Spirit King: Return of the Crown

by Dashiel Douglas

  Kyle Sandersen: “Let’s see who they replace Henry with. Hopefully, the new CEO will make some much needed change in how Pharma does business in Africa.”

  Interviewer: “If this film is half as good as your first documentary, Animal Agriculture: Man’s Race to Self-Destruction, we’re in for a special treat. When can we expect the new film to be released?”

  Kyle Sandersen: “We’re putting on the finishing touches now. It should be available on TruFlix in March.”

  Interviewer: “Well, as always, it was a pleasure. We wish you all the best with the documentary. And we hope to see many more from you in the years to come.”

  Kyle Sandersen: “I hope so, too. Thank you, Peter.”

  As the program ended, the following appeared on the screen:

  “We reached out to Pharma for comment, but it declined our request. A company representative only stated that Pharma was in search of a CEO, and that it hopes the media will respect Mr. Stinton’s privacy as he deals with his health concerns.”

  “I can’t believe they’re searching for a CEO!” Wilem roared. “I’ve done more for this company than anyone.” He slapped his full beer bottle off the table.

  “Hey!” the bartender shouted heatedly at Zachariah. “You need to take your friend home, right now!”

  “Sorry, he isn’t usually like this.” Zachariah attempted to calm Wilem down. “Don’t worry, man. I’m sure you’ll be the new CEO. Look at how far you’ve come. When we first met, you were a scrawny, wet-behind-the-ears do-gooder. Now look at you. You’re running Africa for one of the biggest drug companies in the world.”

  “Why do they have to search?” Wilem slurred, wobbling as Zachariah practically carried him to the exit. “I’m right here.”

  “Look on the bright side,” Zachariah said. “Even if they don’t make you CEO, it’s not a big deal. You can make ten times more money in our business than you do at Pharma.”

  “That’s your business, not mine,” Wilem snapped. “I’ve worked too hard and sacrificed too much to not be CEO.”

  Wilem hadn’t always been so starved for recognition and power. He came from humble beginnings in Detroit. His father was an auto assembly line worker and his mother was a motel housekeeper. Although barely scraping by financially, when Wilem was born, his mother quit her job to be at home with him. Wilem’s family couldn’t afford for him to go to college, so he joined the Marine Corps. His first assignment sent him to Nanjier, where he met Zachariah.

  At that time, Nanjier was in the midst of a civil war. The U.S. threw its support behind the Nanjier Rebel Front (NRF). Wilem was part of the Marine unit that trained the rebels, working closely with NRF leader Baako Okoye. After the NRF’s successful coup d’état, Okoye became the President of Nanjier and Wilem returned to America.

  Zachariah, spotting a business opportunity that was too good to pass up, stayed in Nanjier. The war left behind several warehouses full of munitions that the country no longer needed. Zachariah convinced President Okoye to let him “manage” the warehouses—meaning, to sell the weapons. Okoye agreed, but on one condition: Zachariah could only supply the weapons to the Shuja rebels fighting in Malunga.

  Back in America, Wilem graduated from college, then went to work for Pharma in San Francisco. Recognizing his great potential, Pharma paid for Wilem to attend Stanford business school, where he met his wife, Helen.

  Wilem and Helen got married and had two children right away. Wilem was living the life he had always wanted—a steady job and a growing family. But before long, his life unraveled, beginning with his marriage.

  After their second child was born, Helen wanted to get her career moving again. Holding tight to his traditional values, Wilem insisted that she stay home for the kids, just as his mother had for him. At first Helen acquiesced, but as time passed, she grew bitter and defiant. She didn’t go to business school to become a babysitter. She had grand ambitions for her career and lifestyle.

  On good days, their home was various degrees of tense, but on most days, it was a battleground. Helen communicated in the form of tirades. Then, seemingly overnight, she changed. Her outbursts ended, but nothing filled the void. She became distant and melancholy. Although Wilem was concerned about their marriage, he didn’t grasp the extent to which it had deteriorated.

