Coming Home

Chapter 3

It was Saturday. Due to the environmental sanitation, Julius and Patience were home.

At the moment, Julius was seated in front of his balcony in an armchair, receiving some fresh air.

It was already past four in the evening and Nathaniel was not back home yet. A thought crept into his head that made him chuckle. It was what happened earlier that day during breakfast.

“Hmm. . .who cooked this food?” Nathaniel asked, diving into the meal.

Patience replied, “It's the cook, Ada.”

“Wow, she's such a good cook! It's been ages since I ate such a handsome meal,” said Nathaniel.

They'd all laughed at this. Just then, Nathaniel cracked his voice to speak, after sipping some water.

“So, brother—” to Julius “—I've been thinking about what we discussed last night and, truthfully, I think I'd give some effort to my one and only goal.”

“Hurray!” exclaimed Julius.

“That's great, Nathaniel. So what goal is it you're planning on achieving?” Patience asked.

Nathaniel dropped his fork and knife in his plate.

“I've always wanted to be a tourist. But since I cannot be officially, then I'll just start by visiting lots of places. I've always loved some adventure as a boy, so here's my chance to start touring the beautiful city of Lagos.”

Julius felt stupefied inside. He knew he encouraged Nathaniel to get working on his goals. However, he wasn't expecting this... tourism?

“Wow, that's wonderful, Nat,” Julius finally said. He stabbed some fried plantains with rice, dipping into his mouth.

“What a goal!” Julius said to himself as the memory from this morning still lingered in his head.

In front of him, at the far end of the compound, just beside the gatepost, sat Akpan and Kabiru. They were arguing as usual.

Julius mouth twitched.

“Hoodlums.”

Thinking of Nathaniel again, he thought of giving him a call. He reached for his phone in his shirt pocket and pulled it out, dialing the latter's number.

Switch off.

Julius sighed, replacing his phone to his pocket and averting his thoughts to work. The thought of calling his manager propped up. He was wondering if the project had finally been carried out successfully.

“GET OUT!” ordered a strong, masculine voice.

He had obviously been sleeping for a long time now, judging from the dimming sky. It was already sunset. He blinked his eyes to adapt to the blurred images outside the bus. Some voices could be heard. He couldn't make sense of the words.

“Are you deaf? I said you should get out!”

He raised his head to the exit of the bus and recognised the face. It was the red-eye conductor.

Nathaniel rubbed his eyes with the back of his arm. Strong breeze invigorated his body as he pulled himself out of the bus. He felt dizzy. Walking out, he used the roll of chairs in front of him to aid himself in alighting from the bus. Turning around to look back in, he realised that there were none inside.

In front of him, Nathaniel saw the conductor pointing at him to a uniformed man. Even if he knew nothing about uniforms, one thing for sure was that that fellow was a sailor. The thought of it made him make a quick survey of his environment.

A seaport.

“Where am I?” he asked the conductor, placing a palm on his forehead. He felt a rising headache.

“My friend, will you shut up and come here?!” thundered the driver opposite the duo. With him was the man in the sea-blue uniform. Turning to the latter, the driver said, “I guess we have a deal.”

“Affirmative.” The uniformed man withdrew something form his inner suite's pocket that was in a black, cellophane, nylon bag, passing it to the driver very quickly.

“Oya move!” the conductor ordered Nathaniel, pointing towards the uniformed man.

“I don't understand, is this some kind of joke or something?! Not only did you take me past my bus stop, you even make business over my head!” Nathaniel could not make sense of it.

He was already suspecting he had been drugged to sleep for such a long period of time. He wasn't the sort of person who slept and forgot himself.

The uniformed man looked at him as though he were amazed.

“Let's do it the easy way, shall we?” beckoned he.

“Over my dead body!” declared Nathaniel.

The corner of the man's lips curved up.

“Then over your dead body it shall be.”

The man folded his fingers into a fist then ran towards Nathaniel to aim for his head. Nathaniel simply maintained his posture, unalarmed. He tossed his head to the left, missing the punch easily. In defence, he palmed against the other party's chest causing him to lose his stamina and fall to the ground.

The uniformed man could see, from the corner of his eyes, how the bus driver and conductor quickly ran to the bus and started the engine. Seeing this, he exclaimed, “Thieves! Get back here!”

In all honesty, he was heavily enraged. Diverting all his energy at Nathaniel, he made a quick “Chinese get up” and arched a blow. Nathaniel crouched low just in time to dodge it, then he pushed a blow into the man's stomach.

