Indigo (27 page)

Jerry's sleep was deep, but troubled. As he slept he felt Sondra's softness next to him, yet he wanted that softness, now, only for the sake of comfort, for the sake of rest. He wanted to think that he had disconnected himself from Sondra because of Pamela, but he remembered that he and Charlotte, too, though they'd sometimes caught a glimpse of passion's coattails, had rarely looked into the longing depth of its eyes. And now it was as if what he had felt with Sondra, those three nights before, was of the same fleeting quality. In other words, though he had wanted Sondra then, he did not want her now, and that realization gave his sleep a certain sadness that he brought with him when the bus stopped along a length of straight road and the driver woke everyone up. “Some small trouble wit de engine,” he said. “Dis be Agbor. Everybody get down small.”

Jerry awoke more slowly than the others, but when he looked out the window he could not see Agbor, and when the others, many of them complaining about the stop, finally got down to stretch their legs, he found himself alone on the bus. Where had Sondra gone? How had she slipped so easily past his knees?

Jerry stood, then squatted in the aisle, trying to shake his melancholy mood. Out the window to his right he could see the passengers standing in the road, behind them now the outlines of a few miserable buildings, darker rooftops against the lighter sky. To his left were fields as flat as someone's Oregon lawn, and across the fields another few houses stood.

There was a palaver starting up on the road and when he finally stepped down from the bus a few of the market ladies were yelling at one another, bursts of explosive language bothering the nearby houses and causing low-down lights to go on.

“What's wrong?” Jerry asked. He had found Sondra, looking fresh and wonderful against the nighttime sky.

“These ladies do not believe we have engine trouble,” she said. “If there is a problem they want to know why the bonnet is still shut. Also, they can't locate our driver. He has disappeared, it seems.”

It was true. Though the passengers stood in a rough circle near the door of the bus, the driver wasn't among them. One Yoruba woman was screaming by this time, winning the war of indignation and quieting the others with the force of her shriek. “This one's just discovered that Agbor is our driver's hometown,” Sondra said. “She thinks he's faking the breakdown so that he can stop at his house.”

The passengers had awakened in stages, the Yoruba woman leading them, but the others getting into the spirit of it too. Though the bus had stopped very near a group of houses, the passengers didn't worry about waking the residents of the town. They were in fact yelling, shouting for the driver to come back, but causing instead the appearance of a growing circle of kerosene lamps, carried by the citizenry as it came out to see what was going on.

Though Jerry's little sleep had been troubled, it had still somehow refreshed him, and he soon got interested in watching this event unfold. The leader, the Yoruba woman, seemed to be as angry at the other passengers as she was at the driver. Words leapt from her like machine-gun fire, outbursts so fiercely delivered that Jerry thought there might soon be blows. Sondra pulled him away as the residents began shouting too, unhappy with the invasion of their town and telling the passengers to go away. The circle of kerosene lamps closed upon the passengers who immediately joined forces, turning on the townspeople and telling them to shut up, to mind their own business and go back to bed.

Luckily for everyone, just then the driver came back. Both the passengers and the townspeople were mad at him, but he was carrying a tool box and that seemed to quiet them down. “He's been with a woman,” the Yoruba woman said, “look at the way he carries that tool box in front of him, he's covering a stain.” A few people laughed, but when the driver got to work on the bus the palaver ended. Some of the passengers found their seats again, others peered past him at the engine to see what the matter really was.

And something definitely was wrong with the bus. All his life Jerry had worked on cars, but it didn't take an expert to understand from the smell that wires had burned. It was lucky that they had gotten as far as Agbor without a fire. He came up close to watch the way the driver pulled the burned wires loose and then he found Sondra again, back where the remaining residents stood. He was about to speak to her, but the people standing nearest them drew his attention. Three women and a man were watching him. Jerry at first thought that the man was white but in the next instant he knew, one more time, that he was wrong.

“Hello,” the man said. “Fancy dis, ladies. Here come our man from up de way. De ol' rash man who help us out dat one las' time!”

