Mamba Point Read online

  “You’re going to give him nightmares,” Mom insisted.

  “No he’s not,” I said, hoping to prove that the new Linus was cool with things that slithered and spit poison and could outrun me if they wanted to.

  “The chances you’ll even see a mamba are like one in a million, though,” Darryl offered, looking at Mom and probably hoping he was making up for all the snake talk. “They don’t live in the city. Only in the jungle, miles and miles away. So don’t get your hopes up.”

  “We already saw one,” I told him. Darryl looked at me skeptically, but Dad reached over from his seat and nudged him, then gave him half a nod that it was true.

  “Well, you probably won’t see any more, then,” Darryl corrected himself.

  CHAPTER 2

  When Dad told us we were going to live in an apartment, I imagined a big red building with long hallways and rows of doors. The building wasn’t like that at all. It was half open on the ground level, with a couple of big pillars keeping the rest of it from falling down, and instead of a front door, there was just a wide flight of steps leading up into the building. There were only two apartments per floor, one to the left and one to the right.

  “Anybody can just walk in,” I pointed out as we lugged our bags up to the third floor.

  “That’s why the guard is down there,” Dad replied. That wasn’t much comfort, since it looked like the guard was sound asleep.

  Our apartment was bigger than our house back in Dayton. There were four bedrooms and three bathrooms. That was one bedroom more than we needed, and practically one bathroom each. There was a balcony in front, with a view of the city, and another in back, with a view of the ocean. I liked that one better. I’ve always liked the ocean. I hung out there for a while, watching the waves crash on the shore and little kids running in and out of the water.

  When I first found out we were moving to the West African coast, I imagined walking up and down beaches with a girl. Maybe we wouldn’t hold hands, but we’d kick through the surf, splashing each other and maybe throwing sand crabs at each other if there were sand crabs everywhere, like there were at a resort we went to once in San Diego. At night kids would have campfires and roast marshmallows and tell stories.

  This beach was all wrong for that kind of thing. It was lined with jagged black rocks, and there was crud zigging and zagging across the sand in designs shaped by the waves. About a hundred yards away was a group of shacks made of cast-off wood and corrugated tin. A good, hard wind might knock any one of them over. Hopefully there were nicer beaches nearby.

  “Lock the balcony door, okay?” my dad said when I went back in. “We need to be careful.”

  “We’re three stories up,” I reminded him, glad that I’d remembered to show how unworried I was about bad things happening.

  “You think that’s going to stop rogues from getting in?”

  “Rogues?”

  “Burglars.”

  “Right.” The first word sounded worse. Burglars took stuff when you weren’t home. Rogues broke in and killed you in your sleep.

  Dad opened the door and led me back out on the balcony, and showed me the decorative trellis running up the middle.

  “Rogues could climb that,” he said. I wasn’t sure. It didn’t look that sturdy, and a fall would be fatal if someone landed on the jagged rocks down there.

  “Someone would have to be crazy to climb that,” I said. “They’d probably fall off and break their necks.”

  “They are crazy,” he said. “Poverty makes people crazy.”

  We went inside, and he shut the door, making sure it was locked. “Just remember to lock the door.”

  I ended up with the smallest bedroom, since Mom wanted one of the bigger ones for a family room and Law took the next biggest. My new room was still bigger than the one I had back in Dayton.

  I dug my notebook out of my suitcase and made sure my drawings were still safely folded between the pages. They were. I spread them out on the desk, looking at the characters I’d copied out of comic books into various school notebooks over the last couple of years—usually in class, when I was supposed to be doing math problems or taking notes. Most of my drawings were so lousy I tore them out and threw them away. These were the few I wanted to keep.

  My favorite wasn’t from a comic book. It was a cow standing out in a field by a fence. It was still copied, but from a photograph. I meant to send it to this girl I used to know, but I lost my nerve and then her address. I put the notebook on top of it to press out the crease, thinking I might hang it up later.

