my father used as if he believed that using certain words over and over again could help and it didn’t affect their value.

The yelling voice of my father was moving around to the front of the house and I willed myself to go to the window. My father was held in a headlock by one policeman and the other one held him around his kicking legs. My father’s track suit pants were being dragged down and half his bare backside was there for anyone to see. My mother screamed as I had heard her scream before.

Don’t be stupid Bruce. Do what they ask.

Beside the police car the two officers sat on my father and his hands were pinned behind his back and one policeman took his handcuffs from his belt and my father was helpless except for those words. Together they stood my father up and dragged him to the police car and my father still struggled uselessly until he hit his head on the door sill as one policeman shoved him into the back seat and sat beside