  One night, not long after Helen’s change in mood, over a typical haphazardly prepared dinner, she casually informed Wilem that she had accepted a job with Zembio. This was a double punch to Wilem’s gut, knocking the wind out of him. Not only had Helen ignored his wishes, but Zembio was one of Pharma’s main competitors.

  From then on, whenever Helen brought up her job, Wilem immediately changed the subject. And every time one of their children did something naughty, Wilem took the opportunity to stick it to Helen. “This would never have happened if the kids had their mother at home!” After a while, Helen no longer even tried to defend her decision to go back to work. Their relationship spiraled. They only spoke when it was absolutely necessary, like deciding who was picking the kids up from day care.

  One evening, Wilem came home to an eerily quiet house. Dizzy with anxiety, he instinctively shot to his bedroom. Helen’s dresser drawers were bare. He dragged himself to the kids’ room, knowing his heart was about to be shattered into a thousand pieces. Not a single artifact of his children remained. Helen had taken everything, even the photo albums. Wilem leaned heavily against the wall, then slid slowly to the floor.

  After the longest hour of his life, he carried his weary body to the dining room. Dinnertime used to be the best part of his day. He would come home to vivacious children scooting about and shouting random stuff, Helen scurrying frenetically to cobble a meal together, and Butterbean, their dog, lathering Wilem’s face with an excited tongue.

  There he found, sitting on the dining table at his seat, a plate full of food. Wilem stared at the plate. He didn’t know whether Helen meant it as a gesture of goodwill or a final dagger to his heart, but she had made his favorite meal—pork ribs, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. His eyes slid warily to a note lying forebodingly on a large manila envelope.

  Dear Wilem,

  I didn’t know how to tell you this. I thought about the best way many times, but realized that there’s no best way. So I’ll get right to it.

  Wilem’s heart pumped deadened thumps. He shoved the dinner plate away. He had no appetite anyway.

  Over the past year, our marriage has really suffered. It was getting worse by the day. I didn’t know how to fix it. I started to become despondent, not only at home but also at work. My boss, Ben, took notice of my deteriorating performance. But instead of firing me, like most bosses would have done, he truly cared about me as a person. It started out as him just listening as I shared my feelings. But then our time together became more frequent and lingering, and our calls less and less about work. One thing led to the next and before I knew it, I realized that I had fallen in love with him.

  Wilem’s head pounded like a jackhammer. He pushed on his temples, trying unsuccessfully to alleviate the mounting pressure.

  Ben said we could move in with him. He’s taking the kids to see the Giants on Saturday. After the game, I’ll bring them over so you can spend some time with them.

  I’m so sorry things turned out this way. You and I were madly in love at some point. I don’t know where it went wrong, but it did. Now, we must move on and do the best we can for our children.

  Love, Helen

  A tear stained the note, then another. Wilem slumped numbly in his chair. He brooded, unaware of the hours passing.

  Suddenly, he jumped up. He ran to his computer and opened Google. He knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help himself. Full of apprehension, he entered the name of his wife’s new love. He hesitated, then hit Search. And of course, he promptly learned things about Ben that he wished he didn’t know.

  Benjamin Tru
itt, three years Wilem’s junior, was the youngest CEO ever of a company as large as Zembio. Just the year before, Ben had received a $7 million bonus from his company. If there was one thing Wilem detested about Helen, it was that she made him feel small, as if he and the money he was making wasn’t enough for her. Wilem was sickened by the thought that Helen couldn’t have a life of luxury with him, so she had found it with someone else. Ben was surely able to give her all the things that Wilem couldn’t.

  Wilem snatched up a steak knife from the table. With quivering hands, he sliced along the top of the manila envelope. He started to remove the documents, then shoved them back in.

  An agonizing week later, he finally raised the courage to look at the papers. They confirmed what he had suspected. Helen had filed for a divorce.

  July 5, 1997 was the date the divorce became official and would forever be burned into Wilem’s brain. It was the worst day of his life—until, just a month later, he heard from a mutual friend that Helen and Ben were getting married. Wilem spent the few days around the time of the wedding (or “the betrayal” as he called it) in Hawaii, to get far away. When he returned, he became completely unglued.

