The Governor of the Northern Province (16 page)

At present, though, they followed Bokarie's order and reassembled the recruits so something could be said about their recent showing. The boys were almost all still there, nervous and bored, moping and limping around the temporary camp they'd struck. They remained because the General had only given Bokarie one big juicy rainbow bundle of cash to wave in front of the eye-wide audience, back at the golf range, as an indication of the promised payment. None of them understood inflation. And regardless, the promised remainder of the first instalment had yet to arrive in camp. Supply line problems, some thought; a hijacked courier, others had heard; just a miscommunication about location, the optimists predicted. But they were all starting to feel it in their bones. No money was coming for what they were doing, but for now it was all they could cite as a reason to stay, it being a many days' walk from here to the capital city, with more whack-happy Upriver types to face along the route.

Of the two fighters who had deserted, one was an ex-orphan of the former Father Alvaro's. Knowing no alternative, he headed towards his old village, but his bearings were off and he went in the opposite direction, reaching another Upriver village around the time Bokarie's force was hitting its stride. The village elder stuffed his ears against the man's explanations and disavowals, and an hour later the remains were tossed near the chipped beef tins that collected behind the local canteen for area scavengers to take care of. This was done in case the Grin Reaper, as Bokarie came to be known around Upriver because of how he brought them death and destruction with a smile, found evidence that one of his men had died in the village, which might inspire his men to seek more than just their vengeant brands of peace and justice and redistribution. The other deserter wasn't heard from for some time, but when he turned up again, he was well received, mostly for the fancy company he brought with him.

The rest were grouped together as they had been on the driving range, but this time the mood was glum and low and the faces long with callow. They were a band of sour teenagers little different from any other, showing in their looks the expectation of punishment for their versions of broken curfews and busted tail lights, and not wanting to grant their fathers the pleasure of their
mea culpas
. Bokarie stalked out in front of them, hoping he could summon the right passage when the time came and that his words would rally the listeners to the cause of a carved-up comrade. Shaking his head, he began to pace and bop before their down-turned faces. He kept at this for a long while, building enough tension to make the whole lot jump when he barked his first words.

“Chop-chop!” he opened. “Do you know what this means, any of you? Chop-chop!” They jumped again, their birdcage chests pounding with the possibilities being laid out for them. “Do you know that the General said this to me when I spoke with him by phone yesterday, when I had to tell him what happened on our first mission? He said this because he wanted me to make an example of one of you, to teach the others what happens to patriots when they don't conduct themselves honourably while on their country's business. Because he was ashamed, as was I, as should you be, at what happened. After all the trust placed in us, in you, this is the result? Going after chickens and women and then running and screaming like chickens and women when the Upriver pigs come at you waving their sticks? So, to remind you of the bravery and honour you've agreed to, the General ordered me—
chop-chop
!” This third time they heard the words, they turned in to each other a little, quivering.

Bokarie let up a moment and motioned for his cousin to bring him the burlap bag. Then he beckoned the man he was calling Jesse to join him. Various shudders and whispers went through the crowd. Some knew this had happened to the boy in the border village. Others wondered, with the altruism of private relief, if this poor sap had already received punishment on behalf of the rest.

“The Upriver pigs obeyed the General's orders before I could,” Bokarie continued, after embracing the cowering boy and then gripping him by his good shoulder. The boy kept reaching, in vain, for the other. “They sent this brother, Jesse is his name, back to us like this, with his arm in this sack, as a warning, as a reminder to us that they are stronger, harder, madder than we are. And so I ask, do you agree?” Bokarie knew a plant wouldn't work this time; the crowd had grown familiar with his entourage. His stomach fell some as they slouched in tacit answer to his question and then seemed, as lectured teenagers are wont to do, to go away for a while. They were fondly recalling their old easy useless lives in the slums of the capital city. Each to himself, they were sniffing and sniffling that they didn't care about any fat stack of money or the stupid General or his stupid campaign anymore. They were longing for a return home, but then Bokarie whistled and brought them back, a frustrated coach, job on the line, trying to redeem a failing pep talk.

