Now Is the Time for Running

by Michael Williams

  He means germs.

  I pile the bushes in front of the pipe again. Smoke curls from one of the huts in the village. It seems very still. Too still. I don’t want to walk among the dead again, but I have no choice.

  In the village the air smells of burning wood, blood, and machine oil. I do not look at the bodies. I walk quickly to our hut.

  Innocent always buries his Bix-box at the back of the hut in a hole. I lift the flat rock and find his box. My hands are shaking, and I keep hearing noises. Perhaps the soldiers are back? I must get out of here. I grab the leather pouch Grandpa Longdrop made for me. It doesn’t seem possible that I will ever play soccer again, but I pick up the pouch anyway.

  I know where Amai hides our money. When I open the side of the mattress, I see that somebody has come before me. The money is gone. I go to her second hiding place, inside her pillow. I find several fifty million dollar notes, a few more hundred million dollars. There is no time to count it all. It’s not much, but it will buy us some food. The only problem is how to carry all the notes.

  I stuff them into the leather pouch. The money fills out the ball nicely, and I find a piece of string and sew up the patch. I toss the ball into the air. Nobody will know I have a billion dollars in my soccer ball.

  Outside, I give one last look at Amai. I wish she would rise from the dust, wipe her hands on her apron, and smile at me again. I wish she would call me in for food and tell me sternly not to forget my homework. I want to kneel beside her and cry, but Innocent is waiting for me and the soldiers might come back.

  I go and stand before Grandpa Longdrop. He seems smaller than I remember. “Thank you for the soccer ball, Grandpa Longdrop. I’ll always keep it with me,” I say and wonder if he hears me wherever he is.

  There is nothing left for me here.

  When I get back to the pipes, Innocent is waiting for me. I hand him his Bix-box.

  “You didn’t look inside?” he asks.

  “No, of course not. Come on, let’s go.”

  Innocent takes out his small radio and turns it on. He starts searching for a station. His thumb moves expertly on the dial.

  I know what he is looking for. “There are no soccer games today, Innocent.”

  “I’m just looking,” he says, turning the sound down and looking at me as if I have just told him he’s stupid. He holds the small radio close to his ear, and I don’t have to worry about him anymore until he is hungry. Once Innocent gets into radio land he’s in another world. He walks a bit stiffly, painfully.

  I never know what Innocent does with pain. Ever since I can remember he hasn’t felt pain like the rest of us do. Amai said it has something to do with his nerves and the messages they send to his brain. She said the messages are a bit slow. Sometimes his brain doesn’t register the pain until long after it is over. Innocent was badly hurt by the soldiers. He flinches when he walks, but he doesn’t complain. He is lost in radio land.

  We walk away from Gutu without looking back. I wonder whether I will ever see this place again. I hope not. Gutu is the place where Amai and Grandpa Longdrop died. This is no longer a place where people live.

  This is a place where my people died.

  6

  CAPTAIN WASHINGTON IN BIKITA

  We walk to Bikita to see Captain Washington. He is the best policeman in the district. I will tell him what happened to us in Gutu, what happened to Amai and Grandpa Longdrop and the others. He will know what to do. Bikita is three hours’ walk on the normal path from Gutu, but we do not walk on that path. It is the road that the soldiers used. If they should come back they will see us. We walk the long way.

  After two hours of walking I hear the batteries slowly dying in Innocent’s radio. This is another sort of trouble with Innocent. Battery trouble. He hates it when his radio dies and there are no fresh batteries to keep it alive. Amai always kept a supply of batteries on the top shelf of our hut for these emergencies. If Innocent can’t turn his radio on, he goes crazy. I mean really crazy. Screaming and breaking things and swearing so bad it makes your toes curl. I’m a little scared of my big brother when he gets like that. Grandpa Longdrop says it’s when the curtain is lifted in Innocent’s brain and we can see how much damage was done when he was born. He said it is a reminder to us of how well Innocent does to keep everything under control most of the time. Grandpa Longdrop said that the Spirits had gone to sleep when Innocent was born. Amai always rolled her eyes when Grandpa spoke of Innocent’s birth. She said it was the doctor who was asleep and didn’t get Innocent out of her in time.

