by Kwei Quartey
Darko listened to his speech. It had an uneven rhythm. His voice was not exactly rough, but it had cracks in it like the surface of a badly tarred road.
“Woizo, woizo,” Auntie Osewa said.
She made space for him at the table and then introduced Mama, Cairo, and Darko. His name was Isaac Kutu. He was one of the local healers. He smiled at everyone. His eyes were dark and deep, and sometimes he looked to the right or left without turning his head.
“Mr. Kutu has been helping us,” Auntie Osewa said, looking from her husband to her sister. Darko didn’t know what she meant.
“Oh, very fine,” Mama said.
“How is Papa Kutu?” Kweku asked.
Isaac looked troubled. “Not well at all.”
“What a pity,” Osewa said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I am doing most of the work now,” Isaac said. “He is too tired.”
Osewa brought him a bowl of water to wash because he preferred eating in the traditional manner with his fingers—right hand only, left hand tucked securely out of the way. As they talked, it came out that the compound Mama and the boys had spotted on the way in belonged to Isaac’s father. Papa Kutu apparently had great prestige as a traditional healer.
The discussion moved to farming and the price of cocoa and other unbearably boring grown-up talk. Darko didn’t pay much attention to what they were saying, but for some reason he kept stealing glances at Mr. Kutu.
At one point, Uncle Kweku cracked a rare joke and the grown-ups burst out laughing. Darko didn’t get what was so funny, and maybe Mr. Kutu didn’t either because his chuckle seemed halfhearted or distracted. As Darko watched him, he saw something.
Mr. Kutu’s eyes flashed sideways at Mama, who sat opposite him at an angle. It was very quick—again without turning his head—and Mama returned the look. But Auntie Osewa was quicker still, and she caught that glance between Mama and Mr. Kutu. It all happened in a tiny fraction of time, but Darko captured it like a photograph and he reacted strangely to it. His stomach knotted up and he lost his appetite and stopped eating.
“What’s the matter, Darko?” Mama asked him.
“Nothing.”
“Eat up then,” she said briskly. “You don’t waste food, hear me?”
Darko felt Mr. Kutu’s gaze shift to him, but he never looked directly at the man again. He couldn’t face the eyes.
Evening had arrived when Mr. Kutu left. Uncle Kweku brought out a game of oware, and they played by the light of a kerosene lantern. Auntie Osewa went up first against Cairo and was soundly thrashed. Mama challenged Cairo and went down in flames in the same way.
“Okay, let someone else play,” Mama said. “Darko, play with your uncle.”
Darko squirmed with discomfort. He wasn’t terribly good at it—no comparison to his brother.
“Come on,” Auntie Osewa said, “don’t be so shy.”
Darko did better than he’d expected, or maybe Uncle was just being nice to him. The contest between Uncle and Cairo was fierce, and it seemed like it would never end. When Cairo got squashed, he couldn’t bear the defeat and challenged his uncle to a rematch. What intrigued Darko was the way Uncle Kweku had come to life with the game.
Laughing at the players’ antics, Auntie Osewa got up, said she would be back in a moment, and went outside.
Cairo and his uncle went another round. Auntie had been gone longer than Darko thought she would be. When she returned, Uncle Kweku and Cairo were just about ready to finish up the game.
“Okay, I’m tired now,” Uncle said. “Cairo, you’re too good for me.” He leaned back against the wall with a sigh. “Where did you go, Osewa?”
“I went to set the rabbit traps.”
Darko, startled, looked sharply at her. Her voice had changed. It wasn’t musical like before, and it shook slightly, like the tremor of a leaf in a brief stir of breeze.
“Those rabbits have been at our crops again,” she added. Her eyelids fluttered very slightly. Darko saw that. It wasn’t a mannerism. Auntie Osewa did not have such a mannerism. It was something else.
Whether a person’s voice felt like silk or sandpaper to Darko, the texture did not vary much. The pitch could change, and so could the volume or loudness, but the way it felt to him stayed the same … unless. Unless the speaker was holding back an emotion or hiding something.
Or lying.