  I heard some whoops and hollers through the window and peeked through the blinds. Some Liberian kids were kicking a red rubber ball around like a soccer ball. One of them was kind of hanging back and watching while the other kids kicked each other’s shins apart. So even Africa had nerdy kids, I thought. I identified with him. I was also the kind of guy who would hang back in a fierce game of soccer, not wanting to get creamed. Just like I was the kind of guy who drew a picture for a girl but never worked up the nerve to mail it, even though she’d given him her new address and asked him to write to her.

  Why was I like that? Nobody else in my family seemed to worry too much. For example, when Mom and Dad said we were moving to Africa, Law asked if there was a movie theater. I asked whether there were man-eating lions.

  I didn’t want to be that guy anymore. I didn’t want to be the chicken in the soccer game. I wanted to be more like this other kid down there. He was a head shorter than the other guys but always right on top of the ball, stealing it away from them, shooting at the goal. He was getting knocked around and kicked in the shins, but he was totally fearless. I could be that kid, I thought. Nobody knew me yet and I could be whoever I wanted to be.

  Jet lag hit me all at once, and I collapsed on the bed and slept for a few hours. If the apartment hadn’t been furnished, I probably would have curled up on the floor. When I woke up, it felt like morning, even though it was getting dark outside. I could have slept on through the next day, but we had to get dressed so we could go out for dinner with Darryl.

  “We’re going to a nice restaurant, so try to look decent,” Mom said.

  “Is it at the embassy?” I wondered if the nice restaurant was like the officers’ club on the air force base in Dayton.

  “No, it’s at a hotel. Darryl says it’s the best restaurant in Liberia.”

  Law and I didn’t have nice clothes in our suitcases. We had some coming with our air freight, but wouldn’t get that for a day or two. The best we could do was clean shorts and new polo shirts with little jumping tigers on the left—presents from Grandma before we left.

  “It’s supposed to be an alligator,” Law mused, looking at himself in the mirror. “Izod shirts have an alligator.”

  “I’d rather have a cat than a reptile,” I told him.

  “It makes it look like we’re trying to be cool, and failing,” he said. “It would be better to look like we weren’t even trying.”

  “Maybe if we wear them, we’ll look like we’re not trying to look like we’re not trying to look like we’re trying,” I said helpfully.

  He looked at me for a minute, and shook his head. “It’s supposed to be an alligator.” He scratched at the tiny tiger patch like it might come off if he scraped at it enough.

  “It’s a nice shirt,” said our mother, “and anyway, it’s supposed to be a crocodile.”

  The doorbell rang, and we heard my dad talking to Darryl.

  “The driver must be here,” Mom said. The driver? Suddenly we were the sort of people who had a driver show up. Back in Ohio we had a station wagon with a dented bumper.

  “Oh, Linus.” Darryl was excited to see me coming into the living room. “This is Matt, my boy. You two are in the same grade.”

  A gloomy fat kid barely nodded at me. He looked like he’d rather be doing anything than going out to dinner with us. It was just the two of them—no momlike person in the picture, but neither of them explained why
not.

  Matt muttered something to me. I didn’t quite make it out, but I thought I heard the word “blanket.”

  It wasn’t quite dark when we went outside, and I was able to get a better sense of the neighborhood while everyone else piled into the embassy van. I glanced down the street at trees I didn’t know the names of but knew we didn’t have in Dayton. Something shadowy and slinky dropped out of one and disappeared in a jumble of tall grass. It was pretty far away, but I hurried up and got in the van, cutting in front of Dad.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, following me in.

  “Nothing.” I worked my way around everyone else to the backmost seat with Matt. “I think I just saw a snake, that’s all.”

  “Another one?” Dad asked.

  Darryl turned and looked at me curiously—or maybe suspiciously.

  “Maybe it was a snake,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know.” I couldn’t think of anything else long and ropey that climbed trees, but I didn’t like the way everyone was looking at me.

