“Nah, leave your shit here,” the madman said. “For now.”
Richard and Nancy nodded, exchanging a confident look. They were in. They followed the militants into the bush.
“You have your cell phone?” Richard asked Nancy in a low voice.
Nancy nodded. “But I don’t know why I’m here if I can’t use my cameras.”
“We’re just getting clearance,” he said.
They walked along the dirt path for about twenty minutes. A strong morning sun lit the sky but little of its light made it through the dense foliage. Nor did much of a breeze. The heat and humidity pressed so heavily on Richard that his ears were ringing.
By the time they got to the first village hut, Richard and Nancy were prickly with fresh mosquito, fly, and gnat bites, and drenched with sweat, and their boots were heavy with mud. They’d taken the scenic route. As if we couldn’t see how close the damn village was from the boat, he thought, annoyed. He could even see their boat sitting in the same place, yards away.
In the village, some old men sat at a small table staring at them as they passed. A woman was in front of her hut knitting a fishing net. A baby in yellow pants and a green shirt happily crawled around her. It was from inside this woman’s hut that the Erykah Badu music blared. Now it was playing “On and On.”
They stopped in front of four plastic white chairs.
“Sit,” the madman instructed. Richard and Nancy quickly did so. He turned to one of the boy militants. “Saturday, go and get me something.”
The boy named Saturday went into a nearby hut. A group of more militants, all masked and armed, sat inside another hut having a loud lively conversation in a language Richard could only identify as not being Igbo or Yoruba. One of these men came out to meet the madman. They greeted and spoke to each other in the same foreign language. The man might have been the tallest man Richard had ever seen.
“Damn, what a fucking giant,” Nancy whispered.
“Gotta be what? Over seven feet tall?” Richard replied.
“How’d they find camouflage fatigues to fit him?” Nancy whispered after a moment.
“I was wondering the same thing,” Richard said.
“They’ve got money.”
“Yeah.”
“This piss poor village is a cover.”
“Yep,” he said. “We’re not in yet.” His fingers ached to write this all down just as Nancy’s probably ached to take pictures of these men.
A more ordinary looking militant joined the wild and tall one just as the boy named Saturday came out carrying a bottle of whiskey. The wild one grinned and took the bottle. He mumbled something and poured a bit to the side. Then he took a deep gulp. Great, Richard thought. Alcohol is all this one needs. He handed it to the tall one who did the same and then handed it to the ordinary-looking one who, without drinking any, came over and offered it to Nancy.
Nancy paused, and looked at it. She smirked. “Sure,” she said, taking it and taking a swig. This was so like her.
The wild one laughed as did the others. “You’re supposed to give it to the man first, almond woman,” he said. He shook his head. “You American women are something else.” He pulled up a plastic chair and sat across from them. The other two stood behind him.
Nancy handed the whiskey to Richard who took a swig and then handed it back to Nancy who took another. She handed it back to the wild one. For several minutes they passed the whiskey around and soon the bottle was empty. Richard found himself feeling nicely spirited. He’d just begun to relax when the wild one who seemed to be the leader suddenly jumped up, his cell phone ringing its twinkle tune.
“So what are those symbols?” Richard asked, slightly slurring his words. “What do they all mean?”
But the leader had brought out his cell phone and was looking at the screen. He seemed to be reading something. A text message, Richard thought. Whoever it was doesn’t want this guy speaking out loud. He exchanged an uneasy look with Nancy.
“Icon,” the tall one said. “The man wants to know about your symbols.”
Even through the thin mist of whiskey, Richard heard, caught, and shelved the name in his mind. Icon. The wild one who was the leader was named Icon. Didn’t sound Nigerian at all.
“Eh?” Icon asked, his attention still on the screen of his cell phone. “Okay,” he muttered, putting his phone back in his pocket. He looked up. “Almond woman, do you want to know, too?”
Nancy shrugged and nodded. “What I want is to take your picture, but sure, I wouldn’t mind knowing.”
