The path was still narrow and dim. Their feet were sliding softly on dry forest leaves. The wind was blowing pretty well. Musical melodies of forest creatures filled the air, resonating through the forest in echoes.
After about forty minutes or so trek, Ekoyata saw increased light infiltrating the forest. Trees grew shorter. It was more of grasses and shrubs than gigantic trees now. The grasses were brownish-yellow and Ekoyata knew that they were actually burned by the dry harmattan weather.
There were farms now on the sides of the road. Gloria showed him yam farms, rice farms and cassava farms. Ekoyata saw that the yam and the rice farms had been harvested. But their stubbles were still on the farms.
As the world unwind in front of them, the land began to rise too. The grasses also got shorter and paler. Then, Ekoyata saw a vast naked land sprawling ahead of them. And he understood their need of endurance if they would ever get to the hilltop.
When they finally got to the hilltop, Ekoyata found that it was a complete wreck of barren land festooned with embroidery of precious stones. Grasses were scanty there and they had withered. There were mostly short Alpine trees and Cactuses. And Ekoyata could see far into an empty distance.
They looked down to the side of the forest where they had come to the hill. It was down below them and they were now taller than all the big forest trees. As the distance grew, tree tops blended and became a green blanket spread over the surface of the earth. And somewhere, the blanket met the sky that seemed so near ahead.
‘We can make heaven from here,’ Ekoyata said and jumped.
Gloria didn't answer. Ekoyata thought that she was looking at the inside of herself again. She always told Ekoyata that her mother was poor. Ekoyata had always told her not to worry. Ekoyata glanced at her face. Her eyes were low. She had said that she never had a chance because of polygamy. Her widowed mother was the second of her father's two wives. And she was her only child. Gloria's father, Okedina, died intestate. Her eldest stepbrother expelled her mother from her husband's house and administered the whole estate.
Gloria upset Ekoyata when she was sad. How could she not learn to forget as he always told her. He had gone to their family house with her. The house was mud too, like the rest of them in the town. Gloria always said she never got a chance, Ekoyata thought. Now, she got one. She ought to make a woman of herself. Ekoyata poked out a red lips at her.
'Are you all right?' he asked.
Gloria smiled. Ekoyata saw that it was a smile that sought to cover everything.
'Why should we go heaven?' she asked looking Ekoyata straight in the eyes now.
'Because it is so close here,' Ekoyata said.
‘The earth is for us,’ Gloria said.
‘Yes. But heaven is too close to the earth here,' Ekoyata said again.
Then he saw Gloria shaking her head. The effect of the raw truth got to her.
‘But this hill is a paradise on earth. Isn't it?’
‘And see the sun. I haven't seen it like this before.'
‘A big red!’
‘That is not far from here too.’
‘That is because this place is very high. I feel that we are standing on top of the globe.’
The few surviving trees and grasses bore flowers of the harmattan season. Gloria started to run. The ground was filled with the flowers that dropped from the plants as if rose bearers were ahead somewhere. Ekoyata ran with her. Insects in swam buzzed on the flowers. Ekoyata and Gloria ran in the same direction. The breeze was blowing. The freedom was boundless.
When they stopped, Ekoyata saw Gloria moving her body in a slow circle. It was a dance step. There was music everywhere. Dry leaves and insects were playing music. And the breeze was singing.
Gloria spun. Her long gown belled out in the wind and Ekoyata saw where her panty started in her thighs. Ekoyata turned his face from her. She was provoking his feelings. He knew that if he give free reign to those feelings he could do something that would make him feel ashamed. Gloria stopped dancing.
‘Somewhere down there, the trees have formed a rug,' she said. 'If I could fly there I could imagine how soft it would be to land on it.'
Ekoyata looked at her. ‘You are wonderful!' he said. 'And do you know what I think, Gloria? I can bring down the sun, if I have a long stick.'
They looked at each other and began to laughter. Gloria flung her arms out again and began to dance at the back of Ekoyata. She mumbled snatches of the melody in the wind as she gloried herself in the twitching of her muscles.
The humming of the song turned Ekoyata’s head round. Gloria saw him. Gloria smiled. The shades of her mind were completely gone from her face. She danced ballet. The sheer beauty of dance reeled Ekoyata's senses as he watched her.
When Gloria stopped dancing, she gazed up at Ekoyata and heaved a deep sigh. Ekoyata stared at the outline of her body. It was hazy under the gown. Something was telling him to pull Gloria down and make her sit on his laps.
