Kid Moses

by Mark R. Thornton

  The land cooled and the flies stopped buzzing. Like the harbour at night, where people changed from beggars into drunks, from sleeping people in the afternoon into violent men at night, here too was a transition at dusk.

  But for Moses and Kioso, the routines of this night were new. New sounds emerged from the bush as darkness came. Vision was no longer the primary sense. Instead, the ears awakened. Scratching noises could be heard from within trees, walking-animal noises from the bushes, and the strange sounds of flying things whisked above them and sometimes close to them, almost brushing their faces. The night got cold too, not like at the harbour. The earth lost its heat, and the boys curled in the ditch by the road.

  We shouldn’t have jumped, Moses thought. Those men beating us would have been better than this. Animals all around. I can hear them. All these noises, and it’s cold, and there are things crawling in the leaves in this ditch.

  Just keep still and don’t move, he thought. Don’t make a sound. I think Kioso’s sleeping. I am too tired to look after him right now. It’s cold up here and there’s nothing we can use to get warm. Just sitting here, holding my knees. There must be more cars on the road. We shouldn’t have jumped.

  “What’s that noise?”

  “Nothing, Kioso. Just go back to sleep.”

  “How are we going to get back to Dar?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  “I want to go back.”

  The harbour. I could be sleeping in the ship now. Fast asleep, not cold. Could have maybe gotten leftover food from the restaurant. And today’s Friday. Could have gotten some money from the shops. Those Muslims always give money on Fridays.

  Mika and Heriel are probably at the ship now, sleeping like I could be. Maybe Ali has come back, too. Don’t know where that kid went. He’s been gone a while. Who knows where anyone goes?

  Kioso slept that night, but Moses never did. He sat, eyes open in the darkness until the moon rose, casting light over the world. It was a big moon and the light mostly shone onto the road, but some filtered through the tree canopy and Moses looked up at the shapes above him. It was colder than any night he had ever experienced, and he sheltered Kioso, giving him warmth from his body.

  Moses watched the night mature and the moon travel overhead. Then he watched dawn come with cold, blue light and low fog over the earth. The sun rose higher and finally he felt its warmth on his feet. He was determined not to spend another night sleeping in a ditch.

  “Kioso, get up. We’re leaving.”

  “I’m hungry. You hungry?”

  Moses looked at Kioso and did not answer.

  “We’re leaving here now.”

  Hungry, he thought. Yes, I’m hungry. Of course I’m hungry. Standing in this road again, looking down that way, just dust and trees. And this way, just the same. Moses knew that before they had jumped out of the lorry, they hadn’t passed any villages for a long time, and they hadn’t seen any signboards either. Just trees. To head back the way they had come would be a long and lonely walk. So Moses decided that going forward was the best option. Into the unknown, but with a chance at least.

  “We’re going this way. There must be a village or people or something. Maybe a car will pass by anyways.”

  “But Dar is back that way, the way we came.”

  “Yea, but there was nothing for a long time. Remember? And if a car passes us going that way, we can get a lift maybe. But for now, let’s walk on. Maybe we will get to something.”

  Kioso whined for more answers when there simply weren’t any. Moses almost snapped at him, but didn’t.

  “C’mon, Kioso. Just follow me.”

  Moses began to walk down the road, the dust not yet flying, the land still cool and calm. Kioso climbed out from the ditch and trotted along behind him, anxious to catch up. And the two boys, in red sandals and dirty shirts, were small on the wide road as they walked on.

  At first, they looked around as they went, at the trees, into the woodland around them, in the ditches, for something, anything. The trees were thick with big leaves, but not lush like back in Dar. It was dry. At first, when a noise came from somewhere off the road, they would stop and hold still and strain their ears to hear it again. But after a while, they just kept on walking. The narrow road was crowded in by tall trees, and when Moses looked into the surrounding wilderness, he saw a mass of endless woodland, thick, looking all the same. It seemed that if they were to walk off the road, even a few steps, it would be hard to find it again. The bush would swallow it. The road, so certain when one was on it, would simply fade into the expanse of vegetation and grass.