“So then, yes, you do agree? You're that weak, that soft, that womanish? If so, then why don't you give up on the General and suck at the President's milk bags? Go ahead and leave, there's no room on this squad for such types. You're acting like his children anyways.” Bokarie spat out this last line, flung it at them like a skein of phlegm. But the insult was also a gamble, he knew, with the dejected air hanging over the camp since their bashed-up return. If even a few were to break away now, he realized, the rest would follow. And he would be left holding a bag of arm, of shit, of his prospects. But before this could happen to him, Bokarie started smiling, forced confidence turning up the corners of his mouth. Everything he had said, they would see, had been mere preparation. Having scorched them with the righteous flame of his anger, he had some lamb words ready.

“I don't believe that about any of you. I know you have strength within you, that you need more than the tasks given to you to bring it out. As if running after chickens was enough to suggest your talent! This is why I have Jesse beside me today, whose suffering, my brothers, shall be our inspiration. And so I promise to all of you that when we return to that village tomorrow, the spirit of the Lord will rest upon us, a spirit of strength that will put fear in other men's hearts, and you, in revenge for our brother and for oh so many others, you shall strike the ruthless you will find with your rods and slay the wicked who lay up there with your knives, and justice shall be wrapped around your waist and patriotism a belt upon your hips. Because”—here he guided the distracted boy forward, who, being actually named Philip and shot through with codeine, had little awareness of or interest in the part he was playing in Bokarie's speech as it reached its climax—“many shoots shall sprout from the stump of Jesse, my brothers. For our General, our nation, our Jesse!”

On cue, rusty rifles were distributed to the recruits to supplement their machetes. East German surplus that hadn't arrived in time for the first raid. They would all jam with the first firings.

The reaction, the lack of one, to Bokarie's rousing address surprised him. He had been expecting, if not a chocolate prize for his fine scriptural elocution and creative memory, at least another rush of voices at his phrases, as had happened on the golf course and, before then, whenever he described how he took down his opponent Foday and, before that, from below the orphanage wall. But the boys hadn't throated up, as expected, at his grand ending. This was indifference to his words, to him. He didn't like it. He would work up some new material for next time, he decided, though he was worried that maybe the Bible had outgrown its usefulness.

But even if his speech didn't get them going, Bokarie noticed with some relief that the timely gun distribution was having a good effect anyway. Most were clamouring after them and then, like children on Christmas morning, sliding around the parts of their new toys and imaging scenarios for their use. As some paired off and exchanged slow-motion re-creations of the rifle butt punishments that the Upriver men had given them, Bokarie accepted that his current prop, the renamed amputee, and his words, the punched-up bit from Isaiah, and even himself—that none of this was so crucial all of a sudden. Next time, yes, he'd do better. For now he had to consider the matter at hand, and he began to think that perhaps the first defeat had been worth something. Because at least his fighters now had some smack of memory to feed from and private desires for future reckonings. Which meant, most importantly, that they were still movable to his plans and the General's directives.

But still, his tongue felt like a cramped eel. His mouth was crammed full with good writ. He couldn't resist. He decided the boys needed more convincing. A touch more.

“You are remembering, I can see, what's been done to you and now you have in your hands the way to return the favour.” They looked up at him, semi-interested. “But we will fail, brothers, if we act each for himself. This is why I want you to feel another memory before we go back to give them some of their own. Tomorrow you will spring and shoot out, victoriously, at the Upriver swine. But first you will know, each man for himself, what's been done to one of your own, and what's to be done to them in revenge. Bellies for bellies, yes, and now arms for arms!” This got at least some snorts of agreement. He ordered a line to form and file forward.

They processed past, their rifles low slung, and casually saluted and hailed him. Bokarie tolerated their swaggering because of what was then happening to each when he had them reach into the riper and riper bag to feel and wince at and study the mushy pointlessness of a chopped limb. (Jesse died from infection a few days later, a vague martyr.)

