Juju

All Rights Reserved © 2000 by James E. Christie

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Writers Club Press

an imprint of iUniverse.com, Inc.

For information address:

iUniverse.com, Inc.

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Lincoln, NE 68504-3467

www.iuniverse.com

ISBN: 0-595-00958-1

ISBN: 978-1-4697-2505-5 (eBook)

Printed in the United States of America

For Konah Sambolah…

missing since the rebel invasion of Liberia

in early 1990 and presumed dead.

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE Northeastern Liberia 1975

PART ONE Monrovia

PART TWO HINTERLANDS

PART THREE WAR

EPILOGUE East of Monrovia 1995

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.

Joseph Conrad

Under Western Eyes [1911]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a novel is usually a solitary endeavor, but I do not know of any authors whose work is completed without the help of many other individuals. Thanks are due first to my wife, Kathleen Baldwin, who put up with quite a lot from me while I was immersed in my fictional world. Esteemed authors Carol Edgarian and John Ruemmler encouraged me to continue after reading a few chapters. Editor Tom Jenks improved my structure and prose and also put me back on course when I veered into melodrama. Ed and Betty Masi opened their Florida home to me when I needed a change of scenery. A third of Juju was written there. Finally, my heartfelt gratitude to the writers and friends in San Francisco who read and critiqued chapter after chapter for over a year: Donna Levreault, Doug Konecky, Kristin Anundsen, Loren Bialek, and Ed Miller. There are others I haven’t mentioned who deserve thanks as well. You know who you are.

PROLOGUE

Northeastern Liberia 1975

The girl stood motionless in the center of the sacred grove, head bowed, staring at her feet. Onlookers edged closer in anticipation of her dance, as the talking drums sounded a uniform thudding beat. Then Delah Sebo began to sway.

The dance was a reflection of her bush school training. Starting slowly, a pantomime of household tasks and agrarian duties, she raked the earth, fetched water, gathered wood, and lit a fire. Then she dug roots, pounded cassava in a mortar, picked bananas and breadfruit, planted and harvested rice. Her movements raised a dusty mist which stuck to her skin.

Delah beckoned and gyrated in a ritualistic mating drama as the tempo and volume of the drums increased. Curiously, her performance was neither coy nor lustful; rather, it revealed a seriousness about the responsibilities of womanhood.

Zezedy, the wise old Zo responsible for the girls in bush school, brought forth the thick staff that symbolized a phallus. Holding the staff in front of her, she circled and stalked her protégé. Then, in a climactic duet, she lunged repeatedly, goading Delah into imagined throes of coupling. Finally, the girl collapsed onto the powdery soil, utterly exhausted.

Villagers watched her chest rise and fall, heard her sharp expirations. Delah’s dance had revealed a certain knowledge of the ways to please a man, and prospective husbands were among the celebrants who looked on in admiration.

After two years in Sandé bush school, Delah Sebo was now a woman.

Delah’s father had also witnessed the ceremony. Isaac Sebo stood solemnly in a blue and white striped burnoose, hands crossed in front of him, gazing about with barely concealed pride. He looked at Delah, her dust-covered body, raffia skirt, the sweat seeking pathways on her scarred torso and clay-decorated face, her closed eyes. After a short time he walked to where she lay.

Ba vuo? he asked.

Yes, she said and opened her eyes. I am awake. Several seasons had passed since she was last awakened by his whispered Ba vuo.

Her father looked the same as before: weathered black face, brown eyes, broad nose, and ears she had grasped as a child like the handles of a jug. Then she noticed the faint yellow cast in his eyes and the white threads in his close-cropped hair. Not there when she had gone into the bush.

Isaac Sebo extended his dry, cracked blacksmith’s hands to help his daughter up. She took them and pulled herself upright. He felt her added weight. She had grown stocky like him and almost reached his modest height.

He knew the ceremony was not over, but he did not want his daughter to stay for the group dance or wrap herself in the country cloth of a mature woman. Nor would he have her stand like a cow on display for the wife seekers. Isaac Sebo had other aspirations for his fourteen-year-old daughter.

Their premature departure would cause some consternation, particularly in one young man who had waited patiently for this day. But who would dare question the chief if he wished to enter into serious palaver with his daughter? Perhaps the Zo would gently reprimand him later, but she knew the girl-woman’s destiny lay beyond marriage and childbearing.

