Mamba Point Read online

  “It is for Bob,” he explained. “But you can keep going. You have to foil the bad guys. Figure out why they blew up the dam and—”

  “But Zartan’s a pirate.” It made me sad to think about a pirate without a parrot. How would he have the courage to take on bombers and solve mysteries? “Maybe Zartan can find a magic stone that brings Bob back to life?”

  “I don’t make up the rules as I go,” Matt said. “Otherwise, there’s no point.”

  “Maybe we should call it a day, then,” I said.

  “It’s early,” he said. “Not even dinnertime yet.”

  “We can go up and play Atari, then you can have dinner at our place.”

  “I suppose.” He scooped up the gaming stuff and put it all in the box. “I can make another character for the next adventure.”

  “Maybe you can be the python.”

  “Maybe.” He mulled it over. “A pirate with a pet snake, huh? That would be one bad pirate.”

  When we headed upstairs, we found Gambeh and Tokie waiting in the stairwell.

  “Hi, Linus,” said Gambeh, his face serious.

  “Oh, hey, it’s you. I haven’t seen you in a while.” I wondered how long they’d been waiting around.

  “You know these guys?” Matt asked.

  “Sort of, yeah. Their dad was a guard here.”

  “We used to play football in the yard,” Gambeh said. “The new guard told us we can’t play there anymore.”

  “He told us to go away,” Tokie added. “He said never come back.”

  “We had to sneak in now,” Gambeh admitted with a guilty smile.

  I unlocked the door so we could all go in. Gambeh stopped in the hallway, Tokie hiding behind him.

  “Your mama makes good rice,” he said, peering around his big brother.

  I got it. They were hungry. I glanced at the clock. Mom wouldn’t be home for another hour, probably longer.

  “Do you want me to make some?” I didn’t know how to make rice, but I could read the instructions.

  “Yes, please!”

  “Oh, for …” Matt muttered something in disbelief.

  “It’s just food,” I said. I knew what he was thinking—that these kids would pick you clean if you let them. That’s what his dad told us our first day in Monrovia. It wasn’t like I was giving them money, though, and even if I did, so what? It was my money. I got an allowance and so far hadn’t used it for anything but the occasional soda because I hadn’t found any comic-book stores or arcades in Monrovia.

  We had plenty of bagged rice but also a box of instant. I made that, boiling filtered water and dumping in the rice. I didn’t remember exactly what Mom did to hers, but I made mine yummy by melting margarine in it and sprinkling in sugar and cinnamon. Matt hovered in the background, watching, not saying much. My rice came out mushy.

  “Sorry it’s not good,” I said, dividing it into two bowls and giving it to Gambeh and Tokie. They carried their bowls into the dining room to eat, so we went with them.

  “Is there more?” Tokie asked a minute later, showing me his empty bowl.

  “Maybe we have something else.” I went back to the kitchen and opened a can of deviled ham. Halfway through making sandwiches, I realized they might be Muslims like Charlie. They must not have been because they ate the sandwiches.

  “Thanks for dinner,” Gambeh said.

  “Anytime.”

  I saw Matt rolling his eyes. He probably thought they’d come every night now.

  “We have to go,” Gambeh said. “Mama expects us home.”

  “I want to play with the lemon,” said Tokie sulkily.

  “No, we have to go.” Gambeh grabbed Tokie’s hand and half dragged him to the door.

  “Just one game with the lemon!” Tokie said again.

  “He thinks Pac-Man’s a lemon,” I explained to Matt, who looked confused.

  I let them out, and Gambeh turned around just before I shut the door. “Do you have any jobs for my pa?” he asked.

  “Well, I don’t, but let me ask people.”

  “Thanks! I’ll come back!” He and Tokie ran down the steps.

  “Pathetic,” Matt said, shaking his head, when I came back to the living room.

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “They’re all right.” Gambeh and Tokie were usually pretty happy. “You know, you could help those kids.” An idea was dawning on me.

