by Solomon Samson
It is better to fish in the evening and the boy often visits at that time.
Along the way to the river, he has to pass Stingo Fashion, Jenchat Boutique, Sheris Plaza, Oreo Popcorn, and Dido Pepper Soup. As soon as he gets to the river, he will set down his gear and bamboo rod and eat the food he gets at a jungle of shops on Kaje Street before fishing begins.
Beside the river lies a network of plots where local farmers grow fruits and vegetables. But most of time they are gone when Panja gets there. Sometimes, when he is not heading to the river, he will help his mother roast corn and sell steamed atili and mangoes near Transformer Street. Sometimes, he will go and play soccer at a local club for under- 14s in his neighbourhood.
Often, after fishing, he will head into a street in Narayi to sell his modest catch. But, this April evening, after his fishing, he sets out on a long, slow journey to Sacred Heart to show Father Latoo his catch. He pants as he tears through the calm of the stone parish on Ngu Road.
It is nine and he is just coming from the river. After dropping the catch on the gleaming porch of the Catholic church, he lets out a long last sigh of relief. The door of the church is open and from outside he can see the soaring ceiling and frescoes of JESUS being beaten and crucified.
The priest, who has been reading a letter from the bishop of St. Joseph Cathedral in the sacristy, steps out of the parish building to locate the sound coming from outside.
“Hope it is fine?” he asks after seeing the boy who sometimes brings him some fish for sale. The boy stares at a white Chevrolet Impala pickup truck parked under a green aluminum pavilion on the affluent premises of the parish before responding.
“It is, Father,” he replies. He has been standing at the position where vendors often laden with souvenirs and religious ornaments wait for followers to burst out of the church during Sunday Mass. But as the priest steps out, he draws closer.
“But you’ve never stepped into the church at this hour,” says Father Latoo. On this Saturday, the stout priest stands in a white soutane, a brass crucifix, soft brown sandals—and smells of Imperio perfume. As he speaks, the boy begins to scratch a sudden itch under his rough amber sweater with two long blunt nails.
“I want you to see this,” says the young visitor.
This is the first time the priest will notice, after stepping out to meet the boy, the big burden on the ground. For a while, he assesses the prize before him. The fish is long, shimmering, and has big red blotches on its underparts.
It is dark outside, the priest has to draw closer to see more than the faint outline of the fish. As he studies the catch, he dangles a wooden rosary in his right hand after adjusting the skullcap sitting on his whitening hair. All this while, the fish is panting and bleeding through its inflamed gills.
“Is it a tilapia?” he says after a while.
“Hold it and see.”
As the priest bends down to touch the fish, it begins to flash its spines and sweep its tail on the ground, leaving a red stain on the ground.
“This fish is too big to have come from our river,” he says and looks back up at Panja.
“It almost dragged me into the water,” replies the boy.
Although the priest can see the weals on his arms and the exhaustion on his face, he doesn’t want to believe that boy caught the fish alone. “How did you bring it here?” he asks after considering the fish again.
“I had to drag it along the road.”
“There is an extra hand in that journey.”
Panja stares at the priest.
“I don’t know. But since I caught it, I’ve been restless.”
“You don’t understand.” The priest rises to his full height again.
“Take it to the street before it is too late. It will make a respectable amount,” he says, tapping the boy on his slender shoulder.
“I will sell it during bazaar.”
“Why?”
“It will bring a bigger profit.”
“That will be in September,” the priest reminds him. Panja looked away.
“I almost forgot.”
“Sometimes it happens. Especially after getting a big catch.”
“That’s true, Father.”
They stared at the beast for a moment in silence. “Anyway, there’s this other fish I must catch. It has been trou- bling me since January.”
“How?”
“Anytime I fish in its range, I won’t catch anything. So far I’ve lost 21 hooks and a mass of bait in my effort to catch it.”
“Is it a big fish?”
“No. I only see its outline. But it resembles a catfish.”
“Sometimes, it is the smallest things that draw us to our doom. Stop exploring its range. That’s the only way to neutralize its spell. But there is still something we can do about it,” says the priest. After whispering a string of incantations, he scoops the bleeding behemoth and steps into the church towards the altar—one hand on the head and the other grabbing the tail.
