The Good Son

**Guidance warning: This story contains violence and adult themes.**

Father took me to the field one day. We were planting potatoes. I stood with the shovel. Father sat on the stairs, the sack between his legs.

Each breath condensed in the air. I wanted to help him haul the burlap sack, but he coddled it close, gripping the lumps in the sack. Grandmother stood at the porch, watching us go. She held me for a moment, perhaps thinking it was too late for me to be out. But father said mother was okay with it. Said she’d have baked potatoes with butter ready for when we returned. We must have been spots in the distance when grandmother finally went inside. Father showed me how to strike the frozen ground. The sun was setting by the time I dug a deep enough hole. He told me to dig so deep that the fires of hell would roast the potatoes to a crisp.

"Why would we want burnt potatoes?" I asked. He told me to dig. I think I made him proud with the hole I dug, because he forced a grin but he was shivering terribly. Father told me to turn around and watch the sun set.

"This is a special one," he said. I didn't ask why it was special, I just did as I was told. I’d tell mother about all the colours I saw later. I heard a thud against the ground. Father set about refilling the hole. When he was done, it had begun to snow. We looked up at the sky for a moment until father’s eyes watered.

On the journey home, father told me I was a good son. I beamed with pride. Father did not say hello to grandmother. He sent me straight to bed. I asked him when the potatoes would be ready.

"When the snow melts away," he replied. He tucked me into bed and said goodnight. I asked if mother would be coming to say goodnight as well.

“Why didn’t mother make us potatoes like she said she would?"

“She's resting now. A lady gets tired. When carrying a little one."

I was going to be a big brother. They told me a few months back. I could teach him to dig just like me.

I never got to teach my brother how to dig. Mother had run off with a black man, father said.

Grandmother soon died of cancer.

"Find those potatoes, boy. Don’t ever stop digging," she said with her dying breath. I didn't know what she meant. Life went on.

I too became a father. It made my father proud. My wife made him fat and merry with her cooking.

But my wife and I began arguing. Those fights left us in bitter moods, but it seemed to dig away at father more than anyone else. I found him mumbling one day, brandishing his cane. "She’ll get what’s coming. My son knows how to dig. He knows how to dig.” He was startled when he saw me staring. I didn’t know what to say.

One summer's evening, I took my family to the field. Father's arthritis had gotten the best of him. He stayed indoors to rest. We walked until we reached the foot of a hill. Remembering the trip with father, I recounted the story to my children. They asked if we ever harvested the potatoes. I could not answer. Father and I had never gone back to find the potatoes. Perhaps he was too sad after my mother left.

"Why don't we go digging, pa? Let’s grow potatoes!" My daughter beamed up at me. What a brilliant idea? When I told father, a cloud hung over his head. He thrashed about. He scared my children. Father begged me, on his knees, not to plant anything at the foot of the hill. I listened to his warning, but paid no heed.

Next day, I carried a shovel as my children dragged a burlap sack. I told them to dig, just as I had done before. They dug and they dug like the good children they were.

We peered into the hole. I reached down to pick up a smooth rock beneath tatters of floral cloth in the dirt. We stared at it. My fingers traced the features with fascination. The top of it had collapsed and when I turned it over in my hands dirt poured from two round hollows. My arms went limp and I dropped it back into the hole. I turned to my children.

"Run along. Into town. Buy a sapling - any'll do." They went, clinging to each other. I brandished my shovel and marched back to the house.

My wife looked up and smiled. I told her. She got into the truck. Off into town, to be with the children. When the dust trail from the truck dissipated, I went inside. Dishevelled hair, wild eyes, and flushed skin greeted me in the mirror. My breath fogged up the glass as I stepped up towards the figure. Its face began to snarl. With a firm grip around the shovel, I smashed it. "I found those potatoes, grandmother."

Father was sleeping. I stood over him until he woke. "Son, what's wrong?" I raised the shovel over my head, my face unmoving. Father looked up, with quivering eyes.

"Black loving tart -" he began, but I swung down the shovel. I dug it down into his brain, the way he taught to me to dig. I braced myself for another swing. And another, and another, digging away.

I folded him up and shoved him into the sack. I dragged him through the field. I think I felt him stir a bit. Once we got to the hole at the foot of the hill, I tossed the sack inside. The stars were out when I was almost done. My wife and children arrived in the truck.

We planted the sapling. I'm sure he'd be proud.

No need to dig there no more.

Shortlisted for the BBC Young Writers' Award 2016