Chapter 5-3
1140 Words
It was young Chris Bawa.
He was barefoot. His broad feet were puffed up and bleeding. He had obviously been running barefoot over rough ground. He was wearing only a pair of tight-fitting blue shorts. His huge frame was covered with sweat. The fine hair on his body glistened as he took in the awful sight.
His whole frame became rigid, his face tortured, as he looked at the bullet-ridden body of Uncle Chad.
The look on his face was filled with such complete pain that it brought tears to the eyes of many present.
Chris’ fat fingers curled until they were huge fists.
His teeth grated together, making a disturbing gnashing sound.
When he spoke his voice came out as a hiss.
“Who did this?” Chris Bawa whispered.
His face was a mass of pain in its raw form.
The citizens of Little Rock knew that Uncle Chad and Chris Bawa were great friends. What they did not know was that it went beyond mere friendship.
For a boy who had never received any love from his father, who had refused to subject himself to the wills of an abusive father, his love had been redirected, and apart from his mother there was none he loved more than the old man who had secretly taught him the brutal way of life, Uncle Chad. The bloodied body of Uncle Chad represented a loss so great that it would have driven Chris Bawa mad, had his body not intervened.
An unexplained function of the body fought against the acute tragedy, cushioning its effect, guarding against what might have been a tragic consequence.
As a result, the boy became a boiling cauldron of pure hatred, devoid of all emotions except the great urge to lash out, to redeem and set things right.
Up until that point, the boy had never commanded any form of respect in Little Rock as a man.
He had rebelled against his father’s iron methods, and he rarely did any work on the ranch. He was a free spirit, roaming the wild, taking life easy as it came.
Chris was not interested in inheriting any part of the Circle T ranch. He was almost obese, but he was tall with it and incredibly handsome. He never wore a gun as the young men did. Chris never got involved in fights no matter how much he was provoked.
He was indeed considered a coward, like his mentor, and he would have received a most ungentlemanly nickname had it not been the fact that people in Little Rock respected his father.
Almost all the young men in Little Rock had nothing but contempt for him, regarding him as a big fat nonentity.
The young women were another factor altogether.
In an era where manhood was measured by quick brains, a fast gun and a ready fist, they found Chris Bawa’s aversion to anything violent really fetching. Plus, he was such fun to be with, and even then had a certain level of charisma which most boys found hard to beat.
Most of the young ladies went tender-hearted when he was around, with most of them doing their best to be close to him. No one could say the boy was a one-girl type; he liked to date the ladies, and on more than one occasion he had been the centre of rowdy disagreements between some of the ladies.
On that particular day of Uncle Chad’s gunplay with the Spencer brothers, Chris Bawa had not taken part in any of the competitions at the Rock Park. Truth was, he found the celebrations boring.
He had been going out with Elaine Boateng for some time now, and he spent that day with her. Elaine was the only daughter of Dirk Boateng, one of the new ranchers in town.
Elaine was beautiful, quite simply the loveliest girl in Little Rock.
Many of the young men had tried to win her attention, but as usual, it was the overweight son of Ted Bawa who had rendered her starry-eyed. They had clicked like two stars the first time they met, and it seemed that for once Chris Bawa had met the one woman who would own his heart forever. Chris had been dating her for almost six months, which was the longest time he had ever been with any girl. It had started speculations that they might get married eventually.
Chris Bawa missed all the terrible scenes on the day his mentor faced the killers because he did not stay long enough on the park to be part of the celebrations.
He only came to the park to see Elaine, and having caught her eye he managed to lead her slowly and carefully away from the main action.
The young men glowered at him, especially his brother Ato.
Ato Bawa secretly had the most tender of spots for Elaine, but he was so shy that he was barely able to maintain eye contact with her for more than a few seconds.
The fact that Elaine seemed to love Chris Bawa had really hurt Ato very much, although he had tried his best to hide it. To him, Elaine was the only girl he would ever fancy.
Ato had followed his younger brother at a distance he hoped was discreet, but which actually was just a few feet away. He watched as his brother and the girl he considered to be an angel stole into the woods bordering the Rock Park.
The last thing he saw was a shimmer of her golden shoulders and the tingling echoes of her happy giggle as they disappeared into the woods.
He stayed there for a while, his hard face suffused with jealousy so bitter and so green that it could have killed a horse.
Absently his right hand fingered the butt of the gun on his hip, and then, after a spell, he turned and went back to the festival grounds.
Ato was there when the five riders rode toward Uncle Chad and began speaking to the old man.
His heated brain had already been conjuring up hideous acts which his younger brother was enacting on the fair Elaine, and he had worked himself up to such a pitch of emotional mayhem that he was fit to blow any second. He had been looking out for an excuse to go into the woods and disrupt his brother at all costs, and any excuse was welcomed.
Thus, as soon as the killers spoke to Uncle Chad, Ato Bawa didn’t wait for anything more but turned round, found his horse and rode into the woods.
He found Chris and Elaine beside the Yumany River.
When Ato saw that Chris was naked, his heart almost tore right out of his chest!
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