Picking Up The Pieces

His return to the place of his birth was unannounced. There wasn’t any family or relative, neighbour or well-wisher waiting for him at the mouth of the street that led off the main road into the village. He couldn’t have liked it any other way as the bus dropped him off at the junction and the conductor came around to assist him in taking down his jungle green army duffel bag from the rest that were tied on the roof before heading off, bound for the city. The wooden sign that stood beside the narrow path that led off the road proclaimed in bold hand-painted letters behind a blue background:

ARO-MECHI VILLAGE
Welcomes You!

The sign had stood on this same spot since the early days of his youth. It was the last thing he had seen of his village when he’d left it two years ago to enlist in the Federalist army. He had been away for only two years and yet it felt as if he’d been away for more than ten; he wondered if at all there would still the folks around who’d remember the rambunctious youth he’d been before some sense had stumbled into his head that made him leave. Most especially, he longed to see his mother after so long … to feel her embrace around his shoulder.

He picked up his duffel bag and slung it across his shoulder then started on his way down the road to his village.

There were birds making sporadic music in the trees above his head. The sun’s radiance shimmered past the overhanging branches, making him lower his gaze to stare at his boots as they crunched on the tiny stones that littered the path. He raised the back of his free hand to wipe the film of sweat that was on his brow. It wasn’t long before a woman carrying a tray of what looked like mangoes came and went past him without once batting an eye to take in his fatigue uniform; by the time he thought of stopping her to buy some fruits from her, she had already disappeared from sight almost as if no one had come and gone past him. The journey in the bus had been long and tiring, and he so much desired to feel his mother’s meal once again in his stomach after having missed it for so long.

He came into a wide clearing that opened further into the standing homes that comprised of the village. It was almost noon and yet the streets seemed empty as if everyone was still indoors asleep. But still he liked it the way he was; he figured it was too early to be seen and congratulated by anyone for his safe return home. He’d rather embrace his parents first than think of such.

He did pass several faces along the way, but few only gave him a cursory glance as they went about their way. He couldn’t help but notice a certain tinge of sadness about their faces, the way their eyes hung low and unhealthy-like. Obviously he could sympathise with them – the war had no doubt taken a lot from them than it had actually sought out to accomplish: sons and daughters such himself were yet to return from wherever they had gone during the expanse of the campaign.

It wasn’t long before he sighted the familiar front yard that was his parent’s abode. The orange tree standing beside the window that belonged to his parents was still where it was. There was someone sitting on a stool under its shade. It wasn’t until he got closer that he recognised the old and gaunt features of his father as he waved a hand-fan about his face.

“Father,” he said, inching closer to where his father sat till coming to his knee, dropping his duffel bag at the same time. “Father, your son has returned.”

“Who is that? Who could that be?” his father turned his face towards him but not actually seeing him. His father’s eyes had long shut themselves permanently blind since he turned a teen. Numerous charms and local medicines had been consulted to provide both an explanation and also a cure for it, but none had ever worked.

“It is I, father. Your son.”

“Oh my God, Rueben.” His father raised a hand gently to feel his face. Reuben held his tender hand in his, guiding it across his skin. “Rueben, is it really you? Has God been so good to hear my prayers that he’s sent you back to me safely?”

“Indeed father, it is me, still alive and well,” Rueben answered, feeling the tears starting to well up in his eyes. He helped his father rise from the stool, allowing him to rub and feel every part of him as if he was still uncertain that his son standing before him was merely a ghost. Finding nothing to fault, he pulled him closer and father and son held each other in firm embrace.

“Rueben, Rueben,” his father repeated his name, pressing his hand against his head, the emotion too much for him to contain with the way his body shook. “O God! The Lord has really shown favour upon me to bring you back. O my son, I thought I’d never live to touch you again.”
“I’m back, father. Everything is all right.”

“All over the radio they’ve been announcing that the war is finally over but we never believed any of it. Please tell me, is it true? Is the war really over?”

