Indigo (32 page)

“Don' kill me,” the young sergeant said.

Pamela's Peugeot was parked, this time, just on the other side of the monkeys, on the nearest real road where that hammerhead shark had once been, and when she gave the keys to Louis, finding them somewhere with her blood-soaked hand, Louis brought the car around, pushing the cages over with its bumpers and then reaching to open the right rear door from the inside.

Jerry ordered the soldier to help Parker lift Beany into the back of the car, but his voice seemed detached and neither man moved. Rather, both of them stared down at the ground at the unending flow of blood and up at the diminishing figure of Beany as the blood poured out.

Beany Abubakar was dead, probably instantly so, but for all of them time somehow still seemed of the essence, as if getting him into the car and taking him somewhere would allow them to continue, for a while, in believing all those things Beany had said.

While the car door was opened Jerry managed to give Parker the gun, and when he lifted Beany from the chair, Pamela stood with him, slipping into the car first so that she could receive Beany's body, taking care with the way they put him down. That was all. Beany was incredibly light by then and easy to move. When Jerry ordered the soldier into the front seat of the car, this time the soldier complied, and when Parker got in the back he let the barrel of the gun rest up against the nape of the soldier's neck, keeping it there even when all the car doors were closed.

There were no words then, only the quick departure of Pamela's Peugeot, only Jerry Neal, standing in the heart of Jankara market, at the center of an expanding circle of wet ground. It had not occurred to Jerry to ask Pamela where she thought she could take the man, who she thought she could find to do him any good. It had not occurred to Jerry to ask such things because he knew the answers, finally, as well as any of the others did. Though it was late on New Year's Eve day and though news of the success of the military coup would soon be spreading around the country and around the world, in Jerry Neal's mind's eye he could see Pamela's Peugeot safely traversing the country once again, the soldier providing safe passage, heading toward Onitsha where it would deliver Beany Abubakar's bloodless body to his mother and to his two growing sons.

When Jerry got back to the International School, it was early in the morning on New Year's Day, 1984. He had left Smart's place quickly, going back inside only for his bundle, and he had walked across Lagos during the night, letting no man see him in the shadow of a bush or a tree, existing with quietude, like only the night itself went by.

No one was at the school. The teachers were still on holiday, the maintenance crew still at home. Jerry walked past his office and when he got to the parking lot he retrieved a second key to his flat that he kept taped beneath the bumper of his car. When he let himself into his flat the first thing he noticed was that Jules had cleaned everything well, that there wasn't even any dust, though the place had an unlived-in feel.

Jerry walked into the bedroom, letting his filthy clothing fall to the floor as he walked. Before heading in to take his bath he stopped to look at the series of photographs of Charlotte that lined his wall. Here was Charlotte as a girl, there Charlotte as a grown-up woman, over there Charlotte standing with her sister and Charlotte alone. He tried to remember what had happened to the photograph that he'd taken with him to jail, but he had no idea at all.

In the bathroom Jerry was pleased to find that the water was hot. He filled the tub to the top and then climbed into it, sitting down in one motion, only watching his legs beneath the water and feeling his pores opening, the particles of dirt floating away. Jerry looked over the edge of the tub at his bundle sitting there. He was still wearing his cap, of course, but he let one hand rise from the water and take it from his head. He then reached down with the other hand and, pulling the bottle of Power 99 from the bundle's top, drenched his putrid hair and scalp, rubbing hard with his fingers and closing his eyes. The smell in the room was unmistakable but it wasn't that which had sickened everybody in the back of the truck, that which he had smelled under the mango tree. Rather the Power 99 mixed with the water well, lathered thickly, and turned the tub black when he lowered himself down into it to rinse his hair clean.

When Jerry Neal came back into his bedroom he was normal again, his old self, though slightly thinner than he cared to be. His hair was combed and he had shaved and when he put on a clean shirt he regained, somewhat, the bearing of a principal.

