Indigo (22 page)

Sondra and the chain-saw man were going along the hallway toward their respective rooms, and when Jerry paused, Sondra called to him. “I will bring you my gift before you go,” she said. “I will take it from its frame.”

Jerry looked at her and nodded, somehow not wanting to speak. But when Pamela and Bramwell went through the screen door, the banging of it shocked him again, this time not conjuring summers in America but making him stop anyway, as if there were something else that should have come to mind. This time the door's cracking sound seemed like a warning, and though he was completely at a loss as to what the warning might be, he could not take his eyes off his arm.

Though by late the next morning it looked as though the swelling on Jerry's arm had gone down, the redness and itching continued, so Pamela suggested that they walk into the village and try to find something that would take the itching away. There was a chemist's shop. Bramwell was going with them and knew where it was. Jerry wanted to mention going back to Lagos again, but he found it strangely easier to concentrate on his itching arm.

During the previous two days Jerry had marveled at Bramwell's metamorphosis, he had dwelled on it, and he was beginning, now, to find it impossible to remember Bramwell as the ironing-board boy at all. It was as if the ironing-board boy really had been someone else, a kind of Good Samaritan, a simple boy who had come to his aid when Pamela's Peugeot would not start and had then disappeared into the ambiance of the car.

The ironing-board boy had been a product of Bramwell's father's mind, a creation of Bramwell's own ingenuity and of Jerry's imagination too, but at fifty-seven years of age Jerry had to believe that he was not like Bramwell. At fifty-seven, surely long before that age, the real Jerry Neal had emerged and real life had been continually lived. Despite that belief, however, Bramwell had become a kind of metaphor for Jerry, making him think that there were other men within us all, alter egos knocking at the inner walls, a universe of ironing-board boys waiting to come out.

The day was hot but the sky and the air were clear when they started into town. They cut down a trail that turned behind the People's Canteen, letting Jerry see that the restaurant's backside abutted the crumbling clay back of another building.

“Ah yes,” said Pamela, “this is the village school.”

They walked to the front of the building, which was really one of three such buildings in a small compound. At the center of the compound was a dirt yard, one that Jerry imagined the students used for play and that made him think of the courtyard at the International School. This school, like his own, was closed for winter break, but when it became clear that there was activity in one of the rooms, Pamela took his arm and walked him over.

“This is the office,” she said. “The man inside is the headmaster.”

When Jerry looked through the window he saw a man in a dark suit working at a small desk. He at first supposed he would speak to the man, but as he stood there looking, he began to concentrate on his own reflection in the glass of the window. He still wore the old woman's African cap, but in addition to that his clothing looked slept in and his posture was bad. And when he looked down at his hands they seemed still covered with the ash of the burned thorn carving of the day before. How, then, could he speak to a fellow educator, telling him hello and that he was a principal too?

They stepped away from the headmaster's window and walked quickly around the school, looking into a half-dozen unpainted rooms, but by the time they left the school grounds Jerry felt so at odds with himself that he took hold of Pamela's sleeve, as if, like Scrooge, he were helplessly following the ghost of some other Christmastime.

They were in the village proper almost immediately after leaving the school, but since the pathways were twisted and the growth along them was lush, it was difficult to see very far ahead. As they walked, however, the kinds of buildings that they passed didn't change much. Most of them were small and facing the street, their sides made of brown clay, a material that looked like adobe but that had fallen down in places, exposing chicken wire. Jerry tried to see into some of the houses, but the interiors were invariably dark.

The village appeared to be built pinwheel-style, with paths meandering off a main square and intersecting haphazardly, like the twisting tails of snakes. There were children in the village, but Jerry was pleased that for once they did not seem interested in following him about or shouting at him like Lagos children often did.

When they got to the end of their path they found a tree with benches under it. Across from where they stood there was an asphalt road, one wide enough to accommodate a bus, but though this was without question the village square, apparently the center of things, it seemed as though they had just come from the center and were now standing at the edge. A man in a badly made suit was there, as were three well-dressed young women, all of whom seemed to be waiting for a bus.

