2. The Cleansing River

STEPPING BACK IN TIME Part 2

Owongo’s belly was all wrong. He might have been only five years old (give or take the odd approximation in times of poor mathematical perception), but he knew when something was wrong inside himself, and the way he was feeling was wrong.

His natural reaction to the raging pain that doubled him up was to cry out loud, but he also knew that his father, the rough and ready Faceache, tended to be annoyed when he cried, and that usually resulted in additional pain of a different variety, usually in the region of his head. And in truth his stomach was already in too much pain for him to want to add to it via the odd clip to his ears.

They were cruel times, not that Faceache was a particularly cruel man. In fact, he looked upon himself as a big softy and even Willyscab in the cave next door thought twice about thinking of him as anything but agreeable, though his woman, Bumtidy, had formed less complientary opinions.

Then with no more warning Owongo’s stomach erupted. There could be no other word for it. In one gigantic eructation everything he had eaten in the last week came pouring forth in a noxious torrent of nastiness as if propelled by something truly vicious. It filled the air with a fetid stench that was mostly the product of the fruit that his caring father had just forced down his throat in a bout of over-zealous love. His mother Mingey was horrified and slapped his head hard enough to give him a week of headaches, but that didn’t stop the vile outpouring. In fact, it added to it whilst simultaneously making the boy howl.

“He hurt,” muttered Faceache considerately and in part chastising his good lady for her reaction.

“He stop hurting,” grated Mingey, and she raised her large and calloused hand in order to administer an extra hard slap, but the warm-hearted Faceache stopped her and pulled Owongo to him.

“Me take boy to river, wash him,” he told his lady partner (she wasn’t his wife because marriage hadn’t as yet been invented, so partner is a closish approximation to what she was) “then me take him to Goboloff for medicine!” he added, scowling.

At the mention of the dread name of Goboloff Owongo stopped howling and his mother clutched her hands to her own head and gripped it tightly. Goboloff was the village medic, but he was only ever turned to for help if the alternative was certain death. His particular skill was in mixing a wide variety of natural substances such as poisonous plants until he had what he thought looked the like perfect medicine. Then he sat back, basking in the sun and waiting for patients with any sort of complaint to come to him, bearing gifts in return for his services. And they only teetered towards his cave if their need was, indeed, great.

In fact, he was asked to prescribe more of his personally created tonics for corpses in the vain hope they might work on the dead than for living beings, and those living beings unfortunate enough to fall under his care soon deteriorated into corpses as they swallowed his magical cures.

“Not Goboloff!” hissed Mingey, “he make Owongo dead and me bear Owongo all them months in my belly!”

“It’s last resort,” assured Faceache, “Goboloff mended Faceache’s face when it hurt. And now look at me: a perfect face on a perfect head.”

Mingey wept but dared not contradict her man when it came to discussing his grotesque appearance. In actual fact he wasn’t the perfect figure he saw himself as being, Even his teeth were all wrong, those that weren’t missing that is. And his nose had never recovered from the blow that had shattered much of its bone structure. In fact, had Faceache been left to recover on his own without the medical intervention of Goboloff his appearance would almost certainly been easier on the eye and have been achieved more rapidly under the caring ministrations of Mother Nature alone.

“Me go!” declared Faceache, and he picked his five year old son with one powerful hand and placed him roughly under one harm. Then he marched out of his cave and took Owongo to the stream that flowed through their home valley.

“My, you stink, son of mine,” he growled as he went.

Bumtidy, the woman who shared her life with Willyscab and who happened to be out and about at the same time looked at Faceache with what could only be called a spiteful expression on her careworn face.

“What you do with boy?” she barked. It was a vocal impediment that made her bark. Some said it might be the result of inbreeding, her parents being a mixture of the valley folk and a tribe of Neanderthals who often parked their families not so far away. Not that such genetic considerations were even suspected back when the height of scientific endeavour was to look at the moon and be quite certain that it was a woman.

“You mind own business!” screeched Faceache in a fit of unpredictable rage, “Me take Owongo to Goboloff for medicine. Goboloff make boy better.”

“Goboloff kill him more like,” woofed Bumtidy, wiggling her waist so that her bottom looked charmingly tidy.

The nature of this discussion affected the young and stricken Owongo so that his gastric system managed the seeming impossible and produced further supplies of stinking vomit, which it propelled at Bumtidy as she wiggled.

“Poor mite been eating poisonous mango,” diagnosed that good lady as the liquid missile struck her. “Someone,” and here she fixed Faceache with a fierce eye made worse by a rather obvious sty that was on the point of erupting itself, “someone fed him sweet foodstuff that have nasty juices.”

“They were good and sweet!” barked Faceache, and he added, “Faceache eat some himself.”

“Then Faceache a fool,” giggled Bumtidy, “put your toddler down and let him clean in river.”

Faceache was about to explode with a simple version of Faceache do what Faceache pleases and not what silly woman wants but instead found the contents of his own stomach rising and he quite carelessly dropped poor little Owongo onto the ground.

“Ouch!” shrieked the child.

“See,” smirked Bumtidy, “Faceache a foolish man.

“Bumtidy right!” called Mingey who had seen the altercation from the mouth of her cave and had come to rescue her son from the fallout of of a neighbourly argument.

But Owongo had sense of his own.

He scurried off the few yards to the river and jumped in. Like all youngsters in that age of the world he could swim, and he splashed and shrieked as the waters washed everything bad from his tingling flesh and left him feeling pure and pristine.

© Peter Rogerson 11.02.22