  They carried on for a long time with no cars coming, and the day began to get hot. They rested in the shade for some time. And then they continued walking.

  “Wo! What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “That’s a snake!”

  “That’s a stick.”

  “No, that’s a snake.”

  “I never seen a snake that big before.”

  “I did one time. Dead on the road. A green one, really long. Don’t touch it.”

  “Is it dead?”

  “Don’t get near it.”

  “It’s big.”

  “Maybe it’s sleeping. It’ll bite you, you know. And you’ll die, because they have bad poison.”

  Kioso approached warily, ready to jump back. Moses found a stick to poke the snake.

  “You crazy. That thing will kill you.”

  “Na, it’s dead. Look at its head, all smashed in. Got run over.”

  Moses tried to lift the snake with the stick, but it broke. He found a bigger stick, but he still had to use both hands to lever up the snake. “Here, look at it,” he said, shoving the snake towards Kioso.

  “Don’t throw that thing over here!”

  Moses stopped and looked up the road. “Shh, what’s that noise?”

  He stood still, the dead snake now at his feet, with Kioso also listening.

  “What do you h—”

  “Shh!”

  Sometimes the noise would die out, but then come back. A low drone, then the occasional bump.

  “A car. Coming from up there. Going back that way. To Dar. We got to try to get on.”

  An old grey Peugeot drove slowly towards them and stopped, its engine still running. A white man sat inside. The car’s small engine idled in a weak purr, as the man leaned out the window. His movements were slow, strange, and the boys edged back from him.

  The man was old and grey-haired. He wore a stained, short-brimmed hat. Moses looked at his face. His nose was huge and full of holes and pointed like a woman’s shoe, and his face was spotty like all other old white men, but more so.

  At first, he looked at the boys, his eyes bright blue, almost white, and then he opened the car door to step out. Moses and Kioso backed away. But the man squatted down and told them in Swahili that it was all right, there was no need to run.

  “Where can you run off to anyways?” he said, smiling. “There is only bush here. And you don’t want to go in there, because it’s dangerous.”

  He motioned to the trees with his arms, still squatting, and then opened them towards the boys. “Come. It’s okay.”

  He moved slowly like any other old man, Moses noticed, but he kept twitching his fingers. And his car was old. What was a white man doing with such an old car?

  “Kioso, come over here.” Moses grabbed his arm and pulled him closer.

  The man rose and stood over them.

  “Where are you two boys going?”

  Moses looked up the road.

  “Trying to get back to Dar. But walking that way.”

  “Dar?” The man cocked an eyebrow, and then squatted again.

  “I am going that direction. Not all the way to Dar. But you can come with me and get part of the way back. Get in. You can have a nice meal.” He smiled, showing big yellow teeth, and opened his arms again, as if a man waiting to be hugged by his grandchildren.

  Moses looked u
p the road and then at Kioso, who just stared back at him. All the nerves in his body told him to get away from the man, to keep walking. The instincts that had kept him alive on the streets of Dar told him so.

  But the boys got in, Moses in front, Kioso in the back seat, and the man drove slowly down the dirt road. Moses sat close to the door, far from the man. Whenever he looked over at him, their eyes would meet, and Moses’s heart would jump, and he would look back at the road.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  The man smiled back at him. “Oh, not far.”

  They passed the spot where they had jumped off the lorry, and then a few farms. Moses was relieved at the thought of finally being out of the empty wilderness. The man’s house was off the main road and up a rough narrow track leading into the hills. When they arrived, the house stood decayed and small in a yard of weeds with trees all around. A car with no doors lay rusting in the yard. The man pulled up next to it and stopped. “Here we are. Go inside, boys.”