Delah Sebo had learned more than family and social duties during her time in the bush. She was intrigued when the Zo told her that poison is the woman’s way to vanquish a foe, and so undertook a thorough course in the art of poison. She could administer death or insanity slowly or quickly, painfully or without symptom, with a quantity of crocodile gall, sasswood bark, or some other virulent mixture hidden under a fingernail.

One time, with the approval and guidance of the Zo, she tested her skills on a fellow student. The victim was not an enemy, but merely a nonsensical girl more interested in game-playing than the lessons of bush school.

Delah took chunks of sasswood bark and scraped their fibrous insides into an iron pot of boiling water until it frothed white and emitted an acrid stench. Properly prepared, the concoction would be non-emetic. Zezedy sipped the astringent brew after it cooled, then told the victim to drink a cupful as part of her initiation. She complied. Her eyes bulged and her mouth opened in a surprised gasp. Then she fell to the ground, writhed for a while, and died.

Delah believed the dead girl’s soul understood that they had done her a favor. Poisoning her was necessary for the collective tribal good.

Delah also underwent the age-old circumcision rite. She stepped outside of her pain, did not shriek like the others, when the Zo cut away the surplus folds inside the lips of her vagina with a safety razor. The implement, purchased from a Mandingo trader and embedded in a wooden handle, replaced the iron knife of old. There were casualties nevertheless. A paste of healing herbs was not sufficient to stem the infections that killed two of the girls. Their parents, like the parents of the girl poisoned, awakened one morning to find broken pottery outside their huts—the sign that their daughters would not return.

Delah thrived in bush school. She augmented her power by eating her excised tissue, and then, before she emerged from the bush, the skin of her torso was lifted by tiny hooks and razor-sliced, and ashes of plantain skins were rubbed into the wounds to hasten healing. Her raised scars were the teethmarks of the Sandé spirit.

Isaac Sebo stood amidst the circle of onlookers, holding his daughter’s hands and looking into her eyes, sensing the changes she had undergone. Then he turned and led her to the verge of the clearing.

Delah hesitated and looked back at her friends, the other dancers, now washing the clay from their faces at the communal calabash. She also saw Dennis Muna, tall and muscular and no longer a boy, walking toward her. Her father pulled her hand, then turned around when she resisted.

Dennis Muna stood before them. With respect, Chief Sebo, Muna said.

Sebo looked up at him with arched eyebrows.

Chief Sebo, I wish to discuss bride-price.

I will not discuss it now, Sebo said in a tone that brooked no argument. He pulled Delah by the hand and she followed, unwilling to defy her father openly.

Chief and daughter left the grove. They walked along a narrow footpath overgrown with lianas and thick leathery leaves toward other sacred ground. After a time the path rose out of the green darkness and gradually broadened; jungle vines and creepers loosened their grip and gray light filtered through the trees. Delah tired. She asked him to stop.

They sat in silence near a streamlet and she drank from cupped hands. The trickle of water and her drinking were the only sounds. Not even a bird sang in the midst of the primeval forest. Delah breathed deeply. She smelled vegetation and earth and moisture. Her face became serene and childlike. For an instant she felt that this place—earth, water, air, and forest—needed nothing. It had been like this forever. She would strive to remain on favorable terms with its spirits.

When Delah was rested they resumed walking and soon arrived at a hill denuded of growth. They climbed to the crest of the hill, the highest in Mano country and the stamping ground of powerful spirits. They breathed hard from the steep ascent, inhaling the metallic odor of the ore-rich peak. They looked out upon the forest canopy. It rolled away in all directions, emerald waves tinged red with dust from the harmattan that blew south from the Sahara during the dry season. The sky was cloud-layered: shades of gray darkening to a thin black band lying low on the distant horizon.

It was a land of two seasons—one of heat and light, the other of incessant rain—each half a year long, the former about to yield to the latter. It was an ancient cycle, a struggle in the manner of two lumbering giants, neither able to conquer the other, but each holding sway in its time until exhausted.

A storm is coming, said Isaac Sebo.

Yes, said Delah.

Since the time of the old ones and before that, he said, the spirit of Wala Va has lived in every stick and stone, every river and tree of this land. But when the Americos came, things began to change. When they were hungry they took our food and gave us nothing in return. When they wanted roads, they whipped our men and said ‘build roads.’ When they wanted money they sold the men and sent them to Po. They are black men but they act like whites.

