Does family really matters to you? Read this short novella and see whether family does matter or does not.

 15^th  September, 2014.

The Oracular Forest.

Lateef Yahqub Olamide.

CHAPTER ONE

            Home; sweet home, there is no place like home. It has been twelve years that I left my hometown; I haven’t stepped my toe on the soil not once since I left. For this a friend first thought I was on exile. I loved it before now but I hate it now. For two yuletides I haven’t bought new underwear, my shirt is two years old and I have been wearing it repeatedly. I washed it yester night and wrung it severely to make sure it is dry before this morning; this has always been my way of life since I bought it. My shoe; addidas  product, I worked for two weeks before raising the money to buy it, it is two years older than my shirt and one year older than my faded blue jeans. There are no less than three holes in it and I don’t bother to mend them, for they give good ventilation to my feet. It’s hermetic whenever I wear it, you know why? My feet are bigger than the shoe!

            Where I work; I’m the manager and the retailer of my company; a sausage company. I’m the manager because after taking a carton of the stuff, I manage the sales myself and I’m the retailer because by myself I get the stuff to the end users. I’ve worked with Gala sausage company for six years after I’ve left bus conducting job and this was the first job I was offered when I reached this land; I did the work for two years, and I quitted it the third time I fell off the bus while it was on break neck. I had two minor prolapsed bones and several bruises, the scars are left as cairns on my brow.

Selling of rusted iron sheets to the Northern people of the country; the Hausas, was the last work I did after the selling of newspaper in the traffic congestion before getting the sausage company job, and this has been the work I’ve been doing for six years now. I did sell rusted iron sheets for one year; I couldn’t bear the stink during the pick and because of this I quitted early and I sold the newspapers for three years. I’ve sold the product; Gala sausage, for six years now, yet every night; I sleep below the shade made by the government bridge, the sheet of the previous goods I sold has always been my bed for six years. I always change it any day I’m so lucky to sell the whole goods, and I’m always lucky every day.

Any day it happens to heavily rain in the night, then, I’m done for sleep for a week or two depending on how heavy the monsoon, for my place of sleep will be as good as a place for the mariners to have their training for that week or weeks. I’m only lucky to vacate the place for a day if it only rained slightly. And if this happens, I’m left to sleep at beer parlors or in front of any person’s shop. No reasonable human will want to sleep at these places but for me, I’ve no choice.

Governor Raji Fashola has tried his best to eradicate this kind of living but I still managed to live like that. Whenever his appointed parastatals chase me away from one spot, I’ll find another.  Throughout the nights I have spent in the city of Lagos for twelve years, I’ve always enjoy the cantata sang with cantabile by the sopranos mosquitoes and the bites were unspeakable unbearable. I once prayed there should be rain no more but nature won’t let.

            Something enigmatic happened the day I prayed this prayer, it was unbelievable; it rained for five nights consecutively after the night I prayed and surely I vacated my place for a good month. Since then, I vowed to pray no more about it. I’ve used my slippers as my pillow until I was able to acquire my addidas shoe. Nothing to cover my body through the nights; I thank God I have skin though I’ve exposed it to mosquitoes’ bites plus frostbites. I hope my God will forgive me for that.

            As the bus I boarded swiftly run on the road to my place of birth, I spin my automated teller machine card with my names; Swagger McJagger West as weird as they sound inscribed on it. The banker who helped me in opening my account six years ago stumbled over the intrigue of my names as she pronounced them repeatedly feeling very confused of whether I’m really a Nigerian. She would have doubted my nationality forever but my seared light skin as from the product of the scorching sun, my Negro nose; as all Africans, my short uncoiled dark hair and my accent like every other Nigerians, with all these factors she gave up about it. She could write my surname and other name but my name was at last done by me.

I’ve suffered a lot for an aeon. I’m now on my way home thinking of what the people would think of me. They will need not to stress themselves to name me because my appearance surely will tell them what to call me. A psychopath; my clothes are sure practice of anachronism, my hairs are overgrown and unkempt and my bag has nothing in it, it is as empty as me. All these are factors that describe a chronic psychopath and synchronically they are all on me.

I left home when my father died and my mother had died two years before him. I was the stubborn boy and the black sheep of the family then, but now I’m back home with nothing to flaunt but the rags I wear and the overgrown hairs and outdated me, the only thing that is modern about me is my automated teller machine card and I’ve hid it from anyone’s sight and I’ve vowed that it will be the last thing anyone will know about me. I’ve chosen and I’m ready to serve the maid of the family, even if I don’t want to, I have no other choice. With my appearance I know I’ve no value so automatically I’ll have to submit myself to the least of the rack and file members of my home.

I’ve left Lagos for my hometown about four hours ago after I’ve talked with the foreigner who changed my name to Swagger McJagger West, I was Edaolaropin Tanimola Inaolaji. He said to me as I told him I was leaving, “Go home and make changes” with his beautiful accent I’ve always like to listen and few drops of tears quickly find their ways down my cheeks and they dried as quickly as they fell. He was moved as well but managed to escape the tears.

Mr. William McGongall Poe; a hired Whiteman, an American who works as a road constructor in Lagos, he found me among the flock of other hustlers and chose to make me his friend, it was strange but I didn’t even for once intend to query why it had to be like that; I took it as my fate. I’ve decided not to fight for answers of things I wouldn’t get answers to and so it had been since then and it’ll always be till my end. I worship luck and it has always been following me all my days.

Everything is not the same as they were when I left but one thing remains as it has always been; the way my people speak. Local Yoruba accent as every Lagosians like me would call it.

The bus I boarded from Iwo; a town that is very close to my hometown, after I’ve alighted from the bus that took me from Lagos there, halted for the out-of-date man he had took from there to alight his source of income in Awo; a town very close to Ede but a little far from Osogbo and from there I boarded a commercial motorcycle to my place of birth. I’m an indigene of Iragberi a place where thunder would never strike their children not even by mistake!

Many of the times, I flaunt this fact before Mr. McGongall my good friend and he would smile and say “Tell me science is false.”

I hardly could identify my father’s house because it was the only house that was painted in Iragberi before I left but now there are more than six houses paint with the same colour my father’s house was painted. I stood in dilemma of which house to lodge in that won’t cause a scene, swiping my sight from one painted house to the other as quickly as the sway of a waving flag influenced by gust and fidgeting on a spot as though if I take a step I would explode. People who pass me by look at me in an enigmatic manner and quicken their walk in fear of what I could do because I was supposed to be a mad man in his apogee of insanity. I drag my empty bag by its handles in order for it to sit well on my back as though there is something in it.

After few minutes of standing in confusion of which house to enter, I felt the déjà vu of being on that same spot before as the imaginations of how I used to play around in my place when I was young vividly sweep through my hypothalamus. Then, dramatic impulses hijacked me and begin to move me towards one of the houses, the third building by the right; a bungalow with its archaic balcony dancing weakly to the rhythm of the breeze as it hits it.

As I reach the front of the house, the domestic goats; four of it, quickly stood to welcome me as they bleat away in fear of the strange man in front of them. I smiled at this anyway, though since I’ve left Lagos for Iragberi this will be the first time I’ll be mused. I move into the balcony as I feel like a thief seeking something to steal. My eyes swiped faster than my legs and that was a sure evidence of anxiety.

I waited in hope for someone to query who just sneaked in but there was none since I’ve entered the balcony so then I decided to make the call. “Hello!” I say as I peeped into the house for the sixth time or so, “Who is there?” a weak masculine voice asked and waited for an answer but I didn’t know how to describe myself.

I guess it’s time to play the hide and seek game. “I’m here,” I said trying to lure the person out of his hide, “Don’t you have a name?” he asked again with a kind of angry tune. Another problem arose; I don’t know which of the names to give him, whether the one given to me by my white friend or the one given to me by my parents, “It’s me, Tanimola,” I reply hoping the person would quickly recall who I’m, “Tanimola?” the person asked in disbelief as though he had been expecting me, at this juncture, I fidgeted more than ever as I heard the person struggling with something; it seems like he was trying to stand either from a place where he sits or a place where he sleeps.

In few seconds, a ragamuffin like me came out looking very famished and malnourished, his clothes are outdated more than mine, the skin of his head was clearly seen; no iota of his hairs was left on it, he is not bald so he must have scraped every single string of his hair. As bad as I look, I made two steps backward for fear for what the person might do.

I may be an outdated ragamuffin fellow but I’m not out of my senses. We stared at each other for few seconds, he seemed like he could identify me but I cannot say who he was. “Big brother Tanimola,” he said as he made two steps toward me and I automatically stepped two steps more backward, I tried to identify him but it all failed, when he noticed this, he made a rueful smile, then took a step forward towards me but this time I didn’t move any more backward, “It’s me, Mokanjuola,” he said as he moved another step towards me. “Alas! What has life done to the both of us?” I didn’t know how this lamentation question burst out of me, but he only gave another feckless smile as his reply then moved another step forward and projected his hands in gesture that I should give my bag to him. I knew it is empty but I did give it to him and it showed from his reaction that he was taken aback with its emptiness as he scrabble the entity of the bag from the outside repeatedly and watched me in total disappointment.

Mokanjuola; my one and only brother, I’ve left him for twelve years. He looked older than I’m, gravely malnourished and hyper famished. I still can’t identify him well. He looked like an archaic man, and he has a bent back like a hunchback victim. I managed to feign my feeling of no belongingness, and embrace him carefully and mildly for if care is not taking I may crumple him into his flotsam and jetsam.

We entered the house, though it is neat but the cologne of domestic goats’ urine could be easily perceived, I ignored it because the place where I live in Lagos is a septillion times worst than that. I was ushered to one of the almost thirty years old cushion chairs my dad had made before he died, as I sit on it I feel this sharp pain in my buttock from the pierce of the half damaged chair, I hid this too for I don’t want to make things more worst.

We spent the rest of the day staring at each other, until bed calls. There is no question I have to ask about his predicament and there is for sure none from him too, there may be maybe tomorrow we would unleash them on ourselves like launched rockets. After, we just wished ourselves sweet dreams though we already know before our sleeps that we cannot have it.

CHAPTER TWO

The rays of the light that managed to pass through the holes in my window and the whispering song from the surrounding birds are what wake me up this morning. Yesterday was Wednesday, the 18th of September, 2013. A day that means a lot to me just as the day my mama died.

Edaolaropin Anike Adetutu; her beauty was beyond the prettiness of the smile of the moon, her white teeth as white as the whitest snow was what I suspect enthrall my father to marry her, her “Abaja” tribal marks where telling tales of why she chose to be the only beauty Africa has ever given birth to, her ever smiling face and never bitter mind was what made her the best mother to us her children and to the world. A frump she was yet she was beautiful than the queen of our land, I deified her and I’m sure the gods won’t be provoked for if by any chance she still lives my libation would be as large as the Everest and as frequent as the count of seconds hand of the clock. I miss her today anyway as I do every day. She was the best mother anyone should ask God for.

I struggle to get myself unwrap from the piece of wrapper I suspect my brother to have used on me when I slept off yester night without being covered, this has been the way I’ve been sleeping for many years back so I didn’t bother covering myself. The sleep was bad but far from worst like the ones I’ve been having in Lagos, for it was peaceful; there were no much mosquitoes humming, and no much cold but it was not any qualm free for I didn’t escape my daily nightmare.

I slouch out of the room I slept as though my legs couldn’t hold my body anymore. The passage is empty and a little bit dark though it is dawn already. I walk towards the entrance, peeping into each room as I pass by them hoping I’ll find Mokanjuola but he isn’t in any of the rooms. I’m on the verge of calling out his name when I hear someone scrubbing iron on a stone outside of the house so I decide to go watch who it was, though I suspect Mokanjuola and it is him.

He is busy scrubbing his second machete seriously on a broken piece of rock sited by the left side of the building under a tree with lots of branches blessed with abundant of green leaves after a well sharpened one has been leaned on the trunk of the tree which evidently has been sharpened through the same means. The tree was the first monument that made me believed I was stepping into the right building yesterday when I arrived from Lagos before a kind of cross shaped piece of wood work that was hung on the front edge of the building’s roof; it is as old as the roof itself. I watch him pitifully move his arms to and fro as he polishes the machete on the piece of rock with great stress and the way he wiped his sweats with his hands; very rueful, he raises himself up very often, I supposed he is doing that to stretch his bent back and to containing the aches he suffers.

As he keeps doing this so enthralled to it, I smile roguishly hoping to avenge whosoever exacerbates our lives though I know not any but I’ve always blame devil for mine, I’ll surely blame him for his too. Little drops of hurtful hot tears escape my cheeks but I quickly clean them to make sure he didn’t notice. As I watch him, a thought flashes through my mind; “Now you know the reason why he has a bent back and seem older than you are,” it says clearly and fade away as quickly as it comes.

I call him and he is shocked for the sudden call; God knows what he was thinking. He drops the machete and quickly swiftly swaps his face towards me. “Good morning” I say feeling bad of my previous observations of him, “Good morning bro” he replies breathing heavily; he seem to have worked out his breath, “How was your night?” he ask quickly, “Beautiful,” I lie, “Thanks to Jesus,” he says as he cleans his face with the brim of his clothes as dirty as it is. I nearly ask him who Jesus is for I’ve not attend a church service for long time; as little as twelve years!

 I’ve even forgotten that name – Jesus, ever exist. Jesus! I’m a sinner, and I need no one to tell me this. What keeps me wondering now is how he copes with his sufferings and attending church on Sundays, as for me, I don’t joke with any of my days, I hardly have time to sleep. I didn’t let him notice this. He sees me as a Muslim anyway for my father was a Muslim and my mother was the Christian, he has taken my mother’s route and supposed I chose my father’s.

