by Meja Mwangi
Finally, Hari lowered his fist and said, “What shall I do with you?”
“Let us go home,” I said. “We’ll never come to the forest again.”
He looked from us to Cutter-Cutter. Cutter-Cutter looked on, let him make all the decisions.
“I can’t let you go,” he said. “It is not that simple.”
Cutter-Cutter gave a signal and the men grabbed us. They tied our hands and legs again and returned us to the back of the cave. Then they tried to decide what to do with us.
I was glad Nigel did not understand our language. He would have died of fright if he had understood some of the things the men were suggesting.
They discussed us for a long time.
“Let them go home,” Hari said at last.
“Because he is your brother?” Cutter-Cutter asked.
“Your plan cannot work now,” Hari told them. “The forest is full of soldiers already. They are looking everywhere for the white boy.”
They were quiet for a moment, thinking. But I could also tell there was fear in the air.
“Let us kill the little white man,” the scarred one said.
“No,” Hari said quickly.
“Why not?”
“There is nothing to be gained by that. It will only make them angrier. Besides, he is only a boy. And that was not the plan.”
“The plan,” Cutter-Cutter said quietly. “The plan was that you would take the note to the white man.”
“I had no chance,” Hari told him.
“Then you will take the note to him?” Cutter-Cutter asked.
“I never said that I would not,” Hari answered. “It is just that I had no chance. They have arrested me twice already. They let me out of prison just this morning.”
“Did they torture you?” someone asked.
Hari snorted angrily. “What do you think? I told them nothing.”
They were quiet for a long time after that. Later on they were joined by another gang. The new group brought news that there were even more soldiers in the forest around the farm.
They were all afraid and restless now. They discussed what they should do. They discussed for a long time.
“Here is what we shall do,” Cutter-Cutter finally told them. “Hari will take the note and go back to the farm. He will give the note to the white man. Then, when Hari confirms that he has done so, we shall take the boys and go up to the mountains. We shall go there and give the mzungu time to make up his mind.”
They sounded agreed on this course of action. Then Hari spoke up.
“It will not work,” he told them.
“Why not?” Cutter-Cutter asked impatiently.
“I don’t think the mzungu will give up the land in exchange for two little boys,” he said. “Believe me, I know him.”
“Then we shall kill the little white man,” Cutter-Cutter said. “We shall kill his grandson and see how he likes that.”
I was cold with terror. I struggled silently trying to free my hands. Nigel was doing the same thing and not being any more successful than I was. After a while we gave up and lay back to await our fate. We listened to the men talk.
“Rookie?” Nigel whispered to me. “What are they talking about?”
“They are talking about us,” I told him. “They want to kill us.”
“Why?” he asked me.
“They want Bwana Ruin’s farm,” I told him. “They want your grandfather’s land.”
“Why?”
I told him I did not know. They said that it was their land, that Bwana Ruin was a foreigner and had stolen it from them.
“They are liars,” Nigel whispered back. “My grandfather is not a thief.”
That was what I thought too. But they said that it was their land and they would kill us if Bwana Ruin did not do as they demanded.
Nigel digested that information for a while.
“Rookie?” he asked finally. “What shall we do?”
I had no idea. They would definitely kill us. There was no doubt in my mind about that.
But they did not kill us right away. First, at Hari’s insistence, they took us out and fed us roast buffalo meat. We ate hungrily. When we had finished, they gave us mugs of hot buffalo broth. They fed us very well, considering what they intended to do with us. Then they tied us up again and took us back under the pile of skins.
I must have fallen asleep after that. A deep, deep sleep with dreams of hunting and fishing.
I was surprised when I woke up to find myself under the skins, tied up hand and foot. It was the biting pain in my foot that woke me up.
The cave was dead quiet. Nigel slept peacefully by my side, breathing easily. I lay for a long time wondering what time of day it was and what the people of the forest were doing. My foot throbbed with every heartbeat. The first chance I got I would squeeze out the pus once again. Then I would put salt on the wound. I knew of many forest plants that were good medicine for wounds. But they were impossibly far away now.
I heard a creeping movement in the cave. I pricked my ears and listened. The movement was quick and quiet and very worrying.
Then the sheep skins were pulled away from us and I saw a shadow looming over us. It had a machete in one hand and appeared ready to strike.
I thought this was the moment of our death. I opened my mouth to scream but no sound came out. I fought back, kicked out at the shadow.
“Kariuki,” the shadow barked. “Be still.”
It was Hari. While I sighed with relief, he bent down and cut the ropes that bound our hands and feet. Then he pulled us to our feet and dragged us out to the mouth of the cave.
“You must go away from here,” he said urgently. “You must go home now.”
The others had gone up to the mountain, he told us. Their plan had failed. There were too many soldiers in the forest looking for Nigel. Cutter-Cutter had changed his mind about killing us. He was a superstitious man and had decided to leave us there in the cave for the hyenas and the wild dogs.
