The city of Manaus was still asleep in a dark sweat-drenched night. Along a downtown boulevard, a black man walked. Extraordinarily large and tall, he carried an old doorless refrigerator on his left shoulder. He stopped by each trash can, gathered all the bags and tossed them inside his box.
His name was Abeo Bankole and he had been doing that for months now. His large, strong hands worked on autopilot allowing his mind to drift from his reality to his old life in the Nigerian mines. Thoughts of family he’d left behind often filled his thoughts. They were the reason why he couldn’t return... he cringed as he thought of the lynching he’d barely escaped.
The garbage truck’s motor drew his mind back to present times as the radio announcer spoke in Portuguese, “You’ve just listened to Nazareth, ‘Love hurts’ in your ‘Dawn of Manaus.’” The announcer said. “And right before that, we played Paula Fernandes’ ‘Fire Bird’. It is 04:37, now we’ll listen to…”
The thrust back into reality had startled him. Quick as he could with the gigantic metal box still on his shoulder, he rushed down the rest of the block to finish his job.
Abeo returned to where the street began and waited for the garbage truck to come. He’d learned the hard way that it was best to keep his head down when you’re the height of a giant... and black. Of course, the fact he didn’t have legal papers to be working didn’t make him any more confident.
With little effort, he lifted his metal box to dump its fetid content into the wooden container designed for the job. A uniformed man on top of the container started spreading the recently dumped litter.
Abeo rushed to the next street with the big metal box on his back. Meanwhile, two men, also in uniform, walked to the truck calmly talking to each other. Their Portuguese strongly marked with Manaus accent made it difficult for Abeo to understand.
“Yu still goin’ in the stews today, Jackson?”
“Too hared up, bro!”
Abeo got too far away to hear the rest of their conversation, but he didn’t need to. Every night was the same: both in Nigeria and Brazil, drinking and pussy was all other men seemed to care about. Abeo, somehow, couldn’t relate to them. In fact, hearing those men talking and laughing like that always made him uncomfortable. So, leaving those guys, even for only a while, was kind of a relief. But now he had to go back to the truck and his respite from their manliness was over.
From the container top, the worker burst into laughter catching Abeo’s attention before inquiring, “Yu is indeed real gonna spen‘all your salary on pussy and booze egen?”
The giant man already knew the answer of the two garbage men. He didn´t know the exact words, but was sure they would indeed spend all their money in the “stews”. But that night, the man on the truck back complained about how the other two were always leaving work earlier.
“Why help, Juelcio? That ol’fredge on his back, the big black fellow there can handle this job for we all!” commented one of them, pointing with the chin towards the foreign man.
Bashful, Abeo understood enough to realize they were talking about him. Although, he wasn’t exactly sure about what was said, he could imagine they were speaking about his old rags, dirty and torn, or about his big curly hair connecting to his thick tangled beard which he thought resembled a mane more than human hair. Never in his whole life had he resembled a critter so closely, not even when he worked in the mines.
They could, as well, surely, be commenting on how big and clumsy he was, practically a cripple, he said to himself, remembering the taunts from the bullies in his homeland.
He didn’t begrudge them though, what else would they call him? The tallest normal sized men in his village would only reach his chin, and that’s if they were on their tiptoes.
Then there was his belly. Abeo sighed as he thought of it. Big and bulky as if it were a muscle apart. The miners in Nigeria at times said that was fruit from snail worms. Other times, when his countrymen were angrier, they tortured him with false allegations of stealing rations and beer from the pantry.
The man on the dumpster laughed out loud bringing Abeo back to the present once again. “Yu is son of a mare, that’s what yu is!”
From inside the cabin, the driver yelled, “C’mon, Juelcio! Efter that Big Joe caime in yu ain’t go down from the containar no more, this I kno, see?”
Jackson, one of the other garbagemen, hurried close to the driver, hopped on the doorsteps and murmured, “Yu gut tha muney, Osmar? Us wiw stey hiere in the stews.”
“Yu fogot that weige advences, huh?”
“That peenots? Ain’t that all peyd off?”
“Onli in two wiik.”
Jackson glanced at Abeo, as he moved toward the other street, before whispering to Osmar, “Ok, thun gimme hef of Abeo’s wiik pey.”
“Yu nouts, bro?”
“I gut this gig for hin, yo. For me, he lend this muney, no probrem pel. Yu kno haw gringoes are gud for nufin.”
