“There must be ways people who lie down daily in the sun and the rain and are lashed by strong winds look at their society that are different from those who do not live under such conditions. There must be ways they look at others and themselves. Their existence and conception of life would unavoidably be complicated by their particular situation.”

They peered at the calendar, at the new month of October; there wasn’t a highlighted day, not other than Independence. It was bound to be a turbulent four weeks, but the trio knew that they could always take, in the perpetuity of death, some relative comfort. At Stephen’s, they requested to borrow the day’s newspapers. Ganzo, the eldest of them, flipped to the obituary section. Squinting, he turned his back to the light flooding in from the entrance of the shop, then drew the papers closer to his face, trying to make sense of the words, their meaning a delicate, imprecise scent that he necessarily had to close in on. Seeing that Ganzo was taking way too long, the other two boys took a step back to afford him a little more sunlight.

“Anything?”

“Give me a minute, man.”

“You’re taking too long.”

Ganzo looked at the boys, frustrated. 

“Do you want to be the one to read?” he mocked Sixteen, the boy lowering his gaze and stepping back. Ganzo spread out the newspapers even wider, basking in his literacy monopoly. In truth, he was only of the half-literate sort, more like a quarter if precision was paramount, but the one-eyed man is king and whatnot.

“Today’s English is too difficult,” he finally declared, closing the newspapers. The boys roared with laughter, seeming as it did that every day’s English turned out just the same—too difficult. As they solicited Stephen’s help, extending him the papers so he could read out to them from the relevant section, Ganzo laid down his usual monologue, varying it only ever slightly. The English language came by ship, you shouldn’t forget that, he said to Sixteen and Henry. The language had to cross very many difficult storms and waves just to reach us, little wonder it is too difficult, he elaborated. That had it been that David Livingstone and his missionary friends had opted to come by aeroplane, perhaps then the language wouldn’t have been as difficult. Disregarding Ganzo, the boys turned to Stephen, who surely had a shop to run, and who, although he never admitted it—perhaps as a consequence of his being one half courteous and the other taciturn—clearly didn’t have all day for people of their station.

“A certain John Ddumba regrets to inform the public of the untimely death…”

“Very unfortunate. How close?” asked Ganzo as soon as Stephen finished.

“Seeta.”

“That’s like five kilometres. And the burial is when?” asked Ganzo.

“Says tomorrow.”

The boys’ facial features tightened.

“Can we try another one?”

“In loving memory of Joy Athieno…”

As the trio left Stephen’s shop, crestfallen, wondering where the hell the day’s lunch was to come from, they decided to head back to Base, to regroup, to re-evaluate. Along the way, as the onslaught of a thunderstorm manifested across the sky, juvenile raindrops scattering the dust in the open road, the rising petrichor teasing their nostrils in a gentle mockery of their desolate bellies, the boys were reminded of a higher power. They sought refuge under the awning of a petrol station, and then they prayed, in English. They didn’t take their chances. It was safer to invoke a universal and sophisticated God in an equally universal and sophisticated language.

“Dear God Almighty…” Ganzo said.

“Wind tomorrow…” Sixteen said.

“Make blow today…” Henry said.

“Say please,” added Ganzo, looking Henry’s way. 

“Make blow today, please…”

“Amen,” uttered the boys, in chorus.

At Base—an abandoned building crawling with rodents and overrun with grass the height of their knees, the grey of bare concrete accentuated by patches of dark green moss—the trio had raw mangoes for lunch, harvested by Henry from a tree in the vicinity and seasoned with salt. From a distance, the frontage of their sanctuary passed for an eternally gasping face staring out into the street, its gaping door a mouth all its own, sandwiched between two windows passing for eye sockets with no eyes in them. Later at night, the boys made preparations to slumber, tucking their bodies into flour sacks the colour of the earth, folding themselves so that they were engulfed up to the shoulders. Ganzo, much too tall, could only cover up to his ribs, so his thin, trembling hands drew over his upper body a second flour sack with a hole in it the dimensions of his head. When the stirring had stopped, Ganzo proceeded to lay down the plans for the next day, a talking head swivelling on a pencil-thin neck, cheeks inverted parentheses converging at the chin, a flicker in his eyes at once a fire and a fever, never seeming to settle on which it possibly was of the two near homonyms of hunger and anger. No begging; that is rather lowly, always to be treated as a last resort. No borrowing (stealing); God takes no liking to that, not to mention it is risky business. It was agreed then that the boys would have to wait for the funeral in the afternoon, and do the best they could with the mangoes in the interim. In the silence that ensued, the boys’ stomachs taking turns grumbling, Henry reminded Ganzo of his promise to tell him his age. Ganzo said tomorrow, and Henry said Ganzo had become like the dead, always tomorrow.

