Golden Boy (11 page)

I make it
without incident across the various roads and roundabouts until I can smell hot engine oil and see the tracks stretching away to freedom. I crouch across the way and watch the station. The lack of sleep has made my sight even weaker than it usually is, and I can feel my stupid albino eyes jiggling back and forth, making it hard to see clearly.

The train station is a small building, with people going in and out through the dark arches of the doors like ants exploring a piece of fruit on the road. I hesitate. The minute I walk up to the ticket window, people will see me and know what train I'm going on. If there's a long time between when I buy the ticket and when the train leaves, it would be that much easier for Alasiri to find me.

For a few minutes I argue with myself, doing nothing. Finally, I tell myself that a strange albino boy staring at the train station from across the street is just as noteworthy as a strange albino boy buying a ticket, and I push myself to my feet. Slapping the dust off my pants, I resettle my bundle on my head and walk up to the ticket window. Although the window faces the street, it's too dark for me to see if there's anyone inside. I lace my fingers through the iron bars in front of the window and lean forward. The smell of metal worn shiny by many hands greets me.

“Hello,” I call into the darkness. “Please, could you tell me how I buy a ticket?”

“What?” a deep voice asks from beyond the bars.

“I'd like to buy a ticket, please,” I say. My hands are sweating, and I wipe them on the sides of my shirt.

“Yes?” asks the voice. “A ticket to where?”

I pause. For some reason this question makes it all come crashing down onto me. I'm leaving. I'm really leaving my family. I'm going someplace completely unknown, and I'm going to pay stolen money to this man to make it so.

“How much to Dar es Salaam?” I manage, although my voice is a little higher and tighter than it was a moment ago.

“Eighteen thousand, nine hundred shillings.” My head reels. Not only at the amount, but at the fact that I'm currently carrying enough inside my shirt that I can even have a conversation about such a number. I'm sweating into a small fortune. The man is still talking. “. . . and it will take you forty hours to get there.”

The voice in my head gasps.
That long? Two whole days?
I try to remain calm. I want to ask the man whether there is anywhere else I could go and be safe, but that's not a question I can say out loud.
Two days on the train!
my inner voice groans.

The man is getting impatient. “Well? Do you want it or not?”

“Ndiyo,”
I say, and dig in my shirt for the folded bills. “Yes, please.” The bills are plastered against the skin of my chest, but I peel off a few and hand them over. I can only hope that they're the right amount. As tired as I am, I can't see well enough to tell the numbers on the bills anymore. I figure he'll tell me if I underpaid. Since he says nothing, I figure I've at least paid him enough, maybe overpaid. A hand pushes a ticket at me out of the darkness.

“Do I get any change?” I ask with all the calm I can muster.

He hands me a few small bills. I sigh. The change may or may not be accurate, but I have no way of knowing.

“Asante,”
I say. “How long until my train leaves, please, and where do I catch it?”

A small, awkward pause follows my question.

“Boy,” says the voice, “there is only one train. There is only one track. You have twenty minutes to figure it out.” A finger jabs out of the darkness in front of me to point over my shoulder at the farthest arch. I assume that's the entrance to the tracks.

I turn away from the window, clutching my ticket.

“Oh, and boy?” he adds. I turn around and look in the direction of the dark window. “If you miss this train, the next one isn't until Sunday. The train only runs twice a week.”

“Asante,”
I say again, blessing whatever luck brought me here on a Thursday, and I walk through the arch farthest to the left into the shadowy, crowded passageway of the Mwanza train station.

Instantly, smells and sounds take over sights for me. (Sweat. Lye soap. Fry oil. Dust. Hot machinery.) My eyes become nearly useless in the low light, and all I sense are waves of heat when somebody pushes past me. (Swishing clothing. The slap of sandals against worn heels. A woman talking loudly on a mobile phone. The bleating of a goat beyond the tracks.) I get jostled, and my bag slips off my head. I cry out and turn around, bending down to find it. (Feet. Dirt. Dog urine.) People move around me and I feel like I'm in the middle of a herd of cows that has been spooked. I'm afraid of getting crushed, but I'm even more afraid of losing all my belongings, so I stay on the floor and feel around until I find them. Just as I close my hands around my pack, two leather sandals full of dusty toes stop an inch from my face.