“I just want to quickly sharpen these machetes,” he says as he picks the machetes and exits the spot and start moving towards me, “Alright,” I say and give him space to walk in, he drops the machetes on the floor in the balcony and moves swiftly into the passage, then darts into a room, and in few seconds he comes with two old woven baskets. Without telling me, I know he is trying to take me to farm, a place I’ve reached last in 1999; fourteen years ago and that was after the death of our mother. Trying to feign that I notice it, “Where are you going?” I ask knowing well where he is going, “To the farm,” he replies looking at me with disbelief, he then fecklessly smile, “Aren’t you going?” he asks as he picks one of machetes, “Um, actually, I won’t go if I have somewhere else I can go” I confess frankly as I walk to pick up the woven basket he leaves; I know it is for me, “I’m not planning to go work much on the farm. Let’s just go bring home what to eat” he says as he walks out of the balcony and I follow him. We haven’t taken our baths. I think that is no problem because looking at both of us it is evidently seen by our dresses that we certainly need no bath and besides farm is not any clean office, it’s like picking trashes from the garbage, so I don’t bother.

He is walking faster than the fastest snail can, as fragile as he appears he still wants to walk fast. Farm work has changed his handsome rigid primate physique to a kind of reptiles’ whose walk is by crawling. If he isn’t my young brother and I don’t know how young he is, I’ll surely advice him for the third leg as his walking ability convince me quite well that he needs that at all cost. He walks forcing his body to move forward first before his legs; it is a kind of stressful way of walking. I keep walking behind him, watching him carefully so that he won’t trip on anything and smash the floor with his malnourished and medical attention lack body, I know if he does, I may end up digging a six feet height and width hole beside or behind our father’s house for he will for sure kick the bucket.

We have walked by two young girls and three boys between the age range of thirteen to fifteen who were with buckets – they are going to the river for water. They greeted with respect and loyalty, they made their knees to touch the floor and the boys actually prostrated like a snake; typical Yoruba children. Now, there is another three young lasses coming our way, I was hearing them prattling loudly from afar before but now I can see them well. Two of the ladies, the black complexion ones, are between the age range of twenty one to twenty three, while the third one, a fair complexion lady is either twenty or twenty one years of age, they evidently also are going to the river to fetch water for their buckets sit very comfortably on their heads without a brace. They also greet with respect, just like every other well culturally trained Yoruba girl would greet with her knees on the floor.

After meeting different anonymous faces of different ages on their different itineraries, we are now on the farm. It is amazing with the way Mokanjuola has managed the piece of farm he has tried to cultivate. An approximately thirteen plots of land, it looks clean as large as it is and the crops on the land are greatly green and healthy, he is good farmer.

“This is the part of the land father has left for us” he says as if I don’t know as he moves along the rows of ridges of newly planted maize, and I keep listening like a bewildered cretin. “Over there,” I say pointing to a bushy piece of land that is ahead of us and is the next land after the one we are on, “Who owns it?” I ask, though I’m trying to confirm if it still belongs to us because I’m sure it is part of our father’s land, “Father of course,” Mokanjuola replies without looking back as he leads the way. Anywhere he jumps, I must definitely jump with him for he knows where danger is and where there is none. He has shown me five different spots where he sets his traps; two have caught while the others are still waiting for the prey to come. A squirrel and an antelope are the meats caught respectively. “Those unfortunates had come here to destroy my maize,” Mokanjuola says on the spot where we stand to look at the extreme breath and length of the land, “Who?” I ask, “The rodents,” he replies as he watches me in the eyes, I feel inconvenient about his look but I hide it. He appears to have something to ask me, but not on the farm.

“This piece of land and the others, how do you manage to keep them?” I ask him trying to kill the silence, “I just do, I cannot explain,” Mokanjuola replies as he begins to harvest some yam tubers, “Sometimes, people try to trespass but not after I’ve warned them. Most of father’s relations had come to claim counties of the lands but it all failed like planting maize in desert,” he add as he stops working, “We will talk better about it, let us get what to eat first” I say trying to lure him back to doing what he was doing, “Sure,” he says as he uproots the fourth tuber of yam, “This is enough,” I say as I pick it up and fling it into the basket, “Let’s take three more, so it’ll sustain us for the day,” he says as he moves forward to another ridge and inserts his machete into the soil to dig out another tuber of the yam.

He has successfully withdrawn seven tubers of the yam from their abodes and it appears that he is satisfied with it, and we are now moving home. I’m carrying the basket with the yams while he carries the one with the meats.

CHAPTER THREE

There is nothing as strong as family ties, and no place is as sweet as home. Some days ago, I was one of those waifs on the street of Lagos hawking my goods in traffic congested areas hoping the night never comes because I hate where I sleep, I was there all alone with no one to share my pains and no one to call brother, sister or relative. There was no where so safe, but as from yesterday the story is taking another dimension. I’ve gotten a brother, a safe home and there is no qualm of where to sleep.

Its afternoon already and it’s a herald crying that today is far spent. We had roasted yam and boiled meat in the morning, this afternoon we just had pounded yam and vegetable soup, cooked with granulated melon, bunch of mushrooms and few pieces of the antelope’s meat. Mokanjuola has been a good cook. He also enjoy the product of his work in the kitchen, yet, as he cooks, he screams, “It’s no good being a bachelor! I miss mama!”

He is in his room sleeping after he had had the bachelors’ poison he had made, while after I had had from the food Mokanjuola made, I’m sitting in the balcony contrasting and comparing the differences and similarities between living and existing. Yesterday morning I was existing for I was just myself’ family and companion and I had no responsibility to be called for but today, I’m a responsible man seeing clearly the responsibilities he has, and I’ve gotten a family; someone I can lean on his shoulder. I’m living now, but yesterday; I was existing.

I’ve a lot secrete about myself, things that only Mr. McGongall and I know about. Let me share little of it anyway. I’m an educated fellow, I schooled in Lagos under the aegis of my friend Mr. McGongall.

This was how it all started. How we met and became friends. On that fateful day, like every other day, I don’t have a school so there is no need telling you I wasn’t in school. I was on the street like every other street kids, wandering around the congested area of Lagos state, I was supposed to be selling the newspapers as I’ve been doing but I just don’t understand why I didn’t do that on that day, even now if you ask me, it still remains a mystery. I was just seventeen years of age and that was the fifth year and seventh month I arrived at Lagos, which was sometimes around 2006. I left home for Lagos when I was twelve years, I’ve live on the street and I know what is what, who is who and where is where in the enclave of the streets. I know the bigger boys who are bloody so I don’t trespass their territory and with that, I’m safe. I don’t smoke, sniff, nor drink like every other waif does, not because I don’t want to but because I can’t take the risk of competing with the big ones in the coven where they meet, many of the young vagabonds lost their lives there because the older addicted ones want their pots and when they try to rebuke them, they send them to apparition either intentionally or mistakenly.

I sat on the pavement of the road, watching how a white fellow and his entourage of black men were instructing some workers on what to do on the new constructing road and how to do them. I was enthralled to watching them give orders and see the bunch of workers obey them immediately, for this, I wasn’t noticing that the other people; not only waifs but some young hawkers of different gender that were watching them as I was too had flee the spot when a soldier ordered them to leave. Suddenly, a lash was allowed to run riot on my back, it was with something the street residents know as “KOBOKO”. It is a long twisted dried animals’ skin, mostly cows’ skin. I howled in pains, and fell to the floor and one thing the Nigerian soldiers detest was what I did, so the soldier was gravely provoked and wanted to unleash it on me, he raised his hand in order to wiping me another round of the twisted animal skin but I was saved. “Stop it!” someone ordered from the other side, and the soldier did stop and that was how I escaped the second lash of the horrible beating material commonly use by the Nigerian armies. I stood and began to stagger, not because of the beat but because I was petrified beyond the threshold I could withstand. I was like that for few seconds before my hypothalamus picked up the normal message that I should run out of the spot, I took the baton and kicked off for the race, then another thunderous voice ordered, “Stop!”, but I ignored and increased my acceleration, “Stop!!” it said again, I wanted to ignore but fear caught up with me and reduced my speed to naught.

I was scared “I may get shot,” a voice said within me, “And that will be end,” another louder resonance of it blasted in my skull, “You better stop for a soldier could kill and still not be executed,” it gave an advice and I wanted to ignore, “That can be,” I said to myself, “He’ll surely forge a reason against the deceased,” the voice explained further, and I knew that was the bitter truth. I stopped and at that juncture, I was petrified that all I could do was to shiver away my strength. The reason was if I was killed there would be no one to treat my corpse kindly. I was asked to come back to the spot I had run away and I did immediately. For few seconds I was there watching each faces, some ignored my presence, most of the blue collar workers did while the others sympathized sarcastically, this can be tailed to the rack and files too, and to make it less ugly, I ignored myself also.

Then the white man came close to me and held me by my neck smiling cordially at me, he then asked, “Don’t you go to school?” with an accent that made what he said hard for me to understand, and I gave a positive nod. Actually, I didn’t know why I nodded but I think it’s one of those in a whim thing. The white fellow then looked at me and asked, “Will you like to go back to school?”As though he knew me before and know what I wanted, at that juncture I gave a feckless smile and gave another positive nod this time it was intentional. He then smiled and said, “I’ll advice you to go back to school, if you go, you’ll be able to revenge what that soldier did to you,” and he then gave me a pat on the back but mistakenly he hit me on the weal left by the whip and I reacted by holding his hands, “What is it?” he asked with surprise thinking I was trying to fight him but when he looked into my eyes and felt the pain he knew I was reacting to the stimulus, “Oops! Sorry” he said as he dragged away his hand from mine, he then gave me five hundred naira note to take care of myself and that was how we met. There was no name exchange, neither was there very much cordial interaction than that until seven months after, when we met again.

After he had talked to me over going back to school, it began to echo in my skull that I really needed education, not just education but western modern education in its apogee but there is no one to sponsor me. After two weeks of keeping the five hundred naira note on me unspent and resisting the call of schooling like the evangelists do to evangelism, I suggested enrolling myself into a public middle school in Lagos after I surrendered to the calling for I’ve already passed my common entrance exam before coming to Lagos though I did another common entrance with which one Mr. Surulere Ayegbajeje helped me with getting into the school. I bought the school uniform and some other school stuffs, such as note books, pens and a bag and other things the money the white man had given me was able to get for me. I suffered throughout the school days. I’ll go to school in the morning and return to the street to hawk for what to eat for the next day in the afternoon after the school hours, I don’t have problem about where to sleep for I sleep just exactly the way I’ve been sleeping; below an overhead bridge, or anyone’s shop. Throughout my school days that was how I lived and only God knows why it never affected my education, for I hardly read and I hardly score below ninety percent of every of my subjects from middle school class one to three and high school class one to three. None of my school mates know where I sleep though they suspected but all of them know I hawk on the street, they wondered how I managed to pass my exams, those who understood concluded I’m Ben Carson’s type; a gifted child, while those who didn’t said I used voodoo! Anyway they addressed it; I don’t allow their ignorance to affect my forward steps.

            I’ve ate and drank on the land poverty and sufferings and I believe it’s a beautiful place everyone should visit once in his or her lifetime but I don’t advise anyone to stay there for life. Poverty is a handsome and good teacher of life, sufferings are good teller of life stories, and poverty teaches you how to live life when wealthy come, melancholies tell you stories on how to maintain ecstasies when they reign.

            You may not believe this anyway, but I’ll tell you for you to know. I’m worth, one million five hundred and seventy eight thousand naira. It’s in my bank account sleeping and anticipating for me to wake it up and I’ll surely do that when the time comes.

Mokanjuola is awake, he is now coming to me, I’ll tell you the story about my money and before I forget, I’ve my Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination result, I did well in it, I had six credits, two distinction both in Agriculture and English language, and a pass in Geography.

“How did the nap go?” I ask looking into his eyes as deep as it has went below his sockets, “Not bad bro,” he replies very exhaustedly as though he had worked in his sleep, “I’m going to church,” he says in a way that convey that I should come with him, but I’ve not reach a church for twelve years not because there were no churches but because I didn’t just like church, “Alright, go and don’t be late,” I reply back, he is shocked and is taken aback, I suspect he had thought I’ll follow him dogmatically, “You won’t go to church?” he asks in disbelief, “Yes bro, perchance some other time,” I say trying to euphemize, “Alright,” he says, moves into the house and comes back in a new but old cloth and his bible well gripped by his left hand. We had taken our bath after we had eaten our breakfast meal, so he is good to go and he is gone already.

I’m left alone now and I want to go have my nap.

CHAPTER FOUR

Many days had gone though melancholy braced them. As rich as I am, I still suffer and still help to put my brother through suffer course too. Reasons are behind actions anyway. Suffering is no good thing but reasons is making me to subject myself and my young brother to it. It is three weeks and four days I arrived to my hometown now, and no family, neither of my mom’s linage nor of my dad’s heirs has come to check on any of us for better reason. The ones who heard I’ve arrived but like a psychopath waited for days before they come to check on me, check isn’t the good English word I should use but I just want to euphemize it, to tell the truth, they had come to make rude mocking remarks at me and my young brother.

This is one of the reasons why I have chosen to be poor with my rich sitting beside me. Well, I’m an innocuous innocent who knows nothing about why they had chose to be like that, my father was good to them with the little I know when I was young before he died, and my mom; the best mom anyone should beg for, was a caring and loving mother of all. The last one who came to us a day before yesterday, had mocked us with our father’s death, she went so much far to say, if care isn’t taken, I and my young brother will die the same horrible death our father encountered. I roguishly smiled at her; that mother of three, two males and one lady. Mrs. Esutola Anigilaje, never knew why, she didn’t even think twice about it.