At the funeral, the priest spoke with the sincerity of a seasoned televangelist, the kind that had memorised nine tenths of the scripture. The boys hoped that nobody bought into it, but the deathly silence that prevailed all but extinguished the likelihood of ascertaining so. Thereafter, Ganzo approached the open casket, the two boys trailing him, all three of them lowering their gazes, as courtesy demanded. At the casket, they bowed their heads, as if in prayer.

“My God, he looks…dead. I hope I won’t look as bad when I die,” whispered Ganzo.

For a minute or two, the boys held their position, then slowly turned their backs on the deceased and walked over to the bereaved family. Ganzo grabbed the young man’s wrist—the one who had spoken on behalf of the bereaved family—and proceeded to lament the fact that he hadn’t spoken loud enough for him and the others at the back to hear. Visibly shocked, the young man politely asked who the deceased had been to Ganzo. Ganzo turned and moaned to somebody else that he hadn’t been able to hear the young man from the back, and so hadn’t gotten to learn anything concerning the circumstances that had led to the death of his poor father, a dear old friend of his. The woman he turned to—much older than the boy but bearing a sheer resemblance, Ganzo realising just then that she must’ve been the widow, no doubt about that—stepped forward and placed her hand over Ganzo’s shoulder, patting it and drawing him in for an embrace. When they were separated, Ganzo whipped out from his pocket a black handkerchief, affording a cursory glance in Sixteen and Henry’s direction before proceeding to dab his teary eyes. The two boys took out their handkerchiefs as well. As the casket was lowered into the ground, some woman, charging forward, arms flailing, feet bare on the grass, all manner of hands restraining her, tried to fling herself into the open grave. The boys even heard the tearing of fabric. Henry shook his head, and Ganzo pinched his forearm.

At sundown, as the trio headed for Base, they made an inventory of their bounty: matooke, potatoes, cassava, chapattis, milk, porridge, soda, bananas, and loaves of bread. It was a relatively long walk, the fullness of their bellies weighing them down, but the boys wouldn’t be caught complaining. When they got to a well-lit road, they hopped from one streetlight to the next, double-checking their bags’ contents, marvelling at the yield, budgeting on-the-go, their teeth a golden yellow in the shimmering light.

“No, but the widow is the lead. You cannot wail louder than the widow.”

“Well, that Sylvia woman sure was the loudest.”

“Any woman who wails louder than the widow—” said Ganzo, breaking off.

“Uh-huh?” asked Sixteen and Henry.

“Think, man. Think. Any woman who wails louder than the widow—”

“Was paid to wail?” asked Sixteen.

“Okay, yeah, that too is possible, and it happens. But usually any woman who wails louder than the widow—”

The boys came to a halt in the middle of the street, Henry and Sixteen staring up at Ganzo, paying him the closest attention.

“—that’s who the deceased was having an affair with,” whispered Ganzo, smiling maniacally.

It took a moment to register, and then Sixteen and Henry threw their heads back laughing, Ganzo accompanying them.

“Yeah, always look to see which woman who’s not kin is wailing louder than the widow.”

“Wow. She seemed so upright, that Sylvia. Who would’ve thought?”

And the boys laughed some more.

“Tomorrow’s wind has blown today,” Sixteen said, catching his breath.

“It has, hasn’t it?”

The dead were the kindest people they knew. The next four days were spent in relative comfort, the trio never straying so far from Base. They washed their outfits down at the borehole using bar soap borrowed from a neighbour’s kitchen window sill. More accurately, Henry, the youngest, did the washing. Sixteen went shopping for the soap while Ganzo did the overseeing. They didn’t wring the clothes because they wouldn’t, after drying them, have the means to iron out the creases. So they hung them up in a tree’s branches, dripping like man-made rain. As they sat in the tree’s shade, Henry reminded Ganzo of his promise to tell him his age.

“Tomorrow,” Ganzo said.

“But you said the same last time,” Henry countered.

“You say the same every time,” Sixteen chipped in.

“Okay. Stand up, eh?”

