by Chamber Four
I knew Pa would seize the bottle of honey, if Ma ever gave it to him.
Ma said, “I no go give you out of my honey.”
“Ehn, na so?”
Ma said, “Na so.”
Ma didn’t have the bottle of honey, and she didn’t tell Pa that she had given the honey to Juwa because she told me, “na opaka ya Papa go dey talk.”
I had sat on the stone in front of our house with Juwa in the afternoon one month before then. A mala walked down Obama Street with a covered bowl on his head, and two bottles of honey in his hands. He came to Juwa and me, and told us to taste his honey and, maybe decide to buy. Ma had shouted to me and Juwa from where she sat roasting her corns, “No be original honey, make you no taste am o.” She then promised Juwa a bottle of “original” honey, a promise she fulfilled a month after she made it, a month during which I knew she saved money from the roasted corns she sold.
I bought soft drink for Juwa, and as we headed back for the house, he said, “Your grandma.”
I looked at Juwa, and I waited for him to continue.
“It seems to me that I saw her on TV sometimes in the past.”
“Maybe. She works with the Election Commission.”
“Yeah, now I remember. I thought she has some connections with election matters, but I was not so sure. There is this news about one State Electoral Commissioner who refused to declare the results of the election he supervised. Or is the Commissioner a she? I can’t immediately recollect. But it’s been in the news for days.”
I said, “Ehn,” and said nothing more.
Ma told me what happened, and she said I should not tell anyone that Grandma had come to hide in our house. Ma was the third and the last of Grandma’s three children, and I think she could not be older than my school Principal who marked her thirty-sixth birthday when we resumed the new school term. Ma did not go to school like Uncle Pate and Aunty Ilali. Their father died a month after Ma was born, and Grandma did not have money to send all the three children to school. Uncle Pate and Aunty Ilali had scholarships from the missionaries at the parish where Grandma worshipped, and that was how both attended Universities in London. They had returned at the time Ma met Pa. Grandma, Uncle Pate and Aunty Ilali said Ma would not marry Pa because he was a houseboy, and he had no money.
Ma ran away with Pa, they did a court wedding, and when I was born five years after, Ma sent a message to Grandma. Grandma showed up at Iso-Pako, saw me, and that was the last time she ever came in the last ten years ago. When one of Grandpa’s friends was elected the state governor four years ago, he had Grandma, whose only educational qualification was Elementary School Leaving Certificate, appointed as the State Electoral Commissioner. She conducted a governorship election three weeks ago, and said that some people threatened to kill her if she would not announce a falsified result in favor of the Governor, and so she fled. “My conscience would not let me announce a falsified result,” she had explained to Ma.
Ma told me that those who wanted to kill Grandma would not know she came to our house. Grandma had been in our house for two weeks. Aunty Ilali came and I heard her tell Grandma that she should go and announce whatever results her subordinates gave her, after which she could resign her appointment. Grandma had said she would not, and Aunty Ilali had said it was in the news that Grandma embarrassed the government with her action, and that she was a Wanted Person. Aunty Ilali came to our house every day since Grandma arrived. I knew she told Uncle Pate to come and see Grandma, and I was sure she wanted him to tell her to announce falsified results.
“Sit and wait for me,” I said to Juwa. “Let me give Pa the balance of his money.” I pointed to the stone, when we returned to the house. I walked past a Mercedez Benz, Aunty Ilali’s car, that had been parked in front of the house before I returned with Juwa.
I walked into the sitting room, to the door of the bedroom, and stopped. I didn’t know how many of the people inside the bedroom were crying. I thought I heard Ma’s voice, but it could have been Aunty Ilali, the two spoke and cried the same way, I had since discovered. Both resembled each other, though Ma with her straight legs and narrow hips looked like she could contest for Miss Universe and win, a thing Aunty Ilali would not dare do with her wide mouth, either side of which had deep lines, and her wide hips and the legs that made me think of the legs of an elephant. Sometimes, I thought she should have been the one married to Pa, instead of Ma, except that the top of her head could only reach a point below Pa’s chest. And I didn’t want her to be my mother because when she spoke to me she carried her nose up like a cat that sniffed the air for fish. She also carried her fingers, with talons painted in red, as if they should never touch firewood, wash plates, cut okro with a knife, stir orunla soup on fire, and dish food for me and Pa. Ma told me Aunty Ilali was never married, and that her boyfriend of many years went away with another woman. Ma didn’t say why Aunty Ilali’s boyfriend went away with another woman, but I felt I knew why.