Jerry was in his bedroom a good long time and he heard it first just as he pulled on his trousers, a second and third time when he walked into the hallway to find a clean pair of socks. It was his telephone, ringing loudly in the other room. The sound of it seemed foreign and harsh and insistent, but with each ring his resolve to ignore it slipped away.

When he got to the telephone he was fully dressed, clean, and angry enough at the sound that when he picked the receiver up he held it away from him, ready to fling it down. “What do you want?” he said.

Though he had not spoken loudly, a voice responded, talking fast, and when he finally brought the receiver closer, he heard only the last part of what it said.

“… been calling for days,” said Charlotte's voice.

“Charlotte?” he said. “Hello, Charlotte?”

Now there was silence on the line, as though he had breached some surreal sense of etiquette by calling her name. “Charlotte,” he said again, “answer me now, I'm ready for anything, believe me.”

“Jerry Neal, I just don't think that's very funny at all,” said Marge.

Jerry felt himself grow cold and slumped into the chair next to the phone.

“No, Marge,” he said, “you're right, it isn't.”

“Where have you been? I've been calling for days. Why didn't you come home for Christmas?”

Marge's voice was Charlotte's again, the same tenor, the same sensibility. Jerry had loved Charlotte so, still did, of course, but she belonged to another time and shouldn't be calling now.

“I've been gone,” he said. “I decided to see something of Nigeria this time out. I won't be coming home for a while.”

Marge started to say something else but then thought better of it, and though it was a terrifically expensive call, they were both quiet for a long time, their thoughts, their lives, even their senses of what it meant to be alive, meeting somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, far out in space.

“Marge,” said Jerry.

“Jerry,” said Marge.

But that was all, for then, mercifully, the Nigerian telephone system remembered itself and the line went dead.

P
ANEL
N
UMBER
T
HREE

February 25, 1984, p.m.

The school courtyard was packed an hour before the auction began, with parents and visitors bunched around their tables, voices filled with laughter, glasses filled with wine. To some it might seem strange, but this was the social event of the year, a chance for the entire school community to come together in a philanthropic mood, to bid large sums of money for insignificant goods.

Joseph and his crew had finished their work and were out of the way now, standing behind pillars or sitting down on stools in the carpenter's shop.

In his office Jerry Neal changed quickly into a tuxedo, then reached into his bottom drawer to find a pair of well-shined shoes. The tuxedo was his own, but it fit him poorly now. Though it was nearly March and nearly two months had passed since his normal life had resumed, he had maintained the thinness he'd acquired in the outside world, and he had to press the tux to him a few times with his hands.

When he left his office and stepped into the courtyard, the first person Jerry saw was LeRoY BaLoGuN, who had arranged his work area and was already tapping away at the third panel, slowly letting the end of the story unfold. It had been the school board president's idea to have LeRoY finish the final panel while the auction was under way, but LeRoY had readily agreed. He had made his sketches in the village but would pound the panel while people ate and drank around him, while other items were auctioned away. And the last item sold would be the panel itself, bringing extra money to the school and fame to an artist to whom fame was long overdue.

LeRoY's work station was to the left of the auction block and near a table which was reserved for his own friends and colleagues, for other artists and people that he knew. At a quarter to eight the auction guests were mostly settled and the dinner had been served. At LeRoY's table Jerry sat next to Pamela, but among the artists from the Onitsha house only Sondra had accepted the invitation, and though she had come early, she had now gone off somewhere, so Jerry and Pamela were alone.

“I went to the Ministry of Internal Affairs today,” Jerry said, “did I tell you that?”

“You did,” said Pamela, “you got your visas. I am sure there was no trouble.”

It was true. Jerry and Sunday had gone to see the new minister, who had personally stamped the passports of the teachers who'd arrived that previous fall. It had been easy, the minister had been kind, it had taken no time at all.

