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'Ah! Segun! You are wicked. Did your younger brother not deliver my message to you that your father is sick and bedridden?' her emotional outburst characteristically feminine.

'Deji delivered your message. But I can't come,' Segun said bluntly.

'Why, Segun, why?' Mama taken aback.

'What do I have to do with him again, Mummy? He had denied me. He did. He said he is not my father. He said it with his own mouth and I've made myself to come to terms with it. The denial sank so deep and I lost all feelings toward him. I had to actually force myself to even pray for his recovery, and that once. I struggle with my conscience daily but visiting him is too much an honour I can't afford, Mama. He went too far to shame me only to carry me farther to shear me of all feelings and honour I hold for him...'

'Segun! Segun!' his mother cut it, 'My Adesegun! If we forget not yesterday's grudge we will have no one to take to the game.'

The crown that brought me conquest

The Alani who is no fool

In a single swipe

He splits eko, the half-solid gruel

Twenty wraps down the gut

And he still wants more

Adesegun, their son in Igbein

The Igbeins, the sons of Ojowu

And Ojowu, the son of Sikiki

Who would bring home produce

If the farmer he met on the farm

Even in the farmer's absence

He would still cart the produce home

But then in superfluity

The farmer's cursing

Ranting and raving

Never took a toll on your ancestor

And cursing never does

On your lineage ever since

Son of ...'

'Oh! Please, please, please, Mummy. You know I don't like all this ancestral praise-singing. Please stop it...'

'Adesegunfunmi, my one and only! Eh! For the sake of this my womb that bore you for nine months; these my knees that bended to bring you to birth; these my two breasts that nourished you in your first year and for the sake of this my back that carried you for two years, please forgive your father. Jo oko mi. My son that is like a husband to me, please. Everyone has his day of blunder. Agreed that your wedding pre-introduction day was his day of blunder, eh? But Alani ogo, Alani is no fool, please find a place in your heart to forgive and let bygones be bygones. You need to bury the hatchet my son.'

The atmosphere dripped with emotion. Even Sola, the 13-year old, caught the current. Her eyes, fixated on the mother-son scene, were saturated with the tear-gland fluid ready to trickle down any moment. Mrs. Toriola had succeeded in infecting every occupant of the sitting room with emotive germ. Segun contracted the endemic and a lump was stuck to his throat. He was gradually getting mollified as he succumbed to the feminine tear-power supplying the atmosphere with the electricity in high horsepower. He is no wood, how will he not succumb! Yes, it will only take a wood to stand unyielding when mother's tears start yielding in squirts. He dropped his head, shook it vigorously and was still for a while. When he finally lifted up the bloodshot eyes, his exasperation had been defused.

'But Mummy, I'm confused. He said he was not my father. Here you are saying I should forgive him being my father. Would there be smoke without fire? Would Daddy...' the first time in many days his heart and mouth would reconcile to call Mr. Toriola daddy, 'have said it if nothing broods at the back of his mind? Mummy, does the mouth not speak out of the abundance of the heart?' The conveyance of his conviction was wrapped up as he awaited its effect.

The middle-aged mother heaved a great sigh but not of relief. It was time she visited the past she dreaded even its mere mention. She acute-angled her head on the upright, the backrest, of the sofa as she travelled down memory lane.

'It was some twenty-nine years ago. You were six months in my womb then. Some three men, armed with matchete, burst into our home while your father and I were asleep. They dragged him out and, oh my God! They murdered him, in very cold blood!' She stopped cold and the valve to her tear-store let go freely. Cascading tears pervaded every particle of the emotional pause.

Segun squeezed his eyes shut as if remembering something. Yes, the dream. Those three men. That man he bore uncanny resemblance to who was hacked down mercilessly. The woman heavy with pregnancy. Every detail streamed up his memory. Then, they were obscure, even to his pastor. But now, the pictures came out crystal clear.

'The dream!'

'What dream, Adesegun?'

'I saw everything in that dream a year ago!'

'Eh, what did you see?'

'Daddy was matcheted to death. You came out, saw it and blacked out. I saw everything vividly in the dream.'

When weeping weds wondering, a sight to behold indeed it is. With eyes oozing tears and mouth agape in wonder, the matriarch was lost in meditation on God's awesome reign of providence over the earth.

'So it is true that Daddy is not my father. But wait Mummy, why then do I bear Adesegun Toriola?'