As he holds the gleaming fish, it drips foul water onto his pristine soutane. At first, he holds the fish at the level of his navel but raises it aloft when he gets close to the altar. As the boy steps behind him, he stares at the hangings and the Biblical scenes used to embellish the walls, floors, and the arches of the church. As he moves through the front pews of the church, the chill floors stab his bare feet.
At last, the man in a white garment stops at the spot where altar boys in elaborate robes hold a missal and respond to him in memorized Latin as they pour water and wine into his chalice during Mass.
“From now on. No fish that flows in a river will escape your grasp. Let this encounter mark a transition in your fishing trips,” he says after a minute.
When the priest begins to talk, the boy doesn’t know whether to kneel, stand, or speak. For a while, he remains as silent as someone going through his first confession trauma. But as the minutes pass, the priest can hear the boy whispering Koro in an English church.
After a while, the priest set the fish on the ground and begins to wipe the sweat running down his face. As the fish sits on the ground, it tries to flip over.
“If you won’t sell the fish, your mother will need it for her soup,” he says after a while.
“The fish is not for her. Let the church partake in the blessing.” Panja seemed like he was running out of arguments.
“We don’t have to linger on this. I will do as you wish,” says the priest.
Before leaving the confines of the stone parish, the priest takes off his chic brass crucifix and hangs it around the neck of the young visitor.
“Hold this.”
The boy smiles, offering it a kiss before staring at the priest. “What is it for?” he asks.
“It is a gift from the Vatican. It will help you remember me when I leave this parish.”
Panja shook his head: “I will never forget you. It’s you that made me start attending Mass regularly. I didn’t like church when it was Father Damina. But since you came, Sacred Heart has been flourishing with reports of miracles and everyone is running to it to seek comfort.”
“I understand. But don’t ever compare people who renounce the world for a divine journey.”
“Forgive me,” says the boy after hearing the priest’s verdict.
“I’m not upset. Don’t imagine that for a moment,” replies Father Latoo.
*
One week afterwards, the boy begins his fishing trips again. Often, he goes to the river with his brindle dog, but since February he has hardly brought the mascot along after the farmers began to raise concerns.
“Stop bringing that dog to our river,” a farmer tells him one Wednesday after the dog damages a patch of onions.
“I won’t bring it again,” Panja pleads. But, sometimes, he still brings the dog along since the farmers are often gone before he gets there.
In the next few days, Panja’s fishing gets even better. In a single day, he catches 18 big eels, 12 minnows, one salanga, four trouts, a pair of jantalau and a 39-pound tilapia.
“It’s that crucifix,” he tells the priest during another visit to the parish.
“No ordinary thing comes from Vatican.”
“I’m sure.”
“Still—let’s wait and see.”
“Why?”
“I must find out the source.”
“How long will that take?”
“I cannot tell.”
“It’s the crucifix,” the boy repeated. “In the end you will believe me.”
With the profit he gets from the sale of his haul, he gets a pair of Umbro boots, a blue number 10 jersey, a white shin guard, 4 hooks, a lump of lead sinker, a line and an Eric Legend T-shirt from a boutique on Jama’a Road.
*
Every single day, Panja is making new findings. Besides seeing a fish with a long slender snout, he has found out that different species of fish live in different depths. Sometimes he will pause from fishing and watch flocks of cranes hanging around the river in isolated pockets waiting to snap up the fish he will leave in his wake. There are many things to learn about the river—fish flourish during heat and retreat to their burrows when it is cold. Fish hate noise and prefer to emerge in the evenings. Some of these things he learns through chance encounters and some from tales of local fishermen.
*
After he catches the big fish, he visits the river almost every day, except on the evening that he helps Father Latoo shoulder a wooden cross as the congregation of his parish tours the streets of Narayi after Palm Sunday to demonstrate the Crucifixion of Christ.
In one fishing trip in June, he catches 16 carp besides a spotted varanus. On one occasion, instead of catching a fish, the boy returns home with a Chakwaikwaiwa bird in his rough arms.
“Father Latoo doesn’t want to believe me. But whenever I take that crucifix along the catch is better,” he reports to his mother after return- ing from the river one Tuesday.
“Perhaps he doesn’t want to explain.” “I think so.”
“Then don’t push him. Divine revelations often come when we don’t expect them.”
“I won’t,” promises the boy.
Father Latoo’s plan to keep him from attempting to trap the fish that eats his hooks only works for three days. Panja’s curiosity overpow-ers him. He attempts the catch with irregular returns to the river. After 21 encounters, he has seen enough of the fish’s underside to determine that it is female, but is unable to see its entire body. In the last week of June, he whisks it from the river, but it slips from his hook and plunges into the water with a splash.