Delah looked at him but his face was turned away. A breeze rippled the folds of his burnoose and forewarned of the coming rain. She pondered this talk of the past and a memory surfaced, of her dead grandfather, of a slave island called Nanny Po. She looked at the approaching storm. Small black forms hurtled towards them—birds racing on the wind ahead of the storm. Harbingers of a land out of balance.

Sometimes, the chief continued, a person’s medicine, his own magic, comes back and catches him.

She wondered if he referred to the coastal people or himself. I have been warned by the Zo, she said.

The men who try to destroy our ways…what they do will come back to them. He turned to her and she saw pain and anger in his eyes. Perhaps all of this land should return to bush, he added.

Delah considered this and felt its truth. The Zo had said as much. She had cursed the Americos and their jealous Christian god.

A windblown mist cooled her face and she dreamed of returning to the bush, but with a husband, a family. She recalled the sadness on Dennis Muna’s face as she had left the grove.

Papé, why did we leave before the end of the ceremony?

The chief hesitated. The wind and the birds swept past them and the first thick raindrops spattered the ground. He smelled wet stone and wet earth. The devils of this place tell me that a storm is coming, he said. It might come within one rice planting, or it might be ten or twenty plantings, but I know it is coming. You can be a powerful Zo, the one woman in Poro. You must be ready.

Father, I will prepare, but I also want a husband. I want to give you a grandson.

This argument gripped his chest, for his wives had given him no sons and his other daughter, Delah’s half-sister, was with the missionaries, cut off from his life and beliefs. He wanted a grandson, but if Delah’s belly were soon swollen like those of the other bush school graduates, he feared her training would be forsaken.

There will be a time for that, he said.

Father, I have learned much. I will be Zo, but I’ll also be wife and mother. This land must go back to the bush. I feel it. If Wala permits, we will see it together. If not, I will struggle without you. Either way, I will have children to follow after me.

Her defiant tone startled and silenced him. He pressed his lips together and stared at her, but she looked away.

It was raining steadily now. She licked her lips and tasted salt and clay. She tilted her head skyward. Water as warm as tears coursed down her face. She raised her hands and washed away the clay designs, then turned to leave before he could speak again.

PART ONE

Monrovia

CHAPTER

ONE

In more reflective times Henry Roye would think about the fate of his country, and his family. In his search for understanding he would pose philosophical questions to himself: Was free will a delusion? When was the path of the future established? Was there only one path, or were there myriad paths from which to choose, each leading to a different future?

For centuries West African tribespeople had used witchdoctors to find the proper course. Henry Roye was not a tribesman, but he too believed that men were continuously presented with an array of alternatives. But he would ultimately question whether any man’s choices made a difference in the end. Perhaps there was only one course….

On a January evening in 1979 Henry Roye left the University of Liberia campus and walked home, his normal routine during the dry season. He lived with his mother, Emma Roye, and his grandfather, Roosevelt Warner, in the house his great-grandparents had built in the capital city of Monrovia. The Warners were freed from slavery after the American Civil War, but they chose to return to West Africa where other American ex-slaves had founded a republic.

Ironically, the so-called Americo-Liberians established a lifestyle in Monrovia and along the coast reminiscent of the American South. The settlers transported religion (Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian) and dance (fox trots, two-steps, the Virginia Reel) and genteel manners; the women wore velvet gloves and carried umbrellas to fend off the sun and, in the early years, the men wore top hats and carried guns.

By the time Henry arrived home that evening, sweat beaded his forehead and showed in dark patches on his shirt. Dense air surrounded him and seemed to press against his skin. He pulled out a handkerchief, wiped his brow, then headed up the walkway of his three-story house. A southern-American influence was evident in its architecture: gabled roofs, dormer windows, broad verandahs and, for a touch of elegance but also in consideration of Monrovia’s steamy climate, a false brick chimney.

The screen door whined and clapped shut and Henry looked up. Minna, the family’s Bassa maid, walked across the front porch and stopped at the top of the stairs that descended to the walkway. Folding her arms under her broad bosom, she looked down at him with large moist eyes.

