Little Bee

The wounded man stepped so close to me that I felt the sand sink under my feet from his weight. He ran his finger over my shoulder, over my bare skin, and he said, “What do we want? We want…to practice…our English.”

The hunters exploded into laughter. They passed around the bottle again. For a moment, when one of them raised the bottle, I saw something with a pupil staring out of it. It was pressed up against the glass. Then the man put the bottle down, and the thing disappeared back into the liquid. I say liquid because I didn’t think it was wine anymore.

Andrew said, “We have money, and we can get more later.”

The wounded man giggled and made a noise like a pig, which made him giggle more. Then his face set suddenly into an expression of complete seriousness. He said, “You give me what you got now. There is no later.”

Andrew took his wallet from his pocket. He passed it to the wounded man. The man took it-his hand was shaking-and he pulled out the banknotes and threw the wallet down on the sand. He passed the money behind him to the men, without looking or counting. He was breathing very heavily and there was sweat running down his face. His neck wound was wide open. It was green blue. It was obscene.

I said, “You need medical attention. We could get help for you at the hotel.”

The man said, “Medicine not fix what these girls have seen. These girls got to pay for what they seen. Give me the girls.”

I said, “No.”

The wounded man looked at me, astonished. “What you say?”

“I said no. These girls are coming with us to the compound. If you try to stop them, our guard will shoot you.”

The wounded man widened his eyes in an indulgent simulacrum of fear. He put both his hands on the top of his head and turned himself through two shuffling circles on the sand. When he faced me again he grinned and said, “Where are you from, missus?”

“We live in Kingston,” I said.

The man cocked his head and looked interestedly at me.

“Kingston-upon-Thames,” I said. “It’s in London.”

The man nodded. “I know where Kingston is,” he said. “I studied mechanical engineering there.”

He looked down at the sand. He stood in silence for a moment. Then he moved, and it was very quick. I saw his machete go up, I saw the blade flash in the rising sun, I saw a tiny flinch-that was all the guard had time for. The blade went into the guard’s throat and it rang. It rang when it struck the bones of the neck. The metal was still ringing when the man yanked it out and the guard dropped into the sand. The blade rang, I remember, as if the machete was a bell and the guard’s life was the clapper.

The killer said, “You ever hear a noise like that in Kingston-upon-Thames?”

There seemed to be more blood than one skinny African boy could possibly have had inside him. It went on and on. That guard lying there with sand covering his eyeballs and his neck gaping, as if it was hanging on a hinge, wide open. It looked like a mouth. This very calm, middle-class voice in my head said: Pac-Man. Pac-Man. Oh gosh, he looks just like Pac-Man. We all stood in silence as we watched the guard bleed to death. It took the longest time. I remember thinking, Thank god we left Charlie with my parents.

When I lifted my head, the killer was watching me. It wasn’t a mean expression. I have seen checkout girls look at me like that when I forget my reward card. I have seen Lawrence look at me that way when I tell him I have my period. The killer was watching me with an expression, really, of mild annoyance.

“This guard died because of you,” he said.

I must have felt things, back in those days, because tears were running down my face.

“You’re crazy,” I said.

The killer shook his head. He made a steeple of his fingers around the handle of the machete, held it up so that the point aligned with my throat, and eyed me sorrowfully along the trembling axis of the blade.

“I live here,” he said. “You were crazy to come.”

I began to cry then, out of fear. Andrew was shaking. Kindness began to pray in her tribal language.

“Ekenem-i Maria,” she said, “gratia ju-i obi Dinweni nonyel-i, I nwe ngozi kali ikporo nine na ngozi dili nwa afo-i bu Jesu.”

The killer looked up at Kindness and he said, “You will die next.”

Kindness looked back at him. “Nso Maria Nne Ciuku,” she said, “yo nyel’anyi bu ndi njo, kita, n’ubosi nke onwu anyi. Amen.”

The killer nodded. He breathed. I heard the cold surf in ebb and resurgent. The brown dogs left off the carcass of the killed dog and they came closer. They stood with their legs trembling and their hackles up, the blood stiff on their fur. The killer took one step toward Kindness but I did not think my mind could survive seeing the machete cut into her.

I said, “No. Please…please, leave her alone.”

The killer stopped and he turned to me and he said, “You again?”

He was smiling.

Andrew said, “Sarah, please, I think the best thing we can do here is to…”