Abeo pondered whether he preferred Manaus at night or during daylight. Night weather was slightly more pleasant, but his work was worse.
Besides walking a lot more, it took longer to get used to all the disgusting odors of his work. In daylight, however, his senses were hardly offended, but it was the insane heat he couldn’t just get accustomed to.
He had certainly experienced hot days in Nigeria, but none of them as hot as Manaus. In the lands where he grew up, any breeze was a relief from heat, and so was sitting under shade. But in Manaus, instead of cooling, the winds felt like they were warming him up, almost like getting too close to boiling water.
Even under shade, two minutes after washing himself, he always felt soaked in sweat. Is being cool even possible in this city? Abeo thought with frustration.
Despite the heat, he had to carry on with his work. With his backpack on, he transported boxes of fruits and vegetables from trucks to street fair stands. Luckily, this demanded even less concentration than my night gig.
The main thing Abeo hated about his mindless work was that when his mind was idle, it wandered back to the days in Nigeria. His narrow escape when his fellow miners tried to lynch him… the withering gaze of both his mother and father that told him they too saw him as a useless, pathetic creature that was never worthy of their love.
These thoughts were always followed by concern when his baby sister, Shanumi, came of age. Poor as we are, she will surely be auctioned and then... he shuddered to think what would happen.
Today, however, different scenes were flickering in his mind. Stubborn visions of that orangish-red beard continued to plague him. The tattoos on his neck, all that fur under the silk shirt, his thighs, and even that big bulge between them. And those eyes!
He yearned to know the color. The events the night before had happened too far away to see and it’d been too dark to tell. The vision and his yearning were still there, fresh, and crystal clear. It was certainly not the first time something like that had happened, but it was getting more and more frequent since he had come to Brazil and it had never been that strong, to the point that it felt like the very ground under his feet disappeared. He felt so lost.
Was it... fear? Yes. But, not of being found out. Abeo was profoundly afraid that he would never feel anything like that again—not even once—for anybody.
More alarming, Abeo knew he didn’t want anybody else. “You are dumb,” he chastised himself out loud. The odds of seeing that man again were low, very low, and even if there was a very faint chance of meeting him again, from a distance, at that very same place, it would solely be to see him hugging one of the women who spent the night showing off her naked boobs.
Abeo wondered what he’d do if he bumped into that stranger and found himself face-to-face. What would he be tempted to do? While carrying banana boxes, he envisioned himself giving the redhead a tight hug, tracking the scent of that beard, of that neck, of that chest full of fur. He wanted to feel that tattooed skin, those muscles, those thighs, that... that bulge. He wished he could massage it, to really feel if it was as warm as he had imagined. He wished he could...
He shook his head to prevent himself from thinking about what he wished for any longer. He knew what any man would do to him if he ever acted that way. And despite the fact he doubted the redhead would be able to hurt him, just the thought of the disgust his face might show was way more painful than any physical harm he might try to inflict upon him.
Abeo dragged his body between the trucks and the stands, as he carried boxes and boxes with his downcast, distracted eyes. At least up to the point where he would come across a pair of white feet in sandals. The polished toenails told him they belonged to a woman. At first, this would not catch his attention, but as soon as he stepped right, to dodge them, the feet did just the same. And when he returned to the left, trying once again to dodge them, the feet followed the movement, blocking him again.
There was not much to do other than raising his eyes a little. What he saw was a middle-aged woman, with long blond hair and in a loose, short dress.
“Hello, big guy,” she said in crystal clear English. As he only tried to dodge her, she then again blocked his way and crossed her arms around her torso. She inquired, “So? What’s your name?”
“Abeo. Sorry, miss, I must carry on my work.”
“How much do you make, Abeo, carrying boxes back and forth?”
“I... I don’t know exactly. Ten... ten reais... I guess.”
“Well, I know a job where you’ll be making much, much more.”
That definitely called Abeo’s attention.
“And what do I have to do?”, he asked.
