The Seersucker Whipsaw

Chapter 22

William drove the Humber slowly down the high-crowned asphalt highway that wound through the town of Obahma that lay 70 miles from Ubondo, 169 miles north of Barkandu. Shartelle was slumped down into his familiar back-seat position. The rusty slouch hat sat low over his eyes, the twisty cigar gathered a nice ash.

“William, you keep poking along like this and we’re never going to get anywhere.”

William turned his head around and gave us the big smile, but he seemed nervous.

“Madam ask me to ask you, Mastah.”

“Madam who?”

“Madam Anne, Sah.”

“What she ask you to ask us?”

“If we go now for my village. It is not far.”

“How far is not far?” I asked.

“Forty, maybe fifty miles.”

“When’s the last time you were home, William?”

“Two years ago, Sah. I have letter from uncle. He say my brother is now ready for school. For good school, Sah. Madam say to me that she will see that he go to school where she is teacher.”

I looked at Shartelle and said: “As far as I’m concerned, Madam has spoken.”

“You’re right. William, we go for village.”

“Thank you, Sah!” He spun the wheel of the Humber, made a U-turn, barely missing a mammy wagon that went by the name of “Poverty Is No Crime,” and sped down the highway in the opposite direction.

“What’s the name of your village?”

“It very small. It is called Koreedu. Very nice name.”

“Very nice,” I agreed.

The rain forest thinned out, the farther north we drove from Obahma. It gave way to fields of stunted trees and grass. Palm groves which looked cultivated cropped up occasionally. On a curve, a family of baboons suddenly loped across the road. The rearguard stopped and chattered at us in what looked to be real rage.

Shartelle gave me a poke. “Lookee there, Pete! Ain’t that something? Look at him just standing there and giving us billy hell. Ain’t he a pistol?”

“Baboons, Sah. They very good chop.”

Shartelle had his head craned around, staring at the baboons through the rear window. “You don’t eat those things, do you, William?”

“Very good, Sah.”

“Goddamn it, Pete, that’s the very first live animals I’ve seen in Africa. Baboons.”

“There’re supposed to be some elephants left around here some place. And rhinos. At least that’s what it says on the map.”

“I’d sure admire to see some.”

“Maybe we’ll be lucky.”

We weren’t, though. All we saw the rest of the trip were some goats and chickens. That far north, traffic grew scarce, and the Albertian or two we passed gave us a cheery wave and a shout of greeting. We waved back.

William turned left onto a laterite road after we had gone what I estimated to be fifty miles. The washboard ridges in the laterite grew deeper and rougher. The car jounced along, spewing up a cloud of thick red dust behind. Finally, the laterite gave out to a one-car trail with grass growing between the two tracks. William kept on driving, a little faster now, eager to get to his village.

“You sure you know where you’re going?” Shartelle asked.

“Very sure, Sah. Not far now.”

“It wasn’t far sixty miles back,” I said.

A few people began to appear. I don’t know where they came from. There were no houses or huts around. They waved at us and William honked the horn and waved back. In a small clearing, just off the trail, there was a mudwalled building, open in the front, that displayed a faded red Coca- Cola cooler of an early 1939 vintage. William pulled up to the building and stopped. Inside, I could see shelves stocked with a few tins of sardines, soup, biscuits or cookies, canned meat, powdered soap, bar soap, matches, cigarettes and snuff. It was another general store.

“I buy gift for village,” William said.

“Is it the custom?”

“Yes, Sah.”

“We’ll buy the gifts. You got any money, Pete?”

I gave William two pounds and told him to get what he thought proper. He came back with boxes of cookies, some cigarettes, some snuff, some tinned jawbreakers, and a half pint of whisky.

“What’s the whisky for?” Shartelle asked.

“For village head man, Sah.”

“He likes gin?”

“Very much.”

“Take the whisky back and trade it for some more cookies. We’ll donate a couple of bottles of the Ile’s gin.”