“It sees through my mind,” says the boy after the fish escapes.
*
On one Saturday the catch is so big that when he returns home with just a single string of fish his mother laments, thinking he made a poor sale.
“It is just the remnant. What I caught filled a bucket. I sold it to Maman Leka,” he replies.
“Hope she bought it well?”
“Yes. But she asked me to come for the balance on Friday.”
“She likes buying things cheap. That’s why I am asking you.”
“She doesn’t do that to me.”
After setting down his fish on a bench, his mother tells him that some of his soccer teammates came to see him.
“They want to tell me that coach Akala wants me to come and play another match for him in Motorola Five-aside Tournament,” says the boy.
“Forget about him,” she says from across the room.
Panja stilled. “Why?”
“How much did he give you for helping them win Glo Cup?”
“Nothing.”
“That coach is just using you.”
“I don’t play it for money. I just love the game.”
“Other boys in Narayi get free jerseys from their clubs. It’s only on your team that you have to buy everything you wear.”
“Elio FC is just a new club. It will start giving us free things when it gets stronger.”
“You will always come up with an excuse,” his mother replies as she walks towards a shade outside the house where she often tethers her hog to feed.
Nine days afterwards, he catches that fish again, but after pulling it clear out of water, it crawls across the ground using its pectoral fins. Helplessly, the boy watches the foot-long fish walk out of captivity before slipping into the river.
*
On the first day of July, Panja makes another big haul. In the course of the catch, a tilapia stabs him when he tries to grab it with his hand and he has to spend the next nine days struggling with a sudden fever. When Father Latoo hears about it he drives to Ikulu Street in his Chevrolet Impala pickup truck to see the boy. This time the Franciscan priest comes in a brown habit of his Roman Catholic order.
“I would’ve come and seen you before now. But I went on a mission trip to Karuga,” says the priest after sitting near the boy on a plastic mat with faint designs of a Nok terracotta.
“It was a tilapia,” says the boy, showing the priest an inflamed thumb. “Often, a tilapia harbours lots of poison in its spine.”
“But the finger is healing.”
“I can see it.”
“Father, I don’t have to see God again,” the boy says after a while.
“How?”
“I see him in you. I must catch a big fish for you before you leave Sacred Heart.”
“Don’t think about that now. Wait until you get well,” says the priest before feeling the boy’s temple with his right hand.
“He is even better now,” says his mother who has been winnowing tampami beans in a wooden tray when the priest steps into the house. Before stepping out of the house, the priest leaves a bunch of banana, bottle of Lucozade, a card of aspirin, and a wooden cross hanging on the door.
“It will scare away any bad omen planted in this house,” he explains.
*
After a week of rest, the boy returns to the river to reap another bounty. During a spell of poor catch in August the boy heads to the stone parish again to see the priest.
“I caught only one minnow,” he says. “Why does that trouble you?”
“I don’t know. But I got hungry on Monday and stole mangoes from a plot. And I still bring my dog along to the river,” the boy explains.
“You’ve always done that.”
“Yes. But the farmers asked me not to bring it again.”
“Why?”
“It tramples upon their plants.”
“Have you told your mother?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“She won’t allow me to go that far without the dog,” he answers, remembering what his mother told him several years ago when she first brought him to the area to buy fruits and vegetables from the farmers.
“Why?”
“It protects me. Anytime a stranger tries to harm me it will jump at his throat.”
“I will talk to her.”
“She won’t listen.”
“It’s because I’ve not spoken to her,” says the priest.
“That’s what you think.”
“You’ve forgotten how I convinced her to let you get on with playing soccer when she feared that she didn’t have the money to give a chemist if you got injured.”
“I do. But sometimes it can be hard to influence her.”
“Just wait and see.”
During another trip to Sacred Heart he tells Father Latoo that he has met that fish a number of times again. On this day, he is so thirsty that he gulps some water from a stoup before heading to the priest.
“It keeps changing its range. The other time I tried an arm of the river where I’ve never fished and found it there. But it often prefers the side of the river with shade plants,” he says.
“That fish is up to something. But let me know if you encounter it again.”
“I won’t forget to let you know. But I won’t be going to the river tomorrow. I will be having a soccer match on television.”