  The man had no help, no maid or garden boy, which was strange, Moses thought, especially for a white man. But he heated a meal of leftover beans, and the boys sat inside on the floor on a worn, yellowed sheepskin. The man didn’t speak any more, but kept glancing back and forth between the stove and where the boys sat. Eventually he placed a tin bowl of food down in front of them. He told them to eat and sleep if they wanted, and went outside onto the steps and sat down. Moses had forgotten how hungry and tired he was, and the boys ate quickly. After they finished, Kioso was asleep on the sheepskin within a few minutes. Moses didn’t intend to sleep, but he also did. The house was so quiet.

  When Moses woke up, it was getting dark, and things were different inside the house. The man sat at the table with a bottle of liquor and a glass in front of him. He was watching the boys.

  Moses looked at the man staring at them. His mouth was wet and pink and his hair was matted down where his hat had been. There were no lights in the house, just the blue-grey colour of the last breath of day creeping in through the windows. The house was still, no wind finding its way inside or through the trees in the surrounding forest.

  Moses watched the man pour more brown liquor into his glass and drink. He set the glass down gently, but unsteadily, and then rose and took three uneven steps to the counter by the sink, and switched on the radio.

  The tinny sound of Soukous music rattled from the small radio and the man drank again from the glass. Moses nudged Kioso, who woke up, turned over and looked at the man.

  “What YOU looking at?” said the man, with spit bubbling on his bottom lip.

  Kioso sat up on the sheepskin and looked away. Moses glanced at the door, at the window, the radio, the bed by the wall. His heart was beating hard now. He thought in rapid succession of the way they had come up to the house—the main road, the dirt track, the rusted car in the yard—and then the way he had felt when the man had first approached them on the road.

  “Little monkeys. Lost on the road, you were. With nowhere to go.”

  He sang slowly at the ceiling. “Nowhere to go … Nowhere to go.”

  “NO—WHERE—TO—GO,” he repeated, louder, sliding his head back and forth with each word.

  Then he rose and came closer, hovering over them, a giant creature filling the room. He squatted, his face close to Moses’s. Moses could smell beans and liquor. The man’s eyes were watering, his lips sucked together. He looked sick, his patchy skin like porridge, pale and cratered. Moses turned away and hunkered closer to Kioso, the two now linking arms.

  The man grunted and rose with effort, returning to the table. He started to sit, but then he turned, walked to the door and went outside. Moses could hear his boots clunk on the steps down into the yard. He heard the zipper of the man’s pants, and then him pissing in the dirt. A long, wobbly-legged drunkard’s piss.

  “Moses.” Kioso sat upright and looked at Moses with fear.

  “I know. We’re going to leave.”

  Moses thought of the possibilities, various images racing around his head. Moses remembered the men on the streets who took small boys. Kioso had been caught once.

  He’s still pissing, Moses thought. Still outside. What’s he doing here living in this house? Why did we get in that car? He’s drunk, and what is he going to do all night? We can’t sleep here. Maybe he’ll pass out. Maybe we should just wait for him to drink more and go sleep on that bed. Then we can leave or maybe wait until morning. And outside? Don’t know where to go there. Except for that track leading down to the road.

  The man stopped pissing and Moses listened to him climb the steps to the door. But then he stopped. Moses watched the door, the doorknob, the crack beneath the door. He squeezed Kioso’s hand, thinking of how to run, when to make a dash. He waited for the man to enter, but the man just stood outside. Moses could see the shadows from his boots under the door. Just standing there, not moving. For some time there was no sound.

  Then the doorknob turned and the shadow of the man came inside. For a moment, he lingered tall in the doorway, his hand still on the doorknob as if to hold himself up. And when he staggered back to the table, they ran.

  The two little monkeys jumped at the door, feet quick like they were back at the harbour, the market, the street.

  But the man lunged across the small room and snatched Kioso by the arm.

  “NO. You are NOT leaving.” His jaw was flexed and his lips hidden inside his face, bent with anger.

