There are people you know will not end well. People whose sun you can tell will set too soon. They are the kinds who confuse the rest of us about the role of destiny in determining one’s fate. Timothy was this kind of people. And his story began before he was born.
His mother—a product of a broken home—had keenly understood, unlike some women who live with their heads floating in the clouds, that the only place good men exist were in the Bollywood movies she watched as a child, peering through curtain slits in the neighbour’s windows. One wouldn’t blame her, especially since her mother and aunties were either dumped or driven insane by their husbands.
Good men, she was sure, were definitely not from Nollywood; not the Ramsey Noahs, Jim Iykes or present-day Timinis and Demola Okanlawons—good-looking, smooth-talking men for whom a woman’s heart is a plaything. This knowledge took a lot of pressure off her, so, she settled on a formula: a good man was someone with a good dick and a generous hand. When one of her regulars at the bar proposed to be her man one drunken night with a lascivious glint in his eyes, disco lights bouncing off the wedding band on his finger, she scoffed externally and agreed internally. Nine months later, as Timothy came smiling into this vale of struggle and tears, the man we would call his father stopped coming to Lady Zees bar. It was that simple. A door opened, and another shut for Timothy’s mother.
So, Timothy was born, the product of a drunk and horny sperm donor and a semi-ignorant woman who wasn’t expecting a child. Stories like this were meant to be closely-guarded secrets. But, not for Timothy’s mother. And here’s how most people got to know about it.
On the days she took too many swigs from the Chelsea dry gin bottle—the medium-sized one she always had in the money pouch strapped to her beefy girth—she would tell a tale about how Timothy was her beautiful mistake, her numerous retellings often ending with that Nigerian expression that connotes divine intervention, Na God ooo. She would go on about how all she ever wanted was a warm bed for cold nights and cash for rainy days—only for her to end up with a son.
Most of her new patrons would nod while they nursed their drinks, dismantled a chicken leg, or slurped spicy broth. And, to be fair to them, most of them were battling with their personal issues. Some even considered the story a drunken rant. Others, the old patrons and staff, would continue their activities. Nobody ever replied. Even if they should have. Perhaps it was simply the nature of bars: too loud music, too little thinking. For, no one ever saw it fit to tell her, after her proclamations, that science never works that way. Science understands two genitals, a fertile ovum, an exploring sperm, and chance. Or maybe it was destiny at work: things happened because they were meant to happen. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter because Timothy arrived precisely nine months and five days after conception.
Now, if anyone had paid attention, they would have known the sort of child he would be, a child who knew exactly where he wanted to be. But reading signs wasn’t a gift of the humans around him. So, no one noticed.
Now, don’t get it twisted. The day Timothy was born, there were no omens. Even the weather was great for most of the day—clear sky, cool breeze. This was especially good in an avaricious and rambunctious city like Lagos where street hawkers spend their days chasing after never-ending traffic and their often-elusive dreams of making it under the glare of an unforgiving sun. Even in the neighbourhood where he was born, none of the superstitious neighbours claimed to have noticed anything untoward—no mass of cockroaches clustered in a place, no skulking cats, bats or owls. You know, it was just a typical day. There also wasn’t any terrible news on the TV like mass kidnappings, pipeline explosions, or plane crashes.
Of course, there was your usual scatter of muggings and domestic violence, the sorts of things that happen every day in every country. The kind that rarely makes the news. However, Timothy’s story actually begins here. When you’re born to a mother who owns a thriving beer parlour, some things are sure to characterise your childhood. You are exposed to unsolicited kisses from barmaids from infancy, but that’s even the least of things to be worried about. As you grow older, you will be inducted into a world of molestation and abuse, a world where women’s asses are meant to be grabbed, breasts to be leered at, and cleavages to hold crisp or folded naira notes. Complaints about such behaviour are meant to be waved away, or if serious, paid off. You learn soon enough that to be chaste is to be boring; to be a harlot is to be a woman wey sabi. So, the girls there called themselves ashawo with their full chests. And because you are a child, these things will stick; they will form part of your beliefs and the lens through which you saw the world.
You will learn that angry men, vile men whose faces are shaped into permanent scowls, whose moods are so shifty that a lukewarm drink or a stray fly could trigger a reaction—these sorts of men are the cool men. The soft-spoken ones who allow the serving girls to shout at them are small boys. Bar fights and brawls will be cliche to you. The sound of broken bottles and hawked threats will be like music to you. You will learn that money doesn’t need a public address system but everyone listens whenever it speaks.
