first-trimester girlfriendâs fate. Having married in haste, she would repent during labour.
The Father of the Bride missed all of this. Glenn and Jennifer were orbiting far from the bride and Bokarieâs double-backed beast waltz. To fill in the cogitating pauses in their conversation, the car dealer and would-be federal candidate passed billowy bon mots back and forth about their friend-in-common.
âHam couldnât be prouder!â
âCaliban canât compare!â
Eventually they came to agreeable terms for the pending election race and then exchanged offers to be driven home by the eloquent linchpin of the coming campaign.
In the meantime Bokarie had gone outside, intent upon securing some space away from the teeth against the bottle, from that too-recollecting sound. But for such a wide open country, it could be hard at times to find a little patch of oneâs own. He was immediately surrounded by smoke and barricaded in by the brisk flicks of chin that young men give each other while waiting for the start of the hunt. They were all in their late twenties and early thirties and magnificently single and just looking to have a good time, no head games. They went quiet at Bokarieâs appearance. The new African in town. They found him just too hard to figure because he was more than the convenience store counterwork and always smiling at everyone. There was something else there that didnât sit right.
It wasnât so much how he looked or even how he made them feel, but just being here. It was what he did to their place and their stuff. The African wore a heavy chain that attached his wallet to his belt-line, just like the rest of the stylish young men about town. But the brushed steel links clanging against his clover-boned hips gave off something less than transplanted Leeds tough. More Goree Island redux. None of this was ever said or even thought outright, but it was in the air. Bokarie was the one too many.
The older immigrants around town, for all their ripeness and silly sounds, could at least provide linebackers for the high school and cabbage rolls for the church hall. They could rice-paddy over the strip malls with all-in-one dry cleaner and computer stores. They could bindi-dot intersections with their incense-drenched video outlets. But the new guy from Africa? He brought nothing with him except untold suffering embodied, the back pages of the newspaper made flesh.
Bokarie sensed something of this in the suspended air when he walked out. He accepted that Canadian men his own age were tougher marks than their elders and their women. But he was a practised manager of menâs passions since his orphanage days, and also a close study of which words and signs mattered in his new land, and of where the stresses should fall with each group. And of picking his moments. This wasnât one, and so he did a perfunctory grin and cut past them. And so the young men left off any further thinking about what it meant for this new African to be in their town, living beside them. This soft collision of incompatible realities. Because more immediate needs presented. This was the last wedding of the summer and it was getting late and more beer goggles were needed before Last Call. They wandered back in, wondering what was left for talent on the dance floor.
II.
Because he could already sense the greatness and power that would come to him after he was named governor of the northern province, Foday had refused to budge from his spot in front of the dance floor when Uncle had sent over the first pair of girls, compliments of the house. Foday, the new area warlord, and Charles, his visiting grandee, had come to Uncleâs beer bar to celebrate their recent agreement in regards to the reorganization of the nearby Upriver lands and sanitization of its swinish peoples. All of which was part of a National Restitution Campaign quietly being organized by one of the nationâs most patriotic
The Father of the Bride missed all of this. Glenn and Jennifer were orbiting far from the bride and Bokarieâs double-backed beast waltz. To fill in the cogitating pauses in their conversation, the car dealer and would-be federal candidate passed billowy bon mots back and forth about their friend-in-common.
âHam couldnât be prouder!â
âCaliban canât compare!â
Eventually they came to agreeable terms for the pending election race and then exchanged offers to be driven home by the eloquent linchpin of the coming campaign.
In the meantime Bokarie had gone outside, intent upon securing some space away from the teeth against the bottle, from that too-recollecting sound. But for such a wide open country, it could be hard at times to find a little patch of oneâs own. He was immediately surrounded by smoke and barricaded in by the brisk flicks of chin that young men give each other while waiting for the start of the hunt. They were all in their late twenties and early thirties and magnificently single and just looking to have a good time, no head games. They went quiet at Bokarieâs appearance. The new African in town. They found him just too hard to figure because he was more than the convenience store counterwork and always smiling at everyone. There was something else there that didnât sit right.
It wasnât so much how he looked or even how he made them feel, but just being here. It was what he did to their place and their stuff. The African wore a heavy chain that attached his wallet to his belt-line, just like the rest of the stylish young men about town. But the brushed steel links clanging against his clover-boned hips gave off something less than transplanted Leeds tough. More Goree Island redux. None of this was ever said or even thought outright, but it was in the air. Bokarie was the one too many.
The older immigrants around town, for all their ripeness and silly sounds, could at least provide linebackers for the high school and cabbage rolls for the church hall. They could rice-paddy over the strip malls with all-in-one dry cleaner and computer stores. They could bindi-dot intersections with their incense-drenched video outlets. But the new guy from Africa? He brought nothing with him except untold suffering embodied, the back pages of the newspaper made flesh.
Bokarie sensed something of this in the suspended air when he walked out. He accepted that Canadian men his own age were tougher marks than their elders and their women. But he was a practised manager of menâs passions since his orphanage days, and also a close study of which words and signs mattered in his new land, and of where the stresses should fall with each group. And of picking his moments. This wasnât one, and so he did a perfunctory grin and cut past them. And so the young men left off any further thinking about what it meant for this new African to be in their town, living beside them. This soft collision of incompatible realities. Because more immediate needs presented. This was the last wedding of the summer and it was getting late and more beer goggles were needed before Last Call. They wandered back in, wondering what was left for talent on the dance floor.
II.
Because he could already sense the greatness and power that would come to him after he was named governor of the northern province, Foday had refused to budge from his spot in front of the dance floor when Uncle had sent over the first pair of girls, compliments of the house. Foday, the new area warlord, and Charles, his visiting grandee, had come to Uncleâs beer bar to celebrate their recent agreement in regards to the reorganization of the nearby Upriver lands and sanitization of its swinish peoples. All of which was part of a National Restitution Campaign quietly being organized by one of the nationâs most patriotic
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