They followed the driver who led them to an open space with sparse tree, and there he dumped his blanket on the ground and laid on it. Edegbe turned around from the scene, if he kept looking at the driver he might explode.
"I am famished," he said, placing his hand on his stomach. "I need food, we didn't buy anything during the drive, did we?" He asked Efe.
"No."
"We need food."
"We need food," Efe repeated. He knew what his boss meant when he said they needed something, knew the errand would be on him.
"Somebody needs to get food." He looked around as if looking for the somebody.
Efe imitated his gesture. "Somebody needs to get food."
Edegbe stopped looking around and locked gazes with him. "I want to eat rice and pork meat." He brought out naira notes. "And a chilled bottle of Schweppes or Bitter Lemon."
Grumbling, Efe took the money. "I mean where do I see rice and pork meat, and Schweppes or Bitter Lemon at this ungodly hour of the night?"
"Please, since you're going, you can help me buy something. Please." One of the passengers fumbled with her pause to bring out naira notes of little denominations, placed atop one another in the descending order peculiar to arranging money. When two more passengers came to him with pleading tone, money in their hands, he withdrew from them.
"Sorry, but I'm not Jesus, neither am I Jesus like. Anybody that wants to get something should get it himself."
"Ah, don't be like that, you're going to buy something, just help us," one of them said.
He started to work away. "You are not serious."
Edegbe chuckled, he would have been more surprised if he had consented to it. "Let's not have an argument over something like this, he can't go alone, obviously, and carry everything. Some of you should go with him."
They agreed. A man, a very cheerful and hyperactive short man, went around, dancing and shaking his shoulder, and collected money from the everybody. They laughed and cheered him. Even the driver had stood up, saying he knows the fastest route to get to a store, and telling them would only buy what were available.
Three guys including the driver, and two ladies went along with Efe, and when they got back half an hour later, some of them carried firewoods, and the others carried a bag that when unravelled, revealed corn, potatoes, cocoyams and a tuber of yam.
"As you can see, we joined the money together and bought what was available. We're even lucky to see traders by this time, so we're going to share. Let's party!" The short man raised his fisted hand up in a dramatic slowness and shouted the last word. They laughed and moved around, arranging the firewood and making a fire.
"Where are the things I asked you to buy?" Edegbe asked Efe.
"I went round the whole city, but nobody sells rice by this time of the night. I bought pork meat though, you know these are the things that move market at night. And Schweppes? When I asked the woman she looked at me as if I was running mad, so I just respected myself and bought Bitter Lemon."
"You went round the whole city within how many minutes?" He opened the black cellophane and looked into it. "You didn't buy anything for yourself?"
"I'll eat corn or yam."
They sat around the campfire the others had created, in the midst of other passengers. There were three campfires, the sparking sound of roasting corn was heard at one, and the smell of roasting potatoes and yam filled the air of another. But the night was more bustling in the third campfire, the girls sang and the guys drummed on the downturned plastic bowls, and on a stainless steel basin that the woman whose child was sick had allowed to them. At intervals she would stand up and sway her hips, and swing her hand, and the short man would stand up and make lopsided gait dance, and they would laugh. When another person raised a familiar song, they would cheer, hands raised up and sing in high pitched tone.
Everybody watched them, some singing along and others, like Edegbe, humming. He turned to Efe, "See that the good work paid."
"That girl over there seems to be looking at my direction." Efe nodded towards his left.
He turned around and glanced at the girl. She had an earring pined on her nose, wore a very beautiful hijab, and had her lower eyelid lined dark. With the help of the fire he could map out the henna tattoo on her wrist and finger. He turned back to Efe. "It seems like you're the one looking in her direction."
"You noticed?"
"Guessed. I mean, why would anyone look at you?" He drank from his bottle of Bitter Lemon. "You should have brought a straw."
"I'm handsome," he replied to his earlier statement, "and I look like I have money."
"But you don't have money, I do." He glanced at him, as if searching for the looks.
"You don't look like you do." Efe glanced at him too, as if searching for the look.
"You look like you do because I pay you enough to look like you do."
"But you're not even handsome." And then they laughed as though they had cracked the most hilarious joke. They had concluded, at the beginning of their friendship, that they liked themselves enough that they could not keep a fued between them.
One of the men from their circled sighed, he was chewing on the soft of the potato whose fire roasted dark peels he removed, and sighed. "A more sensible driver would have taken us to at least, at least o, a motel," he said in a loud voice as if he was talking in the absence of the driver. But the driver sat to his right, chewing his potato like a ruminating goat, and making sounds with his mouth. The driver heard him, but either the driver was too hungry to respond, or was already used to passengers pouring their frustration on him, no one could tell. Edegbe picked the latter, and when the man gestured to him and said, "Do you have a spare condom?", in a very causal tone as if he was asking for water, and that he expected him to have water, to carry water where ever he went, and to give to a fellow man who was in need, he ducked.
"Condom?"He raised his head to ask.
The man eyed him, genuinely surprised. "Yes, condom. It's white, rubber like, transparent. It has the shape that allows it to fit over the manhood, and men wear it when they want to meet a woman."
The men, the driver included, laughed, adding to the cheer of the third group where the short man had started to imitate Indian dance.
Edegbe turned to Efe. "Why is he asking me if I have a condom? Does he expect me to carry condom around?"
"Every healthy male carries a condom around," Efe replied.
His eyes nearly bulged out of his sockets. "Do you have a condom in your pocket?"
"I said healthy male."