That was the world Timothy grew up in, the world from which he went to and from school. His mother, like everyone who has a child they were not ready for, handled Timothy as one would treat an alternative. She ensured he had everything he needed—but there was no extra attention, no special focus. Apart from a few frustrated shouts hurled his way, Timothy was a child left mostly to himself.
On the streets of Lagos Island, he learnt things that weren’t taught in school: loyalty, sensitivity, hierarchy. He was mentored by egbon adugbos, men who could be anything from hemp sellers to land grabbers, kidnappers, robbers, and election touts. He learnt that if you were the sharp kid who knew how to be seen and not heard, you caught their attention and fit into the base of the pyramid system where you became an omo adugbo. This was Timothy’s lot. He learnt very early to shine his eyes. His father, who was a fine Igbo man with a boxer’s body, wide lips, a golden-brown complexion, had passed his genes to Timothy, who grew handsome and more brawny than his peers. By the time he was seven, he had already beaten up a few prepubescent boys, throwing them on their backs and leaving them with cuts and bruises, without a single scar on his own body. When he was twelve, he had already acted as a lookout for over two dozen burglaries. He had smuggled enough weed to land an adult in jail for a long time. He had also acted as an “eye” for his street egbons during street duels and police raids. The egbons praised him for the steady supply of gin from his mother’s store and his incredible O.T.
Despite all this, he didn’t fail, repeat, or even drop out of school like many of his compadres. He was one of those rare lads who were both book smart and street smart. And then there was his mother, who wouldn’t have allowed him to consider the possibility of dropping out. She was one of those women who swore their children wouldn’t experience what they experienced. Since she never made it to the university, her boy would, even if she never bothered about what he would study. Maybe if she had known, if any of the prophets and spiritualists she visited had seen the future, they would have discouraged her. And she would have put a hold on her plans.
At 15, before Timothy left for the university, he had earned a street name: Tumo Boy. And it was this name, which was more a marker of street credibility and a ballooning hubris, that he took with him to the university.
* * *
Some people stay on their own, minding their business, and trouble ambushes them, double-crossing them and their well-laid plans. Others, like Timothy, walked towards trouble, poked it on its face, and told it, “Here I am.”
Now, I must add that this is not a figurative expression. That is precisely what he did. On a sunny day, midway through his first semester at the university, he walked up to a group of four boys leaning against a battered fence by the school field, littered with election campaign posters. A haze of hemp smoke hung above the boys’ heads; empty sachets of alcoholic bitters formed a glossy carpet underneath their boots. All the students who saw their black t-shirts, golden watches or bangles knew who they were. Those who didn’t, only had to look at their faces to know to stay away without being told.
It was towards them that Timothy walked, like Daniel strolling into the lion’s den, and said the word no one ever says aloud in public, especially not to people for whom trouble flapped around them like a red flag.
“Who goes there?” Timothy yelled.
All the witnesses told different stories that day. There was Timothy’s version, the boys’ version, and the version from onlookers who did more running than looking. We will go with the last because we can’t trust Timothy’s or the boys’.
So here it goes. Onlookers said a bottle materialised out of thin air and was aimed at Timothy’s face. But Timothy parried it with his hand.
Another version said it was eight fists and eight boots first, and then the bottle. But what everyone agreed on was that Timothy was caught in a tangle of punches and kicks.
For days, many whispered how the air in the field was filled with barks of “who you be… who dey check am… your papa.”
Nobody could tell how he escaped that day, but he did. Timothy became a marked man with scars to match.
I suppose we can also pay attention to Timothy’s side of the story here because many remember how he bragged that his plan had succeeded. He told everyone who cared to listen, mostly his girlfriends, that he had made an impression. The week that followed seemed like those decades described by Vladimir Lenin where nothing happens. The wounds on Timothy’s body began to heal. But his restlessness knew no bounds. He snapped at everyone, struck at everything.
Finally, after a fortnight, on a Wednesday night when the hostels echoed with the voices of the few who didn’t attend any of the Christian fellowships, as they watched the UEFA Champions League games showing in the overfilled and undersized common room, five boys with feet shod in Timberland boots, heads wrapped in bandanas and bulges pushing against their t-shirts, visited him. They kicked down the door of his off-campus lodging. “Where that bastard ju wey dey price im papa?” they said.
Timothy was on the cusp of sleep, courtesy of the deep tissue massage performed on him by one of his many girlfriends, a student three years older and two classes above him. The terrified buxom beauty passed out as soon as the door slammed open.
