Karoo Boy by Troy Blacklaws

is becoming a stranger to me. In my mind his face is fuzzing at the edges. His eyes are a deadpan, soulless stare. The glint is gone.
    – To prove our manhood we had to do one daring deed. In the old times you would hunt a leopard or a lynx, but they were hard to find. So we chose to kill a dog that barked at us whenever our mothers sent us to buy bones or a pig head at the butcher. The butcher in our village was a bitter white man who lived in an old caravan. We hated that dog, the way he snarled and lunged at us, baring his teeth, fighting the rope that tied him to the caravan. One night I stalked up to the caravan when the dog was snoring and cut the rope. Then, from a distance, we whistled to wake the dog. When he ran to us, we speared the dog with sticks we had knifed at one end. It felt good to kill the dog. Years later, I saw that it was not the dog that was evil, but the man who taught the dog to hate.
    The memory of it bends his white-fringed head and a sigh whispers from his lips. Then he lifts his head to suck long at the cigarette stompie. Wisps of smoke flow through his yellowy, cobby teeth as he goes on.
    – My father and the fathers of my boyhood friends sent for the old tribal doctor, the ingcibi, to come with his assegai and make men of us. On the day the ingcibi came to our village, we boys of sixteen or seventeen smeared each other from head to foot in white ochre. Painted white, we would stay unseen by the evil spirits that waylay boys on the journey to manhood. For a moment I wanted to laugh at the sight of my black boyhood friends standing there white as ghosts, but I did not laugh, for I remembered the pain to come. The time for boyish fooling was over.
    Moses stubs his cigarette out under his boot.
    – We sat naked on our heels, the way bushmen do, waiting in a row for the ingcibi. We were surrounded by our fathers, and the other men. I wanted to catch my father’s eye, but knew I was not to glance around like an inquisitive boy. I was to stare ahead, and go through with it. If my face pinched with pain, I would shame my father. The shame of being a coward would dog me forever. I would never walk among men with my head held high. I would never be a soldier or a miner. I would run away, my bleeding tail between my legs like a scared, stoned dog.
    I glance down at the scar, recall the fish hook in my finger on the Kalk Bay harbour wall, recall my father’s words: Be brave, Douglas. Cowboys don’t cry.
    – I heard the drums and I saw the ingcibi shuffle his scaly feet towards us, his spine bent, so his head was level with the earth, as the head of a tortoise is. Tixo, guide the hand of this old man, I prayed. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the ingcibi swing his assegai. Ithi uyindoda, he said. Say you are a man. I heard a young voice cry out: Ndiyindoda! I am a man!
    I shudder at the thought of an assegai scything through my skin. Instinctively, I clasp at my songololo.
    Moses sees me squirm. Laughs.
    – For one crazy moment, I too wanted to save my cock. To run for it. But then I saw my father’s unsmiling eyes on me. I wanted him to give me a sign that the pain to come would not be too bad, but his face was as cold as a mask. The ingcibi stood before me. I would not shame my father. He pinched my foreskin in his fingers, tugged at it and sliced through me in one swing. The burn flamed through my guts, my bones, my head. It was a pain way beyond the pain of a deep thorn or a dog bite. I saw the mouth of the ingcibi chewing unheard words. I saw, as if it was a leaf falling slowly slowly, my foreskin fall to the sand. I heard the cry of a man escape my mouth: Ndiyindoda! I saw my father’s teeth smile. I picked up my foreskin and swallowed it before the evil spirits could get their hands on it and bewitch me.
    I feel faint. I hold the cold can of Coca-Cola to my forehead to keep from keeling over.
    – Afterwards the ingcibi wound a weed around my burning cock, bound it on with a leather thong.