The man asked the other men, and when he wasn't offered any, he got up and dusted his buttocks. They watched him, in expected silence, as he walked to one of the ladies, the one who Efe had claimed looked in his direction, and started talking to her. They saw the movement of his mouth, grinning from ear to ear, and when he stretched his hand to touch her, she poured water on him. The men threw their food and laughed. But his determination to get laid that was not waned, he moved from woman to woman, trying his luck, and when one of the women smiled at him, he led her into the bushes, walking at her back and ogling her behind, watching it went this way and that way, adding more swag so he would be more excited. Before he disappeared completely, he turned around and gave a thumps up to them, who were still watching.
"So he's going to sleep with her?" Edegbe said.
"That's why he asked you for a condom, sometimes you behave like you don't know how the world operates," Efe replied.
"He's going to sleep with her?" He repeated. "This is how people share diseases."
The man and his partner did not come back after one hour, they did not come back even after the short man got tired and stopped dancing, or after the excitement came down, or after everybody had slept, they did not come back that night. They came back the next morning when the passengers were washing their faces and their mouths, and joined the rush, because the driver was already shouting and saying he was ready to go. They hurried and settled in the car, and the driver drove off but soon stopped at a restaurant and there were sighs of relief and praises as the passengers got down. Edegbe did not get down, Efe did, bought the food and came back and by the time they moved again, after thirty minutes, the smell of fried rice, and jollof rice, and fried chicken filled the bus.
But Edegbe was tired, the woman in hijabs did no longer amuse him, he did not longer wonder how the pyramids of nuts did not fall even as the traders ran, his body itched from the bath he had not taken, and more than anything, he wanted to arrive at his destination. And so when, within the moments of his frustration, there was a scream at the back, he turned around, ready to pour his anger. But the sight that greeted him stopped him. It was the woman whose child looked sick enough to die, it was actually the child herself, she was moving and jerking, and her mother tried to hold her down. The passengers on the woman's seat shifted, some left their seat and came to the front, obstructing his view. The woman was still trying to hold her down, and the girl was still jerking, and he wondered if she wouldn't snap into two.
"Oga, stop the bus!" One of the passenger said to the driver.
"Are you sick? What do you mean by stop the bus?" Edegbe asked, what did she think was going to happen if the driver stopped the car? He tapped the driver who could only hear heys and has and the screaming of the woman. "Oga, as fast as you can, drive to a hospital," and told Efe, "look up the nearest hospital from here on Google map."
When he turned back to look, the young girl was convulsing, her legs and hands were stretched and stiff, and she was grinding her teeth. The woman, shouting, asked anybody to bring anything, somebody brought a spoon. She trapped her child between her legs, trapped her jaw between her calloused hands and pressed, willing the child to open her mouth. She had made a small opening, and so she forced her finger inside to make it bigger, but it was too late, the child clamped down on her finger. Her scream was agonizing. Another woman joined her in pressing the child's jaw, but to no avail, when her finger finally came free, her finger was gone, and in place was the child's own tongue. The woman was talking now, praying maybe, saying Allah, her words in Hausa, incoherent, she was praying and sobbing. There was so much blood, the girl's mouth was filled with blood as she pressed down on her tongue, fiercely, as though biting on her tongue was her last struggle to live.
The driver was still driving to the address Efe had called when the woman gave a loud cry of anguish. In her arms laid her child, her tongue which had been cut into two was now free from the pressure of her teeth, her hands and legs were no longer stiff, they fell slack to her sides, her chest was not heaving with breaths, she had died. The woman, who had removed her hijab to reveal a hair cut low, was shaking her child, shaking the child would dispel reality, it would defile nature, and her child would breathe again.
When the driver finally pulled in front of the hospital, the other passengers got down to free up space for the woman, and when she got down, she dropped her child on the ground and danced. But this dance was different from the one last night, there was no swaying of hips, no swinging of hands and no cheering. The woman moved with an uneven pace, she knot her wrapper at the sides of her waist, and when it got loose, she knot it against. She held her hands up to the sky, as if telling them that her hands were clean, then she placed them on her head and wept. The nurses tried to hold her, but they could not keep up with her forward and backward pace, it was a sight too heart rending to behold, Edegbe looked away.
The incident stalled their movement, but hardly anybody took notice, it was as if they wouldn't mind if time stopped for the woman to grieve. The doctors ended up giving her anaesthesia, and they rolled her into the hospital when she feel slack. The driver, from her ticket, called the number she wrote as an alternative, thankful that she had not discarded the ticket. A man picked, he talked with an Hausa accent, replacing p with f, and f with p, telling the driver to leave his wipe at the hosfital, begged that they should fay some of the hosfital pees if they could. When the driver ended the call, he took a sharp air in, was he supposed to ask travelling passengers to contribute money for the woman? Edegbe who had overheard the call told the driver he was going to pay the bills, he followed him into the hospital, transferred the money and a little more extra.
When he got back into the car and the journey started again, he told Efe, "Her life will never remain the same."
He nodded. "I don't think any of us will forget it. We should have taken a flight."
"People also lose their children in a flight."
"If she has the money for a flight, she would have the money to treat her child, and the child wouldn't have convulsed, and wouldn't have died."
"Then suppose someone lent her the money?"
"She wouldn't use it for a flight. Has having money blinded you so much that you remember what it feels like to be poor again?"
Edegbe shook his head. "It's not called blinding, it's called change of perspective."
"If you perspective have really shifted then we wouldn't be in this nonsense of a vehicle, having this nonsense of an experience. You still think like a poor man, no offense."
But he took plenty. "See, I pay your salary, without me you'll probably be as wretched as that woman, so mind the way you talk to me."
Efe didn't respond, something had marred between them. Something that stretched for the hours they spent before entering Nasarawa.