  And I forgot the batteries. So stupid! He turns the dial up, presses the radio close to his ear, and shoots me a worried glance. He will be coming out of radio land soon, and I’d better find something to keep him from worrying about his silent radio.

  Innocent is like that. There always has to be one thing he is busy with. He must be washing his hands, eating, listening to his radio, helping Grandpa Longdrop sweep the yard, or taking the garbage to the dump for Amai.

  We approach a baobab tree. It’s time for a fruit break.

  “Turn off the radio, Innocent. Let’s eat.”

  I climb up the great branches of the baobab tree and pick the huge fruit. I drop them down to Innocent. Soon we have a pile at the foot of the tree. I break open the hard shell and pull out the soft fruit inside, handing some to my brother. We eat in silence, juice running down the sides of our mouths.

  “Where are we going, Deo?”

  I have no answer. Captain Washington, I could say, but then where?

  “Deo?”

  I am eating and thinking. This is a problem that needs lots of thinking. My amai has a sister in Harare, but the road to Harare is very long and filled with soldiers and roadblocks. My aunt is uneasy around Innocent. I don’t want to arrive there and tell her the bad news from Gutu.

  I am thinking now and not eating.

  “Here. Look.” Innocent hands me a photograph that he has taken from his Bix-box.

  It is a color picture of a man standing with his right arm around Amai. She is smiling. The man is hugging Innocent with his left arm. Innocent is grinning as if he has just been tickled. He is a lot younger. I was not yet born when this photo was taken. Behind them is a great big truck with the word REMOVALS written on its side.

  “Mr. Goniwe,” says Innocent. “Mr. Goniwe lives in Goodwood.” He shows me the words on the side of the truck with his knuckles, his fingers pointing to the ground.

  “It’s in South Africa, Innocent. We can never get there,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I have never seen this photo. Mr. Goniwe is my father too. My mother has shown me some others, but not this one. I am angry for no reason I can think of. I look at the man embracing Innocent. There is no photo of me this close to my father.

  “Goodwood must be a good place.” Innocent puts the photograph back into his Bix-box, and the conversation about our father is over, because I see people coming along the same way we have come.

  We hide in the bushes. You can’t trust anybody these days. They are not from Gutu. The men carry suitcases; the women carry their small children on their backs and parcels on their heads. They pass a little way in front of us. They do not look happy. They walk as if they carry rocks, and they look scared. Perhaps they have some kind of sickness. Some of the men have bandages around their heads; one of them is helping a boy my age, struggling on crutches. I see that he has only one leg. Bikita is still another hour away. It must be hard to walk with only one leg. Perhaps they took this path because they are also afraid of the soldiers?

  “I am glad the soldiers didn’t take my leg,” whispers Innocent.

  We wait for them to pass, and then we go. We must get to Captain Washington’s house before it gets dark. Perhaps there is an English Premier League game on his television. Captain Washington has a satellite dish, and he allows us to watch soccer whenever we come to Bikita. I think Captain Washington is kind to us because he has no wife and no children. Amai al
ways made sure that when we visited him she brought food and the foreign magazines she gets as a schoolteacher. I think Captain Washington is soft on Amai. She said he was becoming as big as a hippo with all the food she was making for him. Captain Washington always laughed at my amai’s jokes. She can make you feel like you’re the only person in the world that’s important. She’s like that.

  She was like that.

  The burning lump in my chest rises into my throat. I swallow it down. My eyes water again, but I will not cry. Sadness makes me walk faster.

  Innocent’s radio is softer. He pushes it hard against his ear. I know he can’t hear very much. He’ll get desperate pretty soon.

  We get to Bikita just before battery trouble.

  “My radio’s dying, Deo.”

  “You’d better hide it,” I say.

  Innocent looks as if he is going to explode. He pushes it into my hands, wanting me to fix it, wanting me to make it right.

