Him, Her - A Short Story by 'Namdi Awa-Kalu
- By 'Namdi Awa-Kalu
- Published June 19, 2009
- Fiction
-
Rating:
“Well, I hate this” She pushed me, slipped and steadied herself, the alcohol suddenly in direct communication with her senses. “You don’t want to chill with me; you want an audience, an admiring fan. You want someone who you can feed your endless cynicisms about life and the human condition. You want a sounding board.” Her voice flew up an octave at this last sentence, the last word coinciding with a drunken hiccup. I could not believe my ears. I had never seen this side of her, never known she felt so deeply about what I felt. I was touched that I was the cause of her vexation. But people were starting to stare and this made me indignant. I would not risk embarrassment in front of this ugly, gossip mongering mob.
“Let’s go” The rough in my voice was no longer sexy; it was a ridge-tailed dragon. I gripped her arm, belched flame. “What would your parents say of their darling medical daughter, with her airs, cavorting drunkenly with these, these muumuus” I spat out the last word with every ounce of Nigerian there was in me.
“But don’t you see just there that you are just the same as them? You are the same! Gossiping and bullying just like them. Only you walk around with this pompous inflated vision of yourself as a saint. Why don’t you go off then and find a cure for this poison you always talk about. Go off on your own, since you are Jesus and they are Pharisees” She was shouting by now and her eyes had darkened. I was backing out of the room, my coat still on my arm because I had not bothered with the cloakroom (give one pound away in a Naija party? Never). My gaze was steady on her quivering form, still lovely though she was shaking with passion and anger. “Yes go, go! You didn’t come here for me anyway. Just to prove to yourself that your judgmental views of Nigerians are correct, that you are better than them. You think you feel so deeply about me-yes I’ve read your ‘secret’ poems- but you’ve never said anything to me that didn’t involve yourself you selfish fuck. You’re so sure you know everything. Dude, you’re blind to a few obvious truths. You’re Nigerian, I’m Nigerian. NIGERIAN. My full name, FYI, is KARACHI!” And with that, accenting the beats to her name with their proper Igbo intonation, she stormed off to the toilets, leaving that wintry chill behind her that I will always associate with those memories. I ignored the slavering looks on the swarthy faces of the mob standing open-mouthed, suddenly presented with such juicy jist. This one would spread like a California forest fire. Things fall apart. Man did you hear about Kara, and how she ex’d that guy who thinks he’s oyibo? I angrily walked out, vexed at myself more than anything else.
“Brother,” Shankey’s voice parts the curtains of my reverie with that emphasised West African up-down syllabic stress pattern. I’ve been swimming for thirty minutes straight, lap after lap, thrashing through the pool in continuous unbroken rhythm. Now I rest on the edge, panting, immune to my surroundings, thinking faraway thoughts. “How much more will you think about her, man?” Even as he stretches the final word in the languid style of post- colonial English, I’m struck by the way we’ve grown accustomed to reading each other’s thoughts in so short a time. His hands are smacking against his chest in a samba rhythm and I know he’s thinking about music. Just putting the world in tune, and making it spin to his tempo. I notice he is dry. He hasn’t gotten into the pool at all but is content to sit on the edge making circles in the water with his feet like a girl. I lift an eyebrow at him questioningly. He smiles his toothy, infectious smile like a little devil and splashes into the water beside me, tickling me in the sensitive spot above the hips between muscle and bone. It is too much and I laugh wildly, my kicking legs making the water ripple in much larger circles than Shankey’s feet did. He jumps on my back now and the sudden body contact is slightly unnerving but I ignore it. For once I set aside my passive aggressiveness (Is that what Kara called it in her text message? Yep. And self-absorption as well. And ‘fuck- headedness’. I just love compound words) to things that other people apparently find normal. For once I am hardly thinking about those things that are always so damn penultimate in my mind, lurking in the background and narrowing issues into funneled prejudices. In the water, I always feel able to disconnect, to go with the flow. I won’t let today be any different.
I notice that Shankey is not his usual uninhibited self in the water. He is tremulous, even though he clearly can swim. I can see the surety in his arms. But his eyes betray a fear. Not fear of the water but linked to it all the same. There is a soullessness in his eyes. I think being close to the water seems to have unearthed something in him. Something he would have preferred to stay firmly earthed. He frequently swims up to me, alongside me, God knows why. I am a bit irritated by the unnecessary rubbing against my leg, accidental though it may be. This is part of why I never played rugby, this liberated homoeroticism. I get fed up and I climb out of the pool, somewhat wary of Shankey’s eyes on me.
