Jo Cannon

Boy of Silver

Helicopters circled overhead.  Search lights picked out the village through choking red dust clouds. Calling for the children, my family and neighbours scattered. My baby brother screamed in the dirt. I picked him up and ran.

He cried for two days. I stumbled through the bush too afraid to feel hunger. When he turned dead weight that lolled on my back unable to cling, I sat him down in the shade of a thorn bush.

I said, ‘Be a good boy. I’ll be back soon.’

I pushed his thumb in his mouth and brushed flies from his eyes. He didn’t cry then. My name is Thomas and I died the day the helicopters came.

I barely know how I arrived in this city.  The roaring traffic; the filth and fumes and furious crowds, terrified me. Summers are hard here. All living things wilt, and no one can sleep at night. Winters are worse. I lived in corners and stole from bins and pockets.

Now I have a bar at the bus station. Every morning I set earthen jugs and plastic glasses on upturned boxes. My customers drink as soon as it’s light. They are drivers, or travellers waiting days for their bus. Wrapped in blankets they sleep beside small fires that flicker through the night. You’d be surprised who has dined on my nsima and stew. They pass hours at my tables, but forget me the moment the bus comes. Grubby back packers argue every cent. Pock-faced girls with babies on their backs sell themselves for less than a bottle of beer. My radio plays all the time, and people dance to the music of Soweto and New York.

I haven’t forgotten the old songs. Now my voice has gone, there’s no-one to sing them. My mother and father sang, though never together. On Sundays hymns would pour all day from the mud-brick church. I’ve started to dream again: helicopters, and my baby brother crying.

Today I close my bar for the last time. I step down from the bus at the place I returned to in dreams. My feet know the way like an animal finds water. The church remains, though shrill with insects and reclaimed by nettles. Once it had glass in the windows and poinsettia by the door. The bush is loud with ghosts of my neighbours and family. My mother hums as she prepares the morning cooking pot, the moon still fat in the sky. The songs of weddings and funerals resound, but now the brides are angry and the dead won’t lie down and rest.

I find my little brother, thumb in mouth, where I left him. When he sees me he stretches out his arms: a silver boy beneath the moon.