  “Put it away before the soldiers see it. We’ll go to Mr. Singh’s shop.”

  The shadows are long. There is something strangely different in the air. It is nothing like normal, sleepy Bikita. The people run from place to place. The doors are shut. Curtains are drawn. There is no one sitting on the steps by the office building. But before I do anything, I must get batteries for Innocent. He looks like he will burst. He sways from one foot to the other and slaps the side of his head as if mosquitoes are biting him.

  Innocent and I go into the Bread and Milk Shop. Mr. Singh is looking out the window nervously.

  “Can I have some batteries? Four radio batteries.”

  He doesn’t greet us but goes to the shelf behind the counter and gets the batteries. I don’t know why it is called the Bread and Milk Shop. There is never any milk or bread here. The shelves look emptier than last time I was here, but thank goodness Mr. Singh has batteries. He doesn’t recognize me without Amai or Grandpa Longdrop. Usually he smiles at me, asks me how school is. Now he seems busy with something else that makes him look as if he’s got ants running up and down his legs. While he gets the batteries, I take some money out of the soccer ball.

  I give him the money, but he shakes his head.

  “They cost three times that amount now,” he says.

  I’m confused. “But why, Mr. Singh?”

  “Inflation.”

  I don’t understand but give him more money to pay for the inflation anyway. I don’t think Mr. Singh would cheat me, but how can something cost three times more in a month’s time?

  Mr. Singh is looking out the window again.

  “What’s happening?” I ask.

  “Operation Who Did You Vote For,” he says. He looks worried. Very worried. “They are calling for a pungwe tonight.”

  “What’s a pungwe?”

  “A time for Zed to remind us why we are lucky to have our president,” says Mr. Singh. “They call it Operation Rehabilitation.”

  I want to ask him more questions, but he shoos me out of the shop and locks the door behind me. I hand Innocent his batteries, and he grins like a toothpaste ad. He hands me the radio.

  “Make the radio work again, Deo.”

  “I’ll put them in later. Now we must get to Captain Washington.”

  We run through the streets to the policeman’s house at the end of town. When we arrive, Captain Washington is standing on a ladder working on his satellite dish. “Hey, Captain Washington! What are you doing?” I shout, and he drops his screwdriver in fright.

  “Deo! What are you doing here?” He climbs down the ladder and smiles nervously at Innocent and me. He must have been sleeping in his uniform. It is all crumpled and dirty. He seems surprised to see us, almost embarrassed.

  “Innocent? What happened to your face?”

  Innocent ducks his head, raises his hands to hide his face.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, pointing at the dish that is hanging half off the wall. I don’t want to tell him what happened in Gutu. Not yet.

  “I have to take down the dish. It’s Operation Pull Down the Satellite Dish.”

  Innocent finds this very funny. He starts giggling, his hand in front of his mouth, and his whole body starts shaking.

  “And you, Innocent, why are you laughing?”

  “Operation Go to the Toilet, please,” he says, pointing to the house.

  Captain Washington can’t help but smile at my brother.

  “Operation Open the Door,” says Innocent, standing in front of the closed door. I roll my eyes at Captain Washington. This will be the Big Joke for at least the next two weeks.

  Captain Washington has a large house made of bricks. It has a kitchen, a bedroom, and the best thing of all, a bathroom with a flush toilet and a shower. But the main thing about his house is the lounge where the television stands in one corner. Innocent and I have sat here many times watching English Premier soccer matches. Manchester United against Chelsea. The best games, though, are the Africa Cup games. Senegal against Nigeria in last year’s Africa Cup finals. This room is why I liked coming to Bikita with Amai. Innocent and I would sit here staring at the television while Amai and Captain Washington would talk in his bedroom. It is in Captain Washington’s lounge that I have met all the giants of soccer: Drogba, Ronaldinho, David Beckham. I know all their names, what goals they scored, what positions they play.