When I left Lagos for Iragberi, I made a decision and on it I’ve stood since I’ve been home. The decision was that until I know who loves me and my young brother for real, I won’t show off what I’ve got. I’ve vowed that not even my young brother would know about it until it is the right time for him to know.

The time hasn’t come yet and he is not yet to know. Mokanjuola has been a good brother since I’ve been home; he has done a lot of sacrifice for me. He divided his farm into two and gave half of the parts to me, “All I have belongs to you brother” he said when he gave my part of the farm to me.

We have shared our insufferable stories the night after the second day I arrived. Under the bright full full-moon light, and the glitter of the stars like the fire-flies and the night whispering lullaby of the insects, tears went down our cheeks quickly after each other like a sprinting spring as the no good stories were told, the claps of each of our lips as they gave a free rein to the rueful stories could be heard, our eyes told tatty taunt tales to the tattered souls we embedded. Categorizing the threshold of the melancholy of each story, I’ve come to conclude that mine is bad, his is ugly. When he unleashed to me what he encountered before my arrival, looking at the severity of the melancholy, I immediately accept nihilism as my way of life for if it was me, I’m sure I would have begged for euthanasia. Let me tell you what he told me.

He shifted his short local stool close to me after I’ve told him my pitiable story and the cicatrix I’ve suffered, he looked straight into my eyes and said “You really suffered brother, but to me your story is a halcyon,” he then raised and twisted his lumbar in order to containing his lumbago, he then as usual, gave another feckless smile, then added, “Mine is a turbulence.”

I adjusted myself on the local stool on which I sat, and get my ears ready for the hot molten magma that he was about to pour into them. I knew the story would hurt hotly yet I couldn’t wait to listen synchronically to it. He smiled ruefully at my reactions, scoffed and then readjusted himself too on the stool, he then opened his mouth like a thirsty duck but nothing was said, the next reaction was that he began to cry though he forced himself to talk but it seemed for I’ll be the first person he would ever have the chance to tell how he feels to so he seemed not to be inured to the circumstances surrounding telling sad stories. I was moved emotionally, I could understood, I knew he reacted that way because he had imagined what he had encountered and the figments of his imagination vividly portrayed in his memory. I quickly embraced him, and for few seconds we were like that. He sobbed as I unwrapped myself from him, he then said, “I don’t just know where to start from,”, he then gave an hiatus, and then started again, “I was mocked here and there, no family wants to help, no food, no clothes, I was even driven away from home, I dropped out from school, I was frustrated by life and its entourages, I hated ever being alive, I could remember when I went to mama’s grave, I lamented to her, I told her how I was suffering, I howled yet she didn’t come, I don’t just understand why life has to be this way bro,” he said frustratingly unclearly like every other frustrated soul would tell their melancholy story.

I couldn’t understand his ranting lamentation well, but I didn’t want to elevate his agony yet I wanted to know what really happened. I allowed him to wrap the ranting then gave little sympathizing remarks and then asked him to tell me synchronically what happened to him when I wasn’t around. He looked straight at me in disbelief, I’ve anticipated such reaction anyway, I understood he would be shocked I still didn’t understand what he had been ranting about but the truth of it was that I understood he was ranting because he was hurt but I wasn’t interested in whether he was hurt or not because I know it as I know the moon that he was certainly hurt but all I want to know who are those who had made him suffer. “Please tell me,” I said to make him know I wasn’t teasing him. He wasn’t happy with it though but he really also wanted me to know who the good geese are and who the bad orchids of the family are, so he started first by blaming me for leaving him without looking back, he then proceeded;

“After you’ve left for Lagos, I was all alone on my own though I stayed with Mr. Esutola until he died two years after. When he was alive, he was nice and was caring and he tried all his best to curb his wife from treating me like a slave but after his death, things was exacerbated by the handiwork of his wife. I’ll go to school with nothing to fill my victuals office for days, four days at least. I can go like that with nothing in me, sometimes I’m lucky to get things to put into my belly from friends at school, yet Mrs. Esutola will punish me for all of my peccadilloes.

I try to avoid big offences as much as I try to avoid death for if I mistakenly commit any big offence then I should call for my hearse to get ready, thinking about committing any big offence is as bad as thinking about digging a grave for an infant, so I don’t even think of it not to talk of doing it. I’ll fetch the whole water for the entire house while her children will do the watching; though the eldest child hated this but he’ll never try to help for if he did, then he is done for.

The other two children change their attitude towards me like chameleon changes its complexion; today they’ll come and sympathize and tomorrow they’ll come and jeer at me gratuitously, and I believed they enjoyed the sadism. I always sell her dried fish every time I arrive from school every day after I’ve sold chewing stick in the morning before school hours, sometimes the first period will be already gone.

Though it was a public school where anyone hardly cares about when you come to school that much but thank God for my lovely class teacher, Mrs. Dotson Diadem Julia, an Igbo woman who tried to understand and definitely understood everything I was encountering. She had always mark my attendance as present even when I’m not in class, she believed that even if I’m not in class for that morning I cannot be absent for the whole day though sometimes I disappoints her by not coming at all when I am too late for school but thanks to God I’ve not for once put her in trouble. Doing this was not a legal under her profession but she did it out of love.

I keep living like this until I had my middle school part three terminal examinations, then, for the sake of my life that was at stake, I ran away from home to Ode–Omu, a town far from Iwo where a friend who knows about my predicament had asked me to come stay with his family by my two tiny tatty feet.

When I arrived at the village, I fell sick for twenty days after I’ve walked for two straight days, the moon really helped as source of light, there was no fright because I was not scared of death and there is no fright that is beyond the macabre of death. They have always said no pain no gain, but brother, I swear by what I revere the most in deification, if pain emerge beyond what masochism can contain, there is no gain from it. I suffered and I know how a five days old cooked yam taste, I suffered and water tasted sour and sugar was bitter than bitter kola, and my living in life was as smooth as the skin of an aged crocodile.

I was first challenged in the new family I entered, but when I explained to them who I am and how I managed to survive they definitely allowed me to stay with condition, saying I would only stay with them if I can see myself as one of the family and not just a visitor. They are family of ten children; six girls who are all the elders, four of them are married already before I join them and four boys. The second eldest boy, Hasmukh, was my friend who brought me into the family while Amathalal is the first son. They are all good, cool, caring and God fearing family. Mr. and Mrs. Imran are good parents, I love them. One thing that is forever enigmatic about them was the fact that they are devoted practicing Muslims, but they never for once stopped me from going to church. Brother Tanimola, little can my mouth say of the pains my soul had suffered, for little can the can a baby say of what happened before it was born. I suffered bro, God is my witness.”

He told the story ruefully, making hiss his hiatus and cleaning his eyes as entr’acte. Thousands of hisses were released from him, maybe millions from me, for the hiss reigned as if it was raining. As he unleashed his pathetic story, I rued for the fact that I left him all alone to eke all his days. There is reason for me anyway. I was called by the eldest of my father’s family, Pa. Ejide Shifau Idiokedun, a wild animals hunter, he called me after my dad’s death and said to me, “My son, many of these people will promise you rivers flowing of honey, tuxedoes made of gold, and perfect nights spent under well decorated igloo. I say to you as old as I’m and assure you with my grey hairs that it shall all be sincere lie, so, I’ll advice you to kindly find means to do something, find a way to make sure you and your brother don’t suffer for life. They can do but nothing after the death of your father, so I will advise you to heed to my words.” He was the one who suggested I go to Lagos to go work but he never knew I’ll go, I left without telling anyone, even I wanted to hide it from my mind if it was possible. When I asked of him when I arrived, I was told he has come, done and gone, I was told he had kicked the bucket. He released his phantom when he clocked one jubilee and thirty years, he deserve to be as old as the Adwaita the tortoise who lived for two centuries and a half plus two years, people like him deserves aeon longevity.

Mokanjuola suffered because I left him when he was still so young, I’m three years older than him, so he was nine years old when I left.  If he could walk a distance of almost fifty kilometers at the age of fourteen for he said he left Iragberi for Ode-omu six years after I have left. And if he could know the taste of a five days old food, if he could sustain life with one meal a day for one month and months, and could survive by begging little food or no food at all for days, if he could survive all these pains, then he has suffered a lot than I have. For, actually, I didn’t beg for food, and didn’t starve myself, I didn’t suffer molestation, and wasn’t pelted with abusing words that can break someone back bones like the ones Mrs. Esutola had thrown at him, all I suffered was that, I didn’t have a good clothe and surely, he didn’t as well, I didn’t have a good place to sleep but he escaped this.

CHAPTER FIVE

Mokanjuola has been thinking since I and him had talked over returning him to school yesterday night. His replies were promising, but I notice he had uhtceare through the night, and before this morning he seems to have developed ergophobia, hum dungeon and clinomania and I strongly believe that no expergefactor would wake him from his tattered old bed that belonged to mama when she was alive. Although his staddle is getting deeper he still doesn’t want to get up.

It is three months now that I have arrived from Lagos, changes should take place now. At least, our clothes should be changed and our hairs should be shaved, our living should be upgraded and the places we rest our bodies in should be renovated to modern standard.

I have done all that should be done to know who are those who love me for real will and who are those who love me for legal will. I have provoked people to know who will forgive me my transgresses even as I am a ragamuffin who has no worth, I have hurt people to know who will endure my trespasses, I have abused to know who wants to be loyal for real, and I have pretended I have nothing to know who will stand by me and brace to grace me through topsy-turvy times. I have teased a lot of people to get from them what they think of me. I sometimes talked fecklessly and laughed with no reason, to see who will scream, “Psychopath!”

Mrs. Esutola and her children had once developed this habit of greeting me by calling me “Beere”, a Yoruba word which simply means; an old uncle or brother who have no money neither any social value; simply a valueless elder. That hurts me hotly that I couldn’t endure. I understand the children really don’t like it too. I have been taught to be reckless in order to be wrecked less from the bigger boys of the street, so I defiantly definitely rebuff them. I was reckless with rebuffing the idea off their sanity so that I will wreck less or wreck never and they will rest less and eventually become restless.

Mokanjuola is awake, he is right beside me standing erectly as though he is a guard assigned for my protection, and he appears weak and tired and looks at me as though I am the thing responsible for his clinomania. I smile at him and he smiles back childishly brotherly and I welcome it with avuncular, he sits beside me and rest his head on my shoulder. I am so happy with this and I pray this moment lasts till eternity. Nothing is as sweet as sharing the family love, I feel sweetness inside me, sweetness that I pray it never cease even at my deathbed.

I am planning how to raise the discussion we left without a strict conclusion yesterday but Mokanjuola is not looking encouraging, his appearance and attitude since yesterday is much of recalcitrant attitude. I am afraid he may not go school any further. Let me give a try anyway; let me ask if he wills.

“Mokanjuola, hope you’re ready for today’s itinerary?”

“Brother, I am too old to go back to school,”

He replies sharply as if beforehand, he was on ambush of the question and then recedes just few inches away as though I would drag him there.

“You’re not, dear young brother. Don’t you think too old of yourself, it hinders prosperity. I was old when I restarted school, so, to me aged or not aged is no excuse to whatever achievement you endeavor most especially in education,”

I reply and try to counsel him so as to avoid consoling him in the end of his life.

“I have no taste for education again,”

“Why?”

I ask in disbelief, and I am intrigue to know the reason behind.

“I don’t know, I just don’t know,”

He replies like a bewildered shanghaied cretin.

“Education these days, it’s important for human continued existence, so you need it, not just for flaunt but because it’s a vital part of human existence,”

I advice, moving close to him in the aim to embracing him, because I remember vividly, that I once heard Pa. Ejide Shifau say that “There is power of understanding in body contacts of two individuals,” when I was very young.

“You are teasing me as though you don’t know what really is going on. No money, no good health and no tangible clothes. Can’t you see for yourself how malnourished I look?”

He laments of his own health for the first time since I have been home. He doesn’t complain, and he doesn’t rely. He is just an epitome of mavericks.

I understand we need money and many other things, though, there is money for the provisions but I canst let him know anything about my money in the bank for now. I know it’s not any eternity secret for, for sure it will be exposed to him but all I pray for is that it doesn’t hurt him too much when he knows.

“Young man, I understand we need money, don’t you worry about that, we are going to fix these things soon. Just get your mind set for the school enrolment and leave every other thing to God and man and wait for its result.”

He sees me as a young hurt poverty companion agonizing soul, ranting his maudlin psychobabble to a deaf and dumb famished blind fellow. Certainly, my words are making no sense to him. He looks me in disbelief, shakes his head and stand to leave.

“Hey, don’t leave. I promise we will fix these things today,”

I say and he smiles, sits and then in disbelief looks at me as if I have gone mad.

“How do you mean? How do you want this to be done?”

 He asks and waits for an answer, not just an answer but a reasonable one as I can read from his looking. Though, I have no reasonable answer but I still want to convince him. They say action speaks more audible than words; I’ll take actions now, to convince him.

“Let’s go to bank,”

I say looking straight into his eyes to convince him that I’m not to prank him. He is surprised but he doesn’t conflict it. He stands and wants me to lead the way; I quickly stand too and go to pick my automated teller machine card and we begin the journey to Iwo for there is no bank in my town and Iwo is the nearest town I can go to withdraw.

Mokanjuola is still looking at me in an inconvenient manner, he wants to ask questions but he seems like he doesn’t know which question to ask me in particular. He often breaths and let it sinks down his heart cavity, and uses hiss to cap the action, and if I ask why he has been sinking his breath so much and so often he will just say it’s nothing that he is fine giving aimless smile in between every hiatus of his words.