“You! There on the floor! What is wrong with you, huh?” Large hands grab my shoulders and pull me up to face a hulking, sweaty man in a khaki uniform. (Voice like gravel under tires. Cheap cologne. Armpit. Garlic with dinner last night.) The light from the platform beyond him makes it impossible for me to see his features, but I don't think he's anyone I know. I clutch my bundle to my chest.

“I'm sorry,
Bwana.
I dropped my bag.”

“Well? Did you have to crawl all over the floor like an animal to pick it up?”

I flush, humiliated. His voice is not quiet, and I'm sure there are people staring at us now. I'm leaving easy tracks for my hunter to follow.

“I'm sorry,
Bwana,
” I say again. “I don't see well.”

“Hmph.” His grip loosens, and I step away from him. I shuffle toward the light, jerking to a stop whenever someone's shadow passes in front of me to avoid bumping into them.

I come out of the station and stand against a chain-link fence that separates the courtyard of the station from the tracks. I squint around. People waiting for the train are clustered around a small shop painted red with
Coca-Cola
written all over it. Other than a thin stretch of packed earth, there isn't a platform. The long metal rods of the train tracks are set into the dirt about ten feet to the left of where I'm standing. There aren't any people on the far side of the tracks, so I assume that where I'm standing is the right place to catch my train. I'm glad for that, but still, until the train comes, I need to get out of sight.

I walk through the gate in the chain-link fence and look around, scanning for places to hide that would still give me a good view. There's a small shed off to my right, away from the tracks, and I decide to walk over and check it out. Behind it a small triangle of ground is sandwiched between a large blue plastic rain barrel, the wooden north wall of the shed, and a pile of old bags of concrete, fused to rock by the humidity. It's like a concrete version of my corn cave. It's perfect.

The only trick will be getting into it without being seen. I loiter for a bit over near the fence, my fingers laced through the chain link, my head tipped forward so that my hat covers my face, waiting for everyone to lose interest in me. Three minutes creep by, then five. Finally, I get the chance I've been waiting for.

On the far side of the Coca-Cola stand, a boy playing with his brothers runs into an old lady carrying little bags of rice to sell at the market. Some of the food goes flying and lands in the dirt. The woman is furious and grabs the boy by the scruff of his neck. When everyone turns to watch the shouting and scuffling, I slip into my hidden corner without anyone seeing me.

Once I'm wedged in, I set my pack beside me and arrange myself in a sitting position that keeps all my skin covered. I inch my pants down off my hips and roll my toes into the cuffs; I make sure my hat flap overlaps my shirt collar; I tip my head forward until the tip of my nose disappears under the shade of the brim; I put my hands under my knees.
Yes, perfect.
I'm safe from the sun and from prying eyes, and I'm so used to hiding in the corn cave that I could stay here comfortably for hours if I need to. There's even a crack between the wall and the side of the rain barrel that lets me see out.

I'm just settling into these happy thoughts when I catch sight of a familiar figure stepping out of the station arch. Even though I'm well-hidden and he's nowhere near me yet, when Alasiri walks onto the dirt platform, my heart stops.

I have to remind myself to start breathing again as I watch him walk up to the Coca-Cola stand and start talking to an elderly couple sitting there in the shade. I'm much too far away to hear what he's saying, but I can imagine well enough. When he holds a hand out in front of his chest to indicate height, I know he's asking about me. In an instant I'm back in the corn cave, feeling the walls close in around me. My breath comes in gasps and I'm overwhelmed with the desire to run.

I splay my fingers against the rough wood of the shed beside me and force myself to breathe only on counts of ten. My lungs tighten, telling me I'm not getting enough air, but I ignore them and keep counting.
Think!
I tell myself sternly.
This is no time to panic! You have to think.

