The crowd jump up again, roaring. The man at the gate say that every fight booked. I think back to early in the day when that little boy piss in my water jug, even after telling Yétúnde that he don’t want to play with me, and I fly up in a rage so wild that I did know right there that I could kill a child. My wind, she don’t have head nor mind, so a little storm rise up, blow him out of my room, and slam the door shut. In the evening I go into the woods to fight the tree but they all start to cower, or so it look. Rage was coming out of me whether I like it or not, and even though I know who I mean it for, it was starting not to care. I tell the man that I will challenge who win, and I come with gold if I have to pay.
“You paying me to fight? You mad?” he say and laugh. But he open the door. “Pay me now,” he say and I realize he was trying to steal more coin, but I pay him anyway. The donga already shouting and raging from a fight. I reach just as one fall down on the platform and the crowd start to chant. The chant get louder and louder, in a tongue I don’t know. I touch a man beside me.
“What they singing?” I ask.
“You new?”
“I come from the east.”
“Ikipizu. It don’t belong to no tongue. It mean kill him.”
So there be the crowd. Looking down on one man standing, one man on his back, and shouting Ikipizu! Ikipizu! Ikipizu! The fighter raise his fist to the crowd. Then he turn around and push the man off with his foot. I run back home.
A whole moon pass before I leave the house again. In the noon of that day, the house is most lazy, and those who not sleep, lie down heatdrunk and fan themselves cool. I going through a bundle, for I have enough clothes for a bundle now, and come across what I done forget. The linen paper that Emini used to keep secret by wrapping around her waist, the cloth that she wrap around me because none of the nuns did see the need to inspect a no name girl’s body. Her dreams, her plans. Trees tall enough to touch the moon, a city or citadel reaching even higher. Houses, halls, and palaces curved, like lying women, roads a day long, going up toward sky. A city in the trees, and bridges of ropes. Home on top of home all the way past clouds. Drawing of dreams I still don’t understand, but I do understand that somebody out there so wicked that he murders dreams, even the dream of a womb-dwelling baby.
I go back to the donga that same night.
Third match is where they put me. They ask for a name and I say call me No Name Boy. “This one, he call himself No Name Boy,” the announcer shout to the crowd and rub the fat belly under his white agbada. The crowd start to chant No Name Boy! No Name Boy! Until my challenger leap from out of the darkness and land on the platform so hard that my side of the platform whip up and almost throw me off. Love him, this crowd do, for they are roaring so loud that I don’t hear Pig Destroyer until the announcer say it. Then Pig Destroyer is all that I hear. His skin red like ochre, which could have been from the torchlight, but it look like he want people to think it was blood. A whiff come on the wind and I smell that blood is exactly what it is. Pig Destroyer! Pig Destroyer! is what the people shout, and when he stand tall he is taller than me by at least four heads. Before I even wonder where his stick be, this man hold out his hand and something from the dark give him a hammer.
“Hark, this is no stick fight,” I shout but in this crowd it is a whisper. The crowd roar again and he is a buffalo, charging after me. I slip to the side quick, but he quick too and I roll out of the way before his hammer smash the platform. He hammering and hammering and I rolling and rolling so fast that everything blur and I roll myself off the platform. I scream. I grab a floating boulder and for the first time look down into the darkness that clouds pass through. I try to pull myself up, but there is nowhere on the rock to climb up. So I swing my legs, trying to catch a small platform, really a door, and push myself from the rock. Pig Destroyer’s back is to me as he whipping up cheers from the crowd. I leap from the door back to a bigger rock, controlling myself this time, letting it sink, and waiting for it to rise when I use the push to leap off and land back on the center platform. Pig Destroyer still bathing in shouting and whistling and singing, so he don’t see me swinging my stick with great force and striking his back thigh. He shout, turn around, and run after me in a rage, hammering and hammering his club. That when I realize that despite a club instead of a stick, he is still fighting northern-style, where warriors just wail on each other until one get whipped up so bad that all he can do is block blows. I jump out of the way of a blow, for there will be no blocking that club. And then it happen. I leap out of the way, but I don’t land. I leap high above his head and the crowd all go wooooo. His head, my stick, I whip-whip-whip his left cheek, then right, then left, then right, then his neck and slice his lip, and spin-spin-spin like a gig and rip up his chest. The wind, my wind, decide to help me, I know it. Your dagger for the streets, not this donga, a voice sounding like me say, but I shut it down. He block his belly, but that is not what I was going for. Yet instead of drawing blood, my stab at his crotch draw a spark. Iron armor. The crowd laugh at him and boo me for hitting where man not supposed to hit. The thought take me out and he come at me again, northern-style like everything was an ant, and every hit a hammer. He throw his weight down, trying to knock me out of sky, but wind shift me sideways and I slice across forehead and down nose. Pig Destroyer scream like, well, a pig, and clutch his face, falling to one knee. He roar something but I all hear is something about women liking his face. He come for me and I dodge, but he ready for me and I dodge right into the swing of the club, which clobber me in the belly.