Henry obliged. Ganzo lifted his gaze from the boy’s feet to his head a good few times, his scanning motions judicious, measured and deliberate, before arriving at a more than probable figure. 

“Nine-and-a-half,” he declared, matter-of-factly. 

When Henry squinted, visibly confused by the half age, Ganzo was right there noticing it, anticipating it. 

“Nine-and-a-half means you’re going on ten. Double digits, eh? Means you’ll soon be very respectable.”

Henry nodded continuously, face beaming in the harsh of that afternoon sun.

“Now go check up on the clothes,” Ganzo said, looking up at them.

On the fourth day when the food had gotten done, Ganzo seeing it fitting that he be the one to down the very last of the slightly stale bread, the trio made the pilgrimage to Stephen’s shop, a profound silence binding them. Sixteen and Henry—Henry now insisting on being called Almost Ten—were silently praying that, for once, the day’s English turned out a little simpler. They dreaded a day, the day that Stephen would inevitably run out of kindness, or worse still, a day he’d undoubtedly join the legion of the kindest—the dead. Mrs. Bbosa, the lady who had, prior to Stephen, played the charitable part of lending out the newspapers, had reluctantly entertained the boys’ morbid curiosity for the same duration that it had taken her to figure out precisely what the hell the boys had been up to, after which she had dismissed them like they’d brought the Ebola, hurling a sandal in Ganzo’s face and threatening to involve the authorities. People had stared at the boys, second-hand embarrassment plastered on their faces, except that for these three, feelings like embarrassment were such utter luxuries. For their assistance offloading the lorry on the days he restocked the shop, Stephen paid the trio in foodstuffs, mostly. What Stephen didn’t know was that when he wasn’t looking, the boys occasionally stuffed their mouths with the raw rice and ground nuts that were on display at the front of the shop. His questions were, in many of their interactions, answered with mmhs and hmms and uh-huhs and the nodding and shaking of heads, the boys desperate not to open their mouths. The offloading was always communicated in advance, and it operated on a level of trust that had taken four months to establish. So, for days like that day, those godforsaken days when the trio showed up unannounced, with nothing to offer but apologies for their inconvenience, they were altogether at the mercy of Stephen’s mood, which was, in turn, at the mercy of the day’s sales figures.

“How did the funeral go?” Stephen asked.

“Went well enough. How are you? How’s your wife?”

“We’re okay. She’s due very soon.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Girl, but I doubt that’s why you’re here,” said Stephen, reaching for the Daily Monitor newspaper from the rack.

He handed it to Ganzo, who wasted no time flipping to the obituary section. On the third last page it was always to be found, preceding the sports section. Ganzo stared at Sixteen, then at Stephen, then back down at the newspapers. Stephen held out his hand, taking the newspapers. None of the funerals was nearby. Ganzo and Sixteen turned to go, murmuring their gratitude, but Almost Ten stayed transfixed, eyes glued to the news rack, to the New Vision newspaper. A customer strolled in. Ganzo said to go, but Almost Ten disregarded him. The two boys left without him. Moments later, mouth full of raw rice, Almost Ten would catch up with the boys squatting at the street corner, the duo springing to their feet as soon as they’d see him, a medley of eager anticipation and nervous dread flashing in their pale faces. None of the funerals in the New Vision was nearby, either. Walking back to Base, the boys decided then to take a vote—the vote. They hated to have to, but they had to.

“Those in favour of Ganzo?” asked Ganzo, stopping in his tracks.

Almost Ten’s hand shot into the air. All the other hands stayed put.

“Those in favour of Sixteen?”

All hands stayed put, and then, Almost Ten, figuring the more than likely outcome of the vote, started whining.

“But it’s always me doing the begging, why? Even the other week, man.”

“Stop whining, we haven’t finished voting. Those in favour of Almost Ten?”

Ganzo raised his hand, and so did Sixteen.