“Whipping boy!” Icon called. “Get your ass over here.” An unmasked boy immediately came running. He couldn’t have been more than nine. He wore a tattered black t-shirt and old looking jeans. He had three short black lines etched into each cheek. Richard wasn’t sure if these tribal markings were Hausa or Yoruba; one of those, definitely.
Icon brought a small jar from his pocket and grabbed the boy by the shirt collar. The others in the hut came out to watch.
“Every soldier must do his time,” Icon said, as he dipped his finger in the white paste that was in the jar. He was breathing heavily with excitement. Richard suddenly had a very bad feeling.
“Richard?” he heard Nancy moan beside him.
“Shh, quiet,” Richard hissed. “Don’t bring any attention to yourself.” Still, he was curious to see what this man was about to do.
Icon smeared paste onto the boy’s face. He drew a circle on the boy’s forehead and what looked like a Star of David on the boy’s bare arm. Then he stood back. “They call me Icon because I can draw ‘icons,’ loaded symbols that speak the unexpected,” he said. “The fucking kill-and-go and all those oyibo white men who come here and hunt us like chicken . . . ” He grinned and shook his head. “Give this boy a gun and it becomes a different game.” He pointed his gun at the boy. All the men around him quickly moved away from him.
“Icon, dis no be necessary, o,” the tall one said in his low voice. The ordinary one shook his head with obvious pity but did nothing to stop it.
“What the fuck?” Nancy shouted.
“Hey! No! Don’t! Wait!” Richard screeched, holding up his hands. “We believe you! We . . . we’ve read the papers! We’re journalists! You believe in Egbesu, right? The . . . the deity of warfare? That’s what those symbols mean, right?”
“That is superstitious bullshit,” Icon said, his gun still pointed at the boy. “I want you to report what you see here. This is the real thing, my man. Oh, wait.” He brought down his weapon. Richard sighed with relief. Icon strode over to him. “Better yet, you shoot him,” Icon said.
Richard backed away. “What?”
Several of the militants immediately pointed their weapons at both Richard and Nancy.
“What did you think when you came here?” Icon asked, cocking his head. “That you would shake my hand and call me brother without really getting your hands dirty? Just like a typical Black American.” He paused, glaring at Richard. “It is time for you to go.”
Richard whimpered, stealing a glance at Nancy. “Okay,” he said. “Fine . . . fine! We’ll go!”
“We had no intention of letting either of you in,” Icon added. “Our great leader Biko Niko is a man of his word. He told you ‘no’ in his email, yet you think by throwing your money around you will still get in? You have no respect.”
Several of the militants sucked their teeth loudly and grumbled agreement.
“I . . . I’m sorry.” Richard said.
“We both are,” Nancy added.
“Go,” Icon said. As Richard made to move in the direction they’d come, Icon grabbed his arm and said, “But first, you get your hands dirty.” He shoved the gun in Richard’s hands and stood back. “Pull the trigger or my men shoot you.”
Richard stood there with the AK-47 in his hands. He’d never held a gun. It was heavier than he’d imagined. Were these even NDPM militants? He was no longer sure. But one thing he knew was that he and Nancy were on their o
wn. He twitched, the gun pointing at the cowering boy.
“I won’t!” Richard cried, his body beginning to shake. “No way!” He glanced at the boy and quickly looked away. He couldn’t stop the tears of terror from running down his or the boy’s face.
“Look at this fucking white black man,” one of the militants goaded. “Idiot akata. What’s doing you? No blokkus.”
Richard just stood there, sobbing. Some of the men began to laugh. Nancy tried to give him a reassuring look. It helped. He took a deep breath and started to calm down. A little humiliation was better than killing a little boy. He was looking down at the gun in his hands when Icon swiftly stepped up to him from behind, grasped his finger, and squeezed.
Blam!
The boy that they called Whipping Boy was blown right off his feet, his flip-flops flying in different directions. He hit the ground and was instantly silent.
Journal Entry
I’ve returned from the swamp covered with its slime.