From the general store it wasn’t far to the village of Koreedu. The word had been passed that William was returning, driving a fine car for the two white men. They all turned out to meet us — all seventy of them, including children and dogs. There were some square houses built of mud with round, thatched roofs. There were some shed-like buildings that looked as if they were used to dry crops, if ever a crop were harvested. The street was pale dust. William parked the car and got out. He was embraced by an old man, then by a series of younger men. He answered questions; asked questions, smiled, laughed and talked. His relatives and friends did the same. Shartelle and I stood by the car and watched. It grew too hot for that so we walked over and stood in the meager shade of some palm trees. William ran over to us and asked us to follow him. He led us into the village’s largest building. It was cooler inside, but that ended when the village population decided to come in, too.

There were three chairs on a raised platform and the old man whom William had first embraced directed Shartelle and me to sit on two of them. William ran out to the car and brought back the boxes of gifts and goodies. He didn’t forget to bring the two bottles of Gordon’s gin. Shartelle and I sat on either side of the old man. Speaking in the dialect, William made a small oration and presented the two bottles of gin to the old man with a flourish. That called for a response which took up another quarter of an hour or so. The old man then produced two unlabeled pint bottles of clear liquid and handed them to us. Shartelle rose to the occasion and made a fine five-minute speech on behalf of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, Chief Akomolo, the party, Padraic Duffy, Anne Kidd, the Widow Claude, himself and me. He also threw in a few words about the grave responsibilities and duties which William shouldered in Ubondo. He sat down to thunderous applause.

The old man insisted that we have a drink of the unlabeled liquid. I asked William what it was.

“Gin, Sah. Native gin.”

“Sweet Christ.”

“Very good, Sah.”

Shartelle uncapped a bottle and took a swallow. I watched to see whether he keeled over. He didn’t, so I uncapped my bottle and swallowed some. It wasn’t bad. I’ve drunk worse. But rarely. William then passed out cigarettes to the younger villagers, snuff to the older ones, and candy and cookies to the pickins, as the children were so quaintly called. A woman came forward and began to talk to William earnestly. He shoved her away with a sharp retort. She insisted. He relented. Shartelle and I decided to give the native gin another go.

“Mastah, woman here want you to look at her pickin.” “Why?”

“She say he sick.”

“How is he sick?”

“He sick for three, four days now. Cry all time.”

“Does she want me to come with her?”

“Pickin just outside. She bring him in.”

Shartelle sighed. “All right, I’ll look at him.”

William spoke harshly to the woman. Maybe he was due to be headman someday and was just practicing for the job. The woman shoved her way through the packed, now airless, meeting hall where the villagers stood and sat, eating their cookies, smoking their cigarettes, and passing around the Gordon’s gin. The woman came back carrying a naked year-old baby who was loosely wrapped in a piece of blue cotton cloth. He was a boy and he squawled, his eyes screwed up tight, his stomach distended and hard. She deposited the boy at Shartelle’s feet and backed off into the protective custody of the crowd. Shartelle knelt by the baby who racketed off some more screams. He sounded as if he were in bitter pain. Shartelle patted him on the head, probed his stomach, looked into his mouth, and felt the joints in his legs and arms.

“William, get me some boiling water,” he said.

“You’re shooting the wrong scene, Manny. The kid’s already born.”

“Nothing wrong with this kid except pellagra, rickets if he don’t get some vitamins, and colic. I know a colicky kid when I see one. I can cure him, too.”

“What with?”

“Wild yams. Pound ’em up into a mush and feed it to him. Clean him out good.”

“That what the boiling water is for?”

“Kid needs a tranquilizer. Can’t get wild yam mush in him till he calms down.”

“Where you going to get a tranquilizer?”

Shartelle gave me his wicked grin. “Boy, you just look and learn. You’re going to see one of the oldest tranquilizers for kids in the history of the world.”

William brought in a small primus stove with a pot of water that bubbled on top of it.

“I need sugar, William. A pound maybe. Brown or white, it doesn’t matter.”