The two thousand shillings Almost Ten secured on his ninth try was spent on twenty pancakes, eleven—four, four, three—of which were accompanied with borehole water, oh so refreshing after the long walk in the afternoon sun. Later, although the night was cold, although the flour sacks itched and prickled, although the rats persistently undermined the truce that both parties had brokered, busy pacing up and down, lured by the scent of the pancakes, the boy’s hard-earned breakfast, the trio couldn’t, because the following day was a Sunday, afford to sleep in their shirts, Heaven forbidding that you came into the presence of a universal and sophisticated God with your clothes creased. It didn’t happen every Sunday, but for that one, like many before it, the trio would have to convert to Catholicism. Anything to confuse the pangs of hunger. Like the snacks Almost Ten often secured from catechism classes. Or holy communion. Maybe two servings of it. Perhaps three. To many priests, it was two different parishioners if, for the second time, you came wearing a jacket. So, in the morning, the boys carried their promotional jackets and prayed for an ageing priest. Ganzo’s was a yellow MTN Marathon jacket of questionable origin. Sixteen’s was a Red Cross Society jacket with the sophisticated high collar, the one he had secured the time he attempted to donate blood. He’d seen them before—the blood donors—walking away smiling with their sodas and red jackets, like foot soldiers of mercy. So he, too, had conjured an air of humanitarianism and stepped forward, only for the sweet lady nurse to take one good look at him and deem him ineligible, her eyes filling in for a weighing scale. Sixteen had insisted, saying he was much heavier than he looked, saying he’d gotten his parents’ consent too, the sweet lady nurse objecting, saying that the boy looked like he barely had enough blood for himself, Sixteen pleading, saying could he at least have the soda and the jacket then, the sweet lady nurse holding her waist and staring at him hard, looking over in the direction of her superiors and establishing that they were indeed absent-minded, then finally yielding, saying, “But of course!”. Then, Sixteen walking away beaming, joining the ranks of the foot soldiers, sipping on a Coca-Cola, the sweetness lingering.

Some months were necessarily easier. Like the month of Ramadhan, somewhere mid-March to mid-April on the Gregorian calendar. The Muslims were the second-kindest people the trio knew, after the dead. Ramadhan meant a free evening meal at the masjid every day for twenty-nine or thirty days. You could even spend a night or two in the warmth of the masjid, if you behaved yourself. And all that was nothing compared to Eid—the Eid week. Ganzo’s position was that “As-salamu alaykum” was worth much more than “Hello, how’re you doing?” could ever be. He insisted that, as universal and sophisticated as the English language was, the Arabic language was equally well worth looking into. But for all their generosity, to the trio, the Muslims possessed one deeply fundamental flaw: their funerals, they were so minimalist, so swift. No casket, no fanfare, and many a time, little to no food.

After Mass, the boys, knowing that they couldn’t go to Stephen’s, his shop being closed on Sundays, made their way back to Base, feet dragging in the dust.

“I could eat a whole goat right now,” Almost Ten said. 

“A goat is small. I could eat a whole cow, me,” said Sixteen.

“Now what should we do?” asked Ganzo. 

The two boys stared at him, the air heavy with expectation.

“Those in favour of Ganzo?”

“No, no, no, man. I’m not going,” moaned Almost Ten, stagnating.

“We haven’t finished voting,” Ganzo said, looking back at Almost Ten. 

Almost Ten stood his ground, shaking his head.

“What is wrong with you?” Sixteen asked him.

“Nothing. I’m not the one begging this time, man,” Almost Ten said, receding.

“Those in favour of Sixteen?”

Almost Ten didn’t wait for it. He wheeled around and sprinted down the road, branching off in the direction opposite to that of the cathedral and out of sight. Ganzo and Sixteen squatted by the roadside, waiting for the boy to quit with the games. Five minutes became half an hour. The sun made it overhead. Was that a loaf of bread coming down the road? Sixteen blinked. No, not bread; a yellow bus. A school bus with children in it, some of whom he imagined to be around his age, sixteen. Two hours, no sign of Almost Ten, still. The boys decided to leave without him. At Base, they took off their shirts and down in the grass they lay, staring at the clear blue sky.

“He’ll be back,” Ganzo said.

“How sure are you?” replied Sixteen.

“Hasn’t he always come back?”

“One day he may not.”

“He’s got no elsewhere to go.”

“Hmm. Why did you even lie to him?”

“About what?”

“About his age. I doubt he’s even seven yet.”

“Well, did you see the look on his face? Honesty is overrated.”

From behind them came a nomad with his cattle, displacing the two boys. They perched in the branches of a tree, occasionally looking down the street and in random directions as far as their eyes could see, half-expecting a little boy’s figure to materialise.

“Now what?” Sixteen asked.

“Stop bugging me, man. You want to run as well?”

“Maybe I do, yeah.”

Ganzo chuckled.

