6.

The party finally arrived at the chosen campsite. At its threshold, o Lwera offered a few oases. Luckily, this one was close to a cave. The men rested their loads on the ground. Those carrying jugs took them down to the spring where water flowed, while others searched the cave for snake eggs or animal cubs. Kalema put down the gourds and stretched.

“I could’ve carried on,” he laughed, shaking his hamstring.

Kintu clicked his tongue. “You’re numb. One of these days, this journey will creep on you with such malice that even your tongue will ache.”

As they sat down to eat, Kintu asked Kalema to get him brew. Kalema picked up one of his father’s rounded gourds and ran down to the spring where the jugs had been rested to cool. He blew dust out of the gourd, tipped a jug with banana brew, filled the gourd, and took it to Kintu. After a sip, Kintu waved the gourd at Kalema, coughing. “Bring me water!” His voice was hoarse. “This is warm,” he coughed.

Kalema ran back to the spring. He looked at the brew in the gourd, and for a moment was stuck. He could not pour it back into the jug yet all the other gourds were back in the cave. The other option, pouring the brew away, seemed like a waste to him. On the other hand, it was taboo to drink from Kintu’s dedicated utensils. When his gourds cracked they were buried. Nonetheless, Kalema put his mouth on Kintu’s gourd and started to drink.

Out of nowhere, Kintu’s backhand crashed into Kalema’s jaw. Kalema’s hands let go of the gourd and it fell to the ground shattering into fragments. Kalema looked up at his father, surprised, but his eyes kept rising as if the slap had come from the sky. He started to blink rapidly and then sank to the ground. He made to stand up, but fell back onto a rock. He raised his right hand, trying to get up. His hand rose and rose, but then he fell forward, face down and thrashed. The force of his thrashing flipped him, turning him onto his back. The back of his head rolled in the mud. Small shards of the gourd stuck in his hair. His eyes stared wild. For a while Kalema writhed like a caterpillar whose hairs were set on fire. Finally, he slowed down until only his fingers twitched. A long rush of breath drained from deep inside him. Then he stopped.

“Abange,” Kintu choked.

The men came running.

“Oh.”

“What is this?”

“Ah.”

“A snake?”

But none of them would question the governor by asking what happened. Nnondo looked in the distance, all around, as if he expected to catch whatever killed Kalema disappearing.

“He’s gone,” one of the men whispered as if not to wake Kalema. And the men stood and stared. To still his shaking hands, Kintu clasped them behind his back. Several times, he opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out.

“To say that just a minute ago this boy was—” a man started and stopped. Then he tried again. “Take a step back, just a minute back, this boy will be running.”

“I chastised him—a slap,” Kintu finally managed.

There was silence as if Kintu had not spoken.

Then a man said soothingly, “Journeying is like that. Some are allowed, some are not. We all slap our children. They don’t drop dead.”

The men sat down around the corpse. Kintu walked back to the cave; he had to hold himself together. He had been on his way to relieve himself when he saw Kalema drinking from his gourd. In panic, he had slapped the gourd off Kalema’s mouth but instead caught his jaw.

In the cave, Kintu sat down. Not far from him, Kalema’s food sat on a calabash as if he were coming back to eat it. The shattered fragments of the gourd flashed in Kintu’s mind and he shivered. Take a step back . . . he had never struck a child, he had made all the right sacrifices for the journey, he had not offended any god. Take a step back indeed! He pulled a sheet of barkcloth from a pile and covered himself. o Lwera’s heat had fled.

Outside, Nnondo rallied the men, “Come on! Let’s get on with it.” He made to lift Kalema. Custom dictated that trekkers who died on a journey be buried by the roadside. The other men hesitated.

“I’ll ask him for instructions,” one of the men said as he hurried toward the cave. When he got there he asked Kintu, “Can we still bury him today, Ppookino?”

“No,” Kintu said. “Wash him and lay him on a mat. We’ll bury him at sunrise.” Kintu gave the man his thickest sheet and told him to wrap Kalema up well to keep him warm. On hearing these instructions, the men looked at each other. Any fool could see that Kalema was dead and there was plenty of time to bury him before sunset. But they could not question Ppookino. First, Nnondo passed his hand over Kalema’s eyes and closed them. Then he straightened him and washed him. Finally, they laid him on a mat and covered him just as Kintu had instructed, with his face uncovered as if he were asleep.

Now Kintu remembered. He should have said something when he had that premonition. It was now useless to say, My hair rose early into the journey. I felt something stalking us. Nnakato, he wanted to call out and indulge in grief in the privacy of her chamber, but Nnakato was far. Had Nnakato got the sensations, she would have sat down in the road; they would not have moved an inch further.

Memories came flooding back: the eyes he had felt watching as the men closed the reed gate at home, even that moon sinking when they were in the forest was now significant. Kintu would give his life to retrieve those moments because in them, Kalema was still alive. To think now that when he sensed danger he had brought Kalema close to himself, to think that Kalema, his gentlest son, should die at the hands of his own father. Nature had a cruel sense of irony.

Sleep is a thief: at dawn, despite staying awake all night, despite the death of his son, sleep stole Kintu away. While he slept, the men took Kalema for burial and left Kintu to rest. To them, o Lwera was mysterious. Once in a while, despite sacrifices, it swallowed a sojourner. They were as bound to nature’s whims as the smallest ants. It was sad to bury someone so young, but a relief it was not one of them.

By not setting off at midnight, the party had lost half the time to travel to the next resting place. The men buried Kalema in a hurry. The grave was narrow and shallow. They used a stick to measure Kalema’s length, but while the stick fit into the grave, Kalema did not. They crammed him in. They also stripped him of the sheet Kintu gave them to cover him. To them, it was too expensive to be wasted on the dead. In their hurry, the men did not even realize that they had buried Kalema beside a thorny shrub, e Jirikiti, the burial shrub for dogs. When they were ready to start, Nnondo woke Kintu up.

“Did I fall asleep?”

“You needed it, Ppookino.”

“Did you lay him properly?”

Nnondo nodded.