"A powerful, gritty, and exquisitely written anthologyâŚnot to be missed." â J. Miller, Reader's Favorite
Thailand. The Congo. Greece. Spain. AmericaâŚFour continents and forty-plus years in the making.
The Man Who Screams at Nightfall is a landmark collection of short stories depicting a young man on a classic voyage of self-discovery, wandering the earth in search of some purpose in life.
From childhood to parenthood and everything in betweenâthese tales are raw and unflinching; at other times, poignant and moving.
Get ready for a literary journey unlike any youâve experienced before.
"A powerful, gritty, and exquisitely written anthologyâŚnot to be missed." â J. Miller, Reader's Favorite
Thailand. The Congo. Greece. Spain. AmericaâŚFour continents and forty-plus years in the making.
The Man Who Screams at Nightfall is a landmark collection of short stories depicting a young man on a classic voyage of self-discovery, wandering the earth in search of some purpose in life.
From childhood to parenthood and everything in betweenâthese tales are raw and unflinching; at other times, poignant and moving.
Get ready for a literary journey unlike any youâve experienced before.
Kachamba could fix anything.
In the village of Kitengo, in what was then called Zaire,
there stood a large mango tree that was rumored to be five
hundred years old. Beneath the tree, in the shade, beside the main
avenue that ran through the village, Kachamba would sit on a small
wooden stool and calmly fix whatever was broken. The people of the
village always had something for him to do. They would bring him a
cracked pot, a bent machete, a dead radio, a broken shovelâwhatever
it was didnât matter, for they knew that he could fix it.
When I lived in Kitengo, I used to pass by Kachamba every day on
my way to the valley. He always had a smile and a wink for me,
sometimes even two. It was a very soothing sight to find him beneath
the mango tree. He was somewhere near forty years old and had fine,
weathered features in his face. He was bald up top but had long, thick
sideburns that were steadily turning gray, and he was lean and
muscular despite all the hours he spent just sitting in one place. He
always wore a pair of rust-colored cut-off shorts, never any shirt or
any shoes, and he liked to bury those bare feet in the sand of the road,
creating two perfect little triangular-shaped mounds. A small wooden
toolbox sat below him to his right, and he liked to hum to himself
(always the same melody) while he worked to breathe life into
whatever dead thing lay before him. I once asked him what song he
sang all day long, and he told me it was no song at all; it was just
something he had made up to pass the time.
It was on my second day in the village that I first met him. I had
been sent to Kitengo to help the farmers of the area raise fish, and as I
was walking toward the edge of the savanna, I passed the mango tree
and Kachamba looked up and winked at me for the first time. He had
a flashlight in his hands, and he was busy scraping off rust from the
coils of the battery tube. My assistant was traveling with me, a
friendly young man named Pumbu who told him my name was
Michael Shaw. Pumbu explained to me that Kachamba was the cousin
of the village chief and that if I ever had anything that needed fixing,
he was the man I should see.
It was at that moment that Kachamba began to study me, in the
same way that he studied each item the villagers brought him. His
eyes tightened, and for a long time he did not say anything. I
remember feeling a bit uncomfortable. But then he relaxed, and a
smile crept across his face. He winked at me again.
âBring me something to fix,â he said.
I said I couldnât think of anything I had at the moment that was
broken.
âEveryone has something that is broken,â Kachamba said, and
then winked at me for the third time.
I immediately liked him. I told him that I would look around and if
I found something, I would most certainly bring it to him to fix.
I politely excused myself. Pumbu and I went on our way and spent
the afternoon down in the valley speaking with farmers. A group of
four men was interested in setting up a small fish farm, so I spent the
day hiking around in the thick, hot forest trying to locate a creek or
spring that could be used as a potential source of water. It was a full
dayâs work, and by the time evening drew near and the light in the
sky had begun to finish its own work in a flourish of scarlet, orange,
and gold, I found myself walking back along the main avenue toward
my home, and back in front of the mango tree, where Kachamba still
sat, humming, and working, and winking at everyone that went by.
And it was not long after that, when night finally fell, that I heard
him scream for the first time.
