Forgetting Silas

Silas is dead. And it’s entirely my fault.

I didn’t drown him in a tub of water or send hired guns after him but I killed him as surely as if I had held a knife to his throat and watched his warm blood gush out. I’ll tell you what happened, then maybe, just maybe, you would understand.





Silas was the epitome of a perfect student. I couldn’t account for his behavior at home but in school he was so quiet and polite. Never late, never rude, never fought, always neat, and he knew his place. Silas was fair almost to the point of being an albino. His nickname in school then was Silas White or Silas Marner. Like that book we read and stumbled over in Mrs Erusiafe’s literature class.

Secondary school seemed like a sub-section of hell then. Looking back now, it was actually a breeze but who could blame us? We were starry eyed children who couldn’t wait to get out of high school in our little town and gain admission into a university. Universities; those glorious places where you didn’t have to go to class if you didn’t feel like, you didn’t have to wear uniforms and bulky container shoes that turned your white socks black with polish and brown with sweat and dust. But the ticket that got us sold was that there were no canes, no punishments or floggings of any kind.

Jumoke’s sister beside my house said her boyfriend’s brother often bragged that they walked out of a class if the lecture or lecturer was proving too difficult and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them!

You don’t need a soothsayer to tell you why I passed my entrance exams at a go, the WAECs, JAMBs, Poly Jambs, Post- Poly Jambs, NECO, GCE and all. It was a tedious process because exams were not unified then and you had to visit the schools of your choice to take their entrance exams and revisit for their follow-up exams if your initial efforts were successful. This thing you called checking your results online? Nope. God help you if your school of choice was outside the state of your residence.

First year of university was easy. I settled in and made new friends, my secondary school friends were dropped because I had left them behind as they struggled to gain admission while I made it look like a cake walk. Needless to say, there were a lot of spiteful words and a few ruffled feathers that I had neither the time, patience or interest to calm or pacify. I had “arrived” and I definitely had bigger fish to fry.

This is year 3 and I when I was back home on one of my infrequent brief visits, my mother had loaded me up with so much goodies that taking a bike back to the bus stop was beginning to seem impossible so my father offered to drop me off. I am in the front seat of the car staring out of the window when I notice a familiar face flash by. It’s been three years but I would recognize him anywhere.

 “Silasssssss” I scream shrilly as I wave frantically.

There is a curious look on my father’s face as he strains to take a peek at the object of my attentions. That’s possibly the only thing I remember clearly because the others seem like a blur.

I also remember now that Silas has always had keen hearing, he is the only passenger on a commercial motorcycle and just as he turns back sharply in response to his name, he upsets the precarious balance of the Okada and the rider who is wrestling with the killer potholes in the road can’t right the motorcycle in time. I watch in what seems like an out-of-body experience as they execute a skillful somersault which anticlimaxes with cries of “Jesus, Jesus” and then silence. The end result is two broken necks and limbs bent in ways that would have a professional contortionist green with envy.

My father’s Jeep zooms past them while he mutters about the hold-up the accident would cause on his return trip. I sit in shocked silence and I am rigid like that till we get to the bus stop and my father puts me and my belongings on a bus straight to school.

I float on a haze of unbelief into my room. I am the only one there and that’s how I’ve always liked it but this time, I crave some company.  I take out my phone and dial my mother’s line. My voice is thick with tears and when she picks up, I burst out sobbing as I relate what had happened that afternoon and my unwelcome part in it. “I killed him mommy” I sob. I expected and desperately wanted soothing words of comfort but my mother’s actions are contrary to my expectations.

 “Shut up! You didn’t kill anybody. Did you stab him or break his neck? You didn’t even touch him. So how did you kill him? I don’t want to hear such nonsense from your mouth again. Wipe those tears off your face and warm the soup I packed for you. Warm that soup and don’t let it go sour. You hear me? I will call you tomorrow by God’s grace.”

 She rang off without even a farewell.

I didn’t go home for the rest of the year and when our mutual friends and classmates began to write touching messages on Silas’s Facebook wall, I switched off my phone and went out to the cinema for popcorn, movies and more popcorn.

Silas is dead and his life is over but I have mine to live.