Ekoyata moved close to her. He caught her shoulders and pulled her to himself. He was surprised that she didn't resist him. He staggered and went down backward to a mound of anthill. Gloria was on his laps. He felt the pressure from the Akpono beads that lay on her waist. He smoothen the wisps of her jet black hair over the nape of her neck. She was smiling but her lips weren't stable. They seemed to tremble slightly. Ekoyata knew that each of the touches of his hand on her hair set her on fire.
Her weight pressed her thighs against his. He wondered if she would allow him to see the Akpono on her waist. He remembered the night of the Ikhio Gbedu. Obehi told him that girls didn't let men see the Akpono on their waist except on special occasions. But when they were in love, they let their lover see them. Was he Gloria's lover now? Would he let him see it? He touched the Akpono on her waist and felt her body surging. When he touched it a second time, Gloria jolted up with a scream. Ekoyata knew what she was feeling. She ran off from him. Ekoyata went after her. Then, he saw her going down.
She must have hit a stone, Ekoyata thought. Gloria scrambled violently and stopped on her knees. She turned herself and sat on the ground. Ekoyata stood over her. Gloria pulled up her gown and examined her knee.
'Did you injure your leg?' he asked.
'I am trying to see,' she said.
Ekoyata squatted down and put down one knee. He wasn't very comfortable because her gown was too high on her thighs and he was seeing the inside of her legs.
'No, I don't think I was injured. Help me to get up.'
Ekoyata got up first. Gloria offered her hands. Ekoyata took them and pulled her. Then, he lay a hand on her back and tapped it softly.
'Are you all right now?' he asked.
'Yes, sir.'
Ekoyata didn't realised it, when his fingers slid under her hair and began to play on the tiny bristles at the base of her skull. Gloria grew softer in his hand. He felt her tightened as his hand slowly slid down on her back. He thought she was a bomb about to explode. Gloria shuddered.
‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘I want to take you to some place.’
‘In the hill here?’ he asked with wide, curious eyes.
‘We need to get to that place, to touch the heaven, where it meet the earth.’
‘That is the horizon,' Ekoyata said with child-like wonder.
‘Do you know why? We came to see the sun, didn't we? At this time of the day, servants are believed to be there, making the bed for the sun in his nuptial chamber. The folktales said that it happens at this time behind the brink of the earth.’
‘You make me feel like a little child. The sun never sleeps. But now, I am your baby.'
Gloria didn't answer. They were silent, looking at each other. Gloria lifted her hand. Ekoyata’s eyes followed the hand.
‘Soon the sun will sail down to the chamber and cover himself and his bride in a black blanket that brings darkness to the earth. Until he awakens and removes the dark shawl from his body, it is dark on the earth.'
Ekoyata shook his head. 'Gloria, I didn't know that you are so creative,' he said.
'No, I am not. It is our tales by moonlight.'
'I have heard some. Baneke culture is rich, isn't it?'
'I don't know, sir,' she said and turned her face from him.
What is wrong with Gloria all the time when you praise her? Ekoyata thought. Is she not a crazy girl? People want you to praise them all the time.
They started to walk again, silently in the direction of the West. Other wealth of the hill was naked in front of their eyes. How could they learn all of them in one evening? Ekoyata wondered. The evening sunlight reflected from crystalline stones. Ekoyata's eyes were dancing to every direction. Each sight was an exuberant scene in the panoramic view.
Gloria stopped and began to gaze at the sky. Ekoyata stopped too, looking at what Gloria was trying to see. Clouds of warm colours were floating overhead. He tried to take a stock of the richness of the sunset sky. But that wasn't possible. The flagrant use of colours humbled him. He wondered quietly. Gloria too wasn't talking. She held her gown tight to herself. Ekoyata was inspired with awe.
‘I am thinking of the colour variety,' Gloria finally said. 'I am thinking of the balance too. The celebrated paintings of the world, got nothing close to this mural.' Gloria paused and turned aside. There was a large anthill. She climbed to the top. She spread out her hands. ‘Praise be the artist who designed the sunset sky.’
Ekoyata joined Gloria on the anthill. ‘God is great indeed,' Ekoyata said. Gloria lay a hand on the back of Ekoyata's neck. She pointed out the other hand at one part of the sky. Ekoyata felt the hand on his neck. It was very soft, much softer than Green's hand, the lady he once befriended in Arizona, U.S.A. The direction Gloria pointed the other hand had a cluster of small colourful clouds. She started to give her opinion.
