ALIVE TO TELL A TALE!

Narrates the exhumation of graves,due to the displacement of the billion Naira epitaph; search for the for the "graved" money; a hell of a drive to hell...the romantic,thrilling end..

This night of August 28,2007 was an exact replica of July 5,1996: that fateful day a billion naira was robbed by the Indomitables: same dark clouds, heart-stabbing lightening plus pulse-racing thunders.

The Indomitables,Dr. Brown and Puppy,their brains washed up with cocaine,collected diggers and shovels from the BMW they had just parked in front of a graveyard. They then shuffled across the dew-soaked grasses into the graveyard. The time was 01:00. Like a couple of ghosts,they began to unearth countless number of graves after graves as if their lives defended on exhumation.

As a fierce lightening flashed, followed by a death-echoeing thunder,it started drizzling while the Indomitables went on digging more graves, ignoring the blisters already forming on their palms. This exhumation of bodies went on until 02:30 when Puppy shouted excitedly: "Man! I've hit the goddamn jack-pot!" And Brown moved to the grave immediately.

As the two scraped and removed out a wooden casket from the grave, a heavy downpour,fit to frighten the fish,began. Yet,they indifferently remained at work: unfastened the casket,removed a smaller glass casket from the wooden one. This they carried and dumped in the back seat of the BMW. The empty,wooden casket was abandoned there,and so were the numerous disturbed graves. The people of the area would have to fix them back during the day.

Ten minutes later,the BMW was sent racing along the Eastern By-Pass Road,southward. Puppy was at the wheel. The downpour was pouring. Visibility became blurred,though effortlessly challenged by the windshield wipers. On reaching the Naibawa traffic circle,Puppy took the north going down town into Kano,the Northern center of commerce. At this hour,there was nothing to slow down for before passing that College of Education,and Naibawa fruits market. Apart from the regular drone of the falling rain,the area itself looked quite. Lights showed from few windows of Hotels like the Dofin Cafe of the Naibawa T-junction. It was not until reaching that largest motor park of Kano at Unguwa Uku,and having passed the Federal Government College,that Brown broke the long silence.

"My Man! We sure are gonna have fun!"

"Think we'll get away with this?" Puppy replied,engaging the 5th gear having slowed down on reaching Kundila GRA Quarters,before maneuvering the car around the Gyadi-Gyadi traffic circle,and then headed the north,driving at about 70klm per hour.

"Ah! The goddamn pessimist! Use the white stuff in your skull in case you have any. With those 11 year cover-up,we're not f*****g gonna be challenged anymore. Know something? The operation has so far been a success. Never in the history of robbery has there been a time when robbers cached their catch in the graveyard and then committed a purposeful murder simply to mislead the law off the course of catching them.
"Hey! I'm gonna give My Only the world on a plate: some car of the decade,the trunk of which contains a hundred million naira,cool cash,a gift for her 26th birthday,coz she does deserve it. Pup,tell me,have you changed your mind on how to spend the dough? That your investment idea doesn't sound great."

"Not really! One thing is certain,if,and only if we do scale through,I lay off the racket. I quit! Coz I can't afford to take any more risk. Living a normal life is adventurous enough. After all,a half billion naira could not only enable one to leave on easy street,but take you to the Pluto."

Brown agreed that one could even live there if so wished. But Puppy yawned,peering through the windshield as they rounded the Dangi Chemist traffic circle,passed the Bn Uthman Friday Mosque and Jifatu Stores,then still took the north. Very few road users were present at this hour,mostly Acaba riders and the blue and yellow Kano cabs plus few number of those dough-looking cars of the rich,the powerfuls and the luckiest. The pouring downpour was still on. Pools of water were already forming everywhere. Water speedily ran down the roadside culverts with noise that still made its presence over the falling rain. As the glittering impressive Bank of the North tower appeared,having reached the walled Audu Bako Secretariat,the effect of the cocaine began to be unbearable to Puppy. He had already caught cold. A couple of sneezes had just confirmed the fact. He had trouble recognizing the very streets they were driving along. Brown too was no longer feeling okay. His nostrils felt stuffed up. He was breathing noisily. All he could register or imagine was that,My Only,his girlfriend was beckoning to him. She looked more inviting than ever. But he finally dozed up into a sleep that would take him to a future he would never have imagined possible.
Conditions changed from bad to worth for Puppy. By 04:00,he felt too sick to recognize the Silver Jubilee traffic circle which he stupidly rounded twice with a pulse-jolting squeal of tires,before finally taking the east,State Road. Yet still,neither registering the School of Technology nor the impressive buildings on the both sides of the road leading to the state Government House,Sabo Bakin Zuwo Road,Tarauni. He never even noticed the very street they were driving on. Not even the several T-junctions on the road: Kano Capital,Gidan Dan Hausa History and Culture Bureau,among others. His face was a study: feverish,telegraphing dizziness.

