It rained heavily the day Ojukwu died. A bus driver was trying to evade the MOPOL officer who always asked for fifty naira and ran over him where he squatted beside Pound Road bus stop; trying to cram refuse into a bag.




Everyone from Orlu, his small village, knew Ojukwu; knew he was once a respectable strong man who had won the wrestling championship twice in a row, and knew his nickname was Nnunu because he was as fast as the bird whenever he was in action. He defeated Obia, the champion, twice in the competitions, and also once when he challenged him near the village market on a market day. A crowd gathered when news flew around the market and nearby homes that Ojukwu and Obia were about to wrestle again. Within minutes, the two strong men were in a lively and necessarily raucous human circle, bent with their feet astride, and their eyes locked on each other in an attempt to anticipate the next quick move.




As the crowd cheered and hooted, Obia thought of how he had to redeem his name and Ojukwu who did not want to lose to a man he had thrown twice, was extra wary. The fight was very short. The two who had now taken off their T-shirts circled in the burning sun and their sweating bodies seemed to have the colour of plenty small fish trying to escape a fisherman’s net. Obia attacked first; he lunged at Ojukwu who stepped to the side and grabbed his waist from behind. With both hands clenched into a vice from behind, Ojukwu strangled the struggling Obia’s bosom and tried to throw him. Obia fell at his side and scurried up before his back would touch the ground. Ojukwu had already closed in by then and he grabbed Obia again from behind and threw him, this time with his left ankle displacing the opponent’s to make sure he fell down, back first on the white sand. The crowd cheered wildly as the young men lifted Ojukwu high on their shoulders and went round and round and into the market chanting his name, their champion was still champion. No one even cared about the loser who was still on the ground, so no one noticed when he left in anger.



People had different theories to explain Ojukwu’s behavior two weeks after he defeated Obia, but no one noticed he started first by insulting anyone who he came in contact with, then he started sleeping drunk in Nze Ebuka’s little thatch hut where palm wine with roast bush-meat was served to seekers of relaxation, then when Nze Ebuka stopped entertaining him because he fought everyday in the hut, he started drinking dry gin at Mama Udi’s shop which only frustrated old men patronized.




Ojukwu was running out of control. Some people said that as undefeated champion, he may have offended Ogwugwu , god of the earth who gave him his strength. Some said that Obia whom he defeated thrice had an aged relative five villages away who was a witch, and that she had eaten Ojukwu’s sense in revenge. Some said that madness ran in his lineage and whenever he walked in the same market he was celebrated in, pregnant women looked away so their unborn babies would not be like what their eyes saw and men would circle their right wrists around their heads, saying: “Tufiakwa, God forbid evil thing”.

Ojukwu would roam the village as naked as the children who would follow him singing mockingly, ready to scramble into the bush if he turned to chase them, only to come back singing louder when he continued his march. He had family, but their attempts to hold on to their dear son proved useless. His father was long dead and his mother, my father’s friend would never allow her third son to be taken to any native doctor for treatment. It was too fetish, as she would say, and she was, a born again child of Jehovah. She once took to him to her pastor in a small church in the neighboring village. The pastor asked for the ropes which bound Ojukwu to be cut and said he wanted to be alone. Then he shut his eyes, trying to bring the Holy Spirit down as he spoke gibberish. Ojukwu, who had been moping at the man tentatively from the floor where he sat, quietly took quick strides to him, grabbed him by the waist, and threw him like a wrestler. The pastor, as his mother told my father, had run out of the church: his hand supporting a dislocated left shoulder screaming: “The blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus.” with Ojukwu chasing after him.



The thin line between insanity and drunkenness in his case was conspicuous. Ojukwu was not insane, but he drank so much that even the numerous drinking places turned him out when he visited because of his potential nuisance. His family was exhausted. He only came to the house when he was hungry and once he ate, he would walk away again, sometimes for weeks, only to return naked except for his favorite underwear and slippers. It was very strange that Ojukwu had favorite clothes and spots where he would sit on to eat or drink; it showed people he still had some fragments of his sanity left. He indirectly depicted that there was not much of a nuance in his case. The only option they had was to send him to town, hoping that if maybe he got away from a small rural community like Orlu, he would get his sense back.



