Graceland (29 page)
The crowd had grown silent; the lack of sound, sinister, dropped over the scene like a dark presence. Jeremiah was spinning around in a circle like a broken sprocket, pleading with each face, repeating his name over and over. Instead of loosening the edge of tension by humanizing him, the mantra of his name, with every circle he spun, seemed to wind the threat of violence tighter, drawing the crowd closer in.
Elvis watched a young girl, no older than twelve, pick up a stone and throw it at Jeremiah. It struck him with a dull thud, and though she lacked the strength to break skin, the blow raised a nasty purple lump. That single action triggered the others to pick up and throw stones. The combined sound was sickening, and Jeremiah yelled in pain. There was something comically biblical, yet purely animal, about the scene.
“Why doesn’t anybody help?” Elvis’s voice cracked. This was just like the time that man had jumped into the fire and the time the youths had chased that thief in Bridge City. In both instances he did nothing. Now, again, he did nothing.
“Because dey will stone you too.”
Elvis’s question had been rhetorical, and he glared at Redemption, who went on blithely:
“Look, Elvis, dese are poor people. Poor people are hungry people, and like Bob Marley talk, a hungry man is an angry man. You get ciga?”
Elvis passed his pack. Redemption lit two, passed one to Elvis and pocketed the pack.
“Hey!” Elvis said.
“Sorry. Habit,” Redemption said, handing the pack back with a smile.
“How long can we use the excuse of poverty?”
Although Elvis had not asked anyone in particular, a man sitting across the room responded angrily, not taking his eyes off the scene outside.
“You dis man, you just come Lagos?”
“Hey! Mind your business!” Redemption shouted.
The man returned to arguing with the buka owner. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, attention divided between pots bubbling over on the wood-burning stove and the scene outside.
“He must have molest a child,” the buka owner said, voice heavy with wonder.
“If so, he for die by now. I tink he is just a common tief,” the man said.
“But he no look like tief,” she countered.
“How does tief look?”
“Not like him!” she said.
Elvis turned away from them. He watched Redemption’s face. It was clear that his attention was focused completely on the events unfolding in the street outside, even though his face wore a disinterested look. His breathing was shallow, and that intrigued Elvis.
“Where are the police when you need them?” Elvis asked, sucking smoke into his lungs.
“Dere dey are,” Redemption said, pointing to the checkpoint a few yards up the street. The policemen were watching the scene with bored expressions.
Outside, the crowd had given up throwing stones and was watching Jeremiah for signs of life. He lay on his side twitching, the tire necklace still in place. Elvis noticed that Jeremiah’s hands were tied, explaining why he couldn’t fight back. A whooping sound went through the crowd as a man ran up with a ten-gallon metal jerry can.
“What is that?” Elvis asked.
“Petrol,” Redemption replied.
“Oh.”
The crowd parted slightly to let the man with the jerry can through. He stood in front of the prone Jeremiah for a while, appearing unsure about what to do next.
“Baptize him! Baptize him!” the crowd shouted.
Moving quickly, the man unscrewed the can’s cap and doused the prone Jeremiah with the petrol. Jeremiah twitched as the petrol got into his open wounds and burned. A fat woman stepped back and Elvis caught his first good look of Jeremiah’s face. It was tired, features reflecting Jeremiah’s struggle against the inevitable resignation. The man threw the empty can to the ground and it resounded with a metallic echo. Nobody moved or spoke, not in the crowd, the buka or at the police checkpoint. Everybody was waiting for something to happen. Anything. Peter stepped forward and stood before Jeremiah, who, revived by the harsh smell of the petrol, was struggling to his knees.
“I beg, Peter. You know I no be tief. I beg.”
Peter calmly reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette lighter. He flicked it on and stepped back from Jeremiah, dropping the lighter on the tire necklace. Elvis followed the lighter’s fall. It could not have lasted more than two seconds, though it seemed to take forever. It was hard to tell which came first, the sheet of flame or the scream.
“Aah,” Redemption said in a long, drawn-out breath. “Necklace of fire.”
It sounded so sensual it made Elvis shudder.