Run! Run! Run!
chitters the small voice of fear.

I keep breathing. So, Alasiri is still following me. He's here and I'm here. The only question is whether he'll find me.
Well,
I think,
now I'll see whether
this
hiding place works.
The calmness of the thought surprises me, but I suppose the body only has so much space in it for terror and then it just doesn't hold any more. I must have used all mine up.

I press my face to my peephole again. The old man is pointing at the station, waving his hand. Alasiri straightens, says something over his shoulder to the old people on the bench, and walks back the way he came. He pauses for a moment at the gate in the fence that leads into the station, hands on hips, looking carefully through the crowd. I hold my breath again, willing him to go away. The space that I'm in looks too small to hide a person; the way the concrete bags are stacked makes it look like they fill the whole space. I hope that this illusion will be good enough to make Alasiri leave entirely. For a minute I think he might come over and look behind the shed, but instead he turns away and is swallowed by the dark arch of the station.

As Alasiri disappears into the shadows, I discover I have the ability to breathe normally again. I also notice I was gripping the planking of the shed so hard that I've split a fingernail on the rough wood. I put the finger in my mouth and suck on it as I think about what I should do now. The wild voice in my head is still gibbering out crazy ideas, like hiding in the bush or running away on foot, but I decide to ignore it until it starts talking sense. Because really, the fact that Alasiri is still chasing me doesn't change my plans at all. It just makes it even clearer that I have to get out of Mwanza as quickly as possible.
And that,
I remind the whimpering voice in my head,
is still going to happen fastest by riding a train.

Once I've come to my decision, I settle into my earlier position, squatting in the shade, eye pressed to barrel crack, to wait. I imagine the voice huffing off into a corner of my mind and sulking at my maturity. It makes me smile.

The next half hour passes slowly, not helped by the fact that my stomach is grumbling about a missed dinner and breakfast. But there's no way I'm going to wander out and buy something from the food stand, and I refuse to unwrap the food I brought with me until I'm on the train. From time to time I squint up and try to gauge the passage of time by the progress of the sun, but eventually I give up and just wait.

Finally, I hear a soft, rhythmic chugging and I see the people on the platform begin to stand and stretch. Children scamper and point and I know that a train is on the way. Now I'm nervous again. I don't want to stay hiding so long that I miss my train, but I also don't want to jump out too early. I can only imagine how awful it would be to stand around, waiting for the train to arrive and open its doors as everyone on the platform stared at me. I would never know, until it was too late, if one of them was rich enough to have a mobile phone, and unpleasant enough to know Alasiri. My palms begin to sweat.

I pull myself into a crouch and knot my knuckles into my bundle. I have no feeling in my arm or my hip, and my skin is pitted with little dents from the time spent pressed against the rotting wall of the shed. I swear I hear my hips creak when I move. I stretch as much as I can in the small space, getting ready to dash for the train.

The scarred engine pulls slowly into the station in the middle of a cloud of foul-smelling smoke and a painful shrieking of brakes. The large doors on the side are shoved open and people start getting off, some stepping down carefully and reaching up for their luggage or babies, and some throwing their bags out ahead and leaping after them. People from the platform crowd in among the passengers getting off, pushing their way onto the train.

I'm so enthralled, watching all this, that I almost forget I need to get on that train, too. Almost, but not quite. When the platform is nearly clear, I put my bundle on top of the bags of cement and heave myself over. Then I pick up my pack and jog toward the train. But I'm already too late: I see a man in uniform start to swing the heavy train door shut.

“Wait!” I call, terrified at the thought of being left behind and having to stay in hiding until Sunday. “Please! Wait!”

The man sees me and holds the door open a little, with a noise of annoyance. The train gives a shudder and starts to inch back the way it came, out of Mwanza. I jog faster.

I'm nearly there, on the packed earth leading to the train, when a movement ahead of me pulls my attention away from the door. There, leaning in the shade against the corner of the station, is a man.