Bingo's Run (24 page)

“Throw it,” I said.

He threw. It didn't come close. I threw the next one; my shot was better than his, but the garbage mound had grown. My rock was also far off.

Krazi Hari burst out with his mad laughter. “Ya, Meejit wanka,” he shouted. “Ya fookin' useless.” He was waving a half-eaten newspaper like a stick. He laughed lunatic style. He screamed, “Ya dumb sheet fren', a half-brained idiot.” Nothing had changed. Nothing ever changes, except that the mound of garbage gets bigger. “You pair so fookin' useless ya can neva hit a fookin' bus. Why don' ya go an' wank off ya. At leas' tha' way ya neva miss!”
He laughed out loud again and started to jump up and down like the lunatic he was.

“Fook it,” I said.

I picked four rocks up off the ground and started to walk up the garbage mound. Georgi watched. “Get some rocks,” I said to him. “Let's hit tha wanka.”

The stink was terrible. I marched fast, and Slo-George followed slowly. The scavengers carried on; work is work.

There was a slam behind me. I looked round. Mrs. Steele had gotten out of the car. She shouted, “Bingo, wait!”

Fook ha, I thought. Mrs. Steele ran toward the mound. “Bingo, wait,” she shouted again. At first I continued walking. She yelled again, “Bingo, I said wait,” and I stopped. Her voice could stop a dog from shitting. Mrs. Steele walked up the mound toward me. She had on her hooker shoes and gripped the contract in her hand. Even Krazi Hari stopped his craziness and watched her.

Mrs. Steele's hooker shoes slowed her. Her feet sank into the black muck, but she was still faster than Slo-George and passed him. She lost a shoe in the filth. “Fuck!” she said. She took off the other shoe and threw it. Three scavengers looked up and dashed toward it. Mrs. Steele got closer to me. She breathed hard. I felt sick from the smell—I was amazed that she could bear it. Her contract was already smeared with filth. Her face was sweaty; her voice was loud. “So that's the Master?”

My eyes followed hers. She was looking at the lunatic.

Vapors took over my head. I retched, then retched again. I sat down. I could not breathe. I did not say “Yes,” I did not say “No.” But I admit it: I nodded.

Before I could speak, Mrs. Steele said, “Bingo, you wait here. No way am I going to let you play me. I know exactly what you are capable of.” I guessed that the vapors had gotten to her head,
too. The white skin of her feet was black from filth. The white of her dress was smudged with dirt, so that some of the black dots joined up.

I called out, “Mrs. Steele, wait.” I had no idea what the lunatic might do. But she did not listen to me. She went on, and with each step her feet sank up to her ankles in filth. “Wait,” I shouted. She and her contract did not stop. “Wait for me,” I said. But she carried on. Who was I to stop her?

Slo-George reached me and looked down. His eyes closed together. He grunted.

“I'z fine,” I said.

Mrs. Steele was close to the lunatic. Against the giant sun behind him, Krazi Hari's shape started to swirl. I said to Slo-George, “We have to get her.” Slo-George helped me stand and we followed Mrs. Steele up the hill. But we were slow. I leaned against Slo-George as I walked. Mrs. Steele was almost there; none of this was my fault.

I had never been this close to Krazi Hari. He looked like a long pencil; his feet were rooted in garbage, his head thrust toward heaven. His hair was mad, as if it was trying to escape him. He had four teeth. His shredded clothes were black, but he glowed in the sun. Flies buzzed around his head. From time to time, he swished his rolled-up newspaper at them.

Mrs. Steele made it to the top of the hill. She reached her hand toward Krazi Hari. The top of her head did not reach his shoulders. “Master, it is a pleasure to meet you,” she said. “I am Colette Steele.”

Her hand hung in the air. Krazi Hari placed the rolled-up newspaper into it.

“Thank you,” she said, as if this was a normal, everyday event. She handed him the contract. He took it, rolled it up, and swished it. Just like normal.

Each breath was painful for me. I sat down on a smashed-up wooden box and watched—I figured this would be better than TV. Slo-George sat beside me. He put his hand on my shoulder. It still had a rock in it—it hurt, but I did not say a thing. The sun beat on my head as if to say, “Bad friend.”

I looked up at Krazi Hari and the hustler art dealer. The show was about to start. They looked good, the two of them. Krazi Hari dropped the rolled-up contract onto the mound of garbage. It landed on a large piece of blue plastic as if it was his desk. He lifted his right arm into the air and opened his hand. At least a dozen flies landed on his palm. He then closed his fist, lowered his hand, and made a hissing noise. He threw his hand at Mrs. Steele. The flies bounced on the blue. The heat and the smell made my head steam, and my thinking became shadows of shapes. I was not sure if Krazi Hari spoke or if all the sounds of Kibera became his voice. His words were slow:

The lunatic roared over the din that came from the other side of the East Wall of the Kibera slum.

