PETER ORNER

Obadiah

Days pile high. We loaf long against the doors of our rooms. Obadiah’s on his back under the Mapone, his upper body in the shade, his lower in the full sun. He reads out loud from a week old Namibian that he is holding over his head like a tarp:

February 12. Kuisebmond Location, Walfish Bay: An as yet unidentified twelve year-old boy was found in the cemetery adjoining the playground of the Kgobetsi primary school at Kuisebmond West Location yesterday evening. Police estimate the time of death to have been between twenty-one hundred and twenty-three hundred hours Tuesday Night. The boy was found disemboweled.

Then, speaking not to us, not to anyone listening anyway, he says, “A reporter wrote that. Byline: Oswald Kambabi. The boy was found—First Oswald scribbled the word down on a pad at a police briefing. Then, later, back at the office, he typed out his copy.”

A lone finger rises and begins to peck the air.

T-H-E-B-O-Y-W-A-S-F-O-U-N-D-D-I-S-E-M-B-O-W-E-L-E-D.

“Oswald, did your hand tremble to type those letters? Or is such sentiment entirely vanished from the earth? Have we lost even the right, to be surprised, much less indignant? Antoinette prays to God. I pray to God. But there are new Gods now. Oswald Kambabi who types such things without trembling.”

And Obadiah begins to rock slowly from side to side under the Mapone. He lets go of the paper and drifts slowly down and covers his face. Chanting: The boy was found, the boy was found, the boy was found . . .

“Twelve years old,” Obadiah says. “Only the shit beetles who crawled all over what was left of him weren’t indifferent to that boy.”

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