The Power 99 man seemed terrifically glad to see Jerry. The Andrews Sisters, however, were ambivalent.

“Hi,” said Jerry Neal.

“Oh hi, yes hi,” said the Power 99 man, and when he nudged the girls they chimed in. “Hi,” they sang. Their harmony was still tight though they were obviously sleepy.

“We take dis bus often our own self,” the Power 99 man said. “Fancy it breakin' down in Agbor, our own hometown.”

“It's the bus driver's hometown too,” said Sondra.

The smell of burned wire had convinced them that the bus wasn't going anywhere very soon. Some of the passengers were still interested in watching the driver work, but when the Power 99 man said, “Come to our place,” there didn't seem to be much reason to argue. “Don' worry,” he said. “We stay close, can hear de bus if she try to get away.”

The Power 99 man had a lantern and walked away quickly so that he could clean up. The four of them did live very close to where the bus had stopped, in two rooms of a building similar to the one in back of the artists' house. The front room, the one the Power 99 man was cleaning, contained so many cases of Power 99 that the usable space was greatly reduced, and the back room, into which he had thrown everything, was closed from view. Jerry put his bundle of art down on top of a case of Power 99.

“It ain' much,” said the salesman.

Jerry couldn't argue with that. It was a dismal place. The room seemed to sag in on itself and the walls were bare on three sides. When he turned to look behind him, though, he was surprised to see two paintings hanging there. One of them was of an albino Jesus, his face bloodless, his head wearing an unusually thorny crown. It was a haunting Jesus, even a frightening one, but Jerry's eyes were more strongly drawn to the painting next to it, which was of Beany Abubakar. Beany was wearing tribal clothing and was every bit as powerful as Jesus. The paintings were of equal size, both of them too large for the room, and the two figures seemed to be staring at each other. For the first time Jerry saw something in Beany to admire. Maybe he
was
a man of the people, like the albino Jesus, a symbol of life to come.

Jerry looked at the paintings for a long time before making his voice light and saying, “Look, there's Beany.” He turned Sondra toward the picture, but all she said was, “Oh, yes, that one, I haven't seen that one in a very long time.”

The Power 99 man smiled. “You ain' seen it because is a collector's item,” he said. “All over Agbor dis de only Beany of is kin'. Other people got de new Beany wit' him wearin' de business suit, but dis one go back to 'is regional days. In fac' dis one de firs' Beany to catch on.”

They leaned against crates of Power 99, admiring the collector's-item portrait of Beany until Jerry broke the silence by pointing to the crates and asking, “How's business? It doesn't look like you're about to run out of stock.”

The Andrews Sisters looked like kittens sitting around a proud tomcat, and when Jerry spoke the Power 99 man smiled again. “This is all new stuff,” he said.

Indeed, the walls of the boxes looked strong and sharp compared with the walls of the room, and Jerry understood that the boxes alone, even empty of the magic cure-all, would be worth something on the street.

The Power 99 man opened the box nearest him and pulled a bottle out, passing it across the small expanse of room. “Here,” he said. “Take one along, my gift.”

The Power 99 bottle Jerry remembered from before had been round, with soft sides and no proper label on its front. This new Power 99, however, was much more substantially packaged. The bottle was square, and though it was the same white color as before, there was now a large label stuck on its front. Perhaps he shouldn't have been, but Jerry was surprised to see the collector's-item portrait of Beany embossed on the label. “Power 99!!” was nicely written below the portrait and in a cartoon balloon, as if it were coming from Beany's mouth, was the slogan, “The War Against Indiscipline Starts with Good Health.”

“My,” Jerry said, “did Beany really say that?”

“Course 'e did,” the Power 99 man said. “Dat one is Beany's motto. He always say sometin' 'bout it in 'is speech.”

Jerry sat up straighter. If he wanted to talk more about Beany, now was his chance. If Beany was a man of the people, then who would be better than the Power 99 man to tell him what such a thing meant. Before he could speak, however, Sondra put her hand on his arm. And when he looked to where she pointed he saw that the Andrews Sisters were asleep.

