The View From The Window (3)

 WARNING: ADULT CONTENT!

As the news spread about the returnee, his friends were trooping in, slapping his hand and clapping his shoulder and back. Seeing the mood the father was in, they ordered more bottles of beer and meat.The place was foggy with cigarette smoke.

The language changed from Efik diluted with Ibibio and Annang dialects to pidgin English as the Ejagham and Bekwarra-speaking fellows joined their friends. The party was on till dusk.

When night bimbled in, the young men and their girlfriends melted away for fear of the known unknown, the police who could swoop in or not. Everyone went away with the instruction by Utai to 'draw the ear' of their friend, Imo.

Honestly,  the boys didn't stop smoking and the police boots like vultures' talons on the iron sheets of a slaughter-house didn't stop descending click-clack on the shanties. When the ill-timed marathon persisted, Amba and all his friends eventually vanished from their homes. They slept the nights on the floors and benches of churches, friends' and relations' abodes in safer parts of the village. Some left for the forest, working there long-term.

With government's tough stance, those abducted were freed. (Unfortunately, the female professor lost her life.) As the trajectory of events was favourably changing, doctors shifted their position and returned to work. Shortly after, the police from the state capital curtailed their raids on the shacks near the brook.

The year was advancing. The rains, like a retiree, pulled the drawers of its desks and picked its belongings and vacated the space it called its workplace. A fresh face, the dry season, walked in and took its seat.

Amba and a few friends returned. The rest had rented new homes in other parts of the village. 

Mr and Mrs Udiong from their window could conclude business had plummeted for the young man. The few customers still patronizing him were a bunch of chickens which would bawl and scatter in different directions at the mere shake of a leaf thinking it was the kite. For the first time, the Udiongs saw Amba doing menial jobs on the farms and building sites around. But the men and boys where he worked knew it was also the process he used to offer his services to those in need.

From their window, the Udiongs noticed Ime, a regular customer who frequented Amba's kitchen. Ime's brother-in-law was a young thriving palm-oil merchant who lived across the path the Udiongs resided. Mrs Udiong was quite familiar with his sister as they interacted a lot in the market selling their goods. But neither the wife nor her husband had let Ime's sister know what her younger brother had been doing behind their house. Of course, that would have exposed their viewpoint into the backyard and they would have been seen too as nosy parkers.

Whether Amba was around or not, the fair bearded guy with a stocky stature would sneak into the kitchen, pull a burning log or ember from the fire and light his white-papered stick. He would leave the room looking sideways and hurried down the track leading to the brook. At the bushy edge, he pulled on the stick of cannabis between his lips, strolling up and down, and peeping at all directions to be certain the spoilsports didn't hide somewhere ready to pounce on him. He made Mrs Udiong giggle a lot when he dragged on his stick and it would burst into flame. He would spiritedly fan it with his free hand to quench the flame. When that was done near their window not too long ago, she would hear some popping sound.

Then Amba started having altercations with the youth. They shared the same mother tongue which the Udiongs did understand and Mrs Udiong was watching the two through a slit between the curtains as they quarrelled.

'I'd warned you before and... and I'm warning you for the last time, don't come to my kitchen to light your hemp. You can't get your stuff elsewhere and ... and come here to smoke it.' When Amba was angry, he stammered.

'You're talking trash. If I buy it from you, you don't quarrel. But if I bring it from outside, it makes you mad. Do you know if a friend gave me this?'

'Go to your friend ... friend's place and smoke. Leave my kitchen before I crack ... crack your head with a stick,' Amba said, picked a piece of firewood from a stack at one end of the verandah and waved at Ime to get out.

'You're not serious,' Ime said, still clutching his roll of hemp between his fingers, eyeing an ember to light it. 'You behave like a child.'

'Look, leave my kitchen. I want to boil ... boil water for my wife to bathe. Leave or I'll ... I'll hit you.'

A struggle ensued and Ime was hit more than once. His stick of cannabis was on the dirt floor and looked crumpled having been marched. Vicky, Amba's wife, who had rushed from their room to the kitchen, stood at the door and reprimanded her husband. 'You're fighting a man like yourself with a stick?' Addressing the two now, she said: 'Please, separate. I don't know why you two are always quarrelling like co-wives.'

Amba threw down the firewood and the other hand loosened his grip which had tightened on the ends of Ime's shirt's collar.

Ime assessed the bruises where he had been hit. One was below the knee on the side of his bare leg and he then drew up his shirt's sleeve to assess the one on his arm. He picked his crumpled stick of hemp and walked out of the kitchen, seething.

Amba's wife was not happy with the two for their actions. She left for their room while Amba stoked the fire and poured water into a kettle to boil for her bath. Their new baby, barely a month old, whimpered in the room.

It wasn't long, Ime returned. His pitch was high and drew Mr Udiong from his parlour, where he was browsing the net with his handset, to join the wife peeping.

'How dare you leave wounds on my body. Am I your houseboy? If I don't wound you back, call me a bastard!' Ime said loudly.

'I hope you would respect yourself and leave,' Amba replied nonchalantly. 'If you dare try any nonsense with me, what I would do to you will be worse than the first.'

Amba's reaction tore the thread holding Ime's seams of senses together. 'Oh, you're talking like that?' He rushed towards an empty bottle of drink on the verandah near the bench, picked and smashed it on the angle of the floor and rushed towards Amba who geared up to defend himself. The lightning swing of the broken bottle Ime clutched caught Amba on the inside of his elbow, red liquid splattering on Ime's shirt.

Amba looked down at his arm and couldn't believe what he saw. His brain sifting the reality, he inched forward and attempted grabbing his opponent. A second swing of the weapon tore open his polo shirt and drew a white curve that quickly turned red from one breast to the other. The six-footer sank backwards like a bag of fufu to the ground.

Ime stared at his victim writhing helplessly on the ground and then glanced at himself from his blood-spattered shirt to the broken bottle in his hand. He threw the bottle down, wheeled around and as the witnesses, mostly women and kids, were screaming for help for the bloodied fellow wriggling in the dust, the attacker strode down the path towards the brook.

THE END