Yet,the car was still somehow steady up to 04:02. There was the first light of the dawn in the still cloudy sky. It was only drizzling now. Prayer calls of the muezzins could be heard from nearby mosques. Brown was snoring,deeply asleep. Puppy's head felt clogged as the car passed Magwan Water Restaurant junction with the speedometer reading 90klm/ph.

Fortunately,there were not any vehicle on sight up to the time the BMW reached the walled State Government House. Armed mobile police officers were there as usual,glaring at passers-by. The city was waking up.

Had Brown not been asleep,he would have warned Puppy that Sabo Bakin Zuwo Road was still under construction. Shekarau administration was still toiling with the dualization of the road. For some reason best known to the authorities concerned,the work took more than a year before completion.

Within a nerve-racking second,Puppy's highly developed sense of danger awoke. But,it was too late,for the BMW could move! The speed could not be controlled. Puppy instinctively grabbed and pulled Brown's left arm upward, confusedly thinking it were the emergency brake,and yet still,stepped hard on,God! the gas pedal,thought to be the car brake. But that twisted everything within seconds!

In one nerve-jolting moment,the mobile police officers watched the BMW zoom forward into nearby heaps of sand,then crush into a purposefully laid acacia tree,fall into a culvert with a terrible thud that tore the 04:04 atmosphere with shrieking sounds of shattering glasses and metals being dented,and electric wires sparking lights,and finally catch fire. Flames! A fiercing flame that turned the dawn evening,only minus a sinking sun featuring in the sky. The BMW caught fire,yet with none of the three contents inside which were all thrown out the windows way before the final fall.

Wanted!
Dead or alive then for nine consecutive years. Imprisoned now by fractured arm and lap,and gasping to death,Dr. Brown tried in vain to endure the throbbing pain gnawing his spinal cord. Hell! The vertebra felt affected. Possibly having at least a couple of damning fractures. Fractures that shattered his chances of survival into fractions mathematicians might never solve. His neck felt immobile. Blood oozing from his scared and scratched forehead blinded his right eye. The left one struggled with salty liquid Brown could not tell whether it was tears,sweat or the dirtied drops of the still falling drizzle.

"Looks like the end of the chapter has finally come!" He thought feverishly,managing a one-eyed, side glance that registered the terrible scenes featuring in the moment: he vaguely saw his friend Puppy,possibly dead,laying some 10 feet by the left; by Puppy's right,about 5feet away,laid the shattered glass casket that contained the complete,untouched billion naira,now scattered all over the place. The pain in Brown's left ring finger made him tasted the movable ones,a move that touched the concrete walled State Government House he felt himself currently leaning on.

"Damn! It's the Government House all right!"Brown thought feverishly.
In vain!
Melt into nothingness!
All those years aflame!
A hell of an end of a chapter!
He cursed the fact of being this helplessly enchained,at the mercy of the law.

"Well," he thought again;dizziness overpowering him,but willing himself to remain at least awake before the final possible fatal blow! He had something worth doing: "At least I can prove something to myself: a word of farewell to My Only."

Pain!
He wanted to scream,but the effort itself was impossible. His right arm hardly moved. Ah! The left hand! Glad the fingers felt well enough to function. This message must be extended! Some souls were made and meant to be cared to the end!

Inchly,he managed to move the left hand;felt the wet,dirtied and bloodied white shirt. Two trembling fingers inserted into the pocket and finally produced a NEC616 cell-phone plus a Marlborough billfold from which,somehow using his blood stained teeth to open the flap,brought a typed piece of paper,containing a poem,carrying ALIVE TO TELL A TALE. A title in Bradley font style,heading a couple of stanzas personally composed and typed,and pocketed for long,purposefully meant for a moment like this.

