Kollie shook his head. “No,” he said. “They won’t. They wouldn’t.”
They were standing in his father’s blind spot, so he couldn’t see them talking, but they could see him. Plus, his window was rolled up, and as far as Kollie could tell, he was trying as hard as he could to not admit that what was happening was happening.
Angel wiped away some tears with her hand. “They will. You know they will.”
Kollie kicked at his suitcase. “Motherfuckers!”
Angel grabbed his shoulders and steered him back to their secluded spot. “Stop it! He’ll hear you,” she hissed.
Kollie pressed his eyelids together, tried to regulate his breathing. I’m going to Atlanta. I’m going to Atlanta. But deep inside him, in the quietest part of his mind, he knew that he wasn’t going to Atlanta. He was terrified. “I won’t go. I won’t do it.” He paced in front of the suitcase.
“Listen! We only have a second now,” said Angel. “He’s going to tell you that if you don’t get on that plane to Monrovia, you will stay there four years instead of three. That he will send you no money. Even that he will make sure you never come back here.”
“He can’t do that!” But as he spit out the words, he knew they were not true. His father could do it, and would.
Angel looked at him. Her pity was overwhelming, and he wanted to hit her. Even in the midst of this small kindness she was offering him, her last gift to him made her better than him.
And then, before he could say anything else, the Papi was beside them. Kollie did not even have time to wonder how much of the exchange he had heard. “Angel, get in the car,” he said quietly.
Angel looked from Kollie to her father back to Kollie again. “But—”
“I said, get in the car!”
She hung her head in defeat and turned on her heel to go. Then, she thought better and ran up to her brother, giving him a hug and a kiss on the cheek before he had time to react. “Good luck,” she whispered. She ran back to the car.
Kollie and his father were alone, for a moment, before an airport security officer shouted that he should get back in his car, that he was blocking traffic and would be given a ticket if he did not move promptly.
“You were always a good boy, back home,” his father said. “You will be a good boy there again.”
Kollie shook his head. “I won’t go. I won’t.”
“You will go,” the Papi said simply. “And you will be fine-oh.” Then he turned and began to walk back to the Jeep, as security approached him.
“Yeah, fuck you then! Fuck you, James!” Kollie yelled at his back desperately.
The Papi didn’t respond, only held up his right hand, in an officious “good-bye” gesture.
“I’m not going!”
The Papi turned back just once, the last time he would see his only son for five years. “We will talk on the other side. You will be fine-oh.” Then he got in the Jeep and started the car.
Angel leaned across the seat, pressing her hands against the left-side window. I love you, she mouthed.
Kollie lost all sense of propriety then and pressed his hands, his face against the driver-side window. “Don’t do this! You can’t do this!” he screamed.
“You will be fine,” his father seemed to say through the window. Kollie couldn’t hear anything, though, over the siren burst from the airport cop telling them all to move along.
Pee-nyuehn ni se hwio xwadaun.
(“Night must come to end the pleasures of the day.”)
—Bassa proverb
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
1926, Grand Bassa County, Liberia
AM I STILL A MAN, then? If he was doomed to live a life of banishment from all he knew and held dear, fleeing the Frontier Force infantrymen at every turn, subsisting on roots and leaves and the occasional kindness of strangers, then his father, his grandfather, and their fathers would regard him with shame and embarrassment. He would be no man at all, really. He would be only a shadow, spreading out at dusk, and alighting each morning, not attached to any body, place, or feeling; just moving, being, escaping.
How could this be? He was no longer a rightful citizen of Giakpee and would therefore be thrown out of the clan if the soldiers’ claim was sound. Then he could never return to Jorgbor and their son. That all of this had come to pass in the space of three days was incredible. His whole world, gone. Everything that mattered to him cleaved open, dried out like so much cassava.
And, however much he swatted it away, the question always returned like a tsetse fly, biting until the disease fully bloomed in the blood. The longer he was in the bush, the weightier the question became, taking more shape until it finally broke in on itself and echoed in the dull space of his skull: Am I still a man?
* * *
—
Togar Somah, son of Baccus Somah and grandson of Aku Mawolo, leaned down into the creek and cradled a cupful of its cool, clear water. He knew that the soldiers were probably less than a half day from him, but he hadn’t stopped to drink in hours and was on the verge of collapse. He brought the liquid to his parched lips and sucked it down hungrily, dipping back in the creek several more times before pushing himself down on to the rich dark clay of the bank. How soothing the mud was on his overheated, sweaty skin, chafed from days of running in the bush without bathing. How strangely easy it is to become nothing, he thought. To be unknown to everyone but your pursuer, and to disappear into this land.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had set out on his own alone, as his family had constant need of him. Besides, with the recent raids in neighboring villages, it was no longer safe. Still, Togar mused, admiring the green abundance of the ironwood trees, the palm fronds that reached around his every turn, no one ever really took the time to actually see this land, their home, unless they were alone. And this was the first time he had been so in years. He heard the shrill call of a monkey somewhere high in the tree branches above him and the steady beat of a woodpecker nearby. A flock of guinea fowl walked to the edge of the creek, about five feet from him, to drink. They did not seem bothered at all by his presence, though a few fluttered their gray feathers, speckled with white dots, and after drinking, raised their curved bills to the sun. Togar watched the perfect, pear-shaped birds strut and gather around one another, and for those few minutes he was glad to be there with them, simply being in the harsh afternoon sun. At least there was this one moment that he could honestly say the wicked ones had given him.