As Abeo walked back to the truck, the old fridge full of plastic bags, Jackson walked past him, money in his hand, following Joziel. He yelled in his very poor English, departing already, “Thenk yu, Abeo. I now use my parte of giving you worky.”
Surprised, the Abeo watched them move away from the truck, take two of the many semi-naked women by the hand who were waiting at the street corner and began pulling them into a bar.
He stood there still for an instant, not knowing what to think. He didn’t speak English well, and didn’t speak Brazilian at all. So, the English he thrust at him was so poorly spoken Abeo wasn’t sure what he’d actually said. From the way he took the money, however; Abeo was sure he’d said he was going to take a cut of his pay for getting him the job?
Before he could get angry, his thoughts vaporized as his gaze fell on a man who stepped out of the shadows and stood at the end of the street. His fierce eyes fell on Abeo causing him to freeze and the breath rush from his lungs.
The stranger’s gaze was intense, raging even but also... beautiful? Abeo shook his head and lowered his eyes in shame. He wondered if the stranger could read his sinful attraction. Abeo warred with the conflicting emotions. On one hand he felt the need to avert his gaze, and on the other he wanted to stare at the man in front of him.
The desire to see the stranger won out. He felt helpless to do anything other than stare at the man’s features. His trimmed mustache and fire-red beard framed his mouth, mesmerizing Abeo. His desire deepened when he noticed heavy black tattoos lurking beneath the red-head collar. It was rare for Abeo to see tattoos in Nigeria, they were still mostly taboo among his people. Was that why he found them so attractive on this man?
As Abeo’s eyes traveled down the man’s body, they landed on his tight pants, which revealed strong legs, like you’d expect to see on a robust soccer player. Abeo’s face flushed as his eyes drifted between his legs, as he discovered an unhidden bulk. His tongue moved out to moisten his lips, just as the man turned fully facing him now. Sweat popped out on Abeo’s forehead as he imagined for the first time what it would feel like, taste like if he put his mount on the man in this sensitive place.
He withdrew into himself then. He really did have wicked thoughts.
Abeo’s heart stopped when the truck honked its horn. He looked back to Juelcio, who was waving to him from the top of the dumpster. In broken English Juelcio demanded he rush and get his job finished.
Even then, he took the time for one last glance at the red-haired guy. He watched the man pull one of the whores by her waist toward the bar where his coworkers had gone just moments before.
A cold bitter void grew bigger inside Abeo’s guts. Despite not admitting rightfully to himself, he knew why that scene was such a hurtful one for him.
It was a reminder that, deep down inside, he was destined to live a lonely life, as the abomination he was. For all his faults excuses could be made up, but not for this one major flow. Both his father’s and his mother’s religion dictated, his life was doomed in this world as well in the next.
The truck honked again and Abeo ran towards it, the box bounding on his back. He needed to focus. The last thing he needed was for these Brazilians to sense his perversion, or worse, that the red-haired man perceived it.
He was already paid less than the other garbagemen, so what would happen if they discovered his depravation?
This was exactly why he needed to stop thinking about the redhead. The petit Shanumi depended on the money he was scraping. Even as he toiled, he knew it would take months to get enough. She did not have months.
As dawn broke, the driver handed Abeo both a roll of cash as well as a bread roll wrapped up in a plastic bag. He put the money away in an old backpack, headed to the river bank and quickly bathed. As he rushed to his other job, he was trying to guess how much he was being charged for that roll of bread and whether he really needed that or not. Not that they’d given him a choice.
Saving his little sister was Abeo’s top priority. Nevertheless, he often caught himself wondering if he’d ever catch another glimpse of the handsome redheaded man with all the tattoos.
****
Meanwhile, a United States Colonel entered his expensive hotel room on the other side of Manaus. When the phone rang, the Colonel recognized the number from his superior officer in DC.
“Colonel Walker, we analyzed your reports. Are both your targets still in Manaus?”
“Yes, sir!”
His superior responded, “You’re authorized to pursue.”
“Sir, projections of Brazilian casualties are expected to be massive, especially if we try to apprehend both of them at the same time.”
“We’ll work it out. Don’t fuck this up, Colonel. If you do, it’s on you.”
“Understood, sir!”
Walker ineffectively set the AC even cooler. With a confident smile, the Colonel fell into his chair. With a bit of luck, capturing these two men would be his ticket back home.
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