When Bendic returned, he changed from his work clothes and came out to the parlor to sit with Application Master. Bendic asked Paul to get him a glass of water, and Paul soon emerged from the kitchen with Bendic’s beer mug filled and dripping with water. Bendic motioned for him to keep it on the side stool to his right. The wrapper on his waist was rolled up in a loose bunch in front so that the waistband of his Y-front briefs was visible.
Ma called Bibi to help with dinner and asked Paul to get the guest room ready. She wanted him to change the sheets and open the window to air the room.
Later that night, after dinner, they all sat outside because there had been a power outage and the air in the parlor had become warm and stifling. Bendic asked Ismaila to check how much diesel was left. “Maybe you can turn on the generator for an hour so we can watch the nine o’clock news.”
“The buses all charged double fare today,” Application Master said. “From Ogibah to Ahoada, and from Ahoada to Port Harcourt, they charged double the usual fare. As if what we used to pay was not already high enough.”
“It is so o,” Ma said. “We were lucky to be able to fill our tanks with petrol, but we couldn’t find diesel for the generator.”
There was speculation that tanker drivers were planning to embark on a strike the following week, so people flooded the gas stations, panic-buying and causing a shortage even before the speculated strike.
Bendic explained this to Application Master while the children waited, hoping to catch a hint of the matter that had brought Application Master from Ogibah. Ajie sat on a kitchen stool in the rough circle, certain the news would trickle out soon enough. Paul took off his shirt and fanned himself with it. Bibi had spread out a mat on the ground and was lying on it.
“It is unheard of,” Ma said soon after, and Ajie saw the outline of her shoulders shrug in the moonlight. “Why should he send the police to arrest you?”
“Ogbuku has always been a bit stupid. And his father, Nwokwe, sits back as his son misbehaves like this?” Bendic said. “Someone has to stop him before he goes completely mad. All that Company money he is eating has gone to his head. The fact that a fellow citizen can send the police to arrest another person is a different matter altogether.”
“They call Ogbuku ‘Chop-I–Chop’ these days,” Application Master said. During the campaign for the local government chairman position, his message to the Youth was that whatever he got once he was in office would not be for his pockets alone, that he was not the greedy type, whatever he could collect would surely go around. “You chop, I chop” would be his modus operandi. Not like the old-timers, who he said wanted to keep everyone away from the pot.
“I still don’t see how that gives him the right to eat the money meant for renovation of the only school we have.”
“It takes a certain originality to call that pitiful job he did an upgrade,” Ma chortled. “Ultramodern, indeed.”
“This petition I wrote that is running him crazy, he has no idea I can do worse than that. If I sit down properly and write a petition against him…eh?” Application Master sighed. “These young ones think that they can do as they like.” He touched his breast pocket, but the pens that he always had clipped on weren’t there.
—
A band of policemen had come into the village one morning and arrested four boys. Four boys they found sitting by the road near the empty market stalls. They shot them with Taser guns first to encourage their cooperation. Then they hit them with batons to make sure. By the time people arrived at the scene just after they had taken the boys away, they saw bloodstains in the sand.
Two weeks earlier, Application Master had written a petition against Chop-I–Chop, who was the current councillor for the ward and had his eyes set on becoming the next local government chairman. A contract had been awarded for new classroom blocks for the secondary school in Ogibah. Chop-I–Chop’s company won the contract. The project was billed as an ultramodern learning center. In other words, it was six classroom blocks, complete with laboratories, staff room, library, and gatehouse. Many months passed before work began on the school site. The “ultramodern” project manifested as a three-classroom block with rough unplastered walls and floors, no ceiling, no staff room, no library, no laboratories. Once the roofing was done, pupils began to take lessons in the classrooms because the old block was overfull.
People grumbled: Chop-I–Chop could have followed the blueprint and built decent classroom blocks and still have made a killing from the contract. They summoned Chop-I–Chop to answer for himself at a youth meeting; he didn’t bother to show up. He said the project had been inspected and the execution approved and commended by representatives from Company (who had awarded the contract as a community development project to soothe tempers frayed by the ongoing construction of the new pipeline). Why were they all going mental, Chop-I–Chop asked, about money that did not even come from their own pockets? He dismissed the elders’ talks as the prattle of yesterday’s men.
Application Master then wrote a petition against him to the local government chairman; copies of the petition were sent to the general manager of Company, to the manager of the department in charge of the inspection of the project, and finally, to the office of His Excellency, the governor of Rivers State.
When Chop-I–Chop got wind of the petition, he decided to go shake up Application Master a bit and make him withdraw his submission. Things could be kept quiet at this stage, so he went to the police station in Ahoada and had a little talk with the DPO. Two policemen in plainclothes were dispatched to do the job.
They enter the courtyard of the house and demand to see “Mark Alari, the owner of the house.”
Application Master’s sister in-law, who is in the out-kitchen frying garri, simply hollers over the hiss of the pan, “Who is asking? Who wants to see the man of the house?”
The two men march to the shed and speak to her tersely in English and order her to go find her brother-in-law.
She pulls wood out of the fire. “Just a minute,” she says to them, “please, sit here and wait,” and then hurries out. In no time, word goes around. Strange men called at Mark Alari’s house, demanding to see him, they wouldn’t say who they are. Mark is on his way back from Aduche’s house when the message gets to him. He is told to keep a low profile until they find out who these men are. What do they want? The young men who have gathered wonder among themselves. People from out of town come here, demand to see a man without stating their mission? Oh, back in those days when Ogibah was Ogibah, such madness would not last a second.
Ogibah youth gather at once and march toward Mark’s house. They find the plainclothes policemen sitting on a bench by the kitchen shed and begin to question them: “Who are you? What do you want?” But the men will not say. So they order the men out of the courtyard. They should detain these men. Who knows what they have come for. They look suspicious. They may be hired killers, but even hired killers should know better than to come into Ogibah like that.
A boy pushes one of the policemen. The man pushes back and tells all of them to back off. “We are police,” the man declares. The crowd reels. Police? But the excitement in the air isn’t about to cool off yet. “Show us your ID,” they demand. “Why did you not say this? In fact, we do not believe you. Your ID cards may be fake. Okay, okay, tell us, policemen, what have you come for? What is your mission?”
They have come for Mark Alari, they say. They have come to take him to the station for questioning.