They said Baba Kayode punched a man to death. We thought it was a lie, considering everything he did for us. Every Christmas, the whole village lined before his gate for small bags of rice and jerry cans of groundnut oil, and when our children were thrown out of school, he gave us money for school fees. He even bought wrappers for our wives that Christmas year. You know the year, the year rain flooded our farmlands and gulped up all the fish in the river, so we earned nothing from all our hard work. We were round-belly men with big-hipped wives, wives we couldn’t feed a balanced diet, wives we wanted to ride every night because despite all our daily toiling the bold thing between our legs was never tired. Our wives denied us mostly. No one couldn’t blame us. We were farmers. We were fishermen. We were simple men who, after a hard day's work, wanted to tap from the sea of sweetness our wives carried around in those juicy hips. How else were we supposed to release all the hardness life peppered us with? It was our small heaven.  

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The reason Baba Kayode killed a man was longer than the Nile River. The why passed down from Baba Kayode's security guards to his gateman, to the gateman’s girlfriend, to the girl’s family, then to us. 

Everything started when his wife, Mama Kayode—the only woman in the village who had never cooked or washed in her life, her skin butter-soft and yellow like the inside of a mango—dragged her bags back to her father’s house for reasons she refused to disclose to anyone including her parents. She said she needed time to herself, a marriage break. 

“A marriage break?” we gasped. 

We had never heard it. Maybe she was drunk, we said. Maybe all the body cream she used had made her mad, our wives said. A married woman stayed married except when the husband died. For someone rich like Baba Kayode, it wasn’t unusual to see them marry up to four wives, if not more. Mama Kayode had caged his heart. But her lack of competition triggered her nerve to leave his house. The village elders told him to marry one more wife and see if she wouldn’t run back, begging. Baba Kayode, being the gentleman he was, with a hand under his chin, exhaled and said he had no interest in marrying another wife. All that was set in his mind was to take care of his three sons and only daughter, Bisoye, spoilt and stubborn, living the carefree life of a lastborn. He feared she was turning wayward and required his third eye.

A month later, we caught the rumour that Mama Kayode was going out with Dr Bassey, a medical doctor who was a decade younger than her. We widened our eyes and saw them at the market buying foodstuff, at the river washing their clothes, at church, same church Baba Kayode attended. Always, they were hand in hand. Shameless. Baba Kayode tilted his head up as though he had seen nothing. But the village elders too saw and took the news to him. They asked him if he had held Mama Kayode’s hand like she did with Dr Bassey. Not in a long time, he said. The village elders shook their heads. Maybe she hungered for youthful love—hands-holding love, public love—but any man old enough to work had no time to hold his woman in public when he was supposed to be fishing or farming. This Dr Bassey was a lazy man who should never have anything to eat, who shouldn’t be entrusted with a woman. 

A year later, Dr Bassey left for London and Mama Kayode sought Baba Kayode at his house. She wanted forgiveness and to return home. It sounded simple. But it wasn’t. The rumour that whirled its way to us had it that she was pregnant, with only a few weeks to labour. Yet he embraced her, kissed her lips, and ordered his servants to take her bags inside and prepare for a party. His servants slaughtered two goats, brought out the oldest bottle of wine, and called the biggest musician in the whole village. His prodigal wife had returned home, he said. That night we horded into his large compound with our empty stomachs. We drank. We dined. We danced. And we took leftovers home. 

A month later, cries of death came from his compound. His prodigal wife and the baby had died during labour. Cause of death: haemorrhage. Big word for a big person. When people like us died, we died of simple words. A fall from a palm tree. Juju. Old age. 

After her burial, he shut down his multiple businesses. Inside his bedroom, he shut himself, refusing to see anyone. For months this went on and his sons looked after his businesses. The story of his wife became our village cautionary tale. We drew our daughters by the ear and told them to be faithful to their husbands if they didn’t want to die in labour. Every night, their ears drank our warnings. For years, our daughters married men and stayed married, afraid of losing their lives. Baba Kayode remained widowed, refusing to marry any of the women flaunting their hips around him. 

Years later, Dr Bassey, still a single man, returned and built a hospital, the biggest our village had ever seen. Bisoye, Baba Kayode’s daughter, now a nurse, got a job there. Baba Kayode didn’t want her to work there, for he said Dr Bassey killed her mother. Aside from being stubborn, she wanted the job because the pay was great and the hospital was more equipped than any of the village hospitals, so he granted her wish. A year later, Bisoye fell in love with Dr Bassey, and they got married against Baba Kayode’s warning. Baba Kayode denied the marriage his blessings and refused to attend the wedding. We too, angry, didn’t attend. We told all church priests we knew not to bless the marriage and they obeyed us. But Dr Bassey brought in a foreign priest, a white man, who smiled too much for a priest. 

A day after the wedding, Baba Kayode went to the market square, picked a built man, paid him a million naira and asked the man to let his body be used as a punching bag. Why? the man said. Baba Kayode said he needed to let go of the anger of losing his wife and favourite daughter to the same man. He said life had been unfair to him.

The man refused and gave him his money back. When Baba Kayode got home, he was told another man was at the gate, ready to be used as a punching bag. The man was let in, given a contract to sign (in case of injuries or death, Baba Kayode would be nonliable), given the money, and tied to a steel pole in the compound. From morning till evening, Baba Kayode punched. The man bled. Baba Kayode also bled. And cried. After, some of his guards held him back, for Baba Kayode kept falling, and the man was sent home with his money. The next morning, the man’s wife sobbed to Baba Kayode’s house and said her husband had died. 

We were trying to get down with our wives when we heard that the king had sent for him. We all filled up the palace. Our hearts beating on our palms, we prayed the king wouldn't hang him. Baba Kayode told his side of the story and everyone who witnessed it told the same story. 

“Why a man?” the king said. “You could have punched a punching bag instead.”

“It had to be a man because a man caused my suffering.”

“So, you admit to killing another man?”

Baba Kayode turned away from the king and gazed at our sweaty faces. He wiped off a tear along the edge of his eye. “Yes, I killed a man. I deserve to die too.”

“No,” we screamed and crowded behind him. The king signaled to his bodyguard to hang him. We circled him and told the king we won’t let this happen. 

“He doesn’t deserve to die,” we said. “You will have to kill us before you can hang him. And besides, the dead man signed a contract.”

The king waved his hand and granted him a pardon. We danced and took him home. 

The next morning, we found Baba Kayode in the bush, at the top of a mango tree. A noose hung from a branch. He tied his neck. His legs dangled in the air. 

“No.” We climbed the tree and gripped his wriggling body. He kicked and kicked at us. Tears snaking down his face. He told us to leave him alone, that life had been unfair to him, that he was a murderer and alone in this world. 

We held on to every scrap of him. We sang his praises: how we had survived because of him, how we couldn’t send our children to school without him, how our wives had new wrappers because of him. We told him we loved him, that we would die if he died. He gaped at us and stopped writhing. We brought him down and took him home, again. 

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