17. RE-ELECTION

Prince Dickory has a fiendish plan

The Owongo residence had returned to its original peaceful and harmonious condition when Quanto decided it was time to return to his home before someone decided it belonged to nobody and stole it from him.
“You good friend,” he told Owongo, and he turned to Mirumda, “and you a beautiful woman,” he added, “Me take Brava with me because he my son, and Coo-coo too, for we know her folks, and if they are killed by volcano we will adopt her. That is the right thing for us to do.” I doubt that he used the adopt word, but translation from a prehistoric tongue can never be easy.
So Brava and Coo-coo, bade the Owongo household farewell, children wept because friendships were being severed, and promises were made about possible visits when this or that miracle occurred in the night sky, and Quanto sadly led them away.
“Now,” muttered Owongo, “for the future. And Dickhead”
When it seemed that everyone in the tribe was going to turn against him, Prince Dickory decided to steal an idea from his arch enemy Owongo and hold a referendum himself, and he had a foolproof method. At least, it was foolproof inside his own head as he pictured the event.
He was going to gather everyone, man, woman and children together and offer them a chance to walk through one or two marked pathways: one would be in favour of himself and his policies (if he had any) and the other would be in favour of the man he called Wongo. And here was his clever bit. He had a few friends, bought over the years and scared of their parts in some of his schemes being made public, who were quite capable of cheating. He could imagine the gorgeous (in his eyes) Roddy.
In a time when it was seen quite normal for a man to really and honestly fancy another man, Prince Dickory fancied Roddy. He would have said that he fancied the pants off the man, but neither of them wore anything remotely related to pants. The weather in their village (and throughout the surrounding countryside) was invariably balmy if not uncomfortably warm, and clothing (which would be invented before too long, what with cold winters forecast by Peri Winkle) was back then unknown. So there was no question of pants being either on or off Roddy.
The big problem for Roddy was he didn’t particularly like Prince Dickory and rather resented the assumption made by that Prince that he was a special friend because he already had enough friends on account of his hunting skills and general attractiveness, and none of them liked to touch him like the dreadful Prince did.. And the Prince neither hunted nor was blessed with pretty eyes. And worse: the Prince was usually overweight with what looked like juicy steaks hanging from his stomach. And even worse, Prince Dickory had an ego the size of what Roddy might have called a medium sized planet if he had suspected such places could exist anywhere under the known sky, or above it. But he had to put up with attentions from the Prince because, above everything, that Prince knew a thing or two that Roddy didn’t want getting around his more normal friends. At least, Roddy thought he did.
Then there were others, like Susu, who could easiiy twist truth into such fanciful lies that even she suspected they might not be true but couldn’t prove it. And Susu worshipped Prince Dickory with the sort of affection that was merely self-serving because it might eventually lead to glory of an unspecified and unimaginable kind for herself if she clung to him.
So Prince Dickory was happily aware that is his mind if not in the real world he had enough friends who, through either fear of him or love of themselves, might do his bidding.
No sooner had a second referendum and the means of cheating so that he would certainly win crossed his mind that he made it known throughout the village that in two days time he expected everyone to turn out and cast their vote in a second and final referendum, the result of which would be binding, and not be subject to the silly charade that Wongo’s election had been. And, he concluded, he would appoint two independent counters to make absolutely and quite sure that nobody got counted twice (unless they were carrying an infant, in which case that child’s vote would be counted. After all, the future belonged to the very young, didn’t it? And such a manoeuvre made him look truly decent, didn’t it?)
When Owongo heard about the scheme, at first he was pleased that at last things would be fair in the village and if he won (which he rather hoped he would, bearing in mind his own well known decency) then life in the future would be fairer than it ever had been, and every man, woman and child would be quite certain in their minds that nothing stupid would ever happen again, like the recent adventure over the mountain.
But his pleasure was short-lived when he discovered who the independent counters of votes would be. Those walking through the pathway marked for the Prince would be counted by Roddy, and Prince Dickory’s not-so-secret affair with him was well known, and those choosing the pathway marked for Owongo would be counted by, of all people, Susu, who had never said or done a fair thing in her life.
“It no good,” he moaned at Mirumda, “I can’t win, not if they’re doing the counting.”
“What can you do?” asked Mirumda.
“I’m trapped,” sighed Owongo, “if I protest they will think that I’m afraid of losing and besmirching good honest people and their names in order to win.”
“But you not,” pointed out Mirumda.
“You and I know what is truth, but most people have their own lives to live and don’t know much about ours. Or Roddy or Susu and their loyalty to Prince Dickhead,” growled Owongo.
A scraping just outside against the stone wall that was the cave’s entrance was followed by a voice.
“Do I hear my name being cursed?” it said, ”Oh, Wongo, are you a poor lose? Is that what I tell people?”
That angered Owongo and he stamped his feet raising a cloud of dust that Mirumda would have to wipe away, before he said.
“I not lose, Dickhead, and you not win!” he said, “You wait and see!”.
© Peter Rogerson 23.11.23
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