The Absentee Husband

                                                                  The Absentee Husband
                                                           by
                                              Austin Mitchell

Part One( An excerpt)

             Alrick Dixon was born in 1920 in the little district of Friendship in Trelawny. He came to Kingston when he was seventeen. He got apprenticed to his uncle Gladdy Deans as a welder. He lived in Franklyn Town and met several women. Alrick had three children before he was twenty-five with three different women. It was a shock when he met and married Maisie Dillon in 1947. The union produced six children and by that time he was a driver of heavy duty vehicles as the government stepped up its road building program.
            “I’m going to work in a place called Keswick, Maisie,” he told her one day in 1959.
            “Since you’ve been going all over the island on these jobs it has come to my attention that you have many women, Alrick,” she accused him.
            “I have six children with you, three boys and three girls, now why would I be going out there looking other women?”
            “Alrick, don’t tell me that I’m lying. Look how many nights you’re gone and it’s me alone look after the children. I’ve never once thought that I’d cheat on you. I don’t even know what you’re doing with those women you had children with before I met you.”
            “You’ve been tempted many times, though. And I give those women their allowances. They’re all married or living with a man.”
             “Of course, I have been tempted, many times too. Which woman wouldn’t, after her husband only comes home, maybe once or twice a month?”
          “I’m a truck driver. That’s how I make my living. The government is doing a lot of road building all over the island. So they employ me. Whenever I come home, I bring money for the house. You don’t have to work.”
              “You’d want me to go out and work and look after six children?” Please visit my Amazon pages by typing in Austin G Mitchell.

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