source of all their fears, and the likeliest temptation for the boys.
Lee’s triumph at finding the runaways in a ditch on the side of the entrance road into the airport wilted the moment he learned that one was still missing – the boy had somehow jumped the roadblock. Lee put his hands on his hips and scrutinised the sky. It looked like tea-time and his stomach thought so too. He was beginning to wish that he had paid his Hippocratic tax and been done with it. To save time, he stashed the other boys in the bed of his pickup and drove to the security hut. He leaned his head out of his window and grinned. The guards remained unamused until he obliquely offered them a bribe and even then, one of them insisted on accompanying him.
The sun was setting and Lee’s indignation with Mabvuto’s mother had festered into irritation – the low crackling burn that regret kindles – by the time they found the boy inside the aeroplane wreck. There was nevertheless some pleasure to the finding. Cotched! Lee thought. That was what he and his friends had said back in the day at Falcon, with that double glee of the hunter and the snitch. Just then, out of the corner of his eye, Lee saw the guard raise the gun.
‘Hey, hey, he’s just a kid, man,’ he frowned, reaching out and pulling the barrel down.
The boy skittered down the nose of the plane and slunk up to them. He wore what looked like a seat belt low on his hips, but he was otherwise empty-handed. He had a quiet intensity about him. Lee and the guard walked him between them to the pickup, where he climbed in the bed with the others. Lee drove back to the roadblock, where he dropped off the guard, resorting to another bribe to prevent what would no doubt have been a pointless, bullying interrogation.
Lee drove out of the airport and directly into the compound, leaving dust and curiosity in his wake. As soon as he braked, the boys leapt out of the back. But before they could run off, they were swarmed by gloating good girls, who began wringing their hands so the index finger snapped the knuckles, chanting: ‘Halifogali, nevah said a sorree, jumped in a lorree…’ Weary as an embattled soldier, burdened with his own good deeds, Lee pushed his way through the crowd of compound dwellers. He walked each of the boys to their respective homes, staving off rewards of tea and beer from their poor, grateful mothers.
* * *
Lee dropped off the one who had found the crashed plane last. The boy led him to a one-storey building painted in coral pink, with ‘HI-FLY HAIRCUTTERY & DESIGNS LTD’ in big green letters on the facade. Beneath the sign was a list of services and prices offered. A series of severed heads demonstrated the patterns you could have your hair plaited into: S’s and X’s, cul-de-sacs and labyrinths, exclamation points and question marks, hedgehogs and horns, antlers and antennae. An English garden of possibilities, Lee’s mother would have said. Lee walked up the short set of steps ahead of the boy and knocked on the wooden door.
A woman – young, pretty – opened it, tightening her chitenge at her waist. It was patterned with tea kettles, as was the chitambala tied casually around her head.
‘Bwanji? Can I help you?’ she asked.
‘Bwino, bwanji? Does this belong to you?’
He pulled her son from behind his back, gripping him by the head. Lee was pleased to note that the boy’s skull fit within the span of his palm. But the woman, still leaning against the doorjamb, did not seem impressed or even surprised to see her son. She remained motionless but for a slight lift of her eyebrow. ‘And where have you been?’ she asked.
Was she talking to him or to her son? Lee and the boy looked at each other.
‘Hmp,’ she said. They looked back at her. Lee saw now that she was, in fact, neither young nor pretty. She was in her thirties and beautiful. Indeed, her beauty had reached its richest hour. Her upper lip was two soft hills, her lower lip their reflection in a lake, blurry along the bottom edge.
‘Go inside,’ she said, pulling the boy to her and then patting his buttocks to embarrass him in. She turned back to Lee.
‘I know you,’ she said, tilting her head musingly.
‘No, you don’t,’ he laughed.
‘Yes. Actually. I