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Night in a Drum
A Short Story by
Emmanuel Sigauke
Entering the
compound, I was supposed to walk with the confidence of
someone returning home, but there was no telling what would
happen when Mukoma saw me. He sat in the sunlight behind his
bedroom hut, carving his wooden stools, so I was going to
try to sneak to the kitchen hut before he saw me. Too late:
he was already looking at me as if he had seen me walk all
the way from Mai Ranga’s home. The stare was calm, as if he
did not care about what I was planning to do. But as soon as
I reached the chicken coup, he sat up and coughed. I turned
and walked toward him like a surrendering soldier.
“Where were
you last night?” he asked, licking his lips.
“In a drum,”
I said. “Mai Ranga hid me.”
His eyes
opened wider, but narrowed as if he had just remembered
something.
“You are
lucky she did,” he said; then he raised his big hand and
sent it flying towards my face.
When I tried
to dodge the blow, I stumbled and fell face down. Mukoma
began to laugh. That’s when I knew he was not angry with me
anymore. I got up, wiped dust off my face, and started
laughing too. That’s what he had taught me—to laugh whenever
he laughed. When he stopped laughing I stopped too and
looked at him with a smile.
He leaned
forward and said, “You know I can kill you if I want to,
right?”
“Yes,” I
said, following his gaze, which was now directed towards Mai
Ranga’s home. “I will always listen to you.” Then I drew
closer to him to show that that I understood that he was not
angry anymore.
“Now go let
the goats out. Remember to guide them to Runde.”
I left
immediately for fear that he might change his mind and call
me back, but I was happy that he had forgiven me. But the
thought of Shami in a far away village tugged at my heart,
and for this reason I forgave Mukoma too, but telling him
so would make him beat me.
People called
him the bull of Mototi, one of the few strong men still
remaining in the village after most went to war. Mukoma
said he had been lucky because when village men his age
joined the war, he was in South Africa. Now no one could
force him to join the struggle since he said he knew how to
argue. He once told me that one did not have to join the
comrades to be part of the struggle. He was already fighting
a great war by raising me, he told people. He also kept
healthy goats and chickens, which the comrades demanded for
food each time they camped in our village. Since Mukoma was
not away at war, Mai, his mother, whom I also called mother
because my real mother had died a few months after giving
birth to me, always told me the village bored him, so he
entertained himself with fights.
But I liked
to watch Mukoma fight. His massive fists knew how to
discipline other men, and most of them feared him. Nearly
every grown man who came to our home always called Mukoma
“brother”, even those who were older than him. Some would
even tell me that if I really listened to Mukoma I might
grow up to be a great fighter too. And I wanted to grow up
to a fighter, but I didn’t like when he used his fists on
me, telling me I needed to know how real men’s fists felt.
When he was serious about beating me, a beating that would
last for a very long time, with breaks in between, he would
send me to fetch a strong Mupani whip for myself. I was an
expert in fetching good whips.
But on the
day I ended in Mai Ranga’s grain barrel, I had done a bad
job of fetching a whip. Mukoma was working on his baboon
stools, carving them with an adze. He was an expert in
baboon stools, regular wood stools with a baboon carved in
the middle of the two flat ends on which people sat. Sitting
on the stool was like sitting on the back of a baboon, and
people liked doing that; so bought all the stools Mukoma
made. His stools could be found in all the nineteen villages
of Mazvihwa.
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