The Seersucker Whipsaw (33 page)

“Mastah, woman here want you to look at her pickin.” “Why?”

“She say he sick.”

“How is he sick?”

“He sick for three, four days now. Cry all time.”

“Does she want me to come with her?”

“Pickin just outside. She bring him in.”

Shartelle sighed. “All right, I'll look at him.”

William spoke harshly to the woman. Maybe he was due to be headman someday and was just practicing for the job. The woman shoved her way through the packed, now airless, meeting hall where the villagers stood and sat, eating their cookies, smoking their cigarettes, and passing around the Gordon's gin. The woman came back carrying a naked year- old baby who was loosely wrapped in a piece of blue cotton cloth. He was a boy and he squawled, his eyes screwed up tight, his stomach distended and hard. She deposited the boy at Shartelle's feet and backed off into the protective custody of the crowd. Shartelle knelt by the baby who racketed off some more screams. He sounded as if he were in bitter pain. Shartelle patted him on the head, probed his stomach, looked into his mouth, and felt the joints in his legs and arms.

“William, get me some boiling water,” he said.

“You're shooting the wrong scene, Manny. The kid's already born.”

“Nothing wrong with this kid except pellagra, rickets if he don't get some vitamins, and colic. I know a colicky kid when I see one. I can cure him, too.”

“What with?”

“Wild yams. Pound 'em up into a mush and feed it to him. Clean him out good.”

“That what the boiling water is for?”

“Kid needs a tranquilizer. Can't get wild yam mush in him till he calms down.”

“Where you going to get a tranquilizer?”

Shartelle gave me his wicked grin. “Boy, you just look and learn. You're going to see one of the oldest tranquilizers for kids in the history of the world.”

William brought in a small primus stove with a pot of water that bubbled on top of it.

“I need sugar, William. A pound maybe. Brown or white, it doesn't matter.”

William translated this quickly to the crowd. Three women darted away, squirming through the packed audience who moved in closer for a better view of Dr. Shartelle's matinee performance. The women were back soon with the sugar, which they handed over to William who handed it to Shartelle. The sugar was brown and it was kept in paper spills. Shartelle took a look at the water and told William to pour about half of it out on the dirt floor. William poured and part of the crowd jumped back. He set the pot back on the stove. “Get me a small, clean stick, William,” Shartelle said. William demanded a stick and a man who was cleaning his teeth with one that had a sharp point sacrificed it for the operation. It also entitled him to a ringside seat. Shartelle took the stick in one hand and a spill of sugar-filled newspaper in the other. He poured the sugar into the boiling water, stirring slowly.

“William, get me the biggest rooster they got.”

“Rooster, Sah?”

“Cock—male chicken—man chicken.”

“Sah!” William translated quickly to the crowd. “Ahhhh,” the crowd said. Now the white fool makes sense. He will sacrifice a cock. Someone else burrowed through the crowd bearing a scrawny rooster. He held him out to Shartelle. Another man offered his machete. “Just hold him there a minute,” Shartelle said.

He finished pouring the sugar into the boiling water and kept stirring it with a spoon until it was a thick syrup. Then he asked for the Gordon's gin and poured a thimbleful into the pot. He stood up. “Turn the rooster around and hold him tight,” he told William who told the rooster holder.

Shartelle inspected the rooster's rear carefully, selected the longest, biggest tail feather, and gave it a quick jerk. The rooster squawked. The kid set up a new howl. Shartelle took the tail feather and dipped it into the syrup until it was completely coated. Then he waved it gently in the air to cool. He gave it to the baby who put it in his mouth—at least part of it. He quit squawking and sucked on the syrup. It was sticky. He liked that. He was only whimpering now. The more he sucked on the feather, the stickier he got, and the better he liked it. He gurgled a little, and wiped his face with the syrupy feather. He liked that even better. He dragged it across his stomach and almost smiled when it tickled and left a syrupy trail.

“Never seen it fail,” Shartelle said. “The stickier they get, the better they like it. They can suck on it and it's sweet. They can mess with it and it just gets nastier and nastier. Just a taste of alcohol. Nothing a baby likes more, boy. Any baby.”

He turned to William and told him to tell the mother how to use the wild yam paste to cure the baby's colic. William understood and sought the mother out in the crowd.He translated to her, and to the fascinated audience. She went shyly towards the baby, scooped him up, sticky, syrupy feather and all, smiled nicely at Shartelle, murmured something, and darted through the crowd which parted for her.

Shartelle and I had another drink of the native gin and then got out of the building. “Get that brother of yours, William, and let's get going,” I told him.

“He here, Sah.” William pointed to a small boy in khaki shorts and white undershirt who giggled and darted behind a stout woman who seemed to be his mother. William talked to her and she talked to the boy who took William's hand. “This is Kobo, Sah. He is my brother.”

“Hi, there, young fellow,” Shartelle said. The kid ducked his head into William's side.

“He's your real brother?” I asked.

“Very close,” William answered and I didn't have the heart to ask him what he meant.

The old man who had given us the gin hobbled up with another present—a live hen. He extended her to Shartelle who, with his usual charm, accepted gracefully and kept his speech of acceptance to two minutes. The villagers crowded around the car as William, a big man among them now, got into the front seat with Kobo and the hen. Shartelle passed out a couple of handfuls of “I Go Ako” buttons which he had pigeonholed somewhere and the recipients “ahhhed” them. We shook hands with the headman, and with anyone else who wanted to, and got in the car. William backed it around slowly and then drove off. I thought the woman whose skirts Kobo had hidden behind was crying. She ran after the car for a little way, waving. So did some of the other villagers. Kobo sat still and straight in the front seat, stroking the hen. He had tied her legs together.