Ojukwu’s mother had a beautiful name; Beatrice. She was classmates with my father at University of Benin and they were in the same ethnic group community. They met in one of those meetings the community held outside Igbenedion Campus with ‘National Association of Imo Students’ boldly typed on a large banner serving as a guide. Beatrice was beautiful when she was in the university with my father and when he talked about her when we looked at old pictures together, his voice will become that of a man in ecstasy. I would have asked him if she was his girlfriend like teenagers do in Hollywood, but in my father’s house, such words were illegal; equal to black witchcraft.



So as Beatrice sat across my father in his big bookshop at Mile One, dour and moody, telling us about Ojukwu, her third son who had gone berserk, I felt embarrassed sitting there, listening. I had wanted to leave the shop and sit outside to allow the couple talk as was appropriate but she insisted I sit down and listen to learn some things. Then she started her story, speaking in Igbo dotted with little English for words with no Igbo equivalents and I found no traces of histrionics in it. My father listened carefully. She came to tell her old friend about her son. She said it was marijuana that made him so; no one knew until his friends confessed they went out together to smoke, and he insisted he was not smoking ‘mere’ cigarettes anymore.



“He said he must take Indian hemp, that he had outgrown cigarettes after defeating a former village champion twice. They gave him and he took off his clothes afterwards, running like a dog on heat until they gave him some garri to chew.



“I had warned him several times to leave that village but he insisted on staying his there while he waited for admission into the university, imagine that!”



She spoke of how he brought disgrace and attention to her small and peace-loving family in the village where people now know her as Nne onye-ara, mad boy’s mother’. My father thought quietly for a moment, then said: “But you were happy when he won the wrestling competitions, weren’t you?”



“Blacky, no.” It took me a moment to know it was my father that Beatrice called ‘Blacky’. He told me once that his nickname in university days was Black; because he was dark skinned and not white like his middle name, ‘White’ had suggested. “I was never in support of that boy roaming a village when his mates who were also waiting to get into the university were in cities, working and praying to almighty God. He was strong headed, that’s all, and I know he will never forget he put himself into this mess.



I shifted where I sat. Business was dull today; it was Wednesday when Oil Mill Market opened and people would go there because it was cheaper. Otherwise, the shop would be full of people, mostly teenage students who would ask for Macmillian English textbook with ice-cream in their hands and adults who had been regular customers of my father even before I was born would haggle over the price of a novel with him. I wanted some fresh air and I took permission, passing my hands under my buttocks and squatting halfway.



Few minutes later Beatrice came out. I was seated at the door with a book in my hand, she smiled and tugged my cheeks fondly, saying “Bye-bye”. My father saw her off to the end of her car which she parked behind the shop and came back shaking his head as though he did not believe the story



Ojukwu, as he would later tell me, had left the village and walked all the way to a nearby town, his uncombed hair locking gradually and he had started living like a fugitive; picking refuse along the road and living on the little money good Samaritans flung at him.



I did not hear about Ojukwu again until that Thursday morning it rained and there was no school because it was Sallah. My father came into my room where I lay in languor. I greeted him, his reply was short, distracted.



“Remember Aunty Beatrice that came to see us at the shop three months ago?” I nodded in affirmative.



“Ojukwu’s mother?” I asked.



“Yes, Ojukwu’s mother. She called me this morning”, he paused. “He is dead – Ojukwu. She said it happened last night at Pound Road. May he rest in peace”, another pause.

“I’m sorry”, I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.



“Me too”, he replied. “But Beatrice is not. I hate the way she put the words. She said: ‘Ojukwu is dead. We finally lost him’, as if she was expecting him to die, to avoid shame . . . Such a young boy - wasted”

Nice work! your story is sweet but you could have made it longer, there is a lot you could have added before arriving at your conclusion. However well done.

Abosi, you did well on this. Salutations.

DOMAWOLEYE:
Nice work! your story is sweet but you could have made it longer, there is a lot you could have added before arriving at your conclusion. However well done.

true. . Domawoleye. I'll try. Thank you :-)

ruffhandu:
Abosi, you did well on this. Salutations.

thank you ruffhandu. :-) i'm glad you like it.