‘Those look like animals,' she said.
They began to laugh again, and as they did, Ekoyata felt the need to say something. Maybe she expected it, he thought. He turned to another direction where it was quite red. He pointed a finger. ‘That one looks like the wake of a giant atomic bomb in an American war film.’
Gloria smiled dryly. When Ekoyata looked at her, he immediately knew what the dry smile meant. Gloria didn't know movie pictures. She hadn't seen a television before. Ekoyata hiked past Gloria and down from the anthill. He looked back and saw Gloria also trying to imitate him to slope down with the same style.
Ekoyata was thinking about her. She was intelligent, but hadn't had a chance. She hadn't seen a television before. Thinking about her like that was all right. He would buy a television when he finished his own house. He won't buy a television in the mud house they lived in now because of her. When he finished his house, Gloria would see an American movie in the television.
Gloria took a wrong side of the slope. Ekoyata saw her in horrible danger of rolling off. She clutched on the stones to the either side of her to compensate for her deficiency in balance. Ekoyata waited on the ground to support her when she flew down. Her gown hiked up her thighs, belling up to the air, providing no protection for the delicate skin on the sides of her hips as she came down the slope. Ekoyata fenced her way and received her. They staggered violently but didn't go down.
For a while, Ekoyata and Gloria were looking at each other. Ekoyata saw that Gloria's face held an intense expression of affection. The breeze blew them from behind. He felt like leaving her and separating far away from her. But she was very beautiful. Breeze dried the sweat on their bodies and made the smell of their skin thick. Ekoyata's senses was drunk from the odour of Gloria's body. She had his feelings too. They disengaged only slowly from each other. The breeze was steady. It pasted their clothes to their bodies. The breeze teased their skin like small kisses. And the melody it piped along, stirred more romantic feelings.
The gusting wind tossed Gloria's gown. What an experience with her! He didn't want to go to those show places where rich people had good time because as a falling hero, he thought that he was not their kind any more. And about the question of landing, he had found some answers now. But he didn't know exactly what they were. He was still working them out. Gloria was beautiful. She was a village belle. Yet, she was a flower sprouting both day and night. But the sun that made her succulent in the day and the moon that made her bloom in the night, were never seen by the ordinary eyes.
Ekoyata was looking at her and was thinking of her. She was a decoration at the sunset. Her gown was transparent. The underwear clung to every contour of her body. And her breasts were revealed more than he needed to see in that lonely place. Ekoyata chased and tried to hug the wind. A date in the sunset rich gold was a taste of freedom.
'There is supposed to be a house here, Gloria,' Ekoyata said. 'Something that would be like a rest house.'
‘Did you forget that the cemetery is not far from here?’
‘It doesn’t matter. We would be overlooking the cemetery when they put fence on it. We would live here but we would watch them buried their bodies there. Baneke is their cemetery.'
‘The ghosts might be coming from there.’
‘Ghost are demons who pretend to be spirit of the dead? If I owe them nothing, they would have no business with me. I lived in America; I lived in the cities. But Baneke is the only home I will ever know.’
The discussion didn't go further than that. Ekoyata reached his hand to Gloria. He saw that she was ashamed to take it. He wanted them to hold hands in the golden sunset. Gloria stretched a shaky hand. As Ekoyata wanted to take it, the hand stopped midway in the air. Ekoyata understood why. If Gloria felt what he was feeling too, it would make her feel ashamed. If they could rise up and float away separately, it would keep them from feeling this mutual shame.
Ekoyata contemplated the ifs he had thought about as if what he wanted them to do was wrong. When Gloria finally took the hand, she smiled. It was a smile that sought to cover the shades of her mind. Yet, when he looked at her, she was pale and vulnerable. And that vagueness that made her see only the surface of things started to kill him through the little resistance remaining in him. With her fingers laced with his large workingman hand, they both tilted their heads and gazed into the fading sky. Ekoyata didn't see the sky. His mind was fill with thoughts of Gloria. Her smaller hand was hot inside his. It was soft, he thought. Gloria was beautiful. He didn't exactly know what he was feeling for her. Did he love her now? Was he only being inflamed with the moment's passion? His mind was still working this out. He knew that there was not any other endeavour that began with great hopes and expectations that yet fail often than love. He would work this thing out carefully.
