Fast and Furious Feet

"Sorry, kid. No breakfast," he added. He already had a big pile of papers on the TV table from preparing for work with maintenance records, schedules, part inventories, and order sheets.

A white honda cab took them with their luggage away. The cab was a base model with hand cranked windows and no AC. All the windows were cranked down. The shocks were worn low. Every deep in the road, the cabin nearly bottomed out on the shocks. Red dust was over the windshields. The wipers had carved a semi-clear area into it. This wasn't a pretty, shiny cab like the city cabs. The driver had driven in from the countryside. He was chewing on a toothpick. His hand was tapping on the car door from the outside while he drove. He had some rhythm in his head. The red dust even covered the inside of the car door, probably from driving with the open windows over dirt roads. A wooden scorpion was hanging by its tail from the rearview mirror. It was painted blue and red.

As they got away from the center of Kigali, the manicured yards stopped. There simply were no more discernible yards. The red dirt with a few light green grass patches was the same everywhere. The car did a thud as the shocks bottomed out, the tires continued on a dirt road - dry, soft, powdered, red dirt. The houses became groupings with empty space in between. The empty space was filled with those medium high trees with big tops and fluffy bushes.

"No more polisi," said the driver, while the tires rattled over a cattle guard.

Indeed, Boris hadn't seen any police cars in a while. With the windows open, he could listen to the ambient sounds. The people in the street had a sing song chattering here. There was an ease and liberty that was missing in Kigali. A guy walking down the street even flashed Boris a big smile. The guy massaged his head, seemingly to signal that he admired Boris's blond hair, apparently an uncommon sight in this all black country.

Just the spirit of the environment overcame Boris. He stuck his head out of the window. He felt the draft in his face. He had to squint against the air. He felt the cool draft gripping his cheeks. He felt his hair being tussled. It kind of felt alive to brave the window, to pull hard with his longs to overcome the draft sucking the air out of him. He smelled the red powder dirt in his nose. He smelled the vegetation, which vaguely smelled like pine needles. He felt like a boy on an adventure.

Mikhail seemed to feel the joy of adventure as well. Mikhail placed his hand on Boris' lap in a sign of father-son bonding affection. Mikhail could be a rock of love. Even without words, Mikhail's affection was very palpable. The stillness on his face with which Mikhail savored the moment said it all. Mikhail had a deep warmth in his heart. That's why his comrades savored his company. There was something so steadfast about the way that he joined ventures that it lifted everyone's spirit. An old friend used to say. Until Mikhail comes, it's simply doing something. But when he's there, it becomes a mission.

After an hour, the cab pulled onto the dirt spot in front of a small blue house. The front of the house was riddled by a hundred bullets. The distribution was very even like the shooters hadn't even aimed at anything in particular. After Mikhail paid the cab, he eagerly looked up close at the bullet holes. He felt the inside with his index finger. He turned the index finger around like a sommelier swishes wine around in his mouth.

"At least a decade old! The holes are no longer crisp. They have deteriorated and crumpled in this climate for a long time. From the size, it's probably a 9mm. From the depth, the gunpowder was stretched with filler to make the bullets cheaper. Those wouldn't even penetrate a Russian skull at point blank range," said Mikhail with a dismissive tone.

Mikhail led the charge to the door. Boris followed in the shadow of the hulking body of heft. Mikhail looked the doorframe up and down. There was a fly screen before the door. The door didn't have a lock for a key. It simply had a handle. Mikhail held both open. The fly screen and door opened in opposite directions. They created a kind of lock to pass through. The living room was tastefully and simply decorated. There was a simple table made from some wood planks. There was a couch. The windows let in some nice bright spots where the sun came in and also left some cool, dark spots without sunlight. The kitchen was visible from the living room. It was a simple, spartan kitchen with electric heating wires for a stove and a bare sink. The fridge was giant - not so much from being oversized but from being kind of old and having really thick walls.

The dining table had a note, two flip phones in a plastic packaging shell, and a black handgun with a magazine next to it. Mikhail threw one of the flip phone packages to Boris. "I text you, you text back," he ordered Boris, while he removed the barrel and looked deeply into it. Then, he slid the slide back to hear it snap. It flipped all the bullets from the magazine into his hand and inspected them for defects. With satisfaction, he re-assembled everything and put it into his waistband behind his back.