Why would Auntie Osewa lie? Darko’s face grew warm, perhaps on her behalf, or maybe because such an embarrassing thought should even have entered his mind. No, she wouldn’t lie—not his Auntie Osewa. Would she?
AT THE END OF THE workday, Dawson went to the CID garage to get his assigned Toyota Corolla and put away his motorbike in a secure spot. Before he went home, he had two stops to make. The first was to his brother, Cairo, who lived with Papa in Osu, a south-central district of Accra.
Once robust and naturally athletic, Cairo had been a paraplegic now for twenty-five years. Whenever he thought about it, Dawson experienced an eerie moment of unreality. He could still barely believe it. The accident had happened in Accra three months after the trip to Ketanu.
Mama sent Cairo to the corner kiosk to buy a tin of sardines. He was starting across the street when she remembered something. “Get some bread too!” she called out through the window. He turned at her voice, walking backward and sideways at the same time.
“What did you say, Mama?”
She screamed as she saw what Cairo never did. The oncoming car hit him hard. He went up over the roof of the car and down the back.
Within seconds, Cairo was paralyzed from the waist down. Yesterday the master of his own body, today immobile and dependent on the care of others. Mentally the anguish was immeasurable, and if anyone suffered as much as or even more than Cairo, it was Mama. Her guilt was a living torment.
Two years after Cairo’s accident, she took a trip to Ketanu and never came back. She disappeared into thin air. Perhaps she could not bear ever to look Cairo in the eye again, but perhaps that was not it either. To this day, no one knew, and Dawson wondered about it over and again.
Jacob, Dawson’s father, was in his early sixties now, and he was Cairo’s sole caretaker except for the occasional member of the extended family who took over when Papa had to go out. Cairo made a little bit of money carving wood face masks—the kind popular with tourists. Dawson always felt guilty about how little he contributed to Cairo’s everyday needs. The one rule he kept firm to the point of superstition was he never left town without first stopping by to see his brother. In any case, as if sensing Dawson’s imminent departure, Cairo had called him on his mobile that afternoon to ask if he was going to drop in.
The house really wasn’t far from CID Headquarters, traffic just made it seem so. Dawson made his slow way down Ring Road to Danquah Circle, where policemen were directing the flow. He got around the circle to the segment of Cantonments Road aptly nicknamed Oxford Street for its density of shops, Internet cafés, glitzy stores and banks, and restaurants serving anything from sushi to pizza. Once he got past Oxford, things lightened up a bit and he arrived at Papa’s house and parked the car.
Cairo was in his wheelchair repairing a hole in the wood fence at the back of the house. He looked up and smiled.
“I thought you didn’t love me anymore,” he joked as they hugged.
“I do love you,” Dawson said sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I have no excuse and I’m not going to make one up. How are you? You’re looking good today.”
In fact, with inactivity, Cairo had become overweight, and bouts of infection had taken their toll. It was often painful for Dawson to visit him, especially when Cairo was having a rough time. It left Dawson with a lump in his chest and moisture in his eyes. His mother gone, his brother maimed—these things still hurt.
Dawson was glad to help Cairo repair the fence. Doing something active with him made the visit easier and more cheerful. They chatted happily. As adults they were intellectually equal and compatible, but Dawson always regarded Ca
iro as his older, wiser brother and he was comfortable with that.
“Listen,” Dawson said at length, “I have to go to Ketanu tomorrow.”
“What’s going on up there?” Cairo asked.
“Someone’s been murdered.” Dawson handed him a nail. “Lartey wants me to find out who did it.”
“Just like that, eh?”
They laughed.
“So, back to Ketanu after all these years,” Cairo said.
“The way it’s grown, I probably won’t recognize the place.”
Leaning forward in his chair, Cairo deftly drove the nail home. “You might even need directions to Auntie Osewa’s house.”
“You know what I feel sorry about?” Dawson said.
“What?”
“That we’ve never visited her again over all these years. I mean, she was very good about writing every once in a while, sending us photos of the family, and so on. But after all that, it’s not her invitations to visit that’s taking me back there, it’s official business.”