Of course, he hated them too—hated the Congo people for snatching his newly won manhood from him. Just eighteen and a husband and father, where would he go and who would he become, now that his future had been uprooted from its rightful soil? Who could he become? He didn’t want to be another beast of burden for their plantations, would rather die than be shipped off to Fernando Pó, that home of the devil where so many Kru men met their final resting place.
Togar shivered and the water churned in his otherwise empty belly. There were not enough curses for the Congo men. Don’t think they ain’t kill you for a scrap of land, his great-grandmother Lani used to warn him and the other children who gathered round her. Congo people evil-oh, she would say, gravely wagging a gnarled old finger in their faces. You forget at your own peril. Even now Togar laughed, at the memory. She used words like that, peril, on occasion, white words that none of them quite knew what to do with. And she even had a small stack of books she kept in the corner of her compound, a gift, it was rumored, from her own Congo mother, who was apparently one of the first to come over on the big ships, full of dreams of taming the wild forests and building a country out of mud and mosquitoes. Grandma Lani had never talked about it, but there were whispers that her mother banished her for marrying a heathen Bassa man, great-grandfather Gartee. And that Grandma Lani had never looked back, even though she had kept some of her Congo ways through all the years, her book learning and her
Congo English. She had even given Togar a talisman of sorts when he reached manhood: The remnants of a leopard skin pouch with a metal clasp at the top. It belong to my poor brother-oh, Grandma Lani had told him. He remembered that he had been surprised to see tears in her eyes. Before the fever take him. His Bassa love give it to him to ward off evil spirits and keep him safe in this world and the next. After he gone, it keep me safe too. She closed his small fingers over the cool metal clasp—the only part of the trinket that was still intact. Then she focused her runny, yellowed eyes on his own youthful ones. Keep it on your body, and it will do the same for you. So, he had taken a piece of twine and hooked it through the clasp. Then he had tied the whole thing around his neck and had never taken it off since, not even for bathing. And he had to admit, it had brought him Jorgbor and Sundaygar, the luckiest things in his life.
He fingered the talisman absently now, as he often did when he was thinking. It calmed him, somehow, knowing that it linked him to another history and people he had never known, but who were nevertheless, part of him.
A loud rustling behind a tangled knot of vines threw Togar out of his daydreaming. He sat up abruptly and cursed himself for taking too long to rest. He raised himself up on his haunches and peered into the dense underbrush. Even if they were this close, he still might be able to run. He had always been the most swift and agile of his peers, able to dodge the most tenacious pursuer. And even if it truly was over, if they did try to subdue him, he would resist till the end. He reached down and grabbed a handful of silt from the creek bed. It was a fool’s plan, he knew, with little chance of success, but it was all he had. Togar’s muscles tensed as another vine cracked. Whatever was coming was coming now, and he would have one chance to escape and maybe not even that if they had fresh munitions.
He realized in that split second that although he wanted to live, needed to kiss Jorgbor and Sundaygar one more time before leaving this earth, he was prepared to die if it came to that or imprisonment. Yes, his fathers, his ancestors were surely with him. Togar smiled: Even in death, he would still be a man. Grandma Lani’s laughter flooded his ears, deriding the Congo people as it brought him stories of their cruelty and the Bassa ability to resist it. We always been here, eh? she would tell pekin gathered at her feet. And we always be here. That why they hate us. And then the great laughter would come from her small body, giving them all the feeling of daggers being thrown into the soft earth.
Togar leapt up now, as a loud crash echoed through the bush. Cradling the mud in his right hand, he took five long strides before he heard the petulant oinks of three wild pigs break into the small space of the creek bank. The guinea fowl scattered immediately, heading as far away from the offending animals as possible.
Togar fell down in the dirt and roared a deep belly laugh. It was a sound out of a man’s body, but if the pigs had known how to listen, they would have heard echoes of the joy of a child at play. “You wicked, wicked beasts!” he scolded. The pigs regarded him for the first time and took several steps back. Togar’s stomach growled at the thought of roasting one of them, and then he forced the image out of his head. God had given him another chance for freedom, another opportunity to reunite with his family, and he shouldn’t be distracted by something as base as meat. No, he needed to get moving again. His luck was holding so far, all thanks to the ancestors, but he knew it would not always be so.
