The green army jeep patrols sent by the President arrive late on one Saturday afternoon. Kilonzo and Joseph are standing near the dirt path that leads to Bernerd’s kiosk when Joseph’s attention to drawn to a green army jeep that is parked under the mango tree. “Kilonzo, run! Run as fast as you can,” Joseph warns Kilonzo. “Where?” Kilonzo questions perplexed. There’s no reason for alarm. Kilonzo always felt secure around Joseph. Joseph sets him free. Surely the confidence he inherited from Joseph would overcome any threat. He ignores the warning teasing a white butterfly as he continues up the dirt path. His feet below disturb the silent red soil making a fuss with an orange cloud of dust behind him. “Kilonzo, no,” Joseph screams.
A loud blast echoes from the classrooms followed by the sound of light gravel shaking in a tin can. “Go!” Joseph yells. Kilonzo looks up startled by the tone of Joseph’s voice, finally ignoring the white butterfly. A green army jeep is heading their way from the street. Kilonzo turns to run toward Joseph and notices a boy running through the maize field away from the Bernerd’s kiosk. The alarm subsides as Kilonzo laughs off the absurdity. “Why are we running?” he wonders. The presence of the green army jeeps is not a concern for Kilonzo as he follows Joseph home. They set out running towards Ghana Street taking a shortcut through the quarters behind Kilonzo’s house. “Mamma, Mamma,” they hear a boy crying out from one of the quarters next to Joyce’s. The crying gets louder as they approach the quarters. Kilonzo has heard the cry before. He ignores the crying; it offers no concern for him. “Who is that?” Joseph inquires. “Joyce’s new neighbor,” Kilonzo assumes as they continue walking through. He is embarrassed to answer feeling he should have more to offer. “Just a boy crying,” Kilonzo adds as he continues walking through. Joseph pauses outside the door. His fists are clinched tight. He appears apprehensive about the crying boy. “Let’s go,” Joseph instructs Kilonzo in a whisper. They start running along a concrete sidewalk towards Joseph’s house past several cream colored rectangular houses with orange tile roofs. They turn around the corner of the last house on their left, past a sign that reads “Gambia Street”. Around the corner facing a thicket of thorn bushes separating Thika Road and the campus, they arrive at Liberia Avenue.
A green army jeep and white van are parked in front of Joseph’s house. Joseph appears agitated as he runs ahead of Kilonzo. “No good,” he says to Kilonzo. Kilonzo recognizes one of the lion men and becomes frightened. “What are they doing here?” he wonders. “Kilonzo, go home now!” Joseph shouts. Kilonzo stops running as Joseph approaches his front door. He does not make it into his house before he is grabbed and thrown to the ground by two of the men waiting for him. Kilonzo observes from fifty feet away. The men grunt like savages engaging their prey. They continue their rage against Joseph’s innocence relentlessly. The horror in Joseph’s voice is unexpected; Joseph is beaten regularly at Muthaiga Primary school with acceptance. Kilonzo does not know what to make of this new discovery. Joseph’s limbs are flying all over like a spider trapped in water, as he is thrown into the back of the white van. A man with a receding hairline, dressed in a short-sleeve button down shirt and brown trousers, stands handcuffed leaning against the van nodding his head in approval, all the while silent.
Kilonzo’s head is pounding. His fists are clinched in rage, silenced by the fear of recognition; inherently so he has a reason to be angry. The reaction of the man in handcuffs stops him dead in his tracks. The anger has nowhere to go. The man is released by one of the lion men. The green army jeeps and white van leave. Left behind in their orange dust are Kilonzo and the released man who is now kneeling facing the taillights of the departing convoy. Kilonzo’s attention is drawn to another figure whose presence he just now noticed. The strange figure is standing over the kneeling man. Kilonzo thinks of him to be a ghost, an imaginary aberration of his own making. The figure is a tall slender man with a light brown complexion. His clothes are out of place, a blue dress shirt, a corduroy khaki sport coat, and matching slacks. The ghostly figure stands still like a statue. The kneeling man remains frozen in place before him. Kilonzo turns to the tangerine sunset with his head down and he trudges home. The thought of the white butterfly chasing up the dirt path, and the boy, running through the maize field, run through his head, as he begins to entertain a new idea. What was this freedom in Joseph that he craves to have? Joseph is removed from him, taken away, and relinquished without a fight. In his childish dilemma, he looks at his clinched fists and is suddenly ashamed of their weakness.
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