How Beautiful We Were(21)

Fathers and uncles and grandfathers move farther away from the women and children to confer, nodding to whatever Lusaka is saying. My friends talk about Konga. They imagine he’s in the forest, strolling without cares as animals roam nearby and birds tweet above him, listening to the voices of leaves when the wind forces them to speak.

At the far left corner of the square, Jakani and Sakani stand watching us. They’re in the same spot from which they’ve observed every meeting, including the last one, which they witnessed in entirety, though they did and said nothing even after Konga arrived.

Sitting on the ground not far from our mothers, my friends switch from discussing Konga to wondering when our stand against Pexton will end, how it’ll end. One of our classmates is getting sicker; he wasn’t in school today. Another friend’s baby brother fell ill; she had to stay home to take care of him so her mother could go to the farm. Whatever hope we had only days ago is fading; Kosawa can’t shake off its desolation.

Every few minutes, my friends get quiet—death can be talked about for only so long. One of them suggests that we wait in silence. Another says that while we’re silent we should pray in our hearts. Everyone agrees; if we’ve ever needed to pray without ceasing, now is the moment. I bow my head and start praying for Kosawa. I pray for Papa’s return. I pray for Yaya and Mama and for all mothers to cry no more.



My eyes are closed when a friend nudges me. Lusaka and the other men are walking to retake their places behind the grandparents. I quickly see why—Woja Beki and the soldiers and Bongo and the two other young men are turning around from the path that leads from Woja Beki’s house to the square. Mothers pick up babies and toddlers and stand up for a better view. Everyone stares at Woja Beki as he strides to the front of the square, exposing his spacious teeth, his eyes sparkling. The soldiers are on either side of him, Bongo and the young men a step behind.



* * *



—

We do not need to wait long for Woja Beki to begin speaking. He is beyond eager to tell us that his meeting with the soldiers has been a wonderful meeting—Hasn’t it been? he says, looking at the soldiers, who both nod without interest, their demeanors unchanged.

“My dear people,” Woja Beki says, “I put my head together with our fine soldiers here and our sons, and we agreed that we absolutely must find a good explanation for what is going on. We considered many different scenarios that could have happened, and then we said to ourselves, Maybe our dear friends from Pexton decided to make a detour to visit a relative on their way back home—which is possible, isn’t it, my dear people?”

“It is,” our parents and grandparents respond in unison.

“This is what I think, my dear people: I think that the wonderful men from Pexton went to visit someone who is a relative of one of them, and this relative, being a kind man, told his wife to prepare a bountiful feast for his dear relative and his friends, who have all accomplished something great by becoming workers for American people, and so the wife of the relative killed and stewed the fattest pigs and chickens and sliced and boiled the thickest yams, and the Pexton men and their driver ate well, so well that they decided that, because they were enjoying themselves beyond measure in the relative’s village, they would spend a few more days there; it wasn’t every day a man got a chance to reconnect with a relative and relax like that, and why shouldn’t they take a break for a few days? Their jobs would wait for them, their wives could surely use a break from cooking for them, and their children would have some space to be mischievous, so this delay would be good for everyone. It’s possible the men thought so. Is it not possible?”



“Anything is possible,” our parents and grandparents reply.

“Our good soldiers think that the Pexton men are responsible men,” Woja Beki continues. “Our dear soldiers think that our Pexton friends wouldn’t eat and laugh and soak up life so much that they’d forget their responsibilities, but when we asked our good soldiers to come up with another theory as to where the men might be, they couldn’t come up with any. The men have to be somewhere, but where? Their car did not have an accident on the way back to Bézam; otherwise, our good soldiers would have seen the battered car. The men didn’t vanish, because it’s not possible for grown men to just vanish, is it?”

“It’s not.”

“Weren’t we all here when their driver turned their car on and started moving it back toward Bézam?”

“We were.”

“Didn’t we all watch with our very own two eyes as the car left Kosawa?”

“We did.”

“So we have nothing more to tell our dear soldiers except the fact that the three Pexton men are somewhere out there, they didn’t vanish into nothing, they’re having themselves a good time, and someday soon, we’re certain, they’ll return to Bézam.”





The Children





HOW WE LAUGHED ON OUR way to school the next morning. All the cracking up we’d done after the soldiers left still wasn’t enough. We needed to dissect every detail—the way they’d looked at Woja Beki after he was done talking; the manner in which they had shrugged and walked back to their car. Did you see the looks on their faces? Aren’t soldiers supposed to be intelligent? Many years from now, we said to one another, the children of Kosawa will compose a song about this first victory that ultimately led to our vanquishing our foes. They’ll skip around in circles, just as we do today when we sing of how our ancestors carved up men from other villages who arrived here lusting over our land.