Chapter 15: Gone into the Crowd
Chapter 15 · 6 min read
Three more men came out of the crowd. They were big, and they carried heavy wooden sticks. One of them kicked over a basket of dried peppers, just to watch them roll. The people who had been watching the game hurried away.
“Lower Square,” a seller whispered, as if it were a curse, and pulled her children behind her table.
The four men spread out, closing every gap between the stalls.
Kofi held his bread tight against his chest.
“Lumani,” Ayo said quietly.
Lumani did not move.
Keep your eyes down, Kamau had said. If anyone looks at you too long, you walk away.
He had promised Kamau.
Four men were now looking at him.
The passage on the left was empty.
“Left side is open,” Ayo said, very low. “Three steps, and we are gone.”
Lumani looked at Jabari, standing by the mat with the coins in his fist, and at Kofi, clutching the bread. Neither of them could outrun four men with sticks.
If Lumani walked away, they would be alone.
“Not without them,” he said.
Behind him, Ayo said, “I knew you would say that.”
The man who had stepped on the coin rolled his shoulders.
“Last chance, camp boy. The coins.”
“They are not yours,” Lumani said.
The man reached for Jabari’s fist. Lumani stepped into his path, the way Kamau had taught him when no one was watching. He slipped under the arm, drove his shoulder into the man’s ribs, and pushed as hard as he could.
The man moved back one step.
Then he laughed. “Is that it?” He rubbed his ribs. “You hit like a camp boy.”
He grabbed Lumani by the tunic and threw him into a stack of clay pots. The pots broke all around him.
From the ground, Lumani saw a second man swing his stick at Ayo. She ducked under it, caught his wrist, turned it sharply, and hooked her heel behind his knee.
Lumani stared. He knew that move. Kamau had taught it to him.
The man dropped to one knee and came straight back up. He tore his wrist free and struck Ayo with the back of his hand. She stumbled into the stall behind her.
The man shook out his sore wrist and glared at her.
“Who taught you that?”
Ayo did not answer.
The largest man had watched all of it without moving. One of his ears was much bigger than the other. It stuck out from his head like the handle of a water jar. Now he stepped forward. He held his stick low and close.
Lumani pushed himself up from the broken pots. His chest grew hot, right over his birthmark. Under his feet, the ground began to hum.
The largest man frowned at him.
“What is wrong with your eyes, boy?”
Too many people were watching. Lumani pushed the heat back down.
“What is wrong with your ears, man?” he said.
The largest man touched his big ear.
“I am going to kill you,” he said quietly.
He nodded to the others.
“Take the coins. And break the little one’s fingers.”
One of them swung at Kofi.
Lumani threw himself in front of Kofi and lifted his arm. The stick cracked against it. Pain shot up to his shoulder.
The man reached past him for the bread. Kofi bit his hand. The man howled and pulled back, shaking his fingers.
Ayo kicked out the pole of the nearest canopy. The cloth came down over the man who had struck her.
Jabari opened his fist, took three coins, and threw them high into the air.
“Coins!” he shouted. “Free coins!”
For one breath, Jabari watched them spin and flash in the sun. Then they came down, and the whole market came down with them.
People rushed out of every stall and threw themselves at the ground. Chickens burst from a broken crate. The crowd crashed into them from all sides.
Someone knocked Lumani into a cloth stall, and it collapsed on top of him.
Through the dust, he saw Jabari grab Kofi’s tunic and pull him into a dark alley on the right. Two of the men ran in after them.
“Jabari!” Lumani screamed. Nobody could hear him over the noise.
A hand grabbed his wrist. Ayo.
“Not that way!” she said. “Come on!”
“They are in there!”
“Lumani. Come on!”
He looked back. The alley on the right was empty.
She dragged him into a passage on the left.
Behind them, people were still on their knees, fighting over coins.
The big-eared man stepped over them and followed Lumani and Ayo into the passage.
The passage grew narrower and narrower, until it ended at a wall.
The wall was twice Ayo’s height. She jumped, caught the top, and pulled herself up. Then she turned and reached down.
“Your hand!”
Lumani reached up with his hurt arm. His fingers would not close, and they slipped off hers.
“I cannot—”
From the dark end of the passage, the big man’s voice came, calm and slow. “Nowhere to go, camp boy. No one laughs at my ear.”
“Then hold still,” Lumani said. “I am laughing now.”
The man’s footsteps sped up.
“Other hand!” Ayo shouted. “Lumani, now!”
He jumped again and caught her with his good hand. She pulled. His feet scraped the wall, found a crack, and pushed.
Thick fingers closed around his ankle.
“Got you,” the man said softly.
He pulled. Lumani’s chest hit the top of the wall. Ayo held his wrist with both hands, and he still felt himself sliding back down.
Lumani kicked hard. On the third kick, his foot came free, and his shoe stayed in the man’s hand.
Lumani and Ayo fell over the other side together and landed hard in a street full of people.
His shoulder hit the ground first. Pain went through his hurt arm like a hot nail. He bit down on his sleeve to keep from crying out.
Before he could get up, he heard boots hitting the ground together, the same sound as before.
“Soldiers,” Ayo said.
The soldiers rounded the corner, marching toward the noise.
Ayo hauled Lumani behind a cart of yams.
“Arms up.”
“What—”
“Arms up!”
She yanked his tunic over his head, turned it inside out, and pushed it back on him. The red stripe was gone. She rubbed dust over the stripe on his pant leg until it was brown.
“Where did you learn that?” Lumani whispered.
“Same place you learned to fight,” Ayo said. She folded her arms over her own stripe and stood where the cart hid her legs.
“Now eyes down.”
“You said my eyes were mine.”
“Not right now.”
From behind the cart, Lumani could see their boots. Black boots, all the same, all moving as one.
The soldiers marched past. One soldier at the end of the line turned his head. His eyes moved over the sellers, over Ayo, and down to Lumani’s feet, one shoe and one bare. He looked at Lumani’s face. Then he looked away, and the line marched on.
“Did he see me?” Lumani asked.
“Not yet,” Ayo whispered.
On top of the wall behind them, the largest man crouched, holding Lumani’s shoe, his one big ear dark against the sky. He waited until the soldiers were gone.
He held up the shoe.
“Camp boy!” he called. “I will keep this for you.”
“Keep it safe,” Lumani called back. “I will come back for it.”
The man laughed, slow and loud. He tied the shoe to his belt by its strap.
“I will be waiting,” he called.
Ayo grabbed Lumani’s hand, and they ran.
Past the yam carts. Away from the cloth stalls and the corn lady’s smoke. Ayo did not look back once. Lumani had to run hard to keep up, his bare foot slapping the hot ground.
She ran as if the gang were not the only thing behind them.
Somewhere back in that market, two men were still hunting Jabari and Kofi.
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