  We drove along the coast, with the noises and smells of the city coming at us on one side and a fresh ocean breeze blowing through on the other. The sun was setting out over the ocean, scattering rusty rays across the water. I wanted to get a better look and enjoy the breeze, but Matt crammed himself up against the window.

  “Just wait until you see this place,” Darryl said. “You’ll love it.” We turned onto a wide road. There were a couple of guards, but they waved us in the second they saw the American Embassy logo on our van. We went slowly, past clean white beach houses and a much nicer beach than the one at Mamba Point.

  A big, bright building rose majestically above the beach. There were rows of terraces going up to the roof, seven or eight stories high, and a bunch of flags hanging over the entrance. The driver let us off, right in front, and drove away.

  “Hotel Africa,” Darryl said. “The last president built it to impress all the other African head honchos. There was a big conference here about three years ago. Before Tolbert was assassinated, obviously.”

  “The last president was assassinated?” I’d read the encyclopedia article on Liberia, but that fact wasn’t in there. Our encyclopedias were about ten years old.

  “Duh,” Matt muttered. “There was a coup two years ago. A bunch of guys threw out the old government and took over. The guy who killed the last president is president now.” I didn’t know if I should believe him. Would that guy who shot Ronald Reagan be president if he’d had better aim? No way. He’d be given the electric chair.

  Darryl started to elaborate, but Dad nudged him and whispered something. Darryl nodded.

  “It’s a five-star hotel,” he said. “Only place in Liberia where you can get a fancy meal.” We followed him into the lobby while he told us more about the hotel. I tuned him out, wondering about this assassination and why Dad hadn’t told us about it. He had to know. He’d spent weeks learning all about his new post.

  “This isn’t bad,” Law said, wheeling around to watch a couple of women in bathing suits striding over to the elevators.

  “Oh, you have to see the best part,” Darryl said excitedly. He herded us all through the lobby and down the hallway to a set of doors on the far side. Outside there was a huge swimming pool in the shape of Africa. People were standing in the shallow end by a bar where you could get a drink in a coconut without even getting out of the pool.

  “Nice, huh?” Darryl said. “Tolbert was sure proud of this place.”

  “It’s lovely,” my mother agreed.

  “It might have gotten him killed,” Darryl added. “Well, it sure didn’t help. People starving in the streets while their president builds a fancy hotel so he can show off to other world leaders.”

  My mother murmured something to Darryl, who stopped talking a moment, then turned around and rubbed his hands eagerly.

  “Let’s eat.”

  The menu was mostly fancy stuff, with a few “West African Favorites” listed on the back page. I ordered from the main menu: crepes filled with chicken and spinach. They came with a whole boat of mayonnaise to spread on them. They were delicious.

  “That’s gross,” Law said as I slathered the mayo on the crepes. He hated mayonnaise almost as much as he hated spinach. He’d ordered something from the African part of the menu: a big shank of meat that came with a kind of rice pilaf with onions and peppers.

  “Now, that’s a proper Liberian supper.” Darryl nodded in approval at Law’s plate. “Goat meat and jollof rice. Yum.”

  “It’s good,” said Law. He gloated because he was being authentic and I wasn’t.

  “So it’s not baa-a-a-a-a-a-d?” I bleated.

  “Don’t be a dork.”

  “Sorry to baa-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-other you.”

  He snickered, and gave me a little head butt to the shoulder. “You are what you eat,” he reminded me, and butted me again.

  “You guys are dumb,” Matt said. He went back to gobbling up his chicken stuffed with ham and cheese, barely looking at us.

  “So, you’ve lived here seven years?” I asked him, remembering Darryl saying that on the drive from the airport.

  “Yep.”

  “Wow.” We only lived in Dayton for five years, and it felt like home to me. I wondered if Liberia would ever feel like home.

  “Do you like it here?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he answered, but didn’t bother to explain. Yep, this kid was a joy.

  Law barged into my room later, even though the lights were out and I was trying to sleep.

  “Mom wanted Darryl to shut up because she didn’t want to exacerbate your condition,” he said.

