How Beautiful We Were(88)

“Move to Lokunja?” several shouted in unison.

“Buy land?”

We did not need to hear any more.

We stood up and lifted our stools. We signaled to our wives that it was time to leave. Some of them appeared reluctant to obey; one look and they knew it wasn’t the right time to attempt to defy us. The interpreter called out to us as we walked away, saying we didn’t need to sell our lands and move to another village unless we wanted to. We heard Sonni calling too, saying we should give Mr. Fish a chance to explain.

A few of our fathers lingered to talk to the interpreter, to find out what it was that Pexton truly wanted, but we knew there was no need to ask—they wanted the entire valley. They wanted whatever oil was below the ground on which our children played. They wanted to search for oil beneath our huts. They wanted whatever oil sat idly under the kitchens in which our wives cooked. We would die before we let them have it.



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The next day, Sonni made a round of our huts to extend an invitation from Mr. Fish: the oilman wanted to sit down with us in his house. It was certain to be another waste of time—what more could he have to say?—but we went anyway, a week later, along with the Sweet One and the Cute One, who insisted we owed it to our friends in prison.

In a room full of books and pictures of a long-haired woman and three boys with leaf-green eyes, Mr. Fish’s interpreter told us that Pexton absolutely did not expect us to sell them our lands. The only thing Pexton wanted, the reason they’d sent the previous overseer back to New York and brought Mr. Fish to us, was that they truly wanted peace. If we wanted the same thing, why didn’t we all shake hands and start anew? Pexton was ready to make a deal with us, a preliminary deal to set the basis for the bigger deal: if we stopped breaking and burning and instilling fear in their laborers, they’d continue working on the agreement regarding our percentage with the Restoration Movement. But first our friends in prison would be set free, as soon as we all shook hands as men.



The three of us in attendance excused ourselves and went outside.

On Mr. Fish’s porch, looking at the expanse lying before us—the laborers’ conjoined houses and the empty school; the oil fields with structures jutting into the air delivering black smoke; pipelines running in all directions; our huts in the distance, undignified and slumped on their knees—we deliberated on whether we should accept Mr. Fish’s terms. We wished Thula were there, but we couldn’t write to her and await her counsel: our friends in prison longed to sleep on their beds, eat warm meals, wrap their legs around their wives, and watch their children do homework by the bush lamp. It was for their sake that we agreed to walk back into the house and shake Mr. Fish’s hand, and lay down our matches and machetes. We would give Pexton three months to start giving us our percentages, in cash, delivered on the same day of the month, every month. We would give them a year to start cleaning the river and the air and the land, and if they couldn’t fully clean them, at least stop poisoning them so they might recover by themselves.

The overseer agreed to everything. Of course, he said, smiling. We smiled back. One of us laughed. Was it truly happening? Were we really making a deal with Pexton?



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The interpreter took a photo of us shaking hands with Mr. Fish as the oilman beamed, grabbing our hands with both of his. We looked at each other, flattered and amused at his excitement. The fact that we had the power to make an important man from America so happy surprised us. After the handshakes we took a group photo, Sonni and Mr. Fish in the center, shaking hands, the three of us and the Sweet One and the Cute One on either side of them. The interpreter, as he took the photo, said it would be sent to newspapers in New York to serve as a testament to the power of dialogues.



Mr. Fish rang a bell, and a servant, dressed in black and white, appeared.

He nodded as Mr. Fish spoke. In less than a minute he returned with a tray of glasses, all filled halfway. We each took a glass. Mr. Fish held his glass up in his hand and said something in his American-accented English that sounded nothing like the English we’d spoken with our teachers at the Lokunja school. His interpreter laughed at whatever he’d just said and we all laughed too. We lifted our glasses high, to imitate the American, grinning like giddy goats. Mr. Fish clinked his glass against Sonni’s, and we began clinking our glasses against each other’s. Mr. Fish drank whatever was in his glass in one gulp. We looked around at each other and did the same. The taste made us crunch our faces, which made Mr. Fish burst out laughing, and soon we were all laughing hard, forgetting we were in the house of an American oilman. We walked out of the house that evening with three bottles of the drink, his gift to us. That night we shared it with all the men of Kosawa as we recounted the story of the meeting, enjoying this moment of unity that had long eluded us. We told ourselves not to celebrate quite yet, but we were prepared, finally, to exhale.

That all happened about six years before Thula returned home.

In that time, we did nothing to hurt Pexton. Oil spilled on our land and we did nothing. Our children coughed and we did nothing. We sat on the bus to Lokunja with the laborers and we did nothing to them. We’d given Pexton our word. We kept it.

We waited for them to keep theirs.



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