Millipede Chasing - Part 9

MILLIPEDE CHASING

This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

PART NINE

Drawn back to reality from his day dreaming, Emenanjo looked back again to find that Sunday was missing from the mob. He had abandoned the chase in exchange for a lovely meal of his udara fruit. Now Emenanajo was famished, so terribly hungry, but he could not afford to stop and eat. He was afraid that the angry mob would hand him over to the police who would lock him up and let him rot in a cell to die.

“Onyeshi, thief!” shouted a group of naughty boys who had just joined the mob as well. They reminded him of his life as a young boy. The group of boys were closing in on him. Dancing to the chant they created among themselves “Thief run! Thief run!” they approached him. One of them gave him some cold water to drink. The other gave him some bananas and groundnut. Emenanjo was not surprised at their acts of kindness, because young boys were notorious for acting out stubbornly against the adults.

It was clear that the boys had no interest in catching him. In fact, they did not want him to ever be caught at all. Smiling with a quick wave the boys ran past him and wished him good luck. Emenanjo could feel the luck on his side and he smiled again, knowing that there were those who still saw the goodness in him. He was not a thief! He never wanted to be a thief. It was the thief that found him; he did not find the thief. Understood! He hoped that the congregation’s ears were merciful enough to hear the song from his heart.

*****

“Millipede!” Okafor laughed.

“Where? I can’t see any millipedes,” Emenanjo exclaimed, kneeling down on the rich moist ground, slightly covered with wildflower and weeds in patches. They were outside in the field, playing football. Since he knew that it was perfectly possible for small creatures to hide in the grasses without being seen, Emenanjo used his hands to uncover the hidden earth by pulling the grasses apart. Confounded, he frowned at the empty soil and asked, “Where are the millipedes? I see nothing?”

“Millipede! The way you ran yesterday, beating everybody in the race,” Okafor laughed louder and patted his best friend on the shoulder, which prompted Emenanjo to look up to him with a tinge of confusion. “You have a thousand legs, just like a millipede. Get it?”

“Me, millipede?” The 12-year-old Emenanjo jumped up and beat his chest with both hands, shouting “I will beat you, big head!”

Okafor stood still. He did not move at all and simply stared at his friend strangely for a few minutes as the other boy performed like a circus animal.

“What are you doing?” Emenanjo asked suddenly, finding his friend’s quiet behaviour strange. Okafor was highly intelligent for his age. He always spoke like an old man with words dripping in wisdom. In fact, the one and only difference between Okafor and a parrot was that Okafor was human. Other than that they were twins, as far as Emenanjo was concerned. Okafor could talk. Man, he could talk! He even talked in his sleep. Sometimes he would say he was doing business with some rich clients, other instances he would talk while he was taking a shit in the restroom. He even sang while he was eating, because he firmly believed that singing when eating made the food taste better. So, the only time he did not utter a single word, was just now. Yes! Now, at this very moment.

“Hmm,” Emenanjo was really puzzled now. After one minute had passed, his friend still stood frozen and said nothing.

“Okafor! Okafor, you are scaring me. Say something.” Two minutes had gone by, but Okafor still said nothing. He stood rigid and motionless as if his battery had ran out. “Okafor! Okafor!” Emenanjo suddenly became reluctant, even scared, to touch his friend. He took two steps away from his friend and secretly prayed in his heart that Okafor would soon stop what he was doing.

“I remember now!” Okafor suddenly unfroze and spoke, giving his poor friend a dreadful fright. He walked rapidly up to his friend. He bent down and crouched over the ground to pick up something. Emenanjo watched his friend’s odd behaviour, amazed by how strangely he was acting. Okafor took Emenanjo’s right hand and opened his palm, stretching his skinny fingers out straight. Emenanjo did not resist or fight him, but he didn’t understand what was going on. Okafor placed the creature on his friend’s right palm. Emenanjo looked at the little wriggling thing in his hand. It was a millipede.

“You are a millipede – you will not cry when someone steps on you, but the one who stepped on you will do the crying.” Okafor said, his face still carrying a serious expression like that of a wise old elder, took out a kolanut from his pocket and ceremoniously broke it into two. He ate half of it and with his right hand he fed Emenanjo the other half, straight from his hand to his friend’s mouth. Emenanjo obliged by eating it. The crunching sound of the kolanut grinding in the mouths of both boys filled the air, creating some sort of sacred atmosphere all around them. For that moment it felt as if the world stood still to accommodate the significance of the sounds from the boys. It became dead silent, going from a bustling football field, filled with other people playing around them, to a static place in a timeless moment. It was as if everyone had been put on “pause” with a cosmic remote control device. Then Okafor continued with an even toned voice, “I am giving you my blessing and the gods of our land, gods of our ground are blessing you with this millipede from this soil we are both now standing on. Now! Free the millipede on the soil so it can go, so your destiny will be fulfilled!”

Again, Emenanjo obliged and did as he was told. At first he wanted to question his friend but he enjoyed the attention he was getting too much. With a careful hand he dropped his palm close to the ground and let the little insect make its way onto the ground. It crawled into the weed roots and disappeared. Emenanjo had never had someone bless him before. It felt good to be receiving a blessing, even though he doubted the credibility of its potency.

The next morning, Emenanjo decided to ask his friend about the blessing. “You were like a different person yesterday. Are you sure you are just twelve years old? Because your brain is like that of a man with white beard.”

“What are you talking about?” Okafor asked, confused by his friend’s sincerity about something he knew nothing about.

“You blessed me with a millipede,” Emenanjo reminded him with a silly smile, to see if he would remember.

“Millipede! I don’t even like that thing! Gross. I would never bless you with a crawly, snotty millipede,” Okafor winced and pulled up his nose at the thought of touching the wriggling insect.

“Yes! You did, and we ate kolanut together,” he was promptly reassured.

“Kolanut! Maybe in your dreams… Emenanjo, are you going mad?” Okafor asked in astonishment. He truly did not remember doing a blessing, nor eating kolanut.

“I am not lying. You took kolanut out of your pocket and we ate it. You gave me a good blessing yesterday,” Emenanjo exclaimed gratefully, “Thank you. I wanted to tell you thank you.”

Okafor laughed, as usual. Then again, he never took anything seriously. He normally brushed off what he heard from his friend, especially when his friend could not discern his dreams from reality.

Okafor sighed and put his hand on Emenanajo’s shoulder, “I don’t remember eating kolanut; I never ate kolanut in my life. Kolanuts are for old wise men. I can’t give out blessings! Children don’t ever give blessings, except those ones from the shrines. They in fact curse you, they don’t do blessings.”

Emenanjo became more confused than ever now. He knew for a fact that the blessing really did happen, and up till this very day, he was befuddled that Okafor still did not remember anything about that day. It remained a mystery. Being drawn back to reality, Emenanjo’s face lit up a bit with this reminiscence, a long past, loving memory of those times with his childhood friend. He fondly wished so much that he could disappear, travelling back to that time, and be locked forever in that innocent world he lived in before he became a petty thief.