The problem now is that we don’t have the transport fare for our proposed itinerary. I’ll return the money to whoever lends me, but there has been no one to lend me the money. I have no friend, neither any enemy but those who prove themselves to be. I feel like meeting with Mrs. Esutola for the money I know she has it but she is certainly not going to lend, I don’t even understand why I’m thinking like this.

I tell Mokanjuola what the problem is and he says we should go meet one of the motorcyclists that shuttle the place and then bargain with him to take us to Iwo and we will pay him when we get there.

One of the riders accepted our offer and took us down to Iwo local government. I withdrew from my account a sum of hundred thousand naira only, I paid the rider double sum of the amount we have bargained earlier and he felt like a thief and flee away. With the way he looked at me and some witless questions he asked me before collecting the money with a shameless wild wide feckless smile, I suspected he thought my insanity has at last reached the apogee for maybe he thought if at all I’ve got such a huge amount I shouldn’t spend it in such an extravagant manner. Mokanjuola, was taken aback with the huge sum of money I withdrew, he wanted and wished he could question it but that moment we both need the money so he sluggishly welcomed my suspicious quomodocunquize.

We had our hairs cut to the finest, and we bought clothes of different kinds; net rate of forty thousand naira only. We bought fine smelling creams, bathing soaps, and about two bottles of romantic smelling perfume, some kitchen utensils, two new mattresses and then enough food stocks apart from the ones we have in the farm, such as yam, palm oil and some other food stocks we can easily get from the farm and we left Iwo for Iragberi in a hired bus. As we moved home I thought over renovating the furniture in the house and the house itself. I wanted wholly, a new looking domicile for the new us. Money drives one crazily; I even wanted a wife and children, all in a day!

What a change in a jiffy. I never knew life can change so quickly!

Money is man, man is money. A man that will be called man would have money because a man without money is like a shadow; he follows around the money man, he shows only when the time is topsy-turvy; during the sunny hot times, but when the rain falls, when the weather is cold and cool for better living; he is out. A man without money would be spent like money, and a man with money will spend both money and man without money. I love money though but I love saintliness the most.

We were in some hours ago the ragamuffins but now, at this moment we are the richest bachelors in our town, that’s an overstatement though. I pose in my newly bought jean trousers and a pair of shirt; expensive ones, after I have taken a nice calm bath in the happiest mood and thinking over avenging and revenging what was done to my Mokanjuola and me, I have got the money to dust the dust on me. While Mokanjuola is dressed in his clothes too, he lasted more than an hour in the bathroom; the water falls calmly as though it wasn’t pouring at all. I suspected he was thinking over how I get the money and how things could change so easily and quickly. Though the clothes haven’t look good on him yet, for he is greatly emaciated, yet he looks different from the Mokanjuola every other person has known before; the ragamuffin before now, now is the one wearing the expensive clothes of the time.

CHAPTER SIX

Today is the happiest day since I have been home, even the air around us knows about the changes going on; the smell is differ from that of yesterdays.

Mrs. Esutola has heard about us, she is right in front of the house looking at me and my young brother as though we had came to steal what we are wearing form her wardrobe. She slough a little forward, and smiles, not because she is happy for us but because she just can’t believe what she is seeing.

We try to ignore her as though she wasn’t around at all as we continue our talk but her fidgeted moves are much than something we can just give no attention.

“Tanimola! Tanimola!! Tanimola!!!” she cries out my name suddenly after the tremendous no blink gaze with her devilish cantata singing eyes is done on us, “I knew it!” she adds, “I knew you are going to become bandits at last!” she screams out loud; loud enough for the deaf to hear. “You cannot go unpunished; you’ll both be caught very soon and be slaughtered right in front of everyone in a piazza where the ghosts of your pathetic unfortunate parents will watch you groan in throes of death helplessly.”

I guess she is thinking we stole the things we bought, I am sure she didn’t see us bring those things in; some rumour mongers most have brought the news to her door step. I am not happy with her claim anyway but I am happy she sees the changes; I feel how it’s burning inside her like liquid rock. I like the sadism she is experiencing from my audible actions.

Thank God, except of the domestic animals and the lizards around, I and Mokanjuola are the only ones who are listening to her gratuitous nightmarish cry because the neighbors have gone to work. It is forty minutes gone past one in the afternoon, it’s still during the working hours; the students are at school and the government workers are still at their different work places while the farmers are still busy with their hoes and the jobless are busy with sleep or measuring the streets’ lengths and paying no attention to whatever the noise around them may be. Mokanjuola wants to reply her but I refuse, we leave her in the balcony where she had come to meet us and go inside.

Fire of vengeance burns brilliantly inside my heart, its waiting for whom to consume with sadism, it’s lunging for who is to make suffer for his or her deeds. I feel like reaping Mrs. Esutola apart but the time is yet to come. She didn’t know what I am worth, she knows nothing about what I can do and cannot do, and she knows nothing about the revolution taking place. I pity her not, for not any iota of augur for forgiveness passes my mind.

“Why didn’t you allow me to reply that fool?”

Mokanjuola asked with his eyes red from anger.

“We don’t need to give answer to what will harm us not,”

I reply folding my arms against my chest as vengeance cries within me. I know I should have let him but I don’t know the reason behind why I didn’t, I am happy about it though but it still hurts as he asks me.

“How do you mean?”

Mokanjuola asks, waiting for a reply as he looks into my vengeance seeking soul’s windows.

“That is libelous statement for anyone to say. She has gone beyond her boundary big brother,”

“I know she has gone beyond her limit, but we still have to be patient with whatever step we want to take. Sometimes being quiet while an opponent rants hurts than ranting with an opponent, in this kind of situation being quiet is the best way to kill her greatly in her marrows,”

“Alright, I accept what you say but if she comes here to behave this way any other time, she will surely pay the price,”

He says and leaves. I watch his shadow disappear into his room and I look out to see if Mrs. Esutola is still at the entrance but she is gone. She must have left because we left her to be ranting to the shadows of the things that don’t exist and that is typical way to let someone express insanity. Well she is wise enough to have left, for is she hasn’t, I am thinking of putting the front door under latch and getting the windows closed and by then she will be shouting at no one, not even anyone’s shadow and her insanity will be by then at the highest state.

I stay for few seconds in the balcony, as I regurgitate the bitter salt of what Mrs. Esutola has came to do; she has for sure spoilt the day. My soul could sing of nothing else for her but a severe rueful vengeance full madrigal, I am sure she will dance to it and I’ll enjoy the sadism. As I think over revenging what she has done to me and my young brother, I also think over forgiving her; it’s hard for me though but I still want to count my days by the friends I make and the faces I put smiles on not by the people who hurt me that I hurt back nor by the number of vengeances I succeeded in accomplishing. Mokanjuola will certainly verily hate this philosophy, hate me and immeasurably hate its accomplishment. He will hate it if I practice this hypothesis on Mrs. Esutola, he wants her to eat from the cake she had made.

CHAPTER SEVEN

(Seven months after)

I am at the entrance of my new looking archaic inherited house watching the fading of the sun and the rise of the moon come alive. There is no one with me except the stubborn domestic he goat who I have rebuked for the eight time or so, the distance whispering birds are the things that are making it not much boring for the presence of the he goat is as good as not having a living thing around.

My young brother has went out with a friend; a female friend to be précised. I have come to the realization that money is more powerful than charm. Since he has changed his wardrobe, he has gotten more new friends. If he had used some charismatic igniter charm some four months ago, I’m very sure he wouldn’t have as much beautiful female friends as he had had in just two months that he started his academics.

Mokanjuola is a very smart fellow. An averagely tall not so thin black man who poverty has almost destroyed his physique. Mokanjuola is turning a positive attitude towards his academics, though not the best in his class but a noticeable performance has been put forward by him in the school. Sometimes, I jealous his learning ability which is close to the Williams James Sidis’, I’m scared I may die with it anyway.

  I have been sitting in this breathing things filled wilderness for the past one hour now waiting for my young brother to come home because I’ve got something vital to discuss.

I’m thinking of expanding our farm and introducing poultry and maybe we could collect loan of controllable interest or no interest at all from the government or from any bank. Mokanjuola is a smart guy. He is a very objective observant and a swift strict decision maker. Whenever he says no and he really meant it then the line of Rubicon has been crossed and it is irrevocable; I also learn that from him, the ability to make an unchangeable decision. He’ll say “whoever that does not have a rule that governs him or her, is more like a slave because he or she lives by the rule stipulated by others.”

Though everything is happening like the flash of lightning and I am scared for everything may also end like dew, yet, I still love it.

It has been some thirty minutes now that I’ve been here listening to the song of the wind and watch the nearby plants dance to it. Nothing is better than peace and the only place where peace lives is grave anyway.

Mokanjuola is now around, his look isn’t good, he seems like he lost a fight to someone who factually won’t be able to beat him. His eyes is filled with anger, his face shows he could shut the world down if he has the chance and the way he rubs his palms together shows nothing but vengeance.

“What happened?” I ask and wait for few seconds as I stare into his eyes to feel what stairs his soul,

“It will be better you don’t ask me what happened because if I tell you, you’ve got no nerve to do anything about it,” he says as he moves toward the entrance,

“You don’t talk to me like that and you don’t walk away when I’m talking to you!” I yell. It was not for anger and not for anxiety but for curiosity, the curiosity to know what happened.

He reverse about three steps and we stand side by side facing opposite directions and starts “What do you mean by I shouldn’t talk to you like that? Is it because you brought and bought everything? Or what makes you think in that manner?”

This time I know what I’m feeling is not curiosity but anger, I want to talk in anger but I still have to be patient so that I don’t worsen things, I understand he has been provoked and it’s something that has to do with me.

“I’m sorry,” I apologize and ask him what happened again but calmly and cordially. He says Mrs Esutola’s daughter and her friends saw him with his friend and they began say to we stole everything we wear and own, that his friends should beware of who they should be walking with for someday they’ll be implicated.

The kind of anger I’m feeling now is doubled the anger God used in destroying Sodom and Gomorrah but yet something still don’t want me to fight back, some voice is whispering inside me to be calm and to not give vengeance for vengeance.

I swallow the sticky saliva that quickly gathered in my mouth with difficulty, anger is showing on my face but I have to put smile to façade it in order to extirpate the situation. I want to make things better and I know it’s not by breaking the eggs of the fowl that spilled one’s herb.

 “Mokanjuola, we should not let these things turns us into the bad ones, we should try to be patient,” softly I say to him but with sure difficulty.

Mokanjuola swiftly move towards me, look me in the eyes, in a very strong way and I see nothing but mixture of anger, vengeance and hatred in his eyes; they were clearly shown in them.

As if he would punch my face, he raises his right arm and squeezes his palm to form a kind of small stone, he gnash his teeth so hard that I hear the cracking. He then says in anger “You are a coward and you are devotedly committed to your cowardice,” he moves a step forward and swiftly turn back at me, I know those words are not enough to express his anger and I’m sure he turns back to say the words that conveys what he really feels. “I hate you!” he yells the words one after the other as if he had said them all together he would explode. He moves into the house and I hear the bang of his door from the outside where he had left me to choose whether I’m truly the coward he called me or the peacemaker I pictured myself.

“The jealous ones don’t live long, for they increase in sadness per unit increase in another man’s fortune,” I say to myself and breathe in the new air.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The only time a man is worth to be called a man is when he knows the true meaning of family. Family is strong and a fortress, family is paradise when it is run in the right path and the love in it is made strong. I’ve used all night thinking of how to sort things out with our greatest enemy in this hometown. I may be able to change many things but one thing I cannot change is the fact that this woman is my family whether I want it or not.

It is only when one has spent some parts of one’s lifetime alone with no family one would realize the necessity of family. I’ve spent a lot of time outside the tie of family and that’s enough a reason for me to make sure the only family I have left doesn’t break. This time I do not care about what my young brother think of this and I have to make him realize it is necessary for one to build a family of love and not a family of hatred.

I know he had passed through hell for the indifference attitude of the family towards him nevertheless, there must be an explanation for these people’s attitude and this is what I’ve used half of the whole night trying to figure out. It is going to be a kind of complicated thing for the both of us but he has to open his mind for understanding and take the fact.

He should be up now; I’ll go discuss with him what I’ve thought about and why it should be like that.

“Hello brother,”

“Good morning big brother. How was the night?”

“It was really fine. How about yours?”

“Not so bad, let me pretend it went well,”

He looks into my eyes for few seconds, a little smile of disbelief run through his cheeks, he then says;

“You don’t look a bit like your night was fine; you look like someone who hasn’t slept for many days. Tell me what’s on your mind brother.”

I move a bit forward and then stop and rest my back on the wall facing oppositely where he is sitting just about three feet sideway away from me. I don’t want to sound awkward and hard and I don’t want to strike hard on him, so I begin with a little smile.

“Did you remember how mom used to buy us candies every time she returns from market?”

“Yes, I surely vividly do. And why do you ask?”

“I just miss those moments and those candies,”

“Ahem, is that why you haven’t been sleeping?”

“No, that is not why I haven’t been sleeping,”

“Then why?”

I stop, move to his front, and stare deep into his eyes. He shows curiosity and is very ready to listen to what I have to say and that’s what I want; his attention.

“What do you want us to do to Mrs. Esutola and her children?”

With a kind of anger mixed with surprise, he grins and then asks rhetorically.

“What else would I have wanted if not revenge?”

“And after that what else do you want us to do again?”

“Revenge! Nothing else but revenge,”

“What shall be our gain from this?”

The contortion on his face changes from anger towards Mrs. Esutola and her children and puts mine on.

“Whatever we gain from it, even though it’s nothing and nothing still; is a thing.”

I ignore his angry reply and try to let him see reason why we don’t need any revenge.

“These people would have reasons why they’re behaving in this manner toward us.”

He cuts in, in anger and yells at me.