Moments later, Timothy—or Tumo Boy—was blindfolded and tossed in the trunk of a beat-up car which sped off towards the vast forests that marked the areas of the proposed permanent site, where a curious capon, the fraternity’s chief priest, the third-in-command of the frat, the member in charge of songs and initiations, and other fraternity lieutenants, waited.
The capon was 29 years old but was wiser than his age, or so we heard. As soon as word got to him about the situation, he made an order—because capons don’t make requests—“Bring that ju to Gaza unharmed.” He had learned from his politician father to keep talents like Timothy close. Reckless courage like that was a virtue that would always be needed, he thought.
Timothy and a few other newbies were subjected to rounds of beating deep in the heart of a forest, surrounded by candlelight and clouds of hemp. And then, much to Timothy’s delight, the oath-taking and sipping of the spicy initiation brew followed. This was the act that bounded him to the brotherhood. It was almost dawn when the capon addressed him personally. Like most charismatic leaders, the capon told him that his craziness may have gotten him attention, but such would lead to his demise within the group. Timothy, with his body hurting, but mind alert and spirit alive, listened half-heartedly. His mind journeyed to a future he thought was within his grasp, a future where he envisioned himself as the capon; the number one man. The 001.
The weeks that followed Timothy’s initiation were unforgettable on the campus. A lecturer slapped a student. Perhaps the lecturer was oblivious of the significance of the gold watch on the student’s wrist or the Timberland boots on his feet. Or maybe the lecturer was frustrated with the recent fuel hike, the third in about two months. Some said the student stared at the lecturer. Others said he warned him, his finger wagging in the lecturer’s face. Others said he laughed and walked out. Two days later, the lecturer’s Toyota Camry “pencil light” exploded just before he entered it. Pieces from the blast slashed the lecturer above his eyes, and the impact left him stunned on the floor for minutes. In the same week, his wife’s fabric store in town was burned to the ground at midnight. According to the witnesses, the skies were suddenly hued orange as though lit by fireworks. By the time the first responders got there, all they saw were melted mannequins, shattered glass and the hardened char of melted fabric.
The police ruled everything as accidents, not because they investigated but because the lecturer wasn’t smart enough to settle them. The whispered word in the hostels and apartments were all the same. Na dem Timothy do am. But no one could say it aloud.
Eventually, Timothy began sporting his own Timberland boots, new ones with the leather label hanging from the sides. He also began wearing matching gold chains that hung low over his black t-shirt. He was also heard laughing uproariously with similarly dressed boys.
Finally, the school year ended.
The hostels and school community emptied as students travelled home with empty boxes and hearts full of excitement. For most students, it was a return to their parent’s nests, a brief escape from the stultifying familiarity of packed lecture halls and septic tanks that filled hostel frontages with sludge and assailed the nose with stench. It was an escape from the red soil that turned muddy when it rained and coated shirt collars and eyelashes during the harmattan.
But Timothy stayed behind at the capon’s orders. They were family, the capon said, and families that preyed together, stayed together. Of course, he didn’t say this, it was tacit and intuitive knowledge.
* * *
What followed was something Timothy always loved: proving himself. To show how loyal he was to his new family, he was ordered to be a hitman for a job. Some said Timothy had suggested it and that the capon permitted him to do so. Or maybe it was simply destiny calling to him. Because new members do not go on hit missions, especially one of such magnitude.
No side has been able to agree with the other on what happened. The rumours that circulated online, gleaned from comments under viral videos, went like this:
Timothy and three others had attacked their targets at a bar.
They swung their axes and machetes maliciously and shot at them.
The stories say the metals bounced on their victims’ bodies, and the bullets dropped like rain. The rivals were fortified. Realising this and recalling the unspoken rules of frat warfare, the older members had turned and fled to fight another day. Not Timothy. Isale Eko boy that he was, he had never turned his back on a fight. They said he picked a plank lying around and attacked.
The grainy video that captured his last moments showed his handsome face bloodied and eyes shrouded in crimson, as he fled from three men. They said his comrades had returned and begged him to come along before it was too late. But as it is said, whom the gods want to kill, they first made deaf. Maybe it was his ori, his personal god, that determined his fate for him. Maybe it was that rugged independence of his mind that had remained unchallenged by his carefree mother. She, and others who knew Timothy, battled with this thought in the days that followed, and in the years that accompanied those days. An explosion and the sight of Timothy’s body falling into a gutter were the last scenes in the grainy video. As I said in the beginning, this story doesn’t end well.❦
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Obaditan Oluwakorede (OBA.T.K) is a Nigerian writer. He works in the private sector as the partner of a microfirm in Lagos, where he lives. His previous works have been published in Kalahari Review, Writer Space Africa, and BlackInk.