Godfrey once promised to see about an internship opportunity at a small, local radio show. Of course everything was forgotten when Karl did the next runner. That time he stayed out all night, so alert was proper high.
The rotating sound got louder and louder, the helicopter approaching his area. After that night Godfrey was busy keeping an even closer eye on Karl. Wasn’t much time left to remember Abu. When Godfrey finally did, one of the wannabes was doing the gig. Local radio programme, about what the youth want. But then no one cared what Abu wanted. Not even Karl. Not any more.
Abu wanted to tell Karl that do-goody didn’t pay any more but he wasn’t here anyway. Karl’s good credit seemed to have crashed suddenly too. He didn’t even seem to care.
Abu kicked a pair of jeans that he hadn’t bothered washing for the past two weeks. Everything Karl. It could drive you up the wall, for real, even if you were proper loyal.
14
* * *
Rules – they show you
which one is this side
which one is that side.
Abu’s mobile vibrated. WTF?!! waz goin on in t’ham. where ru? pickup!! He didn’t feel like answering. What was Karl on about now? If he missed him or anyone else, he should just get his sorry self back over here. Five weeks since he had left, two weeks since project week had finished. Time was standing still; it didn’t even exist any more. He had barely made it through Saturday by hanging with his new mates, holed up in one of their bedrooms, to play the latest version of Lara Croft. They half-heartedly invited him into their little group because he could talk the talk like no one else. It was entertaining when he stood up to older people with his yeah and that’s what you get for the lost youth, told you no manners at all, and threw the fast food wrapper on the street. Wasn’t that much of a deal. Only he would take it out of the bin, in front of the person who had just discarded it, and then deposit it on the pavement, just to make a point (once they had left, head shaking, he would be back to collect the shit and put it back in the bin. He had manners, like for real, was just feeling the no future thing). Something was changing. Abu couldn’t help himself. It blinded him. Loyalty is to be in balance is to be equal. Isn’t it?
There wasn’t anything to do and his new friends drove him up the wall. Nothing, nothing to chat about. No opinion, whatsoever. The summer was drifting unbearably. He had left them early and stayed up all night, watching Dexter episodes with his father, who was off work for a few days (or nights, if you wanted to be all correct about it), and wanted to speak with him about the slavery thing. Interested. Intrigued. But also just wanting to bond with this child of his, who was outgrowing his childhood.
But Abu used only words that had less than three syllables, and only one word at a time. They had sat lost in their own translations, aka, thoughts.
‘He has been away for much longer than expected.’
Baba Abu had tried a different angle. Abu didn’t respond.
‘It must be hard. The sudden change. It is not like Karl to …’
Abu’s head moved back and he exhaled. Loud and deep and long. Looked at the ceiling. Kept his mouth shut. His father looked at him. They sat like that for ages. Nothing coming past Abu’s mouth. The chatterbox. The not-keeping-it-in-when-necessary. The I-can-talk-anyone-into-their-grave. Silent. Not one single word uttered. His eyes fixed on the crack in the faded white paint above him until his dad finally went to bed. Abu had flicked through the programmes until it got light.
He was grateful to be sleeping and turned his head back to the wall. There it was again, the sharp smell of sweat and lack of fresh air of the past weeks. Courtesy of his feet, which were glued into his first-class trainers at daytime. One of the other things his pretend new mates accepted him for.
‘Respect. You decent bruv.’
London warmed up finally. Summer was here. He pulled the duvet over his head and closed his eyes.
* * *
‘Him no answer.’
Nakale was taking Karl to the lab for the first time. He had made his way to where Nakale lived so they could catch one of the motorcycles, an okada, together. He lived in a similar set-up to John, a few streets away.