  “I know, but thanks for dropping by to tell me.”

  When my parents took me to see that shrink after my panic attack at school, he talked to me for a while by myself. Then he let Mom and Dad come back in, and he told them I was stressed about moving. He said it was pretty common for kids facing a big change, especially “sensitive kids like Linus,” which was his way of saying big ’fraidy-cats like Linus. He also told Mom and Dad to make sure I didn’t become preoccupied with things that exacerbated my condition. Those were his words. Become preoccupied meant “think too much,” and exacerbate meant “make something worse than it was already.”

  So I knew Mom was trying to stop me from hearing about things like poisonous snakes, and rogues, and the fact that there’d been a coup. She was going to be happy when she found out that the new Linus didn’t care about stuff like that.

  “I guess it messed up everything, seeing the snake right off the plane, then Darryl talking about all the coup stuff. I bet you’re pretty freaked out.”

  “Well, not really, but thanks for reminding me just before I go to sleep.”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  “Just kidding. I’m not going to have nightmares.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Come on. I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  “Well, I brought you this.” He tossed something on the bed and left, shutting the door behind him. I hadn’t even noticed he was holding anything. I felt around on the bed until I found a familiar shape.

  It was my stuffed monkey, Moogoo. I’d had him since I was three. I’d put him in the Goodwill box when were packing up to move, but my brother must have grabbed him back and hidden him in his own suitcase.

  Moogoo was kind of scratchy and woolly except for his face, which was a circle of soft felt sewn on the head. When I was a toddler, I would carry Moogoo everywhere and make him give people Moogoo kisses, mashing his felt face to their lips. Moogoo also had big googly eyes that used to spin when you pressed his belly. The eyes didn’t work anymore, but the pupils would kind of roll around when you shook him.

  I was too old to sleep with a stuffed toy, so I set Moogoo on the nightstand. I slept well, knowing he would meet any intruders head-on with his manic eyes and give them slobbery monkey kisses until they fled in terror.

  CHAPTER 3

  We went t
o the embassy the next day to get processed. It was just up the road, not even a half mile, so we walked. Despite what Darryl said about it raining every day, that morning was sunny and warm. We passed shanties, shacks made of tacked-together sheets of corrugated metal, with raggedy clothes spread out on the roofs to dry. A really little girl appeared in the doorway of one of the shacks, looking like one of the kids in those commercials that ask you for money. She watched us with round eyes as we passed. Mom reached into her purse, but the girl disappeared.

  This was Africa, I thought. I knew that, but now it really sank in. This was Africa. A monkey skittered up a tree and chattered at us, in case I had any lingering doubts.

  We passed a clump of wild grass and a few trees, where snakes might have been wriggling around and waiting to poke their creepy triangular heads at us, but none did. Past that, about halfway to the embassy, there was a car wash. It wasn’t the kind back home where you drive through a tunnel and machines spray water and soap all over your car. It was just a parking lot where guys had buckets of soapy water and sponges. They were washing a taxi, and a couple more cabs waited in line.

  A street vendor stood on either side of the driveway leading up to the car wash. One had a tray hanging by a strap around his neck. The tray had cigarettes, candy, plastic combs, matches, packets with aspirin and cold medicine—like the counter at a 7-Eleven. The other guy had unrolled a rug and spread out a lot of masks and carvings.

  “It’s a charlie,” Dad said, pausing to look at his wares. “These guys are called charlies.”

  “Good morning, sir,” the man greeted him. “Are you buying something today?”

  “No, just looking,” Dad said, lightly touching a couple of carvings before moving on.

  “Are those like voodoo masks?” I whispered to Law. I was thinking of my Tarzan comics, with the evil witch doctor who wore a mask like that.

  “Don’t be dumb,” he said. “They’re just masks.”

  “They must mean something. They don’t just make them to sell to tourists, do they?” I decided not to ask Mom and Dad, though. It might sound prejudiced.