Three years it take me, and the first thing I wonder is why it take me three years to find out that Keme fucking other woman. I almost scold myself for calling it a shock, when I don’t feel anything like surprise. Of course he entering the house of other woman—I was three years ago that other woman. I not even trying to follow him when I see him, but think that he was following me. After all, why take the border road of Ibiku to come all the way around to Taha when many a road simply cut across? I was ready for whores or other man’s concubines, but not for a house owned by a widow with children and donkeys and one of the few camels in Fasisi. It make me wonder if in a man’s mind different kind of woman lay in different kind of way, and to get what he need he go out. That evening I follow only because my curiosity get hungry. He leave with a smile on his face and the thought that it was from a pleasing fuck didn’t bother me, but that it could come from a pleasing talk bother me to a fever. Wind was running ahead of me to trip him up and knock him down before I whisper through my gnashed teeth to stop it. Maybe Yétúnde know. He not under any duty to tell me nothing. Besides, she not the only one.
I not making note. But the second one is younger than me, and sell roots in Baganda district. I follow him that time, as he go from high Baganda, which sell all that is beautiful, to low Baganda, which sell all that is useful. That is why she selling yams there, for nobody in high Baganda want to see anything that remind them of dirt, especially food. She look like a woman who don’t wash. I wonder what Keme see in her, and what is it he getting that he not getting at his house. Maybe not getting it at a house was enough, for he never fuck her in one. After she close up her stall, I don’t even count to ten before the whole shack start to shift and shake and she start yelping like a small dog.
And he not the only one I follow. A voice that sound like me say, You looking for story, that is what you doing, and is because you don’t like your own. What story? I say back to the voice, to which she only say, Yes. But the children I follow too. In the day, of course, I see them playing in the dirt, with the youngest shouting, I am ninki nanka! Look at my tail! Look at me breathing smoke, and then he hold ash powder to his mouth and blow it. One child squeal, the other laugh, and the other curse out words he not supposed to know, but in the quick they all go quiet, turn and leave the house through the back. Is not the leaving that make me follow, for children will be children, but the quiet, for that is not like them at all. They weave through the Ibiku backwoods, past trees a hundred times taller than them, from a clear trail onto one that still hide in the bush. Not total silence, for the smallest one is singing something. But they keep walking like something unseen luring them until they come across five mounds, in what was a clearing before grass run it over. On these mounds they sit quiet and play quiet games, barely talking to each other. It look like a thing to let pass until a half moon later when they do it again. The third time I follow them halfway and grab the youngest.
“Your mother know you go in the woods?”
I expecting her to be in some sort of bewitchment, but she answer me clear.
“But we always go to the woods. Or they get lonely,” she say.
“They who?”
But she smile and push my hand off, gentle. I quit thinking bewitchment fall on them, and that it was all play.
Maybe I was looking for malcontent, or at least something more sinister, but that they was just children being children leave me feeling a way. The voice in my head would be disappointed if I did allow it. Or unsatisfied. Or whatever it is that lead me back to the donga, and that night I didn’t even fight. A man who take to wearing blood, like Pig Destroyer, defeat another man who go by the name Shit. Two fight to a draw and one get disqualify when in the quick he shift into a leopard and snap the other man’s neck with his jaw. No shapeshifting in the donga, the master shout, only fair fights in this arena, which make me laugh. I sit in the crowd as they shout and sing and curse and shake the floors, and there I recognize the smell of people hungry for blood. I stay for three more fights—quicker when you watching them instead of fighting them—until a man with foul breath say to me, Is you name No Name Boy? Every time you win, I lose.
I get home hoping he don’t come to my room tonight. Morning is still a good while away, I am thinking, when my back get such a clobbering that I barrel into an urn that crack. I roll over, frightened that it was a thief or murderer or demon, but is Keme, his lips wet with rage and his eyes red and furious.
“This is what you do at night, eh? This is how you betray my house? Is my money you betting on death match?”
Before I say anything he reach for my own stick and stomp toward me with it. I can’t ask myself how he find it, or how he know what it be for. I try to roll out of it but the stick still reach my thigh, my buttocks, and my back. I scream, and scream again, but he pull back only to beat me again.
“Stop!” I cry. And I shout it again, but he growling like some sick dog and turn to beat me again, like me was the most wicked child he ever did see. He still shouting and I wondering how he not waking up the house when he swing the stick again, not looking where he going to hit. I crawl away and he strike my back and I cry out. He say something about me loving to watch stick fight, then I going get one, and he swing the stick again. But this time I catch it.
“Stop,” I say.
He is the soldier, but I am the one who been killing people. He don’t know this, but I going to learn him. Still holding his end of the stick, he try to slap me but I raise the stick in his way and he hit it. He drop the stick and curse something that I don’t hear.