As Jake spoke to the girl, Nena took her leave, leaving a hefty tip on the table for Cheryl and the trouble that had found them all. On her way out, she heard the girl explaining that her dad was on his way to pick her up.
“I was at the library and took the bus here to grab a bite, but I just texted him. He’s coming.”
Jake eyed her suspiciously. “Library’s a ways off.”
He was right. The library was twenty minutes out of the way from here.
“And you came here to get a bite?” he clarified.
She shrugged, rolling her eyes with the annoyance only a teenager could muster. “Heard this place had the best burgers around,” she said. “And like I said, my dad’s on the way.”
Nena knew no one was coming for her except those Flushes. Because when a little man-child like that took offense, he’d burn everything down to get retribution. Even his very soul.
8
BEFORE
Through the waves of heat and smoke, recognition flickers within me. The men call him Attah Walrus, a name befitting his enormous girth, but Papa had called him by his name, Desmond. It was not a month ago when he and two others—Paul, who I had taken to be the leader among them, as he had done the most talking, and a younger man they called Kwabena, or Bena for short—had come to our home for an audience with Papa.
“Do you recall my last visit, Michael? Do you recall the unwise choice you made? My offer was most beneficial to you and your people.” Paul paces slow circles around my father. He spits on the ground. Seeing spit always makes me queasy, and I force myself not to stare at the splotch it makes in the dirt.
Papa scans the crowd of interlopers, his gaze lingering on Kwabena, then Attah, then finally steadying on Paul. Even from where I stand, I can see how troubled he is at Paul’s words. “Do you recall, Paul, what I said your so-called offer sounded like? Sounds like hundreds of years ago. Will you have Ghanaians spirited away on ships from Elmina using my people as conduits in some modern-day Atlantic slave trade?”
“You do not want to pass on this,” Paul says assuredly. “You want to be on the profitable end.”
“Profitable in what way, eh?” Papa inclines his head, dismay washing his face in the light. “I want no part of this. And I think it best you and your men leave back to Kumasi or Accra, wherever you came from, and stop all of this.”
Paul chuckles. “Ask your people.” He holds his arms out and raises his voice. “They will want the riches this venture brings. They will want their children given the opportunities living abroad can bring them. It is your responsibility as chief to take it to your council of elders for a vote. Let them choose to get off this mountain and into the real world.”
Papa gives Paul his hard look. His tone flattens. “Leave this place, Paul, and never return. The village council is already aware of your offer, and they want no part of you or your dirty dealings.”
There is a finality in Papa’s tone that causes a niggling inside me to sprout from a little seed to a bud. These men are beyond rebuke. They have killed already. They will not leave just because Papa wills it so. Even I know that.
Paul says, “You would deny me again? Take what’s mine from me once more?” The fires crackle and spit in the background. The square is unnaturally quiet.
Confusion breaks on Papa’s face. What has Papa taken from this man? Papa, who is the most giving man I know.
Pained, wounded, Papa says, “I never took from you, Paul. You cannot possibly believe . . .”
“If it wasn’t for me,” Paul cuts in, “you would not have passed the exams or been chosen for uni.”
Papa acquiesces. “Yes, you tutored me well, but it wasn’t me who prevented you from taking the exam and going to uni with me.”
“No, my father had that pleasure,” Paul seethes. “And I promise you I have thanked him for his prevention in kind.”
In kind. The way he says it sends icicles down to my toes. Coupled with the laughter of his surrounding men, it makes me suspect Paul’s “thanks” to his father was unpleasant.
“But you, you owe me, Michael. Permit this deal. Let me finally prosper as you have. It is my time, brother.”
Papa shakes his head. “Not like this, Paul. Not on the backs of people, of children, I cannot. I will not let you run routes through our roads to ferry people into twenty-first-century slavery. A true brother wouldn’t ask it of me.”
Paul stares at him for a long time. It’s a stare so full of malice it makes me quake where I sit. His voice is so low I strain to hear. “You have made an unwise decision, o.”