Henry remembered Minna waiting for him, worry creasing her face, when he was a frail and, in her mind, vulnerable boy who was late for dinner. Henry was still slender, and perhaps vulnerable-looking with his soft features and earnest expression, but he was twenty-six now, and there was no reason for her to be anxious. He climbed the steps and put his hand on her shoulder. Minna, what’s wrong?

Tears slipped from Minna’s eyes and rolled down her plump cheeks. Old Papé not good, she said. Old Papé was Minna’s name for Henry’s grandfather, Roosevelt Warner. To Henry, he was both grandfather and father. Henry’s actual father, Aaron Roye, had died when Henry was eight.

Henry blinked against the start of his own tears. He was momentarily confused by his reaction, because Minna’s announcement was not a surprise. Roosevelt Warner was eighty-seven years old. He had lived a full life, and much longer than most people, but the force of that life had deserted him.

In December Roosevelt Warner had suffered a minor stroke. Two bedridden weeks later he had regained much of his speech and mobility, and Henry was confident of a full recovery. Now Minna’s face told him to expect the worst. He looked at her worried eyes, her wet cheeks,

then he hugged her. Where is Mama? he asked.

She upstairs with him.

Henry went inside. It was quiet except for the ticking of the parlor clock. He went upstairs and along the hallway to his grandfather’s closed bedroom door. A low voice was murmuring on the other side. He opened the door and saw his mother praying at the bedside. Roosevelt Warner lay on the bed, eyes closed, face slack. For a second Henry thought his grandfather was dead, but then he noticed the sheet covering him gently rise, and fall.

Mama, Henry whispered.

Emma Roye joined Henry in the hall, shutting the door carefully behind her. She was stout and short, her head just reaching Henry’s shoulder. Her hair was pulled severely back from her prominent forehead and tied in a bun at the nape. She had removed her glasses, and her eyes were red from crying.

What happened? Henry asked.

Papa could hardly breathe, she said, on the verge of more tears. I called the doctor. He said the stroke caused Papa to lose his cough reflex, and fluid built up in his lungs. It’s pneumonia, Henry. She began crying softly.

Henry recalled the rasping sound coming from Roosevelt Warner when he breathed and again when his speech had returned. Henry had been relieved that he was on the mend and hadn’t worried about the symptom. He placed his hand on his mother’s shoulder. What did the doctor say? What about penicillin?

He said penicillin won’t help. Emma Roye shook her head and added, I’ll get what he left. She went back into the bedroom. A few seconds later she returned holding a strange-looking device.The doctor told me to use this. She held out the instrument and started sobbing again.

Henry took it. It consisted of two lengths of rubber tubing separated by a glass bulb. He waited for his mother to explain.

She said through her sobs, The doctor showed me…you put one of the tubes down his throat when the fluid builds up, and suck on the other end. She shook her head. Henry, I can’t.

Henry recoiled at the thought, but said, It’s all right, I’ll do it.

For two days, Henry ministered to Roosevelt Warner, sitting for hours next to his bed, using the medical instrument whenever too much phlegm accumulated. On the evening of the second day, Henry’s hopes surged when his grandfather woke up briefly. Grandpa Warner grasped his hand with surprising strength. But his voice was a horrible wheeze when he said, Show courage, be just. The old man’s maxim. Henry had heard it countless times.

Now Roosevelt Warner’s life was running away. He did not reawaken but lingered two more days. A faint odor of urine and decay grew in the room. The ceiling fan and open windows could not dispel it.

Show courage, be just, Henry thought as he opened the door to the sick room later that night. As it happened, those words turned out to be Roosevelt Warner’s last. Henry froze in the doorway. It was clear in the soft glow of the bedside lamp that life had finally abandoned the form lying on the bed. Henry crossed the room and took a long final look at this grandfather–father, eminent former lawyer, son of freed slaves.

CHAPTER

TWO

Roosevelt Warner’s funeral was well-attended, although by few people who actually knew him well. At his age, he had few friends still living. Most of the attendees were friends of Henry’s mother. They were Americo-Liberians, the elite minority who governed the country, a community in which everyone knew everyone else. Emma Roye was on social terms with Monrovia’s best families due to the Warner and Roye families’ reputations and long-standing connections. She also had acquaintances in the American and British diplomatic corps. The funeral was a show of respect and support for Emma Roye in her time of grief.

The Royes received another blow the day after the funeral: Minna announced her decision to leave. She had a recently-widowed sister upcountry who wanted her to come live with her.

