What Blood Cannot Do
Ask me, “Which fluid is The Thickest?” and my lips are sure to volunteer the answer “Blood” Our Lord God had first indicated special interest in blood, when Satan unconditionally joined! This, though, is beside my purposed target, right now. Be it known that it is Man’s Helpless Genetic Custom to forgive a member of his family for offences he would have dealt with an outsider, eyes unblinking.
In normal cases – yes - people think twice about avenging a grievous wrong done to them by their son, daughter, father, mother, kinsfolk but not the other fellow with no blood ties to them. The latter they could and would drag by the nose to The Law Court for prosecution, never letting go, until they had paid claimed damaged or stated bills.
At least, this was true of Mr. Thompson’s Ifeanyi, a man of privileges and proud owner of prestigious cars. Thompson’s close friends and The Casual erroneously thought that they could pull a fast one on him and get away with it: that it would not flash through his mind to get back at them for being, indeed, ‘Stinking Rich!’
“And why should he lament a slipped-through-his-fingers one million or two” rasped A Getting-Rash Mr. Reeves, who happened to have been more obsessed than the rest with the idea of defrauding their Thompson friend.
Not funnily, it was Reeves’ pet dream to hit his first Million by short- changing Mr. Thompson, even if it entailed boring a hole in the latter’s bullion van and through the secured aperture helping himself to as many notes of naira as might slip through it. He Reeves Uwaoma would count the money he had earned in this manner a product of Sheer Industry… Not A Played Prank. Neither Good Luck.
And the prayed-for chance did come to Reeves! Although, when it did, it chose a face markedly different from Reeves’ original scheme…
Luckily for Reeves, Mr. Thompson Ifeanyi had just begun to put finishing touches to another new building of his he would want to rent to Bankers, Industrialists Big Time Contractors, People in the Senior Cadre of the Civil Service and, in short, anybody who was worth the name and social prestige he or she enjoyed. Mr. Thompson Ifeanyi would want truly vibrated blocks to be used in walling the premises of the building, so that it would be fortified against daring thieves and nocturnal prowlers. Besides, in Thompson’s opinion, the use of such blocks finished with barbed wire coils for fencing would give the prospective tenants cause to be gratified that they rented the rooms in it at the prices he mentioned.
Meanwhile, information about the proposed walling of the house had reached Mr. Reeves Uwaoma and he started moving Heaven and Earth for a grab of the contract. Finally, styling as a dealer in Blocks and Concrete his offered his services to Thompson, beautifully succeeding in an issued cheque of Five-Million Naira for the delivery of blocks that would go round the building. Amazingly, he had got what he wanted in practically no time at all. He was in no small measure elated at the smoothness of the deal. At home he flung himself down on the floor, let out shrill laughter, continued to toss and turn on the floor and to beat A Chest of Victory.
Briefly, the temptation of not doing anything at all for Mr. Thompson began to suggest itself to Reeves.
“No! It would be fool-hardy to act in so unguarded a manner” Reeves reasoned at last “Yes, you give him something… But, it doesn’t have to be Vibrated Blocks.”
Reeves Uwaoma knew exactly the blocks he should present to Thompson Ifeanyi. The next day he was at the market to purchase a decided number of bags of cement and returned with them to a Mr. Humphrey Ijoma to mould the number of blocks he and Mr. Humphrey had agreed to. At first, Mr. Humphrey, an expert, complained about the instructions he had received. To use less cement than was required for moulding each block would badly peel off and waste away. But for Target-Preoccupied Reeves, he had given him, Humphrey, his instructions and it was either he carried them out as wished or he, Reeves, would fetch a willing mason for the same task and arrangement.
Resignedly, Desperate Humphrey accepted the job, executed it to the letter, received his pay and disappeared from the scene, as though he had guessed what could be the outcome after a week or weeks…
God so kind that Mr. Thompson Ifeanyi did not kill Reeves Uwaoma: silence him with his AK47. Mr. Thompson happened to have sophisticated guns too besides fine buildings and interesting cars. He seized Reeves by the neck as soon as his eyes had alighted on the misshapen blocks of inferior quality, got him to accept that he had not visited any block industry to order vibrated ones and without a second consideration locked him up in a cell, planning to have him rot there!
In the end, Reeves had to test the four walls of a heavily-guarded prison of their state and then test in it a very long rest culminating in three years. This was in spite of fervent appeals to Thompson Ifeanyi by touched hearers of the incident, who had equally heard of Reeves’ substantial repayment of the unjustly acquired wealth.
Two years after Reeves’ release from prison, it still remained a scary topic that grabbed people’s time and attention in their neighborhood. It became a reason for many of them to start giving even discarded property of Thompson that looked Veritable Scrap a wide berth.
“If he was stinking rich, his capacity for implacable revenge stank too!”
But, unbelievably, it was at this period that Mr. Reeves misfortune had begun to make rounds in the town and people begun to dread the person of Mr. Thompson that his twenty-three-year-old son duped him to the tune of Ten Million Naira!
Francis Ifeanyi! Also, Francis De Black! – A curious enough, alternative designation of Thompson Ifeanyi’s Jobless Son, if one gave much consideration to the non-presence of the Ebony Black Skin Stuff as we know it in his own God-Arranged Flesh. Presumably, the blackness of either his mind or of his heart or of both that icily predisposed him to Mischief, Pranks and Crimes proper.
With the news of the brought-off fraud making rounds in their neighborhood, one strong guess hung like a phantom in minds and sat on their lips: Francis De Black is as good as The Finished by his Thompson father!” But guess what! Mr. Thompson just went to a bed that should help him to first sleep off the brewing storm in his mind and next take up his father’s Rehabilitation Challenges from an Increasingly Stupid Son!
For his still Curious Sympathizers he would have to choose between assuring them that he would not be taking The Matter lightly or- what is wrong about it? – that it is, strictly, a family affair with all doors closed to the enquirer outsider.
Comments