A catalyzed, malnourished, and self-evident coldness from the grief of his father’s recurring waist-down paralysis he accidentally encountered before the toll gate massacre, and his brother’s death after the toll gate massacre – a disastrous, unhinged season alongside the coronavirus pandemic. Once the episode was triggered, everyone stood on their toes. It didn’t matter to him but to his sons. “Your father cannot die like this. He sacrificed everything for you and your twin brother before he died,” his mother would say; an emotional blackmail to carve in and out his choices. June knew his mother knows something about his father’s paralysis. But she never mentioned it. Perhaps, her case was also different. Their cases were different.
“My case is different,” June’s father would recite. A few years before paralysis, it became his watchword. On a warm Friday, he applied for the position of receptionist at a prestigious hotel in Lagos. Fifty applicants were shortlisted for the interview on a Monday, and the Sunday sermon in church, a day before, was tagged ‘My Case is Different.’ His faith rose to the highest pinnacle and then his case was eventually different. He was rejected for the role. Months later, he became a Federal Road Safety Corps Member, posted to Ikare in Ondo State.
He was loved; dedicated, and punctual at the highway checkpoints. After tedious administrative strategic brainstorming with the police officers and the soldiers, the checkpoints mounted to three on the Ikare highway, five kilometers from one another.
“Mummy!” June yelled. “Please come to the locker room. I am here.” The concrete floor rumbled at the sporadic steps of his mother’s gait from his father’s room. “Why didn’t you tell us that Daddy was a thief?” He pointed at a roughed, dust-ridden newspaper, emblazed with a headline – The Federal Government of Nigeria dismissed three Federal Road Safety Corps Members for theft and murder in Ondo State: Page Thirty-Four. He opened the page and saw his father’s image alongside two other unknown faces. June’s mother was aghast and she imagined disappearing into his brain and discarding the discovery.
“Do not call your father like that,” June’s mother snapped, adamantly, and smacked his right shoulder.
“Keep hiding your husband. I am going to school. Keep hiding him until the truth blows up. I do not understand the reason you keep hiding him,” His voice shook and his eyes became laden with unsolicited tears. After Ken was killed at the toll gate by those soldiers, whose children will also be killed, nobody made the case for us. Ken just died like a chicken. And now, your husband has a history of theft,” June recited, held the dust-ridden newspaper, and gestured with his left index finger at his father’s face. The locker room became a justice court. June’s father heard from his room and then called.
“Your father is calling you,” his mum said and grasped his left hand. “Are you deaf? I said your father is calling you.”
“Never! I will not go in there and talk to a thief, who always told us never to keep anything from him and you. But he kept this from us.”
“Are you out of your senses, you this boy?” his mum snapped at him with groaning in her voice and tears in her eyes. “Get out! Always behaving like a bastard son.” June angrily dropped the newspaper on the floor. The pages flipped swiftly in the air and landing on the floor, page thirty-four was glamorously opened.
June walked to his father’s room and saw him in the bed. He imagined dazing him with some slaps to reset his memory for committing a crime that, who knew, bounced back at his twin brother, Ken. There was something outrageously boring, interesting, and beautifully sad about the discovery of his father’s history as a Federal Road Safety Corps member at Ikare, who assisted highway automobile accident victims – drivers and passengers – of both private and public traveling vehicles at, or relatively close to his checkpoint. His faithfulness, compassion, and empathy for the victims by calling for an ambulance, garnered fame at the headquarters. Everybody knew about his loyalty to the saving of lives. A few reports would emerge, subsequently afterward about the missing of either driver’s or passengers’ phones, pieces of jewelry, accessories, money, and other valuables. June’s father and his two colleagues at the checkpoint, before legal interrogation on each omen, would share the stolen belongings after each ambulance paramedic intervention, and then call for a towing vehicle.
The police officers were known for collecting what was called ‘Pay your tithe to the police. Police are your friend.’ Then, the soldiers joined. No one thought about the Federal Road Safety Corps because they did not look like one. But June’s father became one; his case was different. Once, he attended a crusade at his church’s provincial headquarter, also tagged ‘My Case is Different.’ A month later, salaries were delayed and his colleagues wrote letters to the office administrative head. He was admonished to write but he declined. “My salary cannot be delayed. Don’t you know that my case is different?” he would say. His colleagues laughed at him to scorn at each headquartered meeting.
‘My case is different’ when the posting came out. ‘My case is different’ when the toll gate protest became acidimetrically heated and took his son’s life. June’s father’s case was indeed different when salaries were paid but not his. And instead of writing, he prayed and cast out the demons involved in the delay. Were the demons not aware that his case has always been different?
“My son,” June’s father said and hand-directed him to sit at the upper edge of the bed. His mother stood at the entrance. “It’s not what you think. It is the devil’s handwork.”
“There goes the national anthem again,” June said, dismissively.
“Will you shut up?” his mother snapped. June’s father waved his right hand, to tranquilize his wife. “Omo buruku. Stupid boy.”
“I did all because of you and your brother,” June’s father recounted, regrettably. “I wanted the both of you to have a good life. I did not want you to suffer as I had. I did not want you to depend on salaries because I knew that salaries can never and will never make both of you wealthy. I don’t want you to be complacent. I want you to be independent.”
“The reason for your theft?” June asked. His eyes were sunk into exasperation cuddled with desperation and curiosity. The combination of past, present, and perhaps the future. “Wait Daddy, how did you come about this paralysis? I only came back from school and then met you like this.”
“Should I tell him?” June’s father looked at his wife, and she abruptly tilted her head in refusal for divulgence. June caught his mother’s refusal. “Mummy. So you don’t want him to say anything about it right? No problem. Keep it to yourself.”
“Sit down my son,” his father said. “Your anger is different from mine. I was angry at everything when I was your age. I had an accident while driving.”
“How?” June asked. “You don’t have a car, daddy. I never saw you driving a car and I only met you like this last year, when I travelled back for the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, before the toll gate protest against police brutality. So, how come?”
“It’s enough, my husband,” June’s mother interrupted. “The time is far spent. My husband, please enough of this.”
“Allow me to tell him the rest of the story,” June’s father insisted as if he was cooked some fatigue and asked to dissect it with a fork.
“I said enough of the story,” June’s mother dissented. “Both of you will continue later. Mr. June, I need to attend to my husband. You can start going back to school.” June left the room in haste, upset. There was an unfinished task, an unaccomplished mission basking inside of him.
“Honey,” June’s father said to his wife. “Why didn’t you let me just tell him that I had an accident on the same Ikare highway road, with a stolen vehicle we had apprehended at an accident scene?”
“June is too young for all these. Please, when the time comes, you will tell him. By the way, the governor called for parents of the toll gate victims. I will attend the meeting,” June’s mother said.
“I miss my son, Ken,” June’s father sobbed. “I miss him so much. He should not have died.”
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Celestine Seyon Reuben, professionally known as Celeyon grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. He is a young and promising Creative, Academic, Research, and Content Writer and Producer, who illuminates the complexities of human experience in works and publications inspired by events in his native Nigeria and Africa. Celeyon explores the intersection of the personal and the public by placing the intimate details of the lives of his characters within the larger social and political forces in contemporary Nigeria and Africa. His work has appeared in various publications including The Triumph Newspaper, Readsy Page, Writers Space Africa Magazine, and his website – Humane Letters From Celeyon. His Story “Anywhere Belle Face” was included in the May 2024 Edition of the Writers Space Africa (WSA) Magazine, themed, Rwanda. His most recent story “Item 7” was shortlisted for the 2024 TWEIN Recreate Contest. Celeyon is currently working on his debut novel and debut short story collection.
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