Where I stood outside the door of the bedroom, I could hear Grandma as she cried. It was the only thing she had been doing since she arrived our house. I knew her voice, tiny, like a child’s. I thought her voice did not match her height. She was as tall as my teacher who liked to boast that he had the longest legs at six feet and that he would beat every other teacher, like he did the last time the teachers ran a 100-meter dash during our Inter-House Sports Competition. Ma cried each time Grandma did, and she had also told Grandma to go and announce the results since the time Aunty Ilali came and said government officials warned her to tell Grandma to come out of hiding. I could hear Aunty Ilali’s voice as she spoke, telling Grandma to save the family name, that Grandma had nothing to lose, since she would only announce results her subordinate in the field said were the true results. I could hear Uncle Pate’s voice too, as he repeated what Aunty Ilali said.
I did not enter the bedroom, because Pa would shout at me for coming in to disturb elders who were busy. I walked outside and sat beside Juwa; he held the half-drunk bottle of his soft drink in his hand. He coughed and rubbed a finger on his eyeballs under his glasses, then pushed the glasses back on his nose . I turned in the direction of the sawmill.
Work was still on at the sawmill. I saw boys pull a log across the blade of a machine. They split logs under the shed with a signboard that read, Alhaji Rauf Owodunni Wood Industry. Zico in his Yellow Brazil’s football team’s T-shirt, lifted a split plank of wood from the machine, carried it to a pile under the shed that had the signboard, Uncle Semiu International Wood Ltd. I heard as the engine of the wood-splitting machines did koto-koto-koto, and sent smoke in the air, smoke that looked like a piece of black cloth flailing in the wind. The heap of sawdust a few yards to the sheds was on fire, and it sent up smoke.
Juwa coughed again, a thing that reminded me of Alhaji Rauf Owodunni. He was the Chairman of saw millers in Iso-Pako, and Pa’s office was under his shed. Alhaji Rauf died two months ago. Pa said his lungs were bad. I sometimes went to see Pa at his office. I never met Alhaji Rauf with a stick of cigarette, but he always coughed poho-poho, and since he died, I had wondered how the lung of a man who did not smoke could make him die.
After Juwa took the last drop of his soft drink I said, “Let’s go to your house.”
He stood up. I stood up, too.
He said, “Won’t you tell your parents?”
“They won’t mind.”
Juwa said, “My Mum and Dad would mind.”
His father and mother would mind, I knew. His father was a High Court Judge, and his mother worked for an NGO in London. She only came to Grovesnor’s Lane on holidays, and Juwa had lived with her until his father said he wanted the youngest of his four children to come and live with him. A maid came in during the day, took care of the house, cooked the meals, and left in the evening. Juwa was always on his own, and the day his father returned from office and found both of us playing Ben 10 on his computer, Juwa had looked up to say, “Dad, meet my friend, Dore.” Then he
turned his attention back to the computer screen.
Juwa’s father had looked at me, a black robe and a white wig in one hand, a black bag in the other, and he had nodded to my “Good evening, sir” before he walked away from the living room.
As we walked along on Obama street with sawdust as earth under our feet, Juwa said, “I will go to London when the school goes on holidays.”
I was silent. Except for the power generators that did vooooon in front of houses on either side of Obama Street, and the children that ran after football and shouted, “See me here, pass the ball,” Juwa would have heard my heart as it did gbum.
On my way back home that evening, I dropped by at Segzy Restaurant to watch a football match between Real Madrid and my team, Chelsea. A newscaster was reading news on TV some five minutes to the time the match was to start and I heard, “the Electoral Commissioner for Daubu State, Mrs. Cecilia Cyril, has said that she is committed to seeing the governorship election in the state to its logical conclusion.”
I shifted to the edge of my chair. “Mrs. Cyril said this today in a telephone chat with the National Chairman of the Electoral Commission during which she promised to promptly announce the results of the election that took place three weeks ago. It would be recalled that Mrs. Cyril had suddenly disappeared, giving rise to speculations that she...”