In his mind now, it was doubtful that Gloria didn't bring him to that place to trap him. But she was beautiful. If she had crushes on him, he would let her go through with it. The magic was flowing through him now from her soft small hand.
When Ekoyata began to see again, he saw clouds hurrying in the sky. A pink-red shone brilliantly at the horizon. And the rest of the expanse was pale gold. It was delightful. He could sleep there in the roaring wind. Ekoyata could see the big sun, now a butter-yellow balloon, shooting arrows in different directions.
Suddenly, the wind carried noise from the town to their way. They heard a strong alarm, drumbeats and voices of people singing. Ekoyata was amazed that they were so clear even though they were far away in the hill. Gloria turned her head from the sky and looked up at Ekoyata. They still held their hands.
'Did you hear them,' she said.
Ekoyata didn't answer. He was tantalized again by the riddles of the sunset sky which he thought the meaning was at the verge of revealing. Ekoyata wanted to wait to see the sun turned to a piece of lemon. He wanted to see it sank into the horizon.
‘We must go now,’ Gloria said. 'Turn me loose.'
‘Why do you want to go?' Ekoyata said in surprise. 'Don't you want me to see the sun go to bed?'
‘No, we can't wait. Didn't you hear them from the town?'
‘Yes, I heard the music and the alarm?’
‘Something is happening there.’
‘You want to go and see?’ he lay his hand behind her waist and touched the Akpono beads there again.
‘No, I don't want them to see us here. That alarm is a funeral. Let’s leave here.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘They bury the bodies of people in cemetery here if they don't have a house.'
‘All right. If that is how you feel, let’s go.’
'There is a shorter route to the town,' Gloria said.
Gloria was in front, just as they had come. Ekoyata would have love to see the first shades of dusk formed. He contemplated many things in his mind. The breeze was getting cold. Ekoyata's mind eyes stared through him into his future. The noise and the music continued to come to them from the town. Obehi should be anxious to see them back at home now. Ekoyata thought that he was not a lost son in the end. What a blessing his deportation from America proved to be! He had found the lost family thread.
What about Baneke, his dear homeland? he thought. Baneke had been humbled by the union. Most people had helped confirmed it that much. Baneke was rich in tourism, history, resources and culture. Gerontocracy, carefully guarded pride of riches and oppression had helped to squander the wealth.
Ekoyata was glad that he would be no loser if he go away from Baneke now. He had many portions of land here now. But he would complete the houses first, to leave a foundation for his future progeny in the land of his root.
His eyes came back to the present and savour Gloria greedily. He saw her innocence as she walked energetically in front of him. He saw a sense of security in her. And he saw that she kept an open mind with him. There were two Glorias in her though. One was soft and beautiful. The other was a restricted servant girl. He didn't like the servant. He wished he had a duster to blot it out from her, kill that servant, so that he never saw it again. That was what people saw about her. But he liked seeing the other Gloria, the soft black beautiful girl, the village belle. If he could swallow her, he would put her inside his body so that she would live there inside him. Gloria would unite with him and they would became one perfect soul.
He shook his head and gave Gloria another glance. Look at her! What an experience with her! Better than riches and the sleeping on the chest of a woman. He had tasted the three of them. A date with Gloria was better. She was enough to go away with this life. She was a fountain of life itself. But because people liked to look in a certain way, they called Gloria his servant. They were blind and didn't know they were. They looked but didn't see anything.
When I am seeing, they are blind, Ekoyata thought. When I am seeing Gloria and through her to the gold in her heart, their own vision hit the black walls of their eyelids and they think and say things in terms of their obscured visions.
Ekoyata believed he had only one regret. He was not going to remain innocent for the remainder of his life. He was going to leave the youths to waste, the way he met them in Baneke. He didn't want to form them into one solidarity. If Okojie did it, it would be all right. But Ekoyata would not. They were poor. They were part of the great wasted human capital experienced by the nation, a wasted generation. The government does not want them, and so were their kinsmen who manipulated their plight. And they had adjusted well to their conditioning.
He won't think of them. He won't feel sorry for them. He hated them now. He would shut their memories out of his mind and life. He knew that if he allowed their shame, their suffering and their conditioning to get to his full consciousness of justice, he would be shaken into heavier burden of guilt. He was guilty enough already even when he hated them. He was powerless to help them.
Cemetery Fence (A fictional representation of Leadership Crisis in Nigeria )
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