Cairo shrugged. “Why should you or I want to return there? Ketanu took Mama away from us. At least, that’s the way I look at it.”
“I’d never thought of it quite like that,” Dawson said. Cairo had a way of seeing things differently.
Papa emerged from the house into the yard. He acknowledged Dawson without actually saying hello, and true to form he was short on conversation. He had always been that way, and Dawson could not remember him ever hugging them as children. For sure there had been lots of sharp, angry cuffs to the sides of their heads. Apparently that was the physical contact he had been most comfortable with. After all these years, Dawson didn’t understand his father or like him much.
Papa watched while they got the fence patched up.
“Much better,” Cairo said, beaming at the finished product.
They talked awhile longer, until it was dusk and the mosquitoes began to attack like dive-bombers.
“I’d better get going,” Dawson said, slapping his forearm where he felt a mosquito attempting to steal his blood. “I’ll need to get ready for tomorrow.”
“Good luck up there, Darko. Be careful, eh?”
He hugged Cairo, but for Papa it was the usual handshake.
It was now fully dark, and Dawson headed for Nima, one of Accra’s zongos. Nima Road was a vibrant thoroughfare, with Oxford Street’s energy but none of its riches. The pedestrians who tramped the dusty roadside crossed the street willy-nilly, weaving in and out of stop-and-go traffic. With long stretches without streetlights, a visitor might find it unnerving, but Nima people knew how to make it work, even if with the narrowest of close shaves.
Dawson parked the Corolla beside a gutter filled with trash. He locked up and then walked several meters along a twisted, uneven walkway to a dense cluster of ramshackle houses. It became pitch-black as he got farther away from the lights of the main road. Good thing he had come armed with his small flashlight. He hopped over a pungent, dark-colored effluent trickling along the ground.
The man he was looking for lived in the back of one of the decrepit dwellings. The door was coming off the hinges, and Dawson didn’t knock for fear that it would fall off completely.
“Daramani!” he called.
“Who dey?”
“Dawson.”
“Ei! Dawson!”
The door went through several readjustments before Daramani could get it open.
“Hey, chaley! How you be?”
Dawson came in, and Daramani gave him a hearty handshake, ending with the customary mutual snap of thumb and third finger.
The room was tiny and cluttered. The single dangling, dim light-bulb was very likely using electricity siphoned off from someone else. In the gloom, Daramani was blacker than charcoal. When he grinned, his white teeth were blinding. He was thin and straight as a bamboo stick, but he could consume more food than two grown men put together. He was from Ghana’s Upper East Region, and his mother tongue was Hausa, which Dawson didn’t speak. Daramani in turn spoke Ga badly and Ewe not at all, so the two men had fallen into the habit of communicating in Ghanaian-English street slang.
Daramani had been a petty thief with a violent streak. Dawson had taken him down one night three years ago. His room had been full of stolen and contraband items that he had not yet sold, as well as a bountiful stash of weed. Dawson hadn’t been able to resist and had pocketed some of it.
Marijuana was Dawson’s Achilles’ heel. He loved the stuff.
At his hearing, Daramani had stared at Dawson across the stuffy courtroom with a small, knowing smile on his face: I saw you take the weed. And Dawson had stared back: And so what?
The so-called justice system moving at the snail’s pace that it did, Daramani had already served most of his prison time when he was finally sentenced. When he got out, it could hardly be said he was rehabilitated. Once a thief, always a thief. Dawson had picked him up again one night hanging around Makola Market. Daramani had acted quickly to avoid seeing the inside of a jail cell again.
“Dawson, I know people,” he’d said. “Make I he’p you, you he’p me.”
Half an hour later, Daramani was spilling the beans about a serial burglar working in the affluent airport residential area. As Dawson thanked him, Daramani slipped him some marijuana. It was just a little bit, but the quality was excellent.
“How much?” Dawson asked, avoiding Daramani’s eye.
“No, I dey make give you.”
Dawson became an ordinary citizen for a few seconds and stuffed some cedi bills in Daramani’s pocket despite his flimsy objections. Now it didn’t feel so much like bribery and corruption. What a joke. It was illegal any way you sliced it.
