Elvis and I go a long way back. At least since Primary 2, when he put his index finger into Jennifer’s vagina at the back of class while I watched. We all got flogged even though I was more of a curious spectator than an active participant.
His father was a Pastor. One of those New Generation Churches that had just a singular branch but he was doing quite well. They drove nice cars and had a nice duplex. The father had a moustache over his mouth and whenever he saw me with Elvis, he said, “My boy!” with such gusto, then he smiled to show well defined teeth.
My father did not like his father, something that had to do with a massive distrust against any religious leaders that weren’t Roman Catholics. He would go on to make caricatures whenever Elvis’ father came up in a conversation. It should be stated though, that whenever these two men met, they greeted themselves amicably and discussed whatever it was men whose children were friends, discussed. I never told Elvis about my father’s caricatures even though I basically told him everything.
Elvis mother didn’t really do much, merely stayed at home (My mother would use this to defend why she herself could not attend our PTA meetings, not that I minded). She doted on Elvis and he in return, gave her his complete devotion, most times giving into her whims when she complained.
Because our parents did not trust us, they sent us to a private university. One of those places where you couldn’t live outside and each morning, a warden knocked on your door to tell you to head out to class. No much difference than the strict missionary secondary school we attended where we scaled the fence to eat roadside cooked indomie.
Our friendship was an easy, Elvis made a suggestion and I mostly followed through due to lack of activity. My parents were not so into this at first or now for that matter (We had a very terrible track record) but any other person, they set me up with, usually took life a little too seriously and I wasn’t really up for that. You see, I had an uncanny ability of been disinterested in a lot of things.
I was the smart one. One of us needed to be smart because then we both couldn’t fail and also most the people who sat at the back didn’t also fail. And so I if put in a little interest in my books, I was able to at least retain a position in the first ten. Which wasn’t all that great, because per consensus of my teachers, I wasn’t supposed to go far in life.
Elvis liked to think of himself as someone from the streets, which was quite irritating not just because I had to hear him talk as I was almost always next to him, but because it just wasn’t true and as much as we had our vices, pretense wasn’t one of mine. We grew up in gated estates, where we ate cereal each morning before we left for school on the bus. When we practised our pidgin in front of the mirror in his house, it came out slurred and unnatural. He persevered anyway, listening to foreign trap music about the struggles which we never faced. In those moments, I liked to remind him or rather ask him, how he could really be a bad boy when his middle name was ‘Favour’? In return, he would mostly mumble under his breathe before an argument, in very sheltered English broke out between the two of us. We argued the most amongst ourselves.
University was normal. My parents picked my course because I couldn’t care enough to pick anything. Elvis picked computer engineering because he genuinely cared about it. Before we went though, my parents consulted Elvis’s parents. By now, they had since given up on their ambition for me to find more responsible friendships.
When later in our first semester, I realized I wanted to do something else and change courses, I called my parents, excited that I finally found something I liked. They did not share my excitement, only maybe in the least did they sound relived. I sometimes think they had gotten tired of me. One of my aunties liked to say I was possessed with the spirit of ‘I don’t care’ (Whatever that means) and even though she suggested it enough, my mother (And gratefully) wasn’t the too religious person that would drag me off to some trendy pastor’s crusade.
Elvis and I went broke often, something that had to do with our spending too much. Or an income problem as I liked to tell my father. I told him to increase my allowance because my mates doing yahoo were living the life, least I get tempted to try it. He told me I was too lazy to actually learn Yahoo. He was right.
Anyway, by that particular day that the idea of the robbery came about, we were flat out broke and had exhausted all our possible options. Elvis had called his mother and since she almost always had nothing with her, she suggested she spoke to his father. He protested vehemently. I remember his whining voice on the phone, “Don’t worry. Mummy, don’t worry. He’ll just claim I’m irresponsible and don’t know how to handle money as if he doesn’t know how expensive everything is… no, no, I still have something… yea, okay, thank you.”
