Hallelujah!
In the morning we’d be at the mouth of the River Temz, then we’d enter the Ambossan Channel and eventually dip down toward the Atlantic and be on our way to Europa.
I had finished eating and drank from the gourd of water she offered.
She told me I could go on deck as it was almost dark, but I had to stay out of sight.
“Your life is in our hands and our lives are in your hands. Remember that.”
As I made my way out, she hunkered down, spread her shawl on the cabin floor and emptied the contents of a goatskin pouch onto it.
Out tumbled cat’s teeth, claws, bunches of coarse animal hair, the jaws of a rodent, a little bundle of herbs, a snuff box, a candle.
I hoped it was on my behalf.
ALONE ON THE EMPTY DECK I sat out of sight on a coil of rope and peeped over the railing. I was surprised to see we were still only passing through the outer reaches of Londolo—zones 8, 9 and 10. I recognized the prosperous town of Green Wi Che, known for its shipbuilding yards, several of which we passed. We soon skirted the wide riverside factories of the arsenal town of Wool Wi Che, famous for manufacturing the finest spears, shields, crossbows, poison darts, muskets and cannons in the world.
Grotesque hippos lay entwined on top of each other in the mudflats, their rubbery, slimy skins like those of giant slugs, their eyes and ears a putrid pink. Two open-mouthed alpha males were squaring up to each other, jaws stretched wide, teeth interlocked inside.
A herd of ugly water buffalo traipsed like disgruntled hunchbacked farmhands through the mangroves.
A Temz crocodile pretended to sleep on the riverbank, mouth casually open, waiting to snap down hard on its next gullible prey.
Glimpsed between trees a powerful young hunter with shiny black thighs and thin calfs was hot on the heels of a wild boar.
A flock of egrets passed overhead, an exquisite flurry of white wings set against the red-streaked sky.
Soon we came to grassy plains where a herd of giraffe was grazing, wobbly-legged calfs taking refuge between their mothers’ legs.
Farther downriver an ungainly herd of elephants approached the water, making every other animal run for cover.
Far away I could just make out the mountain ranges of the Essex Massif.
Now that I was leaving, it all seemed quite scenic.
AT A BEND IN the river a signpost announced:
WELCOME TO THE CITY OF DARTFOR, TWINNED WITH CASABLANCA.
Coned rondavels, whitewashed villas and mud huts with corrugated roofs rubbed shoulders with one another on the hills. Municipal mud tower blocks rose high above them, laundry hanging colorfully from windows.
As the ship sailed silently past, Ambossan voices ebbed and flowed as people walked along the promenade or sat in cafés, while their children played beach football with green coconuts beneath the advertisements for the Acoca-Aloca fizzy drink, the red-and-white squiggle of its logo emblazoned on riverside billboards.
Under the arches of a bridge, skateboarding teenage boys with wild Aphros, beaded corsets and leather jockstraps hurtled up its sweeping walls, turned, hovered midair, then skidded down again with a whoop and a flourish.
Crouched in the shallows was the after-dinner crowd, chatting and shooting the shit.
A row of young adults sat flirting on a low harbor wall. The girls wore their hair shaved with a bushy topknot just above the forehead, their faces painted a bright yellow with white chalk dots circling each cheek, and wearing kohl-black lipstick. The boys sported thin hennaed dreadlocks and had green lines streaked down the centers of their noses.
Tips of cigarettes rose and fell like fireflies.
Two ancient fishermen with wrinkled stomachs dined at the end of a pier, scooping up rice from a large green ravenala leaf.
As we left Dartfor City a harvest rave was in full swing in an outlying field. Groins banged hard against crotches. Buttocks slid up and down thrusting pelvises. Legs shimmied in between each other while heads rolled from side to side. Drummers sat on a stage banging out super-fast rhythms while dancers wearing grass skirts shook their cheeks to the beat, exposing themselves to the crowd.
The drums pounded on in my bones for miles afterward as the ship rolled deeper into the Ambossan wilderness.
IF I REACHED OUT, I could almost touch the forest ferns.
The skeleton of a disused train carriage became visible where the trees thinned out, a plume of smoke coming out of its chimney.
The shriek of a jackal made me start.
Lemur eyes stared out as luminous orange disks from the branches of trees.
I could hear howler monkeys creating havoc inside the rain forest.
Waterborne creatures rippled in the river.
Airborne creatures flapped around me.
The darkness wrapped me up.
The darkness held me.
The darkness carried me.
I AM WALKING DOWN the lane toward our cottage and see Pa returning from work with his two grandsons who are strapping lads—Robert and John. They’re Sharon’s two boys.
Mam is sitting on a love seat cradling her latest granddaughter who is called Doris. She’s the first child of Alice.
Mam has filled out now and is ruddy-cheeked and she never talks of dying anymore.
Madge is sewing the hem of the wedding dress for her niece Rebecca’s marriage to a turnip farmer who owns three hundred acres. Rebecca is Sharon’s too.
Madge has never married and never will.
Sharon married a stable hand whose bushy-bearded good looks were supposed to make up for the absence of a princely pedigree. But she’s still looking over at the hills yonder, just in case.
