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.”
“And your mother?”
“I know my mother. She is right where I left her. And yet I will see her, Tracker. I leave in two days. Then we can go on whatever adventure you like.”
“You are the one always seeking adventure. Meet me in Malakal.”
“Meet me where you smell my scent. A lazy night this is, and we have fucked out the entire quarter. Drink some more.”
I drank and he drank until we tamed that fire in the chest, and then we drank more. And he said, Let us forget talk of fathers, friend. Then he kissed me on the mouth. This was nothing; Nyka kissed all and everyone, in greeting or parting.
“I shall find you in ten days,” I said to him.
“Eight is the better number,” he said. “More than seven days with my mother and all I can do is try not to kill her. Drink some more.”
A warmth, first on my forehead, ran down my neck. I opened my eyes and the piss hit my face and blinded me. I rubbed my eyes without thinking, and my right hand pulled my left. A shackle on my right hand, a chain, a shackle on my left. In front of me, a leg raised and piss spurting on me. Off in the dark, loud laughter. I lashed out but the chain stopped me. I tried to stand, I tried to scream, the women in the dark laughed louder. The animal, the beast, the dog pissed on me like I was the trunk of a tree. First I thought Nyka just left me drunk in an alley to be pissed on by dogs. Or someone, a madman or a slaver—they infested these alleys—or a husband who did not want me to find him now found me. My mind went wild, thinking three men or four, or five had found me in the alley and said, Here is the man who took the comfort from our lives. But men did not laugh like women. The dog lowered his foot and trotted away. The floor was dirt and I could make out walls. My mind went wild again. I would ask, Who are you men that I shall soon kill, but something gagged my mouth.
Popping out of the dark first, two red eyes. Then teeth, long and white and ready. Light was above me when I looked up, light peeking through branches hiding this hole. A trap I fell into. A trap long forgotten, so that even the trapper would not know that I shall die here. But who put a gag in my mouth? Was it so that I could not scream while it bit into me and tore chunks apart? And yet before I saw the face, when it was just eyes and teeth, the piss told me everything. The hyena backed up in the dark, then charged straight at me. Another jumped out of the dark from the side and knocked her in the ribs, and they both rolled into the dark, scowling, growling, barking. Then they stopped and started laughing again.
“Men in the West call us the Bultungi. You have unfinished business with us,” she said in the dark.
I would have said I have no business with spotted devils, or that nothing glorious springs from deceiving scavengers, but I had a gag in my mouth. And hyenas, from what I knew, had no qualm with live flesh.
The three came out of the dark: a girl; a woman older, perhaps her mother; and a still older woman, thin, with her back straight. The girl and the old woman wore nothing. The girl, her breasts like large plums, hips spread wide; her nana, a sprout of black-haired bush. The old woman, her face mostly cheekbones, her arms and frame thin, and her breasts lanky. The middle woman, her hair in braids, wore a red boubou tunic with rips and smudges. Wine, or dirt, or blood, or shit, I didn’t know; I could smell all of them. Also this. I looked into the dark for the male who pissed on me, but no man came. But the two naked women came in the little light, and I saw it on both of them. Long cocks, or what looked like cocks between their legs, thick and swinging quick.
“Behold, it looks at us,” the middle one said.
“Look at hyena womankind, longer and harder than you,” the young one said.
“Shall we eat it now? Take him in? Limb by limb?” the old one said.
“Will you raise much fuss, man? Living or dead flesh makes no difference to us,” the middle one said.
“Come, come no fuss, rend the flesh, juice the blood, eat it, us,” the old one said.
“I say we kill him now,” the young one said.
“No, no, eat him slow, start with the feet, precious meat,” the old woman said.
“Now.”
“Later.”
“Now!”
“Later!”