He Did Not Pay The Piper
Have you had to expect somebody to speedily run an errand for you but the scallywag remained Immovable Rock of Gibraltar? There must have been moments you barked out an order to another but could not get him moving while somebody else with mere hand gestures later picked from the fellow the longed-for favour!
You need not your two lips curve for a Why? Why? Why? We are all familiar with the slightly tired but still true cliché “Nothing goes for nothing’’. We should be able to surmise that some money or other gratifications had been changing hands or had just changed hands between The One and The Other. Mr. A can’t have been receiving the heat-warming favours from Mr. B for free! And as for Mr. C whom Mr. B had continued to disdain, he probably had not been doing much to please The Hell out of him!
I imagine you need the present story to pull down The Gate of Dogged Doubt over the credence my assertion deserves.
The story is a Herbert’s: still in my mind and crowding its rooms…
Yes, A Herbert I used to know and whose experience in the hands of his Matthew Nephew is an Eternal Food for Thought.
Last three years ago, Matthew’s ego had received a boost. An Anthony Passing Friend of his had called at his place to inform him of his plans to make him The Chief Security of their Uramo Village Vigilante. One had been urgently formed to address the pressures on their community to unjustifiably surrender the economic trees on their borders to their Greedy Neighbors. Members of The Vigilante would be watching in groups and by turns incursions into the area by trespassers.
That was the outfit; Anthony had promised Matthew Isichei its leadership and exclusive authority. Isichei shall be dictating how the vigils and patrols would be carried out on daily basis… As a development, it was a welcome one: a clear elevation of Isochei to a level higher than the one he had been patching up with. Regrettably, he had suffered the indignity of leaving The Police under controversial circumstances: was said to have joined the profession with forged papers and only the right physique, falsely claiming that he was A School Certificate Holder, for five good years breathing The Paramilitary Air in Police Barracks and discharging A Constable’s Duty. Then, the falsification reached enquirers’ knowledge and Ischei had to bag a sack from his doted-upon police stuff…
No doubt, taking up Leadership of Uramo Village’s Vigilante would afford him the chance to prove himself one again as a capable security hand!
Mr. Matthew Isichei did not wait for Anthony to ask him a second time, whether he was interested in the post or not before replying in the firmest affirmative. It became a sealed stuff: an agreement, Mr. Anthony telling Isichei what plans he had put in place to ensure that he clinched the post. Matthew Isichei’s duty would start on the Monday of the following week. He, Anthony, would not be around in the village for the most part of the year, as his main base was in the cities. All the same it would please him, if he, Matthew, appointed A Special Squad that would be watching over his own portions of land at the border as well as guard his new duplex in the heart of their village.
Matthew Isichei found out that Mr. Anthony had not lied to him nor struck up the conversation to merely exaggerate his powers of fixing people into influential positions. In a space of one week, his headship of their Uramo v\Village Vigilante was both announced and confirmed. The succeeding week of Anthony’s departure for metropolis Abuja, he left his house key with Matthew alongside a truly motivational package of N50, 000.00 that would cover the initial costs of his unanticipated service.
Overjoyed Matthew saw in both appointment and the financial grant a reason to be making twice-weekly appearances at Anthony’s Duplex for a through compound sanitation requiring a mowing down of the grasses there, pruning her overgrown flowers and checking the activities of rodents.
Not that Anthony had forgotten to also mention these to him but he had said to bide his time and later on from Abuja convey it to him…
But Mind-Reading, Good-Gesture-Reciprocating Matthew had begun to do precisely. A declared war on a full scale against the elephant grasses, shrubs, foliage and sprouted weeds in the expanse that was the premises of Anthony’s Duplex. When they all got sacked from there by being neatly moved down, Matthew Isichei started weekly checks of their efforts to re-camp at lost positions for striking them anew.
So overnight an Ex-Police Officer, now Uramo Vigilante Chieftain equally doubling without minding as A Lawn Mower for a friend’s entrusted house…
To Matthew it was War not all at dissimilar to ECOMOG’s in War-Torn Liberia of Samuel Doe’s days. But to Uramo Landowners, Landlords and Tenants living close to the scene of the weekly combats, it was a one-sided game of successful harsh landing of cutlasses on the unwanted growths in Anthony Ubara’s elegant residence. It had for them an Innocence and harmlessness that meant an off-and-on hurling of all manner of tolerable jokes and a couple of the less excusable ones at The Cutlass-Swinging Matthew in a stretching field of grasses knee-high. But when Matthew’s reproduction of this scene began to spill over into Early Morning Sundays from Late-Hour Saturdays it began to seem a worthy enough event for Determined Gossip with the interested wagging tongues finally changing their stand on its being a game to accept: that it was actually a war but partly against. God and Christ…
The gossips often got sweeter when they alleged that one was likely to accidentally step on snakes on the grassy premises of Matthew than on his Friend Anthony’s and that he had lately been killing them and other creepers all at his residence, not Anthony’s! Of course, news fly fast. Herbert ‘also based at Abuja’ soon learnt of the close attention which Anthony’s property had been receiving in his absence from Nephew Matthew. Enthusiastically, he wired the latter, expressing his wish that the same care and concern be extended to his own building at Uramo. No mention of any immediate package for him, no hinting at some kind of appreciative envelope in the not-too distant future fort The Ex-Police Officer. Ratter an assurance of fervent prayers for him so that God would start meeting him at all points of his needs, for as long as he had the breath of life.
A clever man! Matthew Isichei was careful not to sound disagreeable on the subject but no definite pledge was released by him to Mr. Herbert that he would see to his earnest wish or that his presence would be felt on his own premises. And Matthew’s presence was not!
Herbert’s imposing two-storey building Matthew kept avoiding like a snake!
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