We are in the showers now. The part of using the gym I hate. Men seem to revel in the splendour of their nakedness for reasons I am unclear about. They carelessly lounge about the changing rooms as God made them, dicks swinging, towels tossed aside as if superfluous. Shankey is one of them. He absently slaps his penis against his thigh, can you believe it, in a melancholy rhythm, eyes amber. We are in the showers now, and he twists open a faucet, his lean form resting morosely against the ceramic tiles, a rumble starting in the many-muscled wall of his torso, and traveling like a memory through his chest and throat until the water bursts out to lance his skin like remembrance. He turns the jaundiced eyes to me, and opens his mouth.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
”I was just thirteen when they took me five years ago. They drove up in their army truck to my house, shooting bullets everywhere. Everywhere. My father had warned my mother that it would happen soon. The soldiers were always looting and killing ordinary people. My father was a maths teacher and a palm wine tapper. My mother was a basket- weaver. They were both a little educated and had decided I would get an education by all means available. So they worked hard and used all the money for school. That day, my father was teaching me long division while we ate. My mother had gone to the market. Just like that, they took everything. Two of them, looking like zombies, came in with these big, big rifles, shouting violently. One of them shot my father in the leg while he was shouting my name, telling me to run, and jumping in their way at the same time. The other one quickly grabbed me and held his gun to my head forcefully, spitting on me. Then his partner beat my father mercilessly, and pumped thirteen bullets into his chest and skull. I counted it, counted it in the shivers in his chest, counted it in the explosive sounds of the gun.
“I counted other things too. The chickens outside screamed as well. Kukurookoo! Thirty -seven times. My mother ran in. They had chased her away from the market and one soja pick her up from floor, smash am down. He flog am with him belt plenty plenty. I bin count the flogging. Twenty- three flogging na im him flog her. Then him tear her cloth sharp, comot him fat prick, him want rape am my mama. I remove eye, begin watch the roof to count the wood. The soja wey dey behin’ me rush me one dirty slap. Then him hold my head make I look my mama. I cover my eye with my hand. The soja daze me another blow sharp and remove my hand. So I watch the other soja. I no want close eye because I dey sure say the soja go see am, daze me another blow. So I begin count the head on my mama wrapper. One one two. One one two. Na my Granma head wey dey on top that wrapper.” He shakes as the tears flow into the water running down his face, crumpling into the wall as he lapses deeper and deeper into the past, his tongue searching for ensconced thoughts with the familiar Pidgin of his childhood just like a mother who shouts out pet names when calling out to a missing child. Then he sees my stunned look and tries to regain composure.
“After the first soldier raped her, the one behind me put down his gun. My mother was no longer resisting. Then he entered into her. One one two. One one two. Her crying was like music. She was not crying for the bastard with his thing inside her. She was crying for broken life, for sorrow, a different pain. Then they took me and threw me into the back of the truck where two boys were already lying down. The rest of the militia men were already running towards the vehicle, their blood lust satisfied. I heard the fire of the gun give my mother wings to fly to heaven. I heard her flapping. One one two. One one two. I even saw her, flying with the rest of the dead women of the village, into the goldness of the sun. Their wings were white and shining against their old clothes. Then the sun touched them and they changed to gold.” He paused briefly, tracing the tattoo mapping Africa on his chest with one finger. “They jumped into the back of the truck with us, in a hurry. Their eyes were strange somehow. Almost like the icing on Krispy Kreme donuts, you know, but very yellow. Their uniforms were torn everywhere and their cheeks were marked with black paint like if somebody slapped it on their faces. I have never been so scared in all my life.”
He is still against the wall and trembling slightly now as if he is cold. I am transfixed. I could not know what made him tell me all this now, but it is clear that he has been carrying the burden of this memory around like a dead weight, like an albatross around his neck. The water gushing from the shower head seems to me to be apt. A ruptured dam of emotion crashing through its boundaries. I know that sounds a bit poetic, but that is precisely what strikes me at this moment. He shifts his form so his head rests against the wall, his voice muffled slightly so I’m struggling to hear what he is saying.