He ripped open the plastic package for the flip phone, while he read the letter silently. Boris watched him, waiting to hear if the letter was good or bad news. Mikhails phone turned on with a beep. Mikhail dialed a number from the letter, said, "Yes, we are here!", and hung up. Mikhail turned to Boris and said with a smile, "Someone is coming to make us food. There are no restaurants out here. That's your room over there, kiddo!"

Mikhail jumped a little bit. An alarm went off that sounded a bit like a beep, a bit like a whistle, and a bit like the suspenseful soundtrack of a spy movie. Mikhail stood there like a cowboy in a duel with his hands hovering over his imaginary holstered pistols at his hip. "I got a feeling tonight's gonna be a good night!" sang a voice in the master bedroom. Boris recognized the Black Eyed Peas ringtone and smiled at how it startled them.

There was rustling behind the door. A wide bellied woman waddled out with her knees pointing to the side and in pink slippers. She was wearing all kinds of wooden animals in her hair. "Welcome! I'm Uwimbabazi. I'm your housekeeper. I didn't hear you come in. I was taking a nap. I'll make you food now." She waddled on to the kitchen. She dialed a phone number and started talking without even opening a drawer.

The two were dazed that she kind of walked past them without reacting to them or waiting for a response. She seemed to almost sleep walk or not care at all. She seemed to think nothing of sleeping in their bed simply because it was pleasant to her. Mikhail went along and continued reading the letter on the table. Boris walked outside to find his two roll-on backs. He had to carry them across the dirt because the little wheel got stuck in the dry, grainy dirt. His muscles working made him a little huffy and puffy.

He kicked the door open to his room. There was a big anaconda coiled up on the middle of his bed. On closer look, it didn't have the pattern. It had the same fatty body and jaw, but the color on the body was more even, somewhere right between brown and olive green. He quickly closed the door and called out to Mikhail. A pot came down hard in the kitchen. Uwimbabzi appeared. She pushed Boris out of the way, went into his bedroom, and came back out with the snake tail in her hand, dragging the snake backwards with swift steps through the living room and out the front door. Once a couple yards away from the house, she spun in a circle and threw the snake all the way across the yard and over the street. The snake flew like straight stick through the air. Then Uwimbabzi went back into the kitchen, muttering, "It's only one snake. Stupid brown house snake. No poison."

Mikhail looked at Boris to exchange his opinion about what had happened with his eyes. And then he added with words, "Next time, grab it by the tail. If you walk fast enough, it lacks the belly strength to coil forward. No problem."

They unpacked in their own room. There was a sense of grounding to set up their new home and acquire familiarity to it. Boris stepped outside to take a closer look at the tree in front of his bedroom window. It was a little taller than he could reach. It had about fist sized pink flowers that were composed of curved petals about the side and shape of fake women fashion nails that are two inches long. When he reached his nose close enough, he could smell an almond-like smell coming from it. It was a bit heavier, a bit more wooden than almond smell. The smell also didn't linger. He had to get his nose really close to get a clear scent. As soon as he exhaled, the scent was gone.

After an hour, Mikhail and Boris were sitting on the couch waiting for food. Not having had breakfast and the midday sun already past, they were hungry. But Uwimbabzi was chatting on her phone in the kitchen and shooed them back out each time they tried to see what was going on. The boredom, the warmth, the tiredness, and the hunger held them in a stupor where they imagined that any minute food would come out of the kitchen but another hour passed.

All told, it was two hours until Uwimbabzi appeared with a big bowl of spaghetti and a small pot of tomato sauce. She placed it on the table without any plates or utensils and went back to the kitchen to chat on her phone. Mikhail reached with his bare hands into the spaghetti bowl. He dipped the nest of spaghetti strings into the tomato sauce pot. With the red sauce coating his fingers, he put them into his mouth.

"Srat tebe v rat," he cussed in Russian. "Those are a ten minute box of spaghetti and a can of cold tomato sauce. It took her two hours!!!"

