Free Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor Page B

“Bring your gun.”
    “Where is it?” Her heart is screaming.
    “Galgalu’s room.”
    She pivots, runs toward the adobe hut.
    Inside the three-roomed shelter with assorted pictures papering the wall, a sepia photo of Akai-ma, and a Sellotaped copy of the Oganda family photograph, an Ethiopian calendar featuring Orthodox saints, three folding chairs, a slightly raised bed. This had been one of Ajany’s childhood sanctuaries. Here she could hide from everything and Galgalu would pretend not to know where she was.
    Ajany now crawls under the bed, looks around, retrieves a rifle stored in a broken wooden box.
    Baba had called her aside on the day she turned thirteen. “Choose one,” he had said.
    She had looked at the weaponry. “Which one?”
    “The one you like.”
    She had chosen the prettiest one, an AK-47 with a Type 4B receiver. Baba weighed the rifle, winked at her, and handed it to her. “Now you’re ready for your wars.”
    Ajany had spent three school holidays taking the rifle apart according to the lessons Baba had condensed for her.
Depress magazine catch. Remove magazine. Pull charge handle to rear. Is chamber empty? Press forward retainer button at rear of cover to remove it. Spring assembly forward. Lift, withdraw out of bolt carrier. Pull carrier assembly all the way to rear. Pull away. Push bolt, rotate bolt to clear raceway, pull forward and free. Click, click, and click .
    Shooting lessons. Baba taught her how to aim and not move her shoulder back when a cartridge fired.
    She lifts the rifle to her shoulder.
    Afterward, Odidi had taken over the lessons. She remembers his hands on her shoulders, leveling her. Looking through the sights, she sees his body in the morgue. A bullet’s trajectory, and an incomplete statement: Cause of Death .
    Ajany returns the gun to its hiding place, then races out of the hut, her body damp, mind whirling, and hands trembling.
    The ranch gate swings wide.
    Baba’s gone.
    Galgalu the honey seeker sobs in a crouch. Because his soul has been profaned, because when he first saw the d’abeela he thought his father had returned to accuse him of all he had not done.
    Ajany hunkers down next to him.
    Galgalu’s horrified eyes—life’s layers shorn off.
    She touches his shoulders, lifts the amethyst necklace from her neck, and slips it over his head. She touches the stone. Galgalu’s fingers close around it. Then, head on knee, Ajany listens to the land. They wait.

    In the dusk of that bad day, Isaiah William Bolton arrived with a dust devil under the guardianship of a red-orange sunset that colored the twisted acacia tortilis gold. He showed up on the trail of nonstop weaverbird song, his athletic build drooped, and he reeked of fresh leather, cow dung, cow sweat, and cow saliva. He was unshaven and mottled. His haversack was stained, and his boots were red with dust. He had wrapped his jacket around his head: sun protection. Gray-edged curls were plastered on his forehead, and his lips were caked with white. He had croaked a call, “Is this Wot Ogyek?”
    At the horizon, a train of camels, a line of sedate movement. Burbling of water, a brook’s language.
    Passages.
    A scorpion crosses Isaiah’s path from left to right, changes its mind, and heads for Isaiah’s foot. Isaiah jumps backward. Ultima Thule , he thinks. Totters. Tries again, “Er … hello, I’m here for Mr. Moses Ebewesit Odidi Oganda.”
    Returning from the boma where he has secured the animals, Nyipir hears the precise pronunciation of Odidi’s name. He wipes his hands on his shirt, picks up his herding stick, and crosses the space, his right hand outstretched in greeting. Ajany, who is leaning against Odidi’s coffin, listens in.
    A voice rumbles, “Afternoon!” With his hand out: “Isaiah William Bolton. I do apologize for showing up like this.” He clasps Nyipir’s hand, frowns. “Are you Moses?” He had imagined Moses Oganda to be much younger.
    Nyipir stiffens, pulls his hand away,