  “What, make rice and sandwiches for them tomorrow?”

  “No. Help their dad get a job.”

  “Who, me? Am I going to hire him?” He shrugged.

  “Your dad could help.”

  “Him? We don’t even have a houseboy. I bet we’re the one American family in Liberia that doesn’t.”

  “He knows people, though. Caesar and those guys. They’re big shots, right? You said they work for the Liberian government. They must hire lots of people, especially guards. So you can ask your dad to ask them to give Gambeh’s dad a job.”

  “Your dad knows people, too,” he suggested. “So does your mom.”

  “My dad only knows people at the embassy, and they already fired Gambeh’s dad. And my mom just started at her job. She can’t already start asking for favors.”

  “Yeah, but … I don’t know if my dad can ask them to hire people just because he knows them,” he said. “It’s not like they owe him anything.”

  “It doesn’t hurt to ask,” I said. “I mean, it can’t be any worse than the last thing we asked, right?”

  “No, that’s definitely true,” he admitted. He still looked uneasy.

  “So, will you do it? Please?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  I tried to think of something to offer in trade, but Matt already had everything I had, and more. I could have talked Joe into anything by letting him use the Atari for a few weeks, I bet. He probably would have done this anyway, but still. He could be bought. Not Matt.

  Well, he didn’t have everything.

  “If you do it, I’ll show you something really cool,” I promised. “So cool you won’t even believe it if I tell you.”

  “Hmm.” He looked at me closely. “It isn’t some rare comic book, is it?”

  “A hundred million times better than that.”

  “It better not be something stupid.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Do I just have to ask my dad, or does he have to agree to ask his friends to give that guy a job?”

  “You just have to ask him.”

  “All right. I’ll do it because I’m curious what your big secret is,” he said. “If it’s dumb, though, I’m going to un-ask my dad.”

  “Sounds like a deal to me.”

  CHAPTER 15

  The power went out late at night and stayed out. I tossed my sheets off the bed and lay there awhile, a film of sweat on me, and tried to think cool thoughts. I could live without the air conditioner if I had to, but I at least needed a fan. What did people do before fans? I wondered. Probably they missed a lot of sleep.

  I thought about my snake and wondered if I could do that mind-fuse trick with it again, or if I’d really done it in the first place. I concentrated, trying to imagine myself in the mamba’s head and hoping I wouldn’t connect with it just as it swallowed something gross like a raw frog. It didn’t work, and I decided either the snake was asleep or I’d been feverish and delusional the first time it happened.

  I glanced at the clock, which ran on batteries. It was 2:38 in the morning and I hadn’t slept at all. I got up and went to get a drink of water.

  I padded down the hall in my bare feet. It was too hot for pajamas, so I was just wearing underwear. I had to grope around in the dark for a glass, then in the refrigerator for the pitcher of cold water.

  I took the glass into the dining room. The side windows were open, and a bit of a breeze was blowing through. It felt good. I was taking a couple of gulps when the lights in the kitchen and dining room flickered on.

  I heard a muted female laugh from the living room.
There was Law, lying on the couch, snuggled up with some girl. No, it wasn’t some girl at all. It was Eileen.

  I plunked the glass on the table and hurried back to my room, slamming the door behind me.

  “Keep it down out there!” Dad hollered from my parents’ bedroom.

  I grabbed some shorts and a T-shirt from the dirty-clothes corner. Law softly rapped on my door.

  “Leave me alone,” I said. I got dressed in about three seconds.

  He opened the door a crack, enough to put his hand through and make a Pac-Man. “Waka waka waka?”

  “Shut up.” I whacked at his hand and opened the door. “It’s not cool to have girls over when your brother’s walking around in his underwear.”

  “So a girl saw you in your Fruit of the Looms. It’s not that much different from seeing you in swim trunks,” he said.

  “Yeah, but she laughed at me.”

  “It was funny.” He grinned. “Come on, it was funny. She wasn’t laughing at you. It was a funny situation.”

