Scars (Short Stories)

It is tradition in my little village that as a first son, you take over from your father the business that he started and owned. You do not have a choice but to learn his trade. You cannot become a poet when your father is a farmer or become a doctor when your father reared cattle. Your siblings after you can choose for themselves whatsoever they wished to become. But you, you do not choose; it is the price you pay for choosing to come first.

My father is a carpenter and so was his father before him. By the time I was age 10, I could nail a long bench, fix a leaking roof, and leg a broken table. Only tasks that involved machines were difficult for me, I could not handle them just yet.
“He’s my son,” my father would tell every customer that comes. I was his successor.

The little boy with hammer and nails and saw was locked up in the workshop with his overall. The little boy that went back home was something else altogether. By midnight, every night after I was 10 especially, I’ll wear my apron, pick up my brush and paint and turn a plain white canvass into the city of my dreams. A city with gardens and birds that perched and sang on trees and butterflies and bees that rested on colourful flowers for nectar.

But this story is not about first sons who succeeded their fathers or how I sneaked to paint at night but about scars and how I got half of my face burnt.
My father was a carpenter, but he knew too how to smash a burning kerosene lamp on his first son the night he had caught him painting.

Younglan Louis