The Man Died

The Man Died

When Roger died, the news spread throughout the village faster than the rumour that convinced people to bathe with salt to avoid contacting the Ebola virus. The passing of the iconic character that Roger had become evoked varied reactions from each different hearer. Yet, there was one common denominator: all were in agreement that the village was never going to be the same again.

And who could blame them. There was not another figure so divisively unpopular as he was equally popular for deeds both heartwarming and mind-curdling.

Roger, who from his days in elementary school was churlishly rechristened with an irritably vexatious prefix " 'Old' Roger" because of an unexpected outbreak of greys in his jet-black hair, grew up with a rebellious spirit. At least that was how his father, Adi, explained Roger's drab melancholy.

"Don't worry," Adi was wont to calm his wife's growing dissonance with Roger's increasingly perturbing preference for solitude, "it is something that he will outgrow with time. After all, I was even worse than that at his age."

"Hmm, ok oo, my husband," an unconvinced Ebo often replied, though that worried countenance of hers never changed nor did the attempted comforting disposition of Adi tame the hyenas of worry that nibbled at her soul.

Once, Ebo suggested that Roger's case be treated as a spiritual malignancy requiring of realignment by ministers of God anointed with the efficacy for that purpose. The less-spiritual Adi must've blown a fuse in his head that day with such an outburst of vehement opposition to the suggestion that Ebo knew never to broach the topic for a long while.

Meanwhile, Roger got into fights, became increasingly pernicious and easily belligerent. It was enough excuse for him to pick up a quarrel (or a fight) with anyone who so much as used the word "old" even when not used in reference to what had become a vexatious contention: the nickname "Old Roger". This state of affairs was not helped by the fact that before the end of Form 6, he had as many grey hairs as black. The contrast was crisp because the black hairs were so black some suspected he dyed it. But to those with such suspicions, there was no explaining his very obvious and quickly spreading greys.

It took new happenings for Roger's case to reverberate around the family house again.

"God forbid bad thing!" It was Ebo's trademark reaction for anything that challenged her reality. "No bi my pikin! Lai lai! God forbid!" saying the last words with a swipe of her right hand around her head and ending the action with a snap of the thumb and index finger as she pushed her arm away from her body. It was a reflex local reaction to ward off evil.

"I know you want me to ask," Adi finally dragged his eyes from the Tribune Newspaper he was reading at the time, set the pages carefully on his lap and turned to her. "Oya, tell me. Wetin happen?"

"My pikin no fit bi winch," she blurted, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head vigorously. Then, she proceeded to explain to Adi how the news had filtered to her that people around the village were hush hush about the way the renowned village mad-woman (whom everyone agreed to have been possessed by a legion of demons) behaved around Roger. For someone famous for violent reactions and acts to self and anyone within the vicinity to noticeably calm down whenever Roger was about had set tongues wagging. The maleficent links beginning to be drawn as explication for this series of events was unnerving for Ebo.

For the first time, Ebo noticed that Adi was disquieted by her apprisal. Stories surrounding that particular madwoman were unsavoury and there was no denying their authenticity. Only the most vile acts could've merited the consequences that befell her. And there was a history of repercussions for each and anyone with dealings with her. That was an outcome Adi was bent on avoiding for himself and his family.

In his calmest but sternest voice, he said to his wife, "Send Roger to me as soon as he returns. You hear me?"

Looking forlorn but relieved, Ebo nodded and retreated. With no more appetite for the news, Adi cast the newspaper aside and stood up. He was talking to himself as he walked into the room he shared with his wife.

"Let this be the last I will hear that you are within shouting distance of that woman," a visibly nettled Adi was laying it out to Roger later that day.

"But, I just..." Roger had begun in his defence only to be stopped by a right backhand across the right-side of his face that shifted his standing position and sent him staggering backwards. It stung and a scream escaped his lips out of sheer reflex.

It drew out an eavesdropping Ebo who rushed towards the now bitter and sulking Roger. She was cautious not to allow Roger think by her actions that she was on his side but didn't want him to feel unloved.

"You know we only want the best for you," she was saying as she tried to give him her customary comforting hug. She noticed his obdurate reactions in avoiding comfort but didn't relent. "We don't want you coming to any harm."

"That should teach you not to speak back at me," it was Adi talking. "It's like you're becoming too big for this house. It's time you know that I'm still in charge here and you're going to do as you're told. You hear me?" Adi moved menacingly towards the pair as he spoke these last words.

He saw the fear that caused on Roger's face. But that wasn't the only thing he saw. Just below the veneer of that emotion, he also saw a steely stubbornness that reminded him of his own younger days of careless abandon. Only that he never could muster it in front of his dominant father as he could feel Roger doing.

"You better make it clear to him that there will be hell for him if he steps out of line," he said resolutely to Ebo who was still endearingly placating Roger.

With that, he stumped out of the house. He needed some fresh air and with another power cut and the familial tension in the sitting room, the outdoors will do him some good.

He was not four paces from the frontage when a fleeing Roger wheezed past him shouting, screaming and crying all at once. It left Adi aghast. He was able to make out a few words of the retreating figure of Roger: "Wicked people", "No one cares", "Leave me alone"...

