Bingo's Run (22 page)

For all Mrs. Steele's beauty, money, and art, she was just a lonely hustler, and the Thaatima was an empty shell. Is the mud in America different from the mud in Kenya? Senior Father said, “Man comes from mud; man goes to mud.” That is life: the run from the mud to the mud. It did not matter what Mrs. Steele wanted with me, just as it does not matter what mud you run to.
What mattered was what I wanted—this was my run. I wanted nothing from Mrs. Steele. I did not want Mrs. Steele or her art or her money or even America. I wanted Charity—and an F-150.

I looked into the blue emptiness of the Thaatima's eyes. “Okay, Boss. You get ya contract,” I said to him. I turned to the last page. At the bottom was a line, just like the one Kepha Kepha had typed. Below it was typed: “Bingo Mwolo, Citizen of Kenya.” Next to my line was the line with Thomas Hunsa's name. The last line had Scott Goerlmann JD typed under it, and it was already signed. “You'z tha winna,” I said to the Thaatima, and wrote my name: “Bingo Mwolo.” The Thaatima took back his pen faster than a beggar eats roast rat.

The tree in the middle of the Excursion Café rustled. I heard it say, “Bingo, run,” but the pain in my belly was too great. I walked from the Excursion Café. I walked away—away from the Livingstone, from the tree, and from the contract.

On Kenyatta Avenue, without the burning sun, the night air was cool. Rage began to beat inside me. Legends don't like to lose.

The night the gang boys came for Senior Father, I was asleep next to Mama under her shawl. I was twelve. They came into our hut like an explosion. They dragged Senior Father outside as though they did not want to mess the house up (Senior Mother was particular like that). I saw them kill Senior Father through the door hatch. He tried to stop the gang boys, but Senior Father was a planter; he was a rubbish fighter. Three bullets was all it took:
Bang! Bang! Bang!

Senior Mother pushed Mama out the back of the hut. “Run to tha riva,” she said. Mama grabbed my wrist and we ran.

Our hut exploded in fire. Mama stopped, and we looked back. We watched it burn. Mama held me tight, then she ran on. Sharpened steel stopped us; Man's machete was raised to heaven. “Where's you going?” Man shouted. Mama gripped me so tight it was impossible to breathe. “Let the boy go,” Mama cried. Man took Mama on the ground. I lay there still. My legs were tree
trunks. I could not move. Mama's eyes looked at me when Man was on her. She loved only me. At my ceremony, Senior Father had cut my face nine times and told me, “Bingo, you are man.” But I was not a man; I was a useless tree. Man finished her before our hut was even burned.

In the morning, Mama cleaned her skin in the river. She tried not to let me see her cry, but I did. A red snake came out of her, went in the river, and swam away.

Senior Father and Senior Mother were ash. Mama and me went to Nairobi. Mama tried to give me away to the church, but I cried and she kept me. We came to Kibera, to Mathare 3A, and many men came to smell Mama. Wolf came the most. The police sent a man into Kibera, but everyone knew he was a policeman because he smelled too clean. The pretending policeman came to Mama again and again. “Tell me about Wolf,” he said over and over. I got his boots when his head was cut off. Mama lay with the pretending policeman because that is how she fed me; for this, Wolf called Mama Sneetch and killed her. Mama never loved Wolf; she never loved the policeman or any men. She only loved me.

Even walking, it did not take much time from the Livingstone Hotel. Two months after Wolf shot Boss Jonni and his hookers, I was back outside the Taifa Road high-rise. The construction in the street had not been finished—it never is—the hole was just bigger. Like before, I hid in the construction and waited to get into the building. I was there to get Boss Jonni's businessman case. The money was my chance. My chance to show Mrs. Steele and the Thaatima. My chance to get out of the city. My chance to win. My chance for Charity. The chance to finish the run I had started.

The gates opened to the parking garage and a silver Toyota 4Runner drove out. Just before the gates shut, I ran in. Boss Jonni's
blue Porsche was still parked next to the stairway entrance. It had not moved, because Boss Jonni could not drive it in hell. I took the key from under the car, entered the stairway, and opened the small gray iron door to the lift shaft. I heard rats scurry and I climbed inside. In the dark, I felt around with my feet and found Boss Jonni's businessman case. I lifted the handle, and the gun, still inside the case, slid to the bottom.

