The Man

The day of Natalie’s due date was long and tiring. Pregnant with our third, she wasn’t much use around the house and I played both Mum and Dad for our two little daughters, Naomi and Susie. After having bought, served and cleared supper, put the two daredevils to bed and approximately tidied up, the sight of my bed was more enticing than I had ever remembered it being. I left my socks on, neglected to brush my teeth and fell into bed.

There is a small bracket of time between wakefulness and sleep where one hovers between the two. It feels like the soul is going through the process of departure for the night and one can see and hear but never really be too sure. It is at this moment in time when many people feel like they are falling and will snap back to alertness until the tendrils of sleep will smother them again.

On that night, during this hazy-pre sleep phase, I had a visitor at the doorway of my bedroom. He was an old man, slightly stooped and wore a brown peaked cap. His outline was hard and clear, not the ethereal, blurry dream-stuff I would have expected. He was waving his can at me and shifting the dentures in his mouth as if he was trying to tell me something.

My weary bones told me to ignore. My instincts told me otherwise. Instinct won and I jolted up in bed.

The man was gone.

“Hello? Hello? Who’s there?” I said into the hallway outside my bedroom. There was no response.

“Wazzamata?” came a muffled voice. I jumped even though I knew it was Natalie’s voice emerging amidst the jumble of blankets and blond ringlets from the other bed in my room. I felt guilty because I knew that sleep didn’t come easily to her in her situation and I told her that all was okay.

I padded down the stairs to check all the windows and doors. I noticed that my heart was beating a staccato and I was perspiring. Man it up! What is with you?

But the image of the man in my head gave me the chills. I knew this man. I had seen him before. Or had I?

Sleep that night was long in coming. I tossed and turned until slumber had mercy and embraced me.

---

The next morning found me serving breakfast to two under-parented, hyperactive girls, who enjoyed creating milky white waterfalls and the sensation of soggy cereal between their pudgy fingers. A combination of bribes and threats got them ready for nursery, put their jackets on and fill their backpacks. I jingled my car keys and watched them run down the path to my car, blond ponytails bobbing.

I yawned, yelled farewell to Natalie, slammed the door shut behind me and staggered as if drunk towards my car.

Right there, before my eyes, crossing my path, was The Man. I blinked.

I was not mistaken.

The dishevelled clothing, the hunched figure, the brown peaked cap. It was him.

In a daze, I followed him with my eyes, not daring to breathe, not daring to move as I watched him swing his walking stick, just as he had done the night before at my bedroom door.

“Who the hell are you?” I wanted to shout after him. But my voice was stuck in my throat. I wanted to follow him and ask him some questions but I remained rooted to the spot, legs jelly, unable to move.

I don’t know how long I stood there, eyes glazed over, in a spook-induced trance, though it couldn’t have been too long with my little chipmunks waiting. I was aroused by two golden topped, giggling things, pulling my hands in the direction of my Honda accord.

“Daddy you fell asleep standing!” Noami squealed and Susie cackled heartily.

I bopped each of them over the head in turn and shoved them into the car, music blaring in an attempt to banish the fingers of fear out that were playing with my mind and heart.

---

That evening was even more tiring than the one before. In all honesty, the drama of the morning was completely forgotten by the time I collapsed into bed. This time I was fully dressed.

The magical dust of sleep was descending and my eyelids were drooping when The Man decided to make another appearance. He was once again in the doorway, shaking his cane and chewing his dentures. This time, he spoke.

“It’s going to be a boy,” he said. The voice was coming from deep within him but his lips were static. “You should call him Harry.”

He stood like that, so distinctly there without any halos or holographic fanfare, that I impulsively leapt out bed.

And he was gone.

---

The next time I met The Man was two days later on the day that Natalie gave birth, four days overdue. We had chosen not to find out the gender of our child mainly because Natalie knew that however much I adored my daughters, I really wanted to be the daddy of a boy. She felt that upon birth I will be too delighted to mind, either way, so we kept it as a surprise.

I was in the way home from work and desperate for a drink and I stopped at corner ATM to withdraw cash because the off-licence shop near my home only accepted cash. Thankfully, there was no queue, only one man at the hole-in-the-wall.

To my horror, I recognised him.

It was The Man.

Whilst he collected his cash, I was bracing myself for a confrontation. One that I would initiate.

“Who are you?” I asked him as he turned.

He grunted.

I now had a real close-up view of him. I saw his shiny, sweaty forehead beneath his fraying peaked cap. Wrinkles crisscrossed his weather-beaten face like a fishnet, decorated with muddy liver spots at his sideburns. His mouth was constantly moving and was frothing foam at the corners

A line had formed behind me on the pavement.

“Who are you?” I asked, a notch louder this time.

Something inside me wanted him to say “Harry”. But he said nothing, only growled and waved his wooden stick menacingly at me. A carrot haired girl behind me tittered.

“Get a move on will you!” came an exasperated female voice from somewhere the back of the queue.

Defeated, I turned, collected my cash and crossed the road to get a good old can of Carlsbad.

But, even before I was able to get my fatigued fingers on the beer, the phone call came.

Natalie was in labour.

---

He was right.

The Man was right. We had a boy. Beautiful and blond like the others.

As I sat near my sleeping beauty wife and brand new son in the hospital cubical later that day, I tried to convince myself that it was a fluke. He had a fifty per cent chance to get it right, didn’t he?

But, as I sat there marvelling at the squashed little thing that was my son, I found myself devising ways of how I would convince Natalie that the perfect name for our blue little bundle of joy was Harry.