The Price One Man Exacts From Another by Luke Beling
He said he didn’t think he could make the 25-hour flight time without smoking a cigarette. “Your mother bought me those patches, but they don’t work. And who’s going to get my wheelchair when I want to use the toilet?”
When he arrived on the Big Island from East London, South Africa, I counted it a miracle. The purple-black bags under his eyes had deepened, his silver hair was thinner, combed to the side as always. Only his white beard looked shinier than I remembered, thick enough to brush.
I hadn’t seen him in five years. As I wheeled him into the apartment under my house, he joked about refusing to pay full price for a pair of shoes now that he only needed one. He asked me to show him the movie channels, then closed the door.
The days passed quietly. He mostly wanted to sit outside, cigarette in hand, and count the green mangos on the tree. He said little. I had chances to tell him: the night at the Piko Bar, where he listened to me sing the Cat Stevens and Paul Simon songs he used to spin on his record player while he cleaned the house; after I scolded him for smoking in the gym at my work; over his daily cup of Coke that he’d let his three-year-old granddaughter sip from.
But I never did. I never told him that I forgive him for the day I sat on the curb after school, watching him drive past to go drink with his mates at the Majestic Hotel. For the night I found him passed out in his car, the engine still running. For punching and pushing that black man down the stairs when he knocked on our front door during the Rugby World Cup in 1995. For beating Sydney, our beloved worker, in a drunken rage in the backyard.
I never told him how much I needed him to teach me how to shave, talk to a girl, smoke a cigarette. To wait for me on the curb the way I waited for him. To raise me with the kind of love that allows a boy to live without having to justify his existence.
On the last day, he wanted to visit Costco and Walmart to compare the cost of things in America with those back home.
“Everything’s so expensive here,” he kept saying, grabbing cans, chips, and chocolates off the shelves, so interested in the price that one man exacts from another.
At the airport, when we looked into each other’s eyes we both knew. I handed him a few hundred dollars, then I said goodbye, my tears wetting his beard.
South African-born singer-songwriter Luke Beling grew up immersed in the sounds of the ’60s and ’70s, shaped by the records his father played and the vibrant, tumultuous spirit of his homeland. Beling believes art should embody both the miracle and the labor of life. Weaving everyday stories into modern folk songs, he hopes to offer listeners something honest. In March 2026, Beling signed with MDDN Records, an Atlantic Records imprint, which will release his new album Sea Queen later this year. Produced by Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter, David Ramirez), the record was preceded by the title track and its 8mm-shot music video, filmed on a black-sand beach on Hawai‘i Island, where Beling lives with his wife and four daughters. He is also a published author. His debut novel and short-story collection, released in 2024 and 2025, share the same ground as his songs: ordinary lives rendered with unusual attention.