Emma Roye was so stunned that all she could say was, You can’t. Subsequent, more reasonable entreaties did not sway Minna.

The following weekend, after a tearful farewell with Henry and a more restrained one with Emma Roye, Minna left for Bendu, a town north of the Firestone Rubber Plantation.

Henry Roye tried to avoid thinking about either Roosevelt Warner or Minna. He kept his grief and loneliness at bay by immersing himself in teaching and studying. On a Friday afternoon two weeks after the funeral, Henry sat in his classroom at the University of Liberia, hunched over an open book on his desk. The students in his next history class, his last of the day, would soon shuffle in and take their seats.

Henry wanted to deliver a lecture that would grab their attention, chase the indifference from their faces, provoke lively debate—things he’d been unable to do since his grandfather’s death. The material he was reviewing—the League of Nations’ 1930 ruling that Liberia had enslaved its own people—was perfect for a spirited session.

But his mind kept wandering. His eyes strayed from the words on the page up to his right hand, resting above the book. His fingers were long and delicate, like a pianist’s, his mother said. His skin was sleek and deep brown. He smiled without parting his lips…his thumb was the peninsula comprising Monrovia. The curved inlet between his thumb and index finger was the Mesurado River, separating Monrovia from the mainland. The Mesurado, named by a 15th century Portuguese explorer, meant measured. It also meant miserable. Below his thumb was the Atlantic Ocean. Henry splayed his fingers up and they became the major rivers that ran from the Guinean plateau—the Mano, Lofa, St. Paul, and Cavalla. Southward they flowed, rushed during the rainy season, down through the hinterland forests and to the sea at last.

Henry thought about the ex-slave settlers of this steaming malarial coast. Their first ship, the brig Elizabeth, sailed from New York in 1820. They believed that black people didn’t stand a chance in America. They were reversing the slavers’ journey of 200 years before and returning home. Or so they thought. The early settlers were on the verge of extinction several times from disease and from warfare with the native tribes. But the settlers prevailed. In 1847 they founded Liberia, meaning land of freedom, and proclaimed to the world, The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here!

For tribespeople who had never lived anywhere else, the nation’s motto had a grim irony. The settlers relished their southern-American lifestyle but failed to leave its most despicable aspect behind. For slavery too was ferried back across the Atlantic, borne to Liberia as if it were an inseparable element of their being, a latent gene that mutated into a role-reversing disease that turned freed slave into master.

As a history instructor, Henry Roye knew about the Americo-Liberian impressment of natives in the early 1900s. Native men and boys had been sold to Spain by the boatload. They labored on the cacao plantations of a rugged island of extinct volcanoes in the Gulf of Guinea known then as Fernando Po.

Henry Roye knew it, but he didn’t teach it that way. How could it benefit his students—Liberia’s future leaders, educators, and businesspeople—if he joined the critics who continued to scold Liberia fifty years after the fact? It couldn’t, he told himself as his students assembled.

During class, most of the students were attentive but quiet. Henry finally got up from his desk toward the end of the session. Consider the censuring of Liberia by the League of Nations, he said. Why were we singled out? He paced in front of the silent students. What other country could have been…no, should have been called to account?

A young man in the front row raised his hand and said, Spain.

Yes, said Henry Roye. And why wasn’t Spain investigated? Silence greeted him again. Didn’t the Spanish plantation owners on Fernando Po arbitrarily withhold wages? Didn’t they force laborers to work longer than their contracts called for? He paused, then added, They even held public whippings of those who complained.

Many of the students were nodding their heads in agreement. Some showed little interest. A few looked angry.

I would suggest this, Henry Roye said. The League of Nations—the white Western world, if you will—couldn’t accept a successful black democracy. They decided to put us in our place, and they ignored the wrongdoing of one of their own.

One of the angry-looking students sitting in the back of the room raised her hand. It was Konah Nambey, a young tribal woman from the northeast. She had become agitated as Henry spoke: shifting in her chair, shaking her head, frowning at him. Her thin-featured oval face made him wonder if she was part Arab or perhaps Mandingo, the proud Muslim traders who had roamed West Africa for centuries. He had been struck from the first time she walked into his classroom by her dignity and grace.

Mr. Roye, she said, are you saying the Liberian government was innocent?