We rode in silence for a half-hour or so. Then the hen began to cackle. It cackled some more and then became quiet. Kobo turned around in the seat, a shy smile on his face. His hand came up and he held an egg in it. He offered the egg to Shartelle.

The white-haired man smiled and took the egg. “Thank you, sonny,” he said. “Thank you, very much.”

Chapter

23

It is difficult to remember whether the trouble with the hooligans started three weeks or four weeks after Captain Cheat- wood was stabbed to death on the driveway. West Africa dulls any sense of time. Days begin with a cup of tea and each morning is the same as the one that opened the day before. Flowers bloom, fade, and bloom again without apparent regard for seasons. It's always July in West Africa. A hot July. A journal or diary could be filled with ditto marks.

The trouble came when the roving bands of political hooligans—of all parties—decided to expand their operations. Devised as a form of patronage that offered a few shillings a day and the opportunity to be a general nuisance, the hooliganism broadened into highwaymanship. No longer content with heckling the opposition speakers and harassing their audiences, the gangs started throwing blockades across main roads and robbing the passengers of private autos and mammy wagons.

Chief Akomolo was the first Albertian leader to crack down. He ordered Acting-Captain Oslako to stop the banditry. The job kept the Captain busy. His force was limited and the hooligans had fast transport. They would hit an intersection of highways at six o'clock in the morning. Seven hours later, three hundred miles away, and out of the Captain's jurisdiction, they would be busy robbing somebody else. Oslako and his men managed to capture a few hooligans. Even more important, or useful, they managed to kill some in the process. The Old Boy network among the British civil servants got cranked up again and both the northern and eastern regions announced their determination to eliminate the highwaymen. After the police in those regions caught and killed a few, the robberies stopped.

Captain Oslako dropped by to see me one afternoon during either the fourth or fifth week of the campaign. It was just after the last of the road robberies. I was sitting on the porch, drinking a glass of instant iced tea, and sniffing the honeysuckle. Shartelle and Jenaro were out on a grass roots swing and I had stayed behind to okay copy on the weekly party paper that was published either on Thursday or Friday. It depended on the whim of the printer. I also had to file press releases every morning and night and make sure that the buttons, fans and credit cardholders fell into the proper hands. Things had gone smoothly enough. Smooth for Albertia. A plane load of buttons had been forced down in Accra and the Ghanaian military government impounded them on the theory that they were part of a plot by Nkrumah to regain power. The buttons probably are still in Accra, rusting away.

Everybody had buttons by then. Alhaji Sir Alakada Mejara Fulawa's were white with blue lettering and read “HAJ.” Dr. Kensington O. Kologo, from the east, had smaller ones that read “KOK” for his initials. Ours were the biggest of all, a good two-and-a-half inches in diameter, with white backgrounds and red letters that formed the “I GO AKO” slogan plus the party symbol of a crossed hoe and rake. Shartelle described them as “damned aggressive buttons.” I just thought they were the biggest.

“You look relaxed, Mr. Upshaw,” Captain Oslako said after he took a chair next to the honeysuckle and accepted a cold bottle of beer.

“It won't last,” I said.

“I suppose not. Those hooligans were causing no end of bother. I think we've put a stop to it.” He had a nice BBC accent.

“Killing a few seemed to help.”

“As Captain Cheatwood was fond of saying, ‘My men enjoy their work.'”

“He seemed to know his job,” I said.

“Did you know him well?”

“No. I met him once. He paid a social call.”

“He was an interesting man. He had fantastic sources of information.”

“He said he'd been here a long time.”

Captain Oslako crossed his lean legs. He was wearing a starched khaki uniform and white wool socks with the clodhopper shoes. The socks looked hot and I wondered if they itched.

“You have no idea why he came to call on you that night—the night he was killed?”

“None. Are you sure that he was calling on us?”

“He was in your driveway.”

“Maybe he was forced into it from the road.”

“So he could be dispatched in a more secluded spot?”

“Maybe.”

“His widow said that he was merely out for a walk,” Oslako said. A remnant of my newspaper training made me wince mentally at his use of the word “widow.” It recalled a comment by my first city editor about an obituary I had written: “Mr. Upshaw, Mr. Jones has been dead only a few hours. Mrs. Jones will be a widow for perhaps years to come. Let us be charitable and refer to her as his wife, not as his widow.”

“Then I suppose he was,” I said. “Just out for a walk.”

“Some have advanced the theory that his murder inspired the hooligans to turn to highway robbery; that the murder gave license to lawlessness.”

“What do you think?”

“To be frank, I don't know. I discount the theory of simple robbery. Captain Cheatwood was too good a policeman to let a common cutpurse get the better of him.”

“That's my impression.”

“It may have been inspired by a personal grudge. Or because he knew something that someone thought he shouldn't.”

“And someone killed him to shut him up?”

“Possibly.”

“You seem to have an ample supply of theories, Captain.”

Oslako sighed. “Many theories, but few facts. I even thought that he may have been killed to prevent him from giving you information which might affect the outcome of the campaign. But you seem unable to substantiate that.”

“He had no information, as far as I know.”

“Did you talk about the campaign at all?”

“Yes. We talked about the arrangements for the counting of the ballots, the poll-watching, and so forth. Just the mechanics.”

Oslako rose. “Thank you for the beer, Mr. Upshaw. I take it Mr. Shartelle is out of the city?”

“Yes. He's making a tour with Chief Jenaro.”

We said goodbye and Captain Oslako left. His former superior had trained him well. I wondered if we should have told him about the letter-like trenches that Cheatwood had scrawled in the dirt. I decided to talk to Shartelle about it when he got back.