Growing Tomatoes in Nigeria The Nigerian diet consist of rice, a hint of meat or vegetables, flavored by tomato sauce, yet this stable is mainly imported from China. Our friend Vicenç’s Catalan food company tills land for a tomato farm, employs hundreds of women, pays a good salary. Most give the money to their husbands. At least one uses the cash to buy a new motorcycle and a second wife. When the company digs a well in the nearby village of Wara so nobody has to walk miles to bring clean water, the local headman claims it as his own, charges everyone a fee. Beside the farm the company has a factory to process tomatoes into paste. The fresh economic activity arouses greed and envy. Everywhere Vicenç goes he is guarded by men carrying assault rifles. Thousands of acres are tended and a bountiful crop is ready to harvest. Out of the Niger state forest sweep hundreds of Boko Haram bandits on motorbikes to kidnap the European “experts” and hold them for ransom. Four policemen are killed, Vicenç and the other men flee. The tomatoes are left to rot in the fields. Should the company return? The factory is still intact, the fields can be planted again next year, but is this a governmental conspiracy to compel more payments for protection? Since Vicenç and his fellows are forewarned of the attack he suspects all this might be a vicious cycle to let the government pocket more kickbacks, Boko Haram launch more raids, while the people of Nigeria never get the cheaper tomato sauce they need. Vicenç, a Catalan name, is Vincent in English
Night Nurse Twelve-hours shifts in the ICU watching Covid-19 patients take their last dwindling breaths, while unmasked people standing vigil outside the hospital insist that their relatives on ventilators only have the flu. Local preachers praise God, who is stronger than any virus since true believers who pray to Him will never die. She inoculates people who say the syringe is empty, she must be getting kickbacks from Pfizer for peddling their fake vaccine. She is a hero in a war many in her town think isn’t happening, a hoax. At the grocery-store check-out counter they joke about those few who wear masks. Don’t take it serious, they say, it’s a Democratic plot, once Biden’s in office after the rigged election it will all go away. When someone comes off the ventilator and survives, people give all credit to God, not doctors, nurses, or treatments. It’s a miracle, not modern medicine, that saves them. They’re convinced the hospital claims it’s Covid not the flu to get more federal dollars. When one of her patients dies, she weeps until her ribs ache.
Odysseus Returns 1 Argos Argos is a puppy when Odysseus leaves his home to fight in the Trojan War, wander for many years upon wine-dark seas, visit distant cities, delve into the minds of many men, taste the favors of women and goddesses. When he returns disguised in beggar’s rags, the aged dog, left on a dung heap to die, hears his master’s voice, tries to wag his tail. Seeing this Odysseus strives in vain to hide his tears as Argos breathes his last. 2 Penelope By day Penelope weaves a shroud for Laertes she unravels by night thus keeping her suitors at bay just as she makes daily promises to the hundred men to enmesh them in a subtle web until Odysseus returns. She says it is a burial shroud for her father-in-law, but we know better. It is for her long lost husband, who for years has been weaving and unweaving his way home. When he appears as a ragged beggar crouched by the ashes in the fireplace the two exchange a warp and woof of words creating a verbal tapestry that affirms, in a way so sly it at first eludes her conscious mind, who he is. Only when he asserts who made their bed of mighty wood does she know for certain her true love is back.
*****
William Heath has published two poetry books, The Walking Man and Steel Valley Elegy (a third, Going Places, will be published next spring); two chapbooks, Night Moves in Ohio and Leaving Seville; three novels: The Children Bob Moses Led (winner of the Hackney Award), Devil Dancer, and Blacksnake’s Path; a work of history, William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest (winner of two Spur Awards); and a collection of interviews, Conversations with Robert Stone. www.williamheathbooks.com