Not at all, he replied. There were probably some excesses, some exaggerated promises made to the laborers. What I’m saying is that Spanish plantation owners were guilty of abusing workers, the blame was put on us, and perhaps it was racially motivated.

It wasn’t race, she shook her head. It was money. Our men would-n’t have been sent to Po if there wasn’t a lot of money to be made.

This brought on a rush of sighs, clicking tongues, and shuffling feet from the other students due to their general disagreement with her statement but more so because it was past time for class to end.

Henry said, Wait a minute.She has her opinion,and I appreciate her speaking her mind. I wish the rest of you would do the same more often. He smiled at Konah Nambey but she was staring right through him. He was stung by her look and his smile fell away. The students were getting up to leave and Henry lost sight of Konah. He returned to his desk. When he looked up again, the classroom was empty.

CHAPTER

THREE

Henry Roye walked slowly home in the afternoon heat thinking about Konah Nambey. Her challenge, considering the indifference of most of his students, had caught him off guard. She was tribal, though, so perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised. Maybe her grandfather or great-grandfather had worked on Fernando Po. Maybe he should reconsider his way of presenting this period in Liberia’s history if bitter feelings were going to be aroused.

Henry stopped on the sidewalk in front of his house. He tried to envision Konah Nambey’s oval face but her accusing stare materialized instead. Her eyes said more plainly than words that she had lost respect for him.

Henry admitted that winning her approval was somehow very important to him. Konah Nambey was intriguing. She was different from the young women his mother pushed on him. The eligible daughters of Emma Roye’s friends, several of whom his mother would have welcomed as a daughter-in-law, interested Henry not in the least. He found them unattractive—vain, flighty, schoolgirlish. Konah Nambey had a self-assuredness that seemed beyond her years. Henry wanted to get to know her, but how? She was seven or eight years younger than him, and she was his student.

As Henry climbed the stairs to the front porch the pungent aroma of palm oil drifted to him—Minna preparing…no—his mother preparing the evening meal. Henry entered the house and went through the parlor to the kitchen.

He found his mother there, humming religiously, something the devout Baptist widow often did. Henry thought he heard the words, Let my people go. Emma Roye was tending food in various stages of readiness. There were greens, long-grain rice, palm butter, and a chicken simmering. Henry noticed on a countertop the canned peaches intended for dessert. Papayas and mangoes could fall from the trees at the side of their house, but his mother insisted on buying syrupy fruit slices imported from America.

Henry said hello, kissed her cheek, and took a seat at a wooden table. He watched her stout figure shuffle back and forth as she worked. Her brown skin had a moist sheen from her exertions, and the eyeglasses resting low on her broad nose were misted. It was years since she had labored in a hot kitchen.

She looked at him over the rims of her glasses. I invited Charles to dinner. He should be here any time.

Henry nodded. Charles Jenkins was his childhood friend. They were the same age and had attended school together, from grade school through the university. Jenkins had majored in economics and now held a position in government procurement. Since their career paths had diverged they saw each other infrequently, the last time at Roosevelt Warner’s funeral.

Henry didn’t want to watch his mother struggle in the kitchen, nor did he want to help. He got up and headed for the door. I’ll be outside waiting for Charles, he said.

When Henry stepped onto the porch, the dry-season heat surrounded him again. It seemed to rise from ground level. Monrovia had baked all day under the naked sun, and now, as evening approached, the city gave back what it had absorbed. Henry sat at the top of the wooden stairs. He felt a trickle of sweat run down his back and stop where his shirt clung. He propped elbows on knees and rested his chin between his hands. The stairs were worn down, the middle of each step concave and smooth as driftwood. Years of footsteps.

After a while he heard the sound of an automobile. A dilapidated taxi sputtered down the street and rolled to a stop in front of his house. Charles Jenkins emerged from the back seat. He waved at Henry, then pulled out his wallet and paid the fare. The cab rattled away in a plume of exhaust.

Jenkins flailed at the noxious fumes and strode up the walk. He laughed and said, Damn, I smell like petrol.

Henry stood up. Good to see you, he said as Jenkins came up the steps. Henry smelled no petrol on his friend, only musky cologne.

Charles Jenkins clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed hard with his thick fingers. That’s all I get? Come on, you okay?

