R and R

 

I don’t like it when a man humbles before me. It rubs up the wrong way, I mean I'm just a man like you mehn. So, we walked back into the restaurant. He was still pleading with us that it was not how we think… but who keeps a customer waiting for close to thirty minutes when you really want their money? They just pass by and don’t even ask ‘what are you taking’ I started feeling like we were in the wrong place. It made me stare down our shoes upwards, perhaps we were not dressed like the rest – in a way that pleased him. That was immaterial, we were classy.

Robert reached out to me after he read my previous post, ‘the holy studio.’ He said I could be his next story and I said well I'm that story. He is a good writer, a really good story teller. The voice behind letstalk. All the Roberts I have known in my lifetime are huge people. I expected an enormous figure, but guess what… Robert is not like other Roberts I know. He is huge ideologically and in thinking and huge in creativity.

The meet up was on Saturday afternoon. I was a little late, like twenty minutes or so. I didn’t want to apologize for being late but I thought that would be rude. After shaking hands, I said kishingo upande, ‘iza man nimechelewa’ and immediately regretted my decision after he said I don't have to. In my head I was like ‘wharrathese man, its okay to be late.’ We found our way to The edge Restaurant. The guy who was serving us, the one who humbled before us and I didn’t like it… finally came with a large plate of wet fry goat that later turned out to be a sheep meat. It slapped so well with the small lump of ugali.

He is a quiet and reserved man, we talked about our writing journey and the challenges in it. We both started active writing in 2022. He was most pleased with my story ‘At a glance.’ He said the creativity there was out of this world. He was like, ‘how did you come up with that ending, you had me all the way then..’ And in my head, I was like, well that’s what writers do. I love compliments, positive complements where they are due - I felt contentment run down my nerves.

We talked about social life, about family, about career, about hustles, about the future and childhood among the rest. I realized he had a scar on his right chin. Scars are story tellers on their own. Someday I will ask him about the scar. He’s a technologist but his job is in a different path.

I asked him why he wants to quit writing. I read his latest piece then ‘aluta continua’ and I felt it was showing the beginning of an end. He said he wants to do something else that he has not really figured out. Could be writing at a whole new level, looking for a different job, could be pursuing a future in Europe. The key thing here is that he wanted a different challenge this year and I wished him every best.

We talked football as well; I told him of my undying love for Manchester United. The restaurant had become noisy, it was that hour. Masses slowly creeped and the restaurant slowly became more lively. The arsenal game vs Everton was on and I told him the best arsenal could do against an Everton side with a new coach was a draw. He has a wife and a lovely daughter. He says parenthood is a beautiful thing. And I imagined him at home in the evening his daughter being clingy on him and the picture is beautiful. Makes me feel like giving it a try.

We later watched a match that saw a ten-man side Manchester united brutally bruise Viera’s side to a 2-1 defeat. He asked me why Ten hag and Viera led the team to the stadium with a banquet of flowers and I concluded he’s never heard of the 1958 Munich disaster. We nursed a drink as we watched the game in silence. At the back of my head I knew he was forgetting one of the major things he came for… he wanted to know why Craig Crist-Evans is a bastard, a 'good bastard.'

Craig authored the book ‘Amaryllis.’ An alluring family story that talks of forgiveness and acceptance of what life throws at your face, accompanied with sad - painful realism. It’s a story of a family of four; Mr. and Mrs. Staples and their two sons Frank and Jimmy. Frank was the eldest and had a rough relationship with his drunkard dad, a fair relationship with his mother and a tight relationship with his younger brother jimmy.

The unbearable internal family tiffs pushed Frank away to pick being a soldier in Vietnam over being the face of all family glitches. Vietnam felt better, Frank was away from the constant wrangles with his dad. He missed his brother, and Jimmy missed him so much he couldn’t wait for his letters. The last two letters that Frank wrote to Jimmy ripped my heart apart. He became a person whose only wish was that he could go back home and see his family. 

In the letter he tells Jimmy, ‘You know, what’s weird is that I always thought of myself as pretty smart and capable to do anything I wanted to do. And I thought dad was just a bastard, an angry, drunken bastard, but now I don’t know what to think. Maybe dad has something burning up inside of him that makes him drink and yell. I think there’s a kind of anger and fear so deep that once it gets inside you there’s nothing you can ever do to shake it. I don’t want to be like that Jimmy but I’m afraid I am.’

He is not sure if his fear is being hit before he leaves or it's returning home. He can’t get the image of Jimmy in his head, it has slowly started fading, but even worse he can’t get his either. He is thinking of being home, getting his old board from the garage waxing it and heading down to singer island like he never left. He asks jimmy if Amaryllis is still there with its nose stuck in the sand. He feels like it should get its arse outta there and do what other ships do, but he’s not sure he’s ready to see a huge blank space at the east coast of Florida near West Palm Beach.

He was struggling with smack. Using smack was the only way he could keep his sanity, seeing bullets drive through the guy standing right next to you was traumatizing. Seeing the guy you talked to in the morning being stuffed into body bag like its nothing serious. 

In his letter he tells Jimmy that he’s falling apart. The days are becoming longer and longer and he wonders if he will be able to hold on until his discharge. He made two friends Brown and Hernandez but Brown was the closest. He was struggling with smack too but he kicked it and was more than willing to help Frank. Brown too had family issues that made him flee from home. His dad was violent, he could hit his mom so hard that she could concuss for hours. Brown and Hernandez both didn’t return from the last mission.

He is sad and lonelier; he is trying too hard not to do smack. He feels he owes Brown that decency. That he should just be straight clean and able to do some good things in life. He says just a couple of months now and he will be done. Just one more mission next week and some R and R then he will be counting minutes. That was the last time Jimmy heard from Frank. A letter came from Vietnam that Frank didn't return from a mission in Southeast Asia and is presumed MIA.

Jimmy hated his dad so much, clearly he put him at the centre of everything that ever happened to Frank. Weeks past by and there was no response from Vietnam. His relationship with his dad grew better, they had talked in several occasions as a family and agreed that whatever happened to Frank was no ones fault, not even Frank himself. They agreed that somethings in life really don't have answers and even if they have, they are not easy answers. 

Jimmy organized a night vigil by the sea and called his girlfriend, he told her he did that because he loves Frank so much. He told her that should Frank return some day whatever has happened that night should be between them. He read the letter that he wrote to Frank and burnt it spreading the ash on the waters. I got to take a rest and recuperate, shall we close the curtains guys?

Throughout my reading of Amaryllis, I kept wondering what R and R means. In Every letter, frank didn’t fail to mention R and R but I was too glued to the book that I didn’t bother to check the meaning. Now that I know, I challenge you to find out.