Uncle T was fine with it. Basically Uncle T was busy. His shipment was on its way. The person who seemed to not be on his way was Karl’s father. The security company was saying they were in touch. To be patient. It was the fifth week of his trip. Godfrey was angry. Very angry. He called twice a day, although Karl didn’t pick up. The texts said it all. Most of them where exclamation marks. Call me back NOW!!! But Karl didn’t want to leave. Was trying to be Nakale’s sidekick. Learn more. Be of use. Be here, just be here, you get me. No shit from the wannabes, no past. Just now. What was one more week? Summer holidays had started anyway; he wasn’t even missing college.
They were passing a dark shop next to an unpainted house. Nakale’s auntie owned the tiny spot. A young woman was standing in front, raising her hand in acknowledgment.
‘Auntie not in?’ Nakale asked.
‘She had something to do.’
Nakale nodded and waved down an okada.
‘My cousin.’ He rushed to talk to the okada rider.
Karl looked back. The cousin was fresh-faced, all clear skin, defined cheekbones, lips that you wanted her to say something with. Or lick. Or anything that would make them move and show all of their fullness in action. She looked him up and down.
‘You keep calling your friend, Karl, until you reach him,’ Nakale insisted, and Karl nodded, absent-minded. The young woman turned back. She stroked the fabric she was holding, unfolded it, held it up into the air. Her hair was all roughed-up Afro in a very, very cool way. Like you wanted to play with it and say something even cooler. Her toes were sticking out of some trainers that had the front bit cut off. In a fashionable way. And a heel. Like sandals cum running gear cum wicked outfit. It went well with her denim skirt.
‘With friends you have to keep trying and trying. You don’t give up. Even if they are angry.’ Nakale had to bring him back to earth, didn’t he?
absence /ˈæbsəns/
noun
State or occasion of being away from a place or person.
A neither here nor there marked by not being able to be applied, or defined.
That which is not present.
If present is taken as related to gift (that which is bestowed on someone) it might resemble theft.
Karl nodded and sat behind Nakale, who had already climbed behind the okada rider. Three of them on the bike, the two friends with their hands backwards, holding on to the seat. Nakale’s cousin waved. What was her name? Nakale hadn’t even said. Karl didn’t let go of the small motorcycle and just nodded.
Once at the lab, Nakale’s never-tiring self showed him the whole campus before they settled in front of a workbench. He started on his samples.
‘Look for here.’
Nakale took him through the soil sampling procedure. Karl wanted to know all of it. Know all the shit that was going on, but science wasn’t his strong subject. His mind was drifting; he couldn’t even fake it. Nakale said ‘OK make we go see am.’ Meaning, let’s start with where he took the sample. Show Karl the site. Again. Maybe Karl would have a better attention span then.
Nakale asked the driver to stop the okada on the side of a small bridge. There were some proper dramatic Shell lights, just behind the village. He wanted to show him before they moved on to taking soil samples. The stretch of dusty tar made a tense intro to the dancing flame show ahead.
‘Cashpoint,’ Nakale had started calling him. ‘You see am innit, or is London brain blocking your absolutely fabulous precious veew?’
‘Bruv, ahbeg. No easy de way you de block am with your big Uniport head.’
They were laughing, Nakale appreciative – he had taught his friend well – when the five twenty-somethings appeared out of nowhere and surrounded them.
‘OK. Bring moni!’ they demanded quick, didn’t bother with introductions.<
br />
Karl turned around, perplexed, but then the dimples smoothed when his jaw dropped.
‘For what?’ Nakale replied.
‘For de thing you do.’
‘For what?’ he repeated.
Karl thought of King’s Cross. Seemed like every place had their share of interrupting a-holes. Only these did not at all look like they were trying to be anything. They were. Like in completely. Already somebodys.
‘You are journalists. De moni you carry.’ The leader of the pack was doing a good job being threatening, in your face, hands too close to your body for comfort.
‘Money for what?’ Nakale wasn’t having it. He gripped the sides of the okada as if he was scared his anger would make him jump off, volcano-like, throw himself on the guys, which would so not help the situation.
The okada driver held on to the rust-dotted handlebars, probably cursing the second he had accepted the job. The young men shouting ignored him, the focus all on Karl.
Karl was all piece of wood slammed into the face. Dumbstruck. Silent. Then, as the men’s voices got louder and louder, accusing them, well Karl, of working for an overseas paper for ‘whey him go carry big moni when him sell de pictures,’ trying to interfere. It took a while to get the whole thing. Karl’s Blackberry. That was the problem. The super tech device that would earn him major cash through first-class pics. He wanted to laugh because earlier that morning he had had to take out and reinsert the sim a few times before anything happened on the screen. Had to use the second-favourite IT trick (after turn off and on again): soft but persuasive bangs on the table.
But the guys were not up for a laugh, so much was clear. They were like a phone upgrade to contemporary Londonites: one more, and another one, attracting more of their friends until it was twelve of them, all moving hands in the air, poking Karl’s shoulder, demanding explanations, demanding his little bag (water, always carrying water but they probably thought money), and of course his phone. Maybe these were the without-jobs youth, like back home, or the not-wannabes-but-for-real of the Niger Delta, he thought, while his legs became soft and he became scared they wouldn’t carry him through.
Nakale totally unimpressed. He had remained all bored expression and firmly on top of the motorcycle. The driver tried to dismount a few times but with Nakale tight behind him, wedging him in, all he could do was hold the handlebars and hope for the best.
But whatever they were, job or no job, the men were also healthy-looking, strong, fit. Like in punch you out in one.
‘Come down. Come down for okada.’
Nakale stubborn, holding on to the bike.
‘Give us de moni or—’
‘You know we do kidnapping for here,’ somebody interrupted and the rest got lost amidst the shouting that restarted, now, about what price Karl should pay for his release. The leader, a skinny dark man with taut muscles and a vein that wanted to explode out of his temples, screamed at the top of his voice.
‘Undredtausand, undredtausand. Make he bring am!’ He slapped his fist into the other hand and his face went all alien. Scrunched up. Ugly. Karl wanted to kneel on the dusty road. Do his swan-like fall, then hide under his arms, hands covering the eyes. You didn’t have to be there for everything. You could just let it happen without you. Not even Uncle T or Godfrey could bail him out now. But the man’s friends shouted back what type of nonsense he was on about. No one would pay that.
‘Na small boy.’
And the negotiations continued.
‘$5000.’
‘Him no carry dat type of bread. Wetin be wrong wit you?’
‘Two thousand.’
‘Ah! Sey 500.’
‘One thousand.’
Back and forth like bad table tennis, and Karl managed to stay on his feet, arms by the side. They seemed to forget their two hostages, who were still blocked up, unable to move, in the middle of their testosterone-oozing circle.
‘Him no carry any moni at all. Na be school boy. Na £20. Make we move.’ Nakale seemed to be immune to the danger. Or just too angry.
They cried out what insult, what this, what that. But they weren’t proper vex; their voices had got softer. You didn’t have to be a genius to see that, close-up, Karl was indeed a small college boy, unlikely to be connected to any of the oil giants, or he would not have been seen on some rattling old okada, in the middle of this lonely rural road. The phone was not the camera they thought it was. It was all ridiculous. Someone could come by any minute. Someone who would not participate. And as much as they shouted they knew they didn’t have it in them to kidnap a small boy. Take him where? To their parents, where they lived and who would ‘I go beat you’ them as soon as they entered the house? They had not thought this out. Kneejerk reaction. Opportunists really. But not good on the improv side of things. They were not the ones who had joined any of the militant gangs more prominent on the winding creeks, far from the boring road that they could reach from their sleepy village. After almost an hour of shouting, there was nothing, just the effing dead end they wanted to escape.
‘Karl, give him your emergency money,’ Nakale hissed in a low voice while he locked eyes with the driver, who had turned around. And Karl slipped off his trainer, hands shaking, fished out the soggy £20 note he kept folded small in his socks. Held it out to Nakale who took it before anyone had clocked anything. When Karl hesitated he hissed again.
‘Ahbeg, quick.’
And while the group were still effing Naija-style about the price, Karl put back his trainer, sat back on the okada. Nakale tapped the driver on his shoulder and whispered in his ear. He turned the key in the ignition. Nakale looked at the two reasonable members, a stocky man with a wide gap between his front teeth and a soft-spoken tall one with a faded red cap who stood directly in front of them. They had been ignoring the aggressive shorty once they had told him that his demands were ridiculous, but paid attention to their silent movements. When Nakale looked at them they nodded, and he squeezed the driver’s arm. The okada jumped and gripped the tar and they fled from the dancing flames and the mob that was now angry with the two collaborators, their pride defeated, stinging.
Nakale dropped him a little way off John’s home.
‘Karl. I’m sorry. Just small-village boys. This thing never happen before.’
He reached out to Karl, who turned his back to him, all lost in his mind, no processing, just trying to keep it all out, banishing the pictures, trying to keep his eyes dry, his hands still, the sweat from pouring.
‘Don’t tell John. Or your uncle.’
‘Course not. Am not stupid.’ And he left Nakale, who looked worried; returned to the safety of the small back room at John’s as quickly as his excuse of upset stomach, bad food, let him.
The next day Nakale and Karl went back to the lab. Pretended nothing had happened, took off where they had left it. It wasn’t the first time Karl was jumped and, either way, no one had really touched him.
Nakale carefully recorded something in his chart that was made of neat, biro-drawn tables.
‘The increase is here, you see. From that large spill a few weeks ago, the Christmas tree I show you.’
The structure of short metal valves and fittings had spurted gallons of oil high up in the air. Nakale had shown it to him on their first field trip because the huge spill had attracted international attention. He had also pointed out the clean-up procedure: a tractor had dug up the earth so that the fresher white sand lay on top, merely covering the stained, polluted soil underneath. That was it. Nothing else.
‘You’re going to pass this info on, right?’
‘I better wait and show later what type of cleaning is done and that nothing has improved. At all.’
‘Why can’t you just take them to court or something?’
Nakale’s forehead was shiny with all the sweat. He put the pen next to the paper on the scratchy lab table.
‘Which money go help anyone believe me? And who cares about some small pollution here?’
‘But it’s the truth man. If you show them, I mean this is not some random shit. You have all the data.’
‘Then some company’s money will convince them that it is not so.’ He paused and stared at the writing in front of him. He sounded exhausted and turned back to his papers and flicked through them, his eyes scanning over the figures he had taken during the past fourteen months. He didn’t include Karl, didn’t slide anything closer, highlight particular entries. Karl didn’t seem to get how things were working here, or how they weren’t working, especially when you were a nobody like Nakale. So much was clear.
No need mum. I can stay longer. Godfrey thinks it’s a good idea too. Easier to be away than to call all the time. My credit is almost gone. But will text you soon.
15
* * *
And always
things turn.
Upside down.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Abu’s mother shouted after him. He was standing at the door, keys in hand.
‘I just want to see my mates. I’ve been indoors since Saturday night.’
His mother stepped in front of him and put the chain on. Symbolic. She was good with her gestures, like with her looks. Abu defied her. Looked away but his body was clear; he wasn’t giving in, not this time. His face wasn’t just stubborn: there was hurt there. Something that everyone seemed to miss had bubbled up to the surface. You could smell it. You could even touch it. It was there. His mother studied his turned-away face. She pulled him into the living room. The TV was on. The same picture on repeat. A large building. In flames. The silhouette of a woman, captured mid-air, jumping to safety. From her flat. On the ground, people with outstretched hands, reaching for her. The fire ravaging the large carpet shop. Abu’s mother covered her mouth with her hand. He could hear her breathe before she pulled the twins close to her, one in each arm.
When We Speak of Nothing Page 13