Only in this journal will I say shit about what happened.
I’m still shaken. I’m still in shock. I hope this plane back to New York crashes. Why should I return home?
How can I have done what I did?
This is what I happened:
That crazy mutherfucker who calls himself Icon, the one who draws symbols, he put that poor boy there. No more than a few feet away. Imagine bullets smashing into your body from that close proximity! Now imagine that you are just a poor down-trodden boy who was trying to be a part of something you sensed was destined for greatness.
Now imagine that you are me, an African American searching for an African story within an African story, who’s never touched a fucking gun in his fucking life, despite all the stereotypes about black men, who’s never seen someone die or murdered, who grew up poor but not desperate on the south side of Chicago, whose parents were teachers who were part of the civil rights movement, you see this little boy’s smooth dark brown skin, sweat on his smooth forehead, terror in his young face. He has sad dark eyes that haven’t seen much because he has only been alive for about nine, ten years, nearly the same age as my own son.
Icon’s gun was warm from his hands when he shoved it into my hands. Then he pressed my palm to it. That man was full of a kind of heat that could get near and tear out the throat of any president. I stood close to him. I felt that heat. I know. I know.
My hands shake as I write this. I’m a murderer. Africa made me a murderer.
The boy was shaking. The Whipping Boy.
Icon pressed my finger to the trigger and I twitched. It was my finger that caused the gun to shoot. My reflex. My nerves. It was my arrogant presence that brought me to that place to put me in that position to kill a little boy.
My God, I should have known better! Nigeria is a fucking jungle full of jungle people.
I blew the boy off his feet. His flip-flops flew off. Both of them.
The smell of hot steel, burned flesh, my hands slippery with black gun oil and the sound of Nancy hyperventilating as she fell to her knees and that fucking fucker Icon laughing and smacking me on the shoulder and saying, “Well done. Well done!”
And I sunk to the muddy ground, my quivering hand over my mouth, hollering, “What have I done? What have I done?” Some bird screeched from nearby. No wind blew. The morning sky above was clear, not a cloud, blue as can be. It should have been black. It should have split open to let hell swallow me up.
I had been so sure those men would kill me if I didn’t shoot the boy. I didn’t want to die. But I didn’t want the boy to die either. He was my son’s age. He was like my son.
Icon was still chuckling as he walked up to the boy’s body and pulled him up and dusted the kid off.
“Well done, Victor,” Icon told the boy.
Victor, that was the boy’s real name. Not fucking Whipping Boy. Or maybe Victor was now his name and it was something else before I shot him. A name of rebirth because I swear that boy was dead!
Victor looked bewildered, there were tears on his face but . . . he was otherwise unscathed. Just fine. The boy looked at me and nodded. I stared. Stared at the symbols on his chest. He had been a few feet away. I did not miss. And I’d seen him blown back. Smoke wafting from his chest. He’d lost his flip-flops.
I saw a white flash. Nancy had pulled herself together enough to do what she came to do. Several men aimed their guns at her.
“No, no,” Icon said, motioning for the men to stand down. “We have nothing to hide.”
I don’t know about that.
Neither of us spoke on the boat that took us from that village. They dropped us off on land near a busy road not far from our hotel with one final warning.
“When you write about us in newspaper,” one young man said, “tell the world this: If you people don’ listen, if your oil companies don’ get out, we crumble your economy. And maybe we take down Nigeria economy, too. You go see dis country fall to small small pieces like Biafra War. We at war with everyone. And like you know, we hard to kill. No one go at peace till you people listen to us.” Then they sped off in a hail of splashing water.
Nancy showed me the photo on her computer. She hadn’t only taken one. Nancy has balls, no doubt. The first was a dark photo of the boy just after Icon drew the symbols of him. Nancy truly has courage. She’d turned off the flash and held the camera discreetly at her side when she took the photo.
Despite the shade from the trees, the six point star on the boy’s arm and the circle on his forehead glowed a soft pink. And they looked crisp and clear and solid. I noted how perfect the star and circle looked. As if it had been made on a computer and not by Icon’s hand, the thickness the same all the way around.
