Coming of Age
The butcher’s son stood behind the wooden block and bit his nails. A thin stream of sweat trickled down his forehead. Thud! His father heaved an unconscious goat on to the block, fixed his eyes on his son and waited with his hands on his hips. The son licked his dry lips. He wondered where the goat had come from. Its beard was dirty and matted. Maybe it was a stray. Its eyes hadn’t clouded yet. Life flickered in them. It looked like it hadn’t eaten in days. Maybe its death was a better life for it. Did it have a family? Would they be bleating frantically in grief?
His father growled. The son saw his father’s bloody apron from the corner of his eyes. The goat’s eyes were shaming him for what he was about to do. The wind brought out the smell of rotting innards from the back of the shop. He had forgotten to clean up again. Shit!
“Come on! What are you waiting for? For the goat to sit up and slit its own throat?” The father inched closer to his cowering son, who was thinking about the goat’s destiny. Would it end up in a biryani? Or a curry?
“Pick up the cleaver! Be a man!” The father goaded. The son wiped his sweaty palms on his apron and wrapped his fingers around the cleaver’s wooden handle. “One sharp cut in the neck. Don’t dilly-dally now.” The father roared.
The son gulped. He took a deep swig of water to push down the lump in his throat. “Do it, boy!” The growl was deeper now, coming all the way from the father’s belly. The frown lines between his brows had hardened and set. The son wiped sweat away from his newly sprouted mustache, breathed in, muttered a prayer for the goat and its family, picked up the cleaver and shut his eyes tight.
At that moment, bells jangled at the temple down the street. Sandalwood and rose incense perfumed the wind. He opened his eyes. A gaggle of kids in tattered clothes raced towards the priest who was distributing prasadam after offering it to God. The son had tasted it once although his father forbade it. It was sweet and nutty with hints of cardamom and rebellion. Whenever the stench of the shop made him gag, he smelled the fragrant ghee from the prasadam that lingered on his palm.
A rustle of sarees arrived with the heady scent of jasmine and camphor. A group of women holding their pooja trays strode towards the temple.
Then he saw her.
She trailed behind the women, tottering in nine yards of canary-yellow silk that her frail body was enveloped in. He imagined her squirming as her mother draped it around her. How she must have whined when her mother made her wear those strings of jasmine in her hair. “Why can’t I wear jeans to the temple? A sari doesn’t completely cover your body, Amma, but jeans and a t-shirt do!” She might have argued.
A woman turned around and glared at her. Probably her mother. The girl straightened her back and took a few brisk steps before slowing down and looking around. Her eyes landed on the butcher’s son holding a cleaver in mid-air. It made her chuckle.
She then saw his father towering behind him and smiled at her fellow sufferer. The goat waited. The butcher decided to give his son a few more seconds, the ocean’s tides stopped, and the earth ground to a halt. People turned into statues, frozen in action. Her eyes were all the diamonds in the world. She understood him. An idiotic grin pasted itself on his face like that aromatic ghee on his palm. She walked away.
He looked at the goat. It was at peace. He was forgiven. With the force of all the new-born hope in his heart, he brought the meat cleaver down. Blood gushed out the goat’s jugular, drenching his stark white apron and his palms in red. He looked down at them and then at his father. A proud smile tried to form on the father’s stony face.
The temple priests chanted the vedas in unison with the muezzins in the mosque. She had given him the courage to be a man. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for her. Wiping his hands down his apron, he went out back to clear the rotting trash.
Ooh my gosh, can I say I was hoping the father might be the recipient of the meat cleaver?
Haha!, I know, right? I’m sure there’s a backstory to why he is the way he is, though. But that’s a story for another day. Thanks for reading, Sue 🙂
Oh, the weight of familial expectations. I really like both the boy and the girl. They’re doing what their families want, but they’re still so “them” under it all. My favorite part is the reference to how the girl wants to wear jeans. Maybe because I am that girl.
Thanks, Michelle! I am that girl too 🙂
Oh, the weight of familial expectations. I like the way you have both the boy and the girl doing what they’re expected to do, but they haven’t let go of who they are. The girl wanting to wear jeans instead of a saree and the boy doing what he can to impress the girl. It’s so relatable.
There are some really lovely moments in this story. The paragraph about prasadam is wonderful, and this line made me sit up a little: “It was sweet and nutty with hints of cardamom and rebellion.” The first few paragraphs dragged a little for me, but I loved the description of the women and especially the girl.
Thanks, Christine! I read this story by David Foster Wallace where he stretches one single moment to tell a story. I tried to copy that technique. The girl wanting to wear jeans to the temple is the little piece of nonfiction 🙂
Loved how you reflected the son’s guilt being described through the dead goat. I thought the moment between son and girl was very sweet. The similar sentence structure of the piece was lulling; it started to feel like a list of tasks toward the end. Maybe through a clause at the beginning of a few of the sentence to chop it up. Also, “Then he saw her” is a little cliché.
Thanks, Nate! I was trying to copy a technique I recently read about, stretching a single moment to tell a story 🙂 I’ll try and re-write this next week with your comments in mind. Thank you so much!
I loved the son’s thought process in the first few paragraphs – it was easy to see how awful he felt about having to follow him his father’s footsteps, to the point that the dialogue tags like “goaded” and “roared” weren’t really necessary. It also gave lots of cultural details that clearly grounded the story. I was curious about his relationship with the girl in the sari – did he know her, or was it love at first sight?
I guess he was also trying to buy time, haha. It was love at first sight. Thanks for reading, Laura 🙂
She had given the courage to be a man. Without her he was incomplete.
The temple chanting and the muzzein’s call mingling into the air completes the story.
I was so worried about where this story might go at the beginning. I loved that moment between the boy and girl and how it gave him that burst of power. Great use of the prompt.
Thanks, Margaret! 🙂