As he turned from the disappearing form of the one who used to be his beloved son to look at the distraught form of his wife silhouetted between the frame of the entrance, he could only shake his head. "What has become of him," he wanted to ask but he knew the question will break his wife who was remaining strong because she believed he was firm and solid. If he gave her any cause to think he was flailing too, there'd be nothing left for her to depend on. So instead he took a silent but deep breath to muster the conviction behind his voice and verbalised, "I hope that rascal knows he's sleeping outside this night?"

It lacked the power he wanted the words to have but before it was out of his mouth, he turned swiftly and strutted off.

Everyone minded everyone else's business in the village such that before dusk it was supper gossip that Roger's parents had confronted him about his diabolical (in their opinion) relationship with the ominous madwoman. Some debates were held over how soon evil will befall the Adi family. Everybody laughed and went to bed that night. Like every other night.

Except that it wasn't.

At dawn, the Adi house lay in ashes. Burnt to the ground. When people came around, two ashen remains were discovered among the ruins. Roger's parents. It wasn't long before a village thrown into mourning started to point fingers. And it wasn't only unanimous, it was overwhelming. Roger's culpability was either direct (three people had claimed to have seen a person like Roger sneak in and out of the house before bedtime) or diabolical (something was bound to happen eventually as soon as Roger started hobnobbing with maleficence).

Roger was to spend the rest of his life with an unofficial tag as the one who orphaned himself. And if he was belligerent before, he worsened appallingly. Stubbornly refusing to leave the village and daring anyone with proof of his complicity in the deaths to do their worse, Roger kept no friends, picked up fights with everyone, young, old and anyone in between. He needn't be provoked to engage.

He beat up a farmer's children for having their football enter his living area and when their father complained, he pelted him with stones he kept for that exact purpose. He killed the neighbour's goats that dared left their droppings near his door. He sprinkled their blood in the space between their houses. He scattered the fruit baskets of two fruit vendors left temporarily on his path to the village square and produced a dagger when they confronted him, sending them scurrying. He slapped the White suit-wearing mendicant missionary who dared knock on his front door.

And each episodic misdemeanour was magnified and exaggerated to no end to add to the disturbingly frightening imagery of Roger. Several ill times that befell anyone who so much as fell under Roger's shadow or whose paths crossed Roger's were interpreted with the broad strokes of the diabolism of Roger's existence.

Then, when he was as much a part of the village as was the very harmattan dust for which it was famed, the man died. Just like that. People woke up to find that he picked his own final resting place because they found his remains in a rather peaceful posture on a piece of land originally owned by his dead parents. It was, for the villagers, as if Roger foresaw his own death and prepared adequately for it. His life and death split their history to the time before and after him.

After purification rights had been done to shield the village from any further influence from the passing, the entire village partook in the obsequies. Roger had gone. To his grave. The farmer whose children he beat up, to spread further loathsome stories about old grey Roger, made a show of planting mango seeds at the grave. He knew these seeds were corrupt and wouldn't germinate. What better way to add to the eventful life of this enigma? To continue those perverse filthiness that became Roger's aura.

To thwart this particular farmer's insidious attempt, the mango did germinate. In fact, it became more productive than those tended to by the expert farmer. However, no one dared pick the fruits. But one evening, when the elements threatened to rain a flood, the skies darkened and the wind blew a storm, sending everyone running to the safety of their homes, one of the farmer's daughters, who was now an old widowed fruit-vendor in market-square but who had run out of her mango stock had the idea to go pick the unattended-to fruits at Roger's graveside.

Everything went smoothly as she picked some of the biggest fruits she'd seen (or rather "felt" because it was pitch-dark and she went around feeling for the fruits on impulse). At several times she felt a "presence" but the chase for profit boosted her adrenaline to keep up the pick up. Until, as she later relayed her fellow market-women, Roger thought she'd had enough. He therefore got up and gave her the knock of her life. She claimed to have been left neck-stiff by that knock. It added to the Roger folklore.

But there were stories that didn't get the same exposure as these perversions. No one shared the fact that Roger took care of the madwoman's feeding until her death. Rather, the emphasis remained that he must've poisoned the last meal she took from him. Only the three different wayfarers who at different times in passing through the village but couldn't go further because of the darkness of night can accurately tell of Roger's extreme kind-heartedness as host of the helpless against whom others shut their doors. Little children unable to speak will also not spread the little joys Roger brought them with the funny faces he made to make them laugh when no one was watching.

It'll also never come to light that a power-surge at midnight caused the fire that claimed Roger's parents' lives and that were he at home, he'd have died well. That if his parents had listened, they'd have understood that Roger was trying to be friendly with the madwoman because he felt more comfortable with the less-privileged than the entitled. And he may have been Old Roger. He may have died and gone to his grave. They may have planted that mango tree over his head and that old woman may have come to make a living from picking those mangoes but he never gave her a knock. She, cut out of the old cloth of her farmer father, was an old lying hag.

It was the wind that blew the biggest mango down. It just so happened that it fell straight on her head. But she obviously deserved that stiff neck.

Old Roger must have smiled six-feet under.