Golden Boy (12 page)

Alasiri.

I stop without meaning to. Yes, it's him. He's pushing himself off the building, a slightly stunned look on his face, as if he didn't really expect me to be here, either.

I realize I'm trapped. Alasiri is standing at the station gate. The train is pulling out of the station in his direction. To catch the train, I'll have to go toward the man who is trying to kill me. My brain shuts down for an instant.

Screeching softly, the train speeds up. The door I need to get into, the last one open on the train, moves away from me, closer to Alasiri.

I have no choice: I have to make it to that door before it leaves the station. I break into a run.

For a moment, Alasiri seems content to let me run toward him. Then he sees that my running might get me to the door before I get to him. With a curse, he breaks into a run, too. He has a man's strength to power his stride. I have the pure fuel of fear driving my short legs. It's a race to the door. I cross the expanse of packed earth so quickly, I can feel the impact of my feet on the ground all the way up into my shoulders.

Each step takes me closer to the open door.

Each step takes me closer to Alasiri.

The train is really picking up speed, and I run alongside it, trying to reach the door with the conductor as if my life depends on it. Which it does. My toes are now stumbling along the ragged rocky edges of the tracks themselves, and the train is getting almost too fast to catch.

My vision blurs with my terror. The sound of Alasiri's breath growing louder mingles with my own panicked gasps in my ears. He's so close now, I can see the little hairs on his face telling me he didn't shave this morning. There's a gleam of triumph in his eyes as he reaches for me.

I sprint forward, lungs screaming from the effort, and launch myself sideways toward the open door of the train. I feel the brush of fingers, a grabbing hand that has just missed me. My body slams onto the dirty metal floor of the train, my legs dangling out the door. I drag myself in the rest of the way, then whirl around. It feels like the air is ripping my lungs as I gasp in and out, and I've scraped my palms and knees, but it's worth it. Because there, behind the last train carriage and shrinking in the distance, is the lone figure of Alasiri, cursing in frustration. He hasn't caught me. I collapse onto the grimy floor and laugh with relief.

“Show me your ticket, boy, or I'll throw you off again,” booms a voice from above me. “I won't have kids riding the train for fun without paying.”

“I'm not riding without paying!” I wheeze. “Look, here's my ticket.” I pull it out of my pocket and give it to the train conductor who held the door for me.

“That's a ticket, all right, but it's third class! How dare you jump into the first-class door as if you belong here?”

“I didn't know.” He's still holding my ticket between two fingers, as if it was slimy. I want it back. “Give me my ticket and show me where the third-class car is,
Bwana,
and I'll go there.” I hold out my hand.

The man gives an unpleasant little laugh, shoves my ticket at me, and turns away.

“Wretched boys,” I hear him mutter. Then, louder, “Follow me!”

Carefully pushing my precious ticket deep into my pocket, I hug my bundle to my chest and follow the man down the corridor.

“No! I can't
do it!”

I'm frozen in the door between train cars, my knuckles in a death grip on the thin metal bars on one side, my other hand clutching my bundle to my chest. My eyes are glued to the space in front of me that the train orderly expects me to jump across. Panic crawls up my throat like a hairy spider.

“No!” I say again, starting to back away.

“
Punguani!
Go on!” he bellows in my ear. I wince. But even his bellowing can't stop the slow inch of the panic spider.

After I had gotten on my feet again, the orderly led me from the passenger-entry door to the end of the carriage. Now, directly in front of me, is the next train car, with an open door at the rear of it just like the one I'm standing in. The cars sway with each imperfection in the track and bump in the landscape, and they each sway just a little differently, making the door I need to go into jolt unpredictably. All that's between my car and the other car is a rusted connection and one single chain. And below that—nothing. Nothing but the rocks and red dust of Tanzania, blurring past. The chain tenses and slackens, tenses and slackens, pulling the cars closer together and then letting them drift farther apart. With my bad eyes, I can barely judge the distance between the two doors, but only a blind man couldn't see that a misstep would end horribly.

I imagine myself being pulled under the train and sliced in half, or having the two cars jolt together and crush my legs. I swallow down a mouthful of bile. No, I've just spent two days fighting to keep my legs. I want to keep them a little longer. I turn to the man.

“I don't think I can . . .” I start, but his dark brows crunch down over his eyes and he gives me a rough shove, sending me flying. I land hard against the other door, hands scrabbling for the rails. I find them and pull myself in to safety. My bundle lands on the floor with a thump as I plaster myself to the train wall, shaking.