  “Maybe to you.” I put on my sandals. No socks this time. I felt like living dangerously. I grabbed my key from the dresser and my empty gym bag.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out.”

  “It’s like three in the morning.”

  “If you can have a friend over, I can go out.”

  “She was only still here ’cause the power was out,” he said. He pushed his hair back. It was getting long enough to hang in his face now. “We were at a friend’s place and—”

  “Good for you!” I shouted. I didn’t want to hear all the details. I heard my dad muttering and cussing, throwing his door open. I pushed past Law and went down the hall.

  “Come on, Linus,” Law pleaded.

  Eileen was still in the living room.

  “If you wait a bit longer, you’ll get to see our dad in his underwear, too,” I told her before banging out the front door. I wanted it to be funny, but it probably sounded sulky and angry. I ran down the steps and out into the courtyard.

  “It’s past your bedtime,” said the guard. He wasn’t bossing me around, just surprised to see a kid at that hour.

  “It’s none of your beeswax,” I told him.

  “Beeswax, oh?” He laughed at the expression.

  I walked toward the embassy, stopping halfway between two streetlights in a canyon of darkness.

  “Are you there?” I whispered.

  The street was quiet. Even the bar up at the corner of UN Drive and Fairground would be closed, I thought. There were no taxis cruising along the street, hoping for fares. Mamba Point was sleeping. Were the mambas sleeping, too?

  “Are you there?” I repeated, a bit louder.

  I was briefly blinded by a single headlight cruising up the road, turning around the bend. The car slowed, then stopped. The light went out. I heard a car door open and slam shut. I remembered Gambeh’s story of the heartman. It was probably nonsense, but whoever was out there was probably up to no good.

  Never mind the snake. I took a few quick strides back to the building, ready to run if I needed to. I stumbled, and then there was an arm around me, covering my mouth. The smell of unwashed hand filled my nose and choked me. I wriggled and bit at the hand, then felt a punch to the small of my back. A twinge racked my entire body, like when you bang your funny bone on something.

  “Be still,” the voice ordered, holding me tight. The man’s other hand patted at my pockets, and my bag was yanked away from me.

  “I don’t have any money,” I told him.

  “Shut up now!” he ordered.

  I felt a weight on my foot, the familiar friction of scale on skin. The mamba streaked up my body and over my shoulder, brushing by my ear. I heard a stifled shout, then felt the grip on me loosen. The snake was gone. I broke free and ran for the light by the building.

  “Hey, Linus.” It was Law, lingering outside the gate, trying to hide a smoldering cigarette behind his leg. “You okay?”

  I couldn’t talk at first. I was panting, trying to catch my breath. “I think so,” I said at last, glancing back over my shoulder.

  Eileen was with him. She looked at me, then looked away.

  “I’m walking Eileen home,” said Law. “Why’d you storm off?”

  “Just, um …” I trailed off, glancing back toward the field. I didn’t know if there was still a mugger lurking in the darkness, or a snake for that matter. “I wanted air. It’s so hot up there.”

  “You sure you’re all right?” he asked. “You’re acting weird. Even for you.”

  His tone bugged me. He wasn’t the one who was getting dunked in the pool or having snakes follow him around or getting really sick or getting spotlighted in his underwear in front of the girl he almost liked once or getting grabbed by muggers. Africa was going fine for him, and all he did was change his name and grow out his hair. It’s easy not to act weird when nothing weird happens back.

  “Leave me alone.” I walked around him and ignored him when he yelled back at me that he was only kidding. I didn’t warn him, either. Whatever was in the darkness, he’d have to face it all by himself. Of course, with his luck nothing would happen anyway.

  When I got upstairs, Dad was about to go out and find me.

  “There you are.” He went inside, his keys jangling in his hand.

  “I just went outside for a moment.”

  “Well, don’t,” he said. “It’s not that safe at night.”

  “I didn’t even leave the courtyard,” I lied. “I wanted some air.”

