SUNSET AT NOON

By Akinsoto Rotimi

It was a re-occurring tragedy. She could still see and smell the odoriferous smoke forming dark clouds above and could still hear the dying cry of Kunle, her only son licking up in flames.

Who would have believed that Kunle could cry? No doubt, all stoics lose their pride when they burn. She recalled that the people’s eyebrows were not lifted in surprise and she wished she could go back in time. Unfortunately for her, the time machine was a myth. If only she knew before then that it takes a village to raise a child.

Whenever Kunle came home with a cut or a bruise, the question that matter to Joke was, “Who did this to you?!”
It was just the right platform he needed to falsify the whole story to his favor. No matter how flimsy the lies came, she would take it and it wasn’t because she didn’t know that they were lies, but because she felt if someone was to reprimand or spank her son for looking wrong, it has to be her and no other.

Kunle pride himself a stoic, but wasn’t particularly a good liar, he chokes each time he tell a lie. Joke was considered a Mammoth who didn’t need her husband to fight for her or for Kunle, and not now that he’d passed.

“Did I tell you I’m not capable of training my child?!” She would shriek at her accusers before putting her massive fists to work.

Mama Yemi received a barrage of Joke’s massive fists the day she chastised Kunle for speaking needlessly to a woman old enough to be his mother. Joke wasn’t patient enough to hear the other side of the story which is the truth and perhaps the only side to it— and not even after she left Mama Yemi in a crumple of mess. It was what Kunle told her that matter.

At 18, Kunle stopped schooling and became a ring leader of a notorious gang of robbers and no longer needed his mother to fight for him. He’s got “Boys” to do that for him. By the time Joke realized her mistakes, Kunle was already rotten beyond repair. She tried to chastise him now, at 18, as she should have done a long time ago, but all to no avail. Kunle’s wings had spread too wide to be trimmed and it is about time he flew. Gust on gust, the reports of Kunle’s notorious deeds flooded to the house and she wept day in day out more for her negligence in doing the needful at the right time and of her forbidding people to do the same on her behalf.

It was Mama Yemi that rushed to tell her that Kunle had been apprehended after a failed robbery attempt. Kunle’s circle of “loyalist” escaped, but he was so unlucky, he was caught as he tried to escape. He was beaten with clubs and various sizes of fists plunged into different part of his body and all these left indelible marks on his face, yet he didn’t shed tears nor beg for forgiveness, he was uncharacteristically still. His mother never taught him anything about emotions, and he didn’t know what it means to be emotional. Even after his body was ringed with just the right size of tire and after he was showered with a liquid substance, he never thought he was going to die, not until he heard someone say: where is the pack of matches!
By the time Joke arrived the scene, the smoke was already forming dark clouds