The big man comes in behind me a split second later, taking the gap in one long stride. My eyes must be worse than I thought. It must not be such a big gap after all. Again I wish I wasn't an albino, with all its problems. But I have no time to curse my useless eyes, because the man grabs the collar of my shirt with one hand and scoops my bundle off the floor in the other and, instead of being allowed to walk as I was in the last car, I am dragged through the second-class carriage like a misbehaving child. I don't want to cause any more of a scene than we're already causing, so I go with him quietly.

I have to jump over two more car interchanges before the orderly finally lets go of me with a shove. He dumps my stuff on the floor in front of me. I quickly bend down and pick it up, pulling it up close against my chest again.

“This is the third-class cabin,” he says, loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear him. “Stay here or I will put you off the train at the next station. No more of your tricks,
zeruzeru
!”

With that, he spins on his heel and walks away from me. He reaches the intersection between cars and jumps over lightly. With the benefit of many years of experience and no reluctant boy in tow, he is almost graceful. I wish him a horrible death falling under the train.

Anger helps no one,
chides Asu's voice in my head. But a voice that sounds like Chui is laughing. I turn and look for a place to sit.

The third-class car does not have private rooms off a hallway like the first-class car did. Nor does it have spacious rows of padded individual seats, like second class. Instead, the seats in the third-class cabin look almost like bus stop benches, with long slats of wood nailed together to make the seats and the upright backs. The benches are arranged in rows all the way down both sides, with only a narrow aisle in between.

After my sudden arrival and the orderly's outburst, everyone in the car has turned and is staring at me. For an awkward moment they all consider me. I shuffle quickly down the aisle, looking for an open seat at one end or the other. Having spent a lifetime at the edges of things, I don't even consider taking one of the open seats in the middle of the car.

I find what I'm looking for on the third bench from the end on the right-hand side. This is an added benefit, because I'm facing forward. The swaying motion of the train hasn't bothered me except when I was being forced to jump, but I'm glad that I don't have to spend the next two days facing backward. I mumble my apologies to the men and women there and perch on the bench. I sit and tuck my head down, clutching my bag to my chest with both arms, every muscle tight, waiting for everyone to go back to whatever they were doing again and stop staring at me.

Eventually they do. I hear the murmur of conversations restart, the rustle of snacks being unwrapped, the creaking of the wooden slats when fat people adjust their positions. I wait a little longer, then raise my head. There are two men sitting on the bench with me and a younger man and an old couple on the bench facing me. They look at me with open interest. The older man speaks first.

“What are you, boy?”

I hesitate. What should I say? I'm a
zeruzeru
being hunted like an animal? I'm a child running away from his family? I'm nobody, son of no one? No, better a half-truth. I don't want to appear too vulnerable.

“I am an albino,” I say. Saying the word out loud to a stranger for the first time is like drinking coffee with no milk: bitter, but you're not surprised because that's what coffee is. I shift slightly in my seat. “I'm on my way to stay with my grandparents in Dar es Salaam. I'm going to help out in the shop there.”

The man grunts, accepting my story. He turns to his wife and they talk about me in quiet voices. The young man with them keeps staring at me, though. I turn my head away from him, pretending to look out the window.

I don't know whether the other two men sitting beside me understood what I said, because it's clear that they're from another tribe. Their faces have bold features and are accentuated by patterned scars on their cheeks and foreheads. Their skin is so black it's almost purple, and they stare unblinkingly out at the moving landscape. They seem rather fierce, and I'm sure that's why my seat was left empty. People will rarely sit with those from another group if they have a choice. But to me, the men are comforting. In their own way, they're as out of place as I am. And perhaps sitting next to such large, frightening-looking men will make anyone trying to kidnap me think twice. I slowly let my fists unclench and my shoulders drop below my ears.

I'll relax a little,
I tell myself,
just enough to get comfortable, but I won't let my guard down.

But those brave words can't compete with the effect of relative peace, quiet, and the gentle rocking of the train. The last time I had a good night's sleep was two nights ago, and I've been doing nothing but running and hiding since then. I have stolen, lied, and left my family and all that is familiar to me. I've been terrified, enraged, and just plain miserable. My head drops against the hard slats of the seat and, against my will, I am soon deeply asleep.

The train lurches as it passes over a junction in the tracks, who knows how much later, and I awake with a start. At first I'm completely disoriented, thinking I'm at home and the warm form beside me is someone in my family. But a quick glance upward shows me a tattoo-accented jawline and a dark, intelligent eye above it, watching me. I jerk away.

I can't believe it! After all that telling myself to be careful, I fell asleep. Worse than that, I've been sleeping against the shoulder of the stranger beside me. I feel my face redden with embarrassment.

