Roadside Promises

Somehow, I had found myself driving the A109: a thick, heavy asphalt scar that traced its way across the oldest of all continents. Music thumped lazily out of the bass, and the wind had been fresh in my face. A rooster comb of dust plumed behind me, while high above, the sun bleached the land a bone white and found me driving and listening, driving and trying to forget. 

Yet one memory never strayed far anymore, shackled to me in the heat of the day, tightening painfully in the dark of night. My daughter: a beautiful green-eyed girl, soft to the eye, yet hard to the world. Why? Because her father was a god-damned alcoholic. Promise after promise I had made to her that I would stop, yet every time I still managed to write the narrative with myself as the victim in an unjust world. Finally it had led me here: the A109, one long artery that pulsed from the sun-drenched shores of Cape Town to the elaborate, market weary streets of Alexandria. It was a road that drew in those with nothing to lose or perhaps those with nothing to gain. 

On seeing his thumb, I slammed on the brakes, feeling the steering wheel running loose in my hands. The tyres dipped off the road, seeking purchase on the rough gravel shoulder, and for several moments we fishtailed around, my jeep and I nothing more than playthings to the gods. And then I caught some traction, and we spun and slid and fought for control until finally, I was sitting in a choking cloud of smoking rubber and angry dust. 

The engine tick, tick, ticked, and the dust slowly settled, leaking in a sky the colour of a pale mountain stream. My heart thrummed a frantic beat, the world and my thoughts mercifully forgotten until there was a loud rap on the passenger door. I turned to the face: skin the colour of smooth dark chocolate, teeth as white as Norwegian snow.

"Hello, mister," he said, his English uncomfortably good. "Can I get a ride?"

I needed a moment to let the world fall into place, suddenly aware that the music that pumped out of the speakers would have played on while I bled out on this very road. In that moment of weakness, I gave him a nod, and he climbed on in. 

"You going far?" I asked, painfully aware of the shaky edge to my voice. 

"North, but not far," he replied. 

I gave him an appraising look, gauging his reaction to me more than anything else, and he returned a toothy grin. I dropped the clutch, and we took off out of there, thoughts of my roadside demise nothing more than a lousy memory fading with the breeze. We made good time up the road, not speaking, my thoughts wandering and returning time and time again to the past.

"You have a name?" he suddenly asked, and I paused for a moment to turn down the music. The loud rock had given way to something soulful and lost, and all of a sudden, I didn't want to hear it any more. 

"Johnny," I said. "You?"

"Kanoro," he replied, and then as if I didn't hear it, he repeated it, tasting the sounds as they bled from his lips. 

"It mean something?" I asked, and for a moment we locked eyes, his dark and piercing and troubled. I flinched, the dusty road forgotten, my crusade nothing more than a ghost, as I saw something haunted there on the Devil's highway.

"Sharpens my swords," he said and then fell silent. But my eyes weren't finished. They stole to his arms; each had been crisscrossed with scars, dark ridges of puckered flesh like tiny mountain ranges. Every inch of him was covered, and despite the heat, I shivered. Up ahead, the road swung wildly left and then right, but I gripped the wheel and rode those curves with the confidence of a twenty leagues seaman, closing off my mind to the maelstrom inside. 

"You heading north for a reason, mister?" the young boy asked, and my mind threatened to unravel once again. But it was not for him to know.

"Yeah, for whatever it brings," I replied. 

"My father is there," he said. "I am returning to him, for it is he that gave me my name."

'And the scars too?' I almost blurted out, but I caught myself short and instead swallowed the words. Who was I to speak of fathers? 

Outside, the dusty air twisted and swirled violently in our wake as the continent of Africa fell away beneath our tires, forsaking any promise I had once made. As always, it was easier to give myself to that blurring, bleeding horizon, until out of nowhere, Kanoro began to speak. 

"I did love my parents," he suddenly whispered. "My father was a carpenter once upon a time, strong yet with the soft hands of a child: fingers that sculpted wood for only the finest in our village. Many believed that his skills were guided by God, and for a time, we believed it too. And then his angelic touch began to draw blood from my mother's brow, and then from my brothers and me. He promised us that it would be the last time, but as we got older and his hands lost their touch, we knew it would never be. It was then that my brothers fled our home, and I truly came to inherit my name."

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, the words cutting through my thoughts. Not all scars were on the outside. 

For a moment, the road appeared again, an oasis between what I heard and the promises in my head, and I suddenly felt relief. Out there, a world turned, the cycle of life and death playing out upon that grand roulette wheel, each of us different and how really did this African and his plight relate to me? 

"Soon," Kanoro continued, "the village saw this and passed their judgment on the stories that our scars told. They did this while seated upon the very wood that my father had carved. They considered my mother's weakness aibu, while my father was beaten senseless by the Mkuu. They left him crippled and with the mind of a small child. As a family, we were broken; my mother ran, choosing to hide deep in the folds of the land that our forefathers had once walked with pride. My father and I were left with only each other."

For a second Kanoro's voice quivered. It was the only time that he had given in to emotion, and I marveled at his strength. I was all too aware that my shortcomings cried out for the hot, sweet surrender of the bottle as my forsaken hands turned the wheel in the name of discovering this continent. In truth, my calling had been nothing more than running from that promise that I made that I would be there for her. I wanted to turn to Kanoro then, to explain to him my plight and what it meant to be a father, but what really could I say?

"And yet you stayed with him?" was all I could ask, breathless and clutching for hope.

"Stayed?" Kanoro replied, and then he chuckled, but it was a sound without humour. His eyes settled on me, the pupils malevolent pools that spoke of things that I dared not ponder.

"Oh yes, I stayed," he said.

Suddenly the world fell into frightening focus: the sky a gas flame blue, the land white as bleached bone, and somewhere in between, myself who drove for neither on a false crusade. Up ahead, a town sketched itself against the dust: odd juttings framed against the horizon. At the same time, the sickly trappings of the West splashed themselves against every corner. Something about the sharp contours frightened me, and despite wanting to be rid of my guest, I clutched the wheel tight, eager to press on. 

"This is my stop," the young boy said and against my fears, I slowed the car, the air suddenly thick and heavy. He stepped out and paused in the hot summer air, his fingers still locked upon the door as the wind began to rage around us. 

"Remember your promises, mister, because all roads lead here." 

Behind him, tombstones sprouted out of the dry dirt, like the broken and misshapen teeth of an old man's jaw. The rich smell of freshly overturned earth drifted on a rank summer wind, while beneath it, something lurked; dark and not of this world. 

"I'll see you soon," he said and then disappeared in a cloud of dust that suddenly enveloped us. I tried to follow his path, my eyes stinging and my throat dry as parchment, but there was nothing there but hot, gritty air and a desert filled with the crosses of the dead. 

No, you won't, I thought, thinking of my green eyed daughter and gripping the steering wheel tight. I tried to replay my time with Kanoro again, desperate to make sense of what had happened. Yet my thoughts were frightened and rampant, settling on nothing, and I turned my eyes to the horizon.  The pedal was a temptation under my foot. So I played with it, sending waves of gasoline through the engine, waves of illusion that stroked and calmed my fears, and then the tyres dug deep into the dirt.

I left that town in a tornado of dust and smoke, not north, but back the way I came. South on the Devil's highway. Back towards that promise that I had made to a beautiful green-eyed girl.

And maybe for me…

It wasn't too late.