The Governor of the Northern Province by Randy Boyagoda Page A

generals. This clientele, Uncle knew, were well above using the partially converted Port-A-John stalls that were made available for standard customers (left over from a recent NGO reconstruction effort). He offered them use of his private next-door flat, which featured both a flower-faded chesterfield that still had a little thrum in its cushions and a three-position, Union-Made With American Pride recliner that held self-evident virtues (Left Behind, along with books by the same title, by a family of Iowa missionaries). But Foday dismissed this offer with a wave of his hand, dictating over the music that he would drink his drink and root his root there and then. With his men and the General’s man watching, he had decided that if he were going to be the future governor of these lands—the promise given for services rendered in the Upriver—he had better start acting like it.
    The girls initially assumed this was merely a more exaggerated form of conventional tent-pole impatience, the hungry patron looking to get a little tasting plate before consulting the full menu or inquiring about that night’s prix fixe. So they stroked a little and tugged a little and then went farther into their thigh-rubbing, crotch-cradling cajolery to get the men moving and efficiently processed. Charles was ready enough to go, feeling mostly tired and looking for a good draining and then some sleep before returning to the capital the next morning. But he realized plans were otherwise, and rather vulgar even for a provincial, when Foday grabbed his mitt by her bangled wrist and twisted her twiggy arm until she was turned to the point where an elbow in the small of the back and a categorical shove from behind suggested his forthcoming plans. At which point the girl bucked for her dignity.
    Finding herself crammed into the ready position for a manful flogging, in front of her few friends and co-workers, and in public no less, was too much, was beyond the furthest limits of respectability and decorum that Foday’s girl was willing to ignore for steady meals and pills and a few hours of quiet, man-free earth at the end of every night. Though expecting no Magdalene redemption, Marigold nevertheless wanted to serve notice. She tried to pull away, which Foday found very amusing as he grabbed and squeezed her back to him while his guards, a passel of teenagers floating on bottles of test-market cough syrup they’d liberated from a multinational health clinic, half-consciously cheered him on. At which point Uncle saw Foday rest his palm on his knife hilt, struggling to get the girl back in place. Feeling less intervention-minded than pragmatic, Uncle decided that if Marigold were cut up, she could still go at discount and better that than a spitfire new warlord and his men razing the whole bar in protest at one little request being denied.
    Dancing with his Elizabeth and focused on keeping their steps in time with the disco-tangy beats of the Boney M. classic that was playing, Bokarie didn’t notice any of this happening. Until he collided with the half-naked body that came shrieking and blundering across the dance floor with its dress pulled up over its head, its arms snared in a bunched-up, sequin-dangling span of rayon and polyester. The new warlord lurched over and knocked her down and flicked his chin at Bokarie, waiting to see if there was to be a challenge. But Bokarie, because what did he care, turned back to his dance partner and to “Ra Ra Rasputin.”
    But then something happened.
    He reached the bouquet-pocked wedding gazebo. He listened to the sound of Canadian summer, the cricket chirps and metronomic crank and triple flick! of the country club’s in-ground sprinkler system. Nearby, some preteens were passing a bottle of peach schnapps back and forth and then spinning it around and giggling behind a riding mower. This was a place empty enough to admit it, the something that had happened at the beer