I passed a man smoking tobacco under a torch. He sat on a stool and leaned his back against the wall. Thin face, two large earrings, strong chin, though that might have been the light. The front half of his head he shaved, leaving the back to grow long. Goatskin cape. He did not look at me. From another room came music, which was odd, since nobody in this hall would notice. I stepped over men who did not move, men who could see me but had eyes only for the pipe. The burning-flower smell of opium was so thick that I held my breath. One never knew. Upstairs a boy screamed and a man cursed. I ran upstairs.
For someone not an Ogo this husband was as huge as one. He stood there, taller than the doorway, taller than the tallest cavalry horse. Naked, and raping a boy. I could only see his legs dangling, lifeless. But he was bawling. His two giant hands grabbed the boy’s buttocks while he forced himself. The wife did not want him dead, I thought, but said nothing about wanting him whole.
I pulled two throwing daggers, little ones, and flung them at his back. One cut across his shoulder. The husband yelled, dropped the boy, and turned around. The boy landed on his back and didn’t move. I watched him, waited too long. The husband was upon me, all muscle and skin, his shoulders massive like an ape’s, his hand grabbing my entire head. He picked me up like a doll and threw me across the room. He growled as he had while raping. The boy rolled over and grabbed one of the rugs. The man, like a buffalo, charged at me. I dodged and he ran right into the wall, cracking it and almost bursting right through. I grabbed a hatchet to chop his heel, but he reached back and kicked me all the way to the wall on the other side. It slammed the breath out of my mouth and I fell. The boy scrambled, stepping on my legs as he ran out. The man pulled his head out of the wall. His skin dark, wet from sweat, hairy like a beast’s. He batted away a line of spears leaning on the wall. Truly I knew men who were big and men who were fast but no man who was both. I pulled myself up and tried to run but his hand was around my neck again. He cut my breath off, and that wasn’t enough. He would crush my bone. I couldn’t reach knife or hatchet. I punched, thumped, scratched his arms, but he laughed as if I was the boy he was raping. He glared at me and I saw his black eyes. My sight was going dark and my spit ran down his hand. He even had me off the floor. Blood was ready to burst out of my eyes. I barely saw the man from downstairs break a clay jar on the man’s back. The husband swung around and the man threw something yellow and rank in his eyes. The not-Ogo dropped me and fell to his knees, screaming and rubbing his eyes as if about to scratch them out. Air rushed into me and made me fall to my knees as well. The man grabbed my arm.
“Is he blind?” I asked.
“Maybe for the next few blinks, maybe for a quartermoon, maybe forever, you can never tell with bat piss.”
“Bat piss? Did you s—”
“A giant is just as dangerous blind, young boy.”
“I’m not a boy, I’m a man.”
“Die as a man, then,” he said, and ran out. I ran after him. He laughed all the way out the door.
He said his name was Nyka. No family name, no house of origin, no place he called home, and no home he was running from. Just Nyka.
We hunted together for a year. I was good at finding everything but business. He was good at finding everything but people. I should have known but he was right, I was a boy. He made me wear robes, which I did not like, for they made fighting difficult, but people in some cities took me for his slave when I wore only a wrap. Most towns we went to, nobody knew of this Nyka. But everywhere we went where somebody knew him, they wanted to kill him. In a bar in the Uwomowomowomowo valley I saw a woman walk right up to him and slap him twice. She would a third time, but he caught her hand. She pulled a knife with the other and grazed his chest. Later that night my hand was between my legs as I heard them fuck across the room.
Once we searched for a dead girl who was not dead. Her kidnapper kept her in a burial urn in the ground behind his house, and took her out whenever he wanted amusement. He gagged her mouth and bound her hands and feet. When we found him he had just put his children to sleep and left his wife to go around the back to do things to this girl. He pulled away loose plants and scooped away dirt, and took out the hollow stick that he stuck in the top of the urn so that she could breathe. But this night it was not her in the urn, but Nyka. He stabbed the man in the side and he staggered back yelling. I kicked him in the back and he fell. I took a club and knocked him out. He woke up tied to the tree near where he buried the girl. She was weak and could not stand. I put my hand on her mouth, telling her to stay quiet, and gave her a knife. We steadied her hand as she pushed the knife down into his belly, then chest, then belly again over and over. He screamed into the gag until he would scream no more. I would have the girl get satisfaction. The knife fell out of her hand and she lay next to the dead man, crying. Something changed in Nyka after that. We were liars and thieves but we were not killers.
I tell you all this because I want you to see him as I saw him. Before.
Business was drying up in Fasisi. I grew tired of the place and wives missing husbands every seven days. We were at the same inn we always went to split our profits. And drink palm wine or masuku beer or liquor the colour of amber, which set fire in the chest and made the floor slippery. The fat innkeeper with a frown line right above the wart above her brow came over.
“Pour us both the bottled fire,” Nyka said.
She produced two mugs and filled both halfway. She said nothing, not even when Nyka slapped her buttocks as she went back to the counter.
“Good fortune awaits in the city of Malakal, or the Uwomowomowomowo valley below,” I said.
“Good fortune you thinking? What if I am hungry for adventure?”
“North?”
“I think I shall see my mother,” he said.
“You said before, the second-greatest thing you two gave each other was distance. You have also said you have no mother.”
He laughed. “That is still true.”
“Which?”
“How much bottled fire did you drink?”
“Which mug is yours?”
“You drank from it?” he asked. “Good. When last we talked of fathers, you said you fought yours. One day my father, he comes in from a day of not working, only scheming and plotting and going nowhere. Hitting us was sport. One time he hit my brother in the back of the head with the walking stick and my brother was simple after that. My mother made sorghum bread. He beat her too. One time he whipped her with the walking stick, and she hopped on one foot for two moons and limped after that. So yes, let us say that this was a night he comes home from drink and swings the cane and hits me in the back of the head. Then he kicks and beats me on the ground, knocks another tooth loose, shouting for me to get up and take more. One day we shall talk just of fathers, Tracker. So yes, let us say he swings the stick at my head, but he’s too slow, and I too fast, and I catch it. Then I grab the stick from him and swing it to his head. He falls, just like that, on the floor. I take the stick and beat him and beat him, and he holds up his hand, and I break all his fingers, and he holds up his arms, and I break his arms, and he holds up his head and I break his head till I heard crack, crack, crack and still I beat, and then I hear crunch, and then sloosh, slosh, and my mother screams, You killed my husband, you killed your brothers’ father. How will we eat? I burned him behind our hut. Nobody asked for him, because nobody liked him, and everybody rejoiced at the smell of his burning flesh.”