Graceland (28 page)
“Not since den,” Innocent said. He picked up the plate of food and began to eat feverishly again, staring around him in fear.
“Is somebody after you?”
“Why would anybody be after me?”
“The last time I saw you, you were with Godfrey,” Elvis said.
Innocent stopped eating.
“What do you know about dat?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you saying Godfrey is after me?”
“No. Why? What is going on?” Elvis asked. “I saw you the other day with blood on your clothes. Are you all right?”
“Do you see any blood on me now? Do you see any wounds?” Innocent said testily.
Elvis examined him surreptitiously. There was no blood on his clothes. He was right. But there were several deep scratches around his throat.
“Were you fighting a lion?” Elvis asked, indicating the scratches.
“Mind your business before I slap you,” Innocent hissed.
“Maybe I should wake Oye,” Elvis threatened, getting up. Oye’s room abutted the kitchen.
“No, Elvis. What is wrong with you? You cannot tell I am joking with you,” Innocent said, his manner changing instantly. “They are love scratches, you know.”
Elvis looked at him blankly.
“Love scratches?” he echoed.
Just then, Innocent dropped the plate with a clatter Elvis felt sure would wake the dead, sat bolt upright and, with a yelp, dashed out of the kitchen into the rain and darkness. Petrified, Elvis stared into the nothingness in the corner of the room that had spooked Innocent, one eye watching the candle burn down to a few stutters, then darkness. He sat there until exhaustion and the sound of the rain took him.
Sunday Oke paced the living room restlessly, ignoring the calls from his supporters to sit down. The votes were being counted, the polls having closed hours before. The living room was crowded with supporters who had gathered to wait. There were so many of them that they spilled out into the front and back yards.
In the kitchen, Aunt Felicia and others sweated to produce the endless amounts of food demanded by the crowd that gathered. Elvis sat on the front veranda at Oye’s feet, watching the thugs yelling up and down the road just beyond the fence and gate. They were celebrating their patron’s victory early, hoping to psych everyone else out. Elvis was convinced that they would be overrun at any moment by a mad fire-bearing mob of thugs.
“Don’t worry, laddie,” Oye said. “Tha’s their way of preventing anyone from complaining if they cheat.”
That was not comforting to him. Neither was the feeble defense that the only thugs his father could hire looked like they were capable of providing. They sat near the gate looking as frightened as he did.
Oye noted his apprehension with a smile. “I don’t think you have tae worry about tha thugs, lad, your dad is not going tae win. He had no money tae start with, you know.”
Elvis laughed nervously. “Why do you think he went through with it, Gran?”
“Since your mother died, your dad lost his way, you understand?”
Elvis nodded.
“Well, this election gave him back his fire, some direction. But I don’t think he took it too seriously. At least I hope not.”
“I think he took it seriously, Gran.”
“Tha’ could be bad, laddie. If tha’ is indeed true, I think you should worry more about your father than tha thugs.”
Elvis laughed nervously again. The thugs on the street outside were getting noisier, and the reason soon became apparent. Their boss, Chief Okonkwo, was riding past in a large convertible. With one hand he held a megaphone calling out to his opponents, while with the other hand he doled out money to the thugs. His shiny red convertible pulled up outside the Oke home. The generator was on, and in the lights, the car looked like a red wound against the night.
“Good evening,” he called through the megaphone. “Sunday Oke, I greet you.”
Sunday stepped out onto the veranda flanked by his main supporters. Seeing him standing there, his thugs galvanized into action, making a big show of keeping out Chief Okonkwo and his entourage.
“Okonkwo. How can I help you?” Sunday called back.
“De question, my friend, is how can I help you. It is obvious dat you are going to lose, but being a generous man, I recognize your obvious talents and would like to offer you de chance to work for me.”
The megaphone gave the sense of a one-sided conversation to the people beginning to emerge onto their stoops and verandas, who only heard Chief Okonkwo’s voice. Elvis watched his father, feeling his frustration and humiliation.
“Get lost, you ghoul! De results are not in, so I wouldn’t gloat yet if I were you.”