  “Let him go! Kioso—come on!” Moses grabbed Kioso’s arm. The man pulled Kioso one way and Moses tugged him the other, towards the open door. Kioso’s little body was spread, almost comically for a brief moment, before he cried out and the man punched him. His solid fist slammed down into Kioso’s head, and he crumpled like a cut weed. Moses crouched in the doorway, facing the man, who still held the arm of Kioso’s limp body, like a shot rabbit carried by the ears.

  Only a second passed before Moses ran. He leapt down the steps and bolted for the trees. He heard the man stumble after him, and then fall hard and loud down the steps, crying out. Moses could not hear his words, only the hugeness of his voice. He ran through the forest and through the darkness. One of his sandals was gone, but he kept going, feeling the branches cutting his legs and the stumps and roots hammering his feet. Moses knew how to run. He knew that with men, you run and never stop. If you stop, you get beaten. If you stop, you get your pants ripped and get fucked.

  He fell, got up, and kept running. He fell again and cut his knee. As he went through the trees, he thought of Kioso with the man. He had hit him hard, Moses thought. Kioso—I hope you can get out. But you were down like a dead kid. No way you can run. That man’s got you, Kioso, and I can’t go back. He’ll get me too, so I can’t help you.

  Eventually the trees started thinning, and the land became open fields of dried maize stalks, some as tall as Moses. He slowed to a fast walk. He passed through the maize stalks in the dark, feeling his way forward, parting the tall crops with his hands as he went. Through a field and then another, under a fence, and onto a dirt road. He walked down along it, but carefully and by the side of the road. He knew that if something came past, he could jump into the bushes alongside. But it was dark and quiet. He could not see well, but he knew that he was bleeding from the cuts on his feet and knee.

  Night-time again. He paused and looked back and then up at the sky for some reason he did not know. It was suddenly very dark, with clouds rolling above. No moon, no stars, just blackness. He felt his way off the road and into the tangle of undergrowth, touching the air in front of him, searching for a place that felt safe enough to lie down. His mind was full of images of snakes, like the one they found on the road. The thought of stepping on a snake terrified him, as he poked his way through the leaf litter, twigs snapping under his feet. He found a ditch and crept into it. Just like last night, just like a goat. Some animal sleeping outside in the bushes, in the fields.

  Moses curled in the cold and thought about Kioso. Woul
d the man kill him? Maybe he would just beat him and throw him out the house. Maybe Kioso would also escape and come down the road and find him. Kioso was smart. He knew how to get by. Moses tried to think of good ways for the story to end, imagining Kioso escaping, even killing the old man, and running through the forest like Moses had done.

  And then thoughts of the bad things came, images in his mind of the dark house and the liquor. Of men and violence, those common features in his life. His thoughts jumped back and forth between the bad things, the good things, and then finally they settled on how he had abandoned Kioso. He pulled his arms in closer to his body and acknowledged: “I left him behind.”

  The next morning came early for Moses. He woke just as it was getting light and set off walking again. His feet were sore and cut, especially the one that had lost a sandal. The road was quiet and nothing seemed to be alive. No birds sang. There was a low damp mist around the trees and fields. As he walked, he started to think about the day before, and about Kioso still back with that man.

  After some time, he heard a car and hid himself in the trees to watch it come down the road, in case it was the white man in his grey Peugeot. A different car appeared, also old, but packed with a family and driving slowly, scraping its undercarriage on the road. A man and his wife sat in the front, and the arms and peering faces of their kids poked out the back windows. As the car drove down towards him, Moses stepped into the road to wave it down.

  The woman in the front seat saw Moses and elbowed her husband. “Who’s that boy in the road?”

  The husband shrugged.

  “What’s he doing in the road like that? I’ve never seen him before. Not any of the kids from that farm there.”

  The husband looked at her, shrugged again, and looked back at the road. The woman turned her eyebrows in and looked more closely. Something was wrong, she knew—the way the boy stood, the way he held himself by the edge of the road at that hour of the morning.

  “Stop up there next to him. Just pull up alongside him. Here. Here. Simama hapa. Stop here.”

  They pulled up next to Moses.