Indigo (29 page)

Given the name of the restaurant and his experience in the washroom, Jerry was intent upon making some sort of serious Christian parallel, and he was taken aback.

“What animist?” he said. “I'm afraid I'm lost again.”

Sondra leaned forward. “You like those pieces of art of yours because they have soul,” she said, “that's all.”

The Power 99 man and the Andrews Sisters were eating quietly, bread and fish coming to their mouths as if there were no end to it, and Sondra was staring at Jerry as if she had told him some truth that demanded a response. After he sat there long enough, though, Sondra took her eyes from him and began to eat again. And as she did so Jerry let himself look at the loaves at the center of the table, which were round and didn't seem particularly torn apart, weren't particularly diminished at all. He remembered Charlotte's Christian period and he remembered his own. The parable of the loaves and fishes had been a favorite of his, and as he watched the loaves on the table in front of him now, their black tops like the far-off roofs of mosques, he was suddenly a child again and could see a patient Jesus standing in front of a long and orderly queue. Jesus was a white man in his mind's eye, with blond hair and a beard like D'Artagnan's from the Three Musketeers. The fish were big ones, wrapped in tinfoil like Pacific salmon, but the loaves were what brought him back to Beany once again. The loaves were long and slender baguettes, cut down the center like his mother used to do and laden with garlic butter so thick that when he looked at the others he was certain that the odor of it had invaded the room.

Jerry was silent for a while, though he too finally began to eat again. Art and religion were now somehow inextricably tied up with a new idea of discipline in his mind. It was the five senses that made the world, that was all there was to it, Beany was right about that.

By the time Jerry finished his meal he could somehow hear the outside world again. First the sound of the room's air conditioners came to him, then the sound of the waiters clearing the plates away, then the sounds of the ordinary Agbor passersby.

“It is time,” the Power 99 man presently said. “Soon now the bus will go.”

Sondra paid for everything from a roll of bills that Smart had given her, and when they went back onto the street Jerry had to hurry to get his bundle while the others climbed on board the already moving bus. They had to argue with the driver and the other passengers, literally dragging their feet until Jerry got there, out of breath but carrying his package of art, the center of which was a tree of life, given to him by Pamela and, even as they rode away, taking on additional meaning in his hot but colorless hands.

Jerry really slept on the bus and when they got to Benin City he awoke only long enough to see Sondra and the others step down from the bus's front door and disappear with the departing crowd. Sondra and the Power 99 man waved to him and the Andrews Sisters seemed to sing a farewell, but sleep had such control of Jerry's faculties that if he waved back, it was only at the figures in his dream.

From Benin City to Lagos it was Louis Smith-Jones who accompanied him. Because the bus was so late it didn't stay long in Benin City, and though Louis wanted to wink at Jerry, to give him at least a cryptic nod, Jerry's exhaustion was such that he was unable to keep his eyes open and instead of nodding back he nodded off.

Jerry had always believed that too much introspection was bad for a man, but look how far he'd come. Not only had he stayed up all night, under the mango tree, listening to the speeches of the Power 99 man, but he'd reexamined the reliability of his senses and he'd even had a cathartic moment while submerging his face in the water of a bathroom sink. And all the while he'd been compulsively wearing this African cap, one he believed kept him safe from the scrutiny of others, letting him pass by as if only the breeze and the trees were there, as if only the night itself went by.

Jerry smiled as he slept and when he did so images from his past life came up to examine that smile, to press themselves against it like goldfish against the glass. When images of Charlotte came by, Jerry remembered her conversion, for a time, to a serious Christian belief. Charlotte had told him that if Jesus had truly risen from his grave then nobody had any other choice but to follow him. It was an idea that had kept Charlotte occupied for two years and Jerry remembered his surprise that she had not particularly clung to the idea during her final months, when the cancer, he should have thought, would have made her cling faster still. At the time he hadn't understood such abandonment but he understood it now. With death beside her in her bed, Charlotte had not so much given up on the resurrection of Christ as she had understood something about grasping, something about the nature of holding on.

