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Fiction
Police Wahala
(Excerpt from
Desires of a Common Kind)
By
Uche Peter Umez
School Road glistened in the drizzle. The bus
wobbled from side to side. Like a drunk groping
homewards. An oncoming vehicle blasted its full
headlights into the bus driver’s eyes now and
then, and the razor-sharp headed man slowed down
and cussed as violently as a motor tout.
Two men sat in front with him. The other sixteen
passengers were crammed tight into four rows of
iron seats. Some of them sighed, grumbled,
hissed, at the bus’s wobbly motions. Some
cracked jokes about its battered insides, and
giggled like men high on tobacco.
Bede was preoccupied with himself. He always
remembered Fela’s song about suffering and
smiling whenever he entered a bus that was
jam-packed, and how he often felt smelly
afterwards, because he could sniff varied human
odours on his clothes, aside from the exhaust
fumes.
Yet Bede didn’t mind being swayed back and
forth. He imagined he was on a horse-back,
enjoying a harmless bumpy ride. The rocking
movements suited his present state of mind. It
took his blues away, birthed by the incident
which had soured his day.
He was glad he didn’t board the bike. He would
have been wet by the time he got home. He was in
a hurry to flee the office premises; to put the
incident with his boss behind him, the instant
the bell dinged six. So he had flagged down a
motorcyclist. Just as he made to sit astride the
bike he thought he shouldn’t take his anger
home, since his face might still be flushed with
ire.
Really, it wasn’t wise to walk irate into the
sitting room, for it would disquiet Chisom. The
doctor at the medical centre advised her, some
months earlier, to avoid provocations, to always
monitor her blood pressure. Although Bede often
longed to share with her his stressful
encounters with his boss, he was often compelled
to act more mannish by bottling up his feelings.
In order not to worsen her condition even more.
When the cyclist noticed Bede no longer wanted
to ride with him and was turning towards a bus
that had stopped a few yards away, the man
lashed at him: ‘It’s your type who gets killed
on the road, confused and stupid, walking around
like zombies, thinking stupid things.’
Bede stopped in mid-stride. He clenched his jaw
and fists. ‘You should fling yourself across the
road so a tanker would crush your bones,’ he
thought of hitting back. But then he reckoned
the cyclist might be having a rough day like
him, and so, ambled away in silence, advising
himself not to direct his frustration at
somebody else.
Now Bede was sitting in the middle row by the
window. A drowsy man sat huddled next to him
wearing a tatty Panama hat. A dusty red
handkerchief peeked out of his bark-brown safari
shirt. He had the air of a pensioner, humbled
against his will, yet uncomplaining, and
content. Bede thought he looked ill, too,
because an unpleasant woodsy smell wafted from
him. The man might have swigged some herbal
potions or smeared himself with a kind of
poultice.
As the bus buckled along the dim road, Bede
wished he had not bought the fuel. Instead of
his boss to express his appreciation, the man
had derided him, like a houseboy.
If Bede himself weren’t such an experienced
driver, armed with the daring skills required
for shunting without scratching cars, he would
have been sitting in the depressing queue,
waiting for the next supplies from
who-knows-where. But the hippo of a boss behind
that desk didn’t appreciate his efforts at
getting fuel on time. Perhaps, next time, Bede
would watch the whole scrabble, like some
spineless driver who was huddled over his wheel,
praying to God to assist him obtain half a
gallon after the fracas had died out. Like a
typical Nigerian.
Mr. Brutus Achu was really lucky he did not have
to fight his way through a rowdy line of
fuel-seekers at the filling station. Bede always
made sure the fuel in the car’s tank was
sufficient enough to get his boss through the
weekend. The man did not know how difficult it
was to get even the quantity he had bought that
afternoon. All he was worried about was the
little change his poor driver had salted away –
in case of exigencies. As a driver, you never
can tell what might befall you on the road.
Being on the road is like going to bed; you
might wake up with a pain; or worse, stay dead.
Bede ran a hand on the rusty edge of the seat in
front of him. His boss couldn’t pretend he
didn’t know that sometimes the pump attendant
wanted you to tip them, before they would sell.
After all, they could say their supplies had
dried up just when it got to your turn. What
would you do? Fight them? At most, you would
rave and roll your vehicle away.
Bede caught his shadowy reflection in the
cracked windowpane, and eyeballed it, like it
was his boss’ face glaring back at him from
outside. Next time he would sit idly in his car
and watch other drivers breach the queue. He
would not shrug a shoulder, even when someone
swerved around him to take over his place. He
would return to the office and tell Mr. Achu
flatly that none of the filling stations had
fuel. Everybody knew the fuel scarcity had
forced most of them to shut down. He had almost
headed to Aba, since it housed some major
depots, he would add, keeping an eye on the
tremor on his boss’ brow.
But Bede couldn’t risk using up the little fuel
in the tank, only to get to one of those
crookedly managed filling stations whose meters
had been reset to cheat a driver of the actual
quantities he had paid for. Besides, you might
drive the over-fifty kilometres to Aba and find
out that there was nowhere you could obtain fuel
still. It would be reckless to drive even
further to Uyo, simply because you wanted to
re-fuel at a proper filling station.
The only option was black market. Bede would
watch his boss’ face swell a few inches, and,
finally, he would smile inwardly when the
tight-fisted man approved more money for him to
buy adulterated fuel from the thriving roadside
fuel hawkers.
‘Driver, take it easy!’ someone shouted in
panic.
Bede gasped in alarm, nearly flying off his
seat. His hands gripped the front seat fast, so
his chest didn’t slam into it. The old man
toppled sideways, elbowing him in the ribs.
Bede winced, turned to heave him off his body,
but paused as he saw the humour in the way the
man’s head lay, like a throw pillow, in his lap
– as though the man expected a pat on the head.
Bede didn’t smile or laugh. He only felt
awkward, and sat still.
The bus had pitched to an abrupt halt.
Squashed-up between the door and a male
passenger’s legs, the conductor was craning his
neck out the window.
‘Where did you keep your mind?’ a plump woman
scolded the driver. She was sitting in front of
Bede. She had a sickly sweet oily smell, and
reeked of mackerel. ‘If not for God, you would
have crashed us all into the car in front of
you.’
‘Ndo,’ the old man told Bede, pulling himself
languidly away from his body and back into his
own seat.
‘I hope you didn’t hurt yourself?’ Bede asked.
‘Old soldier never dies.’ The man grinned, and
glanced away towards the bus conductor.
Bede rubbed his ribs, thinking there was
something rueful in the Old Soldier’s grin. He
tried to picture the man’s life, if he lived
alone, if he had come all the way from the
village to demand for his pension, like the
thousands who often assembled at the municipal
council secretariat whenever he went to drop
some stationeries with the finance/supply
office, but he heard someone hiss, ‘Every time!’
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