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    One Small Boy
    One Small Boy
    One Small Boy
    Ebook127 pages1 hour

    One Small Boy

    By Tim Candler

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    About this ebook

    This short book, dedicated to my friend The Mouth, is the first of ten short books that belong to The Rabbit of Usk. Our hero is Timotei. As the years pass he endures several name changes and yet through it all he remembers the year 1958 as the year he became who he is. There will be no semi-colons, there may be the odd colon and some of the spelling might well be obscure. But such is life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTim Candler
    Release dateOct 1, 2014
    ISBN9781310611001
    One Small Boy
    Author

    Tim Candler

    Born in 1952. Raised and educated by a number of cruel and unusual boarding schools and by a loving family, Tim Candler has lived and worked on several different continents. He is unallied to any particular faith, creed or doctrine. His writing tends toward descriptions of worlds where the only constant is friendship. He now lives in the South Central region of the Commonwealth of Kentucky in the United States of America.

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      Book preview

      One Small Boy - Tim Candler

      One Small Boy

      To my friend The Mouth

      Tim Candler

      Copyright 2014 Tim Candler

      Published by Tim Candler at Smashwords

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter One: A Golf Ball.

      Chapter two: A Turkey.

      Chapter Three: A Bicycle

      Chapter Four: Electricity

      Chapter five: A Kerosene Fridge

      Chapter six: A White Ant Queen

      Chapter Seven: A Kite

      Chapter Eight: A Banda

      Chapter Nine: An Electric Light

      Chapter Ten: A White Ant Swarm

      Chapter Eleven: An Ancestor

      Chapter Twelve: A Packing Crate

      Chapter Thirteen: A New Officer

      Chapter Fourteen: A Rabbit

      Chapter Fifteen: The Last Warrior

      About the Author:

      Other Books:

      Connect:

      Chapter One: A Golf Ball

      Beyond the Officer's compound and all the way around the township, pasture was kept low to discourage sickness. Upon this ribbon of grass Europeans played the game of golf. The Officer's own chief had a passion for it, and sometimes I would watch him grimacing and gesticulating as though he himself was barring the way to sickness by fending it off with his stick.

      One late afternoon he hit the little white ball with such force it landed by me in the bushes where I was spying on him. The Officers Chief came thundering after it and in my mind I wondered whether I should flee. But the officers chief saw me in the bushes and he bellowed at me. I picked the ball up and tossed it toward him. This made him so angry. I thought he was going to whip me. But the officers chief spoke my language and in a halting way he stubbornly explained to me that during the game of golf, no hand should touch the little white ball unless the game was at its beginning or at its end.

      I apologized to him and I asked him how he had come to learn my language and I told him of a European boy I'd heard of who could also speak my language. His reply was confusing but I did gather he wanted me to help him porter his sticks, which on a hot afternoon had become a burden to him. And I agreed to do this for him.

      The golfing sticks were carried in a leather bag which stood about as high as I did. Attached to the bag was a strap which went around the neck as an aid to portage. The bag was indeed heavy and awkward, but manageable, and I stumbled on behind the Officers Chief as he played his game. He was a large well fed man. He smelled sweet and like most Europeans he smoked cigarettes in great quantities.

      He asked after my age and clan, and I had to tell him that my origins were unclear to me. I told him that Philemon had claimed me, and that Philemon was from the Northern clan, which would mean that under any circumstance of dispute I felt myself as belonging to the Northern clan. As for my age, I suggested I was about the same age as the European boy who spoke my language. A boy the officers chief didn't appear to know.

      When the game of golf was over, the officers chief thanked me with a coin from his pocket. On my way to Philemon's kitchen I considered showing Philemon this coin. My inclination was to hide it from him, but I thought back to my conversation with the Officers Chief and I decided that if indeed I was of Philemon's clan I should share the coin with him. And yet so often I had been reminded that things are not always as they appear because life was a mirage, and in the distance what might have been water, invariably was not. All the same I showed Philemon the coin and I told him how I had acquired it.

      The sight of this coin in my hand appeared to sadden him.

      When I was your age we did not see coins, he said. Now I think of them a great many times in the course of a day.

      I followed him then to the staff quarter. I had never been allowed into his room, and I was reluctant to enter the threshold. So I stood in the doorway and watched him.

      Philemon had a wooden bed to sleep on. Beside the bed was a metal box and from inside this metal box Philemon took out a spear blade that had been wrapped with cloth. He handed the spear blade to me and told me to hold it. Then in a low voice he began to tell me how he'd earned it. And how, if the Northern Chief ever required it of him, he would cut a shaft for his spear blade and he would use the spear again.

      That evening behind the staff quarter, Philemon asked the men if they could recall when the Northern Chief's smith had last made iron. No one could recall the event, except as something from the past. But Philemon could well recall the event because the last time the Northern Chief's smith had made iron was when he had made a spear blade for Philemon. The men agreed that if this was the case, then it was truly a long time ago.

      And, Philemon reminded us all. The Northern Chief sacrificed a bull for this last spear blade. I myself, carried the bull's blood for the smith. I heard the incantations, I saw a white flame, I helped with the bellows. When it was cool enough I reached the iron out of the charcoal pit and I handed it to the smith.

      Philemon's memories clung to me. I could almost see him as he might have been before he had aged into the Officer's cook. I saw him with his spear and with his feathers, lean and young again, arrogant and tall. And I suppose I envied him his memories because in him there was no doubt about his origin. My own memories of past things were confusing and in the place where I then lived, there was nothing much to remember, except the Officer's compound and Philemon.

      I had asked him once how he came to be called Philemon. It was a name everyone called him, and yet it had a European flavor to it which for a man who had once been given a spear blade by the Northern Chief, seemed an unlikely name. He'd told me that in a moment of weakness and in exchange for a pair of trousers he had been baptized into the Lord's belief, but somehow he had not managed to maintain the belief because both before and after the ceremony he had felt the same. And too, the Lord's belief required considerable sacrifice, which he suspected might one day require him to follow the Lord's fate. Then, as he got older it was this Christian name that had remained with him. Quite why he wasn't certain, but he suspected it was primarily because it was a name Europeans felt comfortable with and one which they appeared to be able to pronounce. Yet to me his reasons for keeping his Christian name had never rung true. To me he appeared rather to be hiding something, and now that he had shown me his spear head, I again asked him why he was called Philemon.

      Europeans came like a revelation, he answered. They were extraordinary. Some thought they were ancestors grown pale from their exile. But such tales were for old men. When I was young I wanted to be more like the Europeans, I wanted trousers. Now I wonder.

      It was this mixing of thoughts that lead me to ask Philemon's advice with respect to the Officers Chief and his game of golf.

      Before the roads and the railway I carried loads for the Europeans, Philemon answered me.

      So I watched for the officers chief. When I saw him I walked over to his leather bag, placed its strap around my neck with the intention of assisting him in exchange for another coin. He looked at me through his blue eyes and I saw what I believed to be disappointment. I recalled Philemon's concern with respect to coins, so I told the Officers Chief that I would carry his clubs if he taught me his language. He looked down at me, and in that faltering way of his, he told me that he would certainly try to teach me his language, but as well he would give me a coin for my work if I said not a word.

      The language was English. The

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