“The reason behind this is because they know I’ve a coward brother and we won’t do a thing!”

It hurts me whenever he says I’m a coward, I feel like I’m vulnerable and like I’ve been invaded. Nevertheless, I still need to make him realize we don’t need revenge.

“Shut up!” I yell back at him.

“You’re a naïve and you know nothing about life. You think everything should be given backlash? You think everything should be paid back in the same measure you were given? Don’t be a fool and come back to your right senses. If these individuals do not have reason for doing these they wouldn’t be doing it, don’t you get it? Every dog has a reason for barking even those who bark into the void.”

In anger I reply saying each word as fast as I could lay them. For the first time since I have been home, I yell at my young brother. I hope he understands why. I feel bad anyway but he still needs to be brought back to bottom and make him realize not every act is worth paying and even some acts are even pay backs.

“There is this popular saying which says do not forget three people in your life; first, someone who do not leave you during difficult time, second, someone who put you in difficult time and third, someone who left you in difficult time. What do you understand by this? Brother”

He says watching me in the eyes and moving his eye balls as often as I move mine. He wants a reply and wants it now. I give a shrug and then say;

“If this is your philosophy, I guess your interpretation is wrong. The difficult situation was built by someone, and someone actually left us in it, and no one yet has stood by us. Mrs. Esutola is the difficult situation we have now and someone, somehow, somewhere must have created her and that someone is the person who should put the blame on and not Mrs. Esutola”

I reply understanding little of what I am saying but I believe I’m saying the right thing and say it with great confidence.

He appears as confused as I am and it shows that he really needs more explanation from me.

“How do you mean?” he asks.

“What I mean is that someone so close must have done something that’s now the repercussion slashes on us. Someone must have hurt this woman and she is paying back using us.”

“And who is that so close that must have done this?”

“That’s the question. That’s the question I’ve been asking myself and trying to answer, but the only way to get the answer to the question is by asking her.”

Mokanjuola laughs out loud pointing at me in disbelief.

“Do you think it’s going to be easy facing her?” he asks as he laughs awkwardly.

I know it’s going to be tough but to make it less hard on Mokanjuola; I give the lie and say it’ll be the simplest thing.

CHAPTER NINE

In life, I have learnt many things but one thing I still haven’t understand is why we have to keep hurting ourselves. Why north wouldn’t want to see south in good health and why south would detest seeing east in fortune. If things should continue this way, in the end the whole would fall like that of Jericho because someday somehow this habit maybe evenly distributed and the whole world would turn against each other and the repercussion wouldn’t be fair.

I’m on my way to Mrs. Esutola’s house alongside my young brother, it has been a quiet walk; no chitchat, not even a seconds look at each other, the deep bush along the way make it even worst. I’ve succeeded in making him realize the essence of family tie though it was hard but I think he throw in the trowel only for peace to reign according to what he had told me previously.

We are short distance away from Mrs. Esutola’s house; I feel a little nervous and very weak inside. I’ll not tell this to Mokanjuola though it is written clearly on my every act right now but I’ll try to keep it away from him.

“Big brother,”

“What’s it?”

“I’m afraid, I’m very afraid.”

“What are you afraid of? She is not going to bite us dear, is she?”

“No, she is not but I’m afraid I’m going to bite her”

I stop slowly in surprise, look into his eyes as though something I verily need is missing in it. We are just few steps away from her house; let me say eight steps for precision.

“We cannot just turn back now, Mokanju you should understand.”

I say softly as I put my right palm flatly on his shoulder to show compassion and slap it gently on my brow and that’s for confusion.

“Why can’t we turn back?”

He asks so readily as though he had been expecting me to say those words.

“We are just little steps away from our trouble free moment or let me say freedom from our trouble causing person. I don’t think we should turn back now.” I say trying to convince him.

“It may even be few steps away from another big problem, even bigger than the ones we have seen.”

He replies as quickly as I finished my sentence. He is making sense now; I am beginning to see things I didn’t anticipate before. Doubts start rolling my mind but I still believe we still can do it.

“No problem is going to come up.” I say as if I could tell the future.

As we move a step closer my heart beats increase and my eyes become fully dilate. I continue to swim in my adrenalin as I step further. Finally, we are at the front of her house.

“What the heck! What are you thieves doing here?”

A boy; three feet taller than my young brother in estimate, a little fleshy and handsome, he seems to be the eldest of the family. I don’t know his name, what a shame? I don’t know the name of my brother. He asks so roughly, dropping himself from a little high block fence that was made to demarcate their house but stopped half way.

“That’s uncalled for.”

Mokanjuola says nicely and calmly and this exacerbates instead of extricating the issue.

“What is it that’s uncalled for? Tell me what is uncalled for you clowns!”

He yells and dashes forcefully towards us. I don’t know his name and I should call him with what would bring him to his senses.

“Hey! Brother, we only come in peace.”

I say to extricate the matter but it didn’t help. I face my young brother who I don’t even know has taken a log of wood of twelve to fourteen inches long from where I’ll describe as nowhere.

“You’re not going to need that.”

I say to Mokanjuola who from his action is very ready to use the log if necessary.

“Yes, I’m not going to need it if and only if he is not going to need that too.”

Mokanjuola replies pointing at the young boy. He is also holding a similar object and it is sure he wouldn’t hesitate to use it if he has the chance. This is when I realize there are lots of logs around us and I see tremor coming alive.

“He brother, please drop that.”

I beg my brother who I know is the only one who would listen to me but unfortunately for me he is not listening and no augur that he is going to listen until the other boy drops his weapon.

I need someone to assist me, I’m hoping someone comes early to help, else, things is going to go out of control in few seconds.

I move quickly to knock Mrs. Esutola’s front door but no one open and I quickly run to the windows unfortunately they are kept behind steals so I cannot knock but I call for help yet no one respond. On getting back to the spot everything has died down just as it all began like a magical show. Quietness took control of everything that the sound of the scratch of the snail’s fleshy foot will be heard.

“What have you done?”

I ask in curiosity as I run to the young boy who was on the floor gasping as he struggles for breath, blood oozes out of his nose and mouth, his feet are shaking vigorously as though they would explode and his arms as strong as the log I drag out of his right hand on which he unconscientiously hold tightly on to.

“Mokanju, can you please explain this to me?”

I ask again and this question becomes the refrain of every break of my heart.

“Why have you done this? Please tell me why.”

I demand in tears as if he would answer me.

“He is dead! You’ve killed him!”

I yell at Mokanjuola who is still holding the log tightly in his hand. He moves a step backward and fell to the floor on his buttocks as though he tripped on something.

Mrs. Esutola’s front door suddenly open up and she comes out screaming in our language.

“They have killed my child! All the neighbors should come out! My child has been murdered. I saw them both strangle my only son to death. Eh! Ah! Um! My head! The spirits of my forefathers please do not sleep! Oh! The world, I’ve been finished. Come to rescue!”

CHAPTER TEN

Still panting, we’ve been walking this bush for about ten minutes before now plus the run from Mrs. Esutola’s house it should be twenty five minutes all together. I don’t understand the reason behind our running, we should have stayed and say all that happened to the people maybe they’ll understand but they may not understand as well and that may even result in the worst of all case; jungle justice.

Trying to figure out what happened and how in God’s name we have gotten into this bush. A little awkward smile facade my fear and sweat run furiously through my face.

“Why in the world did you have to hit him to death?”

I ask in anger and dash towards Mokanjuola and then give him one heavy punch on his face. I didn’t intend to do that though but I’m losing control of my anger and fear.

“I didn’t hit him; I wasn’t the one who hit him. I swear, I’m not the one.”

He replies as I intend to dash on him again. At this juncture, I’m confused and surprised, I don’t even know who or what to believe, maybe myself or him or the picture of the innocent boy’s body I saw on the floor struggling for life or the one I’m trying to form in me right now.

“Please, stop lying. It won’t help us in this situation.”

I say as I slowly move away from him in confusion trying to decipher the entire occurrence.

“I’m not lying. I swear by God who I’ll report to in the end and my soul is my witness, I’m not lying. He was so angry and wanted to descend on me as heavily as he could, on swinging the log in his hand to whip me in the head in anger he lost balance and control and hit his head on the floor so heavily that he lost breathe too.”

He explains appearing very truthful and innocent. If I cannot tell anything about him, I am sure I can tell when he is telling the truth.

“Then we shouldn’t be running. You didn’t kill him, did you?”

I ask rhetorically and stand to return to the scene. I don’t know how it’s going to look like if I return there, things may go off course and devil may take the steer-wheel to driving me to my grave through the jungle justice road.

“No matter what the case I still need to do the right thing.”

I say to myself as I take two steps moving out of the bush we had threw ourselves into without bearing.

“What are you trying to do?”

Mokanjuola asks as though he didn’t understand what it means. Well, I am not replying him anyway.

“You’re not going to return to that place. We cannot pay for what we didn’t do.”

He says, waylays me and keeps obstructing my every move by moving the same way I move.

“What do you want us to do if we do not do this?”

“Let’s run away. Let’s run away from this place,”

“For how long can we run? Mokanju, for how long can we?”

He stands still and calm, his head slants to the left and his two arms standing downward just as the apes’, just exactly the way I am and stares me in face, tears run down his cheeks and quietness is doing its best. It shows that he is fed up.

“We can run for now and not forever, so why not let’s do the right thing and save ourselves from running before we outrun our time. We need to do this.”

I say to him who is standing stagnant in front of me as if he isn’t listening. Though he is sobbing very loudly and looks very pathetic I still can’t lie to him just to make things look cool for him.

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            It doesn’t take a second to take life away from a body. What a mess? Everything has been working against me, even time and my spirit and God and the entire world and many other things I do not see, everything in the world is clearly against me.

            Some months ago I was in Lagos trying to gather life together, hating the sun for shining and blaming the moon for being too bright, cynical becomes an habit and I was addicted to sleeplessness. Now, I’m behind a police van heading to the cell with cold handcuffs hanging its chain in between my wrists, they don’t look anyway good on me. I’m no criminal but who is going to believe me. Thank God Mokanju escape this shit. If not for that unnecessary gun shot by the police officer when they arrived at the scene when I and my young brother returned there, I would have been a corpse riding his hearse by now and Mokanju wouldn’t have had the chance to run back into the jungle we came from just the same way we ran into it without a reason for running.

            As quick as I appeared, almost every male at Mrs. Esutola’s house as at then dashed toward me, I was staring death in eyes by then, I thought it would all end at the spot. I pitied myself but I pitied my young innocent brother the most because he did everything to stop me but I thought truthfulness could save us but as irony works; it almost killed us.

            They were just few steps away from us and we were few steps away from our graves as well, when the police van drove in and the gun shot was made. It was unnecessary anyway but certainly it was it that saved us from death. It saved Mokanjuola from being arrested too, because as they ran away from us thinking we were the one who shot, Mokanjuola took off into the nearest bush. I didn’t follow him because I don’t want us both be caught. I quickly spread my hands into the air and moved toward the police officers and that was how this handcuffs found their way to decorate my wrists. They don’t look a dim good on me, not in an instance.

To me, everything has been bad and funny but the funniest thing is that among every reasonable thought the only thought that persist my mind is that I am not going to pay for the ride.

I think I am thinking like the prisoners now.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The only way to conquer your opponents successfully is to lead them. Two nights have gone as quick as eyes blink and I am still here doing the lead role of the drama in this cuboid shaped stinking dungeon called cell. There are bunches of touts in here, each arrested for alike crimes; if not for rape it will be for street fight, or at worst for stealing an awkward amount of money from someone who doesn’t understand that hunger can turn man to beast.

There are too many of them in here; about seven of us in a cell not well structured, the highest capacity this cell can take on a normal circumstance is five but this is Nigerian police, they can do anything as far as you’re in here. The seven of us are without our cloths, not even singlet our trousers have been taken off all that is left to cover our private is the short.

One thing I have learnt so well in the street of Lagos is that the only way to keep your head safe in the midst of people like this is to play along with the leads. So, I choose to take control with my experience from under bridge. I am a survivor; I know what it is like to survive among people like this.

A constable who I have known so well just in three days; very smartly silly, and wisely stupidly unkind, to my little observation of him like an algae under light microscope, his notion is that as far as someone is brought into the cell he can do whatever he wants and say whatever he likes to him or her. This kind of habit is not less found among them but it is not of all of them, few of them are reasonable and give concern.

“Hello criminal”

He calls pointing straight at me. As the boss; I don’t need to answer him at his first call.

“Are you deaf?”

He says after his fourth call using the same means. I move majestically to the steel bars that keep him away from me though not to hit him anyway but so I can whisper my annoying words into his ears as I have always do since I have been brought here. Cell is not a place for a responsible person, the life in here just for three days has changed me tremendously.

“Was your father deaf before his death?”

I ask him, feeling well comfortable with it. I try to spit on him but he is not so reachable.

“You don’t know the different between a suspect and a criminal? That was how you called me a murderer yesterday. Was it your mother I murdered?”

I ask to add to his previous pain. He looks at me as if he would shot me right in the head but I am so sure he would not dare to though if he does so I will appreciate it for he would just stop all my pains.

“There is nothing good that comes out of a son from a bitch.”

He replies and it hurts me though but I cannot hit him because I know he won’t hesitate to sue me for assault of a police officer. To make it more rough, I give him the reply he deserves.

“The same bitch who gave birth to your grandparents gave birth to me,”

With a very severe look and very bad voice that resembles that of devil,

“Your lawyer is here,” he says as he opens the door that keeps him unreached.

“So, this is the reason why you have been running your mouth?”

I ask though I am so sure he wouldn’t answer. He leads the way and I follow taking each step carefully as if even a step at a time is dangerous for me as I drag the chain in-between my wrists to give its rueful cantata to the air.