Mikhail stormed into the kitchen, "You are fired! Get out of here! We'll cook our own food."

Uwimbabzi waddled out of the kitchen and out of the front door. That's the last time they saw her. She never stopped her phone conversation. She didn't even seem to change the conversational thread to tell the person on the other end what was going on.

"Boris, get us two cans of chocolate pudding. I saw some in the pantry. Make sure to wash the spoons before you bring them," ordered Mikhail.

Boris got up and did as he was told to. The pantry had cans that were still shrink wrapped together into palettes. He had to tear the hard plastic apart to get to the chocolate cans. After he had washed the first spoon, the water stopped coming out of the faucet. So he wiped his own spoon on his jeans. He kind of realized that the large pot in the sink was placed under the open faucet to catch any water should the water service resume running. So he did that.

"Blank slate. Blank canvas. Blank mind. No past. Unknown future. Present moment. Everything ahead a gain. No defense. Only offense. You can be anything. You can do anything. Anything is possible. Given two choices: a good choice and a gamble. The gamble always has more mystique. Here's to new beginnings!"

Right at sundown, his head had become sleepy. Without sunlight, there was no TV or computer game to keep him awake. He was also dog tired from the moving day. He went to bed at the first sign of nightfall. His eyelids heavy, he dropped instantly into sleep and instantly woke up into a vivid dream. The woman with the steam shrouded face shooed him to be still. Her arms were wrapped around his throat to restrain him. He realized that he was lying on her Indian style folded legs, looking straight up at her. She was bare chested again. He looked at that memorable shape of her areolas, that large cone shape, barely any nipple. His eyes feasted on the shape and curve of her round, teardrop shaped breasts. They were so perfect.

She seemed to be paying still, quiet attention to something down his body. His eyes slowly rolled down. He saw that he was naked. Then he noticed the scorpion walking down his thigh. His body tensed at the sight with panic. Reflexively, her arms tightened around his throat warning him to stay perfectly still or he would die. With his heart pounding in terror, he had to freeze in place and watch the scorpion crawl to the knee and crawl sidewaysaround the knee until it four finger width below the knee cap on the side. The stinger rose straight up into the air, completely uncoiled. The woman's arms wrapped tighter around his neck in anticipation of him losing his shit. He strained to breathe. The stinger came down and stung him. She was choking him to the point where he couldn't breathe, but he could tell that he had to be perfectly still now no matter his fear.

The sting wasn't as terrible as he had thought. He panicked about imagining the poison spreading through the blood vessel network in his body with each heart pump. The mystery woman eased her pressure just enough to let him breathe but held him right at the edge to let him know that he had to remain calm. The stinger came down again. The stinger started coiling up and stinging faster now. The scorpion was needling him like a sewing machine. The skin felt like a bright red sunburn - simply an irritating ache.

Then he noticed his skin turning black where he had been stung. There was a silver dollar sized black mark on his knee. It actually had the pattern of a deer. It was a tattoo. The scorpion was tattooing him. He felt like the woman was not harming him at all but caring for him by initiating him. Right as he started relaxing into the up and down welling burn of the scorpion stings, he felt an insect on his chest, then one on his arm, then one on his foot. There were a dozen scorpions all over his body, needling him. His whole body started turning black. The frenzy of scorpions adding onto his body and picking up the pace needling him alarmed him so much that he woke up. He looked out of the window. A hyena with gold eyes reflecting the moon looked back at him and ran off.

When he woke up in the morning, he felt equally deeply rested from a long night of sleep but also worn out from the vividness of his dream. The smell of fresh croissants made him stumble to the kitchen. Mikhail had found canned craft croissants. They were simply rolled up. They unrolled once the can was removed. All they needed was to be popped into the oven. Mikhail was already dressed in his mechanics outfit and had a toolbelt around his hips. Mikhail seemed excited about the day ahead.

After breakfast, they both walked out. Mikhail showed Boris the tarp that was hiding a dirt bike. Mikhail explained that the airport was about a mile away when heading in the direction of 17 degrees. Going in a straight line with a dirt bike was faster than following the streets. He seemed to leave out that he also wouldn't be hassled by police roadblocks. His office had furnished the house with the dirt bike. All Boris had to do was to follow the street half a mile in the opposite direction, make a right on the main road, and to keep walking until he would find the school house. With a vroom-vroom, Mikhail rode away into the savannah.