“Every day for de tief,” the man across from them breathed.
“One day for the owner,” the buka owner completed.
They watched as the screaming, burning Jeremiah struggled to his feet and tried to break through the circle, but men who had retrieved long wooden planks from the timber yard earlier, for this exact moment, pushed him back with the long wooden fingers. The only way out was in the direction of the timber yard, and Jeremiah headed for it. From where Elvis sat, it was impossible to see his limbs; he looked like a floating sheet of flame. The men by the timber yard gate, caught off guard, yelled in alarm and scattered in every direction as Jeremiah crashed through and into the yard. He was still screaming. Within minutes, the timber yard was ablaze and the workers formed a chain, throwing buckets of water and sand at the fire, but it was too big. The mob of lynchers had melted away, as had the police.
“We should help,” Elvis said, not getting up.
“What good is dat.”
“The fire will spread.”
“Not our problem. Anyway, our ride is here,” Redemption said, walking out to a black GMC truck that had just pulled up. Elvis hesitated for a second, then followed him. The last thing he saw was the buka owner grabbing all the money from the tin that served as her till. She stuffed bills and coins down her bra and ran out the back, leaving the food still burning.
“Get in,” Redemption said, opening the back door for him.
As he climbed into the truck, Elvis was shaking. This scene had affected him more than anything else he had seen, though he wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was the cumulative effect of all the horror he had witnessed; there was only so much a soul could take. As they drove off, Elvis watched the spreading fire through the tinted glass. It was horrifying, yet strangely beautiful.
MORINGA OLEIFERA LAM.
(Igbo: Okwe-beke)
This small deciduous tree with a crooked stem, often forking near the base, has a dark grey and smooth bark. The twigs and young shoots are densely hairy, and the tree is often found in farmlands and around small-town homes. It has doubled, sometimes tripled, large leaves, and small white sweet-scented flowers and a podlike fruit.
Its leaves and the young pods are used as vegetables for soup or salad, and the kernels yield clear, sweet oil. The root and bark are used as an antiscurvy treatment. The tree is planted on graves to keep away hyenas and its branches are used in a charm against witches.
He then passes it to the next in line by seniority.
Yet there is a deeper philosophy to this, a connection to land and history that cannot be translated.
They left the scene of the fire behind, merging onto a highway that cut into the edge of a cliff, the Atlantic falling off to the right, sheer rock rising to the left. Mountain goats ran across the road, timing the traffic with practiced ease. The sea was an angry crash on rocks, and the landscape seemed too barren even for birds.
Then the road dipped, still hugging the coastline, until it was at sea level and waves swept over the rock battlements to flood the road. The cliff to their left relaxed in gentle gradients, into a rolling plain of windswept grass. They turned off and headed inland, the sea grass giving way to richer, denser rain forest. The road wound between trees that had probably been there a few hundred years, and the vegetation matting between them seemed as impenetrable as a sultan’s harem.
“Where are we going?” Elvis asked.
“To collect de merchandise,” the driver said.
Elvis studied the two men up front. The driver was short, dark and thick, and he gripped the steering wheel with short, stubby fingers and small hands. He had introduced himself as Anthony, and he seemed garrulous and friendly.
The other passenger was tall and skinny, like an upright mamba, and as dark, his skin shining with a purple hue. He wore a sour expression that seemed apt given that his name was Conrad. His face was patterned with deeply cut tribal marks that would have identified his exact clan a century ago, and might have also saved him from being sold into slavery, because the scarifications would have lessened his market value—unless he ran into slavers so desperate for a trade that they wouldn’t care. He was taciturn, barely responding to their greetings, and then gruffly. The only thing the two men had in common were glittering red eyes; probably the result of some drug, Elvis decided.
“Are we going to meet the Colonel?” he asked.
“You ask too many questions. Watch yourself,” Conrad warned.