“Yes father, the war is finally over.”

Finally releasing each other, Reuben turned his gaze about the compound, taking in the silence. Such a funny thing it was, he thought. All throughout the days of his growing up this compound had ever been as silent as it was now. There was always the sound of hens crowing in the morning, of goats bleating, and as unforgettable, the sound of he and his other playmates playing about till his mother came and made them shut up. This silence was heavy and strange.

“How about mother?” he asked his father. “Would she be inside?”

At the mention of this, his father lowered his head and muttered: “Your mother, she …”

Rueben didn’t wait for him to finish. He left him standing there and headed into the open doorway of the house yelling out for his mother. He ran first into his father’s room but it was empty. He checked the others before stepping out into the backyard, heading towards the outhouse, but even it too was empty. He ran back through the passage out into the front yard where his father still hadn’t moved.

“Father, where’s mother? Is she at the market?”

His father was silent for a moment. Even with his eyes shut with blindness, Rueben could still make out clearly the sudden gloominess that was on his father’s face as he struggled for his next words.

“My son,” he raised a hand to Ruben’s shoulder, “things haven’t been so good since you left. I’m only sorry that old age and my sight has long departed and rubbed me of tears I’d wish to shed to make you know how things have been since you left.”

“Father, please tell me,” He couldn’t hide the sudden agitation that was in his voice, almost as if a part of him knew that something bad had happened and that his life would no longer be the same again. “Where is mother? Please tell me she is alive and well.”

“Your mother is alive and well,” his father said, “but not in this life.”
“What do you mean?”

“It’s been near five months now since your mother passed away. She was shot by a Federalist soldier, claiming that she was a rebel person.”
The world slowly began to spin before his eyes. He raised both hands to either side of his head, trying to hold himself from the shock that was suddenly upon him. “No,” he gasped at the same time shaking his head. “No, no, no – that can’t be true. There’s no way that can be true. Father, please say that it’s not true.”

“I wish I could say different my son, but it was I who buried her along with the entire village. I sat by her graveside for two weeks mourning her. Believe me, she’s dead.”

“No … No … NOOOO!!!” Rueben screamed aloud, not able to stop the world that was now spinning out of control before him, even as he then fell into darkness.

He awoke to the smell of almond, but where it came from he couldn’t later tell. His eyes twitched themselves open, then blinked rapidly on account of the light streaming from tiny apertures above the thatched raffia roof. He was lying down on a mattress in his former bedroom; a young girl wearing a not too clean dress sat a corner of the room staring at him. Slowly he raised himself to his elbow; the young girl immediately left her position and came over to join him. She held a bowl of milk to his face.

“Papa said you should drink this,” she said. Rueben accepted the bowl from her and emptied nearly all of it. He handed it back to her then pushed himself completely to his feet. Much of his fatigue uniform was soaked with his sweat. He unbuttoned it and threw it along with his inner shirt across the room on his bed before turning to face the girl.
“Where’s my father?”

“He outside, peeling yam.” She led the way out of the room towards the back of the compound while he followed her as if he was a total stranger in his own home.

His father sat with his back facing him at the far corner of the yard. Even as he and the girl approached him, he could tell he was cutting something from the slices of yam skin that dropped beside his feet. The girl carried another stool and came over and without a word took the knife from him and continued with the cutting.

“Rueben, you’re awake now?” his father reached out a hand in search of him. Rueben touched his hand and gently helped him to his feet.
“Yes father, I’m awake. Who’s the little girl?”

“Her name’s Mina. She lives with her parents across from our farm; since I lost your mother she regularly comes around to take care of me. I would be lost without her.”

Rueben fell silent for a moment, his mind still absorbing the news of his mother no longer alive and still finding it hard to comprehend it. None of it made any sense to him; how could a federalist soldier murder his own mother, saying that she’s a rebel? This from the same army he had gone to enlist with in order to fight against the accursed rebel army. It was just so impossible to believe … and yet it was the truth, he said to himself as he led his father to the other side of the compound towards the outhouse building, away from the little girl’s ears.