Still staggering from the action, he was amazed to see Nathaniel advancing towards him, whooping two smooth blows against his cheeks. The man staggered uncontrollably, this time, and he fell to the ground.

Nathaniel pounced on him in bitterness, dropping fits upon fits of blows in the latter's face. He kept pouring his pains and disappointments on him through his blows, until, “clung!”, something struck against the back of his head. It sent him unconscious, leaving him to fall on the bloodstained face. Then, there was a total blackout.

* * *

The moon shone gloomily over the crew of sailors and wealthy mercenaries that partied in the ship. It was more of a custom for these ones to party right after the ship's departure. Some discussed in loud whispers, while others moved their legs to the music in the dancing hall. Still, there were those who found that very day one of the best moments of their entire life. Say, for example, Derrick — a fine, British gentleman who had himself locked in his cabin in an attempt to rehearse for the proposal of Miss Veil.

The duo had become extremely intimate since their first encounter with each other, three months ago. Due to how busy the passengers ship was, they had spent that much period on sea. As one who loved traveling by sea, he was already used to all forms of ship excuses to delay in disembarkment.

Kneeling on one leg, he opened a ring parcel to an imaginary figure, saying, “Would you marry me, Miss Veil?”

He raised himself up in dismay.

“I'll never be able to do it right.”

One of his attendants badged in.

“Sir—”

“I remember saying ‘nobody comes in’!” Derick interjected.

“B-but, Sir,” stuttered the attendant.

“No buts!”

“It's Miss Veil!”

That simple phrase, or rather, on mentioning of just that name, made Derrick's face seem to go pale.

“Is she well? Tell me she's well.”

The attendant scratched his head before saying, “Actually, Sir, you said immediate it's this time, I should remind you to go see Miss Veil. You said I should not be a minute late, at all. That's the reason I was running here, Sir.”

Embarrassed, Derrick said, “Oh, I see. I'm sorry for my earlier reaction. You may leave.”

The attendant bowed and turned around.

“No — wait!”

“Pardon?”

Derrick drove his hand into his hair.

“I actually need your help. . . not that I can't do it myself, but I just need a little helping hand here.”

The attendant was confused.

“Is there any problem, Sir?”

“No, no problem at all. And cut the ‘sir’ thing off. My name's Derrick.”

“Okay, Sir — I mean, Derrick.”

Derrick chuckled.

“It seems you're married,” said Derrick, diverting his eyes to the attendant's hand.

The attendant smiled gaily and said, “Yes, umm. . . Derrick.”

“Beautiful!” exclaimed Derrick.

The attendant looked at him with wide eyes. He was astonished. He wondered why this young, white man was acting all “funny”.

“Look you. . . what's your name?”

“Wale,” replied the attendant.

“Yeah, Wale. I'm going to propose to Miss Veil on the dusk of this very day, and I'm. . .”

Before he could find a word to place, he heard the other party speak, casually.

“Nervous.”

“Yes. . .yes, exactly.” Derrick nodded. “I've had to prepare over and over on what I'd have to say, however it's not been going well so far.”

Wale's eyes seemed to have carried an aura of astonishment as he looked straight into the frustrated gentleman before him. Noticing Derrick's attention was now fixed on him, he gulped in some saliva before asking again to be sure he heard well.

“You've been rehearsing on what to say?”

“Yes of course, what d'you expect me to do?”

Wale sighed deeply before feeling more relaxed. Gesturing more casually, he asked Derrick a question.

“Do you love her?”

When Derrick saw the other party's mouth part to speak, he was expecting something incredible to come out from his mouth, however, the question this attendant had just posed at him — he thought — was the most unbefitting to this very occasion.

“What?!”

He was already getting to regret even having to call an attendant over to such a crucial moment in his life.

“Do you love her?” the question came again just in the same mannerism.

Controlling himself, Derrick replied calmly, “Of course, I do.”

“When you speak to your parents whom you love, do you by any chance seem to make preparations for what you'd say?”

Folding his hands, Derrick said, “No.” He felt that the question was in no way related to what was crucial at hand, until he heard the next question.

“So, why rehearse now?”

Derrick wanted to give an irrational response, but at second thoughts, he seemed to have gotten what the other was driving at.

Wale took the advantage of Derrick's silence to continue speaking.

“Let your words be from you — the real you.”

Digesting the former's words, Derrick seemed to have forged a whole new point of view, all of a sudden. He stood up, admired himself in the mirror and, unexpectedly, while Wale was still wondering if the other party had gotten his end point, threw his arms around Wale.

“I owe you one,” he whispered.

Derrick marched out of his cabin with the kind of courage Wale had not seen in a long while.