“It is task force,” was the curt reply. It sounded ominous, connoting horror so strong that Elvis shivered and looked up quickly, half expecting to see some malevolent manifestation.
A man came running toward him, carrying some clothes on hangers, a policeman hot on his heels. Just before he got to where Elvis stood, the man tripped and fell. The policeman pounced on him and snatched the clothes away, carrying them to the raging bonfire and throwing them in. As they crinkled and burst into flame, Elvis, drawn to the fire, walked over and stood watching.
The heat slowly crumbled the fuel and the flames reflected off the face of the fallen man. Still prone from the policeman’s tackle, he watched the fire slowly turn his goods into a mass of hot ashes.
“But I get ten children,” he mumbled over and over. “How I go feed dem?”
Unsure why, Elvis put his arm around the man’s shoulders and helped him to his feet.
“Take heart, brother,” he said.
The man turned to him.
“I try to make money begging, but my spirit wan’ die. So I borrow money, begin to sell dese Okirika.”
Elvis nodded. He knew the man was referring to the secondhand clothes smuggled in from Cameroon through the port town of Okirika.
“Every day I go walk up and down, ringing one small bell make people see me,” the man continued, his voice breaking. He stared into the blaze and the flames ripped through his heart, the fire entering him. His mind reached back and, like a dead star, collapsed upon itself. He screamed. It was sudden. The sound startled Elvis, who let go of the man and jumped back. It also startled the crowd of strangers and other spectators gathered round the fire, and they turned to look. The man screamed again and tore his clothes off, dancing around the fire naked, emitting piercing calls, bloodcurdling in their intensity.
Before anyone could react, he jumped into the fire. As the flames licked around him, it seemed the fire smacked its lips in satisfaction. And in the fire, he continued to yell as he wrestled with it. The last thing Elvis heard before the man died was his terrible laugh. Its echo hung in the air. He never thought to ask the man’s name.
“Ah, madman,” someone sighed.
Elvis got off the bus and trudged past the buka where he normally ate. He lingered hungrily outside, but he couldn’t shake the smell of burning flesh or the sight of the man writhing in the flames. He wondered why he hadn’t helped. Instead, he had just stood rooted to the spot, staring.
A quick count of his money made it quite clear that he couldn’t afford to buy a meal even if he could face it.
He turned away and headed home. It wasn’t even noon yet, he noted. How was he going to spend the rest of his day? He had been fired from the building site, and his long absence from Iddoh Park and the beach had cost him his spot there. He needed money to buy a new spot, money he didn’t have. He felt a little ashamed at how quickly the practical pressures of living had usurped the image of the burning man.
“Elvis!”
He spun around. A man stood in the open door of the buka, dressed like Superfly. Elvis did not recognize him, and the man, noticing his confusion, explained.
“It’s me. Okon.”
It hit him. It was the man he had fed barely a week ago, at this same buka. Okon was the man who had scrabbled in the dirt for rice. How come he was so kitted out now? Had he taken to a life of crime? Elvis smiled at Okon, straining to mask his thoughts. He really wasn’t in the mood for company, but his hunger got the better of him, so he went back. They sat facing each other, caught in an awkward silence broken only by Okon’s occasional repetition of his name—“Yes. It’s me. Okon. Okon”—as if this mantra would bond them. Finally he of fered Elvis a drink and some food.
“Take anything you want — extra meat, stout, anything.”
Elvis smiled uncomfortably and ordered some eba and egusi sauce.
“No big stout?” Okon asked sounding a little offended.
“No thanks. A Coke will be fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Elvis ate in silence as Okon studied him. The buka’s radio sounded like someone had drowned its speaker in muddy water; still, Elvis could clearly hear the Wings singing, “Please catch dat love dat is falling on you … Don’t let it drop, it is not made of wood …” Elvis sang along in his head, wondering if it would be rude to ask Okon how he got the money he was spending.
“So why are you home so early?” Okon asked.
“I was fired.”
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear dat. Why? You are a good person.”
“You hardly know me,” Elvis protested.
“I know you better dan you think.”
He went back to drinking his stout, which, Elvis noted, seemed milky and thick, unlike any stout he had seen before. Noticing his confused look, Okon explained:
“It is concoction.”
“Sorry?”
“Concoction; condensed milk and stout. Very good for your blood.”
Elvis nodded. It sounded disgusting, he thought.
“I know you dey wonder how I manage get all dis money,” Okon said.
Elvis shrugged, embarrassed.
“Dat’s okay. I don’t want you to think I am a tief, dat’s why I tell you.”
“That’s quite okay, really,” Elvis replied. “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I don’t think poorly of you.”
“You are really a good man, but I’ll tell you anyway.”
Elvis was a little worried; he didn’t want to be an accessory to any crime.
“Blood.” Okon said simply.
Elvis was by now visibly agitated. Blood. Did that mean Okon was an assassin for hire? Lots of business rivals had turned to that as an effective system of beating competition. Could it be blood money? Elvis suddenly felt nauseous. Okon noted his expression with alarm and explained.
“Blood. De hospital, dey pay us to donate blood. One hundred naira per pint. If you eat well, you can give four pints in four different hospitals, all in one day. It’s illegal, of course, but it’s my blood, and it’s helping to save lives, including mine. Right?”
Elvis smiled in relief. Okon smiled too.
“You can come too, now dat you don’t have job,” he urged.
“No, I don’t think that’s for me.”
“But if you change your mind, let me know and I’ll connect you.”
Elvis finished the rest of his meal in silence and, getting up to leave, thanked Okon. As he began to walk home, he heard Okon call out: “Don’t forget. Okon, dat’s me.”
Back in his room, Elvis sat in the rust-crisp metal chair facing his desk. Flakes of rust, like red dandruff, fell to the floor. With a sigh he unlocked the metal box he had just placed on the desk. It used to be his school box, holding his books all through primary school. He ran his fingers along the top and down to the handle, remembering the groove it had cut in his hand. It was still there, a hard calloused line.
Opening the box, he adjusted the mirror he had taped to the inside cover. Then, methodically, with the air of ritual, he laid out the contents: a small plastic compact of hard, pressed face powder, a few tubes of lipstick in different colors, a plastic case with eye shadow in several shades of blue, a small bottle of mascara with a brush hardening in it, an eye pencil and a tin of Saturday Night talc. He held up the tin of talc, admiring the image printed on it — a white couple in evening dress dancing under a sky full of stars. That was the life, he thought. Also laid out next to the box and its contents were a wig and a pair of sunglasses with wide frames studded with rhinestones.
The old battery-powered record player scratched through “Heartbreak Hotel,” a stack of coins keeping the stylus from jumping through the worn grooves. Elvis nodded along, singing under his breath as he mixed the pressed powder with the talc. The lumpy powder crumbled in cakes of beige, reminding him of the henna cakes Oye ground to make the dye she used to paint designs all over her body. Satisfied with the mix, he began to apply it to his face with soft, almost sensual strokes of the sponge. As he concentrated on getting an even tone, his earlier worries slipped away. Finishing, he ran his fingertips along his cheek. Smooth, like the silk of Aunt Felicia’s stockings.