Chinedu Ogoke - Under Fire

Finally with good wishes from his hosts, Mickey walked out proudly with his ward.

“Oscar, darling.” A girl carrying a multi-colour hair planted a kiss on Oscar’s cheek.

Oscar raised her hand to a kiss. Without releasing the hand, he tried to draw the girl closer, the other hand encircling her. “Oh, no, Oscar. Stop it.” She brushed aside his hand and dashed off when he wouldn’t stop. The other two girls laughed.

Oscar chuckled with laughter. “Come, le’ me squeeze ya.” He demonstrated with clenched, bony fists.

A mother had laboured with this person, Innocent observed. Whoever the man was who had been involved in making him. The joke in school was, Oscar was an extra-terrestrial sample drafted to school, like the school was running out of normal human beings. Nothing of the sort had previously been seen. But one was just enough for the school.

“This Oscar, I bet lives only on pot,” Innocent said, “with supplies from Koffi the barber. A genius in peeling, this legend. He drugs his victims, takes away all their powers of resistance, then obtains. Especially jambites. But anybody, you don’t have tickets, you borrow.”

“Wonderful.”

“I even overheard him telling a guy he tried to peel, ‘You, everyday, dry weather,’ when will your rain fall?’” Really? Imoni asked. “You can’t try. It was in the presence of some babes. Then, from no where he produced a ticket, and got hailed, ‘rainmaker!’”

They stumbled into Wale, a member of the palm wine drinkards club. “Komrad Imoni,” Wale called, “may you wakar and nefer stumble at all, at all.”

“Wale, may your first son nefer rezemble your houseboy.”

“Emu.”

They linked their index fingers, each snapping his middle finger against his thumb.

“Komrad, you are woked.” Innocent proffered his finger.

But Wale instead offered a palm. “A komrado shall nefer be kponkponkios,” he said.

“He’s joking,” Imoni said in plain English. “He’s not karreable.

“So, he’s an ishiewu.”

Innocent laughed. “You’re ishiewu yourself.” But he shook Wale’s hand.

Wale turned to Imoni. “Niger and Benue shall nefer meet at all, at all.

“And our four mamasis and five fathersis shall continue to discover the Niger, and Mongo Park shall always be announcer.”

“At all, at all.”

Wale informed Imoni about a club’s poster in the cafeteria ahead, before he continued on his way. They entered the cafeteria. A handful of male students was dining inside.

A colourful poster on the large, paste board contested readers’ attention with the palm wine club’s poster. The large, colourful poster proclaimed in splendid letters, a presentation by Pacific Age Productions, a campus outfit, then included side attractions, but silent on the much talked about Mr. and Miss Unimaid.

“No mention of Mr. Unimaid,” Innocent commented.

“Randy and his colleagues are thieves to charge ten tickets as gate fee,” a student who had joined them, said.

“It’s a deliberate attempt to shut out the poor students,” Imoni added. “But there’s inflation in the land.”

“Inflation?” the first, student asked. “I may regret missing it, but they won’t see me there. Let them obtain themselves.”

The palm wine drinkards poster wore a faint, sandy, green skin, and had a palm tree engrafted to the background. It’s clumsy words were transcribed with emphasis on the phonetics of its peculiar language. Part of the message read thus: ‘Jarasis, Jurassic!” Supremost komradiom. Diz iz kolin, on ol Kongosis, dat dia will be a wokedest ekstanal maigreshon to Illya du Rock on di 15 x 2 -9 /- 2 + 3 /- 16 +.... So, dear 4, ol Kongosis sud, by way of Sentral Bank, diklia dia assets and 4 feet dia 15000 kowries. Naija in a woked go slow, Afrika in a serious hurri. Difaided we stand, unaited wi fall. Wan plos wan is ten, and tri minos nut is nutin. A wod is tu smol fo di waild. Taim. 4 kock crow to infinity. Vaibration: Paroto.

Innocent laughed. “These palm wine guys are crazy. Trying to turn everything upside down. Look at this one,” he pointed. Imoni read it. Desert scorpions, a secret cult beckoning to new students. Everything was produced in red, with an impressed, poised scorpion. “Good, the Eng. 101 observers haven’t spared it,” Innocent said. “But why is it even here?”

“Maybe the blue guys haven’t seen it.”

He asked his friend if he thought students would respond positively to it. Well, he shrugged his shoulders, if it commended itself on them. Whoever committed his soul to evil. The poster promised its members, worthy soldiers, security and prompt realisation of their desires. And they did only ask for their pound of flesh and got it. Innocent was going to tear it off, but Imoni stopped him. He thought it wasn’t the kind of thing to get firm root in the school. And, who, for goodness sake was the liquidator? he asked. He thought it childish.

The other bulletins were shuttles scheduled for less broad frames. There was that of a students union calling, Association of Imo State students welcome party, and Sokoto State scholarship board reaching out to clients. Others announced the deaths of two students along Maiduguri-Damboa road, and a Mr. Singh’s missing Beetle car. They started moving east, after consuming the information. Moments later, they were at table before their meals.

The cafeteria was undeservedly middle class. At N2.50, diners grumbled over the food. It had had a great time in the previous semesters. But that had been overturned by other eating places, which now netted the bulk of the middle class diners. It could now only go for those left out like itself. The gate that had unified the female halls with this hall had moved, and the students had moved with it. This now left the cafeteria in the wrong corner of the school. See the people the hall itself was hosting. Hardly the girls. That gate’s closure really affected tourism in the hall. If the hall had to knock on the doors of those students, it had to knock really hard. Back to the cafeteria, the cheap bukas and cafeterias had made a sweep of the people the exalted eating places couldn’t take on. The cafetaria was being run now by the wife of a retired General. She couldn’t help the N2.50, which was even considerably cheap, because of high rent, she had said in a meeting with Shantali the students hall chairman. She referred to students as her children. She operated at a loss, but a retired General’s wife addressing students as her children. Blasphemy, Lawd.

Imoni heard somebody mention ‘Randy,’ and turned. “Cent and Waltz, momen guys,” Randy, carrying a guitar, hailed them.

“Hey, Randy the Shadow.” Imoni dropped his spoon to shake hands.

Randy, in his jeans attire and white canvass shoes, and a shoulder slanted by a guitar, attracted admirers. Another young man consistent with Randy’s appearance, came forward. He shook hands too. Innocent smiled. He could see Randy was in entertainment shape, he said. He had seen the posters, he continued, and the show promised a lot of action.

“Obviously, yes,” Randy replied. “Please, you guys should come. You’ll get more than your ticket’s worth. I won’t disappoint you, my admirers. We are just picking up the rope from where Imoni stopped.”

Innocent attacked the high gate fee, which Randy cleverly defended. After the explanation, he strummed his guitar a while. His hand speed was amazing. He got extoled.

“You just have to come. Imoni, you know we all look up to you.”

Imoni welcomed the compliment, and granted him and his colleague access to his five naira change. Eventually, they bade Randy and his colleague bye, and stepped out. They headed to Innocent’s hall. Close to his room, Innocent was attracted to an open door, but Imoni pressed on. He walked up to door number 15, and knocked.