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Volume 2 Number 2 • Fall - Winter 2010-2011

Mark Cassidy

Stormy Weather
Barracuda Bar

Stormy Weather
(Oyinbo Love Songs, #10)

My driver at that time was a gentleman name of Collins Ebo from Anambra state. He was a good man young Collins, reliable and honest, deferential without the smirk, certainly forthright when necessary, and he loved to tell me things. For instance, one day, as we nosed through the villages between Elembe and the Garden City in our ramshackle Peugeot Five-Oh-Four, creeping, waiting, creeping, stalling in the backed up traffic, the temperature inside the vehicle steadily rising, he proffered uninvited, a treatise on the birthing cycle of the hurricane.

Storms, said Mr. Ebo, were born deep in the forest, the issue of demons who squatted slit-eyed and fat in the green dark to cough up spiteful tangles of fear and misery, idle gossip, much like a cat expels hairballs.

Gossip?

Sah. He jammed the gears and mashed the pedals, lobbed encouragement and abuse in equal measure at anyone who limped or lumbered into our path, and continued.

Once disgorged, such bundles of malevolence floated up through the treetops, nudging past branches and perching creatures, and were carried away by breezes over rivers and roads and villages to the coast. When they reached the sea, if they did not tumble beforehand into someone's bed or yard or kitchen to condemn their lives to sadness and misfortune, they unfolded themselves and chugged out across the ocean, slavering and spitting, feeding on wayward rain showers and innocent clouds, and then, gleeful evil monsters that they had become, turned and hurtled ferociously up through the Caribbean to howl and laugh and torment the coasts of America.

Well ok, I said, thinking more of glasses of cold beer and zesty springrolls at Esther's alley bar than of fiendish tempests. That's interesting.

Is true sah! Look! He pointed along the side of the road. The proof is in the pudding.

And I recall seeing then, beneath his parade of nascent, devious twisters, while we pushed on towards town, a beautiful young girl with dreadfully deformed feet, wearing a pink party frock, leaning on crutches by the side of the road to watch us pass, the day, the forest, the smoke, the dust and the heat, all round her.

And see!

An old man, folded low down in the box of a wooden cart, one hand clutching his throat, the other arm limp dragging in the dirt as he was pulled along by an albino boy whose hair was orange, whose eyes appeared to be on fire.

Eheh.

A tall, very thin man with swollen joints pushing a wheelbarrow containing the huge head of a cow, blood swilling and slapping round the snout and the tip of one of the huge horns, slopping out into the dirt. As we passed, I could smell the blood.

Well sah?

Goats and dogs, naked toddlers, clambering along ridges of garbage and rubble beside us. Traffic at every intersection, backed up, beeping, immobile, the rain coming on again.

Barracuda Bar
(Oyinbo Love Songs, #5)

Listen. For this you just got to listen, ain't no other way. To Dibango grinnin' and groovin' on Big Blow. To Fela his own self, all his jumble up notes and remonstrations snaggled high in the branches of the almond trees and guava trees with the rain come on and the smoke from the suya fires along King Perekule Road drifting in the sour heat

and sweat

and rhythm

of the girls.

It is beauty, certainly. Might be love, quite possibly. But above all it is a secret safe and far away.

Mark Cassidy is a Scots born Canadian though he manages to spend very little time in either place since he works far from home most of the time. He has previously / recently had stories published in the UK (Ranfurly Review) and the US (Audience Magazine).

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