Free Graceland by Chris Abani

movies and Elvis Presley aside, he wasn’t really sure he liked America. Now that the people he cared about were going there, he felt more ambivalent than ever.
    “Listen, Elvis, stop living like dis, you know? If you are going to do dis dancing thing seriously, den do it. Join proper concert troupe and tour de country. I hear dere is money in dat. But if you just wan’ to annoy your father, den you are wasting your life.”
    Elvis looked hard at the floor while Redemption spoke. He had thought about the dance troupe route, especially when he saw a good troupe featured on television. But he was afraid that he wasn’t good enough. There was a positive side to not trying at something: you could always pretend that your life would have been different if you had.
    “On de oder hand, if you want to make more money for less work, let me hook you up,” Redemption continued.
    “What makes you think I am doing this to annoy my father?”
    “I don’t. Listen, I wan’ go beat dese amateurs, tomorrow is rent day.”
    He then got up and went to rejoin the game of checkers, and as Elvis left, he heard Redemption raising the stakes.
    Pensive on the bus ride home, Elvis did not pay too much attention to the cars that in spite of their speed wove between each other like the careful threads of a tapestry. The motorways were the only means of getting across the series of towns that made up Lagos. Intent on reaching their own destinations, pedestrians dodged between the speeding vehicles as they crossed the wide motorways. It was dangerous, and every day at least ten people were killed trying to cross the road. If they didn’t die when the first car hit them, subsequent cars finished the job. The curious thing, though, was that there were hundreds of overhead pedestrian bridges, but people ignored them. Some even walked up to the bridges and then crossed underneath them.
    Elvis was pulled back to the present as the car in front of the bus hit someone. The heavy wheels of the bus thudded over the inert body, spinning into another lane. Elvis winced and turned to the man next to him.
    “We are crazy you know. Did you see that?”
    “Uh-huh,” the man grunted.
    “Why can’t we cross with the bridges? Why do we gamble with our lives?”
    “My friend, life in Lagos is a gamble, crossing or no crossing.”
    “But why not even the odds a little? Did you know that they have soldiers standing on the islands in the middle of the roads to stop people from crossing the busy roads instead of using the overhead walkways?’
    “Ah, dat’s good,” the man said.
    “Yes, but that’s not the point. Why do we need to have soldiers there to tell us it is dangerous to cross the road?”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “If you cross the road without using the overhead bridges, you increase the chances of being hit by a car. Simple logic, really.”
    “So what is your point, my friend? We all have to die sometimes, you know. If it is your time, it is your time. You can be in your bed and die. If it is not your time, you can’t die even if you cross de busiest road. After all, you can fall from de bridge into de road and die. Now isn’t dat double foolishness?”
    Elvis stared at him, shook his head and went back to staring out of the window.
    Outside, the road was littered with dead bodies at regular intervals. “At least take away the bodies,” he muttered to himself.
    “Dey cannot,” the man interjected into his thoughts. “Dis stupid government place a fine on dying by crossing road illegally. So de relatives can only take de body when dey pay de fine.”
    “What about the State Sanitation Department?”
    “Is dis your first day in Lagos? Dey are on strike or using de government ambulances as hearses in deir private business. Dis is de only country I know dat has plenty ambulances, but none in de hospitals or being used to carry sick people. One time, American reporter dey sick in Sheraton Hotel, so he call for de ambulance. De