I too had exhausted my options. While padding up the cost to some of my school books that I did not need, he cut me short. “Jide! Hold it there. Why don’t you pick up a gun and rob, eh? I said why don’t you pick up a gun and go out and rob?” “Eh?” he cut the call on me. I don’t know but in a way, this was a little bit of his fault.
That day, I was down to my last 1k. Elvis was in my room then, lounging on the plastic my roommate used to read. I was in bed. We were both given separate rooms and I would say he was lucky, his roommate was cool. They sometimes smoked igbeaux. My roommate wasn’t bad but had tried converting a couple of times it was beginning to get annoying.
Elvis said, “Guy, wetin we go do?”
“Guy, I no sabi,” I said from the bed. “I’ll just eat buns to hold my hunger small then maybe call my brother.”
“You have money sef,” Elvis said, wide-eyed as if I had betrayed him by having this bit of money he wasn’t aware of.
“Guy, it’s just 1k.”
“Just 1k?”
“Wetin 1k go do for you?”
“You dey ask?”
I laughed. “If I dey go chop, I’ll call you.”
He sunk more into the chair so his feet went sprawling apart on the ground.
My roommate came rushing into the room now with his carefully tended youth pastor attire.
Elvis greeted. “Yo, big man.” Then he put out a fist and my roommate fist-bumped him.
The roommate went to the side of his cupboard and after removing whatever it was that he had forgotten, he turned to me and said, “Are you not going to class today?”
“I don’t have classes,” I mumbled, sitting up on the bed.
“Guy,” Elvis said to my roommate. “Why you dey ask this idiot whether im dey go class. He’s not serious with his life.”
My roommate smiled, they had their rapport. He slung his bag over this shoulders and then when at the door, said, “A warden is coming oo.”
A few minutes later, the expectant knock came and Elvis yelled out, “Fuck off!”
I turned to Elvis and gave him a look, “Yo? What the fuck?”
“He won’t do shit,” Elvis said to me.
The knock came again. “Excuse me,” a voice from the other side of the door.
“Our lecturer cancelled,” I said. We heard the footsteps walk away and then a knock on the next door.
The only reason Elvis and I didn’t get into any trouble was that the Senior Warden was out and this was a junior staff.
Elvis rested his hands, cross-linked on his stomach. “I no wan begin call my popman.”
“Then carry gun go steal now,” I said half-heartedly.
“My uncle has a gun,” he said offhandedly. Then, “Guy fuck that man.” He said about his father.
“Yea, fuck him,” I said casually from the bed. He burst out laughing then we launched into the rituals of degrading the fathers. The mothers were safe though.
I must add here that Elvis and I weren’t necessarily amoral people and while Elvis believed in god, I didn’t. I don’t really see this as a problem and I hated when people said I needed god to be good. Like without their religions, were they monsters? I would say Elvis and I, with all our reputation, actually did the good works like offhandedly giving money and not a hard stare to children that begged on the road.
Later that week, Elvis came to my room excited. “My uncle invited me over, are you coming?”
“The one with the gun?” I asked.
“Yes,” Elvis said rolling his eyes. “He’s travelling and he needs someone to take care of the dog.”
I visited the house some days later with Elvis after signing all the exeats that needed to be signed. His uncle was a policeman but not one of those barely literate kinds that stood on the road. He was well to do and had a nice house.
The dog was a German Shepherd. It looked menacing. Not being a dog person, even after Elvis told me the dog would get used to me, I never went close to it.
We played around the house, watched a bit of cable. Elvis envisioned fucking a girl in the master’s room but couldn’t think of anyone to call on such short notice and so just jerked off in it.
We raided the fridge and took the rice and stew there because there wasn’t really anything in there, then after we were done eating and we left the plates unwashed in the sink, Elvis showed me his uncle’s gun.
It was a cool pistol. The coldness startled me at first, then I got used to it. Put it at the back of my trousers and pulled it out liked I had seen in movies. I held it to the mirror in the room, pointed it to the distance, to the fan, to Elvis. He played with it too, swirled it in his hands. We were like two children playing actor and boz.