Tearfully,his right eye managed to scan,reading in a voice he hardly believed his:

ALIVE TO TELL A TALE

Though alive to tell a tale
Of a one way ride to cell;
Though deafened by a bell
Yelling out the place called hell;
Though unable to reach the dell
Being on a ride straight to hell;

Sorry!
A compulsory pause!
Salty liquid rolled down his cheeks,yearning to feel the quick,gentle touch of the robin chick that ever meant more than words could tell.

Blood oozing from his left eye ;the right one bathed in flowing tears,Brown managed to go through the last stanza:

The feeling still melts to well
Within the soul that yearns to
gel
With you,My Only,that do excel
At relieving the dying cell

Then he fainted!
In every sense of the word!
He had to!

He later felt bony fingers threatening to dislocate his jaw only to succeed in startling him back to the hellish reality he would not have wished to return to. Then he managed to look up only to find a man of heavy built with x-ray eyes that telegraphed memories photographed and saved for moments like this;kneeling beside Brown.

"Ah! Vultures! They've arrived! They've f*****g smelt the corpse!" Brown thought,and was surprisingly caring less,because the end had finally come. After all,he had only one last wish left! But what a priceless wish! Well, here came the chance to achieve it!
"Hi Romeo! Looks like yet another Aniny of 1980s!" The cop said,pointing at the dispersed bank notes all over the place,and mostly muddied and soaked up.

"Have some f*****g sympathy, Vulture!" Brown himself was surprised to hear his voice. It was a voice of determination, "Are you interested in hitting the headlines?" The cop continued eying Brown. The latter could almost hear the former's brain creaking,busy cross-checking mental files. "Does July 5th mean anything to you,Vulture?"

"Yeah!" Replied the mobile police officer,"it does all right! That should be years ago,an afternoon at the Sani Abacha Stadium, the very day when you and another thug were arrested for murder of a Jigawa footballer that scored a goal against the famous Kano Pillars....I was there,in charge of the patrol officials monitoring the event. You both got,was it 9 or 10 year sentence each?"

"Dead right,Vulture! No wonder they still keep you in the rat race."

"I also remember," the officer continued,but was interrupted by a young square-shouldered officer who had just arrived together with five other mobile police: women and men.

"The Chief is on his way,Sir!" Reported the young officer,and was already recording and taking note of the conversation.

"Exactly 9 year imprisonment ,a success,Vulture,you know. The murder itself was purposeful, meant to have the law on a wild goose chase while we,the robbers,holed up somewhere where none of you guys could think possible: a prison,particularly the Pluto,the Nigerian Alcatraz." Brown paused,coughed and spat blood,and then managed to go on, "The murder was part of a mission: Mission 2005. Hey! Vulture! I'm not giving you any more detail for free! Pay the price.... Here you are." Brown handed his cell and that paper to the officer, "Recharge the bat and call My Only via the contact menu. Let her have my Farewell Need. Tell her she remains My Only to the last breath I breathed!"

Gloved hands collected the stuff. The officer said he sure would.

"Well," Brown went on, "I guess I gotta give you the whole photo now,coz these could be my last minutes on Earth!

"Having robbed the banks,and that army captain -you know that,it's in the papers- we cached the money in the graveyard,and then on that July 5th committed the murder at SAS.

"Though we were released in July 2005,we still decided to dig up the dough in 2008. But unfortunately, that CBN governor,Prof. Charles,announced the total change of the value and face of naira,effective by August 1,2008. That prompted us to go for the dough.

"We've had trouble finding it. Having located the epitaph we erected on the grave,we found that there was but a goddamn body in the grave! It then dawned on us that the flood we read about while in jail,had also affected the graveyard. And while fixing the disturbed graves,the local people foolishly misplaced the epitaph. We had to unearth tens of graves before finding the needed one....then finally drove away,only to be left ALIVE TO F*****G TELL THE TALE!"
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Look for the other excerpt
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WRITTEN & PRESENTED BY BAKANO, 5YEARS AGO {JANUARY 30,2008} AT THE BRITISH COUNCIL/CREATIVE WRITERS' FORUM,KANO.
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Author's Note

Grammatically all right!
But open for intellectual pluses and minuses...