The Adventures of Fast Joe (8)
It was well past twelve midnight by the time things settled down at the police station. Corporal Asamoah had been booked and placed behind the back of the front desk of the police station, affectionately known as ‘counterback’. Unfortunate accidents often happened to arrested police officers who are placed among criminal suspects, and the skeleton staff on duty did not want to deal with any aggravation. Asamoah was warned that he should be mindful and not try to escape, because that would be the end of his police career. He was the spend the rest of the night seated uncomfortable, left to his own devices on how to deal with the mosquitoes that seemed to have adopted the police station as their home. And to wonder why his wife refused him entry into her bedroom. Could it be that she had another man in the room? Such unpleasant thoughts kept him fretting and awake the rest of the night.
Back in the house, things were also settling down after even more drama. After walking with the arresting officers to the police station, Bra Kwame was back. He had been told to return to the police station at eight in the morning to speak to the investigator and to write a statement. Kwame, his diminutive body and little boxlike head pumped high, had hoped to return home to a hero’s welcome after having Asamoah arrested, but as is usual with Ghanaians, as soon as the offender was behind bars, public sympathy shifted to his side, as against the side of the victim.
“Why did you rush to the police station like that? Eh, Kwame. This is only a small matter we could have settled here,” said Maame Mansah, an elderly, grandmotherly tenant.
“But he slapped me,” Kwame bleated.
“He said that you called to tell him stories about Ama and some man,” the woman replied.
This brought Ama storming out of her room. She had been hoping for a night of joyful sex with her lover, and all had been thwarted by this ‘konkonsa’ man.
“Kwaseaaa (fool). Kwame kwaseaaa oh kwaseaaa!” she shouted at the top of her voice. “Why should you go telling lies about me because I refused to have sex with you?!!!”
The revelation brought up a collective gasp of consternation in the house.
Maame Mansah, always interested in juicy titbits, shouted, “Ei! Now I understand! So the rest of us were only sleeping in this house, eh! Is that what was taking place, eh, Kwame! You wanted to sleep with Asamoah’s wife?”
This was too much for him to take, and Kwame very quickly took refuge in his room as all the tenants started insulting him.
In her rooms, Auntie Esi had found a sack and was loading it with Joe’s clothing, muttering, “As soon as daylight starts over the horizon, you are going to the lorry station. Now try and get some sleep.”
Joe was only too glad to oblige, and surprisingly, he slept almost without any dream, in spite of his great concern that Corporal Asamoah would be released by his police friends to come back to the house to assault him.
Meanwhile, in her room, Ama was sleepless. First, she missed Joe. She had become used to their regular bouts of sex, and tonight, in spite of the hullaballoo, she was thinking of when things could return back to normal. It was well past two a.m. in the morning, but she could not sleep as she thought about how things had turned out.
She wondered what would happen in the morning, but determined that as soon as day came, she would be sending her children to school and leaving early for the market. There was no way she was going to allow that useless man into her room and into her bed again. Things were over between them, now that she knew she can work and take care of her children.
In his room, Kwame was finally coming to his senses. He now wished that he had not been so quick to rush to the police station. Asamoah was sure to state that it was Kwame who had told him that his wife was philandering, thus forcing him to come to the town. Kwame knew that his information was true, but the problem was how to prove his suspicions. Again, he was battling with himself whether to tell the police that Ama’s lover was the young boy Joe, who lived with his mother in the same house. Would that be proof enough? Maybe if the police were to subject the boy to some serious interrogation, he would confess that he was sleeping with somebody’s wife. On that happy thought, Kwame dozed off.
Auntie Esi, however, did not sleep a wink. Like all mothers, she was highly protective of her offspring, and she determined that she would get her strapping son out of danger, as soon as the cock crowed. So. She planned and schemed as others, including Joe, slept.
She knew that real trouble was heading the way of her son. First, she knew that it was most likely that Kwame would tell the police in the morning all about Ama and her son. Second, she knew that once Corporal Asamoah and the police have this information, they would invite her son and Ama to the police station. As an ignorant market woman, she was afraid of the possibility that her son would be arrested for sleeping with the wife of a police officer, and that was something she was not going to allow.
She tossed and turned in her bed, as Joe and her brood slept around her. She mentally counted her scarce financial resources. She barely had enough to pay the transportation of Joe to her brother’s house at Kenyasi, but she was determined that morning would not find her son at Wenchi. She knew that somehow, she and the rest of her children would continue to survive.
So it was, that as soon as she head the first cock crow, she awoke her son and told him to go and take his bath. He was about to leave Wenchi. She would not allow morning, and the police, to get to him when daylight arrives. How was she to know that her son was about to set off on a long and adventurous life?
To be con’t.
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