  I liked our visits to Captain Washington for another reason—they always made my amai happy. I think she’s soft on the captain too. She would join Innocent and me when she had finished talking with Captain Washington in his bedroom. She was always smiling a secret smile as if he had told her the funniest joke on Earth. And the captain always looked pleased after he had spent some private time with Amai.

  Innocent goes straight for the toilet. He will spend the next twenty minutes washing his hands, long enough for me to tell Captain Washington what happened to us.

  “Where is your mother?” he asks once he has closed the front door.

  And so I tell him.

  Everything there is to be told.

  It is not good to see adults cry. They should not cry in front of children. Captain Washington sobs. I don’t know where to look or what to say. I hold my billion-dollar soccer ball in my lap and wait for Captain Washington to stop crying. He holds his face in his hands, and his shoulders shake. I pick at the twine holding the soccer ball together.

  I would love to get a new soccer ball. I wonder how much they cost.

  I wish he would stop.

  I tell him that Innocent does not know about Amai and Grandpa Longdrop. I ask him not to tell my brother.

  He nods, wipes his eyes and the snot from his nose. He gets up and goes to the kitchen. He brings back a bottle of booze. He pours himself a drink and swallows it quickly. I haven’t seen Captain Washington like this. Normally he is very neat. His uniform is always pressed, his hat always clean. At least when he drinks, he is no longer crying.

  Innocent comes into the room. “Operation Clean Up Innocent,” he says, showing us his hands, washed pink-clean. He does look better, even happy. The swelling on his face is still bad, but his eyes shine, and I think he has forgotten what happened in Gutu. He always feels comfortable here—this is like a second home to him.

  “Innocent is hungry, Captain. Operation Feed Innocent?” This is my brother trying his luck, smiling in the way only Innocent can smile. He is not shy among people he knows.

  I must admit I am pretty hungry myself, but I don’t say anything. Sometimes it’s handy having Innocent around. I’m pleased when Captain Washington goes into the kitchen and pulls out some food from the fridge and puts it on the table. We stand around in the kitchen and eat okra and pumpkin leaves and my absolute favorite food in the whole world—leftover duck.

  “Your mother always made the best duck,” he says, cutting us pieces of the white meat with brown skin. “I loved it when she cooked for me. Your mother was such a good woman, Innocent.” Captain Washington heats some water on the Primus stove for some t
ea. I wish he wouldn’t talk about Amai in the past tense in front of Innocent.

  I am halfway through my cup of tea when there is loud banging on the door. Captain Washington flashes me a warning look.

  “Chipangano,” he says, shaking his head at me. “Don’t move. I will deal with them.”

  There is angry shouting outside, and before the captain can get to the door, it bursts open. Young men in green overalls carrying sticks and shamboks come shoving-pushing-shouting into the room. I have heard of the Youth Party, the Chipangano. Shadrack told me about them. He called them the Green Bombas. They wear green overalls and work for the president. Shadrack said that one day he would like to be one of them. If Shadrack was alive and could see them now, I think he would say it was a stupid idea.

  The Green Bombas are all over the house. They must have followed us to Captain Washington’s home.

  7

  THE GREEN BOMBAS

  Who are you?”

  “These are friends of mine….”

  “Why are you not at the pungwe?”

  “They are on their way….”

  “Your dish is still on the wall!”

  “I am taking it down….”

  “Are you Chipangano? Where’s your card?”

  “No, I don’t think…”

  “Do you vote for the president?”

  “The president is my president for life….”

  “We are talking to these boys. Not you, Captain.”

  “These boys are not from Bikita.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Friends of mine…”

  “Are they MDC? Where are their Zed cards?”

  “No! They are not MDC….”

  “Where are their cards?”

  Their words are like bullets. The room zings with their questions—they bounce off the walls, bounce off the ceiling. Innocent stands up and moves quickly behind me. I can feel him trembling. He hates questions he cannot answer. They confuse him. He ends up saying the wrong things. I say nothing to these boys. They are strong only because they are many. If I catch one of them alone, he will not have so many questions. Instead, he’ll be worrying about how to stop his nose from bleeding and how to get my foot out of his ass.