SHORT RIDE OR LONG WALK
His key fell from his hand and landed on the ground with a thud. For a moment, he seemed to have forgotten the key and might never bend down to pick it up. But just then he did. It was also the moment he finally bothered to tell The Cyclist that he didn’t think he was serious, although the latter had looked anything but A Joker. Without minding, The Cyclist re-educated him on the inconstancy of the fare they charge their passengers during The Rainy Season
“Look Guy, no cyclist after a downpour would ride you across this track to that junction at less than N200.00”
“And why if I may ask” Bruno challenged.
In reply, The Man first gestured towards some far-off point along the rugged terrain they would be plying, as soon as they had agreed on a price.
“You can’t see from here that part with a giant tree but recently it has become impassable to us… Even to walkers!”
Quickly, Bruno denied awareness of the state of that part of the road, enforcing his claim by fixing the cyclist his two blood- shot eyes got from a long relationship with local whisky. According to him, he had not found any reason to venture out of their village for some three weeks or four. In any case, he would not want to hold an extended conversation with him on what to pay as a fare. It would appear that he had seen the cyclist triumphant looks after his careless admission of having not travelled out of his base for a near one month.
“So, are you taking me or not at N150.00?”
“No,” promptly responded The Cyclist, who was beginning to get worked up. All these while they were talking prices, his bike had been steaming, the engine throbbing, its fuel depleting. Without another syllable, he started off the mobility down the bad, sloping road towards the junction, half expecting Bruno to call out to him to halt so that they might go together at his price. But Bruno had suddenly acquired a different mindset and agenda! Trekking the long but stupid distance to the junction and past it towards base.
But it was something that he had never done before. Only that he remembered and trusted that a day begins a story and “There’s always a first time for everything”.
This was in fact the self-assurance Bruno had, when he dropped off from the scene and was trotting down the twisty track to the next town. Luckily, his mission at Villa was not a pressing one that brooked no angering delay. If, indeed, any upset would follow this taken initiative, it should be that of plain gossips about his ungentle-manliness in choosing to walk such a ‘forbidden distance’.
“And the gossip would end there or wouldn’t it? Maybe, continue for another two days or three… and then cease to be a subject of interest?”
In less than fifteen minutes, Bruno has conquered four hundred meters and in another quarter hour swallowed another four hundred. However what he had was some five kilometers to deal with. Not one thousand meters.
How the heavens he was going to lick the rest of the not walked meters ahead, he didn’t know.
Wisely, he tried not to bother his head about it, as by doing so, he might be sowing The Seed of Reckless Self Discouragement from the accepted challenge.
Our Bruno kept striding along, sometimes bounding even as the journey was becoming tiresome, and his steps heavier and coasting cyclists on the same route making a point of casting him a disdainful look or a pitying one at the very moment of shooting past him…
Fiam! Whoom!
Exactly one of the things he had feared would unfold with the made choice. Tried he did to ward it off his mind but the disgusting thought continued to sneak into it and coupled with his state of near exhaustion, he became irrepressibly hungry.
A canteen! Where’s a restaurant around here?
Bruno’s quest for an eatery did not drag on, on the left side of his walked track was a poorly built one that further sold and served illicit local gin.
A shack then!
To this Bruno veered, slid in, appeased his bowels and later came out from to continue an interrupted trek.
But God! he hadn’t plan this clearly sudden meal
“Just like that, an empty nagging tank that made sure he parted with N150.00
Disgustingly, not long after, Bruno accidentally bumped his right foot.
against a jutting stone along the road. As an incident it would not have fetched him pain nor bleeding, if he had not ill- advisedly chosen plain slippers as footwear for the journey. No choice, he had to suspend an already soar trek to get the wounds dressed up in a nearby patent medicine store. Guess at what cost. N200.00. if he had had price-debating chance. Bruno would have turn it debater for the wound dressing but none had been allowed him by his brief female doctor whose unsmiling face, busied seriousness and released medicaments meant that she was bent on saving a misused foot of his….
With forebolding Bruno remembered the cyclist he had apparently stopped for intended conveyance on his Honda Bike to his Ruma Village only to engage in a fuel wasting conversation, tax his patience and let him ride on without him on his back seat…
“Truly, now I believe in Hurt Spirits fighting just to let you know about it and succeeding in this”
But, midway again, Bruno, after defeating three kilometers, stopped to quench a fresh thirst of water.
“Gosh! Thirst now… all from no where”.
Suspicious Bruno was in cold fright and in cold fright!
But the water he saw on sale in sealed cellophanes at a close by kiosk seemed impure to him, wherefore he asked for a bottled Cocoa Cola, producing the money for it.
Unfortunately, the kiosk had only the malt drinks that were priced higher and nearly twice the cost of coke, bottled or canned,
Alas! The throat-punishing urgent thirst of that moment; It warranted that he parted with another N200.0.
At long; last, Bruno didn’t glimpse the fringes of Ruma Villa until after dark!
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