“Please tell me father, how it all happened?”

“Nothing much to say or tell about it: one morning we were sitting out here in the back of the yard when there came a sound of commotion from the front. Federal soldiers, they said they were, stationed in the city. They were doing routine sweep around the neighbouring villages, trying to weed out any rebel sympathisers around. They said someone in the village had told them that my son was fighting for the rebels. We told them that wasn’t true, but they wouldn’t listen. One of them hit me to the ground … I heard your mother cry out my name … I don’t know what happened next, except I cringed when I heard the gun shot, thinking that I was the one they had shot.” His father stopped for a moment in pain of recalling the memory. “Then I felt your mother’s hand against mine on the ground and couldn’t feel her move. I shook her body, cried out her name and then I know she no longer was with me – she was dead. Several neighbours who had heard the shot came over … in the end they helped me in burying her. I cried for a long time, all I wished for was if you’d been around, probably then none of what happened would have happened. But days went by and still I heard no word from you.”

“My battalion was amongst the first that stormed Owerri. Even then I doubt if I would’ve received any letter from you if you’d sent one.”

“I wanted to, but it was your mother that wrote those previous letters to you. I hope you got them well?”

“Yes father, I did.”

“With these non-seeing eyes of mine, I doubt if I can even spell out my name on the sand anymore much less thought of writing to you, telling you of your mother’s death.” His shoulders started to quiver. Rueben held him tight in his arm and hugged him, holding unto him as the bout of emotion soon passed away. “I’m sorry my son, just that I still can’t shake off what I’m feeling … I miss your mother terribly.”

“I know father, I know,” he said. Even he too felt like crying but for some reason the tears didn’t seem to out to come out. Then again he reasoned, hadn’t he seen more than enough of his own share of death, of people dying in their homes, in the middle of the street, out in the bushes when caught in the middle of some maniacal cross-fire with their guts spread open for whomever to see to think that he would suddenly open up and vent his own stockpile of tears even when coming back home to discover a death in the family? His own mother for that matter. What in God’s name was wrong with the world today?

“Tell me father, where did you decide to bury her?”

His father indicated with his head at the direction farther to their left. “Out in the middle of the farm. I didn’t have enough money to buy her a plot of land in the cemetery, so I figured the best place would be in the farm. I hope you don’t mind.”

“No father, I don’t mind at all. I’ll shower first then go over there.”

“You should eat first,” his father said, leading him towards the house. Not good visiting the dead on empty stomach. It’s a sacrilege.”

On that, Rueben couldn’t argue with him. He left his father in the backyard, went into the kitchen and picked up a rusty bucket then went to the dugout well that stood beside their home. They shared the well with their next-door neighbour, though at that time there wasn’t anyone else there. Rueben fetched his water and took it into the bathroom to have his bath. By the time he was through, his meal was already waiting for him inside his room. It wasn’t until he sat down by the edge of his bed, drawing his meal that was on a stool close to him, his nose inhaling the whiff of hot smoke emanating from the boiled slices of yam that he realised how famished he was. He washed his hands in a bowl of water then proceeded to eat.

Later in the day, he made his way down to the farm in search of his mother’s grave. His father had mentioned that a white painted cross stood over it so he couldn’t miss it. How much he still recalls his days of early youth when he’d followed his mother to the farm. So much while he’d been away in the war he had thought back on those days, wondering if ever the time would come that he would return to it. How he had laid plans on what he intended to do once he got back home … never had it crossed his mind that his mother would be long dead before he returned. In a way it felt so much like a dream, like he was still lying in his bed haven woken up from when he’d fainted, and that he wasn’t actually on his way to pay his respects to his mother’s grave but rather for something else. In the deepest part of his mind, with the sun shinning mercilessly down on him, a part of him prayed that none of what his father had said earlier was true – his mother wasn’t dead; she couldn’t be dead.