Elvis lapsed into silence, staring out the window at the increasingly rural landscape. Tall elephant grass that reminded him of his childhood and the rhino beetle hunts he went on, wading through the four-, sometimes five-foot-tall grass, peeling the reluctant armored black beetles from their perches on the tips of the grass. He and his friends would tie stiff black hair-plaiting thread, obtained from a female relative, to the beetles’ torsos, under their wings. Prodded with sticks by the boys, the beetles would take off, flying in circles controlled by the strings, whirring like small black helicopters.
As they passed the occasional small town, he saw old men and women dozing outside their huts. Dogs slept in the middle of the road, where it was warm, reluctantly getting out of the way for their truck. But Anthony never slowed down or swerved to avoid any, and he left a trail of roadkill behind them.
“Hey, Zorba!” Conrad said every time they hit one.
Elvis conjectured that Zorba was Anthony’s nickname. It probably came from the movie
Zorba the Greek
, with Anthony Quinn. In some way, he guessed, it made sense.
They had been driving for about four hours and dusk was settling, but just before it got really dark, they pulled up to a solitary hut. A single kerosene lantern burned from the top of a pole mounted outside. Though there was no sign of any electric lights, a generator thumped somewhere behind the hut. There was only the sound of the generator and the idle throb of their engine. Even cicadas did not sing. Anthony and Conrad got out.
“Wait here!” Conrad called over his shoulder.
Elvis and Redemption exchanged looks. Leaning forward, Redemption wound down his window and lit a cigarette, taking a deep, grateful drag.
“Give me one, man,” Elvis said.
“Dis is my last. I go fifty you,” Redemption replied.
He took a few more drags that burned the cigarette half down. Reluctantly he passed it to Elvis, who sucked greedily until he burned through to the stub.
“Dis car big O!” Redemption said looking around the back of the truck. The GMC truck had two regular rows of seats, and two benches in the back that faced each other. “I fit take it make good taxi. Carry plenty passengers one time,” he continued.
“I don’t trust those guys,” Elvis replied.
If Redemption was surprised at the non sequitur, he did not show it. “Me too,” he agreed.
Just then Anthony and Conrad came out of the hut carrying two giant plastic coolers. Grunting, they struggled to get them into the back of the truck. Turning in his seat, Elvis offered to help.
“Clever man,” Anthony replied cheerfully. “You wait until we done, den you offer.”
Elvis laughed uncomfortably. Conrad had already started walking back to the hut. He returned with six people. As they got close, Elvis saw that their hands were tied and that they were a mixed bunch of kids, boys and girls, ranging in age from about eight to sixteen. Conrad opened the back doors and they filed in silently, sitting facing each other, three to a side, on the benches, the coolers sitting on the floor between them.
While Anthony rambled on about the weather and the trouble the repeated rains were causing his father’s farm and their crops, Conrad chained the feet of their new passengers together. He was about to slam the door shut when a hard-faced man came banging out of the hut, lugging a third giant cooler.
“What’s dat?” Conrad asked. “Colonel said two cooler.”
“Dis is food and drink. It is long trip.”
“Okay. Help me load it,” Conrad said, lighting a cigarette.
The man grunted from the effort of carrying the heavy cooler by himself, shooting baleful looks at Conrad, who just watched, smoking. There wasn’t enough space to get the third cooler in on the floor, so the man sat it on top of the other two coolers already there. With any luck it would upturn and spill the food and drink everywhere, the man thought. But thinking better of it, he lifted it back down and began to move the other coolers around to see if he could fit them all in on the floor. As he was doing that, Elvis turned away from Conrad and the man and focused on Anthony. He was talking rapidly, even more so than he had on the drive up, and he seemed agitated. Elvis could hear the generator thudding away in the background and wondered why it wasn’t connected to any lights—at least, none that he could see. Perhaps it powered some other device. He was curious, but knew better than to ask Anthony or Conrad.
“Redemption, you hold your gun?” Anthony asked.
“Sure.”
“You get bullet?” Anthony pressed, loading a big revolver.
Redemption took out his automatic, pulled out the magazine and checked it. Elvis looked from one gun to the other nervously. He didn’t like guns.
“Bullet dey, thirteen rounds accounted for, sir,” Redemption said in mock military style. Both he and Anthony laughed.