Free Making Wolf by Tade Thompson Page A

bureaucracy, and the bureaucracy must experience you.”
    “Can’t I bypass that with more cash?”
    “Maybe a whole lot of it, more than your sponsors are willing to pay. It’s better if you know someone.”
    The soup was spinach, tomato paste, red peppers, red onions, palm oil, and stock fish (which was sold dry and was so hard you had to cut it with a saw before cooking softened it). I licked my fingers and asked for the washing bowl. When I had cleaned and dried my hands, I phoned Abayomi Abayomi.
    “Akara Ogun!” he said into the phone. “How goes the demon slaying? Still feeling lucky?”
    I watched Nana clear the dishes. “Very much so. Listen, d’you know anyone up at the ministry of justice?” I explained the problem. He gave me a name but could not talk much afterwards, so we exchanged pleasantries and he was gone.
    Nana said, “Do you want to see something cool?”
    It was a full moon.
    Dogs howled at it, took a break, then howled some more. People came out on raffia mats, deck chairs, and carved stools. Children ran around the central wood-fed fire, squealing their delight and roasting wild mushrooms on unsanitary sticks. Wasps, sand flies, stick insects, confused termites, and other arthropods flew into the flames and burned bright for one shining moment before dying. The mosquitoes cannily reserved their attentions for the human beings around the flame. Chickens roosted on rooftops or low branches of surrounding trees. Sheep clustered together, warily observing everything, chewing regurgitated grass.
    An old man told stories of ijapa, the tortoise, considered the most cunning of animals in Yoruba folklore, but often unlucky in his schemes. He wore a soft fila on his head and sat serenely on a black stool, his voice a soft monotone that threatened to send me to sleep. He was skinny, asthenic to the point of being painful to look at, and his face was riddled with wrinkles. Despite the obvious contours, it was impossible to tell his mood as he kept a bland, neutral expression. I wondered how old he was. Life in Alcacia was such that a person could age before his time. His stories were familiar and comforting to the audience. There were no surprise endings; many of his sentences were completed by others and garnished with laughter from all. Nana and I stood at the edge of the people listening to him. Children sat crosslegged on the floor, adults knelt or stood.
    I whispered to Nana. “This is nice and quaint. It warms my heart several times over. But I don’t see—”
    “Shh. Just wait till the end.”
    The old man finished with a tale of Anansi tricking a whole village into staying awake all night by telling them the moon was actually the sun, only very pale and sick. By this time many of the children were asleep, and mothers woke or lifted them away. As the listeners dispersed, Nana and I approached.
    “Papa,” said Nana. “Might we see?”
    He nodded.
    “Put some money in his hand,” Nana said to me. I gave him ten dollars, still wondering what I was paying for.
    The old man took off the fila and leaned toward us, showing his bald head.
    But that wasn’t it. He was not bald; his crown was one big sheet of scar tissue. There was white hair in what looked like a Bishop’s fringe around the scarred area, but otherwise there was an unnatural smoothness broken only by the wrinkles at the margins.
    “Accident,” I asked.
    “No,” said Nana, who had obviously seen it before. “No, this man was scalped.”
    “Where? How?”
    “Papa, tell us your story, please,” said Nana. To me she said, “Give him more money.”
    He first took water from a canteen beside his stool, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and exhaled. He had no teeth to speak of, just gums and a glistening tongue. This close, I could see every blood vessel crawling over the whites of his eyes. He began to speak in Yoruba with the same unaffected monotone with which he delivered the moonlight tales.
    “I was fifteen