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A smartly dressed smart looking individual standing outside the counter; he looks like someone I have met before. I move close to him and he turns to be the lawyer we hired when we were giving out two motorcycles for installment payment.

“Good day sir,”

I greet respectfully. I feel silly and ashamed as I watch him in face.

“Good day dear. Have that been on you throughout?”

He asks pointing at the handcuffs on my wrists.

“No, this old man just put it on me when came to pick me,”

“I have paid for your bail,”

“But bail is free.”

“Yes, bail is free just on paper but not in reality in Nigeria and besides I’m your lawyer; you don’t tell me what I know it’s right.”

“Okay. I am just saying,”

“Release him, and give what are his to him,”

He orders the police constable who had brought me.

“He doesn’t have anything except for his trousers and his belt,”

The constable replies as he finds them among other things that belong some anonymous.

“His trousers and his belt aren’t things of his?”

The lawyer asks as he signs a book that was pushed towards him by the constable.

“He is brightly dumb;”

I say as I sign the same book the lawyer had signed but on a different page. The lawyer smiles at my awkward remark for the constable but I keep my business look.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“The only time you quickly and freely get out of a trap is when you decide to help the person trying to help you out. You have to help me in this case if you don’t want to last a life long in jail.” Those were the words of the lawyer when he was bringing me home in his car.

I don’t know how to help on a thing I do not know anything about. I didn’t tell him anything about us being innocent of the case we are charged for. I think the best person to say that is the victim himself but it’s the most absurd thing anyone would ever think of. He is not dead but he is in a state of coma for the three days now according to the news said by the lawyer. I hope he recovers quickly and most of all, says the truth about this thing.

I don’t even know if Mokanju is telling the truth, I don’t know what and who to believe. The first thing I cannot believe is the court system; they’ll just use law to cut through my throat in there. The second thing is someone’s promise on this case because there lots of hypocrites out there, and the last thing I cannot believe is myself; I don’t know why but still I am not. The only thing I believe in now is the victim’s truthfulness.

I am so deep in thought that I don’t know Mokanjuola is by my side.

“Big brother Tanimola,”

“Yes, dear, what’s up with you?”

“Nothing big, I’m fine. What have you been thinking?”

“Nothing, I mean everythin,.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just thinking about how we got involved into this trash. I’m thinking how it all began.”

“It’s going to be alright”

“Says who? You, right?”

“No, not me but says faith, faith in fate.”

Mokanjuola replies as I drop the stick of broom I have been playing with. I look at him and feel that he has say something encouraging.

“I’m going back to Mrs. Esutola’s house when I am settled,”

Mokanju shows a lot of disbelief at my words as he swiftly stands up and look around as if he would call someone to come tie me down.

“You must be a comedian. I know you won’t even try to,”

He says as he sits back.

“I am not trying, I am doing,”

I reply him and he shows another severe shock again.

“Are you out of your mind!?”

He yells at me and swings his hands towards his head pointing his finger to his skull.

“No, I’m not. I am not going there to cause any trauma but to get some things settled,”

“What do you want to get settled?”

He asks and certainly there is no answer for it.

“I know you don’t have an answer for it but remember, that was how you said we should go the other day and that was how these shits happened,” He says.

“Yes, that was how I said it but everything began with you. You fought the boy; and that was how the problem arose now I want to get things done right and I beg you please do not stop me.”

I reply and he stops saying anything and angrily pace into the house which in front we have been sitting since after I took my bath and ate after the lawyer has brought me back home.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There are too many people in front of Mrs. Esutola’s house; people of different height and body structure. It’s so obvious they all come to sympathize with her. I met some of the sympathizers on my way and the way they looked at me wasn’t so encouraging; it made me doubt if I really want to go meet Mrs. Esutola.

No silly neither too serious look, I will not look anybody in the eyes neither will I mistakenly step on anyone’s toe; I’ll just slowly move into the house and greet gently. I will do my best not start any unnecessary conversation and avoid at all cost any eyes contact and I will not spend much time with her and I’ll quickly move away as fast as I can. These are my plans.

As soon as I appear at the house I call for attention as if all of them have been expecting me; they all set their eyes on me. I am frightened, I feel like I should run away but something still whisper I shouldn’t and should hold my ground.

I stop moving forward and move three steps backward since the more I move close to them the more the looks become more dangerous to me.

“You must have got some nerves,”

A male voice which I cannot decipher where it comes from says and this exacerbates the feelings inside me.

“What is he doing here again?”

Another voice says but it was a feminine. I feel like I should run but it is too late to do so; because if I run they may think I have came to hurt and if I stay they don’t look a bit as if they won’t attack me.

“I am here in peace!” I quickly announce.

“That was his first statement to my brother when he came the first time.”

A young lady who I surely recognize says; she was the lady who led the other siblings to call me “Beere”. I have once rebuked her, I think this her best opportunity to repay me and I doubt she would miss it

I move another four steps backward as I see some provoked six young male individuals dash toward. At first, I think they’d retreat but they really mean the business and the only sure way to keep me safe is to run and I am not missing it. I run but not so fast.

“Let’s burn this idiot!”

That is what someone among them suggested after I have received more than the Jesus’ whips when he was led to Calvary. There is no pain as great as seeing oneself being beat for nothing; for no tangible reason.

They have always said family is the most important thing in life and that’s my belief and I am only trying to preserve it but with all these that are happening I am beginning to lose believe.

“Stop it! Stop it!! Are you out of your minds?”

A male voice yells at them as they were hitting me from different angle and I hit the floor in return; whenever they slap me, I have no other choice than to slap the floor in return and it welcomes me as warmly as “Welcome home child.”

They stop hitting me as frequently as they have been but once in every two seconds I receive a gift of slap which I must not object to and even if I want to object to it I cannot, because I am as weak as a fragile vase. It is only when you’re being beat beyond your stability you realize that weakness is stronger than strong itself; it is amazing the way weakness overthrown my ability and take control of every part of my body even my voice.

Blood oozes through my nose as fast as I breathe, bruises all over my parts. I blurrily see things but I can hear clearly. I have cried my voice out and have struggled out my strength all that is left with me is my luck and it seems it hasn’t left me to myself yet.

“Who asked you to beat him?”

The voice asks as it moves closer. I faintly can see who owns the voice but he appears to be an elderly man.

“You children are shameless idiots!” he says and asks them to pick me into the house.

Nothing is so difficult to understand as greet of death. Just within ten minutes of severe torture, I have lose posture; the size of my lips are as three times as the original, my eyes are as big as an orange size, and my body terrain as rough as an abandoned Nigerian road, my head seems bigger than what my neck can hold and it jerks often as if it would just drop it off. This is the longest ten minutes I have had in my entire life. Within it; I heard death say “Hello dude, I am just passing by.”

“Who are these children?”

The elderly man asks someone I cannot see as the guys drop me carelessly on something I hardly could feel because of the pain I feel from my roughly organized body just within ten minutes or so; those logs that Mokanjuola and the other boy picked when it all began were what was used on me too. I cannot see the elderly man either and I can only hear things very faintly now.

“They are brother Seun’s friend,”

A young female voice replies the old man but I am only hearing at a far distance and cannot see at all, I am really struggling with my soul. I feel cold at my feet and difficulty at breathing; I am not shivering but gasping very seriously. I am hearing voices from very far away though they all are very close but I can only hear them as far as a mile distance away from me.

I am feeling spasm in my muscle and feel this very strong emotion to shout for help but all I can do is give a thud like a drowning thirsty duck. I feel something more than two are lifting me and they are moving very quickly through an empty tunnel as I hear the echoes of each step. I hear an engine starts from a distance as far as three miles away and the movement of my body changes quite very fast and that is when I realized they are moving my body to somewhere I cannot tell; maybe mortuary or a hospital.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Something that looks like a lady shrouded in white just disappear from my view, I cannot see what it is really like but it seems like those ghosts I watch in home videos. It’s like I am already dead.

“Hello brother, can you hear me?”

It is Mokanjuola’s voice; I am very sure it is. I cannot see him and cannot turn my body; I feel like I have been tied down or maybe I am still in the grave but if I am still in the grave what is Mokanju doing here too?

I struggle to move but I am not strong enough; all I can move are my joints.

“Hey nurse! He is awake!”

Mokanjuola announces and this makes me realize I am still alive. The lady shrouded in white comes towards me; she touches me and does some other thing I cannot tell. She then says.

“He is not fully awake; when he is totally conscious he would be able to talk.”

“I hope so. I hope he is able to.”

“Don’t you worry; he is going to gain consciousness. He was just being blackout.”

“I am not worried, I am just scared. I mean I am very worried, no, I don’t mean I am worried because I am not so worried but I am scared.”

“I don’t get what you’re saying.”

“You don’t get what!? You don’t get I am damn worried!?”

Mokanju yells at the lady shrouded in white.

“Hey, calm down. This is not going to help you.”

She replies softly and gently as she moves close and hug Mokanju who is already sobbing.

“I don’t mean to yell at you, I am just confused. He has been lying there for three days now repeating the same thing as if he would stand and you’ve been giving me the same answer. Isn’t it worth getting me worried?”

“Yes, it is. You still have to be calm and don’t make it worst for him.”

The nurse who I have been seeing as the lady shrouded in white says as she points at me. I can see and hear very clearly now and I have gained a little strength to move my body slightly up. I cough as I try to talk and this call for their attention.

“Hello brother”

Mokanjuola says as he cleans his tears with his bare palms and rushes to me where I lay like land.

“Can you hear me?”

He asks and I nod to give a yes because I have difficulty at my speaking. He gives me a gentle warm hug and moves me up to rest my back on the pillow below me.

“Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

He appreciates the nurse’s kindness and the nurse gives a smile and moves away without saying anything.

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The most peaceful place I have ever been in my life is where I am coming from; coma. According to what Mokanjuola has told me and my rough calculation, it has been five days now that’s I have been in blackout; and that five days have been the most peaceful days of my lifetime. He said I was first kept in Aderibigbe’s Hospital; a well known hospital in Iragbiji but when the doctor realize they couldn’t keep me anymore they asked him to take me to LAUTECH teaching hospital in Ososgbo and I have been here for three days now.

In these five days I have escaped Mrs. Esutola and her grave calling words, I have escaped hunger and thirst, I have escaped worries but I have known peace; peace be to the dead and grave.

“Hello brother.”

I say maybe for the sixth time in fifteen minutes after I have alighted death’s vehicle to earth from grave and Mokanju gives another smile for the fourteenth time or so.

“You better say what you want to say.”

He says as he looks me so endearingly and pitifully. Bandages cover half of my body; one wrapped round my left arm, another on my both knee joints, I got one round my head. I don’t know what this plastic neck-like structure that is being used to hold my neck in place is called; I got that too. I don’t know whether it was the logs or the idiots that beat me that were so cruel that they could almost take away life from me in just ten minutes.

“Death gave me a message for you.”

I say very weakly and gently like a baby who is just learning how to speak and I smile to make it look a little funny but Mokanju doesn’t look like it’s funny at all though he appears to want to know what the message is all about.

“And what’s the message?”

He asks as he helps me shift forward so that I can rest my back conveniently on the pillow as I have tried it for four times and I failed.

“Do all the goods you can,

To all the people you can,

At all the places you can,

At all the times you can,

As much as possible you can,

And don’t pretend you can’t,

If you know for sure you can.”

I say the words gently and calmly as if they would bounce back at me and break me into pieces of myself. He smiles and spouts his lips. He then looks at me as if he hasn’t been seeing me for days and asks.

“Is this the message death has sent to me all the way from heaven?”

“Yes, but not from heaven; death doesn’t live in heaven, he lives in grave.”

“I don’t care where it lives, whether in ocean depth or in the jungle. I just have a question for you, did you see Devil too?”

I scoff and smile and he smiles too.

“I don’t have the time to call at the hell’s gate keeper.”

“That isn’t nice, you should have at least say hello friend to it too.”

“I didn’t say hello friend to death either, it came to say that to me.”

“You shouldn’t have welcomed it; it took you too far from me.”

“I am sorry; I have not more than two choices when it came: either I go on itinerate with it or it drags me away with force and you know what that mean, don’t you?”

He smiles and hands over the tea he has been making as we talk. I never know making just tea could take forever too; he stirs a little and talks for forever.

“Where did you guys visit during your tour?”

“Uhm, that’s a nice question. We visited Pain and Peace.”

“Uhm, Pain and Peace? Where are those?”

“They are not places, they’re persons.”

“It’ll be nice to know them. Do you mind to tell me about them?”

“No, I don’t. Pain is one cruel creature it is the gate keeper between life and death and Peace is that lady that drives one into the world from dead; she is mild and beautiful. I am glad I know them both anyway.”

“That’s even the nicest.”

He says as he takes the cup of tea from me and keeps it on the table adjacent to my side.

“How about death?”

He asks as he cleans the spill of tea on my chest with a handkerchief.

“What is about death?”

 I ask as if I don’t get what he wants me to do.

“Tell me about death.”

He requests though he knows I am only pulling his legs with my question.

“Death is friend; he takes you to both Pain and Peace. In case you don’t know, death does not kill; it’s Pain that kills. Pain gives the key to the permanent house of Peace and once you’re in; you’re in forever.”

“I don’t get you. If death doesn’t kill then why do men put the blame on it every time people die?”

“It is because men know nothing. It’s a soul that gives up to the torture of pain or the ones that are so enthralled by the beautifulness of peace that go and never come back. Death will take you to Pain first and Pain will torture you for as long as he wants; it can be seconds, days, months or years. If you give up then he’ll give you the key to permanent Peace but if you do not give up like in my case, he’ll only ask you to walk around Peace’s garden; that very beautiful place no one would want to live and anyone who reaches there and decided not just to play in the garden but stay forever goes back to pain to collect the key. It’s just simple logic; death inflicts pain into soul and if it gives up; then comes the end.”