  “I don’t know when it became permissible for you kids to come and go at all hours of the night,” he mused. “It’s going to stop, though. Both of you.” He yawned and headed back to bed.

  I went to bed, too, but lay awake, and left my air conditioner off so I could hear when Law came back. I glanced at the clock when I heard the faint squeak of the door and soft footsteps in the hallway. It was nearly four a.m.

  “Hey,” Law said, poking his nose in my door. “Are you awake?”

  “No.” I faked a snore.

  “Hey, I didn’t know you liked Eileen. How was I supposed to know?”

  “I don’t like her.”

  “She said you called her a couple of times.”

  “I called her once.”

  “She thinks you’re a nice kid, just a little young.”

  “Sure she does.”

  “Plus, she was dating Bennett until a couple of days ago.”

  “Did she dump him to go out with you?”

  “Look, I don’t even know if we’re dating.” I could barely see him in the darkness, just a shadow against shadows. “I don’t have that much experience with this kind of thing,” he admitted.

  I was quiet for a long time, turning things over in my head. The truth was, I hardly thought about Eileen anymore. Still, she was the last person I wanted to be embarrassed in front of, and Law was the last person I wanted her to be dating right now.

  “I’ll get over it,” I said.

  “I know you will.” Law drifted back to his room, leaving me to lie awake a bit longer, thinking about everything. For a moment before I spiraled off into sleep, I had a flash of the snake again, finding a furrow to sleep in, its eyes open wide. It could see a million stars even while it slept.

  I slept until noon and only woke up then because Dad came in and flipped on the light.

  “It’s nearly noon,” he announced. “Are you going to loll about in bed all day?”

  “Maybe I have sleeping sickness,” I suggested. Wasn’t that something people in Africa got?

  “I think you have lazy-kid-itis,” he said, leaving the light on and the door open.

  I lay there and thought about Gambeh’s dad, who was fired for sleeping on the job. Maybe he had sleeping sickness? Or malaria? That would explain a lot. It reminded me to call Matt and see if he’d talked to his dad yet. He said he would try this morning, but I would understand if it took him a few days to work up the courage.

&n
bsp; I remembered with a jolt that I’d promised to show Matt the snake. Well, I’d really only promised to show him something cool, but I didn’t think Matt was going to be satisfied with me showing him my Millennium Falcon or my baseball signed by Ken Griffey. I couldn’t show him the snake, either, though. That was so stupid and dangerous. What was I thinking? The snake could kill him.

  Which reminded me of another urgent matter. I jumped out of bed, got dressed, and ran down the steps to talk to the guard. I was hoping for the reggae guy, but it was the serious guy, the one who got the job after Gambeh’s dad was fired.

  “Have you heard anything about the snake?” I asked. “Did anyone get bit?”

  “Nobody’s seen it for two days,” he said. “Maybe it’s gone for good.”

  “I thought maybe somebody got bit last night.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I just …” I didn’t want to explain. “I heard a rumor.”

  “I haven’t heard any rumors.”

  “Well, I have,” I murmured. I didn’t like him interrogating me back like that.

  I went out to the field to look for the snake, but all I found was my Mork bag, lying crumpled in the dust like a dead animal.

  CHAPTER 16

  When I went to scrounge up breakfast on Monday morning, Law was already in the kitchen, opening a Coke for his own breakfast. I wondered if I should tell him about how there might be mouse poop in it and decided not to. It served him right, somehow.

  “Are you going to see Eileen today?” I meant to just ask casually, but it sounded resentful and I knew it. He let it slide, though.

  “Yeah. So are you,” he said. “She’s coming to dinner.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah, Mom told me to invite her over.”

  “Huh? That’s nice of her.”

  “I think it’s her way of punishing both me and Eileen.”

  “All three of us,” I said. I was the one who’d have to watch Law and Eileen making kissy faces at each other. “Hey, maybe I’ll tell her the story about how you peed in your sleeping bag on that camping trip.”

  “I told you like a million times that it was just water. My canteen spilled.”

  “Sure it was.”