The walk down the streets was plain. There were only a few houses. And the landscape looked the same. His path was very level because the road had been designed to follow the valley floor. On either side were hills going up. They were soft hills, nothing rocky or pointy. They were simple elevation changes with very flat and wide tops. The school building was recognizable without a sign. The building was large with a playground of swings and slides in front of it.

When he entered the building, he saw that it was one very large room with wide open windows and slow moving fans in the ceiling to keep the air comfortable without an AC. The wall had a wide variety of drawings, maps, lecture notes, cabinets, and piles of things in between the windows. The inside of the giant room was filled with long tables and chairs all around.

The kids were of all ages from three year olds to twenty year olds. The sole teacher was walking in between groups. He'd sent five youngins outside to play. He'd tell a teenage girl to do a drawing lesson with a bunch of ten years old. He looked over the notes of a fifteen year old and approved them with an admiring smile. He handed a book from a closet to a young woman. He was like a magician multi-tasker, who kept about fifty kids all engaged and working on their own lesson. With only a minute of attention, he steered their activity to the next activity.

Hold on, the young woman. She looked about a year older than Boris, nineteen. Her hair was very long and woven into a single braid that tapered down her back and reached all the way to her butt cheeks. The lush blackness of the hair had a sexy, youthful vitality. She was trim and fit. What really caught his eyes was the shape of her boobs. Her whole body was wrapped up in a pink and purple body wrap that fit her like a snug dress. She was playing with frog green sandals hanging from her toes of the leg that was wrapped over the other knee. She rested her cheeks on her hands, which rested on the table top. Like that she was sipping on a coke bottle. It was a half liter glass bottle with a white straw. She drank so slowly, only a sip at a time, then she paused to read a whole paragraph from that new book, before she did a loud air slurp to suck up a bit of cola. It was like she was bragging that she was drinking a cola.

He wondered if that was the woman from her dreams. The boob shape seemed a close match. He could take a clear look at her face. Her cheeks were like two table tennis balls - about that size and roundness. The cheek shape and deep dimples made her appear very spirited - like a fast, unpredictable mind only out for its own amusement. She was tall for a woman, an inch taller than Boris himself. She seemed lean-muscular - nothing brutish, very feminine but also strong. Her earrings were two green boxes hanging from her earlobe, which was deeply pulled down. She glanced at him staring at her and then sucked on her cola like she wanted him to know that she was drinking cola, and that it made her better than other people. There was a strong pride in her sucking on that cola bottle.

The teacher interrupted his leering investigation, "You must be Boris. Welcome to our school! I'm so glad to have you."

"Oh, thank you! I've got my study material in my backpack. I'll be doing long-distance study with a school back home. They said that you could help me if I had questions and proctor any exams that I need to take. They instructed me to give you this introduction packet," explained Boris. He opened his backpack.

"First, this is your home now. Look around!" the teacher invited Boris. Boris looked around. He was back in class with six year olds. There was only one bangable woman of his age. There wasn't a single computer. "Second, if you would be very generous, I have a student who is a wonderful student but terrible at precalculus. Could you help him with trigonometry?"

"I guess so. I only had a C in precalculus, but I've made it all the way to Calculus II if that helps," replied Boris unsure about the whole thing of wasting his time on another student when he could be working on his own grade.

"Wonderful! You are heaven sent, my lovely Boris," said the teacher. It dawned on Boris that the appreciative act was a thing that was ingrained into the teacher. So he followed him to another table. There was not a boy, but a young man about five years older than Boris. The young man was three inches taller than Boris and two inches wider at the shoulder. The young man had a roughness about him like people did in school who got into lots of fights. There was a scar on the young man's face where the dimple was - a roughly stitched together affair. His bicep tendon stood out unusually much unlike the plumb muscles that weightlifting gives, he seemed to be strong and tough from some kind of rough work - not repetitive labor, but something that requires tackling something and quick, intense action.