When he arrived at home with the herd, his cousins who sat in front of their house playing rummy welcomed him with invectives.

“Oh, here comes the vagrant, son of the air,” started Okoth, then he broke into a derisive laughter. “See, an apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, he speaks with the cows and they listen to him. Who else can talk to the animals apart from the free air.” The other two boys cachinnated, but Helena kept quiet and only stared at Odongo with sympathy.

“Sister, don’t be peeved just because he called him a vagrant,” said Omolo, looking at Helena, and then he added with more laughter, “He has no home, no mother, no father... oh my goodness, no grandmother, he is a bastard, can’t you see? We’re doing him all the best by granting him a roof over his head and a floor to lay his ribs.”

“Aaah!” retorted Helena. “Stop! Just stop making fun of our cousin, please. It makes no good.” The boys kept quiet and returned to their game. She was their eldest, the second born in the family, and seemed to have every control over them.

Odongo turned a deaf ear to their talks and led the cattle to their shed. When they heard him talking to a stubborn bull, saying, “Hey, Ogina, leta kichwako hapa (bring your head here)” – the boys laughed again, this time round keeping their laughter a bit suppressed.

Indeed, Odongo always spoke to the cattle and they seemed to pay heed to him. It was a rich long-built understanding that had grown between him and the animals so that they only paid attention to his voice and no one else’s.

When he finished tying the cattle, he said good evening to his cousins and walked into the main house. Only Helena replied to his greeting. She then stood up and followed him into the house. “Odongo, I’m so sorry for what my brothers were saying about you,” she stood behind him and pleaded on behalf of the boys. Her voice was soft and full of affection.

She was also seventeen and a student in form three at a local day school. She had a smooth dark skin and an alluring physique. Her face had a tone of redeemable joy and her eyes full of love.

Odongo turned and looked at her and blushed. “It’s okay, Helena. Thank you,” he managed to say. “They are my brothers and I have nothing against them, you know.” He then looked away from her. “Come,” said Helena, opening her arms wide. He walked into her open arms and she embraced her tight.

For a moment, he forgot his sorrows and felt his life taking a new turn. It was as if his own mother had returned and was holding him tight, trying to console him and hew off the chains of his life.

She let him free and, holding his palm into hers, led him to her room. “You know this isn’t right, Helena. If mama finds out I’m here, she’ll rough me up to death,” he complained when they entered the room.

“I know. But it won’t be for too long,” she replied. “I kept you something.” She let his hand free, opened her box and removed a piece of pancake wrapped up in a newspaper leaf. “Here. Mama bought it for us, but because she didn’t leave you your share, I decided to keep a portion of mine for you.”

He took the cake and smiled. “Why are you doing this? You know mama very well; she’ll be hostile if she finds out,” he said.

“She won’t. See, you’re part of us, and I hate the way mama and my siblings treat you here,” she explained. Silence fell between them as he took a bite from the cake. “Eat and go to the kitchen, bro, and pretend to be busy. I have already washed the...”

“What!” he exclaimed and looked at her with disbelief. “Please, don’t tell me you’ve washed the utensils. Do you want mama to kill me?”

“Uh, come on, she won’t. I won’t allow her. I know she doesn’t want us to do the dishes because she’s taking you for both a scullion and a herds-boy, but I can’t bear up with it, Odongo.”

He looked at her resignedly, gobbled up the piece of cake while she watched with wonder eyes, and left the room. His flit caught Otieno who was peeping beside the door with surprise. Odongo gave him a brief trenchant look and proceeded to the kitchen.

Just as Helena had said it, the utensils were lying neat and shining on their rake, and the cemented floor dusted clean. He looked at it and smiled with admiration. Then he poured some water into a jug, took his milking jelly, can and stool, and went out to milk the cows.

Min Pilot was not yet in. As usual, she would be back from the market at around half past seven. She had a stall at the market where she hanged a few commodities such as fruits, vegetables, cooking oil and sugar. But to be sincere, there was nothing of business in that woman. It was a mere scarecrow to anyone who was out to bat an eyelash at her source of wealth. She had enough to keep her family pot hot; Pilot would always send money every month-end for her upkeep and the kids’ schooling.