“We should rob someone,” I said.
“I mean we do need the money,” Elvis said.
I laughed, “Did you think I was serious?”
“If you are serious, I’m good to go,” he said.
I looked at him. He wasn’t actually good to go but I didn’t want to be the one that chickened out. Plus, We did in fact need the money. “Fine,” I said.
We made plans, a particular street that usually stayed empty for the most part of the day and was too far off for anyone to actually know who we were and trace us back to our school. Also, we were not to meet any elderly personnel and no shooting at all whatsoever.
When we left, I could tell Elvis was fidgety. I did well to hide my nervousness but my heart was in my mouth and at any moment, I felt it could pop out.
We got to our destination and picked a secluded spot.
“Alright, anybody that comes, you would go and meet them first,” Elvis said.
“Why should I be the one that meets them?” I asked.
“Yo, because like… you know like… anybody tries to like get past you, then they meet me,” he said. The gun was just underneath his shirt, tucked into his jeans.
“Fine,” I said. I tried to now to imagine what I would say if someone walked past, how the areas boys did. I’ve been robbed a couple of times. My legs never really stayed at one spot.
After what seemed to be ages, the first person passed. A woman in her late twenties. I looked at Elvis. He shook his head. I understood. She most likely didn’t have any money on her. She was dressed broke.
We waited longer and finally, the victim.
He looked like one of those kinds of men, children called ‘Brother’; Plain trousers, a native shirt and a drooping backpack.
Elvis said, “Go and meet him?”
“Huh?”
Elvis pushed me out.
I walked up to the man who was already eyeing me suspiciously and began walking beside him. “Hi, can you, like give us money?”
He stared at me, a fit of anger seeming to take over him.
Before he could go into an outburst, Elvis was out with the gun. “Don’t even think of doing anything stupid,” Elvis said.
By now, of course, my heart was legit in my mouth. It felt like one of those moments when Elvis and I snuck out of boarding without really thinking of the consequences and then suddenly, trouble. Except of course, this was bigger. We could end up in a police station rather than the senior boarding house master’s house.
“Bring out the money,” Elvis said.
“Which money?” the brother said.
Elvis turned to me, “Guy, empty his pockets.”
I could see Elvis’ hands were quite fidgety. I doubt he knew how to operate a gun.
I reached across to the man and dug my hands into his pockets. I pulled out his wallet, it was thick, then a cheap Android phone.
I opened the wallet, there was a wad of money in it. He had probably just withdrawn.
“You guys are too young to be doing this,” the man said.
“Guy, shut up,” Elvis said, then he turned to me. “Abeg, just give him back his phone.”
I passed the phone to the man and then I murmured, “Thank you,” awkwardly.
It was only after he left and we couldn’t see him that we too left in the opposite direction, quiet and brisk. We took a couple of detours to make sure nobody was following and just before we bust into the main road, we took out the money and discarded the wallet.
Even then, I still didn’t feel safe. I wasn’t quite sure if this was a part of town where you got burnt if they caught you stealing. Elvis and I chartered a taxi to his uncle’s house to return the gun.
“How much is it?” Elvis whispered to me in the car.
“Twenty-five,” I said securing my back pocket.
We got to the house and that was where the trouble actually started from.
I turned to Elvis and said, “Was that car parked here before we left?”
“Fuck,” Elvis said under his breathe. “He’s not supposed to be back for another two days,’ then, “Come on,” he said leading the way. “I would claim I want to use the toilet and return the gun.”
“I don’t want to go in there,” I said.
“Nigga, come on!”
I followed him, carefully trudging a few inches after him.
When we got into the house, his uncle was standing just in the parlour waiting. The dog most have given us away with its incessant barking immediately we (I) entered the compound. I imagined him now, watching us at the gate while we contemplated what to do. He was very visible angry.
“Where’s my gun?” His uncle began.