I got up from my seat and ran. At home, Ma told me that Uncle Pate and Aunty Ilali had gone away with Grandma, and Pa had grumbled, “dem don carry dem headache commot for ma house.”
Tok
By Joshua Willey
The storm broke around the witching hour and by dawn a clear blue sky stretched out in every direction. He woke with a dog licking his face, its black nose cold and wet on his cheek, its whiskers (white on one side and black on the other) tickling his neck. It looked like a collie or a shepherd of some sort, black with a white blaze and withers and socks, but it also had the spots of a dalmatian on one side and icy blue eyes. By the time he was fully lucid it was gone. Dog-face looked at his friend, still fast asleep with the mummy bag pulled close around him. The trailer smelled like sawdust and after pulling on his boots he walked to the open end and looked out at the road. Not a soul in sight. He could see Gakona Junction, the intersection of the 1 (Anchorage to Tok) and the 4 (Valdez to the 2 towards Fairbanks and the northern towns like Circle, Coldfoot, Dawson, Deadhorse), the gas station beside it, and there was that dog, beside the gas station. He jumped down and pissed on a young pine and walked to the station though it was, technically, in the direction from which they’d come.
A toothless old prune sat inside, starring at a WWE fight on a small television. He was talking but it did not sound like a human language. When a woman emerged from the back room it became clear they were having a conversation.
“Now just where did you come from?” the woman asked Dog-face, looking around for a vehicle.
“Hitchin,” he said.
“Oh dear. Which way?”
“Whitehorse.”
“Well if you go straight up your on towards Fairbanks, course you turn at Delta Junction. Twice as far but more traffic. Turn right and it’s the Tok Cutoff. There ain’t nothing out there. Course once you hit Tok you’re close on the border. With Canada that is. Just go through Northway Junction.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he said, smiling irreverently.
“Try tellin that to this one.” She gestured at toothless who was digging into a pouch of Levi Garrett.
“What you need honey? Coffee?”
“Coffee.”
“Yeah you got that look in your eye.”
“You take debit?”
“You go ahead, this one’s on Popeye here.”
“Much obliged.”
“You got a hound on your head!” toothless bellowed suddenly before spitting a brown lugi into a Mountain Dew can with the top opening ripped wide. Dog-face starred at the tooner, remembering how his brother had showed him to cover his thumb with his shirt and press on the can just so as not to cut yourself but leave a hole big enough to spit and not fill the gutter with juice.
“A hound on your head,” toothless said again. Dog-face blinked.
“He’s just fuckin crazy. Don’t worry ‘bout him,” the woman said, disappearing again into the back. Dog-face filled a large paper cup with French roast and slipped a heat shield sleeve around it, put a lid on top, and walked back to the trailer. He set the coffee down in front of the sleeper’s face and got his Bible from his pack and sat on the dirt, his back against a trailer tire, his feet propped on a rock, his body covered in the sunlight which was just gaining enough strength to be hot, and read a little Isaiah, turning to the Songs of the Suffering Servant, harbinger of the coming of Jesus.
After a few pages the sleeper came out, sipping the coffee, stretching. “God damn” he said. “Where are we?”
“Gakona Junction. ’Round Glenallen.” Dog-face squinted up at the sleeper’s back. His piss ricocheted off a rock and the drops caught the sun as they traced their little crescents of farewell.
“Glenallen. And how long we been out here?”
“Where?”
“How long we been gone?”
Dog-face scratched his head and closed the book. “Six months.”
They stuffed their sleeping bags in their packs and walked to the Tok Cutoff. A cloud formation resembling a rib cage emerged from the west, pushed high into the air by the Alaska Range. The air was thick with that warm pine scent, also that far north feeling, a feeling of quiet, of clarity, an inkling that time is moving very slowly.
“We should split,” the sleeper said. “I’ll thumb towards Fairbanks and you thumb towards Tok. If anyone stops, ask if they can take the other guy too.”
“And if they can’t?”
“See ya in Tok.”
“And if they’re goin to Whitehorse?”
“See ya in Whitehorse.”