'I'm not yet through, Adesegun. After the incident, which God showed you in your dream, a lot still happened. I was revived and comforted afterwards. I had hardly adjusted to this which life threw at me when it threw me another. No sooner were my days of mourning over than your father's family stood against me insisting I was responsible for his death. Gbolagade mi, my one and only. How could I have killed my loving and graceful husband! There was no means I didn't employ to prove my innocence. I even subjected myself to swearing an oath before the deity. Still they tortured my existence. When I couldn't bear it anymore I ran away and came down to Abeokuta here. Your pregnancy was eight months old then. Though Abeokuta was supposed to be the country-home of all Egbas, I knew nobody - no friend, no relative. I went through hell. Life was toughest. I had to attend to wicked canteen owners, sell pure water and peddle fruits and vegetables.

'Because I couldn't afford antenatal care I resigned to fate; if God would permit I would be delivered of you safely but if not and I would have to lose my life in the process, so be it. But thanks be to God who had a better plan for me. He saw my plight and divinely connected me with this man you have known as your father all your life. He took me in with the pregnancy and took every responsibilities over it and over you when you came. It was life moving from the depth of the quagmire to the height of the mountain range – a new lease of life. And it was to honour the man that has done, and means, so much to me that I gave you his surname. Maybe by that step, Adesegun, I went too far, please pardon me. You are of age now, you can right the wrong. Your real father's family name is Alapatira. You can be Adesegun Alapatira. But please Adesegun, even if your surname walks away from Toriola, let not your affection for him toe the trail. He has done so much for you and your mother. Please, let his pound of past good deeds outweigh this his penny of momentary misdemeanour. He still loves you Adesegun.'

The atmosphere has been charged up again. Tears freely flowed down every eye in the room. If an outside observer called it showers of tears he would make no mistake. Even if a man who had just had tortoise's head steak, a diet believed by the Yorubas to be an exclusive preserve of a scrooge, had walked in, he would shed proper tears, not crocodile.

'Adesegun,' she picked up the reconciliation bid where she left off, 'every minute that ticks away tugs Adewale Toriola closer to the grave. And only you can restrain his galloping down six feet below the earth.'

'Me? Why? How?!' Segun erupted with a repertoire of one-word questions in response to the responsibility being stacked against him. Something was in his mother's voice that told him this was not about footing his foster father's hospital bill. He had known her all his life and could bet his life on it that her prod was not pecuniary. There was more to it than met the eyes and he couldn't wait to hear her out.

'When your father, I mean the man you bear his surname before now, spurned medical treatment, despite degenerating health, I prevailed on him, as a last resort, to go with me to seek spiritual help in a church. There, we were given the only antidote that would remedy the situation.'

'And what was it?' growing impatient.

'That he has so much offended an anointed one and what we have at hand is the consequence. Only the prayer of that same anointed one can save him from the dangling doom.'

'And?'

'And when I added one to two in my heart, I arrived at you.'

'Mummy!'

'Adesegun, if all my pleas have landed right on your eardrums then it is time to act and that quickly. Adesegunfunmi, my one son that is worth seven others.'

* * * * *

Still, Mr. Adewale Toriola was adamant on not undergoing the testoctomy. Had he, he would have long been placed under the deep X-ray therapy. That means his case would have been transferred to UCH, Ibadan – the only health institution in the South-West with the deep X-ray machine.

He had been to the radio-therapy ward of UCH before to visit a cancer patient on admission. Though the patient, a childhood friend, eventually died of the disease, images of the untold hardship faced by those who had come from far and near to 'pass under the machine' were still fresh in his memory. There were always too many people waiting for their turn on the roll every day. Eventually some would be turned back in gross disappointment at the end of the day, around 7pm sometimes. These had had their names called out in the morning among those to be attended to in the course of the day. Schedule for exposures would have to be thrown into the trashcan. Ten exposures to be taken within two weeks might extend over two more weeks. That is if the patient was even lucky and also knew how to rub the palm of the attendants. Only God knows the ratio of those who died out of the scarcity of the essential healthcare infrastructure to those the obstinate cancer killed. That he met many from the East there could mean that even in the South-East, the machine was almost non-existent.

'Ah! Nigerian Government!' he muted the exclamation as his nervous system reminded him he was in a hospital – sustainable silence, aside from involuntary cries, must be the lifestyle.

'Why worry my head. I never fully subscribe to Western medicine anyway. Testoctomy, injection or deep X-ray, I would have none,' he rounded off the soliloquized murmur.

He was right. It was the wife's plea cum pressure that saw him to the hospital, and with the way things were going, the hospital management might soon discharge, or rather evict, him. What was he still waiting for – he had blatantly refused all the other options beside pills and capsules offered.

* * * * *

The cab pulled up in front of the freshly repainted General Hospital and Segun took his time to alight. He couldn't be faster. The front passenger seat had pressed so hard on his long femur-borne knees and would need to push it a bit forward to free his legs one at a time, like legs stuck in the proverbial local palm oil mill. The cab, a Datsun 120Y saloon painted with Ogun State taxi colour of green with two parallel yellow stripes running along the sides and the centre of the boot and the bonnet, was near rickety. He partly regretted not being selective a bit. It was the custom of Abeokuta commuters to pick and choose cabs. They had all the time and chance – resources scarce to passengers in Lagos, a neighbouring state, who were ever in a mad rush.

