₦airaland Forum

LarrySun:
After losing this the first time, I've decided to repost. My appreciation to all my former readers.

THE COFFIN OF ERRORS

(Still To Ishilove)

The old and bad-tempered Pa Jimoh was dead, to begin with, but he did not go to his grave. And this deprivation of proper interment prevented among mourners any thought of planting over his head a mango tree. The real cause of his demise, however, if brought to focus, would result in an esteem more mirth-inducing to any spectator at the sight of the incident than to the actual victim on whom such tragedy befell.

Pa Jimoh had already hoisted himself to the apex of a rather lofty palm tree before he met his end. His intention behind this ascent was merely to tap in the early wine, but instead, he found his own hand tapping on the delicate nest of snoozing hornets. Not many mortals, if placed behind a judgemental desk, would put too much blame on the piqued wasps for their collective efforts in the attack on the feeble curmudgeon. And it would be unfair if this little but fatal brawl between insect and man was not elucidated in full detail.

The kind of irritation this swarm fostered could only be imagined after putting oneself in their thorax. Just imagine yourself a wasp making passionate insect love to your spouse in your apartment erected feet high on the branch of a palm, then suddenly poof! your castle was demolished by the single stroke of a hand. And this destruction came not just from any hand but from the hand of Man; that specie with whom you have never been (and possibly will never be) of benign companionship. In this instance, the last thing a patriotic wasp would care about was decency; no male wasp would scramble to a wardrobe searching for a pair of trousers to cover its privates, and neither would a female scream for her pants and bra. What would they do? They'd call on immediate neighbours whose mansions had also been reduced to rubble and launch immediate attack on the human intruder.

Initiating the divide-and-conquer techniques, some wasps made their own attack on the human's skull; thereby, in the process, reshaping the dimension of the tapper's occiput into that which was totally different from the Creator's initial design. But this was not what resulted to the old man's demise; of course, something more brutal sufficed. While some wasps families were busy assaulting the old man's skull, others lodged themselves into the dark comfort of his rather oversized pair of trousers. The poor man wouldn't have launched into that extraordinary wail even people far away had sworn hearing if those bees had shown kindness on their intruder. The offensive had found it incubent to sting him on the delicate tissue of the sac dangling between his thighs, while some were satisfied by only sticking their probosces on the flesh of that tender rope that always come with the sac. The agony could only be best described by someone who'd experienced a nearly equal attack. So, it could be deduced that the latter attack was more brutal than the former, for it was at this moment that the old man forgot about the precarious position he was in; he'd disremembered that he was still perched against the stem of a tall tree. And because the pain was getting unbearable, Pa Jimoh let go. Witnessing the brutal event could cause one to see only figuratively the morals behind the anecdote that 'the higher you fall the higher you bounce', and the old man literally bounced when his slim body came in contact with the earth. And these mean insects returned to build another nest only after accompanying their victim to his final destination. A rather eccentric writer may be inspired to coin a catchy title from this tragedy: 'Death by Sting' would go the title.

Pa Jimoh was really dead. There was no doubt whatsoever about that, for he truly and undeniably died from half a thousand stings and a broken vertebrae. He knew about his own death? Of course he did. How could it ever be otherwise? Because Pa Jimoh died a virgin, there was really not wet eye for his funeral. The reason behind his decided celibacy would forever remain a mystery even to the most seasoned of all detectives alive today.

Now, the mention of Pa Jimoh's funeral brings the magic of the pen back to the first line of the immediate paragraph before this. Pa Jimoh was really dead. This must be distinctly assimilated or there would be nothing of consequence to fathom from the extraordinary sequence of events that succeeded his demise. And when a man dies and is still refused the peacefulness of a grave, then most people will agree that there is something still amiss with the world, as it has always been.

Jimoh, being the last of his race, was of no known family member to claim his corpse, let alone rewarding him with a befitting burial. It was only the kind indegenes of Ogbomosho that took it upon themselves to plant the loner, but they refused to do it without a coffin available. It was part of their culture in the remotest part of the village not to bury any corpse in the soil without first locking it in a casket. But the only coffin-maker they knew had his shop in the city, which was many kilometres away from the village. Having no other known maker of coffins, the village elders gathered together their resources and employed the service of Saka, a gifted coffin-maker. These elders exhibited their generosity over the tapper's corpse to a commendable degree. If they'd allowed themselves the pleasure of considering Pa Jimoh's manners in his life they wouldn't have made any step at burying him; they'd rather have watched the corpse rot and become meat for fowls of both air and land, for Pa Jimoh was known to be tight-fisted in his life; a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old man. He was a well from which no bucket had ever fetched a generous water. No beggar who knew him implored of him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman in the village ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Pa Jimoh. Even the blind men appeared to recognize him; for when they sensed him coming ahead, they would tap their canes and make their ways to their doorways. It almost seemed as though whenever it came to situations pertaining Jimoh, they revelled in their affliction. Some of them would console themselves by saying, 'No eye at all is better than an evil eye!'

