Kill Me Quick Read online

  Two shirt buttons were missing and the jacket had a tear under the armpit. He started off, and Meja followed.

  They walked in silence, all the way back to their place at the back of the supermarket, then sat for a long time without talking.

  “You will not find a job looking like that,” Maina finally said.

  Meja sat hunched against the wind and watched as the street slowly emptied of its day people.

  “They will think you are chokora like me,” Maina told him. “Chokora do not belong on Main Street. Chokora belong here with the dustbins.”

  Meja was still in a daze trying to come to terms with the roughing up he had received from Gitau the security guard while the others watched and laughed. The streetlights blinked to life and lit up the streets and the sky over the city with a warm glow that was beautiful to look at.

  A chilly wind blew down the backstreet with dust and paper and the smell of sewage. They huddled together, backs to the wind, and waited until the garbage men came in their noisy truck emptying dumpsters. The truck rumble on down the street and, when it was gone and there was no one to see them, they darted across and hopped inside the largest of the dumpsters. They snuggled together for warmth.

  Meja did not return to Main Street the following day, or the next or the next. Meja never knocked on office doors again. With Maina’s help, he soon forgot he had ever been to school, and he tried to forget he had a family at home, waiting to hear he got a job. He forced a smile and went wherever Maina went and did as he did. He stayed out of trouble, avoided the lure of petty crime, and vowed not to end up a thief or a beggar.

  The cold and wet season gave way to the hot dry season. Swarms of flies and mosquitoes joined them in the dumpsters and hot, dry wind funnelled dust and rubbish down the back streets. The pickings from the rubbish bins diminished. The dumpsters behind the supermarket no longer overflowed and the struggle for food intensified. They had to compete with the dogs and the cats, the beggars and chokora children from the slums.

  Life was no better on Main Street either due to the draught. Pickpockets and muggers returned to the back streets scaring away the back-street mechanics, the street vendors and anyone trying to make an honest living. Some of Maina’s friends returned from prison promising to find a job and make a fresh start. Food got scarce and the competition for recyclable trash was fierce. Dumpster scavengers fought and injured one another over empty cans and old bottles. Maina thought the time had come to try something else.

  “Mkokoteni?” Meja asked.

  “We don’t have money for a pushcart. I have a better idea.”

  This time they would try it differently. They headed to the suburbs and went from house to house offering to work for free. That was Maina’s better idea.

  “We are tired of doing nothing,” he said to suspicious house owners. “We will wash your car, cut the grass, and trim the hedges.”

  All for nothing? Even Meja had to wait to see the end of it. Most house owners told them to go away or get a beating, but some were intrigued enough to try them. Maina was good at it too, whistling and singing as he washed the cars, cut the grass, and worked Meja just as hard as himself. Sometimes they were finished in time for lunch and the housewives would give them something to eat. At other times, they were at it until sunset and got neither food nor gratitude. But most of the people were good people and they felt guilty letting two hard-working boys go away empty-handed. Sometimes they paid with food, and sometimes with food and money. Then Maina acted surprised and promise to would work for it next time.

  Maina spent his share of the money as fast as they made it. He ate in kiosks and smoked whole cigarettes.

  The dry season passed, and again came the rainy season with its share of misery for the backstreet people. Streets flooded and ditches overflowed, and burst sewers sent rivers of sewage down the streets. Not a single culvert or dumpster was habitable. Rain chased the street people to abandoned buildings and to bus shelters and anywhere there was a roof. There they found some of Maina’s old colleagues demanding rent for shelter from the rain.

  Halfway through the rainy season, Maina come up with another plan. He bought a shovel, and a hammer, found an old bucket and they went back to the suburbs in search of potholes. When they found a pothole so large that vehicles had to slow down to go through it, they set up a red flag in it, placed a makeshift MAN AT WORK sign next to the hole and went to work. Meja sat by the hole breaking rocks in smaller pieces and tossing them in the hole, while Maina shovelled soil from the roadside into the hole. When a vehicle approached, Maina stopped to direct it round the pothole.

  “Good morning, boss,” he greeted the driver cheerfully. “What about something for the workmen, boss?”

  Most drivers ignored him and drove on without looking at him. Others just tossed money out of the window and drove on, but a few stopped to thank him for the excellent job he was doing.

  “If only more young men were like you,” they said.

  “Thank you, boss,” Maina said.

  “Keep it up.”

  “What about a little lunch, boss?”

  “Tomorrow,” the man said driving off.

  “We’ll fill this one tomorrow then,” Meja said rising.

  “Tomorrow we go elsewhere.”

  They went from one end of the suburbs to the other and from road to road looking for generous drivers. When they found them, they stayed for a while on the road, and took their time filling the potholes. Sometimes they worked the same pothole for several days. When a pothole was productive, they filled it up in the morning and excavated it in the evening, so there would be work for the following day. It was a good strategy, and kept them receiving tips from grateful motorists, until someone figured their racket and alerted city askari.

