Mamba Point Read online

  “Yeah, I know. Duh.” His name was on the comic Joe gave me.

  “You like Burroughs?”

  “I just know I like Tarzan comics.”

  “Come in.” He undid the chain, then pulled the door open. “I have something you might like.”

  Their apartment was exactly like ours, only the layout was reversed. Even a lot of the furniture was the same because the embassy furnished all the apartments. The Millers had African art all over the place: masks on the walls, little statues on the china hutch, and stuff like that. Some of them looked really old. I stopped and looked at them, kind of fascinated by all the creepy masks.

  “Cool,” I said. “Is this stuff all Liberian?”

  “Most of it is. Especially the masks. Liberia is famous for masks. My dad collects them.”

  I reached out to grab one and try it on. It was propped up in a stand on a bookshelf, so I figured it was all right.

  “Don’t mess with them,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  “They’re not that breakable or anything,” he said. “It’s just that some of them are kind of powerful.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t mess with them.”

  We went on back to the room that was where my own room was in our apartment. I saw shelves and shelves of books and games and puzzles, but no bed.

  “Where do you sleep?”

  “This isn’t my bedroom. It’s my other room.”

  “Oh.” It must be cool to have a whole extra room to mess around in.

  I was expecting Matt to pull out a bunch of Tarzan books, the noncomics kind, but he found a big box and plopped it down on a card table, shoving some other stuff out of the way.

  “This is Pellucidar,” he explained. “It’s a game based on Burroughs’s books.”

  “Who’s Pellucidar?”

  “It’s not a guy, it’s a place. It’s the world on the inside of the planet Earth. Earth is hollow and people walk around on the inside surface, too. There’s a small sun at the center, and everywhere that there’s ocean up here, there’s land down there, and vice versa. It’s another series of books by Burroughs.”

  “I see.” I tried to get my head around that. Didn’t the sun have to be really far from the earth not to burn it up? “Is Tarzan in this game?”

  “Sure. Some of the modules take place in Africa.”

  Matt opened the box, which was full of thick booklets, maps, and funny-shaped dice. There was no board, and no people like I was used to. Well, not all games have little people, but at least you’re a marble or a shoe.

  “How does this game work?”

  “Have you ever played Dungeons & Dragons?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t you have any normal games?” I asked. “Like Sorry or Monopoly?”

  “Oh, role-playing games are way better. See, you don’t play to win or lose. You, like, have an adventure. The other players are your friends and help you most of the time, but they can also stab you in the back.” He was getting kind of excited, and it was the first time I’d seen him act happy about anything. It made me like him better.

  “All right, I’ll play.”

  He walked me through it, and he was right. It was fun.

  We made characters first. I named my character Zartan, after Tarzan. Zartan was a reformed pirate who was really good with a cutlass.

  Matt said the game leader usually didn’t have a character, but he didn’t want Zartan to get lonely, so he made a small character for himself named Bob the Parrot. Bob the Parrot wore an eye patch and could see into the future. He would squawk as danger approached, but Matt decided that to be fair, he’d only be right some of the time. After we made our characters, Matt went and made peanut butter sandwiches. We ate while Zartan and Bob set out with a pirate map in search of treasure. The game was called Pellucidar, but our first adventure was in Tarzan’s world.

  I didn’t know exactly how Matt’s side of things worked. He had the book propped up so I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I guessed it was a little bit like a choose-your-own-adventure book, only instead of just turning to page, or whatever, you had to solve a puzzle or kill a monster first. You killed monsters by rolling high numbers, which inflicted more damage on them.

  Zartan was in a shipwreck and washed up on the shore of West Africa somewhere. He had to immediately face a crocodile, which Bob warned him about, then a lion snuck up on him, which Bob didn’t warn him about, and Zartan was lucky to escape with his life. He found some clues and followed them to discover an abandoned cabin, which I recognized from the comic book as Tarzan’s. I figured there would be stuff in the cabin that would show Zartan what to do next, but the phone rang.