Jerry awoke suddenly and reached up to touch his cap, as if its strong position on his head would let him continue to dream and to think as well as he was. The bus was bouncing wildly, at times nearly achieving free fall, and when he pulled himself up and let his hand come back down off the cap again he forgot his dream and looked, instead, out the window at the shadow of the bus flickering along in the grass. Had they been gone from Benin City for one hour or for three? His mind was clear now, but though he tried to formulate some sense of things, nothing came. The sky was blue, the bus was quiet, that was all he knew.

Since his seat mate had fallen nearly into the aisle, Jerry took a little extra space, bringing his bundle to his lap and unwrapping it. He felt his tree of life, like the ribs of a drum he felt the men that were carved there, letting his hands design their ascent, foot to shoulder, toward the top of the world. Inside the tree of life was his snapdragon batik. He unfolded it until its center was toward him, until he could feel the fertility of it with his hands. Jerry wanted to concentrate, to retrieve some of what he had learned in the restaurant, some of what he had recaptured in his dream, but when his hand fell down on that thorn carving he automatically brought it out, letting himself see the blond-wood thickness of the flames as they shot off the carved woman's head. He could not see her face very well but he could see everything that defined that face, the yellow dress, the yellow flames burning it away. He put the carving back inside the tree of life, beside the snapdragon once again, and when he did so he felt the last item in his possession, the last of his collection of oddities from this increasingly familiar world. It was the bottle of Power 99, the one he'd been given yesterday, the new square one with the Beany label, easy to squeeze. Jerry took the cap off the bottle but the odor was faint and didn't bring anything back. He took some of the liquid on his finger and rubbed it on his arm.

Suddenly Jerry's seat mate sat up and stared at him. “Where is Lagos?” the man asked. “Where do we belong?”

It was certainly a good question, and when Jerry told him he didn't know, the man took hold of his arm. When they got to Lagos it took Jerry a moment to pry the man's fingers away, a much longer moment to rouse him from his second and perennial sleep.

At Lagos, Louis Smith-Jones was the first one off the bus, pretending to disappear into the crowd and then doubling back. Because of his sleeping seat mate Jerry got off late. It was December 31. It was five p.m.

Perhaps it had something to do with an overriding sense of having been gone longer than he had, perhaps it was his change of mind, but even considering that it was New Year's Eve, Lagos seemed less crowded than it should have, less crowded than he'd ever seen it before. There were too few hawkers about, too few people pushing through the thinning crowd. Jerry saw Louis dodging about and walked over to him. Though they stood in the middle of the road, there was no one about to listen.

“Now what, Louis?” Jerry asked. “Here we are back in Lagos. Where do we go from here?”

“Shhh,” said Louis Smith-Jones.

Jerry felt kindly toward Louis, he remembered the benefits he had received from having Louis as a cell mate, and he liked the bumbling quality of the man, but he said, “Didn't they give you instructions? Am I to change hands here? Are you supposed to take me someplace?”

“Smart say we mus' wait on Pamela,” Louis replied.

The lack of a crowd on the street was unnerving Louis, and Jerry didn't like it either. The others from the bus had disappeared quickly, some boarding other buses, some getting into waiting cars.

“Dis ain' good,” Louis said. “I feel like I got no where to stan'.”

Jerry had his bundle but he didn't have any money. Still, his idea was to catch a cab, if they could find one, and take it to Jankara or perhaps even back to the school. It was too strange, but he suddenly felt quite free to do whatever he liked.

“How much money do you have?” Jerry asked.

Louis shrugged and had begun digging into his pockets when the air was suddenly filled with sound.

“Uh oh,” Louis said. He took Jerry's arm and pulled him around the side of the nearest building, off the main street, which was immediately occupied by a troop truck, coming in from the other side. “Oh no,” said Louis. “Dose men don' belong out here. Dis ain' dere day.”

Louis was so pained by the appearance of the truck that he nearly stepped back into the road. Jerry, however, quickly grabbed him. “This way,” he said. “Be quiet now.”