Yeah. Just tired. Henry looked at him and wondered what was different. Jenkins’ good-natured physicality tended to draw attention to his solid, muscular build rather than his face. His clothes were unremarkable—khaki slacks and a short-sleeve blue shirt. Henry took a closer look at his square, dark face. His eyes rested on Charles’ prominent jawline. The difference was a closely trimmed beard, not there when Henry had seen him at the funeral.

Jenkins smiled broadly, let go of Henry’s shoulder and gently punched his arm. Busy chasing those sweet students, I’ll bet.

A vision of Konah Nambey flashed into Henry’s mind. He blinked it away. I’m there to teach.

Ha! You are so serious. Jenkins shook his head.

Henry tapped his own chin and said, What’s this?

Jenkins’ thick eyebrows arched up in amusement. The new me, he said and laughed. He used the inside of his thumb and forefinger to stroke his jawline. This makes me look…distinguished! He continued stroking the new beard and Henry glanced at his hand. Jenkins sported a gold ring and gold wristwatch, also new additions. His square fingernails were neatly trimmed and shiny, as if they had been manicured. The girls love it, Jenkins added. They see Charles Jenkins coming and ooh…they’re wantin’ to join the three-D club.

Henry smiled and asked, What’s that?

The drop-dem-drawers club! Jenkins jostled Henry’s shoulder.

Henry laughed but hoped Charles didn’t start in on his latest conquests.

You should go say hello to my mother, said Henry after a short pause. She’s in the kitchen.

What’s she doing in there? Jenkins asked.

She didn’t tell you? Minna left.

What?

Yeah. Moved in with a long-lost sister upcountry.

Damn, after all those years, said Jenkins.

I thought it was strange, but we couldn’t talk her out of it.

Jenkins went inside to say hello to Emma Roye. After a short while he returned to the porch. He sat in a cane chair near Henry, who was sitting in his former position atop the steps. Your momma’s a good woman, he said. No husband, putting your sorry butt through school, and now, no maid. Jenkins was grinning but Henry didn’t say anything. She looks good, Jenkins added, more than I can say for you.

What do you mean?

Jenkins laughed. Man, you’re looking thin and worried. You’re looking like some of these string-bean Americo girls, afraid they’re not gonna get married. That it? You need a woman?

No, Henry said and smiled. He was amused by Charles’ description of Americo girls. It was an unfair generalization, but in Henry’s experience the description fit all too often.

Charles Jenkins twirled the gold ring on his finger. So, how’s the life of a university instructor?

All right.

You’re a hard man to have a conversation with.

Henry said,I’ve been thinking about this girl in my afternoon class.

I knew it.

It’s not like that. Henry shook his head. "It was the way she reacted to my lecture today. We were covering Fernando Po, and how the Spaniards treated the workers. She said the whole thing was

Liberia’s fault."

Christ. Who’s teaching, you or some girl?

She’s a tribal woman. She sees things differently.

Charles Jenkins’ brow furrowed. Henry, when are those people going to start taking responsibility for their own lives? Here we are, 1979, and all their problems are still our fault.

The two fell silent. Henry looked sideways at Charles. He didn’t disagree with his friend, so why did he feel uncomfortable? So let’s hear about you, he said. How’s it going?

Real good. Jenkins became animated. I’ve got a nice place. Seeing a few girls who like a good time. I’m even saving some money.

How about work? Henry prompted.

The job’s great. I’m meeting some interesting people. Jenkins smiled. Yeah, the Procurement Department is a very interesting place. He laughed and added, I’ve been learning to procure.

What’s so funny?

Let’s just say it’s everything I expected. I’m telling you, if you’re a lawyer or in government, you’re in good shape. You can make some money.

God, this town’s full of lawyers, Henry said, shaking his head. He added, Government people don’t make much, do they?

You’d be surprised. Jenkins laughed again. There’s more than just salaries. Henry lifted his eyebrows and Jenkins went on: Companies are willing to do favors for people in the Procurement Department. There’s enough to go around for everyone. Jenkins grinned and winked.

At that moment Emma Roye called out from the screen door behind them, Supper in five minutes.

When she was gone Henry said, You ought to be careful.

Jenkins flicked his hand dismissively. Nothing to worry about. It’s the way everyone does business.