The rain had stopped. I could tell from the position of the sun that it was about noon. Sunlight glinted on the wet leaves.
I sat down to squeeze the pus out of my wound. It was an extremely painful exercise, but my foot felt much better afterwards. I wrapped it in rags once more.
“Go that way,” Hari said, pointing south. “The soldiers are not far from here. They will show you the way home.”
“What about you?” I asked him.
“I can’t come back home.”
“Why not?” I asked in panic. “You are not one of them. You are my brother.”
“I must follow my friends,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. I will be all right. One day I’ll come back home and be with you.”
I was almost in tears.
“Go now,” he said to us. “Go quickly in case they come back and find you here. Hurry home and stay there.”
He turned to Nigel. He regarded him for a long moment.
“It was my idea to bring you here,” he said. “I’m sorry.” There was pain in his voice.
“Don’t play in the forest again,” he said to Nigel. “The forest is not safe any more. Not for little white men. Not for anyone.”
Then he gave us a shove and we were off. We went stumbling down the hill until we came to the thicker undergrowth and slowed down. Nigel gave me his shoulder to lean on. We plunged into the undergrowth, walking fast and urgently, eager to put as much distance between us and the hide-out as possible.
Eleven
WE MET THE soldiers about a mile from the hide-out, stalking through the wet bush as silently as ghosts. We did not know they were there until we found ourselves in the midst of a dozen grim faces, their guns pointed at us.
They were happy to see Nigel
alive and well.
“Where have you been?” they asked.
“In the forest,” he told them. “Rookie found me.”
He told them how he had been kidnapped by the men with spears. How they had taken him from one hide-out to the next until he had lost all sense of direction. And how I had found him and rescued him.
The officer in charge wanted to know how many terrorists there were. We gave them all the information we could. There were about twenty men and they were headed for the mountains. He gave us four soldiers to escort us home and led the rest of them after the gang.
The soldiers rushed us on through the forest. They got us home in the late afternoon. When we came to the farm, they took Nigel to his grandparents and left me to find my way back to the village.
Father was home, pacing the yard and talking distractedly to himself. For a moment he did not seem to remember me. Then he recognized me and pounced on me. He lifted me off my feet and shook me violently.
“Where have you been?” he asked.
“Nowhere,” I told him. “Put me down.”
He put me down. But he did not let go of my collar. His eyes were wild, his face old and contorted.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“In the forest.”
He raised his fist to strike me. Then he saw Mother watching from the doorway and stopped. He lowered his fist but held onto my collar.
“We did not sleep at all last night,” he told me. “Your mother was so worried about you and Hari.”
I told him that I had seen Hari. He was on his way to the mountains with his friends from the forest.
I had never seen my father so angry and confused. And under the anger and the confusion I saw fear. The fear of new and unknown terrors. The fear that had first invaded the village with the disappearance of Bwana Ruin’s gun and the arrival of the white soldiers. Fear of something so large and so terrible it had neither face nor name.
I had finally lost him his job. I wanted to drown myself.
“You must not tell the soldiers about Hari,” he told me. “You must not talk about the people of the forest to anyone. Do you understand? You must not tell them about your brother Hari.”
But I already had. We had told the soldiers in the forest exactly where to find him.
Father’s face collapsed when he heard this news. His eyes lost all the life in them, and his hand slipped from my collar and flopped dead by his side.
I was petrified. To alleviate the pain, I reported that I had found the boy.
“Found the boy?” he asked. “What boy?”
“Nigel,” I told him.
“Najo?”
He tried to remember where he had heard the name.
They had treated him cruelly in jail. Much later, when he was no longer so afraid and could talk about it, I learned that they had tortured him to reveal his connections with the mau-mau. Someone had told them that he was the leader of the mau-mau. Someone had told the police that my father conducted oathing ceremonies at night and gave food to the mau-mau. The soldiers had tried to make him confess to things he knew nothing about. They had also tried to make him admit to murdering the white boy.
“Who is Najo?” he asked.
“The white boy,” I told him. “The Bwana Kidogo.”
It took a lot of effort to remember. But he finally did. He seemed revived by the information.
“You found the boy?” he asked doubtfully.
“Yes, Father.”
“Where did you find him?”
“In the forest.”
He paused thoughtfully.
“Is he dead?”
“No, Father,” I told him. “Nigel is alive.”
He rapped my head with his knuckles. Why had I told him the little white man was dead? I hadn’t. They must have scared him a lot when they locked him in prison.
“The white boy is alive,” I said to him.
“Where is he?” he demanded.
“He went home.”
He turned and rushed off to see for himself. I was left stranded in the yard between the hut and the grain store, uncertain which way to go. My mother watched me from the doorway of the hut. Her eyes were full of sadness and pity.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
I was not hungry.