“Was that a lecture given by death?”

The nurse comes in and cuts in as I want to answer.

“Enough of this chitchat and allow him to have some rest. You’ve been asking questions for about twelve minutes now from someone who is just coming alive. Do you want to send him back?”

She asks rhetorically. She then asks Mokanju to give me a cup of water as if I told her I am thirsty. Though, regardless of the fact that I have taken a cup of tea earlier; the truth is that I am thirsty and I don’t want to interrupt the conversation so I didn’t tell Mokanju. She tells him to leave me for a while so that I can rest more for better convalescence.

“Sleep tight and please do not welcome that idiot who came to take you away from me.”

 He says as he leaves together with the nurse. She is one pretty lady blessed with everything a male would want from a lady.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“What was the noise for?”

“Noise? No, there was no noise?”

“You don’t lie to me. What was the noise for?”

I ask for the second time and I am serious. Mokanju looks a little worried and he appears he wants to keep something away from my knowing.

“No noise, it was just an argument.”

“I thought I heard some people shouting and it wasn’t like an argument.”

“Yes, there was noise but it was from the argument. It’s because you were sleeping.”

Mokanjuola sits on a stool placed just very close to the entrance but not far from me. He looks very worried and it shows that he wants to talk about with the way he looks but he seems to be scared he doesn’t want to get me worried.

“You know you’re not good at keeping secrets.”

I say trying to lure him to say something, he smiles and waves his left hand at me gesticulating that he isn’t ready to say anything. I am not happy with it because I really heard the noise; it was it that woke me up. Something wrong must have happened while I was sleeping.

“You know there are some basic reasons why we tell lie which weakness is one and the most prevalent one.”

I say as audible and emotionally as I could with my wavering voice. Mokanju raises his head slightly and moves his stool very close to me and hold my palms and I hold it warmly too.

“When did you become a lie detector?”

He asks comically as he smiles so adorably. I smile but still do not believe nothing happened, I really want to know what happened.

“Stop trying to extirpating things, your look is telling tales of a concerned soul.”

“Stop trying hard. I am serious no one was shouting and no one was arguing too; I just said that to make you forget it but as you have insisted, I will tell you who was shouting.”

I cut in immediately and my curiosity was quite annoying.

“Who was it?”

I ask because I thought it was Mrs. Esutola. I saw her and I am very sure I did.

“Alright, the person that shouted was you. You screamed out of from your sleep.”

He replies and the look on his face shows more of fear than of worry. It is like a dream; I don’t really understand what beat Mokanju is trying to play on.

“Stop lying and say the truth.”

“I am not lying and that is the truth.”

He replies and moves his face away from me, throws his arms to the back of his neck and make them rest on it for few seconds, releases them gently and places them on his thigh.

He is not lying; it really all happened in my dream. I saw Mrs. Esutola come in my dream and she was screaming inside my head and I tried to throw her out of my head but I was unable. So, I screamed for help.

“It was a dream.’

I say as the imagination of what happened in the dream visualizes itself right before me as if I am watching a flat screen 3D graphics television.

“That’s no dream, it was a day time nightmare and I am worried about it.”

Mokanjuola replies in fear and concern. He moves more closely to me but didn’t hold my hand this time.

“It was her, right?”

He asks very mildly as he shifts the pillow on which I am resting myself a little higher as if it is necessary.

“Yes, it was her.”

I reply because I cannot help to give the lie even if I can, not in this situation. Mokanjuola shifts his stool backward and slants it in a way that it only stands on two of its legs. He allow the stool to return to its normal position, lean forward in way that his chin is resting on his cup shaped palms and the elbows are sitting on his thigh. He yawns and shrugs.

“How well do you feel on that bed?”

He asks as he stretches his back. He appears very tired and needs to rest.

“I fell very well, I feel fine.”

I lie. No one in the universe will be in this kind of my condition and say it is fine but I have to say it because I don’t want to exacerbate the present situation.

“You don’t need to tell lie, without telling anyone how you feel over there; everyone can tell how it is like to be placed on a sixteen inches wide and twenty three inches tall bed, with one’s body not free to move an inch on its own. Everyone knows it doesn’t feel well.”

He says yawning very audibly as he stretches even longer than the earlier. I smile and his look shows very obviously that he hasn’t been sleeping for some nights; that’s for sure because of me.

“Every moment I see you on that bed; it reminds me of those who put you there.”

He says and caps it with a deep sinking thud sound from intake of excess air into his system; it is not for his thoughts but it is for his tiredness.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Everybody deserves a time to be free from all sorts of trouble; I think my turn for that moment has come and gone. Among all moments in my life, the moments I have spent on my sickbed have been the most peaceful moments of my life.

I don’t like to hate anyone, don’t like to be hated for anyone and neither do I like to hate anyone for anyone and this my ideology is the reason why I still would stand courageously to making my family sit to dinning together on the same table with love and for the love for each other.

It needs more than life to guarding living and that’s why death is being created too. I learnt a lot on my sick bed, which one of what I have learnt is the strength to never give up no matter how strong the threshold of pain; I learnt that when I refused to give the baton of life away regardless the pain I suffered from death’s infliction. The strength is all I would need for now to keep me going, because, from my brother’s perception of things and his stand over this matter; I have deduced he is not ready to support this movement in an inch.

I’ll get to the bottom of this and dig out whatever it is that might have been making Mrs. Esutola to treat us as if we took away the womb of her joyful time. I feel good doing this but the only thing I don’t like about it is the inability to understand the need of family tie by my people. Well, I am not doing this for anyone; I am solely doing it for me.

It is three days now that I have been discharged from the hospital and Mokanju and I have been doing nothing but yak. But, this morning we haven’t started yet, he is just sitting right in front of me and has been watching me as a pet cat does to its owner. I am trying hard to avoid eyes contact and my brain is doing the thinking of how to escape his gaze.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

I ask; as from what my brain has told me to do.  Mokanju smiles sarcastically and awkwardly at my question, and then gives a gesture that means he was not watching.

“Maybe, I am not saying the truth”

I reply ironically and he smiles again. I actually don’t know what causes Mokanju’s smile and I suspect he is not ready to share why.

“You really want to know why I have been looking at you?”

He asks as though I wasn’t the one who asked and I am taken aback because I never suspected he is ready to share that with me; he just succeeded in proving my intuition wrong.

“Sure, I definitely want to know.”

I reply in awe with my two hands fix in the air and my eyes staring at him intensively as though he is about to announce my win for a billion dollar lottery. It seems like that awkward moment when your boss asks you to kiss his wife for him and you misinterpreted it and the whole thing go gaga.

“It’s because I cannot believe all those days you were on that sick bed were real.”

He says and smiles. I smile too but I do not get what he is trying to bring up.

“And is that really why you’ve been staring at me?’

I ask feeling more awkward than ever before. He looks at me with being surprised; he then takes a rather difficult swallow of his saliva.

“I can’t really believe you are asking me that. Is that not worth looking at you?”

“I don’t even know why ask that.”

I reply and then laugh awkwardly and it makes him to join me too.

“You are shameless.”

He says comically and the laughter continues and at this juncture I wouldn’t mind the laughter last forever.

Mokanju suddenly stops laughing and gives this business look that quickly stops mine and automatically puts the same look on my face. I know that is for something serious and needs a quick attention from me but I don’t know what exactly what Mokanju is trying to bring up but like I said earlier it is something serious.

“Why that?”

I ask trying to get the reason from him but he seems not to understand me.

“What is it?”

He asks as he looks as if he is innocent at me.

“Why do you look in that manner?”

I ask in anger rather than in trying to get any reason.

“Oh, I don’t know that’s what you’re asking about.”

He says and I keep silent and for sure I know he understands why I have chosen to be silent; he knows I want him to tell me the reason without hesitating.

“I want to know if you still want to go meet Mrs. Esutola.”

He says with his corny face showing absolute disapproval. I understand very clearly that he doesn’t just want it to happen; he really has been preaching this an eye for an eye ideology to me since I left the hospital but I know he is doing so because he doesn’t yet understand the meaning of family. To me, family is a powerful weapon like a gigantic courage which everybody needs.

“In everything thing one is doing there are always two options with them.”

I say as I stand to take a cup of water from the room because I am quite thirsty.

“And they are?”

Mokanju asks and I can hear him a bit fade from the inside.

“The option to carry on is one of them.”

“And the second option is?”

Mokanju quickly asks as I am taking a bit longer to say the second option and this is because I am drinking and I cannot be talking while I drink. I am done with it now and I am walking out of the room.

“And the second option is the option to quit.”

I reply him and sit back. He spouts his lips, rubs his face, gives a smile and then asks.

“And which of the options do you choose in this your adventure?”

“Option one.”

“I do not expect anything different.”

“I wouldn’t disappoint you either.”

“Uhm, what if I tell you I wouldn’t mind joining you in this quest?”

I pause a little; look around as though there is a third person and then turn to Mokanju, I look him both in suspect and in surprise. I try to figure out why he would say that but I find none.

“Are you really serious about it?”

I ask trying to be sure if he really was the one who said it.

“Don’t you want me to join?”

He asks as if he didn’t know I wouldn’t hesitate to welcome him.

“Why won’t I want you?”

I ask rhetorically and silence took the baton from there.

Everything has been happening like it’s magical. It was yesterday that this strange aged man who called himself the eldest of our family came to check on me after I left the hospital; he was the man who was at the scene when I was knocked out at Mrs. Esutola’s house who asked those idiots to stop beating me.

I am happy that Mokanju has succumbed to join me on the train and I think it’s a good sign of victory.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The hardest work any man can do is to walk alone; kudos to the solitary soldiers. In just thirty six hours that Mokanju has joined me in bringing back love into the family we have made double progress than I have made in the past days; I think it’s nice to work as a team, for if a team of two teem like fourteen teams, I wonder how fourteen teams would teem; perchance like the cavalry from heaven.

We just left the eldest man in the family; this was a suggestion from Mokanju and it seems to be working fine. The eldest man has promised to bring up a family meeting where we can all settle every dices between us all.

I am happy this is about happening and as well scared it is almost a reality. In a meeting of this nature two things are always involved and in the end it’s only one that comes to realization; it is either it succeeds greatly or it fails like the fall of Jericho. Among all of the things involved in this new development, knowing more of the people I am related to is the most fascinating one I cannot wait to see happen.

At this juncture it is not enough to be satisfied; it is not enough to see it happen but to see it end well and sustains its well ending to the end.

Pa Abdul-Salam’s house is a twelve minutes walk away from our house; it is situated amidst of lots of aged house like his. Since we’ve left Pa Abdul-Salam’s house I have noticed Mokanju to have been wanting to say something but I am scared he might say something that will befall everything but no matter what I cannot deny him of his God given freedom.

“What's on your mind?”

I ask as I cross my right hand across his neck as we walk down the boulevard that leads to our place. He looks me and hisses then looks me again with this contortion on his face that shows confusion; and it makes me feel as if I have just said something malicious to the health of the good time we have been having.

“Why this look now, is it bad to ask you about what’s bothering you?”

I ask as if he has said anything that says he didn’t want me to ask.

“Does my look now have a voice?”

He asks without looking at me and makes me feel like I am fool to have asked that.

“No, your look does have no voice but it does gesticulate.”

I reply feeling like the smartest thing on earth but Mokanju moves no pulse to show any feelings of intimidation like I have felt I have done. He just shakes his head as if I have said another senseless word and I am the one the feeling intimidated now.

“Don’t you think what this man is bringing up could bring up a war?”

He asks after about three minutes of silence as we walk through some young beautiful young ladies who one of them just became my crush in few seconds before now.

“Yes, but it could as well stop a war. It is fifty-fifty share.”

I reply slowly as I stick my sight at the young lady I just saw as she moves in her womanish snakelike manner.

“What the hell are you looking at?”

Mokanju asks as he as well looks the direction I am looking at but cannot tell what I am looking at.

“Nothing; I am looking at nothing.”

I give a lie and he didn’t dispute it but he seems to have known what I am looking at. His hiss can tell well how disgusting he finds my attitude. To be sincere; myself, I cannot tell why I am behaving in such manner but I think sometimes love can be folly.

“But this is not love but mere admiration.”

My mind says correcting my wrong understanding of what I am feeling and it is right.

“I don’t even know what is it, whether love or admiration.”

I say audibly enough for at least someone at ten steps away from me can hear but it is unintentionally though. Mokanju couldn’t help but look at me in a very despising manner, shakes his head in more of pity than of hate and drags my hand away from his neck and then walk faster than we have been walking.

I am enjoying what is happening though regardless that I have no idea of why I am doing what I am doing. Sometimes, people behave abnormally everyday and yet find themselves not to be able to explain why they behave in such a manner. A friend would always say; “Every man has to be insane once in his life time.” And I suppose my time is now.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It has been thirty minutes that we’ve been seated here with some human aliens who must have been here an hour before us, as that is the exact time we should have been here though Mokanjuola and I are the number tenth and eleventh persons who have arrived yet.

Mokanju is busy with his phone while I am busy counting the number of planks that hold the asbestos in Pa Abdul-Salam’s house. More alien people have been coming in, in their different numbers more often than some twelve minutes ago and I have been doing the counting of people that come in since I arrived; we are just twenty-six in number including the eight persons that have arrived before us.

Pa Abdul-Salam is with some elderly men and women in another spacious room almost as large as his living room where we are all seated. Most of the things they have been saying are far ten times older than I am but I can deduce quite well that they have been discussing the genesis of our family because I can hear them link one person to the other as they state their ages and the number of wives and children they had.