“Just let me know when it happens.”
*
Time is passing. The weather is changing. Father Latoo’s exit from Sacred Heart is nearing and the angler is facing a stiff challenge from the farmers anytime his dog comes along. In fact, another farmer even tells him that it is only because of his mother that they are allowing him to still fish in the river.
*
This Monday in September he is out again.
Before setting out, he leaves his dog sleeping in the barren centre of his mud house. Down Ikulu Street, he tries to read the faint logo on a white Fiat model a mobile vendor uses to sell hot Feran Bread.
After passing a Gbagi woman backpacking a bundle of firewood, he hastens his steps. Once it is four, he won’t meet a farmer. After leaving here some of the farmers will slog on for miles to a textile mill in Kakuri where they hold second jobs.
On getting to the river, he sets down his bag, his bamboo rod, and fishing gear to eat the sheet of kilishi he bought at Bus Stop. After finishing, he proceeds along the river, searching for a suitable spot.
To make a better catch, he has to move upriver. After passing a shaduf that waters a patch of tomatoes, he stops. Already, a mass of bait he dug along the way is wriggling in a used Vaseline bottle.
After several minutes of evaluating the landscape, he casts his hook into the water. Sometimes, as he monitors line, he will hum a tribal tune. Before dipping his line, he will greet his crucifix with a kiss for luck. But today, in his hurry, he forgets to do just that.
*
After a moment of waiting, something begins tugging at his rope. Before acting, he balances his feet on the ground. As he jerks up his hook, a fish flees away.
“It must be a tilapia,” he says. A tilapia will tug at your hook, making repeated bites at your bait until it is gone. A tilapia can swim in open water. But a catfish remains underwater, brushing its whiskers along the bottom in search of food. After the tilapia flees, he pulls out the hook and holds it, feeling its point and barb. He flinches with pain when he stabs himself accidentally. After wiping out the blood oozing from his finger on his shorts, he flexes his fingers to have a better grip of his rod.
If a fish slashes his bait, he will stop and adjust it.
If his bait is finished, he will search under a damp, rotten log for more.
When he catches a fish, he will string it and dip it in a shallow part of the river to keep it fresh as he fishes some more.
If he lets the fish get some heat, it will begin to smell.
Near the spot where he stops, stands a fig tree that bears clusters of fruits at different stages of ripening on its trunk. If he doesn’t dip his catch in the water, he will hang his catch on the tree to prevent ants from climbing it.
A sharp pain is surging at the point where the hook injured him. At intervals, he will pause and suck the place in order to relieve the pain. A little later, he releases his hook into the river again. This time something drags the line away. The boy poises and jerks up his rod.
“Nonsense,” he says after pulling out a frog.
When he returns the hook into the river again, something catches it. If the fish is big, he will stun it in the water before pulling it out. Even before lifting the catch clear above the water, he knows that it’s a catfish. A catfish doesn’t take bites. It swallows a bait hook, line and sinker, once it makes up its mind.
Before long, a fish drops on a cluster of short grass.
When the fish falls to the ground, he walks closer and stops. The fish slaps and lashes its tail as it elbows along the grass. He hunches over the fish, making a frantic effort to grasp it—then waits. Its pectoral fins are out. If he grabs it, it will sting him.
“You will no longer navigate this river again,” he whispers, the potential of finally capturing the catfish buzzing through him.
If the dog were around, it would hit the fish with its paws, flashing its fangs. If a fish were lost in a patch of grass, it would help the boy find it.
The fish only pants when it stops moving. Each time the boy touches its whiskers, it will react. Like most catfish, it will remain in its element for several days after being plucked from the river.
A full excitement surges in him after grabbing the fish. Usually, he will string his catch before submerging it in the shallows. But tonight, he clamps the head of the fish between his teeth, leaving the trembling tail outside his mouth, not wanting to let go of the triumphant feeling just yet.
After a while, the boy can catch the last wisp of sunset. It’s almost the time when women will stop him along the road to ask the price of his catch. But he hasn’t whisked enough fish yet—although fish is never enough for the fisherman. So, instead of getting set to head home, he casts his hook into the river again—he must catch enough fish before leaving the river.
After fishing, he will wash the day’s dust from his face. In this river, there is no limit to the catch for a day. Only time determines your haul. But there is no time for him.
