This bloody village! I am back to it. Twelve years it has been. 12 years! I know them, I know them all. Some watched me grow, others we grew up together. I hate them, all of them. I remember the taunts, the sneers. The bastard son of a harlot they called me. Well, the son of the harlot was back now, back to take his revenge.
I always wondered why my mother never married any of those men. They came at all hours of the day, some were huge, some were short. I didn’t need to be told to go outside, as it was an excuse for me to roam the village and go play with other children.
It was on one of those trips that I met Tiemo and Tamuno. I had wandered to the beach to watch the other children swim in the sea. I didn’t join them. I was scared of the water. I sat on the rack stack and watched the older ones dive in to the water to the squeals and laughter of the others. This was the rack stack that grew to be a makeshift jetty. The jetty on which I am standing today, after 12 years, and barking orders at the baggers! Everyone in the village knew Tiemo and to an extent Tamuno. There was this particular girl, Abigail, who always smiled at me and beckoned with her hand for me to come in to the water. I liked her. She was always kind to me whenever our paths crossed in the village or in the many playgrounds of the young. Tiemo was the village hero among the young ones in the Tekuni age group. I admired him and tried to get him to be my friend. He always ignored me and would throw his head away anytime I greeted him or laughed at a joke. Tamuno would always stand up to him and ask him to allow me to join in their play - to which he would refuse. With an aristocratic air he would arrogantly remind me of the need to go on a journey to find out my real father.
‘’Of course’’, he would say, ‘’I don’t know where you will start because even the sea does not know’’.
This hurt, especially as it was done in the presence of Abigail. It hurt me so badly that I would just run away, crying and clutching my tattered overcoat that my mother had seized from one her visitors who refused to ‘settle’ her. To my small, naïve mind, I always wondered what ‘settle’ meant.
‘Ozugbo Ozugbo! Bastard child’’, they would repeat constantly. I still remember the accompanying laughter and taunts of the other children escorting my every step as I ran. Somehow, somewhere in the taunts of the children, a voice would shout at them to stop it. It was the voice of Abigail. How I loved that voice. It was the only thing that kept me going back to the playgrounds. No taunt would deter me from seeing her play or hear her talk.
As I ran home I concluded in my mind that I had to go and look for my father. If only to prove to that son of ‘okporokpo’ that I wasn’t a bastard as they called me. ‘Uncle wonda’ was still around. I could hear his voice as he talked to my mother. Her pearly laughter rang out from somewhere within our shack of discarded ‘chemical bags’. This was the big polythene bag used by oil companies to hold and transport chemicals for the drilling activity.
Abigail, I would never forgive that bloody Tiemo for her death. I had left the village two years before. It was one of my mother’s visitors who told me about the army and encouraged me to join the army. He even bought me the forms. I went to Depot Nigerian Army for three months. It was hell on earth. I wonder how I survived that training time. I guess it was the tough times I had gone through before coming there. Well, I survived and after that I was deployed to Liberia. I thought of her throughout my stay in Liberia. Perhaps that is what kept me going. I had only one plan, to come back and ask for her hand in marriage. It was the right thing to do, the only thing to do. That bloody Tiemo stole her away from me and led her to her death. But I was back now, with more money and power than any of them could imagine. As the head of security for Alcove Oil operations in these parts, I could do to them anything I wanted; they were all under my boots. There were no rules of engagement or superior officers in the army to control me. Besides no one would ever believe them, it would be their word against Alcove Oil.
‘I ask again, where Is Tiemo?’
I know you all know where he is, or at least one of you does. That one of you should tell me now. Tamuno where is your cousin Tiemo? I know you saw him three days ago. Tell me where he is and no one will get hurt.