Pumbu and I had just finished a supper of ground squash seeds
cooked with hot pepper and oil. The sting of the pepper was still on
my lips as the two of us sat behind my house and began to pass a
bottle of Johnnie Walker back and forth. There was no electricity in
the village, so we relaxed by the light of a small petrol lantern,
looking up at a night sky that seemed low enough to touch and held
twice as many stars as I had ever seen before in my life. The whiskey
slid down my throat as I counted my first shooting star. A steady
breeze moved through the palm and banana trees that lined my yard,
and it was such a perfectly relaxing scene, that it was even more
shocking when our little cocoon of serenity was suddenly ripped
wide open by the sound of loud, violent shouting from down the
road.
It sounded at first like a whole group of people in an intense
argument. The voices tripped upon each other so fast and furious that
I would never have guessed they all came from one man.
âWhat is going on?â I asked as I twisted my body in my chair.
Pumbu took a sip from the bottle and said nothing. Then came a
horrible, anguished, banshee-like scream, slicing through the air like
an arrow from a bow, and flying straight into my ears and to my brain.
It made the hair on my arms stand up.
âPumbu, what is going on?â
âItâs Kachamba,â Pumbu said.
âKachamba?â I said, taking a moment to remember whom he was
talking about. âThe fix-it man?â
âYes,â said Pumbu.
âIs he okay? Is someone attacking him? Should we go there?â
âNo, no one is attacking him. He is only attacking himself.â
Another scream pierced the night.
âPumbu, I want to go over there. I want to make sure he is all
right.â
âHe is all right.â
âHe doesnât sound all right,â I said and stood up. âAre you
coming?â
Pumbu reluctantly agreed, and the two of us circled the front of
my house and went back out onto the main avenue. The voices (for
again, though they came from one man, there were many) rose in
volume and pace as we drew near.
I could see the glow of a fire up ahead of us, and as we reached the
mango tree, Pumbu motioned for me to stay low and follow him along
a small wall of honeysuckle bushes. We crouched down, and from our
hiding place, I saw Kachamba furiously pacing back and forth in his
yard in front of a small bonfire. He swung his arms wildly in the air as
if he was fighting off something that was falling on him. He dropped
to his knees and then suddenly sprang three feet off the ground. Then
he began to dance, swaying and spinning his body so close to the fire
that I was certain he was going to fall in. All the while he screamed
and shouted deep into the empty black night...
In the preface to his short story collection The Man Who Screams at Nightfall (TMWSaN), Rush Leaming admits that âwhile I was choosing pieces for this collection⌠it became blazingly clear what I had been writing about all along.â He then confesses that the subtext for these stories of self-discovery is his âundiagnosed and untreated (misdiagnosed and mistreated?) borderline personality disorder.â This admission, right up front, provides a unifying perspective that helps readers appreciate the ethos of this anthology.
The stories take place all over the world. Most are told in the first person, and if the protagonist is named at all, it is âMichael,â which creates the impression that itâs the same character throughout. In âParade,â he is in Zaire delirious from malaria. While in Marbella, Spain working as a bookkeeper at the hotel where is crashing, the narrator defends a crazy woman, âElla, La Loca,â against numerous antagonists. âAgora Dogs,â which takes place in Athens, begins with the intriguing line, âI had always wondered what it would be like to kill someone, and when it finally happened, it was better than I ever expected.â Other stories with a similarly unstable but stout-hearted main character take place in a bar in Bangkok, a drug treatment center in South Carolina, and some unsavory backstreets in New York City.
Several stories balance themes of hope and honor amid circumstances contriving to rob the protagonist of both. In the titular story, the narrator learns the efficacy of scream therapy from Kachamba, an eccentric in a small African village who smiles by day but screams all night. By contrast, âAgora Dogsâ is something of a love story, where the narrator surprises himself to discover his own virtues:
âAnd suddenly as I heard myself talking about myself, and as I watched her eyes, and heard her laughter, and listened to her comments, I slowly began to remember that I had in fact had a rather interesting life. I slowly began to remember that I was in fact a pretty good person. And for the first time, in a long, long while I started to not hate myself.â
Not long after which he kills a man. Go figure.
While no one story stands out, the whole of TMWSaN is stronger than its parts. Thatâs not a criticism. The stories interact and build upon each other, so the collection coalesces into a candid and evocative monograph.