  That was the end of their road repair business. In the meantime, Maina had realised the dustbins in the suburbs were full of recyclable trash. He took Meja on early morning raids, through the suburban dustbins collecting repairable and recyclable rubbish. What some people threw away, others bought. And Maina and Meja made money. But it was not enough. Whatever they did, however they did it, everyone cheated them. From the woman who sold them old newspapers, to the butcher who bought the same to wrap up his meat; from the scrap metal buyers to the tea kiosk owners for whom they fetched water, everyone wanted to make the boys work for really nothing.

  The scrap buyers’ scales read the same no matter how much scrap was weighed on them. The assistants rushed through the process fast so there was no time for protest.

  “Five kilos,” he said tossing the scrap in the back of the pickup.

  Then driver calculated the price on the back of his hand and paid without explaining how he arrived at the total. When Meja protested, the man put his money back in his pocket and told him to hop on the lorry and get his scrap out.

  The bottle buyer made Maina empty his sack by the roadside and arrange the bottles by type, colour, and size. Then he went through them looking for reasons not to buy any of them. One day the bottles were too green, the next day they were too white, or too brown, too big, or too small, or too whatever would make them valueless.

  “I will take them off your hands,” he offered. “Just to help you boys. “

  “Help us how?” Meja asked him.

  “Chokora understands. We have done business before.”

  Meja turned to Maina.

  “It took us two weeks to find these bottles,” he reminded.

  Maina shrugged.

  “I am a good man,” said the bottle man. “Chokora knows.”

  Meja again turned to Mania. He was tired of carrying the sack of bottles about. They could not leave it where they slept, for someone would steal it.

  “Are you selling or not?” asked the buyer.

  Meja walked away leaving it to Maina.

  “Chokora?”

  “We are not selling,” Maina said.

  The man picked up his cart ready to push off.

  �
�Wait,” Meja reconsidered.

  He took Maina aside. They discussed the problem. They argued.

  “I have places to go,” said the old man.

  “Wait,” Meja said to him.

  Maina was for breaking the bottles and calling it a day.

  “How much?” Meja asked the old man.

  “I told you.”

  Meja held out his hand. He was hungry, and a little money was better than no money.

  A light drizzle started to fall.

  Meja loaded the bottles on the cart and the old man pushed of. They stood and watched until he turned out of sight. The drizzle turned to downpour. All the dumpsters would be uninhabitable by the time it stopped raining.

  Chapter Two

  An old man walked down the back street, searching in the alleyways, and the dumpsters. He was uncomfortably hot in his brown suit and hat, and smell of rotting waste was overwhelming. He stopped to get his bearings, and took a handkerchief from his coat pocket. He wiped sweat from his face and neck, took off his hat, and mopped his bald head. Then he walked along ignoring the people who passed him hurrying to get out of the stench.

  He found what he was looking for at the back of the supermarket. The boys were sitting by the ditch eating food they had taken from the dustbin. They did not notice him, until he stood over them and greeted them. They sprang to their feet ready to run for it. Then they saw how old he was and relaxed. The old man was sweating heavily, and his nose was twitching at the stench of rotting garbage from the dumpster.

  “Do not be afraid,” he said to them.

  “We are not afraid,” Maina said.

  The old man inspected them, noting that while they were about the same age and build; one had shoes and a coat, while the other was barefoot and ragged.

  “I mean no harm,” he said to them.

  “You can’t harm us,” said Maina.

  “I want to help you,” he told them.

  “Why?” Maina asked.

  “How?” asked Meja.

  “I can give you a home,” he said.

  They looked at each other.

  “We have a home,” said Maina.

  The old man was tired. He sat down on the culvert to rest before resuming his search. Since these two did not want his help, he would have to go find someone who did. The boys, having accepted he was harmless, sat down next to him and resumed their interrupted meal. Maina offered him an orange. He shook his head.

  “Why do you want to help us?” Meja asked him.

  Everyone asked the same question. From his employer to his neighbours, to the congregation at the church where he was a deacon, everyone asked why he took it upon himself to rescue and rehabilitate street rats. Some malicious people spread rumours about his motive for helping homeless street boys, but he knew their evil mind would think the same outrageous thoughts if he helped street girls as well.

  “I help street boys,” he said.

  “Don’t you have your own children to help?” asked Maina.

  He did not. That was why he had decided to help orphans.

  “We are not orphans,” Maina informed him.

  “Why do you to live in dustbins?”

  “We cannot get work,” Meja said.

  “I will give you work,” he told them. “If you come with me.”

  “Come with you where?” Maina was suddenly suspicious.

  “Where I live,” he said. “It is not far from here.”

  They looked at each other. They said a lot without speaking.

  “What sort of work?” asked Maina.

  “I cook for a big man,” he said. “I need a kitchen help.”

  Again, they glanced at each other.

  “Do you have a wife?” Maina asked.

  “I never married,” he told them.

  Maina shot to his feet.

  “Go now,” he said. “Go now before we beat you up!”

  The old man scrambled to his feet.

  “I just want to help you,” he said.

  “We don’t need your help,” Maina said.