CHAPTER FOUR

Henry cleaned up and put on a fresh shirt, then joined Charles Jenkins in the dining room. There was little light in the cavernous space, only the fading twilight that filtered through the gauzy curtain liners covering two windows. The gloom was accentuated by the collection of bulky furniture and the dark wainscoting. An electric fan sat whirring on a chair against one wall, arcing back and forth, apportioning a scant breeze.

Charles was seated, eyeing the steaming food on the mahogany table. Henry sat down across from him. Emma Roye bustled in with one more dish, then seated herself at the head of the table. She bowed her head to say grace and Henry and Charles did likewise. She went through a litany of invocations which neither of them listened to, then spoke the line that always ended her prayer: Bless, oh Lord, this food for our use, and us to Thy loving service.

Charles Jenkins and Emma Roye ate with zest, while Henry picked at the food on his plate. His mother commented on his lack of appetite. He told her the heat had sapped his hunger. She resumed eating, drinking, clattering her silverware. She chatted gaily with Charles.

Henry fidgeted and looked around. His attention was drawn to the family photographs in their tarnished, stand-up frames. He was so used to their presence that he rarely noticed them anymore. Now it seemed like they were all staring at him: young Emma Warner and her young fiancee, Aaron Roye; his mother and father with some politician; himself with his mother and father. Then his grandfather—with associates; with Henry’s parents; with young Henry himself, pulled to the old man’s side by a protective arm around the shoulder. In each of these, Roosevelt Warner’s smiling face looked washed out, as if it had been purposely lightened—a practice not unheard of in those days.

After they finished eating, Emma Roye said she had exciting news to share. The president has invited me to the celebration of Joseph Jenkins Roberts’ birthday, she said proudly. Look at this. She stepped to the sidebar and turned on a lamp, then picked up a large square card and handed it to Henry.

It said:

The Honourable William R. Roberts, President of the Republic

of Liberia, requests the honour of your presence on the occasion

of the 167th anniversary of the birth of the nation’s first

President, The Honourable Joseph Jenkins Roberts. Festivities

commence at eight o’clock post meridian on 15 March 1979 at

Centennial Pavilion, Monrovia, Liberia.

R.S.V.P.

Henry handed the invitation to Charles.

Emma Roye said, I’d like you both to go with me. She saw Henry roll his eyes. Why do you look like that? she asked.

I’d rather grade papers, Henry muttered.

Charles Jenkins said, I think it might be interesting.

Emma Roye smiled at Charles and reseated herself.

What could be interesting about it? said Henry.

What’s gotten into you? his mother asked.

Henry sighed. He wasn’t sure himself.

Charles Jenkins said, Henry had a rough day at school. He grinned and added, One of his students criticized him.

That’s not it, said Henry. I’m just not interested in going. People will talk about the unification policy and say how wonderful things are and congratulate themselves. It’s hypocritical. Things aren’t wonderful.

What do you mean? asked Emma Roye, truly puzzled.

Mama, most Liberians live in poverty. Politicians clinking champagne glasses at Centennial Pavilion doesn’t change that.

I don’t understand you. Emma Roye wearily pushed her plate away. The majority…you mean country people.

Yes. Tribal people are starving right here in Monrovia, Mama, in West Point, he said, referring to a slum near the waterside that was growing rapidly as people came to the capital in search of work.

Starving! she said. Her eyes blinked rapidly. If they’d get jobs instead of looking for a handout… She sat back and took a deep breath.

Henry, what are you saying? Charles Jenkins asked. We shouldn’t honor our first president because there are problems? Poverty is a fact of life. There isn’t a major city in the world that doesn’t have a West Point.

Henry exhaled derisively.

Part of the government’s job is to create the perception of progress, Jenkins added. When you say that things are okay, and you keep saying it, year after year…it has an effect. People begin to think positively, to believe it. The power of suggestion.

Henry’s eyes opened wide in surprise and he laughed. I’m sure the people in West Point appreciate that. The power of suggestion? Great. Rice will magically appear in their bowls.

Jenkins leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. He put his hands together and intertwined his fingers. Henry thought he looked like a politician rehearsing a speech. A politician with buffed fingernails.

Jenkins said, I know it’s not all perception. There has to be real progress, and there has been. But if we’re always saying, Wait, what about the poor in West Point, or the illiterate bushmen upcountry, it destroys the positive atmosphere, the perception of well-being that the government has worked so hard to create.

"But see how you