“F-forgive me,
Bwana,
” I stammer. “I didn't mean to fall asleep on you.”

The man laughs and shakes his head slightly. He says a few words in a language I don't understand, but their message is clear:
It's okay.

I smile back, then look around.

I was right: Riding a train
is
a lot of fun. It's amazing how fast we're going. As soon as you see what something is,
whoosh!
,
it's whisked away again, gone! The landscape outside flashes past in a way that reminds me how we sped along the Serengeti road in Alasiri's Jeep. But that thought is linked to many others I don't want to think about. I glance quickly up and down the train, making sure that no faces have left or arrived and that none of them is Alasiri. Then I make myself think about something else.

Over the next hours, I busy myself eating some of the food I packed and looking out the train windows. I'm mesmerized by the land outside, my land. I see the low scrub stretch far away into the distance where the purple thumbprints of mountains smudge the edge of the sky. Sometimes we pass little villages, nothing more than a cluster of small square houses, drying corncobs on their wavy tin rooftops. I imagine my family living in these villages, what our life would have been like there.

They remind me of our village in the Loilenok Hills. These villages are so tiny, so far away from everything. I understand now how small my world used to be. And yet, I miss it. I miss knowing the routine: knowing I would go to school, knowing it would be awful, knowing I would come home and eat, knowing I would herd the goats, knowing I would have dinner with my family and sleep, knowing that I would do it all again in the morning. Now I'm on my own and I have no idea what will happen or what I'm going to do.

The train does not stop at any of these villages.

The speed of the train and the changing landscape keep me amused for a long time. But the fun hours are followed by hours that crawl. Men and women talk or sleep or look out the window. They eat the food they packed and take trips to the end of the car to use the bathroom. I wish I had someone to talk to; Asu or Mother or Kito—even Chui, I suppose. Fighting with him would at least be
something.
I know I should really be saving my food, but I take out some more
ugali
and nibble at it out of sheer boredom.

Finally we begin to pass houses clustered closer together and then more modern buildings. I sit up eagerly and turn to the young man across from me.

“Excuse me,” I ask, “where are we?”

The man laughs, loudly, in my face. He elbows the old man beside him, who had fallen asleep.

“Bwana,”
he says. “This white boy wants to know where we are. Should I tell him we're in Dar es Salaam already?” He laughs like this is some great joke. I scowl at him. Even I can tell two days haven't passed. I just wanted to know what town we're in. I turn away from his rudeness. The old man doesn't join him in laughing at me, which is slightly comforting. Instead, he leans toward the window and looks at the approaching station.

“Oh no, boy,” he says softly to me. “No, this is not Dar es Salaam. We have not yet gone even a third of the way. This is Shinyanga station. Ten hours more and we will come to Tabora. Then there is only the little station at Manyoni between us and Dodoma . . . and that is only halfway to Dar es Salaam.” He gives me a tired smile. “It's hard to be patient when you are young.”

I smile at him for his kindness in explaining this to me, but inside I'm screaming. We've only gone a third of the way? I don't know if I can take it.

Of course, I know I have to. Because even though every time we pull into a station my heart hammers in my chest as I scan the people waiting to get on, looking for Alasiri, every station we leave behind makes me feel just a little bit safer. I'm getting farther and farther away from him and, from what I can tell, he doesn't seem to be following me. I still find myself starting to panic whenever I fall asleep or whenever my healing arm aches, reminding me of yesterday, but I can talk myself into calmness more and more easily the farther we get from Mwanza.

At Shinyanga, I stand and reach a few hundred shillings out the window to one of the boys selling sweets and buy myself a chocolate bar and a Coca-Cola. I've had chocolate twice before in my life, but I've never had a Coke. The chocolate memories come from the early days at home, when Mother still smiled easily. My father had left us, but the farm was still doing well. For two years in a row that I remember, Mother bought a bar of chocolate for us to share on the holidays. Each small bar had four squares. Mother gave one square each to Asu, Enzi, Chui, and me. At Chui's insistence, we each broke off a corner and shared it with Mother.

I let the chocolate dissolve on my tongue and think about how I'd describe it to Kito. I choke on the bubbles in the Coke and laugh when they tickle my nose and imagine I'm watching him do the same. But these thoughts make me sad. And, after eating a whole bar of chocolate and drinking a whole Coke, I have a bellyache to fall asleep to.

When night comes, everyone pillows their heads on what they brought with them and falls asleep where they sit. I hear people mumbling about how second-class seats recline and first-class passengers have little beds all to themselves. I try not to feel too miserable when I hear this. I sleep sitting up, like the rest of third class, waking every time we hit a juncture or pass a streetlamp.