Speaking of hands, the second photo, which was of some of the militants standing nearby, caught a bit of Icon, mainly his hands, and a bit of his chest. I don’t think any phenomena in the photos were glitches from the camera and neither does Nancy. There was a pink vapor emanating from his hands all the way up to his elbows. And more of it wafted from his chest.
The third photo was a full shot of Icon standing there looking powerful and smug, and there was the pink vapor again, coming from his chest and dripping from his hands like liquid heat. I didn’t see this vapor when I was there.
That place is a cesspool. Oil companies should get out while they can. Who knows what all the pollution and exploitation has made those people into? And who the fuck cares? Leave it alone. Fuck Africa, fuck Nigeria. Fuck history. And fuck this story. Nobody is ever going to hear it.
The Popular Mechanic
Anya was high up in a palm tree when her mother called. She thrust her hand into her pocket, fumbling for her portable. “Shit,” she hissed, as it screeched the Nigerian national anthem a second time. Finally, she grasped and held it before her face, shielding the tiny screen from the sun’s glare. “Hello? Hello? Hi, mama.”
She clutched the tree with her thighs and leaned back against her leather sling.
“Can you hear me, Anya?” her mother asked.
“Yes, mama,” Anya said. She frowned. She could see the brown rosary in her mother’s hands. Something was wrong.
“Are you in a tree?” her mother asked, looking past Anya.
“I just finished my first semester in medical school, mama,” Anya said with a small smile. “No lectures about palm wine tapping only being for men. It relaxes me.” She paused. “Mama, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to alarm you. Especially if you’re in a tree.”
“Mama, just tell me.”
“Come home immediately . . . Your father . . . ”
Anya’s heart jumped in her chest. “Is he okay?”
“I don’t know,” her mother said, now looking openly distraught. When Anya had returned from school a week ago, she was surprised at how tired her mother looked. Even now Anya could see the bags under her mother’s eyes.
“What do you mean?” she asked, grasping her sling.
“He isn�
��t here! I don’t know where he went! He’s in one of his moods . . . he threw a wrench at me. He was yelling . . . in English.”
“Shit,” Anya hissed. It was always English when he was angry. She brought her phone closer to her face. She didn’t see any bruises, at least not on her mother’s face. “Mama . . . ”
“I’m fine. Just come home.”
“I’m on my way.”
She folded her cell phone and put it in her pocket. With a shaky hand, she pulled the wooden straw from the large bunch of shiny red palm kernels just below the tree’s crown and put it in her pocket. The round gourd she’d hung just below the straw was full of milky-white palm sap. She held the gourd to her nose and closed her eyes for a moment. It smelled so very sweet and flowery. Once fermented, it would make a good batch of palm wine. Her father would be delighted.
“If I can find him,” she mumbled.
Though tapping palm wine was considered a man’s job, it was Anya’s favorite hobby. She’d always loved climbing trees but she’d started tapping palm wine when she was fifteen. It had brought a rare smile to her father’s face that first time and she’d been doing it since. Nevertheless, despite her efforts, as time progressed, she saw her father smile less and less. These days, he was in “one of his moods” quite often. Volunteering his body to the American scientists had been the biggest mistake of his life.
If there was one thing Anya had learned in the past year it was that if something was not broken, don’t try to fix it. She and her medical school friends debated about this quite often. Anya was always the one wildly against any surgery that made a good normal life even “better.” To Anya, if a medical condition wasn’t life threatening, or possibly a crippling deformity, then it should be left alone to do as nature wished it. Her father’s life had not been in danger, nor was he deformed. He’d just had one arm.
Anya’s mother was a schoolteacher and her father was a mechanic who owned a spare parts shop. Anya hadn’t grown up rich but her parents were always able to give her what she needed. Ten years ago, when she was thirteen, her father made what would turn out to be the second biggest mistake of his life.
Kabu Kabu Page 17