  Wilem was to spend the week that Helen and Ben were off on their honeymoon with his children. He painstakingly planned each day to be packed with fun activities. The highlight was going to be Disney on Ice—the kids loved everything Disney.

  He arrived at Helen’s new house on the appointed day. Benjamin answered the door. Wilem thought, Helen doesn’t even have the dignity to come and greet me herself.

  “Oh. Hi Wilem,” Ben said, seeming flummoxed. “How are you?”

  Wilem couldn’t bring himself to return the formalities. “Can you tell the kids I’m here?” he said boorishly, as he glanced past Ben into the house.

  “Oh, boy,” Ben said regretfully. “Helen didn’t tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “When the kids heard we were going to Seychelles for the honeymoon, they begged us to take them along.”

  Blood coursed violently through the protruding veins in Wilem’s neck. “Absolutely not!” he shouted through gritted teeth. “The kids are coming with me!”

  It was hard enough for Wilem that they were planning to take away his week with the kids, but Seychelles! Wilem and Helen had always talked about taking a dream trip to Seychelles as soon as they could afford it. They imagined renting a hut standing on pillars over crystal blue water. They would laze on the beach, hike jungle trails, and sip tropical drinks.

  “I’m sorry, Wilem,” Benjamin said sincerely. “But the kids are coming with us. We already bought the tickets.”

  Wilem snapped. He shoved Benjamin aside and marched into the living room. “Come on, kids,” he said grimly, trying to prevent his rage from seeping into his voice. “Let’s go.” The children gaped at Wilem, frozen.

  Helen stormed in. “Wilem!” she shouted, trembling with anger and fear. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you get my message? We’re taking the kids with us. You can have your time with them after the trip.”

  “I’m not leaving here without my children!”

  Benjamin calmly clutched Wilem by the arm. “Please, Wilem. You’re scaring the kids. When we get back, you can take them for two weeks. Okay?”

  Wilem ripped his arm free. “Get off me! And no, it’s not okay! This is my week with them!”

  Benjamin forcefully dragged Wilem toward the front door. Wilem sucker-punched Benjamin in the back of the head. Benjamin dropped heavily in a heap. The kids burst into frightened sobs. Helen comforted them, then called the police.

  Wilem closed his eyes, in shock over what he had just done. He turned to his children, his eyes deadened with remorse. “I’m so sorry,” he muttered, then slunk out of the house.

  When Helen returned from the honeymoon, she went straight to court. She requested a modification to their child custody arrangement. The judge decided in her favor. Helen would have full custody of the children.

  Just when Wilem thought things couldn’t get any worse, his mother died. Then, his father, who was heartbroken, followed her four months later.

  Around that time, Pharma made the decision to expand into Central Africa. Wilem saw this as an opportunity to start a new life and to climb the corporate ladder. He wanted—no, he needed—to show Helen that he was on the road to becoming a CEO one day.

  Wilem had toiled in Africa ever since. And in those years, because of his extraordinary efforts in discovering new medicines, Pharma had catapulted from the ninth-largest pharmaceutical company in the U.S. to the third.

  Nursing a pounding head after his drunken night in the bar that had ended so shockingly, Wilem sat in his kitchen contemplating his next move. The company was “searching” for a new CEO. Wilem believed fiercely that he should be first in line for the job.

  But sickeningly, with Kyle Sandersen’s unscrupulous portrayal of him, Wilem realized his chances had become slim to none. He needed a game-changing medicine, something that would give Pharma no choice but to make him CEO.

  Chapter Six

  The Third Guy

  Christmas had become a holiday D’Melo could do without. He woke to a flood of gut-wrenching images of that fateful morning ten years before. The devilish eyes of the man who had killed his mother were branded into his brain—the killer’s right eye, pure demon; and the left, vacant steel gray, with a slash cutting through it. At times, D’Melo wished, against his better nature, that whoever sliced that guy’s left eye blind had finished the job on his right eye. If he had, then his mother would still be alive.