He stood up and began running in the direction of what he thought was north. The only things waiting for him to the south were more Congo plantations run by slave labor and the ports that led to Fernando Pó, and death.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE AIR HAD BEEN cool and wet the morning the soldiers came to raid the village, the morning Togar fled into the bush. He’d risen at dawn as usual, in order to walk the short distance to the small plot of land where they grew their crops. He smiled at Jorgbor and Sundaygar, both snoring lightly on the pallet, before he slipped out of the compound. You should take a second wife now, his father told him since they had been married for more than a year by then. Jorgbor had taken longer than the family wanted to get pregnant, and Baccus Somah was impatient to see his son’s seed spread and his children cover the earth. Baccus himself had three wives and sixteen children, and he wanted to see his son and the family fields blessed with the same good fortune. But Togar could not imagine it—taking another woman so soon after he and Jorgbor were joined. He could not tell anyone, of course, but he had grown to love her over the course of their short marriage and could not fathom lying with another woman. Soon, soon, he would wave off Baccus whenever he whispered in his ear about it and then would rush off to work the fields.
It was early November, and Togar wanted to pull a few cassava tubers out of the ground to see if the whole crop should be harvested yet. His brother-in-law, Gardiah, had been telling him for months that he should leave the plant in the ground for a year or more, so that it would grow huge enough to feed the family for weeks, but that seemed far too risky to Togar. Almost no one in Giakpee or any of the neighboring villages kept cassava in the ground that long. What if the soil turned it rotten after so much time? Gardiah, who had a mind for farming and botany, laughed outright when Togar voiced these concerns. “There is nothing to suggest that that is a risk,” he told him. Togar rolled his eyes. Gardiah was one of very few men in the village who had made it to senior secondary school, and he frequently made sure everyone knew it. As a small boy, he had worked at an uncle’s house in Buchanan and attended school there until his parents ran out of money for his fees, and he had to return, dejectedly. So, instead of focusing all his energies on his studies, Gardiah now used his talents to cultivate the finest crops in the area.
Togar was another story. He had been helping his father plant, tend to, and harvest the crop on his own plot for years, but paying attention to minute details and noticing patterns had never been Togar’s strong point. Consequently, many of the intricacies of successful cultivation still eluded him. Now that he had his own family to provide for, though, Togar knew he had to do better and make his crops support all of them. This demanded a new commitment to consistency and detail. Every morning, he would need to be at the farm, ensuring his small family’s livelihood. Like a man.
When he got to his plot, he immediately grabbed the cutlass and headed to a cassava plant that had grown wild with branches and narrow green leaves. Togar bent down and pushed the blade below the orange-and-brown tuber peeking out of the soft, pliable soil. Pushing Gardiah’s voice from his mind, he pressed down on the handle and heaved up a midsize tuber, its brown skin shielding the meaty white interior. He took the vegetable in his hand and held it up, thinking of all the soups over boiled cassava, dunboy, and gari they would soon enjoy.
Boom!
Togar jumped and dropped his prize.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
He stood and peered in the direction of the noise. It sounded like gunshots, and when he realized it was coming from the village, he broke into a run. Gede Pa and Kpa Dyi, the next two villages over, each had men taken by the soldiers some months ago. Togar heard they even threatened to rape some of the women and burned down a few compounds as a warning and retribution for the taxes they had not paid. But the chief of Togar’s village had been on good terms with the paramount chief and the district commissioner for some time, so everyone in Giakpee believed they were out of danger, for now.
As the village came into view, Togar saw a line of men, including Gardiah, standing before five Frontier Force soldiers, each of whom held a rifle. Togar dove behind a tree before they saw him. As the pounding of his heart eased slightly, he strained to hear what the soldiers said.
“—has decreed that ten of you are to come with us now, for the duration of the dry season, for the honor and the privilege of cultivating the rice farm of the vice president of the republic!” one of the soldiers shouted. His boots crunched the hard ground as he paced.
Behind the tree, Tog
ar closed his eyes. He wondered where Jorgbor and Sundaygar were and then decided that they were either safe in the compound or hiding in the bush with the other women and children. Why God? Why must you make us suffer these demons over and over again? This land belonged to Togar’s people, after all. It was their country. The Congo people only had what they had because they had taken it. The bastards claimed that their Frontier Force brought peace and security in the lawless, Godless interior, but every man, woman, and child from every tribe in the countryside knew this to be a baseless lie. The Frontier Force was the wrathful hand of the Congo government and its private interests, clearing away any obstacle, including the very lives of the indigenous inhabitants of the countryside. There was a terrible price to pay for civilization, and someone had to bear it.
“Chief Thomas does not agree to this!” a woman yelled, running out of her compound. Togar trembled at the voice’s familiarity.
He peeked around the tree and saw that the woman was indeed Fortee, Gardiah’s third wife and Togar’s only sister. Her faded lappa was tied awkwardly at her side, and her shirt looked like it would fall down her shoulder at any minute. Togar’s stomach fell. Fortee and Gardiah were well matched, both having forceful personalities, though often lacking restraint. This was especially true when they felt threatened.
“You’re wrong!” the soldier sneered in Fortee’s face. His pants and shirt were stained with dirt and sweat, and Togar could smell alcohol even from where he hid. “Your benevolent Chief Thomas is now in a holding cell at Edina, being flogged for treason against the state for withholding food, taxes, munitions, and other resources. Yes, your paramount chief finally confided the whole thing to Commissioner Franklin yesterday, which forced his hand and is why we are here.”
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