  “It’s your mom,” Matt said after he answered. “She says it’s nearly dinnertime.”

  “Really? What time is it?”

  He checked his watch. “Five-thirty.”

  Somehow, the whole day had gone by. “Well, thanks,” I said. “That was fun.”

  “We can play again tomorrow,” he said.

  “Sure. Hey, I have an Atari, too. We could play that sometime.”

  “Oh, I have one of those,” he said in a very bored way. Of course he did.

  We played the game a lot the next two days. It was amazing how time flew by when we were playing. We got totally sucked into the game and forgot where we were. Well, we still knew we were in West Africa, but we’d forget we were in an air-conditioned apartment in the city instead of in the middle of some remote jungle.

  I took the notebook down with me and doodled as we played. There were lots of parts where Matt would just read about the scene, and that’s when I would draw.

  Matt leaned over the table at one point to see what I was doing.

  “Hey, that’s not bad.”

  “Yeah it is.” It didn’t look like a pirate, for one thing. Zartan didn’t have a hook for a hand or a peg leg, so I’d just given him a ruffled shirt and long hair. “It looks like an old lady holding a canary, doesn’t it?” I asked.

  “Noooo,” he said slowly.

  “Yes it does.”

  “Give her a beard, then.”

  “Give her a beard?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I erased the outline of Zartan’s jaw and tried to make him look more rugged while Matt went back to reading the next scene.

  “Where did Zartan get Bob, anyway?” I wondered.

  Matt thought about it. “I guess he bought him somewhere. They probably have parrot stores at some of those ports where pirates hang out.”

  “Right between the eye-patch shop and the rum store?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I thought Bob was a wild parrot, not a pet,” I said.

  “If he was a wild parrot, he wouldn’t follow Zartan around,” Matt pointed out.

  “Maybe Bob just likes Zartan. Maybe they’re pals.”

  “If you want,” he said. “So, what are you going to do? Cross the mangrove swamp or try to walk around it?”

  “What does Bob think?”

  Matt rolled a die shaped like a pyramid. “He squawks that there’s a log with eyes, and flaps over to where it is so you can see it.”

  It was probably a crocodile or a giant snake. That reminded me.

  “I saw another snake yesterday,” I told Matt. “A black mamba.”

  “Sure you did. You were here all day.”

  “I mean the day before yesterday. It came right at me, but it disappeared all of a sudden.”

  He shook his head sadly.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I don’t even think that you believe you.”

  “Well, what if we went outside right now? I’ll bet the snake comes after me. Every time I set foot outside, I see a snake.” Well, maybe not every single time, but usually I did. “We could try, anyway.”

  “No thank you.”

  “It’s no big deal. It lives right over in that big field between here and the car wash. We’ll just go stand there, and if the
snake pops out at us, we’ll run like crazy.”

  “I’m not that gullible.”

  “Nobody said you were gullible,” I insisted. “I’m not saying take my word for it. I’m saying come and see for yourself.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “You’ll try and trick me once we’re out there.”

  “No I won’t. I promise.”

  “It’s a waste of time, Linus. Come on, what are you going to do?” He tapped the book to make it clear that by “you” he meant Zartan.

  I thought over all of my options. “I pick up a big rock and heave it at the log with eyes.”

  “Roll this.” He pushed a twenty-sided die over to me. “If you get a sixteen or higher, you hit it, and if you get twenty, you kill it.”

  I gave it a roll and nailed it. Right on the twenty.

  “You’re so lucky,” he said. “The log sinks into the swampy water, with a few bubbles floating back to the surface.” He set the book down. “It was a big old snake, by the way. The book calls it a bola boa. I don’t even think that’s a real snake.”

  “If I roll another twenty, will you go outside with me and see the mamba?”

  “No,” he said firmly.

  “Come on, what are the odds of me rolling another twenty?”

  “One in twenty.”