  As was the family Christmas tradition, D’Melo and Baba had traveled to Washington, D.C., to celebrate the day with Ameka Bello. Ameka, the aunt of Diata’s best friend in Kipaji, selflessly supported D’Melo’s family during their early days in America. She had taken them into her home, helped them find jobs, and guided them through an unfamiliar social system that was as foreign as it was mind-boggling.

  D’Melo had always dreaded going to Ameka’s house. All she talked about was Africa, particularly Malunga. Although he understood that Ameka’s job required her to stay on top of the health challenges in Central Africa, he felt she went overboard. But this Christmas was different: D’Melo sought to satiate his burgeoning curiosity about Malunga and Pharma. When he initiated the conversation, Baba and Ameka shared a surprised glance, tickled by his sudden interest in Africa.

  “Auntie Ameka,” D’Melo said. He called Ameka “auntie” even though she wasn’t his biological aunt, as in the Kipaji culture, friends of one’s parents are respectfully referred to as auntie and uncle. “You must have heard about that new documentary about Malunga? What do you know about Pharma exploiting that tribe?”

  “Shujas,” Ameka emphasized, wanting D’Melo to know the name of the tribe. “Well, I don’t have the specifics, but I do know that Pharma has been using Malunga’s medicinal plants to create new drugs. But you must understand, bioprospecting for medicine isn’t the problem. In fact, it’s good that companies are bringing new medicines to the world. The problem is that they are taking from us and never giving anything back. And in Malunga, the president is more concerned about lining his own pockets than ensuring that the Shuja people are receiving a benefit from the medicines.”

  “Well, why do the Shujas allow Pharma to take from their land,” D’Melo said indignantly. “Why don’t they just stop them?”

  Ameka explained, “The Shujas, of which I am one, have tried many times over the years to prevent the desecration of the Nyumbani. But the Malungan government supports the exploitation, even using its military to protect Pharma. Every attempt by the Shujas to fight back has been crushed. So, at the hands of its own government, the Shuja tribe has been rendered powerless against foreign exploiters.”

  Just then, D’Melo’s phone buzzed. “Excuse me, Auntie,” he requested. Ameka nodded, giving D’Melo
permission to leave. D’Melo shuffled off, his eyes glued to his phone screen.

  Zara: Merry Xmas, punk. Hope you’re having a better time than me. My GPs have their friends over. I’m engulfed in tales of the old country. Oooh good word, “engulfed.” Clunk. But the good thing is, they brought tons of Nečzian food! I’m stuffed!

  D’Melo: Actually, that sounds like you’re having the time of your life compared to how Christmas at Ameka’s usually is for me. But this year, I must admit, I’m having a good time. She’s schooling me on Malunga.

  Zara: That’s awesome! Wish I was there to hear it!

  D’Melo: Wish you were here too.

  Zara: Aww… you miss me.

  D’Melo: Nah dawg, it’s just that Ameka and Baba are normal people. I need someone here that’s easy to make fun of.

  Zara: Jerk!

  Zara: Gotta go. Děda just told me it’s time to spank some kids.

  D’Melo: ?

  Zara: Nečzian tradition. We go around whipping the butts of random kids with a willow twig. It’s supposed to chase away illness and bring them good health. We have a name for it. We call it Zdravi.

  D’Melo: We have a name for it too… we call it child abuse!

  Zara: LOL

  Zara: Later punk

  D’Melo: Peace

  In D’Melo’s absence, Baba and Ameka took the opportunity to quietly discuss the documentary.

  “I wonder what information Kyle Sandersen uncovered about President Amani’s assassination,” Ameka pondered, in a hushed whisper. “Do you think he found the package?”

  “That would be the best news I’ve ever heard,” Baba mused. “Shujas would be off the hook and the country could move on from this horrible legacy. And, best of all, D’Melo and I could be free.”

  As D’Melo entered the room, they straightened themselves. D’Melo studied them suspiciously. “What are you guys up to?”