Five minutes after Mrs. Esutola and her children excluding the child who is still in the hospital have arrived, Pa Abdul-Salam and the six other old individuals; two women around the age of fifty-eight and fifty-three and four men whose age ranges between fifty-six to sixty-two, come in and find a place that suit them to sit. Pa Abdul-Salam’s age should be around sixty-eight and seventy and it will be very hard for anyone to notice it because he looks quite younger than most of the elderly men and women that are here.

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Pa Abdul-Salam clears his throat, greets everyone and thanks everyone for coming. He says he really appreciates the honour we have all given him and that he won’t forget this special moment in his life.

“Today, I am the happiest man on earth. I have been thinking of how this kind of gathering is going to come up, I have been thinking of how I will achieve this particular dream and it has been appearing like it is impossible until now that it is happening; I just can’t believe it. To achieve anything in the world all you need is a step; I took the step and here I land. Thanks to every one of you for honouring me, I really appreciate your cooperation with me but I will appreciate even more if you honour me with joining me to achieve the sole aim of this gathering which all of you know already. Thanks for coming once again.”

He says and sits back in his seat which is the third seat by the left of Mrs. Esutola’s seat. For some moments the entire building becomes as quiet as the speech-impaired words not because we do not have what to say but because none wants to be the first to talk.

Mokanju has looked me for infinity times now and it is making me look as if something has got itself stuck into  my bum for the more he looks at me the more I squirm left and right my seat and it is making this people pay attention to me than it is needed. The only way to escape this awkward moment is to leave this place now because if I stay a second more here, Mokanju will definitely make it more than unbearable for me.

“Please my elderly ones, I am pressed and I want to go ease myself.”

I say with this embarrassing smile forcing itself on my cheeks. I factually don’t need to smile but I actually don’t know what else I can do to make it less hard on me. I stand quickly and whiz out like a dunce that is being intimidated by some bully from a lower class. I flow through the door like a river that has no certain place destined, then scurry through the passage and burst into the veranda where the outside world welcomes me with its bright day light. I hiss, hiss again and then hiss again and then start laughing at myself; it’s very stupid to be very stupid and all I have just done is what very stupid people do.

I must have spent three minutes walking down here and I am planning another five more minutes to be spent out here so that I can juggle myself and get prepare for whatever Mokanju must have been planning for me. I clear my throat and picture how to handle the vivid imaginary shambles that appears before me.

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I return into the room feeling like a thief who misses his way and run into a court fill with beasty juries and a wild judge, who all are staring deep into his eyes. Someone has started talking already and I suppose she must have started as early as I left in the first place.

I feel vulnerable and less organized regardless the fact that I have already decided not to care about what they think about what I think about but it seems the gaze from these different wild eyes from different angles in the room scare away my courage like the roar of ten pride at a time do to the animals in the jungle and let a million thoughts at time run through my mind like the sudden release of a large water dam into a tightly spaced tunnel.

I slouch to my seat with my eyes set to see no one for the worst thing that can happen now is to have eye contact with anybody and it will be even more worst if it is with the wrong person.

Fifteen minutes run past as though time hasn’t been moving at all and the woman who has been talking has her mouth keep opening and closing and yet she has said nothing for all she has been rambling are things that I don’t know about. I have tried times without number not to give any loud yawn and I have yet not break the trend.

I am the only who what this woman has been saying is boring to because others including Mokanju pay her full attention; I guess I am the alien here now.

She has been rambling about a land that a man who she has been pointing at with barely a second break as from the beginning of her talk extorted from her. When she is not pointing, she substitutes it with an anguish long hiss and as she does this I keep praying she stops in soon time.

Not long after I say the prayer for the third time that she suddenly stops, burst into tears and then slowly fall into the embrace of her seat; it is a painful thing for her but for me it is a boring epical story. The end of her story eases me as if I just escape being convicted for the rest of my years though to others it is a very different case.

Hours have been spent listening to awkward and funny stories from one person to the other and settling one dispute and the other. The meeting is yielding a very good result though sometimes the moment goes awkward as some people throw themselves at one another and almost end up in exchanging fist but thank God for the courageous and determined elders like Pa Abdul-Salam who are gathered here to settle them all.

When some people refuse to throw in the trowel, Pa Abdul-Salam would angrily say “I didn’t call any of you to come here to showing off how stubborn you are and I remember I told you all that if you’re not ready to settle whatever the wrong someone has done to you here, it will be better you stay at your home.” And this method seems to be really helping the situation because at least three people have succumbed and have promised to kill all the differences among them though some people are still proving adamant but it is not saying they will not give in too.

It is eight hours now since we have started the meeting and the time is sometimes around twenty minutes gone past four in the evening. After the refreshment we are having now, it is our turn to talk out our differences with Mrs. Esutola according to what Pa Abdul-Salam has said.

I eat the solid pap and beans cake that Mrs. Abdul-Salam’s granddaughter brought us for refreshment with nervousness as the thought that we are the next to face the panel of elderly well experienced and knowledgeable men and women. As for Mrs. Esutola; she seems to be at ease as a new baby. She has talked out two different quarrels of which she is a direct shareholder since the meeting has began and three other of which she is indirectly a shareholder of and this makes it less worrying for me because almost everyone in here has known her to have been involved in different cases that have been settled here. And in my case, as I have not move an eye ball since the meeting began; they do not know who I am.

I cannot hide the fact of the reality that Mrs. Esutola is a good person from what I have observed because among the entire quarrels she is involved in she wins all with merit of being on the right side from the story from both sides and the blame goes to her counterparts in the end. She only seems to be someone who will not in any circumstance take nonsense from anyone and this makes her gets into many trouble all the time.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Mokanju is sitting on the brim of my bed with his left leg over his right, it is getting dark already we are both exhausted and hungry as we haven’t taken anything after the solid pap and beans cake we took at Pa Abdul-Salam’s house during the meeting. I am throwing off my clothes and Mokanjuola is watching the scene unleash.

“Do you believe all the things that woman said?”

Mokanju asks as he adjusts himself to the extreme of the bed and leans with his back on the wall.

“Yes, I do.”

I reply while I join him on the bed but I am just sitting at the brim facing him.

“Don’t you believe her?”

I ask looking at a plate in the middle of my room and contemplating if I was the one who used it.

“I do not know how to believe her.”

“Then you should learn how to believe her.”

“Mrs. Esutola is not a trustworthy person; I doubt the veracity of all she said.”

Mokanju says as I pick the plate to keeping it somewhere better. I look at him in disbelief and move to the table to keep the plate.

“See, young man you cannot repair what is itself a damage; dad has come and gone and has left his story and no matter how we try we cannot change the story he has laid. Everyone in the meeting knew dad as a miser and a very bad person; he is capable of doing anything when he wants anything. If they say he was the one who causes Mrs. Eustola’s husband’s death, then he is. If he can go all the way to seize his friend’s son for the money he owed him then he can do anything. He is the last person on earth you and I can talk about because we hardly can tell how he looked like and these people are the only people who can tell us who he truly was; take it or leave it dear brother, he is who they say he is.”

I say with a bit anger flowing through my systems and he listens as though I am the most witless person he has ever known.

“Yes, you are right big brother but I don’t want to believe dad could have done such things and put us in this predicament.”

“You have to believe it because you don’t have anything else you can believe.”

I say as I sit back on the bed in the same position I sat before. Silence took control of the room for some seconds and Mokanju breaks the trend.

“I think Mrs. Esutola is a good woman.”

He says without looking at my direction and I was taken aback. I thought I am the only who has observed this but Mokanju just proves me wrong.

“Yes, she is a kind of good woman who doesn’t want any cheat or nonsense around her and that’s why she always gets into trouble with people.”

I say as if I am her solicitor and I am trying to convince the judge in a court why my client always gets into troubles.

Though Mrs. Esutola won all the cases she was charged for in the meeting but she was unable to win us. She brought her feelings into the game and got bitten by her right. If she had not come to our house to shout, told her children to disrespect and intimidate us and didn’t pretend she wasn’t at home when the fight between Mokanju and her son erupted she would have succeeded in winning our case too.

Our father did to her family something they will never forget and may be very unable to forgive; one way or the other daddy was involved in the case that killed Mr. Esutola. He suffered too much pressure from some group of rich men who lend him some amount of money and my dad happened to be the head of the group and the person who put the greatest pressure on him until he has no other choice than to go for suicide.

It was an unbelievably painful story as Mrs. Esutola unleashed the truth of why she hated us; just like one tree is connected to many leaves, our father is also well and evenly connected to us and if she hated dad for any reason then she has every reason to hate us too.

Everything has gone as fine as I wanted it; no more police call at my door, no more hatred for anyone and even the family has become more united than it has been and that is the most pleasing development I ever wanted.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The sun is ripe up in the sky staring at every single living and non-living thing on earth. The time is twenty minutes gone past one in the noon. Mokanju and I are just coming back from our visit to Mrs. Esutola’s child in the hospital. He has not recovered very well; but he is only in the hospital having a good convalesce.

The doctor said he suffered from a kind of illness which he called in its scientific name and the name is what I cannot remember now but he explained it to be a sudden spasm of some of the nerves and quick movement of the blood in the body.

As we move over a bridge that is at the edge of collapsing I notice the bus driver hisses as he continues to press something I suspect to be the break repeatedly in fear and uneasiness. At first I think the break is malfunctioning but my mind swift it out as if it is something I should not think about but the reality is that the break is working no more but no one knows except me, the vehicle and the driver himself.

I want to alert every other passenger in the vehicle but fear has taken away my vocal strength because now we are head to head with a lorry and the driver has out of fear lose control of the vehicle. The vehicle with fourteen people swifts left and right and then runs into the lorry and that is all I can see.

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I cannot clearly see things around me but I can faintly see one nylon bag which is as big as the size of commercial sachet water, it is filled with liquid of orange colour hanging on a stand and a siphon siphoning the liquid straight into my veins through my hand. I do not need anyone to tell me that I am in the hospital for with what I have seen I already know where I am.

As time passes gradually my sight gets clearer and I can see almost everything around me clearly now. A female whose age ranges between twenty and twenty-three is sitting on a stool seated very close to the point where my head is and Mrs. Esutola is sitting by the side of a bed situated a bit farther from me and the person lying on the bed seems to be brutally injured. As I see this I remember immediately that I wasn’t the only one on board in the vehicle and Mokanju was with me in the vehicle. I don’t want to believe my intuition for it says it is Mokanju that Mrs. Esutola is sitting beside.

“Excuse me lady, can I ask you a question?”

I request as I manage to raise myself a bit high on the pillow. The lady turns to me with a smile on her face.

“What do you want to ask me?”

She asks while the smile on her face gives me more health than the drugs must have been doing.

“Do you know my young brother?”

I ask staring into her eyes so that I can know when she is telling lies but unfortunately she moves away her face and reply that she knows him.

“Where is him?”

I ask her praying she doesn’t point at Mrs. Esutola’s way.

“He is in the other ward with my young brother. He has wakened two hours after you were all brought to the hospital.”

She says and the smile is still browsing her cheeks. She is beautiful I must say. I feel ease as she tells me where Mokanju is; I haven’t seen him though but it is good he is not the person Mrs. Esutola is with.

“But who is that, that mom is with?”

I ask feeling a kind of guilty feeling that results from the fact that I called Mrs. Esutola mom.

“I don’t know who she is but I know she is a passenger in the vehicle you were in.”

“And who are you?”

I ask feeling too inquisitive for asking that but she didn’t appear anyway offended with my silly question as the smile on her face do not for a seconds fade.

“I am Pa Abdul-Salam’s last child and second daughter.”

“I didn’t know and I am sorry for being too inquisitive.”

“You don’t need to be. Rest yourself and please do not ask any question again.”

And as she has said I am not asking any question. I feel very happy having my people around me during hard times. It was some days ago I left the hospital and it has been Mokanju alone who was with me during that time. Now it is the both of us that are involved in the road accident, if these family members are not around to help I cannot imagine how hard it would have been for us.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I should also make my way to the Guinness book of world record for what happened to me throughout my life just like; Roy Sullivan who is a ranger in Virginia, he was stroke by thunder lightening seven different times in his life, the homeless Robert Evans who was hit by a hit and run and seven hours later after he was discharged from the hospital he was rushed to he got hit by another fast moving train which knocked him off a bridge and landed him in a creek, Truman Duncan was a passenger on a fast moving train, he fell of the train and got swept under it, he was cut into two but he survived and the music teacher Frane Selak who always escaped death at close calls; he escaped death from: one train accident, one airplane malfunction, three car explosions and two bus accident in which most of them claimed lives of others but not his.

I have also escaped death twice from two worst accidents and I think I deserve to be put in the record too, just like these people.

It has been three months now after the bus accident; I was left with a broken arm and a broken leg and with a stronger family tie because since then I have been unable to stop calling Mrs. Esutola “Mama”. She has from then stood by us and has been like a mother to us. She is indeed a loving mother and a woman that’ll definitely take no nonsense from anyone.

With this development, Mokanju has fully understands the true reason why it is quite necessary to have family around oneself. He also has been calling her mama, it even sounds sweeter on his lips; I think he has needed a mother long time ago.

My white friend; Mr. William McGongall Poe who I called two weeks ago to ask about something I know nothing about does say “This life is like an oracular forest it has a much hidden meaning than what we understand.” I never understood this until now. If in some six months before now I was asked to tell how possible Mrs. Esutola can be close to us, I would have said like the distance between the sun and the coldest planet.

Your best friend can actually be your worst enemy with time and vice versa and that’s why life is an oracular forest.

THE END

(C) Lateef Yahqub Olamide

                                                                        Sat, 15 August, 2015.