Across the square next to the bus stop was the chemist's shop, though since the sign was down Pamela had to detect it by stepping over to see what items were inside. She seemed relieved and said, “We can get what we need for your arm. Perhaps we can buy something to drink and sit for a while under the tree as well.”

Both Bramwell and Jerry felt thirsty then, but when they tried to follow Pamela back across the square the three stylishly dressed women stepped up to them and so did the man in the suit. This man was an albino, and his countenance frightened Jerry. He was like the man in the thorn carving, but he had no crow's-feet next to his eyes. “O brudder,” said the man, “let dem chemist alone. I can fashion you symptom away wit dis what resides in my case.”

“He can do dat, is true,” said one of the girls.

Jerry had not intended to respond to the man, he'd had more than enough magic with the grandmother, so he surprised himself by saying, “My arm itches. I just want to get a lotion or something.”

“Famous las' words,” said the man. “Lemme see de arm in question. Give it here.”

The arm in question was Jerry's left, and when he held it
up the man grabbed it. “My, my,” he said, “dis rash need one quick treatment like de chemist don' have.”

All three of the well-dressed girls were smiling at Jerry now, and Pamela, who had come back to listen, smiled too. The albino man saw her and said, “Every person come for look at dis rash.” He had let go of Jerry's arm in order to squat down in the dust and open his case. “You don' know 'bout Power 99 yet, do you, brudder?” he said.

The three girls had formed a tight half-circle around the man and echoed what he said, “The man don' know 'bout Power 99.” It was incredible but they sang it, their tight harmony bringing more bystanders over to look.

“Really,” said Jerry, “I just want to buy something in the chemist's shop, I don't want you messing around with that stuff.”

But the man ignored him, saying, “Das all right, brudder, don' be o shame. Power 99 don' have its wide reputation yet, das all. A wide reputation is often slow to come.”

He stood up quickly then, a thin plastic bottle in his hand. The bottle was round and white, with “Power 99” written on it in big black letters. Because of the growing crowd Bramwell and Pamela had been pushed up closer to Jerry, and Pamela said, “If you asked me I'd say let's go inside.”

Jerry wanted to agree with her, but the crowd was keeping him pressed in. He knew, of course, that he had been chosen as this man's shill, yet he felt that there was nothing personal in it. The man had simply been waiting for someone to try to enter the chemist's shop so that he could gather a crowd and sell. Jerry felt a certain chill. Surely this man would want a black man for his target, surely he wouldn't want to choose someone who was white.

The Power 99 man held the bottle above his head and spoke loudly. “Folks, dis my brudder here foun' him lucky day. Because I wan' show every person 'bout Power 99 I darefore will work de rash out his arm for free. It won' cost 'im a naira. It won' cost 'im a kobo too.”

The girls sang “Work de rash—out for free.” Their harmony was perfection and when they smiled at the crowd the crowd smiled back.

“Now hold it,” said the man. “Firs' I wan' every someone to cas' 'is eye on de rash in question. Dis ain' no easy rash.”

He looked quickly at the girls—he didn't want them singing this time—and then he pushed Jerry's unwilling arm above the crowd.

“Is a bad red rash, and one wit some small swelling on de underneath side,” the man said.

“And it itches,” Pamela told him, “don't forget that.”

The man looked quickly at Pamela, but he couldn't find the facetiousness he thought he heard, so he said, “Das correc', madam, an' tank you for de remin'. I forget 'bout de itchy which been drivin' our poor brudder to distraction all dese long weeks.”

He looked at Jerry then, realizing that he might have gone too far, but Jerry only said, “All these long days,” and the man repeated it, as if his only purpose was to get things right.

Jerry's arm and the Power 99 bottle were equal partners in the salesman's outstretched hands. “Come close now,” he told everybody. “Les begin.”

