Chapter 2
"You fool!" Chuma snarled at Biayi. "You want to waste your food on a useless old man? If you don't know what to do with it, I'll show you!"
He slammed the food into his own food box.
"But he's hungry," Biayi protested. "And we have more than enough for ourselves." He stretched the rest of his food to the old man.
"Give me that!" cried Chuma, wrestling the food away. "Let this dirty old thing go and work if he wants to eat!"
He crammed what was left of Biayi's lunch into his own food box.
Biayi scowled. "But this is unfair, Chuma. It's my food and I have the right to do whatever I want with it. This poor man is hungry!"
Chuma glared at Biayi. "If he's hungry, let him go and farm!" He turned to the man. "Get out of here - you toothless old vulture!"
He gave the man a kick that sent him tumbling into the bushes.
Biayi was aghast. "Chuma - are you out of your mind?"
"I can't stand the sight of old vultures like you!" Chuma raved, leaping into the bushes after the old man and giving him more kicks.
He broke a branch off a shrub and began to flog the man.
"Chuma!" Biayi leapt at him, trying to stop him, but Chuma knocked Biayi down and continued to flog fbd the old man.
"Clear out of here!" Chuma snarled at the man. "Disappear! Vanish!"
He didn't stop beating the poor old man until the man managed to hobble out of the cane's reach and duck into the bushes.
Biayi gaped at his twin. He had witnessed many of Chuma's acts of wickedness, but this was the Gorgon's head.
He shook his head in utter disbelief. "An old man, Chuma! A man old enough to be your grandfather - frail and feeble!"
Chuma licked his lips. "He should count himself lucky I didn't kill him." He grabbed his sack and food box. "Come on Biayi, I feel fully ziched now for snail-hunting. Come on!"
There was a wicked glint in his eyes and a large cruel grin on his face.
Biayi was still smarting over Chuma's awful treatment of the old man when they got to the snail territory at the river bank.
But Chuma just led out a whoop, and with a hop and a dash set about rooting for snails.
After several hours of snail- gathering, however, the sacks of both boys were only a quarter full.
"The snails all seem to have migrated," Chuma growled. "And it's well past lunch time. I'm breaking for lunch."
"Look!" Biayi uttered, sighting a huge snail in the undergrowth. He jumped over to it and rooted it out.
Chuma's eyes popped at the size. "It's mine!" He spurted. "It's mine!"
"What makes it yours?" Biayi countered, admiring the huge snail in his hands.
"I saw it first!"
"If you saw it first why didn't you go for it?"
Chuma struck Biayi in the chest with his elbow. "Shut up! It's mine because I say it's mine!"
He snatched the snail from his twin brother. "It's three times the size of anything we've got so far. And anything times three is mine - you know that!"
He thrust the snail into his sack and trundled off to a shady spot beneath a tree.
Sitting down, he opened his lunch box and gestured at the food. "Times three," he declared. "Mine.
"That's more than times three," protested Biayi, watching Chuma rip into the food.
"Is it?" spluttered Chuma, sending oil-soaked, saliva-drenched, half-chewed cocoyam shooting out of his over-stuffed mouth - to kill ants and other little insects in the way.
"Yes. You've got my food in there."
"I haven't."
"You have."
Chuma didn't say anything more. He just stuffed the food hastily into his mouth, as if the food was going to run away to Okokomaiko.
"Aren't you leaving anything for me?" Biayi asked anxiously, watching the food diminish.
Chuma hefted down a huge mouthful. "You want to eat?"
"Yes!"
"But you have no food - how can you eat?"
"I'm hungry!"
Chuma battled his eyelids. "You gave your food to the old man, remember?"
"That's my food you're eating, Chuma!"
"How can it be your food?"
"It's mine!"
"No. Don't you know what you have given out is no longer yours? This is the old man's food I'm eating!"
He tossed back his head and roared with laughter.
Join our facebook group for more stories
