Red Sun fall
About the time I was eight, all of us children in the compound played football. In the evenings after school, they’d wake me up from my compulsory nap, calling at the window. And we’d play ball for hours, and raise dust, and break car windows with our shots, and crack walls. Until our parents decided we had caused too much trouble to keep playing ball in the compound, and sent us out to play it on the streets or a nearby school field or who cares wherever! The mishaps were mistakes, they agreed, but our mistakes were getting too dangerous. That was when the fun slipped out of it, because no one wanted to go all the way to a school field and begin to tug for space with other children who had already marked out their spots all over the field like alpha dogs marking out territory.
But the home days were all the fun in the world. Usually, afterwards, sweating and gasping we’d sit on the staircase, and laugh at the ones who got shamefully dribbled, and we’d drool over our spectacular goals, and threaten to grind the other team to dust next time. And in those moments just before our mothers began hollering our names to help out in the kitchen or fetch some water, sitting there, with the cold sweat plastering my shirt to my back and the breeze caressing my hairy skin, the sunset would reflect off the wall and catching my eye I’d look up, and watch the reddish sun fall.
But one day that reddish falling sun began to mean something different; something terribly bitter. Daddy and my elder brother, Dede, had gone to the plantation. They were seeing some buyers for the palm fruits. Usually, when they returned from this kind of trip Dede would be carrying a basket of pineapples and coconuts, and Daddy would have some chocolate for me. He rarely ever bought chocolate or any sugary thing else, and he made sure all of us knew why, but that is a story for another day.
We had been going through the fifty four countries in Africa, Daddy and I, before he left for the plantation. I will memorize the rest, I decided, so that when he returns I will recite the 54 to him, so his face would light up in that way I would never forget. He might even buy me another surprise novel. So I practised. I sang and sang it until mother’s ears were ringing with Angola... Luanda... and she would stop her cooking and eye me with anger and admiration and exasperation all at once.
Weekend arrived and Dede returned, with the basket of fruits in his hand. He was very cheerful; too cheerful. And when I asked about daddy he said daddy was on the way back, that he’d had to visit a friend before coming back. Okay... I don’t like that answer. I don’t like it all. Then he told mummy something in low tones and they two entered the room and shut the door behind them. I tiptoed to the door and flattened my ear against it.
“They found crude oil there but the town council told Uncle to keep quiet”.
“That man was always a coward!”
“Mummy wait, that’s not the main thing”
“Eh-heh?”
“Daddy got angry and went straight to the company people. He said they should give him the oil they drilled from his land or pay him 30%. They told us they had paid the council people for everything, and why should they pay twice, that it wasn’t their business anymore and we should meet the council people”.
“And those council thieves had collected everything and wiped their mouths?”
“Daddy decided we should go and check the trees first”. “From afar you could see that the trees were already dying because of the oil they had sucked from the underground. We were very angry, and daddy rushed into the farm”. Dede fell silent.
“And---” Dede said nothing.
“Chukwujiofor, what happened?” there was fear in mummy’s voice.
Dede remained silent. I could now hear mummy breathing loudly.
“What happened!” she was shaking him.
“Mummy, immediately he entered the farm he fell down on his face. That was when I noticed a red cloth tied to a palm tree close by”. Mummy began to cry.
“Mummy, I carried him and ran back to Uncle’s house. I asked him where the nearest hospital was but he looked up at me and said this was not a hospital matter”. Mummy’s crying increased to wailing. My heart began to tear inside me.
“I insisted, but before we could get him on uncle’s bicycle... mummy... he was no longer breathing”. Dede’s own voice broke, and from the way mummy’s voice muffled I could tell he was hugging her.
I fell to the ground backwards, and though I landed on my buttocks I felt no pain. I realized tears were pouring down my face. I looked up again as if to see Dede’s face: maybe he was... maybe he was joking. I dragged myself inside my room and lay on the bed, soaking my pillow, my chest heaving. Is it my daddy he was talking about?
A glint caught my eye from out of the window. It was the reddish sun falling.
