The End of Money not Earned
He was breathing fast, head bent, a thumping heart no longer obeying regular rhythms, his alert eyes down and preoccupied, darting this way and that, now fastening on an object, but soon unfastening from it to alight on another, either because it held nothing of what they had been seeking or because the new object merited as much intent inspection.
Yes, The Nervous-Man-Turned-Sprinter- and he was getting dead nervous -was retracing steps, combing a track way he had just trodden, oddly hoping that each bulging stuff he planted his eyes on would turn out to be the cellophane pack he was looking for. One could guess the content of the pack by solely relying on his hapless look and haphazard countenance.
Ay! It had often had to be a hard-earned but misplaced sum of money that would kick-start the kind of scenic drama our man was enacting. Mr. Chamberlain Walter! A strange name for a man unlettered, ancient in appearance and a Nigerian to the last hopeless drop of his blood!
"How come the pack had slipped out of his hands... No, sneaked out of his left pocket; for that was where he had lodged the idiot while he coasted home after picking it from Joel.
"So, when did it fly away, Chamberlain? One thousand Naira in twenty places! When did it sprout a pair of wings and flap them towards a direction you can't make out...?"
The cellophane pack while he still had it in his hands never had any such propeller. Mr. Chamberlain was to become less flustered about the upsetting loss, when he remembered both his short memory and quick-to-release-an-object fingers, packaging him as The Butter-Fingered. One Bold-As-Brass Cynic had nastily linked his previous losses of his valued property with his Chamberlain First Name and Walter Last. Surely, they are names and with sounds as appealing as a fruit are juicy and milk creamy. But what's the reasonable message behind them?
"What for Goodness Heavens! do Chamberlain Walter as a name preach, if ,indeed, there is a sermon lurked in them?”
Most likely, an Emmanuel Name-Tag' for this chap now scouring a walked pathway would have been more expedient under the circumstances, as Good luck would not only have been with him, but also with every goddamned earning of his, first strengthening and steadying his treasure-misplacing fingers!.
Either frustration or the strangest of conviction that he had left the money pack behind at Mr. Joel's living room steered Chamberlain back towards the terrain that would eventually vomit him at his former debtor's house.
At Joel's house, Mr. Chamberlain ended up betraying his tactless handling of money matters. When Joel was doubly sure that Mr. Chamberlain’s return to his abode wasn't in any way an insinuation that he had not paid him back his N20,000.00, he remarked that his loss of the money was the inescapable harsh price he, had to pay for brazenly collecting a Methuselah-Old Debt.
"Walter, you know you wouldn't have died, if you had spared me a return of this money borrowed some twenty-seven months ago... especially now Christmas is round 'the corner!” Joel had philosophized.
“Doubtless it would've been a Christmas present for Friend Joel. But, no, for you, that's self-deceiving and a wrong way of facing this year's approaching Christmas, Joel acidly wove in.
Chamberlain didn't think it was in his best interest to still hang around and hear out what his host had to say on the matter.
“Aren’t they mostly taunts, anyway?”
Now was big-money-searching time and none of it should be, squandered in idle indulgence of an unsympathetic friends’ sarcastic monologue. Convinced that the cellophane pack had moved out at the same time as he from Joel's house, Chamberlain turned in the direction of a venue he was sure he would find the elusive thing. He himself could not but force out a sickly smile. A popular but unofficial latrine spot within the perimeter, which he had to veer to straight from Joel's quarters after a dramatic rumbling of his stomach culminating in an urge to disembowel it
"How come you didn't think of the venue until now?” Big fool!"
Perhaps, because latrines are a sordid sight, usually unkempt and unhygienic one rarely recalls them unless one is as much unhygienic.
But that was by and by where Chamberlain had dropped and forgotten the pack, having omitted to later pick it up from the grassy spot he had laid it before scrambling atop the latrine pit about seven or eight meters away. On reaching the spot and kicking over the fairly grown grasses but not glimpsing any pack Chamberlain who had more reasons to start freezing rather than expressing obvious surprise began to do the former. And one needed to see him! A very sorry spectacle wet in armpits that were prepared to free more salty sweat!
Sheer instinct had told Chamberlain that another wayfarer and subsequent latrine user had bumped a lucky right or left foot on the cellophane pack and stopped to unknot its tied end and seen the Manna from Heaven!
More breathlessly this time and much like the freshly insane, he made frantic circuitous dashes round the perimeter of the vicinity, crazily, hoping to see, catch and detain the unauthorized inheritor of his repossessed wealth.
Chamberlain was wrong in that. If he had waded into the scene ten minutes earlier, perhaps he might have made something out of the move. That was when Augustine Michael, present holder and owner of the twenty grand; was still at the venue and wasting precious escaping seconds, while he could not get over the sweet shock plus speechless wonder how one could forget such a meaningful packet and live-wire. As far as he was concerned, his Second Semester Second Year's School Fee problem was now over. A problem he had recklessly caused himself by diverting more than two-thirds of the sum his rich uncle had dropped on his palms for the payment of his school fee to a spurious endeavor.
"I can see that God's hands alone do not wipe tears. Some people's ridiculous carelessness can turn out too to be handkerchiefs!”
That was Augustine decidedly running away with his imagination, convinced that he was trying a little bit of practical rationalization, although in truth he was much taken in by his sudden transformation into a beneficiary of a sum of money that was both unmerited and substantial.
Judging by his looks and frame of mind, Augustine knew that he would just as soon dissipate this new-found piece of fortune!
“Impossible!”
lf he had his way he would dash straight away to the nearest of the banks which their School’s Bursary had contracted with for receipt of the fees of her students, payment of her Staff Salary and making of other cash transactions. Still two or more hours left to the official closing time of banks and he wasn't quite forty minutes away from her.
Like The No-Nonsense Meditating Muslim mandatorily facing The East, Augustine, now A Repented Bad Manager of Scholarship Fund, turned to the direction of the most proximate branch of The First Bank of Nigeria Plc in the suburb, with a view to paying the entire twenty thousand naira into their indicated School Account.
Oddly, this was not to happen. I'd swear a firm believer in the karmic laws would have said “well-deserved” and the fiercer subscriber to the karmic laws Nemesis Suffice it to say that a Young, Sweet Nineteen, whom Augustine had greatly doted upon but not vice versa had fortuitously hit the same axis and not only strikingly warmed up to him, but voluntarily melted in his arm: Events strained and fought to follow one another in quick succession! Passionate hand-holds which their receiver actively welcomed, a masculine chest eagerly brushing against another that was feminine, softer and, by far, more tender. Inevitable Male Accusation to a Listening Female of previous absurd neglects in-spite of his expressed transparent love and care. All-the-same, both Augustine and Rita would want by-gone to be by-gone. Augustine himself was determined to enforce the new understanding between them in practical terms.
Lo! A spick-and—span hotel befitting the romantic youthfulness of the mutually consenting pair was helpfully close to them for a baring of their long bottled-up emotions. To the hotel's porter both went, received The Porter's assistance by way of a released key to one of the exquisite chalets in the hotel and from the hotel's steward brandishing a menu list placed an order for the super bites, great dishes and drinks she had in store for her customer. That: afternoon- a_ companionably cool one - continued to smile at them as " they ate, drank, conversed, laughed, kissed and inexorably moved on to a much more serious activity- Very technical! In the end, Augustine once again emerged quite lucky. The final bill on his table was N20, 000.00.
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