“What?”
“He’s going to run away.”
Hosiah looked at him with a glimmer of encouragement creeping to his face.
“And then you know what’s going to happen while he’s running away?” Dawson asked.
“What?”
“He’s going to run right into the kenkey woman at the market and trip over all her balls of kenkey.”
Hosiah looked at him for a second of bewilderment and then giggled at the unexpected, conjured image of the starchy, solid balls of fermented corn meal flying all over the place. “No, he’s not, Daddy.”
“He is,” Dawson insisted, grinning.
“And then he’s going to get all stuck in the kenkey balls,” Hosiah laughed, his imagination sparked, “and the kenkey woman will say, ‘Hey, what are you doing in my kenkey balls?’ And then he’ll have kenkey balls all over his body, and she’ll make him pay for them, won’t she, Daddy?”
“Yes, exactly right. And that will be the end of that. Then Sergeant Chikata and I will take him to the police station. What do you think?”
Hosiah nodded uncertainly once and then with more conviction. Dawson glanced at Christine, who was smiling but still looked concerned.
“Has he had lunch?” he asked her.
“He didn’t have as much as he usually does.”
“Are you hungry now?” Dawson asked Hosiah.
He nodded enthusiastically and Christine took his hand. “Come along. I’ll get you some more to eat.”
DAWSON RESTED HIS hand on Sly’s shoulder and guided him outside to the backyard. The boy was shaking and Dawson knew why. A sound beating was the only kind of punishment he had known while in the care of his ill-mannered uncle. Now he was fearful that his new father was about to continue the tradition.
“Tell me what happened,” Dawson said as they took shelter from the sun under an awning he had constructed a couple of years ago. “Start from the beginning.”
His gaze shifting around guiltily, Sly recounted how he had come home with Mama on Saturday while Dawson was next door helping the neighbor. He had noticed the folder on the sitting room table and, without giving it a second’s thought, had flipped open the cover. The picture of the severed head was the first and only thing he saw before he hurriedly closed the folder.
Today, after the boys had returned from the hospital with Mama and she was making lunch, Hosiah and Sly were talking about what time Daddy would be going to Takoradi. Sly had remarked that maybe he had already left because he had to keep it a secret that he was going to look for a