Alice, sadly, is in a mental asylum.
Ah no, just kidding. She sees me first, comes running down the lane to give me the sister of all hugs.
There are three other teenagers there too. Two girls and a boy.
The girls look the spitting of me and the boy is a dead cert for Frank.
They’re helping Frank secure the last door on a beautifully inlaid cabinet he’s making. They’re teasing each other and laughing and the door nearly falls off and Frank tells them to behave, but you can see he’s not at all angry because he doesn’t stop grinning at their antics.
He’s not changed a bit. (Not had another woman since, either.)
The look on his face when he sees me is—priceless.
I DIDN’T WANT to return to my cabin.
My first night of freedom would be nothing like my first night of incarceration.
I found a sheltered spot on the deck, piled with empty sacks, and lay down.
I spread my wrappa over me.
The clouds and ship sailed with ease in the same direction.
The stars were close enough to pluck and wear as jewelry.
A pair of star-diamond earrings.
Stars threaded onto a silver necklace.
I felt my muscles unclamp from my bones.
Released, my limbs sank into the improvised mattress of sacks.
My scalp let go of its tight grip on my brain.
My thoughts floated light as an air bubble toward the sky.
I was going home, oh Lord.
I was going home.
EENY MEENY MINY MO
A warm, light-fingered mist seduced me into morning.
The ship was swaying from side to side so we must have moored for the night.
The rain forest loomed in front of me, a high wall of vegetation.
My mattress had molded to the fetal curve of my shape.
I stretched out, wriggling my toes, raising my arms above my head, feeling the rocks of my vertebrae pull away from each other.
I rotated my head from side to side to ease away the cricks.
I yawned loudly, just for the pleasure of it.
I felt so lighthearted, so youthful, so full of hope.
Morning dew brought out the smell of fish, embedded in the sacks.
What was for
breakfast, I wondered. Boiled yam? Boiled cassava?
Soon it would be porridge: large flakes, creamy milk, sweetened with honey.
Rolling over, I climbed to my feet and strolled to the river side of the ship, to breathe in the quietude, to bathe my face in the moisturizing mist, to overhear the unintelligible conversation of birds, to gaze upon the watercolor Temz, which now seemed so beautiful draped in its gauzy bridal veil.
Yellow-billed storks waded through the rushes.
A wadi fed into the river, a gaggle of white swans paddling down it.
That day the Temz would carry me downstream until it pulled me far away from Great Ambossa.
I was looking up toward the heavens, as the rising sun began to bleed a pastel pink through the nebulous gray, when a ship pulled up alongside ours, with all the stealth of a silent assassin.
And there he was, standing high on the gun deck.
Two hundred feet tall, three hundred feet wide.
An expensive black-and-gold striped wrappa was tied around his waist, one end flung over a shoulder.
I heard Harrida behind me, “Come inside! We will deal with this. Come inside, dear. Come inside!”
But she did not know the nature of this beast.
No way, Bwana. No way was I going down.
I dashed to the forest side of the ship.
I climbed over the railings and dropped into the river, not caring that its aquatic citizens might relish a slender white drumstick for breakfast. I dog-paddled my way through the river, gripped the roots of a fortress of trees and tried to lever myself onto their unyielding limbs.
My mind was more agile than my body. I kept slipping, but finally managed to clamber up onto the bank.
Just before I disappeared into the trees, I turned around.
Bwana was spewing orders. Men were running up and down the decks of both ships. Harrida was scurrying back down belowdeck, hands cupped over her mouth.
When I scanned the length of Bwana’s ship, I saw Ezinwene hovering on the quarterdeck. She had wrapped her arms around herself, her hair was undone, and she looked bedraggled. Did she have a black eye?
As soon as she spotted me, she ducked down behind the railing.
Hoisting my wrappa up, I let my legs propel me over mulch and twigs, over stones and moss, through ferns and bracken, over mud pools and rocky streams.
My feet quickly sored. They did not complain.
My legs scratched against thorns. They did not complain.
My hands bashed against the bark of trees. They did not complain.
I listened out for the barking of the dogs that would surely come.
THE CANOPY WAS an impenetrable ceiling that blocked out the light; the sun broke through only where a tree had fallen and now lay upon the forest floor being devoured by insects.
Birds of paradise flew high up in the leaves. Blue macaw parrots argued in the raucous voices of angry humans.
Chimpanzees swung from the aerial roots of plants that dangled from the canopy like snakes.
Mossy twigs could have been vipers.
Black leaves could have been scorpions.
Small rocks could have been porcupines.
I scuttled into the undergrowth where vines conspired to choke me.
Whenever I saw the sun, I followed it, hoping it would stop me running around in circles, hoping it would take me away from the river.
I came to an open space where trees had been burned down and which now sprouted a new carpet of soft grass so inviting it took all my willpower not to fling myself upon it.
To rest, just for a moment.
A black vulture with a glossy wingspan of ten feet was swooping down toward the carcass of a jackal.
Turning to my immediate right, I fled the wide-open space, reentering the shade and shadows of the forest.
