WHAT THE NANNY GOAT TOLD HER KIDS (CHAPTER 10)

CHAPTER 10

 

THE RANSOMS HAD NEIGHBOURS around their property to the right flank and also to the left; the path bordered them at the front but to see the border at the rear you actually walked down a footpath they constantly weeded to reach a swampy and thick bank of a brook.

To one side he had dug a fish pond near the swamp and marked a large area around it he would need to wall and put wire netting around which he would use for raising snails. The financial aid about to be given was just coming at the right time to see him finish and launch his project.

He had gone down the path quite early in the morning with Muscle and Bone running alongside him to look at the site and at the same time assess the sides of the path with vegetables and fruit trees to see if any weed was choking any plant and so whether he should work there that day or go to one of the distant farms.

Done with his assessment of the site and farm, he decided the distant farms needed his attention more than the one here. The birds were flitting and tweeting on the trees around.

Reaching the empty house as his wife had left for the market and his children for schools, he entered and either locked or assessed if they had locked the doors and windows and then stepped out to the veranda, drew the main door close, making sure the two dogs were outside, and then locked it. He picked up his bag which he had fixed with all his farm implements (except the machete in his hand); strapped it on his back and stepped outside. The dogs were following but a couple of steps forward, Mr Ransom stopped and hollered at them to return to the house.

When he looked back and his eyes strayed to the pen covered with palm fronds just beside the big concrete bungalow but placed in an angle the goats were all seen by anyone sitting on the veranda, Mr Ransom saw an anomaly – the billy goat chasing a stoutly resisting nanny goat had got themselves entangled in a way none was useful to the other. The two stood and stared at the other goats and the bale of grass swinging between them.

Mr Ransom had swiftly returned and separated the goats. The dogs were in the pen and watching the goats. They drew near the females, sniffing at them and their dung. They stayed clear of the billy goat as his only way of playing with them was to see if he could clout them with his horns.

Mr Ransom was moving towards the path after sternly warning the dogs and pointing the machete he held at them to show he did not want them to go with him when a message slipped into his phone and made it ring.

He swiftly threw the machete to the ground, jabbed his hand into his trousers’ pocket as if afraid someone else would take his mobile, and pulled it out. Hurriedly, he clicked, scrolled and read the message. With what he read, everything in him just seemed to go limp.

After the first seminar, Mr Ransom had interrupted his farm work for good four times in the last two months to attend others. And lately, among the attendees, there was a growing concern about the reality of the funds moving into their accounts. They had expended funds to buy one book or pay to test themselves with the machines the Hanson team later came with to ascertain their blood pressure or blood sugar levels or even buy genuine honey from them instead of getting rich quick.

Mrs Ransom was even more enthusiastic than her husband because she had heard from the traders bringing goods from the northern part of the country to sell to them here, that in the north people were actually benefitting from this largesse. This speculation began that political leaders in the southern part were sitting on the freebies from the West.

Mr Ransom decided to call Perempe and asked if he had received the text message also. He had returned to the veranda, flopped down on the bench and fumbled with his phone. When the call went through, he put his mobile across his face and spoke: ‘Hello, Perempe. Have you received any new text?’

‘Yes o; just now,’ the person at the other end said. The dogs stood at the entrance and gazed curiously at their boss, pairs of paws up on the threshold and the others down in the sand outside, their tongues hanging as they drooled in the mouths while listening to the chat as the speaker of Mr Ransom’s phone was loud.

‘You saw the message of another seminar this Saturday at nine o’clock?’

‘Yes,’ Perempe answered.

‘Would you attend?’

‘I’m not sure o,’ Perempe said at the other end. ‘As I said before, it looks like something fishy is going on.’

‘Look,’ Mr Ransom quivered with anger, ‘could this bunch of idiots from nowhere just come around to deceive responsible men and women and shamelessly distract them from their work and at the end of it all still steal from us?’