Now Daramani opened a large portmanteau on the floor and pulled out a green bottle.
“You wan’ schnapps, my brodda?”
“You wan’ waste my ear or what?”
Daramani grinned. “Yah, I know. Okay, I dey get dat ting wey you like am.”
Daramani produced a small paper bag and held it to Dawson’s nose. He nodded. Very good.
“Make same price?” Dawson asked.
“Dis one be too good for ol’ price, my brodda.”
“Den how much you dey make am?”
When Daramani told him, Dawson laughed and handed the weed back. “You craze.”
“How much you pay?”
“Same like before.”
“Chaley you dey touch?” He was asking, Are you insane? “No fo’ dis one. No you fo’ do me like dat.”
“Den forget.”
“Okay, take am. Reglah price. I dey like you, dass why.”
Dawson paid him. He took a couple of steps to the portmanteau and yanked the lid open.
“Wey ting?” Daramani said, surprised.
With the vision of a hawk, Dawson had caught a glimpse of something glittery in there. He reached in through the mess of plates, shoes, and other junk, and pulled out a gold watch. He held it up.
“Where you get am, dis watch?”
Daramani looked at him straight and steady in the eye. Too steady. “My friend gimme to make keep am fo’ him.”
Dawson felt Daramani’s voice vibrate like a taut rubber band. “You lie.”
“Oh, no, my brodda, I no lie.”
Dawson flipped the watch over. It was engraved with someone’s name and the inscription “M.D.”
Dawson put the watch in his trouser pocket. “I dey make you one more chance. Where you steal am?”
“I tell you I no steal it, brodda.”
Dawson kicked a stool out of the way as he closed in on Daramani so quickly the man barely had time to shriek and recoil. Dawson’s long fingers encircled his neck, and he slammed Daramani up against the wall.
“Where you steal am?”
Dawson shook him like a doll and rattled his head against the wall.
Daramani screamed. “Abeg, abeg! Dawson, stop, please.”
“Tell me now or you go for jail.”
“Den whe
re you go get good weed from?” Daramani said, eyes dancing and flashing with mischief. “Deh best weed, remember? And who go tell you where all dese bleddy fockin’ criminal dey for Accra?”
Daramani grinned even as Dawson increased the grip on his throat. A smile crept to Dawson’s face, and Daramani giggled.
“Steal anything more, I go kill you,” Dawson said. “Understand?”
“Oh, chaley, no can kill me. You love me toooo much.”
“I no love you, I dey love your weed.”
He tried to keep a straight face, but at the very moment Daramani snorted, Dawson burst out laughing. He released Daramani from his grip.
“I go find dat person wey you dey steal dis watch and give am back,” Dawson said, patting his pocket.
Daramani, chastened, was rubbing his neck. “Okay, my brodda. Sorry. I swear, never again. Ei, you break my neck, Dawson.”
“Next time I go take your head with it.”
Daramani began to giggle again.
DAWSON HEARD CONVERSATION COMING from the kitchen, and he knew Christine and Hosiah were already home. He was much less excited about the third voice—that of Gifty, his mother-in-law. Squashing his inner groan and making yet another failed attempt to persuade himself that she was really not so bad, he called out, “Hello!”
“Hi, Dark,” Christine said in reply.
Hosiah came running out of the kitchen. “Daddy, Daddy!”
He stopped where he was, and Dawson smiled as the boy prepared to perform the customary welcoming exercise.
“Okay,” Dawson said. “Ready?”
The boy leaned forward in the on-your-mark position, one leg forward and the other back. “Yah, Daddy, I’m ready.”
“Set… go!”
Hosiah exploded into a run, his little feet pounding the floor with miniaturized power. Close to Dawson, he launched himself as high and far as he could into his father’s waiting arms.
“Oh, that was a good one!” Dawson said.
“Yes!” Hosiah said, laughing. “I jumped higher than yesterday, didn’t I, Daddy?”
“You certainly did. Getting better and better at it.”