“I’ll make some ugali,” she said.
After a while, my father came back and told me not to worry, that they had found the white boy. Bwana Ruin had said that my father could now go back to work in the kitchen.
He did not seem to know what else to say to me. He raised his hand absent-mindedly over my head. I braced myself for a rapping with the knuckles. His hand opened up and landed palm down on my head.
“Good,” he said, patting me gently on the head. “Good.”
Then he turned and walked away.
I sat there for a long time and tried to understand what was happening to my quiet life. I had found Nigel and brought him safely back to his grandfather. I was only now beginning to realize what it all meant. As soon as Nigel told them how, and by whom, he had been kidnapped, the soldiers would come back and take us all out and hang us.
Jimi saw I was miserable and crawled from under the grain store to lie by my side. We sat quietly for a long time.
Then Nigel suddenly showed up in our yard. Mother nearly collapsed from anxiety when she saw him. Father came to talk to him, but the words would not leave his mouth, and he went away muttering to himself in a language the white boy could not understand.
“Rookie,” Nigel said, “why is everybody so sad?”
“I don’t know.”
His grandfather wanted to talk to me, he told me. To thank me for saving his grandson’s life. I was not entirely happy about the whole thing, but I went with him.
Jimi followed us as far as the gate to the big farmhouse. Then he remembered that Salt and Pepper lived there, and he ran back to the village.
Bwana Ruin met us on the veranda of the house. He took my arm and patted me gently on the head the way my father had done. He showed us to the end of the veranda where tea was set for two and went away.
Mamsab Ruin served us tea and cakes and sat back to watch us eat. She studied me just as closely as the villagers had studied Nigel when he ate ugali at my mother’s house. It was almost as though she expected me to find it revolting.
She was older than Bwana Ruin and more frail and all gray. I had heard it said that she was the real owner of the farm and that Bwana Ruin had married her because she was rich.
Nigel told me the bodies of the dead dogs had been recovered and brought back to the farm. They had been buried in the family graveyard by the orchard. Then Nigel gave me back the toy gun the soldiers had taken from under my bed. I took the gun, but I knew that I would have to throw it in the latrine when I got back home.
As I left to go back to the village, Bwana Ruin came to inform us that the soldiers had returned. The search for the terrorists had been called off for the moment. The soldiers had completely lost their quarry. But they had found one terrorist and wanted our assistance in identifying him.
He took us to the auction pen where the dead man lay half naked and spread-eagled on the grass. He was covered in blood and mud and was a ghastly sight to see.
We stepped forward to look at his face.
My body was suddenly numb.
“Do you recognize this man?” the officer in charge asked us.
There were tears in my eyes. I could neither see nor speak.
“Do you know this man?” the officer asked again, raising his voice.
I choked on the reply. Nigel looked helplessly at me.
“Nigel?” his grandfather warned.
“Yes,” Nigel said. “We saw him.”
“Was he one of them?” the officer asked.
“I don’t know,” Nigel said nervously.
“Nigel,” Bwana Ruin barked. “Answer the officer’s question properly. Was he or was he not one of the terrorists?”
The officer glanced at Bwana Ruin with disapproval.
“Nigel,” he said gently. “I want you to think very hard before you answer this question. Was this not one of the men who kidnapped you?”
“No, sir,” Nigel said right away.
“Think, Nigel,” the officer said patiently. “Think. You have just told me that you know this man.”
“Yes, sir,” Nigel said.
“From where do you know this man?” the officer asked.
“From here on the farm,” Nigel said. “He is the man who runs the dairy.”
Bwana Ruin grunted angrily. The officer glanced at him, then back at Nigel.
“Nigel,” he said. “Was this man in the forest at all when you were there?”
“Yes,” Nigel answered. “He is the man who set us free.”
“Nigel.” Bwana Ruin sounding impatient. “The truth, Nigel. Nothing but the truth.”
“That’s the truth, Grandpa.”
“But you told me that your… that this native boy rescued you,” Bwana Ruin said.
“Yes, Grandpa,” Nigel told him. “First my friend found me and set me free. Then they caught us and took us back to the cave and tied us up again. Then this man came and set us free.”
“How did he find you?” the officer asked.
“He did not say, sir,” Nigel answered.
“Did he tell you what he was doing there in the forest?” the officer asked.
“We did not ask, sir,” Nigel answered.
The officer was not at all satisfied. He turned to glare at me. He took me by the shoulder, squeezing hard, and asked me if I knew the dead man.
I clenched my teeth and bit back the sobs that were rising up inside me.
“Answer me,” the officer barked.
I could only nod.
“Do you know his name?” he asked.
“Hari,” I sobbed. “He is my brother Hari.”
Then I turned and ran off back to the village. I skirted my mother’s house and ran through the bush down to the river.