‘Those guys are four-one-niners. They add class to their thieving act,’ Perempe gave his frank assessment of the bringers of ‘Western goodies’.

‘What!’ Mr Ransom’s scream made his dogs move back, looking around and sniffing the ground. ‘Can you just imagine the brashness of these young men? Days I should’ve used looking after my distant farms now choked with weeds, I was running and falling to climb motorcycles and was driven on pothole-filled paths to go attend useless seminars. These touts are provoking me!’

‘You’re on the farm?’ Perempe asked.

‘No. I was just on my way when the stupid text slipped into my phone. My day has been spoilt. I’m staying back. I don’t know what I should do to these fools! Why is it that when people in this country say that they want to help you so you won’t kill yourself but their intent is only to help and with their own hands kill you quick?’

‘I don’t know, my brother,’ Perempe said at the other end. ‘As you’re not going out, I’m coming to meet you in your place.’ He cut the call.

Mr Ransom held his phone for a long time before his face and stared at the screen. He hissed and said: ‘These crooks would sure live to regret this!’

 

*

 

The sound of the dogs’ feet rushing forward without barking forced Mr Ransom out of his thoughts to appraise who had come into his compound. His mind told him it could not be any other person than the man he had just spoken with a few minutes ago with his phone. The dogs were leaping happily on the visitor.

‘There’s no time I come into this compound with my neat clothes and go back the same,’ Perempe said as he grabbed the paws of the dogs and tried to see if he could calm their excitement. ‘Muscle, Bone; Muscle, Bone,’ he said, his hands rubbing their heads and necks but the dogs still wanted to leap, wagging their tails and touching him with their paws.

But Perempe was no longer having any of their play and his voice changed. He hollered at them to stay calm and looked for an imaginary deterring object to pick. The dogs trotted slightly away from him but were looking at and wagging their tails at Perempe.

When they drew close to the veranda, Mr Ransom said: ‘It’s hard to forget a good master.’

Perempe laughed and said: ‘Now it looks like the millions won’t come, we should look for a day and take the dogs out for hunting again.’

‘Look, Perempe, I just wish it was possible to hunt those crooks with the dogs and my shotgun. How do they dare take us for fools?’

Perempe laughed out loud at Mr Ransom’s pained expression. ‘Wait, Oga sir. So in your wildest dream, you believed these guys had millions they’d throw around like that?’

Mr Ransom gaped and disbelievingly spoke: ‘So you knew they wouldn’t, why didn’t you let me know earlier?’

‘It’s good we all witness how the whole thing would play itself out. If I’d said anything at the start against these guys, I would’ve been seen as a spoilsport. It’s good for us all.’

‘Meaning?’ Mr Ransom could not believe what he had just heard his friend say. He had thought he would even get angrier than himself. He would have urged him this time (as he had not much to lose than what the crooks had cunningly taken from him) to apply his medicine bag to teach them the biggest lesson of their lives. ‘I wish I knew what you know and I tell you these crooks would’ve seen my red eyeballs,’ he tested the ground to see like water, how his friend would flow.

Perempe laughed and said: ‘I learnt a lot from those fellows. What they wrote in their books are things I know and there are a lot more I know which they didn’t mention. I can’t write as well as they did but I’ve started writing and intend to start working with my son who luckily wants to read medicine in the university. I pray he gets the admission and with him, I’d realize my ambition.’

It was Mr Ransom’s turn to laugh out loud at his friend. ‘You want to start selling books and to steal from the people too?’

Perempe replied smilingly: ‘You want me to go and kill people. But I want to pass my knowledge to my son so in a big way he would be saving lives.’

The answer totally snuffed out Mr Ransom’s evil thoughts and left him disappointed. He nodded understandingly and said: ‘That’s a great idea. I wish you and your son great success.’ He got up to go bring bitter kola and akaikai so they could while away the time.

Returning with the items, Mr Ransom said as he stepped onto the veranda: ‘I’d buy your idea that we go hunting soon.’