This was Segun's first time at the hospital. He was welcomed by the board on the gate showing the visiting hours.

4.00 – 6.00pm! Thank God it's just some minutes after four. So he would have been turned away if far, far earlier.

He exchanged pleasantries with those at the security post and as it is becoming of every visitor he asked for directions to the male ward. With reluctant steps he entered the hub of the hospital. The deceleration was due to the ongoing conflicts in his mind – the guilt of not making the get-well-quick visit earlier and the vent of deflated pre-introduction fulfilment. A bold label betrayed the male ward. He was just navigating the corridor towards the nurse/inquiry desk at the other end when he stumbled on a familiar voice. He turned in its direction and there at the farthermost corner to the left was his mother. His gaze steeply descended and met his old man's. He froze. A minute or two later, he clicked into gear and started towards the bed though against a most powerful friction. Adewale's quest for forgiveness swelled to the brim. With an emotional call-out, he broke his son's resistance. He extended arms hungry for an embrace. Segun was overcome. He rushed into the arms. Sparkling tears hunted one another down their natural gorges on the face of the on-looking mother, and wife. She watched the intertwined two in a togetherness that has so long eluded them all with rapture. From the endocardium Adewale rolled out the Elastoplast,

'Adesegun, I am very sorry for all the hurts I have caused you. Please, do find a place in your heart to forgive me.'

All eyes with good sight in the ward turned away from the captivating Nollywood Yoruba movie on Gateway Television, the state-owned station which the ward TV was tuned to and which hardly featured such on its daily line-up. The unfolding scene at the ward's outstage stole the show and tucked in all attention.

Surely, Segun did forgive his father. He passionately prayed for him while still deep in his embrace. The joy of forgiveness gained entrance and Adewale's body reacted positively to it. He could not conceal it. After the prayer he opened up.

'Segun, while you were praying, something moved in my body and I felt light.'

'Hallelujah! Glory be to God. That is the Spirit of God,' Segun concluded.

No doubt, the jinx had been broken and the siege over.

CHAPTER 6

The balance of the day assumed a sloppy sloth towards the even. The blazing ball that had extended its rays to the horizon for the greater length of the day retired with moderate brilliance at its trail. The golden plate warmed up to clock in for the administration of the heavenly canopy. It trotted over the mountains of grey clouds emerging a spitting distance from the rendezvous where the crown of buildings and trees fused with the firmament. Wisps of smoke from the fires of wives in the city suburbia prepared the atmosphere to well-deservedly welcome the handover. The swing shift was for the re-solemnization of what the daily attempts at providing bare necessities had put asunder. Husbands would be brought back from the daily hustle and bustle into the safe hands and gourmet pots of their wives.

Segun was in the sitting room overcome in two parts. The physical and mental exhaustion induced by the rigors of maintaining two jobs a day was the first part. He was a pedagogue at both a public secondary school and an evening private coaching centre. His work schedule was usually rounded off by six o' clock.

The other part of the exhaustion was emotional. He was fuming at the reception his wife threw at him. It was his first day out to work after their wedding. AY had answered his homecoming compliments from the bedroom. She would not bother coming out. And when he endured it and composed himself to demand his right of food, the mistress's response shocked him the more. Without apology she threw instructions at him,

'Get to the kitchen and check the blue warmer, the wraps of Eba are there. Help yourself to the soup. I really need this sleep so badly.'

His little remaining strength drained from him instantly. He dropped into one of the three single-seating armchairs – the one closest to the main door. With head lolled forward and propped on the arms, he fumed in silence like a bottled acid. His condition sparked off a spate of reminiscences. Things he never stopped to think of then climbed up his cerebral neurones.

With Kemi, the scenario would have been different. Poor lady!

Strongly, he was feeling for her. He could remember the last time he set eyes on her. He felt sorry for how he treated her then. It was in his bachelor room. She had burst into the familiar terrain – she even held a spare key – brimming over with triumphant joy. From outside she had called out to Segun announcing her father's final submission to the will of God for the couple. After the long wait she believed the news would be victory at last for them both. But the sight that met her eyes stunned her joy to evaporation in a nanosecond. She stood stone-cold. Segun and AY were at the table sorting out wedding invitations. To confirm her open doubt Segun extended an invitation to her without as much as a word and continued with his engagement. She congealed for minutes. He had noticed her out of the corner of his eyes and could imagine seeing her mind's eyes staring at her world crash-landing like the almost always fatal Nigerian plane crashes. He felt sorry for her. If he could have stood up, walked up to her and declared with a smile, 'It's all just a big joke. We are still together,' her numbness would have been salvaged, though that would be the most unbelievable joke ever hatched. He remained on his seat half-heartedly busy. Omoye has already made her nude appearance at the market square. Of what good is running after her with a complete set of attire.