“What time is it?” he asked. “I wonder what's going on with that bus.”

It was two
A.M
.; Sondra had a watch, and after she told him so she too slipped down a little on the floor. Jerry and the Power 99 man tried to listen again, to hear the outside noises of the irate townspeople, but it was now quiet, both inside and outside the room.

“Let's go see,” Jerry said. “I hope the bus hasn't left without us.”

“Spen' de night in Agbor,” said the Power 99 man. “Travel when de new day come.”

When the two men stood the four women took up all the space on the floor. Jerry put the square bottle of Power 99 under Sondra's head as a pillow, but once outside, though he really had been worried about the bus, the bright moon and the way it played off the Power 99 man's face somehow made him calm. If they missed this bus there would be another.

When they walked the short distance to where the bus stood, however, it wasn't gone. And though the hood was still up, no one was working on it. The bus was as quiet as the surrounding town had become, and when Jerry stepped onto it, he saw that most of the passengers were sleeping in their seats. The Yoruba woman was there, sleeping as soundly as the Andrews Sisters were.

When he got back off the bus the Power 99 man told him that Agbor had mechanics who could fix the bus in the morning, and then he suggested that they walk in the cooling air. “Is my favorite time o day,” he said.

Jerry followed the man away from the bus and, so far as he could tell, away from the sleeping women as well. He had never heard of Agbor before, and though he had thought that it was small, as they walked he saw a large town opening before him, spreading out in the quiet night.

Jerry knew that African moons could be terrific, but the one they walked under was magnificent. Though it was smaller than it had been earlier in the night, it was brighter, and it cast an odd color about the town, letting Jerry see everything in its light, broken chairs in the doorways that they passed, chicken wire showing through the walls.

The Power 99 man was wearing the same black suit and white shirt and thin black tie that he always wore, but he walked slowly now, with his hands in his pockets, the salesman's hype gone from his face. Jerry had been avoiding looking at that face. The man had pink eyes, and though his skin color was roughly the same as Jerry's, it was unsettling to look at it for very long. Jerry let the word “albino” fall from his mind, landing on his tongue in a quiet sort of way. Was it a word he had used before? He delved into his past but no albinos came forward to stand beside the word he had formed.

Jerry vaguely thought that they might be stopped by the police, walking so late at night, but until the moment they turned between two roads and came out next to an open field, they hadn't seen another soul. The Power 99 man pointed at the field and said, “Les walk out a distance. I like to sit down dere sometime, where I don' see my town at all.”

The Power 99 man didn't wait, so Jerry followed him onto a path that field-workers used during the day. It was impossible, at night at least, to tell what grew beside the path, but it was a low-growth harvest. Foliage was only knee high on both sides of them, and though the leaves were probably green, the silver moon and the albino's face and Jerry's own dark countenance kept the green at bay.

The path was narrow so Jerry walked behind the Power 99 man, his eyes on the back of his head. This man wasn't wearing a cap, as Jerry, of course, still was, and the color of his hair in the surrounding air made him difficult to see.
“When it be night no man can see me in de shadow of de bush or tree.”
Jerry remembered Louis's words and Parker's reply:
“Properly in de night you mus' exis' wit' quietude, like only de night itself go by.”

Up around a bend in the path, perhaps two hundred meters off the main road, the Power 99 man sat under a leafy mango tree, the only one in sight and sprouting from the ground around it like a fountain from a windy evening sea. There was an expanse of hard dirt under the tree, and a makeshift bench or two.

“This place is fine,” the Power 99 man said. “Some people come here for talk small when de day get hot. In Agbor this is a well-known tree.”

Though the Power 99 man sat on the ground, Jerry chose a low bench and let his weight come down slowly, his legs out before him. The mango tree had taken the moon to highlight its highest branches so it was darker where they sat than it was in the fields around them. Jerry didn't know the geography of this region but he had a feeling that he was looking down the long floor of a valley. Yet though the land looked lush, he thought he knew that much of it was fallow. Nigeria was importing too much food, and he had an image of villagers abandoning rural life for the decrepit lure of Lagos.