“Well... I can’t tell you this here,” she answered with a grin.
Abeo studied his boss’ angry look at the end of the corridor. That talk was talking too long.
“Well, lady... I have to carry on working. My boss is already getting irritated.”
“I assure you that, if you come with me, you will make much more money than with your boss.”
“But, then what comes after?”
“After what?”
“I work with him every day. And I need to save money every day.”
“How much do you need to save?”, she questioned.
That was a number Abeo never forgot. And maybe... maybe there could be some hope. “Thirty thousand. Thirty thousand reais.”
The woman displayed another smile and responded, “Working for me, you make this much in three weeks.”
Abeo felt his heart freeze. Was that really taking place?
“And what is it that I have to do?”
“To start off, drop this box and follow me.”
“It’s not any kind of criminal gig, is it? I won’t get into trouble with the police, will I?”
“No, it is nothing criminal,” the woman smiled, putting her sunglasses and hat on, moving away. As he did not follow her straight away, she turned to him and insisted, “So? Are you coming?”
Abeo ran to his former boss carrying a box, apologized in English and Hausa, left the box on the ground, and ran to reach the blonde. Followed her through the crowd up to a less crowded downtown street, just by the cathedral. They came up to a silver luxury car. She opened the driver door and cued him, with a head nod toward the door, on the other side.
Abeo had already opened the door when he heard howling and whistling coming from the street market, people gathering around something. Not fully figuring out exactly why, he stopped, with a cold and shrunken heart, watching all that happening right before his eyes.
“Shall we?” the lady insisted.
“What’s going on?” he muttered, in Hausa.
Just as if she understood, the blonde answered, but in English, as she started the car, “It must be another Brazilian guys’ petty brawl. They love watching others using their fists. So, big boy? Shall we go?”
He then looked again toward the uproar. His heart was beating faster and faster, his hands in a cold sweat. Was he... afraid? If so, why didn’t it even cross his mind to just leave all that behind?
Then, in the crowd, some people started screaming and rushing, in panic. That’s when Abeo was overwhelmed by a dreadful urgency, like if somehow little Shanumi was lost in the uproar, her life hung by a thread. He only noticed he was walking towards the tumult, leaving the car behind, when the blond woman sounded the horn and yelled his name.
“We must go now!” she insisted.
He stopped and studied her for an instant, open-mouthed. He knew it was complete nonsense, but he had to find out what was happening in the street market. He would start stuttering lame excuses, when she pulled a pistol, and pointed at him, emptying it.
All the thirteen projectiles hit Abeo right in the chest, neck, and shoulder. They weren’t bullets. They were tiny darts, a little bigger than watermelon seeds, but they did get buried on his skin. Quickly, his vision went dark, his legs wavered and he fell to his knees.
Everything afterward happened rapidly. At the same time, his vision focused once again and was rich in detail, a wave of power flooded his chest, spine, legs, and arms. He did not attempt to remove the darts, he just wanted to flee as fast as he could. After all, he hadn’t yet been impaired, neither would he wait to get hit by another round of those things.
Even before he could get up again, the tumult of the street market had already reached the cathedral. Amidst all the shouting of the passersby, the blond woman yelled, “Drop the Hammer Exos!” Meanwhile, she left the car and loaded another magazine into the pistol. She emptied the gun again, but this time Abeo could tell they were bullets, not darts. Each shot was a deafening rumble that caused the crowd, in panic, to clear a space between Abeo and the woman. The loads hit him as hard as strong horse kicks, painful as hell as they got buried on his skin, but they didn’t manage to knock him down. As with the darts, the bullets got stuck right where they hit, but they didn’t make him feel dizzy. He continued to stand up and turned to the street market, when he saw five odd looking machines falling around him, opening up craters on the blacktop. At first, he assumed they were tractors, but he quickly realized: tractors had wheels, not legs and arms like those things. And specially, not guns like the ones pointing at him now.
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