AY was quite aware that this woman, shorn of joy and left to devastation in the emotional torture chamber, had her man first. Either out of malice or out of contempt, her inner judge to determine, she made no input as well.

Segun's heart was as heavy as tonnes of cocoa beans for the length of Kemi's stupefaction. It seemed like ages. Then the uneasy relief came. Without as much as a whisper, Kemi walked out of the house and his life in the speed of a snail.

Back to the present, another journey down the immediate past was about to begin in the convolutions of his forebrain over the same subject.

'Kemi, what a woman! She gave her best within the limits of what Christian courtship would allow?' He thought.

He recollected some occasions at the more mature stage of their courtship when she would come to help with some sanitary chores and meal preparation while he was away at work. When it was a quarter to six she would set the table, covering the dishes and enamel bowls, and then dash out. Welcoming one's husband from work with an endearing osculation, warn embrace and hot dishes is a delight exclusively preserved for marriage, she would not want to have a premature taste of it – she often told him days later. How he longed for those days when he would come in to a surprise meal set on the dining with a note. The note, usually clipped at an edge to the tray bearing the stock bowl, would most affectionately read:

I LOVE YOU

'Now I have a wife, at home from morning till evening. Thanks to her leave. Yet no set table. Not even a warm welcome to rub off the day's demand. Sleep has engaged her in an assignment more important than all these. Imagine! I should go to the kitchen and dish out my food myself! My own self! What does she take me for? Her child? That's very naughty of her. Kemi would never do such a thing. I lost her by a whisker of impatience. Ah Kemi! What a great loss!'

'Comparing themselves with themselves they are not wise.'

'But should one not appreciate what is good? We must call a spade a spade. You too know it too well that Kemi is better off.'

'Crying over split milk?'

'Very painful I allowed it spill in the first place.'

'Why not try to make the most of what you now have rather than cry over what you never can get again.'

'But this is too much. In her first throw she hit me below the belt!'

'Stomach it and prudently communicate your displeasure later on.'

Easier said than done. The advice from the voice in his heart looked perfect. But the devastating exasperation would not take to it. It had taken a toll on him for two hours already. Lassitude now drowned him in the sofa on which anger had earlier floored him in supineness. It was a quiet fit while it lasted.

From the time he gave his life to Christ, ten years ago, he had worked through his temperamental disposition to provocation. It was transformed from tantrum to sulkiness. The change was really necessary for him to continue as a faith possessor and not just a professor then. Countless times he had had to get rededicated to the course of the Christ in those his developing days. No thanks to the unchristian verbal outbursts. Each time he responded to the first impulse when angered, he would be digressed a bit from the Way. And the muddling of the conviction to repent with the devil's deception of loss of salvation would make him go a day or two on a prodigal journey. It would take the next available altar call to save the day and his soul. Though commitment to God's service along the line had saved him from the toing and froing, he still had issues with anger. Anger had been around him for donkey years. Even in his teens, Mama Sola preferred sending him on an errand when he was boiling. She would say,

'That is when he would deliver on my errand in no time at all.'

She was right. The young Segun would neither greet anyone on the way nor throw banters the whole length of the fit which usually outlasted the assignment.

'Segun no longer boils. Thank God for Christ. But he can still be too sullen for comfort.' One of his childhood friends had remarked during Segun's last birthday when it was time for free-for-all remarks. Segun admitted it was his cultivated weak point.

It was a quarter past eight. AY was having a sweet sleep on her matrimonial bed. She turned her side unconsciously. Her sleeping lips moved and muttered some undecipherable words for a long second before they were sealed again – a strange reflex for an adult, much less a female adult. Certainly, she was in the middle of some dream.

Back in the sitting room, Segun was still lying on the three-seater. He was lost in thought, oblivious of the darkness that had crept into the room. Visibility was difficult but then his sight was not here but there, in the mind. The silhouette of shapes and figures in the room, imposed by the protracted power cut of Power Holdings, the Nigerian electricity authority, cried for illumination from a lantern at the very least. Segun's mind was too preoccupied. Out of mind. Out of sight.

'Tolu was right. My sullenness is very unpleasant. Not only to others but also to me myself.' He thought.

He was thinking about the torrents of thoughts that always bedevilled him and sapped his strength dry whenever he was in a sulk.

No, I won't with my own hands destroy my home. I might not have liked her approach. Her presentation might be rude. But then there's no smoke without fire. I must get to the root of it. But till we have a heart-to-heart, I give her the benefit of the doubt. I'm learning to lean.