Mrs. Steele stared at the lunatic. She did not move, and neither did the flies, dots on the blue plastic. Even the scavengers stopped to listen. He carried on:

Kibera's noise carried on. But after all the riots, rapes, and guns, Krazi Hari was still here. Who riots on a stinking garbage mound? Surrounded by his scavenging soldiers, flies, and rats, the king of the garbage heap could only die when all the garbage was gone—and that would never happen. He had more to say:

Mrs. Steele's mouth moved, but I did not hear what she said. Krazi Hari seemed to grow taller as she sank into the garbage. But the lunatic was not done yet.

Krazi Hari's voice silenced. In that silence, I imagined mad things. The lunatic, hair crazy, stood on top of all garbage as if the garbage mound was the world and Krazi Hari the king of knowledge. The flies, one after another, flew off the blue plastic. The show was over.

Mrs. Steele had met her Master. It was time to go.

Mrs. Steele still had Krazi Hari's rolled-up newspaper in her hand. She put it down on the blue plastic and picked up the contract. She folded the last page of the contract to the front and said, “Master, can you please sign this for me?” She pulled a pen from her pocket and pushed the contract and the pen toward him. Krazi Hari took the pen as if it was a dagger and stabbed at the paper. Mrs. Steele smiled. “Thank you, Master,” she said. I liked that—she always finished her run. As if it was a dance, she picked up the rolled-up newspaper and handed it to the lunatic. He gave her back the contract. She waited, but Krazi Hari kept the pen. He had been reading all his life; perhaps now he would write.

Mrs. Steele came toward me, smiling, holding her contract. Slo-George lifted me to standing and the three of us walked down the mound together. As I walked, I stepped on shards of red, rotting browns, dulled yellows, broken blacks, lost greens, deep blues, dull silvers, and molding purples. If life is color, so is death.

The old tree watched a growth retard, his giant friend, and a well-dressed white woman walk from the garbage into a waiting Mercedes. The tree had seen the garbage grow and heard the lunatic scream many things. The tree knew that the world was a strange place, where the divine was called Krazi and the suffering cried, “It is God's will.” The tree knew that one day it would see itself drown in man's waste. The tree was there to watch man destroy himself and the tree he once planted. The tree gives shade even to the man who sits against it with his axe.

Car doors slammed. My head spun from the stink. I tried to push from my head the thousand voices of Kibera and the lunatic's words. Mrs. Steele sat beside me. Her eyes were green, the way they had been when we were at the swimming pool. She was very beautiful. “Bingo, are you feeling all right?” she asked. The car air-con helped. I started to feel better.

I nodded. Her sharp red lips felt warm on my cheek. “Good,” she said, and I smiled at her.

On my other cheek, I felt dough. Slo-George. He kissed me, too!

The car had not moved yet.

“So where is his studio?” Mrs. Steele said.

I looked at her blankly. She clutched the contract.

She said, “So where does Thomas Hunsa paint? Where are his paintings?”

“Ah,” I said. “Tha' further on.”

Mrs. Steele leaned forward and screamed “Drive” at Mr. Alex. It was loud enough to make the dead live. The hat nodded, and the car inched away. The lunatic shrank from view, a flagpole without a flag. The brown DHL van followed behind us. The caretaker still sucked on his long white clay pipe, a thin smoke spiral connecting him, through the open window, to heaven.

Road by road, I told Mrs. Steele the way to Salome Road in Hastings. As we drove, slower than flesh rots, my head cleared and the banging inside stopped. Whatever direction I said, Mrs. Steele screamed it into Mr. Alex's ear. We were a good team, and she was happier now, without her hooker shoes. Slo-George slept.

Mrs. Steele was pleased with her lunatic. “Phenomenal,” she said. I was glad she had gotten her contract signed. Without the real Hunsa's signature, Mrs. Steele had nothing. She could never sell his art without a proper contract—she had said so.

When Mr. Alex turned right onto Salome Road, the brown DHL van was still behind us. Thomas Hunsa's concrete blockhouse looked the same as always. Paint fumes and paintings spilled out. “Worth millions” buzzed into my head as if a fly had got in there. Children were sitting around Hunsa's house as usual, painting with his leftover paint. One child had found a dead cat and was painting it blue.

“There,” I said to Mrs. Steele, and pointed.

Mrs. Steele yelled “Stop!” and the Mercedes obeyed.

I smiled. Moving slowly is not always bad; on the drive from Kibera, I had worked out a plan.

I got out of the car first. “Wait here,” I said to Mrs. Steele. “I'z make sure tha studio caretaker got clothes on.” I ran toward Hunsa's house, but before I reached it there was an explosion.
Bam!
A giant woman burst out of the blockhouse next to Hunsa's. She blasted open the iron gates and charged at the car. It was the rhino. She was mad terror. Rhino was clothed in brown and orange layers that flapped with each thud she made. Her hair was wrapped in a gold-and-pink turban; her eyes were wild and white. She screamed curses at me that I never heard before: “Ya scum get cholera!” “Have tha pox eat your eyes!” “Rat eat ya brain at night!” And there were others that cannot be written. She charged like a rhino on a safari poster, head down. Each step she took shook the earth. Each step made her giant back-end bounce. And when her back-end went up the rest of her went down.