This time, though the girls were quiet, they were supposed to have sung “Let's begin,” and since they hadn't done it he had to repeat everything, shaking Jerry's arm so hard that Jerry thought it might rattle for the crowd.

“Come close now, come close,” he said, and now the girls were ready. They sang “Les begin” really beautifully. They were like the Andrews Sisters, and though Jerry hoped that later they might sing an entire song, when the man opened the bottle of Power 99 he had finally had enough. Bramwell and Pamela pressed up next to Jerry. “Are you going to let him touch you with that stuff?” Pamela asked.

Jerry was about to say that of course he was not when the Power 99, which he had assumed would be slow out of the bottle, a lotion or a salve of some kind, came splashing down like water from the tap, spilling over his arm and down the front of his shirt and pants, where it dried away to nothing right away.

“Wow,” said the salesman.

The liquid had been cool but as it evaporated the stinging on his arm got worse, for Power 99 was alcohol. The smell of it was in the air and nothing else could disappear like that. Jerry shook his arm, hopping around a little in the small amount of room that he had. “Ouch,” he said and to even the salesman's surprise the girls sang, “Ooouuch—Oh, Oouch.” Their harmony was still good but the salesman was irritated. And just then a bus came down the road, stopping at the place where the man and the girls had originally been waiting.

“We got to go,” said the man. He put the cap on the bottle and shoved it back into his sample case, where other bottles were waiting to be sold. This man knew what he was doing. It appeared that most of the people in the crowd had been waiting for the bus, and by the time he got his things together the girls were in line. “OK,” the salesman said. “Les get on board an' sell dis stuff.”

Bramwell and Pamela and Jerry stood in the center of the village square watching them go. They waved at the bus, and as it turned and went back up the road the three girls waved back. The Power 99 man, they could easily see, was standing in the aisle.

When the bus was gone the village square seemed to blend back into the hot tiredness of the day. There were still a few people around but they were slumped back against things, as if they hadn't seen the Power 99 man at all.

“That was something,” Pamela said. She had spoken to Jerry, but Bramwell answered her back.

“My grandmother hates men like that one,” he said. “She says they give folk medicine a bad name.”

Pamela went into the chemist's shop and when Jerry reached her she was already telling the chemist that they were looking for a salve. This man wore a white medical shirt, the kind with tight buttons at the side of the neck, so though Jerry was tired of displaying his arm, he put it on the counter, turning it so that the rash would show.

None of them had actually looked at Jerry's arm since the Power 99 man had treated it, but they did now, and what they saw was a surprise. The redness was gone and the rash had receded too. Under the rash, however, there now appeared to be a bruise, an ominous darkening that looked as though it should hurt quite a lot.

The chemist took several bottles from the wall behind him, lining them up so that Pamela could read what the labels said. In Nigeria drugs can be purchased without prescription, but though Pamela was examining something dark, when Jerry saw the calamine lotion he picked it up.

“This one,” he said. “When I was a child it worked well for poison oak.” Jerry shook the bottle, opened it, and poured so much calamine lotion onto his arm that he was reminded of the Power 99 man again. The calamine lotion, however, felt good, and though it also dried quickly the itching was soon gone and his arm was an even and dull-looking pink. Pamela paid for the lotion but when they went back onto the street the sun seemed hotter, though it was getting late in the day. “Do you want to go back now?' she asked. “Have you seen enough or do you want to prowl around a bit more?”

Jerry hadn't felt normal in weeks. He could not, in fact, remember when he had last taken a walk or looked at something with plain curiosity, unself-conscious about his movements, and he said that by all means he did not want to go back. If he went back, he would surely have to go all the way back to Lagos, and he was beginning to understand that that was something he was reluctant to do.

“Let's go up this way,” said Bramwell.

There were a dozen paths leading from the square. The village was larger than it had seemed from the road, and Jerry, had he been asked to, would not have been able to say which of the paths they had come by.