Soon I would be back on Taifa Road with $200,000. In an hour, I would be back at the Livingstone. In two hours, Charity and me would be on a bus, and we would disappear. In Nkubu, $200,000 buys a lot of seed-yam. I looked up the long black column of the lift shaft. Wolf was nineteen floors and a column of darkness above me. He lived in Boss Jonni's apartment now; that was his destiny. I was glad I would never see him again.

Every second, runners think: this way or that. If they go this way, they meet Destiny No. 1; that way, Destiny No. 2.

I chose that way.

Worm eats the mud off Man to put him back in the earth. It is how we die.

Worm was asleep inside me, coiled up. Worm woke up. He had eaten long ago and now he was hungry again. Worm stretched out his coils and slithered from his nest. He slid into my right leg—my foot twitched. He entered my left leg—my thigh trembled. Worm chewed into my belly—it hurt, and I groaned. When Worm wiggled into my chest, it began to hammer. Worm moved on. He slithered faster; into my arms, my right and then my left. Then Worm slid up to my throat. I choked, and then Worm was in my head.

My thinking went crazy. Bombs went off, cars exploded, shacks burned. There were yells, shrieks, and helpless cries. “Harambee!”
my head screamed. “Riot!” Mama said to me, “Bingo, run.” Rage roared from a cave deep inside.

I took Wolf's gun from the businessman case and dropped the case, still with the money inside, back through the small gray steel door into the lift shaft. The steel of the gun felt strong in my hand. Wolf had used this gun to shoot Boss Jonni and his hookers, and now it would shoot him. Wolf had killed Mama; I would kill Wolf. This was better justice than all the other killing.

At first I walked up the stairs, but Worm's drumbeat became loud and stopped the pain of Gihilihili's paradise. I began to run. On the eleventh floor, the three stains on the concrete stairs were fainter than last time. Time's dirt dulls any stain. By the time I got to the nineteenth floor, I breathed hard, my belly hurt, and Worm was going crazy in my head. He screamed “Harambee” over and over. I knocked on the door to 19B, and soon a girl opened it. The gun hung loosely at my side. The girl was cheap and badly painted; her lipstick was smudged across her wide closed lips. Her hair was shaved short like a boy's. She wore black skintight pants that left her lower legs bare. Her feet were clean, her toenails red. She wore a tight gold top, but she did not fill it much.

“Ya?” the girl said. She reminded me of a drink-hut server—there to serve.

I stared past her. The apartment looked the same, except that Wolf's sofas were black and there were no dead people on them. The glass-topped table had not moved, but the mountain of white was smaller now, the size of a breast. There were four trails in the powder, as if a family of worms had wriggled out.

“Who is it?” Wolf called from the bedroom at the back.

“Boy,” Drink Hut called as I walked into 19B. “He got a gun.” Through the window, the night view over Nairobi was beautiful. It was as if we were in heaven and a million people sparkled
below. I could see Kibera; even there the lights shone. Wolf came into the main room barefoot, his jeans undone. I raised the gun toward him. His top half was naked and smooth; he had not got fat yet from being a big boss. His right breast was inked with flames and the words “Hell's Love,” and both his upper arms were circled with barbed wire. His right forearm had a prison-number stamp: 14362. One strand of oiled hair had escaped from the rest and hung loose. Thick straight heavy eyebrows sat above his dark eyes, and a short beard hid his short square chin. His nose flared with each breath. He walked toward me, not seeming to notice the weapon pointed at him. A broken-toothed smile filled his mouth. “Jambo, Meejit,” he said. “Good ta see ya, maan. How's tha Livingstone Hotel—good, ya? I hears you'z have a visit with Gihilihili?” He shook his head. “You'z lucky to be here.”

Despite his power, Wolf had a gentle side—like a scarf wrapped around a machete handle. His strength was greater because he understood the weak. “Meejit, when you'z go to America?” he asked. As he walked toward me, I raised my arm and pointed the gun at “Hell's Love.” His hair shone in the light. He stopped a few feet in front of me. He ignored the gun pointed at him. Drink Hut shut the door and came to stand beside Wolf.

Drink Hut draped her arm around Wolf's waist, laid her head on his arm, and looked at me thick-lipped and dull-eyed. Drink Hut did not fear Wolf; this was why he liked her. She was the rock that did not crush under his weight. Senior Mother once said, “You can have a palace, but build it on rotten wood and it will fall. Build a house on stone, and it will last forever.” Drink Hut was the stone Wolf stood on.

No one moved. It was as if I pointed an ice cream at them and everyone waited for it to melt.

