He rounds the bend, stuffing the earpiece further into his left ear in frantic measured attempts. It falls off, the extended wire tugging at the other one in his right ear. He yanks it off, yelling into the mouthpiece instead: "I’m nearby, no vex, no vex, you go see me now!”
He wipes the phone screen on his shirt, spurts of spittle had settled on it. The time is 8:30. Though he could file home like every 9-5er in the city, he couldn’t. He needed the overtime more than his landlord needed another ready renter by month’s end.
He switches lanes, edging left, to avoid the refuse truck sitting gingerly by the roadside. The vehicle had taken two arm’s length of the road, forcing commuters to bargain between running into the heap of dirt overlooking the junction or Yunusa’s basin of charcoal, suya and outrage. He kicks off two gears, shuddering at the queue ahead.
The yellow paint of the truck where Waste Management Agency seats boldly wears a crimson hue from spattered blood. It wasn’t always there. There’s a circus. Aside from the row of headlamps, in front, he could see a smoke of frowns. He stretches to catch a glimpse, his phone beeps, the time is 8:49. He meanders past two vehicles, relieved to be near the mouth of the trouble. He’s torn between returning the call and trading his trauma. The commotion ahead will not let him decide. He joins the crowd of witnesses as they watch a man spoon a woman’s head and body into a waiting ambulance.
It wasn’t there before, this sense of self, it was there now. Though the ambulance would move places in minutes with the police car tailing behind, he would always be here, wherever he was in his mind, right now, shrunken by the frailty of human life and the senseless scramble for wealth, for stature, for sixty thousand naira rent.
He tries to forget the unmoving, mocking eyes of the woman, dismissing her death as a punishment for caring too little about living and too much about amassing. Why would she let herself be mangled picking discarded plastic bottles, he queries. He feels the woman retort. On the floor of the ambulance, with her legs nudged to allow the door to lock, he recognizes his struggle for the first time.
He takes the call at the last ring. Her voice more sore with threats. He propels the motorcycle forward. The hushed darkness draped by the swooshing wind whisks his fear. He redials the call, raising his helmet, he weaves through the last stretch of shops towards Yah Junction.
Laden by the weight of the landlord’s threats and the four other clients, parcels, etched with the promise of 7k overtime allowance, the world about him seemed to blur into a curtain of retreating lights and sifting silhouettes.
The city’s murmur muffles to a faint whisper, all the world seems suspended by a collision of metal and skull. The pother is quieted only by the rush of a man from a Lexus.
The man yanks off thin sheets of the shattered helmet, willing the rider’s face to light up the dark stars that is beginning to daze him. He pauses on the rider’s cloud-white eyes, tugging the flesh around it for a sign. A proof that they both will make it home. Or maybe not, it could be hell or a cell. He pines for a heartbeat. It seems like a hard miss. In his breast pocket, the phone beeps “Oma Fine,” his becomes sterner than usual.
He thought he saw people move closer, with his body hunched over the rider, he braces for the crash. A hand, as firm as it is threatening taps him lightly on the shoulder: 'Oga you better go far now."
To be continued…