“They took us to…river camp. All of them with their other people…dancing, dancing to high life music. There was a small lake there and they were bathing …and there was a campfire. They tied us up. Left us around that fire- we boys- and it was hot. And they were shouting, telling us we must be… We must learn to be men… and they slapped us about, speaking Creole too fast for me to understand then…Then they took us to the lake. All the soja…dem dey shout like monkey, dem throway us for inside that water...we still dey inside rope so me I no fit move body…dem dip one boy inside the water for two minutes until him begin shake like jellyfish, dey scream, dey shake…When him comot from that water him dey cry bad bad so them drop am inside again, torture am…just dey talk say we must become men, we must become men…One big soja come comot. From where him comot, I no fit tell you. The man be like giant and him voice strong like one kin’ drum. Him look me as I dey wait for ... I begin cry. Na the first time I cry that day. The man look my face come shout STOP…confusion, the sojaman dem dey look me like witch. Na so him carry me with one hand comot as I just dey cry, just dey cry.
“That man’s name was Major Bankole Hassan. He was a Nigerian soldier who had seen more money in trading diamonds than in the ECOMOG peacekeeping mission that brought him to Sierra Leone. So he deserted his platoon and went in to the bushes were he put together this group of militant rebels. He was a very cunning man; he used to tell me that he was from the Yoruba people who are very skilled in tricks and cunning. It helped that he was able to pick up languages very fast. I know that he spoke Yoruba, Hausa, French and even Spanish alongside English. He also spoke all the West African versions of these languages, I mean Creole, Pidgin, any bastard tongue that was used in the jungle. He was at home anywhere on West Coast of Africa. He taught me some of those languages. He taught me everything I know. He brought prisoners from the village raids so we boys could…kill them as, as training. But me, he took special care of me. He showed me how to fish, how to play one old guitar he had on him. He was my Mathematics teacher and he was very good at it- he did not want anyone to ever cheat him out of his money, so funny. Our group was always moving about and sometimes I did not even know which country we were in, because we were always shifting around the border of Liberia and Sierra Leone in two wars that are different but are the same. I became his lieutenant by the time I was fourteen because I had grown so tall. I was in charge even though I was younger than most of the group and they hated it. To control soldiers, you have to become merciless, tough, pitiless, strong. Major Hassan told me this. So every time they brought young boys to one of our camps, sometimes to replace the dead, there I was throwing them in the water and ignoring their screaming. I forgot what the fear had been for me in the beginning and…it was so easy when the igbo and the other drugs we smoked in dirty mixtures…were in the system…high, high all the time. Major Hassan showed me how to balance the drugs with kaikai- hot- I mean hard liqueur…can clear your head in a strange way so the drugs are not stopping your mind. He made me his executioner. Soldiers who betrayed us, the many Judases, he would torture them- flog them with barbed wire, leave them alone in the forest tied to a tree so that their fear would drive them mad. But it was me who would dip them in water over and over and over till they were so tired from struggling. Then I would shoot them.
Major Hassan had friends with a lot of power. He still helped out ECOMOG soldiers, tipping them off on the whereabouts of some of the other rebel groups. He also supplied the governments with some information about rebel hideouts. So they left him alone to trade in diamonds and roam free. He was a rich man but liked the dangerous life of the commando. The man was born to be a soldier. But with time, he wanted me to see a different life from the endless movement, sleeping in trees and feeding on bushmeat and fish. He told me I could get a scholarship, this scholarship that got me abroad here. I was getting very good at maths and he wanted me to do that, said that it was more likely to get me out than making music. You see, I was better than the Major at the guitar, and I could play local drums and the harmonica- all of them, Major Hassan taught me. That was the only way I could hold back the hatred the soldiers had for me, in a way. Almost like David in the Bible, the way he calms King Saul down with the harp, that’s how I calmed the soldiers. I was able to entertain them night after night, to cool them down, and to warm them up for battle. I have always been like that, able to make people like me no matter what. The Major called me his secret weapon. One time, I must have been thirteen, we went out to fight one rebel force that was fucking up the Major’s trade and I was the one who pretended to be a lost boy…a, a beggar…I played some drums for them around their campfire while they gave me food and clapped. They were not ready for it when my squad moved in for the ambush. Then we killed them.”
He paused again and I see he has started crying again, and as he starts to thud a fist softly against the wall, I know that he is getting to the most excruciating part of the story. To be honest, I am still flailing a bit in my mind, wondering what had been the trigger for this confessional and almost feeling weighed down myself by this emotional outpouring. Somewhere in me, I am starting to feel a twinge of fear; people with a buried past often have the ghost of those memories, unresolved, trailing them about. Shankey’s is a murderous ghost, bloody and ethereal and I can feel it in the darker parts of me inhaling my fears. I do not know what to feel other than a wariness that stands my hairs up on the dry parts of my back.
“Let’s go” The rough in my voice was no longer sexy; it was a ridge-tailed dragon. I gripped her arm, belched flame. “What would your parents say of their darling medical daughter, with her airs, cavorting drunkenly with these, these muumuus” I spat out the last word with every ounce of Nigerian there was in me.
“But don’t you see just there that you are just the same as them? You are the same! Gossiping and bullying just like them. Only you walk around with this pompous inflated vision of yourself as a saint. Why don’t you go off then and find a cure for this poison you always talk about. Go off on your own, since you are Jesus and they are Pharisees” She was shouting by now and her eyes had darkened. I was backing out of the room, my coat still on my arm because I had not bothered with the cloakroom (give one pound away in a Naija party? Never). My gaze was steady on her quivering form, still lovely though she was shaking with passion and anger. “Yes go, go! You didn’t come here for me anyway. Just to prove to yourself that your judgmental views of Nigerians are correct, that you are better than them. You think you feel so deeply about me-yes I’ve read your ‘secret’ poems- but you’ve never said anything to me that didn’t involve yourself you selfish fuck. You’re so sure you know everything. Dude, you’re blind to a few obvious truths. You’re Nigerian, I’m Nigerian. NIGERIAN. My full name, FYI, is KARACHI!” And with that, accenting the beats to her name with their proper Igbo intonation, she stormed off to the toilets, leaving that wintry chill behind her that I will always associate with those memories. I ignored the slavering looks on the swarthy faces of the mob standing open-mouthed, suddenly presented with such juicy jist. This one would spread like a California forest fire. Things fall apart. Man did you hear about Kara, and how she ex’d that guy who thinks he’s oyibo? I angrily walked out, vexed at myself more than anything else.
“Brother,” Shankey’s voice parts the curtains of my reverie with that emphasised West African up-down syllabic stress pattern. I’ve been swimming for thirty minutes straight, lap after lap, thrashing through the pool in continuous unbroken rhythm. Now I rest on the edge, panting, immune to my surroundings, thinking faraway thoughts. “How much more will you think about her, man?” Even as he stretches the final word in the languid style of post- colonial English, I’m struck by the way we’ve grown accustomed to reading each other’s thoughts in so short a time. His hands are smacking against his chest in a samba rhythm and I know he’s thinking about music. Just putting the world in tune, and making it spin to his tempo. I notice he is dry. He hasn’t gotten into the pool at all but is content to sit on the edge making circles in the water with his feet like a girl. I lift an eyebrow at him questioningly. He smiles his toothy, infectious smile like a little devil and splashes into the water beside me, tickling me in the sensitive spot above the hips between muscle and bone. It is too much and I laugh wildly, my kicking legs making the water ripple in much larger circles than Shankey’s feet did. He jumps on my back now and the sudden body contact is slightly unnerving but I ignore it. For once I set aside my passive aggressiveness (Is that what Kara called it in her text message? Yep. And self-absorption as well. And ‘fuck- headedness’. I just love compound words) to things that other people apparently find normal. For once I am hardly thinking about those things that are always so damn penultimate in my mind, lurking in the background and narrowing issues into funneled prejudices. In the water, I always feel able to disconnect, to go with the flow. I won’t let today be any different.
I notice that Shankey is not his usual uninhibited self in the water. He is tremulous, even though he clearly can swim. I can see the surety in his arms. But his eyes betray a fear. Not fear of the water but linked to it all the same. There is a soullessness in his eyes. I think being close to the water seems to have unearthed something in him. Something he would have preferred to stay firmly earthed. He frequently swims up to me, alongside me, God knows why. I am a bit irritated by the unnecessary rubbing against my leg, accidental though it may be. This is part of why I never played rugby, this liberated homoeroticism. I get fed up and I climb out of the pool, somewhat wary of Shankey’s eyes on me.
We are in the showers now. The part of using the gym I hate. Men seem to revel in the splendour of their nakedness for reasons I am unclear about. They carelessly lounge about the changing rooms as God made them, dicks swinging, towels tossed aside as if superfluous. Shankey is one of them. He absently slaps his penis against his thigh, can you believe it, in a melancholy rhythm, eyes amber. We are in the showers now, and he twists open a faucet, his lean form resting morosely against the ceramic tiles, a rumble starting in the many-muscled wall of his torso, and traveling like a memory through his chest and throat until the water bursts out to lance his skin like remembrance. He turns the jaundiced eyes to me, and opens his mouth.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
”I was just thirteen when they took me five years ago. They drove up in their army truck to my house, shooting bullets everywhere. Everywhere. My father had warned my mother that it would happen soon. The soldiers were always looting and killing ordinary people. My father was a maths teacher and a palm wine tapper. My mother was a basket- weaver. They were both a little educated and had decided I would get an education by all means available. So they worked hard and used all the money for school. That day, my father was teaching me long division while we ate. My mother had gone to the market. Just like that, they took everything. Two of them, looking like zombies, came in with these big, big rifles, shouting violently. One of them shot my father in the leg while he was shouting my name, telling me to run, and jumping in their way at the same time. The other one quickly grabbed me and held his gun to my head forcefully, spitting on me. Then his partner beat my father mercilessly, and pumped thirteen bullets into his chest and skull. I counted it, counted it in the shivers in his chest, counted it in the explosive sounds of the gun.
“I counted other things too. The chickens outside screamed as well. Kukurookoo! Thirty -seven times. My mother ran in. They had chased her away from the market and one soja pick her up from floor, smash am down. He flog am with him belt plenty plenty. I bin count the flogging. Twenty- three flogging na im him flog her. Then him tear her cloth sharp, comot him fat prick, him want rape am my mama. I remove eye, begin watch the roof to count the wood. The soja wey dey behin’ me rush me one dirty slap. Then him hold my head make I look my mama. I cover my eye with my hand. The soja daze me another blow sharp and remove my hand. So I watch the other soja. I no want close eye because I dey sure say the soja go see am, daze me another blow. So I begin count the head on my mama wrapper. One one two. One one two. Na my Granma head wey dey on top that wrapper.” He shakes as the tears flow into the water running down his face, crumpling into the wall as he lapses deeper and deeper into the past, his tongue searching for ensconced thoughts with the familiar Pidgin of his childhood just like a mother who shouts out pet names when calling out to a missing child. Then he sees my stunned look and tries to regain composure.
“After the first soldier raped her, the one behind me put down his gun. My mother was no longer resisting. Then he entered into her. One one two. One one two. Her crying was like music. She was not crying for the bastard with his thing inside her. She was crying for broken life, for sorrow, a different pain. Then they took me and threw me into the back of the truck where two boys were already lying down. The rest of the militia men were already running towards the vehicle, their blood lust satisfied. I heard the fire of the gun give my mother wings to fly to heaven. I heard her flapping. One one two. One one two. I even saw her, flying with the rest of the dead women of the village, into the goldness of the sun. Their wings were white and shining against their old clothes. Then the sun touched them and they changed to gold.” He paused briefly, tracing the tattoo mapping Africa on his chest with one finger. “They jumped into the back of the truck with us, in a hurry. Their eyes were strange somehow. Almost like the icing on Krispy Kreme donuts, you know, but very yellow. Their uniforms were torn everywhere and their cheeks were marked with black paint like if somebody slapped it on their faces. I have never been so scared in all my life.”
He is still against the wall and trembling slightly now as if he is cold. I am transfixed. I could not know what made him tell me all this now, but it is clear that he has been carrying the burden of this memory around like a dead weight, like an albatross around his neck. The water gushing from the shower head seems to me to be apt. A ruptured dam of emotion crashing through its boundaries. I know that sounds a bit poetic, but that is precisely what strikes me at this moment. He shifts his form so his head rests against the wall, his voice muffled slightly so I’m struggling to hear what he is saying.
