The tale of a son I never saw

THE TALE OF A SON I NEVER SAW!!

Catherine was a very slim girl. She must have been 17 years old when I knew her, and I was 21 years old. I used to work odd jobs in small town, some kilometers from my home. That was the time I had quit college because I had gotten into bad books with my brother who was paying my fees. She did not manage to go to high school after class 8, but had joined the village polytechnic to learn dressmaking. She used to deliver milk from her father’s 2 grade cows to her uncle’s dairy shop. Sometimes, she would be left in the dairy to attend to customers, as her uncle went womanizing, or drinking, or both. That is where we met as I always bought milk from the dairy for the hotel I was working. We talked about many things, about being friends and at our age, that means coitus. She had another boyfriend called Peter, but I didn’t know then. Peter worked in a farm far away, and only came home on every Friday.

One day, when her uncle who was supposed to relieve her failed to turn up by 7 pm, she requested me to escort her to her home, about 3 km from the center. We walked very slowly, holding hands, touching and fondling each other. We talked about how we could become lovers, eventually marry and have beautiful kids. She was sexually aroused, but I was too. Of course I begged her to come back with me to the shopping center, but she told me that her father would kill her, so she told me to let her go home and I come back to pick her at 10 pm, as long as I could promise to bring her back before 4 am. This was because she always milked the cows at 4.30 am and be in time to deliver the milk by 5 am. Of course I agreed. We reached her parents gate and she showed me the tree under which I would wait. You would have to remember that at that time, mobile phones where just rumors we heard. I did not know anyone who had a mobile phone. It was a logistical challenge to arrange illicit dates.

At the hotel I was working, I had refused a room behind it so that I could live in a rented room, behind another shop just nearby. When I went back to the hotel, the boss asked me where I had been, and I told him that I had escorted a friend. At about...