“What will you do if I run?”

Ganzo shrugged his shoulders, plucked a leaf from a branch, and rolled it between his fingers. The two boys sat there in silence, listening to the cows mooing.

“Dear God Almighty…” Ganzo finally said, breaking the silence.

“Wind tomorrow…” Sixteen replied.

An awkward silence ensued in which the two boys stared at each other, their three-beat prayer lacking a third supplicant. Sixteen climbed down first. 

“Let’s go look for Henry, man.”

The boys scoured the streets for Almost Ten. They double-checked all the locations they suspected the boy had sought refuge in: the borehole, St. John’s Cathedral, Masjid Taqwa, and the playground at Janan Luwum Memorial. They even strayed as far as Mrs. Bbosa’s shop, halting at the corner to peer up and down the street. The sun dipped below the horizon, and Almost Ten was still nowhere to be found. Famished and resigned, the boys were without options outside of heading back to Base.

In the morning, they arose to find Almost Ten lying beside them, a heaving bundle in a flour sack. The two boys, intent on not waking him, unsure of how long he’d been sleeping, went about laying the foundations for the new day in hushed tones from across the room, their movements unhurried, casting glances every so often in the sleeping boy’s general direction.

“I wish today there’s a nearby funeral,” said Sixteen.

“Yeah, me too. Do you remember that other funeral, the dead chairman?” said Ganzo.

“Yeah. Plenty of food, eh?”

“Plenty, yes, but first forget the food. Do you remember the priest?”

“The one who was sugarcoating?”

“Yeah, that one. So shameless. People need to know the truth about the life of the deceased.”

“Can’t speak ill of the dead, remember? They have immunity like that.”

“Anyway, all I’m saying is that if I died, I’d like for people to know about the real me, not some whitewashed version of me.”

“Then don’t pay the priest.”

Ganzo chuckled.

“And you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about having a remote-control recording in my casket, in order to interrupt the eulogy in those moments the priest is tending toward dishonesty. Imagine a loud knocking noise followed by, ‘Err…excuse me, I just need to correct you on that one point.’ I bet the people—”

Sixteen threw his head back laughing. There was a stirring in Almost Ten’s flour sack.

“I bet the people they’ll say, ‘It was just so him,’” said Ganzo, smiling.

“That would surely teach them a lesson,” said Sixteen, between laughter-induced coughs.

Just then, something shifted across the room, and the boys turned to see Almost Ten’s head shooting out of the flour sack, body rolling in the thick grass, laughing like a madman, no longer able to hold it in. And then, as though by cue, Ganzo and Sixteen were overcome by the same.

“Of course, I’d need somebody with impeccable timing to operate the remote,” said Ganzo, catching his breath, smiling, pointing a finger at Almost Ten.

On the way to Stephen’s shop, the boys now a complete unit, the prayer was established, twice.

“Dear God Almighty…”

“Wind tomorrow…”

“Make blow today, please…”

“Amen.”

A fine Monday morning, the sky as vacant as the boys’ innards. Anticipation tugging at their clenched throats, the boys kept a stiff upper lip, their composure not slipping; not for the state of Almost Ten’s shirt, creased as though two cows had taken turns chewing it overnight; not for the occasional stares from some people that actually recognised them; not for time itself, promising constancy but ever being the most elusive, always presently dragging and then seeming to have flown by in retrospect. At Stephen’s, they could see that the shop was closed. As they lingered about, wondering where the hell the man was, the saleswoman next door seized her opportunity.

“Why don’t you come buy from me?” she beckoned the boys over.

“Good morning. Where’s Stephen?” Ganzo asked.

“Oh, you didn’t hear? His poor wife, she died giving birth.”

“What?” Ganzo and Sixteen uttered, almost in chorus.

“When’s the funeral?” asked Almost Ten, stepping forward, face as bright as Christmas lights.

Ganzo eyed him, and the boy took a step back.

“She’ll be buried this afternoon, I think at—”

“No, it’s all right,” Ganzo interrupted, turning his back on the woman.

“What did you need to buy?” the woman shouted after the boys as they walked away.

As the trio got to the street corner, Ganzo suddenly turned and slapped Almost Ten in the face. The boy whimpered, asking what the hell that was for, and then Sixteen, lips quivering, slapped him on the other cheek. As Almost Ten began crying, falling behind them, the two boys didn’t once look back, eyes fixated on the road ahead.