Small Boys

When they were small boys, AJ had been the fast one.

Chuks had been the big one, even then, and the big one is always in goal. So he had spent most of his childhood standing between two flip-flops on a muddy street in Ajegunle, watching AJ come at him with a ball made of plastic bags and string, dodging three bigger boys on the way, grinning like a thief. AJ never kicked it hard. He always found the corner. Chuks never once forgave him for it, and never once stopped wanting to play.

Then one rainy season AJ's mother packed two suitcases and took him to London. Chuks was nine. AJ stood at the end of the street in a jacket that was much too warm for Lagos and said, "I'll send you a real ball. A leather one. From England."

The ball never came. Chuks did not hold it against him. You do not hold things against small boys. You only remember them.

And now the small boy was sitting on the bench at Iloro House, twenty years later, with a face like a dropped mango and arms covered in bites.

"AJ!" Chuks said. "Na you?" Is it you? He was already crossing the street. "Come, come. I'm just turning this stew. Have you eaten?"

AJ looked up. It took him a moment. Then something in his face gave way. "Not since they let me out."

Chuks looked at his arms. "Look at your arms. Those cell mosquitoes mapped you like Lagos traffic."

"Mosquitoes all night," AJ said. "Then the police beat me. Then the guys in the cell joined in."

"Because of the accent, abi?" Abi means right? in the way that expects no argument. "Two weeks since London deported you, and suddenly you're a foreigner here."

"One of them kept calling me oyinbo." Oyinbo: foreigner, white man, someone from outside. AJ's mouth twisted. "I'm as Naija as he is." Naija: Nigerian, the way Nigerians say it.

"Forget them. You're home now. Sit down small, the rice is almost done." Sit down small: sit a while.

Chuks did not ask about London. He did not ask about the papers, or the raid. He could see the answers on AJ's face, and none of them were hungry for an audience. What was hungry was AJ.

So he fed him. Rice, stew, a piece of chicken he had been saving for himself, and then, because AJ looked at the empty plate the way a man looks at a closing door, more rice.

"I should call my uncle," AJ said eventually.

"Pastor? He's still in Benin?"

"Benin City. Edo State. He'll want to pray over me for an hour."

"Then eat first," said Chuks. "Nobody prays well on an empty stomach."

It took a few days for AJ to stop flinching when a car door slammed. Chuks let him sit. He brought him tea in the morning and food in the afternoon and did not make conversation, which for Chuks was a kind of heroism.

On the fourth day, AJ came and stood by the coal pot without being called.

"You've been away a long time," Chuks said, stirring. "Want me to show you how things move around here?"

It was not a tour so much as a set of lessons, and Chuks, who had never taught anybody anything except how to stop burning rice, turned out to have strong opinions about all of them.

First, running. AJ's legs were stiff from the cell and he moved like an old man. "Run for a few seconds," Chuks said. "Imagine the last plate of rice is getting away." AJ ran, wincing, to the end of the street and back. "There you go! Save a little breath for eating."

Then the map. The estate was small but folded in on itself, with footpaths and back yards and a south path nobody marked. Chuks had AJ pick a spot on the map on his phone, drop a pin, and walk to it without asking anyone. "Even my snack trips need a plan," he said.

Then kneeling, which AJ did not see the point of until Chuks explained how many times a day a man in Lagos has to crouch: to fix a slipper, to talk to a child, to look under a generator, to pray. "Take your time," Chuks said. "These knees aren't fresh from the market." AJ knelt. AJ stood. "Up again! That's the whole trick."

Then, because AJ had come out of that cell with something tight and angry in his shoulders, Chuks stepped back and said, "Throw one punch and one kick into the air. Nobody is your practice bag." AJ did. Then he did it again, harder, and some of the tightness went out of him. "Nice," Chuks said. "The air can take it. Me, I only fight stubborn jar lids."

The bush

The last lesson was the one Chuks had been looking forward to, and the one he had thought about most carefully.

They went down the south footpath to the bush: a patch of scrub and red earth with a street football pitch and an unfinished building, two floors of bare concrete that somebody's money had run out on years ago. Beyond it, you could smell the sea.

Three officers were on their smoke break in the shade of the building, as they were most afternoons. One was older, with a hand radio that crackled every few minutes. One had crumbs on his uniform and in his pockets and, as far as Chuks could tell, in his soul; everyone called him Biscuit. The third said nothing, ever.

"Talk to them," Chuks told AJ. "Their shotgun, their permission. I'll wait over there."

AJ talked. Biscuit laughed at him ("Two minutes here and he wants the expensive toy"), and the older officer looked at AJ for a long time, then handed over the shotgun with instructions as plain as a menu. Bottles and cans only. By the unfinished building only. Pointed at those walls.

"Bring am back o," the older officer said, which means bring it back, with the o on the end for emphasis. "It stays here in the bush."

AJ was not a natural. The first shot went somewhere above the second floor and startled a pigeon into early retirement. The second took the neck off a bottle. By the end he had hit three, and stood there with the gun pointed at the ground, breathing hard, looking surprised at himself.

"Three hits!" Chuks said. "Those bottles have had quite a morning."

And then the part that mattered. AJ stood there a moment too long, the shotgun in his hands, and Chuks saw him think about it, the way any man fresh out of a cell with nothing in his pockets might think about it.

"Take the shotgun back to the officers," Chuks said quietly. "Borrowing ends with a thank-you, not a disappearing act."

AJ looked at him. Then he walked over to the officers and handed it back, stock first, and said thank you, and Biscuit asked whether he had brought any food.

"Good man," said Chuks. "They have it back, just as you promised." He clapped AJ on the shoulder, gently, because of the ribs. "All done, AJ. Rice can wait. Go see the football bookie in the bush. That's where the money is."

Chuks walked back up June 12 Street alone in the late light. At the far end, outside the club with the purple sign, a man in black was standing very still, watching him come.

That evening, the same man came to the coal pot and said the Warden would like some suya.