  “Pretty good odds for you, right?” I rolled the die without his even agreeing to it. It came up seven.

  “So there,” he said. “We have a lot of exploring to do, anyway, if we’re going to get to the good part.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “So, are you heading to the embassy today?” Law asked me Wednesday morning. He grabbed an orange and dug into the peel with his thumbnail. “It’s been over a week, and all you ever do is play Pac-Man and hang out with that weird kid downstairs.”

  “Maybe.” I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I was mainly thinking about how I had to take another one of those nasty malaria pills. “I’ll give you a dollar if you chew your Aralen,” I offered as Law picked up his own pill from the counter.

  “I’ll do it for free if you just do it first.”

  “No way.” I’d fallen for that one before. You learn quick as a little brother: never do anything first.

  “Just pretend it’s a power pill,” he suggested.

  “Waka waka waka.” I gobbled the pill, but it wasn’t any more fun and I didn’t gain any new powers, except maybe not catching malaria.

  Law made a little pocket for his pill out of a bit of orange, which I thought was smart until he popped it into his mouth. He made a face and shook his head. So much for that idea.

  “Well, are you going?” he asked again. “I keep telling people about you, and they want to know when you’re coming around.”

  “Really?” I hadn’t planned on making the other kids wonder about me, but it might play into being the new Linus, like I wasn’t too eager to make friends.

  “Did you tell them I was afraid to leave the apartment because of snakes?”

  “Nah, I told them you were grounded for wetting your bed.”

  “Whew. At least it’s nothing embarrassing.”

  “The longer you avoid going out, the harder it’ll be,” he said. “Anyway, you probably have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than seeing another snake.”

  I wasn’t comforted; based on how the sky looked, that didn’t seem like such a long shot. He had a point about it getting harder to go outside if I waited too long, though. That shrink back in Dayton said the same thing. He called it negative reinforcement, and told Mom and Dad to make sure I didn’t get negatively reinforced too much. That sounded like the exact opposite of what he said about exacerbating my condition, and Dad called him on it. The shrink explained it by saying that the point wasn’t to shelter me, just to make sure they communicated about the move in a positive way. That’s why Mom stopped anyone from talking about snakes and Dad went on about how many friends I’d have here.

  “You want to walk with me?” Law asked through a mouthful of orange.

  “Nah.” I didn’t think the new Linus would tag along after his big brother.

  * * *

  I took the steps two at a time, wanting to get down the road before I changed my mind. I hurried past the guard (who was taking a nap) and saw the usual kids kicking their not-really-a-soccer-ball around in the courtyard.

  “Linus! My good friend!” Gambeh waved at the kids for a time-out and came over to give me a snap-shake.

  “Hi.” I shook his hand and nodded at Tokie, too, who was waiting impatiently with one foot on the ball. “You want to play?” Gambeh asked.

  “Not today.” I decided if I did ever play, Tokie would be on my team. That kid was all over the ball, all of the time.

  “Do you have my present today?” Gambeh asked, grinning. I didn’t think he really expected me to produce a present every time I saw him. He was just messing with me. Still, I wondered if my own rarely used soccer ball was coming in sea freight or if I’d given it to Goodwill.

  “Maybe later!” I hurried down the street past the shanties. So far, so good. I slowed down a bit to catch my breath and noticed the charlie with the masks and carvings spread out on a rug. I remembered what Matt said about the masks in his father’s collection—that some of them were powerful. Maybe the charlie’s stuff was powerful, too. I went over on an impulse.

  “Do you have anything for snakes?”

  “You want snakes?” He looked at the smaller pieces, mostly elephants made of wood or bone, or carvings of people in various poses. “No snakes. Most people don’t like them.”

  “Something against snakes,” I explained. What was the word? “Something to ward off snakes.” I didn’t need any help, really, but something like that couldn’t hurt.

  “Hmm.” He looked at me intently. “You think these items are magical?”