Pilot was her firstborn, well-educated and flying a public-service plane in the United States, as was the talk in town. It was that never-seen plane that earned her the name Min Pilot and the blissful luxurious life she led in the dusty countryside. Everyone could see, the forty-nine year old widow had grown into a strong, podgy, dark-skinned African woman with very little to care about in life.

At around a quarter past seven, after watching the news, the children gathered in the kitchen to prepare supper. Omolo and Okoth went about peeling potatoes while Otieno chopped the meat and Helena picked the rise. Odongo went on with milking the cows outside – there were five of them to be milked.

It was a perfect sharing of roles as usual until Min Pilot arrived a few minutes later and stood at the kitchen door, her handbag hanging down her shoulder. In the living room sat two visitors waiting.

The kids stopped working and stared at her frightfully, as if they had done something wrong. She glared at them, her eyes burning with rancour and her head slowly straightening and turning from one side of the room to the other like a crane lifting a scoop of soil from the ground to the roadside. Seeming not to come to terms with her expectation, she inquired in a rough and strict voice, “Where is he, that wayward bastard?”

“He... he is milking the cows, mama,” answered Omolo in a frail and shaky voice.

“Go and call him,” she ordered. She then stepped into the room to allow the boy out. Omolo dashed out like a housefly, forgetting even to greet the visitors in the living room, and went to the kraal where Odongo was. Min Pilot scowled at the remaining kids, grunted and left the room.

She found Odongo greeting the visitors in the living room. She placed her handbag down, removed a purse from it and, grabbing the boy by his arm, walked him out of the house into the globe of darkness like a thief. She turned on her phone’s torch and looked at Odongo who had begun trembling from fear. “I have visitors in the house,” she vociferated

“Yes, mama,” replied Odongo, his voice trilling.

She opened her purse and removed a five-hundred-shilling note. “Take this money and go to Mbeki’s shop. Buy from him two packets of milk, a loaf of bread... um... bathing soap, salt and... oh, and two rolls of tissue paper. Did you get that?”

“Yes. You said two milk, bread, soap and two tissue papers.”

She became angry with him immediately, clicked herself and hissed, “You thickhead, I said two packets of milk, salt... um... two rolls of tissue, a loaf of bread, butter – don’t forget butter. What else?”

“Bathing soap.”

“Good. Have them written in your brain, okay?”

“Yes, mama.”

She gave him the money. As he walked away and her back to the house, she turned to him as if she had just remembered and shouted, “Seven minutes. You have only seven minutes to get back, boy.”

Odongo drifted away into the orb of darkness, trying as hard as he could not to stumble on a stone. Mbeki’s shop was almost two kilometres away from their home, but he had to get there as soon as he could, buy the items and return before the seven minutes of Min Pilot elapsed.

Not that there were no other shops in the area; his aunt only had a preference for items from that particular shop, arguing that they were fresh and affordable.

When he arrived safely at the shop, he made a great sigh of relief, ordered the items, paid and left.

It was on his way back that he was visited by premonitions. The atmosphere had grown darker and the stories he heard in nursery and early primary schools about ancestral spirits lurking in darkness beclouded his mind. He lost his attention on the road. All of a sudden, he tumbled on a stone and the packed items left his grip as he sprawled onto the ground helplessly. The package landed onto another stone and got torn making the items spread out in different directions.

For a moment, he lay on the ground in silence, a massive amount of pain pinching his skin and bones and causing him to weep. Then he slowly gathered up himself and began moving his hands on the ground in search of the items. He touched onto something soft and his fingers coiled back in fear. He returned his fingers and touched the object properly. It was the loaf of bread. He picked it up.

Then searching again, he found the soap and the two packets of milk, and then the two rolls of toilette paper. Now it was the butter and salt missing. He searched once more, but would not find them.

He gave up on the search and was making a step away when his toes moved into something that felt like sand. He bent down, unable to see what it was, and scooped the substance into his palm, took a taste; oh, it was the salt.

He began to cry again, apprehensive of what the unforeseen occurrence would culminate into. What would he tell Min Pilot, and how would she react? The butter too was nowhere to be seen, yet he remembered clearly how she had emphasized on its purchase. He stopped crying, told himself ‘it’s no use’ and moved on.

***
Part 3 up next.
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© Laminsah