“But dey will be soon, and I will be de winner.”
“Well, dat doesn’t matter, because we both know dat de army boys will come back with a coup within six months.”
Chief Okonkwo laughed. “Is dat a prophecy or are you just a bad loser?” he asked.
“Go to hell!” Sunday shouted back before turning and heading back.
Elvis was glad his father didn’t see his supporters cheering for Chief Okonkwo. Some of them left immediately, joining Okonkwo’s team. Others would follow later. As Chief Okonkwo and his entourage moved off, failure settled on the compound in a hush. Even the thugs at the gate began to drift off. When, an hour later, the news of Chief Okonkwo’s victory was announced over the television, it was anticlimactic.
“So what now?” Elvis asked Oye as they watched people drift off to celebrate at the Okonkwo compound.
“Well, your father thinks he can get anoder job in Lagos and I heard him telling a friend dat if he lost de election he would take it,” Aunt Felicia said.
“Lagos? But that is over eight hundred miles away! What about you? Are you coming?” Elvis asked, voice shrill.
“Don’t be silly, Elvis. Mother is too old to travel and I am seeing someone, so I cannot come either. But don’t worry, you will be fine. You are nearly all grown now.”
“I just turned fourteen.”
“Like I said, nearly all grown,” Aunt Felicia said with a wink that made him blush.
“But my dance lessons, I can’t leave,” he mumbled.
“Why don’t you go to bed and wait until your father decides what he’s going tae do before you get so upset,” Oye said gently.
Elvis got up and went into the house. Noticing that his father was sitting out on the back veranda, he sat on the window ledge and watched as the night thickened with rain. In his father’s hand was a drink; a half-empty bottle of scotch sat on the table beside him. He was sobbing quietly as he listened to the record player spin his dead wife’s favorite records.
Elvis watched his father’s face in the gathering shadows. He had watched him do this before: play records, drink and then cry into the night, the falling rain muffling his sobs. But tonight it felt different—unremarkable, yet different, like the masks that adorned the walls of the men’s cult house.
His father was talking to Beatrice’s ghost. Elvis had never seen anyone else account to the dead. Daily, people thanked, cursed, supplicated and yelled at God. But the dead were another matter. They were too unpredictable, too vengeful.
Sunday Oke let out a long sigh and wiped his eyes, completely oblivious to Elvis’s gaze. He should never have agreed to get involved in politics, he thought. Never listened to the supporters who had egged him on with promises of money and help, but who had disappeared leaving him with a heavy debt. He certainly should not have taken early retirement from his lucrative job as the district education inspector. The job had offered prestige and a good wage, which he supplemented handsomely with generous bribes from schools and headmasters who wanted favorable reports.
“I mean, look at me,” he mumbled to the empty stool next to him. “Oh, Beatrice, look at me, reduced to dis. Now I have to sell off my father’s land and dis house to pay dose debts, and to survive I have to take a job in Lagos, running away with my tail tucked between my legs.”
He took a deep swallow and grimaced loudly as the harsh liquor burned through his pain.
“My supporters, you ask?” he went on, refilling his glass. “I ask de same. As soon as things got sticky, de tricky bastards decamped to dat thief Okonkwo, who paid them generously. Me? I was left alone to foot de bill for de ambition of others.”
He took another mouthful and gargled before swallowing.
“What did you say … ? Of course it was my ambition too. But I was stupid to let dem talk me—what? Don’t interrupt me, Beatrice. Just because you are dead does not mean I can’t slap your face,” he grunted.
Leaning back in the chair, he laughed bitterly through his tears.
“Of course you don’t understand. You are a woman, how could you? Honor is a secondhand concept for you, earned through your husbands or sons. But for us … for us it is different,” he continued. “I had come too far to step down. People were looking at me; my honor was naked in public and I had to clothe it.”
Sobs wracked his body and he fought to gain control. Meanwhile, the Temptations were “talkin’ ’bout my girl, my girl.”