Jerry sat up straight and looked around. There were many tables, well-dressed people everywhere. He could see Lee Logar sitting across the courtyard with Lawrence Biko, the school's attorney. It was odd to realize how distant he'd become from those two men. Both had meant a lot to him at various times, yet it seemed to him now that he had left them behind, abandoning what he knew for a strange world that seemed ordinary to him now, even as the world of those two men had become strange.

“I don't see her,” he told Pamela. “I expect she won't come.”

“She will come,” Pamela said. “She'll bring Bramwell too, I am quite sure of it.”

Jerry didn't believe that Beany's mother would come to the auction, though Pamela had been saying she would for days. Since Beany's death his mother had become a kind of outlaw. The new government was afraid of her and had even sent representatives to the school once or twice to see if Jerry knew where she was. They had not bothered Nurudeen, who was studying again and living with his mother in Jerry's flat, but they had been anxious about Beany's mom.

When Smart and Louis and Parker arrived they went straight to LeRoY's bench, so Pamela and Jerry got up to join them there. Sondra had returned and stood just to Jerry's left, so he was once again sandwiched between the two beauties, Sondra's indigo a pleasant darkness against Pamela's white gown.

The school board president would be the auctioneer but he wanted to start late, after plenty of wine had been served. In this man Jerry saw what he himself had been. The man was forthright, decidedly vigorous in his relationship with each task and each new day. There was nothing wrong with the man, perhaps, but lately he had been making Jerry feel tired, and as Jerry watched him testing the microphone, tapping it and then leaning back to speak to the A.V. man, he saw himself as he had been in Oregon and in Abidjan and during his first three years in Lagos. He had been sure of things then and he had been smart, but wasn't he still that way now? He had run the school, since his return, precisely as he'd always run it, calmly and with no mistakes. What was the difference, then, between a man at one moment and a man the next? Between not knowing something, and then knowing it well?

They were back at the table again when Pamela put her hand on Jerry's arm.

“Look who's here,” she said.

The school gate had been empty for a while, everyone eating and laughing with the unending wine, but when he looked Jerry saw that the gate was now full. Beany's mother was there, regal in white robes, a headwrap down low on her forehead, coming just to the edges of her eyes. She carried Beany's walking staff with her, the cane Beany had had at the Ikoyi Hotel, and she seemed to tap it on the ground in time with LeRoY's hammer.

Pamela stood so that she could better see who else was there. Behind Beany's mother was her grandson, Bramwell, but that was all. Pamela waved and said, “Over here,” but though their entrance seemed monumental to Pamela and Jerry, the other auction guests, the parents and the wine drinkers, seemed not to be aware of it at all. In fact, while Beany's mother made her way to the table, they clamored for the arriving dessert.

There were chairs enough for everyone, and one more for LeRoY, should he ever decide to sit down. There had been music playing but when it stopped it took Jerry a minute to remember that that was his cue, that it was time for him to introduce the auctioneer.

“Good evening,” he said. He had walked to the standing microphone beside the podium, but when he spoke his voice was thin and distant and his eyes on the table he'd just left, on Beany's mother and his first-born son.

Jerry moved closer to the microphone and spokë again. He welcomed everyone and then pointed at LeRoY, telling them what he was doing and even pushing the microphone in LeRoY's direction, so that they might hear the amplified sound.

Jerry could feel his facial muscles working, he could hear the now solid booming nature of his voice, he could even see himself as others saw him, trim and tuxedoed, smiling and tan, the same man he'd been before, the one who'd run their school for them these last three years. When he turned the podium over to Leonard Holtz everyone cheered, standing with prolonged applause, smiling hard at Jerry as he sat back down. He had been through so much, their expressions seemed to say.

“My, my,” said Pamela.

At the center of each table were bidding cards, large squares of colored cardboard with numbers on them. When Louis picked one up, Pamela took Jerry's hand. She then told Louis to put the card back down.

The first item to be auctioned was a carton of imported potato chips, the kind that come in cylindrical cans. Such potato chips were unavailable in Nigeria and Leonard Holtz was asking for an opening bid of fifty naira.