“I… um…” Elvis began to mumble.
“Where is my gun?” the man asked again, punctuating every word as he spoke.
Elvis quietly slid it out of his jeans and passed it across to the man.
“Do you see how foolish you are?” the man began. “You carried the gun to show your friends to show them you are a big boy abi? Do you know how much trouble you could have put me in?”
And then he punched Elvis. It was too fast and too quick and too powerful, I would say because Elvis fell to the ground and blood spluttered from his mouth.
I let out an atheistic ‘Jesus’ as I waited for my turn of pouncing. Luckily, he continued pouncing on Elvis, calling him out on what a spoilt stupid brat that he was, asking him what he used the gun to do.
Then the craziest thing happen, Elvis began to cry.
Small Backstory here; I had never seen Elvis cry before, maybe whine so much as though he was a baby when talking to his mother but never actually cry. We had gotten into serious trouble at the missionary and I can’t begin to talk about the cruelty we faced in the name of punishment but no matter what it was, Elvis never cried. We have been given a hundred strokes each, lying down and while I squirmed, shifted, buried my face in my hands, Elvis took it as though he was merely tapped on his buttocks. The Boarding House Master got frustrated, our mates hailed Elvis. They gave him the name ‘Odeshi,’ and then carried him around the hostel gyrating. He had singlehandedly embarrassed the HouseMaster.
Seeing Elvis cry and say, ‘Uncle, Please,’ was unravelling. Suddenly, we didn’t feel like big boys (not that I really felt like that) but the early twenty-something-year-olds that we were who didn’t still know much about life and were scared of it.
I really wanted to do something, to help him but the problem was, I had never fought a day in my life. Not ever. It was a strange something that sometimes lingered in my mind. Not that I was scared of confrontation but I just never had the opportunity to and so now I didn’t know to throw a punch and doubted that if I did, it would make much of an impact, on account of how skinny I was.
He let Elvis breathe, like walked aside from all the pouncing and was asking questions about what we used the gun to do. Then, when I thought he was going to punch the already weak Elvis, I jumped on him from the back and bit deeply into his neck. Not a very wise decision because there I was, a little over 65kg and then this man who could easily weigh 95 with muscle.
But it worked, because after all the screaming/ curses (he called my mother an ashawo) when he was finally able to wring me of him, he told us to, “fuck off my house now.” He threatened to report to Elvis’ father. He won’t. Elvis would call him later to apologize and they would both meet a consensus not to tell on each other.
We walked the distance to where we would get a bus back to school in silence.
I thought of what to say to cheer Elvis up caused he seemed so desolate with his hands in his pocket and all the swollen face and broken nose. “Fuck that Nigga,” I blurted. “Like seriously fuck him. He’s a beast, what kind of woman sleeps with him sef?”
Elvis said nothing, not even a mumble.
“You know we’d do? We’d go back to his house and shit in his bed, then we’d piss in his fucking stew, which actually would improve the taste. Did you actually taste that shit? It tasted like pains and sorrows. Like trails and tribulations. Like who cooked that should be taken to the market square and flogged.”
Now Elvis was smiling. He said, “Guy, Jide, you be fool.”
“Does he know you are the fucking gangster? The kings of the fucking streets?”
“Guy, shut up,” Elvis said. But he didn’t say it with the irritated tone he used when two of us were arguing and I didn’t agree with his, he was grinning, his left forming a small bump.
“Guy, your eyes are closing,” I said seriously now.
He touched his left eye and stared at me, “What should we do?”
“We would go to a chemist and clean up then maybe use ice block too. Then meanwhile, we would think of a befitting story for what happened to the eye. We go run am.”
He smiled. “Guy, Jide thanks. Today was crazy.”
I pulled him by the shoulder.
“Ouch,” he said and I left him.
“Uncle, please,” I said suppressing a smile. He stared hard at me and the smile faded. “Too soon?” I asked. He said nothing and we continued walking in silence. Everything was back to normal.