  The old man started off, looking old and rejected. Meja watching him go, looked down the back street with its dumpsters, and smelt the stink of the garbage like he had not smelt it since his first day in the city. He realised that, in all the time he had been there, he had not seen or heard anything about the city that he liked. Hope seemed to have had died the day they Gitau the watchman kicked him out in the backstreet for insisting on having a job. Since then, he had not for a moment imagined he might ever see hope again.

  The old man seemed sincere enough to be the miracle Meja prayed for every night.

  “Wait,” he said.

  The old man stopped.

  “I will go with you.”

  The old man waited.

  “Let us go,” Meja said to Maina. “He has jobs for us.”

  “Jembe and panga jobs?” Maina said. “Not me.”

  “We did it when we repaired roads.”

  “Not on a farm.”

  “Goodbye then,” said Meja. “I will come see you here when I get my first pay.”

  “What makes you think I will be here?”

  “Where will you be?”

  “I will find my own job. Go with your old man.”

  Meja turned to go.

  “I will walk you to the bus stop,” Maina said.

  On the way to the bus stop, the old man talked about himself. His name was Boi. He was a cook and a man of God. He had helped many boys out of the backstreets, some of whom had gone back to school and even to University. He did not expect any gratitude and did it for the love of God. Then he talked about the new life that lay ahead for Meja. The work was not hard and the conditions were not bad. Meja would get a house, a daily ration of flour and milk, and a salary at the end of the month. The Big Man would decide how much he got based on Meja’s work.

  “What does your boss do?” Maina asked.

  “He is a farmer and a man of God.”

  “Does he have a wife?”

  “His wife died,” said the old man. “His children live abroad.”

  “I will come with you,” Maina said. “But only until my friend settles down.”

  “I will be fair with you,” Boi’s boss said to Meja and Maina, when they were presented to him, after they had washed and looked presentable. “You will be housed, and you will be fed, but only if you work hard. This is not a holiday camp.”

  That, was it? They had expected to be told their duties and responsibilities, and their pay and working hours, but that, was it? He was about to walk away when Maina spoke up.

  “What about our pay?” he asked.

  “Your pay?” asked Big Man.

  Boi had instructed them not to ask the big man about pay at their first meeting. He nudged Maina to shut him up.

  “Boi said we would be paid,” Maina said.

  “Where do you come from?” The Big Man asked him.

  “Nanyuki.”

  “How much did you earn in Nanyuki?”

  When he hesitated, the Big Man walked away. Boi heaved a sigh of relief.

  “You will be paid,” he said. “Come.”

  He showed them around the farm and pointed out their work. One would work in the garden, as there was need for just one assistant in the kitchen. They would have to decide which one worked where.

  A short distance from the farmhouse was the workers’ quarters, a collection of mud and thatch huts crowded together. The huts were old and crumbling, some seeming about to fall, but they looked inviting after the cold of the dumpsters. Dogs, chickens, and children played along the village lanes from sunrise, when their parents went out to work, to sunset when they returned from work.

  Maina and Meja were given two collapsing structures at the far end of the village away from the rest of the workers. They inspected each hut in turn, checking out the roofs and the walls to see how much work it would take to make it habitable. Both huts leaned to one side, away from each other as if to deny kinsh
ip, and the walls were holed and the thatches infested with rats. Soot hung from the roofs, so heavy in places it caused the roofs to sag, and the floors were thick with dust.

  Then they came to the details that mattered. Meja’s hut was neither circular nor rectangular, but it was dark and crisscrossed by cobwebs. It had fleas too, so many fleas they hopped about on the dust, but that was not the main issue. It was hard to decide which of the two openings was the door and which one was the window. One was low and narrow while the other was high and wide and about a foot off the floor.

  Maina’s hut was round, less sooty, and free of fleas and bedbugs. There were signs of mice and rats there too, but fewer than in the other hut. They decided to move in it together.

  Before leaving them to their own devices, Boi gave them the information he thought they needed. They would work from dawn to dusk, with half an hour break at midday, and for that they would each receive a pound of flour and a cup of milk at the end of the day. They would be happy at the farm, if they worked, otherwise he would send them back to the backstreets. His house was at the other end of the village, and they were free to go to him with any problems. He gave them two large gunnysacks each, one to sleep on and the other to cover themselves with.

  “Chokora,” the foreman said, the moment he saw them lining up workers receiving the day’s rations. “Who says you can eat without working?”

  “Boi,” Meja said.

  “Boi is in the kitchen,” said the foreman. “I am foreman here. Get out of line.”

  Meja started to leave, but Maina made him stay.

  “Boi said we can have food,” he said.

  “Then go eat in his kitchen,” said the man. “Get out of line.”

  Other workers grumbled, told Maina to get out of the line. Maina stayed in line until someone brought Boi. They had their first self-cooked meal that night in their own house, and, although it took them most of the evening to prepare, it was more delicious than anything they had eaten in the city. Then Boi brought them two more sacks and two old blankets and stayed to inform them they would work under him and he would expect respect and obedience. After he left, they made their beds by the fireside.