William translated this quickly to the crowd. Three women darted away, squirming through the packed audience who moved in closer for a better view of Dr. Shartelle’s matinee performance. The women were back soon with the sugar, which they handed over to William who handed it to Shartelle. The sugar was brown and it was kept in paper spills. Shartelle took a look at the water and told William to pour about half of it out on the dirt floor. William poured and part of the crowd jumped back. He set the pot back on the stove. “Get me a small, clean stick, William,” Shartelle said. William demanded a stick and a man who was cleaning his teeth with one that had a sharp point sacrificed it for the operation. It also entitled him to a ringside seat. Shartelle took the stick in one hand and a spill of sugar-filled newspaper in the other. He poured the sugar into the boiling water, stirring slowly.

“William, get me the biggest rooster they got.”

“Rooster, Sah?”

“Cock — male chicken — man chicken.”

“Sah!” William translated quickly to the crowd. “Ahhhh,” the crowd said. Now the white fool makes sense. He will sacrifice a cock. Someone else burrowed through the crowd bearing a scrawny rooster. He held him out to Shartelle. Another man offered his machete. “Just hold him there a minute,” Shartelle said.

He finished pouring the sugar into the boiling water and kept stirring it with a spoon until it was a thick syrup. Then he asked for the Gordon’s gin and poured a thimbleful into the pot. He stood up. “Turn the rooster around and hold him tight,” he told William who told the rooster holder.

Shartelle inspected the rooster’s rear carefully, selected the longest, biggest tail feather, and gave it a quick jerk. The rooster squawked. The kid set up a new howl. Shartelle took the tail feather and dipped it into the syrup until it was completely coated. Then he waved it gently in the air to cool. He gave it to the baby who put it in his mouth — at least part of it. He quit squawking and sucked on the syrup. It was sticky. He liked that. He was only whimpering now. The more he sucked on the feather, the stickier he got, and the better he liked it. He gurgled a little, and wiped his face with the syrupy feather. He liked that even better. He dragged it across his stomach and almost smiled when it tickled and left a syrupy trail.

“Never seen it fail,” Shartelle said. “The stickier they get, the better they like it. They can suck on it and it’s sweet. They can mess with it and it just gets nastier and nastier. Just a taste of alcohol. Nothing a baby likes more, boy. Any baby.”

He turned to William and told him to tell the mother how to use the wild yam paste to cure the baby’s colic. William understood and sought the mother out in the crowd.He translated to her, and to the fascinated audience. She went shyly towards the baby, scooped him up, sticky, syrupy feather and all, smiled nicely at Shartelle, murmured something, and darted through the crowd which parted for her.

Shartelle and I had another drink of the native gin and then got out of the building. “Get that brother of yours, William, and let’s get going,” I told him.

“He here, Sah.” William pointed to a small boy in khaki shorts and white undershirt who giggled and darted behind a stout woman who seemed to be his mother. William talked to her and she talked to the boy who took William’s hand. “This is Kobo, Sah. He is my brother.”

“Hi, there, young fellow,” Shartelle said. The kid ducked his head into William’s side.

“He’s your real brother?” I asked.

“Very close,” William answered and I didn’t have the heart to ask him what he meant.

The old man who had given us the gin hobbled up with another present — a live hen. He extended her to Shartelle who, with his usual charm, accepted gracefully and kept his speech of acceptance to two minutes. The villagers crowded around the car as William, a big man among them now, got into the front seat with Kobo and the hen. Shartelle passed out a couple of handfuls of “I Go Ako” buttons which he had pigeonholed somewhere and the recipients “ahhhed” them. We shook hands with the headman, and with anyone else who wanted to, and got in the car. William backed it around slowly and then drove off. I thought the woman whose skirts Kobo had hidden behind was crying. She ran after the car for a little way, waving. So did some of the other villagers. Kobo sat still and straight in the front seat, stroking the hen. He had tied her legs together.

We rode in silence for a half-hour or so. Then the hen began to cackle. It cackled some more and then became quiet. Kobo turned around in the seat, a shy smile on his face. His hand came up and he held an egg in it. He offered the egg to Shartelle.

The white-haired man smiled and took the egg. “Thank you, sonny,” he said. “Thank you, very much.”