  “No,” I lied. “It’s just …” I thought it over. “It’s for a friend who collects things like that.”

  “Your friend collects magical items?”

  “No.” I felt like he was looking right into me, seeing everything. I wanted him to stop. “He’s interested in snakes.” That made no sense, but I left it at that.

  “I’m sorry. I have nothing to ward off snakes,” he said. “If you want protection from snakes, you sleep on an animal skin. Leopard or cheetah is good. Even water buffalo. Those will keep the snakes away, so they say.” He made a gesture. “I am a Muslim, and don’t believe in these rustic religions, but it makes sense, oh? The snake will hate the smell of these animals.”

  “What if I bought a small square of animal skin? I could carry it in …” I gulped. “He could carry it in his pocket.”

  “Do snakes go into his pocket? Do they steal his money?” He looked at me seriously, but I guessed he was kidding me.

  “What’s your name, my friend?” He clapped his hand on my shoulder. He was really tall, and I had to look almost straight up. He was uncomfortably close, too, staring at me with unblinking eyes.

  “Linus.”

  He grinned. “We’re best friends, true? Charlie and Linus, in the American cartoons?”

  “I guess so.” I wondered if this claim of friendship meant he was about to ask me for a present. He didn’t.

  “Tell me about your snake problem, Linus.”

  “It’s, um, not me,” I said weakly. “It’s a friend.”

  “There was one behind you, back there,” he said. He finally let go of my shoulder to point. “A black mamba. It’s a very dangerous animal. It followed you for a bit, and then went back into the grass.”

  “Oh,” I said. A taxi turned into the driveway. I watched the guys at the car wash greet the driver, take some money, then go to work with the sponges.

  “You’re not surprised?”

  “No. I’ve seen them before.” I looked back and scanned the grass, wondering if it was still there. “Maybe I even saw that one.” I told him about the snake in the street.

  “Yes, yes,” he muttered, like
he not only believed me but completely expected it. “Was that the first time you saw it?”

  “No.” I backed up and told him about the one at the airport, and the one I might have seen that same night. “So that’s three already, and I just moved here. Guys who’ve lived here for years say they’ve never seen one. Why me?”

  “The rural religions say some people have a connection to an animal,” he mused, interlocking his fingers to demonstrate. “They have different words for it. …” He said a word that sounded like “causing.” I couldn’t quite hear because of the taxi crunching gravel as it went out the exit, finished with its wash.

  I tried repeating the word.

  “Kaseng,” Charlie said again, pronouncing it carefully. “You might call it a totem. That’s an American Indian word for the same thing. Usually it is a tribe that has a kaseng. There are leopard people, and bush-cow people, and dove people. But some people have their own kaseng. A person might be born with a strong connection to the mongoose or the frog.”

  “How does someone know if they have one?”

  “The animals will respond to that person. Also, when they are close, their influence will be seen in the person’s nature.”

  “Like how?” I was wondering how a guy’s nature could be froggy. Did he eat flies? Say ribbit ribbit?

  “The leopard is fierce. The mongoose is cunning. The frog is quick in the water.”

  “I get it.” A guy is a good swimmer so people say, Hey, he’s part frog. We say stuff like that in America, too, but we don’t mean it.

  “So, do you think I have this connection to snakes?” I said. “Is the mamba my kaseng?”

  “You must know these are folk religions, and I am a Muslim,” he said. “I honor the one god that is Allah.” He looked to the sky with reverence.

  “Oh.” It sure sounded like he believed in kasengs. “How do you get rid of a kaseng if you don’t want one? I mean, what do the folktales say?”

  “If you do believe in it, and you do have a kaseng, you should not fear your animal. They do not want to hurt you. If you accept it, it will give you strength.”

  “Is there anything like that where the animal is out to get you?”

  He looked at me thoughtfully. “Maybe,” he said at last. “I’m not a scholar on this topic. I hope, for your sake, it is a kaseng.”