And then he looked up and behold he spotted a mound of dug earth in the centre of the field, looking so different from the rest that harboured growth of yams and cassava in them. The mound was long and almost the height of an anthill; further evidence was the white wooden cross standing on the end of it; there was no use in him doubting anymore as he slowly made his way towards it.

He stood there for a moment staring first at the cross then at the mound under which no doubt laid his mother’s remains. Someone had taken the pain to paint her name in the centre of the horizontal section of the cross:

Maybelle Anigua Otumyami (1924 – 1969)
Rest In Perfect Peace

A part of him wondered if by chance her body had already begun to decay under it, and it had, then far would it possibly have gone? No, he ought not be thinking such silly cruel things – that was his mother under there, even if she’s long become a corpse she’s still his mother for God’s sake.

Suddenly it was all too much to bear as he felt himself come down to his knees, his arms spread wide to hug the earth under which lay his mother’s remains, his eyes coming open with tears. The tears poured freely from his eyes almost as if by their own sudden will. He couldn’t help but sense the bitter irony in it, that all this time that he’d been fighting in the war, raining bullets upon the rebel soldiers that someone – a fellow brethren comrade – had visited his home and actually ended up putting a bullet in his mother. Come to think of it, what would have happened had he never made the choice of enlisting – his mother would surely still be alive. Definitely she would. Then who would the soldier have ended up shooting then – him perhaps? To think that his mother’s corpse lay rotting away under this dark soil, in their farm. Wouldn’t it have been better if he’d been around to help give her a befitting burial? So terrible it was that no longer would he hear her call out his name again, to come and eat his supper before it got cold; that she would never be around to hold his father’s hand whenever he needed her … but most especially, that she would never be around to see him chose his bride when the time comes for him to settle down with a wife.

“O mother,” he muttered, hearing no reply except for the slight breeze blowing against his back, the same breeze rustling the leaves of the surrounding trees. “O, mother. I miss you dearly.”
He lay there for a long time, crying.

Dusk arrived with the onset of evening. Rueben sat on a stool in front yard under the orange tree staring at the red sky. Already the moon was starting to show its face just as the sun was beginning to disappear down the horizon. All around him came the music of crickets and mosquitoes.
“Rueben, are you out there?” his father inquired, his father slightly ahead of him as he made his way out of the front doorway. Rueben got up and helped him, leading him to a spare stool. Both of them sat side by side in silence for a moment, both of them slapping flies off their backs, till his father decided to break it.

“You went into the village earlier?”

“Yes, I did. Just went to say hello to some of the neighbours so they know I’m alive and well. I noticed several homes are still empty.”

“Lot’s of them ran away when they heard the federal soldiers coming. Hopefully they’ll return in due time.”

“I pray they do. The war’s now over, thank God for that.”

“Tell me my son, while you fought, did you kill anyone?”

Rueben was silent for a moment, speculating how to answer the question before replying. “Yes father, I did. But never any civilians.”

“Please forgive me for asking. There was war and you had to go and fight in it. It’s not your fault.”

“Thank you, father.”

Silence for a moment, and then:

“But I wonder,” his father turned his face towards him. “Now that you’re back, what are you going to do?”

“Get the farm back, fix the side of the house’s roof that’s still licking … anyhow we’ll think of something.”

“But how? You know that I’m an old man and my bones are no longer what they once used to be.”

He squeezed his father’s shoulder and smiled. “You’re never that old, father. Don’t you worry; things are going to work out all right. First thing we’ll do is pick up the pieces and start all over.”

“Start all over with what?”

“Right now I don’t know. But one day at a time, father.” He turned his gaze back to the darkening sky and muttered, “Everything will start one day at a time.”

They sat there next to each other, father and son, one watching the sky darken into the night while the other listened to the sibilant melody of the evening’s blowing wind.