Chris Abani - Song for Night

This is what we were told: in the army, one mile is one click. It means nothing to us beyond army speak, so this is how we sign it: a thumb clicking an imaginary lighter held between fingers palmed into a fist. The number of clicks equals the number of miles. Simple really. I don’t know how many clicks I have traveled yet; must be a lot though. I stretch in the early sun. The chicken last night was good but I am hungry again — however, if this town is full of old shellshocked, trigger-happy farts, then I need to leave. Still, there is no harm in trying to find another meal in the meantime.

The sun is high in the sky and the roads are melting from the heat, the tar coming away in sticky licorice strings with every step. Apart from a few die-hard traders and a record shop playing high-life tunes at full blast, there are only a few scraggy dogs lounging around, tongues lolling insanely, and I wonder if they are rabid. I decide not to take any chances and avoid them. Though the town looks deserted, I know it isn’t. Everyone is just hiding from the possibility of a sudden blitz. I make my way to a decrepit and abandoned restaurant. Since I won’t have any luck begging, I decide to treat myself to whatever I can liberate. I walk behind the counter, open the fridge, and help myself to a cold bottle of Coca-Cola. There is no electricity so the fridge must be kerosene-powered. There is some dry, weevil-infested bread on the counter and I wash it down with the Coke. Weevils are protein, I figure. The food and the sugar from the Coke give me a burst of energy. I decide to leave town. I already have so much ground to cover if I intend to catch up with my platoon.

I walk through the untidy spread. It is as though someone has thrown the houses down in a huff. The town is built on a slight hill and the houses look like spangles marching up the side of a doughnut. Glancing around, I guess I have stumbled on the poorer part because the houses have closely pressing walls of corrugated iron and cardboard and open sewers running out front. Here, children, naked, many sporting sores attended by tomb flies, run through the narrow alleys screaming in play, unafraid of bombing raids. There are no adults in sight except for a pregnant woman who lounges in one of the open doorways, cooling herself down with a raffia fan. I assume that most of the adults are either hiding or at work scavenging old farms or battlefields, trying to eke out a living. Life has to go on, war regardless.

I emerge into a leafier more salubrious neighborhood. It has taken longer that it would normally because I keep getting lost. I didn’t intend to explore the town; I am actually looking for a way out. Here the houses range from old colonial mansions with rusting iron roofs to more recent mansions built by the new rich. Bougainvillea hugs nearly every wall.

I stop outside a high-walled house on a tree-lined street. Ornate gates open up onto a graveled path that sweeps up to a wooden colonial house. I know who lives here: the rebel minister for propaganda. This is where John Wayne stole his Lexus from. This is the house where I shot my first and only pregnant woman, the minister’s youngest wife. I wasn’t aiming for her, but for her husband, on John Wayne’s orders, when she threw herself in front of him. All of us were shocked. That kind of love we had only seen in the movies, never in real life and certainly not in this war. It was a very strange moment for us. We had seen fathers shoot their children on our orders, sons rape their mothers, children forced to hack their parents to death — the worst atrocities — all of which we witnessed impassively. But this was different. We all cried when that woman died, except John Wayne, who was well lost. It wasn’t dramatic really, just silent tears and a shame that kept us from meeting each other’s eyes.

I approach the house from the back. Huge French windows, sans glass, open up onto a patio made from baked terra-cotta tiles. Giant tubs fringe it. Each has a small palm tree. I can’t bring myself to enter, so instead I peer through the bare door frames. There are figures in the room talking. I must be dreaming, I must be because one of them is John Wayne, and if he is alive then I must be dreaming. I shot him. I know I am definitely dreaming when I see Ijeoma standing off to the left. She smiles sadly and says: “You aren’t dreaming, My Luck, my love. These are memories. Before we can move from here, we have to relive and release our darkness.”

I have no idea what she means. Does she mean I am going to die? Or that I am dead? I am pretty sure I’m not dead though, because that would make me a ghost, and I am pretty sure I would know if I was. There are known methods for determining things like this, I think. When I pinch myself it hurts, so I know I am not a ghost.

I turn and run back to the road. I walk for hours until I find myself back where I started. I stop at the record store and ask for directions to the next rebel-controlled town. I am sure I will find my comrades there. As I walk off, I beat a rhythm on my gun’s stock. Playfully.

This is how we sign this: forefinger pointing to the sky while the whole body gyrates. For Ijeoma and me, play is a veiled thing, our own private language within a private language, sweeter for being secret. Rock, paper, scissors: one tap on our gun’s stock, two taps, three.

One tap. One.

One tap. Two. A loss.

Two taps. One. A win.

Two taps. Two. A draw.

Endlessly we play, never looking at each other but smiling into the distance, hearts racing with the anticipation.

Then a steady hand, palm flat.

Silence.

Still we smile as we scan for the danger, our hearts beating:

One. One. Two.

Two. Two. Two.

Three. Three. Three.

About a click outside of town, to my right, a steep bank of hills rises in green drama. Stunted trees struggle to hold onto the sheer faces. Creatures, maybe mountain goats, romp fearlessly at near ninety-degree angles. To my left the earth disappears into a deep ravine. Looking over the edge, I can make out a body of water. There is a scent in the air, a mixture of coriander, jasmine, and nutmeg that I know well: the smell of the savanna. That means I am approaching the middle plains. Closer to my home.

Up ahead the road passes alongside a large field. Set back on the far side are bleachers. This must have been the town’s stadium. Red circles track the field like the grooves in a tree trunk. I pause and recall happier days before the war when I played soccer with friends in a league we made up. The cup was something fashioned from old wood, tin cans, and foil. Sharp thorns in the grass walls around the fields made it difficult as the balls were always bursting. The imam however approved of football and so I had a virtually endless supply of them. Of course, I would interrupt the games and take my ball home if too many goals were scored against me.

As I get closer, I see the sun has burned the field to a brown crisp. Here and there, patches of red earth spill through like giant puddles of blood. It is as though the very earth is peppered with sores. Scattered as far as I can see are corpses. Like a field of cut corn, cropped and lying in untidy rows, drying slowly in the sun. Further back, behind the bullet-holed stands, the trees straggle in an untidy shade.

A dark shadow, a cloud, hangs over the whole field. I stop and squint. The cloud is local and too dark for the sun to steal through. It is alive; moving; seething; humming. With a gasp I realize that it is a cloud of flies. The cloud heads toward me, then rears up, taking on a form, a huge black-winged angel. I rub my eyes. We’ve all heard stories about angels appearing over killing fields, but none so dark, so empty. The form dissipates as the flies spread over the dead like a loose cotton shift.