Letting out his breath, he continued. “I know I lost. Dat is the consequence of war, Beatrice. Someone wins, anoder loses. But as long as de fight was with honor, both warriors can rest peacefully.”
Elvis continued to watch his father silently. Part of him wanted to reach out in comfort, but something deeper told him it would be wrong. This was too private a thing to be shared. Elvis left his perch and crossed the corridor, heading for bed. He noted Felicia’s absence with a strange pang. She was probably with her boyfriend, the one he had just found out about. Pulling the covers up to his chin, he let the drumming of the rain on the roof lull him.
… and above all the never-ending knowledge that this aching emptiness would be all …
—AYI KWEI ARMAH,
The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born
The eldest guest blesses the bowl and says, “We have seen the kola, but the King’s kola must return to the King.”
History is at the heart of the ritual, marked in Igbo by the word omenala, which literally means “the way we have always done it.”
“So we work for the Colonel?” Elvis asked.
“Dat’s right,” Redemption replied.
“I don’t like that.”
“Elvis, behave O! Dat’s why I no tell you, because I know you can act out.”
“But that guy is dangerous.”
“So you better behave.”
“What does he want us to do?”
“I told you, I no sure, but it is safe business.”
“You keep saying that, but I don’t believe anything involving that man, or his friends, can be safe. Or legal.”
“I no talk say it is legal. But is only a little illegal, you know? Like when something bend, but not too much.”
“I don’t think there is such a thing as a little illegal. It is illegal or not.”
“Haba Elvis! So you are telling me dat stealing bread from bakery to feed yourself and killing somebody is de same? Everything get degree.”
“I don’t like this, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Fine. No like am, but do am.”
Having slept late, they had only both woken up a few minutes before. They were hurriedly shoving food into their mouths as they waited to be picked up. Elvis was still a little sleepy. After his conversation with his father, he had barely fallen asleep when Redemption had come round, banging on his door. He gave Elvis ten minutes to take a hurried shower before hustling him off. They had taken several buses and were now in a part of Lagos he’d never been to. As they waited, Redemption suggested they get some food in a nearby buka.
“So how long have you worked for the Colonel?” Elvis asked.
“For long time. Even dat last deal we do …”
“The cocaine?”
“Yes, dat was him too. Now he is in a new trade.”
“I don’t know what trade can be more lucrative than drugs. Why the switch?”
“Do you know if it is airplane we are buying and selling? Enough question. Eat.”
“But it is illegal no matter what kind of trade, right?”
“Watch yourself,” Redemption warned.
Just then, they heard shouts of “Ole! Ole!” from the small market to their left. It was half hidden by a timber merchant’s sprawling compound, and Elvis hadn’t noticed it at first. A small crowd chased a man out onto the dirt road between the market and the line of bukas. Elvis got up to get a closer look, but Redemption pulled him down.
“Stay out of it,” he hissed.
The crowd had formed an angry semicircle around the man, leaving the timber yard as the only possible escape; but the mean-faced workers gathered at the gate ruled out that option. The man didn’t look to be more than twenty, though it was hard to tell, partly because his face was dirty and bloody. A tire hung from his neck like a rubber garland, and his eyes wore the look of a cornered animal.
“But I no steal anything!” he shouted. “I beg, I no want to die!”
“Shut up!”
“Ole!”
“Thief!”
“I no be thief! I came to collect my money from dat man who owes me!” the accused thief shouted, pointing at a man in the crowd.
“Which man?” someone in the crowd asked.
“Dat one. Peter.”
The man he was referring to, a short, nondescript man, shifted uncomfortably. “Who owe you? Craze man!” Peter shouted, throwing a stone at the accused thief.
It caught him on the temple, tearing a gash, and fresh blood pumped dark and thick.
“I no be thief O! Hey, God help me! My name is Jeremiah, I am a carpenter. I no be thief!”
“Shut up!” the crowd shouted.
“Is he a thief?” Elvis asked Redemption.
“Maybe.”
“Or is he a carpenter?”
“Maybe.”
“Which one?”
“Either. I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“My name is Jeremiah. My name is Jeremiah,” the man kept repeating.