I returned to its breathing—the crushed twigs and leaves underfoot, the insects, the birds, the falling fruit, the howler monkeys who were making such a din.
Passing the reddish-brown bark of a guava tree, I grabbed a bunch of its fruit, stuffing them down without even peeling their hairy skins.
I had sustenance. I could go on.
Oranges, mangoes, star fruit, berries—I could survive in the rain forest.
I LISTENED FOR BARKS but none came.
I listened all night while I scrambled through the undergrowth.
I listened in the morning when I was sure they would have found me.
I listened in the afternoon when I climbed into the cradle of a thick tree and slept, for a few minutes.
When I awoke it was dawn.
Huge black ants were biting my body raw.
I climbed down painfully from the tree and ran until I found a stream, splashed in and watched the ants drown.
Overnight my legs had swollen to twice their normal size. I wrapped my feet in leaves and hobbled along as best I could.
My soles were butchered.
My sores oozed pus.
My cuts were bleeding.
I HEARD CHILDREN SHOUTING.
Behind some mangrove trees, two thin Ambossan boys were beating two gaunt cows with sticks as they chased them around a paddy field churning up mud in preparation for rice planting.
I crouched and watched. If I approached, they might run off and tell their parents.
I decided to wait until they were finished and follow them home.
I struggled to keep up and out of sight as they larked about, their little voices echoing under the canopy, picking berries as they walked, climbing up a coconut tree, slicing open a coconut with a knife, sharing its milk, singing songs, prodding the cattle, cursing them.
I could smell pottery cooking.
Four older women were firing pots in a dell, adding layers of grasses, branches, leaves to the flames. The boys greeted them.
I must be nearing a settlement.
Impulsively, desperately, I walked into their midst.
Looking up, they stopped what they were doing.
One of the women approached. Her hair was a coxcomb of animal fat, the holes in her earlobes were so stretched I could’ve slipped my hand through them. A brass ring hung from the middle of her nose and she wore a brass torque. Her breasts were stringy and juiceless and a dirty beaded skirt showed off withered thighs.
Her face was inscrutable, but she took my hand, gave me water and fed me a piece of fried fish.
One of the boys poked me with a stick as if I was some strange, possibly dangerous, new animal he’d just discovered.
Slapping him on the leg, the woman then helped me up, and I was assisted into their nearby home—a kraal of stone and loam huts thatched with millet.
Everyone gathered to watch my arrival, but no one said a word.
I was offered a straw mat underneath the spacious branches of a guango tree.
My helper dabbed some ointment onto my wounds, ordered a bowl of rice to be brought to me.
I whispered my thanks, saying I hoped my strength would return soon, then I’d be on my way.
I prayed I would be safe there.
I heard the uncertain pounding of corn near the huts behind me and hens clacking. I heard mats being shaken out by confident, impatient adult hands. A crying baby was shushed. There was the squelch of a cow being milked and the brush of twigs sweeping the floor of the kraal.
No one spoke.
No one said a word.
I should have left but—I was exhausted.
The hot afternoon stretched out its long limbs and yawned itself into evening. I closed my eyes, just for a short while.
I awoke to see Bwana heave his bulk into the kraal.
His expensive wrappa trailed from his waist in a long, mud-drenched twist of cloth like a tail.
A forked rawhide whip dangled from his left hand.
I eased myself onto my feet in the vain hope of running but the helper woman pinned my arms from behind.
Flanking Bwana were two hunters whose naked bodies were painted with white
geometric patterns.
One held a spear, the other a machete.
Up close he was a blur of exaggerated features swimming in a film of sweat. His breath was so revolting my eyes watered.
I could touch his fury.
“I will beat you until you can no longer beg for mercy. I will cut off one ear so that you will hear better with the other. I will chop off one foot so you can no longer run. I have been a kind master to you. Now I will be a stern one. Thus will you know the difference.”
He beckoned to the hunters, who ripped off my wrappa, spun me around and tied my hands to the tree with twine.
Warm liquid spurted down my left leg.
JUSTICE IS SERVED
—from The Flame
Dear Reader,
I am not a violent man but one who has, on occasion, to make sure that acts of deterrence and punishment are carried out.
Imagine how I felt when I strode into the compound in the forest two days later and found the wretch cowering with self-pity underneath a tree.
Something inside of me flipped.
Judge me not, Dear Reader, when I confess that I cared little, in that moment, whether the wretch lived or died.
The skin on her spindly back was pale, and when the first lash sliced it open, thick blood trickled down it in thin red rivulets.
What could I do but turn and walk back out of the gates of that compound as the sound of her blood-curdling cries tore through the evening skies?
Night had fallen by the time I returned to the compound to find her on the ground, not moving.
My men stood guard while the local women tended to her.
Something inside of me flipped again.
Tears of rage flooded down my cheeks. After such a good working relationship, it had come to this!
I was forced to admit the old adage—you can take the child out of the jungle, but you cannot take the jungle out of the child.
The humane thing to do would have been to finish her off, but I was not and will never be a murderer.
Blonde Roots Page 14