“They took us to…river camp. All of them with their other people…dancing, dancing to high life music. There was a small lake there and they were bathing …and there was a campfire. They tied us up. Left us around that fire- we boys- and it was hot. And they were shouting, telling us we must be… We must learn to be men… and they slapped us about, speaking Creole too fast for me to understand then…Then they took us to the lake. All the soja…dem dey shout like monkey, dem throway us for inside that water...we still dey inside rope so me I no fit move body…dem dip one boy inside the water for two minutes until him begin shake like jellyfish, dey scream, dey shake…When him comot from that water him dey cry bad bad so them drop am inside again, torture am…just dey talk say we must become men, we must become men…One big soja come comot. From where him comot, I no fit tell you. The man be like giant and him voice strong like one kin’ drum. Him look me as I dey wait for ... I begin cry. Na the first time I cry that day. The man look my face come shout STOP…confusion, the sojaman dem dey look me like witch. Na so him carry me with one hand comot as I just dey cry, just dey cry.
“That man’s name was Major Bankole Hassan. He was a Nigerian soldier who had seen more money in trading diamonds than in the ECOMOG peacekeeping mission that brought him to Sierra Leone. So he deserted his platoon and went in to the bushes were he put together this group of militant rebels. He was a very cunning man; he used to tell me that he was from the Yoruba people who are very skilled in tricks and cunning. It helped that he was able to pick up languages very fast. I know that he spoke Yoruba, Hausa, French and even Spanish alongside English. He also spoke all the West African versions of these languages, I mean Creole, Pidgin, any bastard tongue that was used in the jungle. He was at home anywhere on West Coast of Africa. He taught me some of those languages. He taught me everything I know. He brought prisoners from the village raids so we boys could…kill them as, as training. But me, he took special care of me. He showed me how to fish, how to play one old guitar he had on him. He was my Mathematics teacher and he was very good at it- he did not want anyone to ever cheat him out of his money, so funny. Our group was always moving about and sometimes I did not even know which country we were in, because we were always shifting around the border of Liberia and Sierra Leone in two wars that are different but are the same. I became his lieutenant by the time I was fourteen because I had grown so tall. I was in charge even though I was younger than most of the group and they hated it. To control soldiers, you have to become merciless, tough, pitiless, strong. Major Hassan told me this. So every time they brought young boys to one of our camps, sometimes to replace the dead, there I was throwing them in the water and ignoring their screaming. I forgot what the fear had been for me in the beginning and…it was so easy when the igbo and the other drugs we smoked in dirty mixtures…were in the system…high, high all the time. Major Hassan showed me how to balance the drugs with kaikai- hot- I mean hard liqueur…can clear your head in a strange way so the drugs are not stopping your mind. He made me his executioner. Soldiers who betrayed us, the many Judases, he would torture them- flog them with barbed wire, leave them alone in the forest tied to a tree so that their fear would drive them mad. But it was me who would dip them in water over and over and over till they were so tired from struggling. Then I would shoot them.
Major Hassan had friends with a lot of power. He still helped out ECOMOG soldiers, tipping them off on the whereabouts of some of the other rebel groups. He also supplied the governments with some information about rebel hideouts. So they left him alone to trade in diamonds and roam free. He was a rich man but liked the dangerous life of the commando. The man was born to be a soldier. But with time, he wanted me to see a different life from the endless movement, sleeping in trees and feeding on bushmeat and fish. He told me I could get a scholarship, this scholarship that got me abroad here. I was getting very good at maths and he wanted me to do that, said that it was more likely to get me out than making music. You see, I was better than the Major at the guitar, and I could play local drums and the harmonica- all of them, Major Hassan taught me. That was the only way I could hold back the hatred the soldiers had for me, in a way. Almost like David in the Bible, the way he calms King Saul down with the harp, that’s how I calmed the soldiers. I was able to entertain them night after night, to cool them down, and to warm them up for battle. I have always been like that, able to make people like me no matter what. The Major called me his secret weapon. One time, I must have been thirteen, we went out to fight one rebel force that was fucking up the Major’s trade and I was the one who pretended to be a lost boy…a, a beggar…I played some drums for them around their campfire while they gave me food and clapped. They were not ready for it when my squad moved in for the ambush. Then we killed them.”
He paused again and I see he has started crying again, and as he starts to thud a fist softly against the wall, I know that he is getting to the most excruciating part of the story. To be honest, I am still flailing a bit in my mind, wondering what had been the trigger for this confessional and almost feeling weighed down myself by this emotional outpouring. Somewhere in me, I am starting to feel a twinge of fear; people with a buried past often have the ghost of those memories, unresolved, trailing them about. Shankey’s is a murderous ghost, bloody and ethereal and I can feel it in the darker parts of me inhaling my fears. I do not know what to feel other than a wariness that stands my hairs up on the dry parts of my back.