The troop truck was full of men standing up, the tips of their rifles next to their heads. The truck was moving slowly enough for the men to jump from it, search a little, and then jump back on. Surely there had been a coup already, at the very least a military action of some kind, but if so why had there been no evidence of it in Onitsha or Benin City, no word among the passengers on the bus? Jerry worried about Pamela and about the others too. Where was Beany now that it was time for him to tell his followers what to do?

Jerry and Louis moved away from the advancing truck. They didn't know the roads here, but they tried each door, rattling handles against locks, hoping to get inside. None of the doors would open, not even those of the restaurants and bars. They did see people occasionally, a disappearing face from an upper window, a fleeting bit of color two blocks ahead, but that was all.

Suddenly, though, there was the sound of an engine, a light popping sound this time, and they stopped where they were, listening for its direction. “Hold it, hold it,” Louis said.

The sound was not that of a truck, but that of a motorcyele, and before they could duck out of its way the motorcycle rounded the corner ahead of them, the rider's head coming first, to see if the coast was clear. The rider wore a beaten leather helmet too small for his head, but Louis understood right away that it was Parker. “Oh boy,” he said. “Hey Parker! Come 'ere quick!”

Louis had stepped out of the doorway in which they stood, so Jerry did too, but carefully, looking back and listening for the sounds of the truck. Parker, though his motorcycle was making plenty of noise by itself, was as irritated as Jerry was at Louis's shouting. He coasted up to them. “Quiet, Louis,” he said. “Don' say nothin' more. Get on, hurry up.”

The bike was an old black Honda, a small one, and though there was only room for two, all three of them were on it quickly, Louis wedged tightly between the larger men. They were parked sideways in the road and before they could turn around the troop truck appeared, a hundred yards away, but facing them. They could hear shouts over the noise of the two engines and then they heard the popping sound of rifle fire.

“Oh, shit,” Parker said. The bullets were in the air around them but the bike was quick. Even with three of them on it, it bucked up and took off, Louis's arms around Parker and Jerry's stretched all the way past the man in the middle, his bundle banging along at his side.

But though the first seconds of their ride were promising, Parker was not an expert driver. They managed to turn the corner nearest them, out of sight of the men in the truck, but after that they wobbled, and then they got their front wheel stuck in a grate. They could hear the truck approaching as they got off the motorcycle and tried to lift the front wheel free.

“I tol' 'em,” Parker said. “I am no good at running dese ting!”

The grate had been sticking up, a part of the broken street, and three inches of motorcycle wheel were lodged in it, the tire and part of the rim squeezed so well that Jerry was quickly sure they would never get it out. “We can't stand here waiting,” he said, “let's go.”

But Parker and Louis were busy pulling, shoulders against the motorcycle's handlebars, feet against the stubborn grate. Their faces were grimaced and the noises they made were loud, so Jerry went back to the corner and peeked around it, trying to gauge how much time they had before the troop truck caught up.

“Push,” said Parker, “don' let me do it all.”

Jerry took care with his looking, and when he saw the truck he was at first relieved. It hadn't advanced nearly so far as it could have. On second glance, however, he realized that the truck was empty.

“Hurry up!” he said. “They're on foot now, watch out, let's go!”

He had run back to Parker and Louis, but the two men had given up trying to free the motorcycle; they were too exhausted to move, Parker holding up his hands, Louis laid out across the bike as if he were trying to push the wheel farther in.

It took Parker and Louis only a moment to revive themselves, but a moment proved to be too long, for as they ran around a nearby corner, Jerry and Louis following Parker's lead, they found three soldiers leaning against a building and smoking, their rifles leaning against the building too.

All six of them were surprised. Jerry and Louis and Parker fell back on their heels like cartoon runners, and the three soldiers at first threw their cigarettes down and jumped to attention, as if it were they who had been caught. But the three rifles soon broke the stalemate. Parker tried to reach for one but he only succeeded in knocking it toward its owner. And after that the soldiers' mood turned dark.