Drink Hut turned her body, placed her hand on Wolf's belly, and pressed her body against his. Her belly was swollen.

I almost forgot why I was there. “I come to kill ya, Wolf,” I said.

Wolf and Drink Hut did not shift. The air-con clicked on. Wolf shook his head and smiled. “Na, Meejit. Ya neva kill me. If ya kill me, who's ya run for?” He took a small step toward me. Drink Hut moved, too. Her grip on him was firm, as if construction bolted them.

I held the gun tight. My hand shook. I could not stop it. My palm was wet.

Wolf said, “I knows you'd be back, Meejit. However far ya run, ya's always run back to me. Because that what you do, Meejit. That's what you good at, ya.”

The gun shook more. Wolf smiled more. Drink Hut held him tight. Worm jammed a beat in my head:
Boom-di-boom boom-boom-di-boom
. Wolf said, “Ya, Meejit, you'z my runna.”

Wolf's law had two sides: heads for obedience, tails for servitude. The rules were simple: Disobey, and you are dead. Fail to serve—you die. Before that day, I had seen Wolf as a simple man. But I was wrong. Lit by the modern lights of the apartment, I now saw Wolf's shadows. He was more complicated than I had realized. Wolf loved power not for obedience, hookers, and money but for how it lit him, how it pushed away his shadows. As Drink Hut pressed her belly against his, I saw that Wolf understood that without a slave there can be no master. Without weakness, there is no strength. Wolf's love of power was his fear of weakness.

Worm felt cold and lit a torch inside my head. “Harambee!” he screamed. “Riot!” Worm made my head crash mad. I stood before Wolf and remembered. One day, when I was a little boy, I had gone to the field with Senior Father. I sat under a tree, and in its shade I ate the lunch Senior Mother gave me and watched Senior Father harvest yams with his machete. Now and then he
stopped and shouted at me, “Runna, wata!” That was my job in the field. I ran the water skin to him. After he drank, Senior Father said, “Bingo, you iz bes' runna in the worl'. You save me!” When I got back to the tree, thousands of ants were crawling over my food. I grabbed the food and stamped on them. At first I stamped on the ants out of anger, but then it was just for fun. I got them all. Stamp, stamp, stamp. Then, from nowhere, someone grabbed my arm and lifted me right off my feet. Senior Father, wet with work, was holding me. His face was wild. “Why you kill tha ants?” he screamed. I said, “They'z eat ma food.”

Senior Father said, “Ya understan' nothin'. Tha ants clean tha mud and make tha seeds' home.” His eyes got wide and he shouted, “We neva kill nothing!” His mouth spit wet in my face. He dropped me and went back to the field. His feet were so big, I was sure he killed hundreds of ants with each step. I cried and ran back to the village.

Wolf had stamped on thousands of ants, and now he was boss and lived in a high-rise with Drink Hut, who was swollen from his plowing. Senior Father shouted, “We neva kill nothin'!” But Worm screamed in my head, “You neva kill, then you are tha ant.”
Boom-di-boom boom-boom-di-boom
.

Worm steadied the gun. I turned it on Drink Hut. That is how you hurt Man; you blast away the rock from under him.

I dropped the gun—Wolf's gun—and ran from 19B. At the end of the blue river was the exit. I reached the concrete stairs and sat on the top step. My body shook. I was cold. I had been cold for a long time. I wrapped my arms around my body. I opened my mouth to scream. No noise came out, but Worm flung himself through my throat and slid away.

I ran down the stairs. I did not even feel the concrete. I had come for Wolf—to show Mama. I had come for my $200,000, to show Mrs. Steele, to get Charity, to plant endless fields of yam. But, just as when I arrived, I had nothing. I had left the money in the rat-filled lift shaft. I had left Drink Hut standing beside Wolf. My finger had wanted to shoot away her concrete silence. I had wanted to take from Wolf what he had taken from me. But I hadn't. Was it because killing is wrong, or was it because I was an ant, meant to be stood upon and not to stamp out others?

I ran out of the garage, onto Taifa Road, and into Nairobi's night. The street was where I was meant to be. I am the runner. Every day, I start with nothing and end with nothing. That way, I run faster.

I ran without stopping until I reached the traffic lights on Kenyatta Avenue. I had to wait for the light to turn red. A matatu stopped beside me at the light. Painted on the side was a round woman dressed in bright purple clothes. The words under her read, “The Church of Eternal Salvation.” The music from the matatu sounded as if she was singing: