Golden Boy (5 page)

We are still far away when I hear Alasiri give an ugly chuckle. I pivot around, but all I can see is a blur of light in the distance, which at first I think is the setting sun, but Chui stands up in his seat and waves through the open top.

“What is it?” I ask him when he sits down.

“Mother and Asu have made a big fire,” Chui says, “and they're standing in front of it, waiting for us. They're the only ones there. The other Jeep isn't here yet.”

I'm surprised that he's willing to talk to me like this, but I guess he's decided he likes me more than he likes Alasiri. It puts a warm feeling in my chest, and it's hard right now to remind myself that I hate my brother.

When we get close enough that even I can see the outline of where Mother and Asu are standing, I raise my hand and wave, too. Alasiri pulls into camp in a spray of dust. I see Mother put down a heavy pan, and Asu returns a cleaver to the pile of cooking knives. I realize they were waiting for us, ready to fight Alasiri if he had left us behind or hurt us. This makes me feel warm inside, too. Alasiri puts on the parking brake and turns off the engine.

“Habari gani, Bibi!”
he calls politely to Mother. “You can see that I've returned with both your sons in one piece.” His tone is pleasant, but I feel cold because I know he saw what she and Asu did. I worry what he will do, but he does nothing more than sit down beside the fire and wait for them to serve us our meal. I sit down as well, but on the other side of the fire, not next to Alasiri. After only a tiny hesitation, Chui sits next to me.

“Uh! Is that blood?” asks Mother, coming up behind us with plates of
ugali.
She leans forward to sniff at us and pulls away again, wrinkling her nose. She points toward the water barrel on the other side of camp. “Go wash up immediately!”

Chui and I look at each other, taking in our gore-crusted arms and spattered clothes. I'm about to answer her, but Alasiri drowns me out with a huge laugh.

“
Ndiyo, Bibi,
it's blood! Today your little boys have become men! Hunters!”

A brief silence follows his statement as the women look us over. I know they can guess that there's more to the story than that. Asu passes us a plastic bowl full of water and a rag. I start to scrub my face and arms. When I'm done, I hand the now-pink water to Chui. Asu cautiously breaks the silence.

“What did you hunt, boys?”

“Elephant,” Chui mumbles, scraping the blood out from under his stumpy fingernails. He does not look like the man of the family as he says it. I know that I don't feel like a man, either. Hunching in the long shadows of late afternoon, I feel like a scavenger, taking from the dead.

“Well,” Asu says, filling her voice with a fake cheerfulness to cover our lack of enthusiasm, “I've never had elephant before. Shall I cook it to go with our
ugali
now, or will we have it later?”

Mother and Asu glance around for the meat, but of course they don't see it because we haven't brought any home. Just the thought of eating that gigantic, bloated carcass makes me wonder whether I'm really hungry after all.

“Ah, pretty one,” says Alasiri around a mouthful of
ugali
, “we did not hunt today for meat.”

Without realizing she's doing it, Asu reaches up and touches her cheek at his compliment. Then her hand falls back by her side and she gives him a puzzled frown as the rest of his words sink in. “What did you hunt for, then?” she asks. Alasiri gets up off the ground and walks over to the Jeep.

“We went . . . for this!” He whips back the top tarp with a flourish. The curving expanse of bone gleams in the sunset and the firelight.

“What's that?” asks Mother.

“That,” he says, “is
ivory
! It is the special thing that an elephant's tusks are made of, and it's very valuable. I get more money from one tusk of ivory than from an entire season working for the tourists!”

“Then why do you work for the tourists at all?” asks Chui. I can see that he's getting interested in spite of himself. Chui is always interested in money.

“Because if I don't find out where the rangers take the white people, how would I know what areas to avoid when I'm hunting ivory, hmm?”

Chui has no answer to Alasiri's question and remains silent. Alasiri smiles at him, winks at Asu, and flips the tarp over the tusk again. He walks to his seat and continues eating the food Mother and Asu prepared while we were gone.

“Ivory is a very good thing for me,” he continues, pinching off wedges of
ugali
and using it to smush the spiced pigeon peas into his mouth, “and it's a good thing for you, too, because now I'll have to take it quickly and sell it, and that means that I will be driving straight across the game parks and can take you most, if not all, of the way to Mwanza.” He bumps Chui playfully with his elbow.

It's only then that I notice that Chui has left me to go eat beside Alasiri.
I guess money makes it all okay,
I think bitterly. I look away from them both and pick at my food.

Mother and Asu
join us around the fire, satisfied with the explanation and with the offer of another ride. But I feel like my stomach is a piece of cloth that the women have washed in the river and are now twisting, twisting dry. I can't get past the image in my head of the gigantic elephant, rotting out in the scrubland, not because anyone needed to eat, but because little pieces of it could be sold for a great deal of money.

The conversation moves on to other things. About an hour later, when the second Jeep of men arrives, Mother and Asu get food for the other men, too. I look over. Their Jeep is empty. They have already sold their piece of ivory. They brag to Alasiri about this, and I see his face tighten with anger, even though he laughs with them. I wouldn't tease him the way they do. It's not wise to tease a wild animal, no matter how big a stick you're holding.

They also tell him about a park ranger that they saw after they completed their sale. Alasiri's face looks like a storm about to split open with lightning. He turns to us with a tight smile.

“
Bibi,
you're in luck. It appears I'm leaving right now and going in the direction of Mwanza. Would you like a ride?”

“Really?” asks Mother. “You can go straight across? At night? We were following the road and had to stay hidden all the time.”

“
Ndiyo.
We will go north and west through the game reserves. I have to make a few stops on the way, but then I need to see a man in Mwanza, and I can drop you off near the center of town.”

Mother nods to acknowledge this information and starts clearing away the dinner things. Alasiri pauses beside me on the way to his tent.

“Pack quickly, ghost boy!” He puts his hand heavily on my head when he says this. I try not to flinch at his touch. I see Asu's eyes leave Alasiri's face and fall on his hand. A small line appears between her eyebrows.

“The white boy doesn't like me,” Alasiri says to no one in particular. His fingers tighten on my temples. “Such a shame. Then again, it's one more reason to move on, isn't it? I wouldn't want the little white boy running out and telling anyone about the elephant. But you know better than to do that, don't you, boy?” He tips my head backward and looks me in the eyes. The other men chuckle darkly.

“Don't hold his head like that,” says Asu. Then, when he looks at her, she adds, “Please.” Alasiri looks down at me again.

“Ndiyo, Bwana,”
I mumble. “I know better.” He releases me and his tent swallows him. I look hollowly across the fire at the rest of my family. Chui has already gotten up to find his bedroll, but Mother and Asu exchange a glance with each other and look at the tent flap, still quivering where Alasiri has disappeared into it. It's the look that is the end of a long conversation that I didn't hear. Too tired to piece together what might have been said, I turn away and start to pack my belongings.

“Here,” says Mother, walking over and handing me a rolled bundle of our blankets. “Go ahead and keep this in the back with you. Asu and I will sit up front with him.” Her thin face is serious, and there are dark circles under her eyes. She touches my arm just briefly as she hands the bundle to me. The unexpected touch makes me look at her more closely. She gives me a tight-lipped nod and walks away. I begin to think that this setup is not just because the women want the comfortable seats. I look over and see Asu talking quietly to Chui. She and Mother must have finished their conversation and come to the conclusion, like I have, that Alasiri is no good.

Chui says something to Asu and turns away, scowling. As he walks over, Mother heads around to the front of the Jeep and climbs in. Chui pushes past me and boosts himself into the rear, shoving the pack in ahead of him. He takes a seat high up on the tarps, away from the mess on the floor. I sigh and follow Chui. I wedge myself in uncomfortably between the tusk, our belongings, and Chui.

“One last bag!” says Alasiri, and he shoves a large duffel in at us. I catch it reflexively and set it by my feet. I center it in the pool of blood and watch with a smile as it soaks in. I hope all his clothes are ruined.

Alasiri calls a good-bye to the other men who are staying at the camp and he and Asu head around to the front. Chui is muttering to himself about being stuck in the worst seat, but I'm glad to be far away from that man and his predatory smile, even if it does mean sitting on pieces of a dead animal.

We drive out over the plains through the long dusk. Though the others chat, I keep quiet. Asu and Mother are up with Alasiri and, after he went to sit with Alasiri at dinner, I don't want to talk to Chui, either. So I fold myself into my long clothes and stare up at the bright stars beginning to dot the Serengeti sky above me and wish away the hours until we can leave this man and his wretched ivory behind.

We drive mostly north, bumping over wild grassland and dried creek beds. As Chui and I shiver in the open Jeep, vast stretches of the Serengeti whip past us. We drive out of our way twice on our trip to Mwanza. The first time, just as it's darkening into night, we pass a village and Alasiri pulls over to the side of the road and tells us to wait in the car while he goes into a stand of trees. He's gone for an uncomfortable amount of time, and then returns with four men who tell Chui and me to get out. When we do, they unload the long, curved ivory from the Jeep before letting us climb in again with our bags. As we climb back in I see one man hand Alasiri a thick roll of money. I have no idea how much it is, but Chui whispers to me that it's in dollars, not Tanzanian shillings. This puts me over the edge.

“It's always about money with you, isn't it?” I hiss at him. I cross my arms and glare out of the moving car.

“What?” says Chui, caught off guard.

“You think Alasiri is so great just because he makes all this money. But really, he's only getting money because he's breaking the law.”

“What do you know about money?” Chui's getting angry now, too. “You just sit around at home, relaxing in the shade, playing with the goats. You have no idea how hard Enzi and I work on the coffee plantation. You wouldn't know anything about money. You've never earned a shilling in your whole life.”

I'm furious at him for having a point. He's right. No one would ever pay me to do anything, so instead of having odd jobs to help with the bills like most boys my age, I've had to stay home and do house chores. And only chores in the shade, at that. My guilt makes me even angrier.

“So that makes it all okay, then? It's okay to kill an elephant and take bits from it and leave all the meat to rot? And now we're sneaking around in the dark, hiding from the rangers. There's no way that what he's doing is legal. He should probably be in jail, and you
like
him.”

Chui fixes me with a cold look of pure disdain.

“Do you know how much money he just got for a few hours' worth of work? Do you?” His voice is low and intense. He leans down to put his face closer to mine. “That was enough money to pay off all of our debts. To keep the farm. With two of those tusks I could have fixed the house for Mother, bought a second farm for Enzi to live on with that pretty girlfriend of his that none of you know about, given Asu enough to finish secondary school or get married, and still had enough left over to feed your worthless self. Or”—his eyes are big now, seeing all the things he could have had—“we could have left the farm and moved to Arusha and all lived there comfortably. Instead, here we are, stuffed into someone else's car, with no home and no money, heading toward the charity of some relative I've never met.”

There is a pause where Chui waits to see if I'll say anything. I don't. He leans away from me and stretches out on the packs.

“Ndiyo,”
he says, “to not be here right now and have all of that, I'm okay with killing one animal. To not be poor . . . yes, I would do what he does.”

We sit there for a while in a prickly silence, each of us on our different sides of the car. Now that the large tusk is gone, there's much more room and it's more comfortable. I think about what Chui has said. It is an awful lot of money for just one animal. Would I do this again, if I knew that I would keep the money and it would save my family? I don't have an answer, and the question leaves a queasy feeling in my stomach. Then I realize something: Chui never said what he would spend the money on for himself.

“Chui?” I ask, staring out over the dark grassland, not looking at him.

“What now, Habo?” He sounds tired, grown-up. The way Enzi usually sounds if you ask him a question after work.

“If you were rich, what would
you
buy?”

For a moment, Chui considers whether or not to tell me. Finally, he says, “I'd pay the apprentice dues to be a mechanic and work on sports cars.”

“A mechanic? Really?”

“What, you think it's stupid? Well, you're stupid!”

“No, no! I don't think it's stupid. I just never thought of you as a mechanic before . . .” I trail off. I've never really thought about Chui as anything, really, except an annoyance. I try to think of what else Chui would be good at. Finally I find something. “I thought maybe you'd be a footballer. You're the best goal scorer in the school.”

There's another pause, but this one is not as tense as the last one.

“Maybe I could work on sports cars during the day and then play football at night. That would be good.”

“That would be good,” I agree.

And when we both fall silent now, the silence is soft.

The second time we stop, the stars stretch bright and brittle over us and it's full night. We've been traveling along the Sirari-Mbeya Road for hours, and the others have started to comment on how close we're getting to Mwanza. We twist along a dusty path until we are some way from the road and Alasiri has found what he is looking for.

There's not much here, just a few huts clumped together and a smear of flickering lights that might be a village in the distance. Alasiri gets out of the Jeep and calls, “
Hodi hodi!”

An old man emerges from the largest of the mud huts and walks slowly out to where we're waiting. At first it's hard to see him in the waving light of the lantern he's holding up over his head. When he gets close though, I can see what he is. The man is wearing ratty clothes and necklaces made of teeth. His hair floats out around his head, but the wildest thing about him is his eyes. I realize this man must be a
mganga,
and I slide down as far as I can.

Waganga
control great forces of spirits and luck. Luck is very important. Good luck brings you full harvests, strong sons, and a peaceful death. Bad luck gives you sickly animals, needy relatives, and lets everyone treat you badly, even Death. Really bad luck could curse you with a ghost boy. Freakish, weak, useless. Worse than a girl.

When any of us would get sick at home, Mother would take us to the
mganga wa tiba asili
in the village nearby. He was a not-so-old man, with a certificate from the government on the wall of his hut that allowed him to make home medicines. He would give us powders he made from plants and tell us ways to feel better. We respected him because he would use his power to help people.

But there are other kinds of
waganga.
There are
waganga wa jadi
and
waganga wa kienyeji.
The first are born into the power and the second come into it later, but they both control magic. They use pieces of animals, and sometimes even the hair and nails of people, to make magic spells. They talk to spirits, and they can curse you as easily as cure you. Alasiri's
mganga
does not look like a simple village healer, and I'm almost certain he is a
mganga wa jadi.
At the look in his eyes, I'm afraid. It's like seeing a huge bull behind a twig fence. It's terrifying to think of that much power corralled by so little sanity.

The
mganga
takes the ears, toenails, and teeth that Alasiri took from the elephant. He doesn't give Alasiri any money, but instead spits on his head and mumbles over him. Then the old man gives Alasiri a small bag. Now it makes sense why Alasiri took the other pieces of the elephant, too, not just the ivory. He wanted luck medicine from the
mganga
and needed something to trade for it.

Alasiri is turning away when the
mganga
tips his lantern and looks at us. When he sees me, he lets out a small cry. His hand darts out and grabs Alasiri's arm. Deep shadows mark where the old man's thin fingers must be digging into Alasiri's skin, but Alasiri doesn't make any complaint. He simply leans his head down and listens as the old man whispers in his ear. Once, just for an instant, his eyes flash up to meet mine. Then he lowers his gaze and nods. The
mganga
releases him.

Alasiri gets in, and his smile is wider than ever. The spit glistens in his hair, and he holds up the little bag.