“Oh I see how it is. Does this mean we’re not friends anymore?”
“Come on.”
“Fine then.”
The sleeper walked ten yards down the gravel shoulder and dropped his pack. In the woods, in the shade, the grass was still wet from the rain. He toed a little roadside trash and sang. “I’ve been doin some hard travellin I thought you knowed, I’ve been goin to Fairbanks it’s just down the road, I’ve been sleepin in abandoned trailers workin on the fish docks fillin up brailers and I’ve been doin some hard travellin, lawd.”
Dog-face walked some yards the other way, down the Tok Cutoff, and hadn’t even dropped his pack before he heard the unmistakable sound of an automobile drifting across the stillness.
A tan Mercury Lynx rounded the corner near the gas station and the hitchers watched its slow progress in their direction, each wondering where it was headed, if it would stop, if they would ever see each other again. It turned at the Cutoff and drifted to a halt beside Dog-face. A man with a lazy eye hung out the passenger side window.
“Where to, eh?”
“Tok.”
“We’re going to Chistochina.”
“Where’s that?”
“Nowhere.” Lazy-eye leaned over to the driver, who had long hair down to his waist and wasn’t wearing a shirt, and laughed.
“Halfway to Tok,” Long-hair said.
“Will you take me and my buddy?”
“Looks like your buddy wants to go to Fairbanks.” Lazy-eye nodded in his direction.
“He’ll go to Chistochina.”
“For a six pack.”
“Of what?”
“Listen to this one,” Lazy-eye said to Long-hair.
“It’s halfway to Tok?”
“We just met and already I’m repeating myself,” Long-hair said, and winked.
“OK, lets go.” Dog-face climbed in the back and Long-hair swung it around and they picked up the sleeper. The car was warm and smelled sweetly of dust and smoke. They drove slowly down the straight two-lane blacktop with the anonymous wilderness stretchin
g out on each side. The Wrangell Mountains guarded the horizon. The summit of Mt. Drum hovered above meadows of fireweed. Mt. Sanford, imposing and over 16,000 feet above sea level, its glacier-clad south face rose 8,000 feet off the plain.
“What you got on in Tok?” Lazy-eye asked.
“Hitch for Whitehorse,” the sleeper said.
“And then?”
“Edmonton. Winnipeg. Toronto. We’re open to suggestions.”
“Shit,” Long-hair suggested, ”let’s get that six.”
Long-hair pulled up to a small store beside which a woman was sculpting a pine trunk with a hammer and a chisel. Dog-face went into the store with Lazy-eye. The sleeper got out and leaned against the Lynx with Long-hair, who lit a cigarette and shared it with him.
The store was a jumble of odd products: canned ravioli next to baby toys, shotgun cartridges next to jumper cables. Lazy-eye picked out a half rack of Molson.
“You said a sixer,” Dog-face objected.
“Hold on to yer brain, I’ll buy half, you buy half, OK?”
“OK.”
“Plus some rolling papers.”
“What?”
“Nevermind. Fuck the papers.” Lazy-eye spoke with the clerk in a language Dog-face didn’t recognize. Some form of Ahtna he figured as he handed the clerk a fiver and said “keep the change.” Then he remembered hearing there were less than a hundred Ahtna speakers, that the language was on the verge of extinction, though there had been a recent surge in effort of the younger generation to keep it alive.
They walked through the clean clap of the screen door into the sun, which seemed prematurely high to Dog-face. He blinked. “Where you from?” he asked.
“Northway.”
“Where’s that?”
“Passed Tok. Almost Yukon.”
“You like it?” Lazy-eye gave him an uncomprehending look and then clapped him on the shoulder and said “come on, we gotta make a quick stop.” They all got back in the car and Lazy-eye opened four beers and handed them around.
“Cheers,” he said. The Molson was cold and refreshing and immediately brought a tingle to the hitchers’ stomachs. Long-hair scanned the radio. Nothing but static.
They pulled off onto a dirt road and emerged swiftly into a clearing with a handful of trailer houses clustered around a bulldozer and a totem pole of sorts. Stopping in front of one, Long-hair knocked twice before killing the engine. A gaunt man emerged from behind a trailer’s metal door.