None of the men complained when their rifles failed to fire at pinkish dawn the following morning, because this let them swing away and chop instead. True to newly inspired and recently corrected form, they ignored the chicken coops this time and simply knocked down the women they passed as they went at the village's men, whose pride in their prior victory left them surprised at how fast and hard this second effort came. They were quickly dispatched, pate-cracked and machete-dealt. Eventually the jouncy leader of these hack-hardy teenagers arrived, having hung back because he felt this was conducive to the image he was rubbing into a fine glow, of a leader above the fray who provided a concluding flourish to the proceedings. So, as the bound-up prisoners and back-slapping victors together watched, Bokarie was driven into the village by one of his brothers. He danced a little victory jig on the jawbone of the ass-sprawled village elder. The man's dog came out and growled and whimpered and Bokarie loosely shot at it, tearing out the side of its belly. It slumped away. Then he pronounced the area officially claimed as part of the National Restitution Campaign and offered terms for peace and reconciliation to the next eldest survivor.

Judging the evidence around him, the man accepted immediately and Bokarie embraced him, whispering in his ear what would happen if the man didn't do likewise. They had to demonstrate their healing and friendship before those gathered. As instructed, Bokarie then invited himself to a burial ceremony for the recently passed elder and did likewise with his family there, emphasizing sympathy on behalf of the General and reminding each of the grieving that justice took great pains to get done. The clenched were stunned, as much by the hack and ruin around them as by the audacity of this grinning reaper's response to what he'd just brought off, his whispering what were to them sweet nothings from the Psalms about bones being crushed so that spirits could be revived. They could do little more than go limp in Bokarie's arms and wonder where the rest of the bodies were and hope they could make it to a refugee camp before they heard that chanting come up the road again.

Meanwhile, Bokarie's men cheered lustily at their own success and with his encouragement did a little more dancing and reconciling of their own. They swept through the last of the huts, turning them into private commissaries and, as opportunities kicked and screamed and were forced to present, occasional bordellos. Soon enough, though, the hoarding and humping had emptied out all the huts and groins, but there was still nervous, vicious energy to be spent, as if they knew that to stop now was either to go back to their glum, waiting-around lives or to invite a reckoning with what they'd chosen to do to avoid them. So things intensified. Clay braziers, like the old people slumped around them, were kicked over and cracked. Children were chased down and tossed around like teddy bears while mothers bartered their shrunken paps to retrieve them. Then someone hit upon the idea of tearing up a shirt to pick a lump of coal from a broken brazier and drop it down a woman's top. They watched her shriek and dance to get it out and chanted and clapped to help her move. There were multiple encores.

Eventually Bokarie broke up the festivities with the promise of more to come. There was a timetable to keep to. He left a few of the squadron leaders in place as constables and sent word to allied neighbouring tribes that there was fertile land newly freed for their use.

Stumps sprouted and limbs sprung across the Upriver lands that spring, and word started moving around. It eventually buzzed down to the capital city's barracks and an unmarked campaign headquarters and then to the People's Palace and inevitably into the hotel press rooms.

A BBC man had an early scoop on the developing story. While interviewing a fresh set of migrants headed to the capital, he came across a deserter from some previously unknown rebel movement that had recently tried to take a border village in the Upriver region. For a squishy bar of Fruit & Nut, the limping callow youth told the reporter about the golfing range training and the first raid. En route to Upriver, having convinced the boy he'd be known as a friend to the world if he helped track down his old mates, the BBC man and his techie speculated whether this thing might have enough legs for an extended piece, or even, if they could just get rid of the damned static on the satellite phone, a live-feed interview on
Newshour
. Auntie's interest had been piqued by their initial proposal, which included a clip of the youth telling about a deadly chicken-catching ritual. Voodoo rites always played well to the home audience. He also spoke of the man leading the new charge into the President's tribal lands. He was apparently a bit of a fine-words-and-fancy-footwork warlord, that one.