*
When fishing is over, he will sling his catch over his shoulder. As he begins to enter the streets, he will hold the catch aloft so that a buyer can size it up. But if the catch remains like this, he will enter Narayi with a single fish dangling in his hand. At some point, he catches a rustle in a stretch of ripe grass.
“Perhaps it’s a finch probing among a leaf litter for insects,” he mumbles. If his dog were around, with a few quick hops, it would follow the sound.
At some point, while fixing his attention on the water, he forgets that a fish is sitting in his mouth. Finding that he is lessening his grip on it, the fish pushes further for a space. As the fish moves down his throat, he can feel its 8 barbels and moist body.
When he begins to realize it, the fish is tearing down his trachea, closing his breathing space. Somewhere along the line, he releases his pole and clutches his throat. If his dog had been around, it would have run home to report the incident—but at the moment it would have been sleeping around the cactus fence of their house. For a while, with his flagging strength, he struggles to break the fish free from his throat before slumping to the ground. The sudden silence breaks occasionally by the rustle of rodents, the plop of fruits into the river, until morning.
When the first crop of farmers appears at dawn, they find a long- legged stilt stabbing stale worms in a used Vaseline bottle. Edging closer, they find the boy slumped in the shallow part of the river.
“Come and see something,” says one of the men as he gets closer to the edge of the river.
“This is Maman Imbi’s son. He must have slumped into the water,” observes an approaching farmer.
During a moment of struggle and arguments, they drag the stiff body onto the dry comfort of the bank and cast fresh leaves and branches on it.
Before sitting on the ground to begin a long spell of waiting, the farmers send for his mother and the church. Afterwards, the men remain silent, only pausing to spit and grumble.
“These people should make haste and take away their corpse. We need to go and till our plots,” complains a farmer who often comes to farm on a burro after a while.
“Are they not supposed to dig a pit around here and cover him? His spirit will forever haunt them if they do otherwise,” another farmer tries to counter him.
“Didio, I know that in this region once a person dies in a river, he must be buried beside it. But the church will not accept that.”
“We cannot conclude. Let’s wait for them and see.”
After nine hours without a sign of the people coming to retrieve the corpse, a farmer hanging a grub hoe on his shoulder stands up and disappears into a robust sugarcane field.
“I can’t wait any longer,” he says and he disappears.
Some of the farmers are sleeping and some are in a thinking pos- ture when the rumbling of a Chevrolet Impala pickup truck shatters the calm in the river. After a while, the boy’s mother in a Superprint wrapper, Father Latoo, and a small contingent step out of the white vehicle and move towards the remains of the angler. On getting to the spot where the young fisherman lies under a tangle of mango branches, the priest stares at him after removing the covering from his face.
“He is dead,” he says when he looks up at the other visitors.
“He has been like this since we tried to drag him out of the river,” says the farmer who always prevented Panja from bringing his dog to the fishing ground.
“It’s your fault. You stopped him from bringing his dog,” Panja’s mother scolds him.
Few metres from the boy sits the brass crucifix. But now, the faint patina on the object as a result of frequent rubbing makes it hard for the priest to recognize it.
“We’ve been waiting for you. We’ve other things to do!” explodes one of the farmers as time passes.
“Hold on,” pleads Father Latoo. “The church’s cadets will soon be here to scoop him.”
*
That evening, on its cover page, The Democrat carries the story of a boy who died fishing alone in a deep river.
In the morning, all the walls and electric poles in the streets of Narayi are hung with the solemn pictures of Panja in elaborate sportswear.
The next Sunday, on their way to morning Mass some people stop at the vendor on Kaje Street to read the papers that publish the story of a boy who died fishing in a river.
“It is the water spirit. It’s not normal for a fish to pass through the throat of a boy,” some lament.
“It’s a spell,” some conclude after glancing at the catchy headlines on the newsprints spread across the span of a wooden rectangular table. Seeing the picture used in the obituary, a boy who stops at the vendor with his mother wishes he could get Panja’s green Umbro boots, shin guards, and fine jersey for his soccer training.
*
Two weeks later, in the clothing she used to attend his modest burial, Panja’s mother visits Father Latoo in the confines of the parish for the first time.
“I’ve not been sleeping since his death,” she explains as she stares at a grotto in the premises of the church where worshippers sometimes drop their gifts and petitions in veneration of the Immaculate Mother. “That is not the attitude of a believer. The death of a righteous man is a profit,” replies the priest.