But even Jimoh himself did not give a trifle care to this obvious neglect; it was the very thing he liked, and he always defended himself by preaching about how he was the oldest inhabitant of the village at seventy-five, and that every other villager should always accord him the respect for an elder. Although he always emphasized how he was a year older than any other old man in the village, everybody knew that he was never an hour richer. And to have such an evil-embodiment die in the village without the benefit of a burial might spell misfortune for the growing generation of the village.

Saka worked round the clock to make a presentable coffin for Pa Jimoh, and when the work was ready the next day, Saka was impressed at his own achievement; because he'd never, until now, completed a casket in a single day. It was as though the spirit of the dead palm-wine tapper urged him to hasten up. He knew quite well that his client would likewise be duly impressed at the rapidity with which he completed the work. He also knew that the villagers could not wait to inter Jimoh and get it done with. But in the modern world, there was always Murphy's Law that could not be avoided. And in this case at hand, everything worked together to make sure that the coffin built for Jimoh did not arrive Ogbomosho in time.

Pa Jimoh had chosen the wrong time to die; he kicked the bucket when fuel scarcity was rampant in the city yonder.

With his faithful work of art beside him, Saka waited impatiently at the bus-stop, but the road was practically devoid of vehicles. The very few that plied the quiet road didn't give the carpenter a second glance, and even those who gave were shied away at the sight of the corpse apartment. Most motorists believed that the presence of a coffin in their vehicles could cause doom to their journey, with or without corpse. Sometimes though, some braver ones would adorn their automobiles with leaves of unknown botanical nomenclatures, believing therefore that this action was enough to ward off both potential evils and evil potentials. Besides, everything in life has always boiled down to faith; but faith itself is limited. Would you believe so much in faith that you'd take a bold step to the middle of a rail track with the firm belief that the speeding locomotive would bounce off you at impact? And it is not unusual to find that it is only readers who'd not misplaced their mental gadgets would find the mission an extremely ludicrous one. And if you trust otherwise, then the writer can only shrug his shoulder and urge you to prove him wrong.

Saka was already at the verge of giving up and returning home when he sighted an approaching lorry. There, he decided within himself that this one vehicle would not pass him by, no matter what it took. This was the perfect six-wheeler to transport him, coffin inclusive. He was determined to make the driver stop, and hand-flagging might not achieve that. When the vehicle was closer, Saka suddenly leaped to the middle of the road. There was no one at the bus-stop to stop him from engaging in this suicidal mission. Everywhere was silent, as if the situation was not only inflation in fuel price but also an imposition of curfew. Although this feat was not unlike that of the demented incipient already mentioned in the former paragraph, Saka was one of the sanest people in all of humanity; because it takes a large degree of sanity and ingenuity to build such a remarkable coffin. Fortunately, Saka was not flattened by the wheels of the truck, though almost. The driver had managed to repair the brakes the day before. The vehicle stopped at only a few inches from the carpenter.

'Are you crazy?' Screamed the driver in a thick Yoruba language. As he poked his head out through the window Saka could not help noticing the brutal tribal marks on the man's cheeks. Whoever had carved this tally on his face had not intention of bestowing pulchritude. The lines were not even symmetrical; the driver's ugliness was classic.

'No, I am not crazy, just desperate. There's a difference between insanity and desperation.' answered Saka in like language.

'What do you want?' The facially-challenged man asked impatiently.

'My name is Saka and I urgently need to get to the town of Ogbomosho.'

'How does that concern me?'

'You are going to drive me there.'

'And a dozen beauty queens would fight over me.' Spat the driver, whose name was Dawodu; an ugly name among ugly names.

'Listen carefully to me, Prince Charming, I'm not leaving here unless you agree to transport me.'

Dawodu scoffed amusedly, 'And you think your rigid presence here is a threat to my tipper? I can just run you over.'

Maybe Saka's sanity had reached such a boiling point that a regular prefix had been added to his 'sanity', or the spirit of the deceased client was influencing him negatively, because the coffin-maker's reply was sensationally inane. 'I've memorized your plate number.'

The truck-driver stared at Saka for a long moment; what was running through his mind could be explained by only him, because he quietly but firmly replied, 'My fee is ten naira.' Of course, the amount charged during this prehistoric time was a direct equivalent five hundred times its value fifty years aft.

'What!' screamed the wide-eyed Saka. 'That's a fortune! I can only afford five naira.'

'Deal.'

'Come and let's hoist that to the back of the lorry.' Saka pointed at the coffin he'd left at the site of the road prior his maniacal bound before a moving engine. It was at this moment that Dawodu noticed the wooden object.

'What's that?' he asked incredulously.

'It's a spaceship.' Saka replied absent-mindedly.

'It looks like a coffin.'

'Wow, that's very brilliant of you. You're right, it's a coffin,' Saka said impatiently, 'Now come and assist in lifting it.'

'You are not planning to put that in my lorry, are you?'

The coffin-maker looked at the driver as if he had just said something incredibly silly.

'No,' he answered in anger, 'I'm planning to string it on my waist like a bead.'

'I'm not putting a corpse in my car!'

'The coffin is empty, genius!'

'Prove me wrong.'

It was only after Saka had opened the coffin to show that it was truly empty that Dawodu assisted in lifting.

Then the journey began.