Not What Father and Son Discussed
“I’ll train you and you train your little ones, is that okay?”
At first, Amos nodded his acceptance, then spoke up.
“I’ve heard you, Daddy”
“Fine,” said Mr. Nnodi. To him Amos’ affirmative reply was as profound as a solemn oath to perform an agreed deed. Now, Amos would have no excuse to give for ditching his younger siblings in time of need. He, Amos, had been stripped of the right to dream up reasons why he couldn’t be of financial assistance to his brother anxious to receive one from him in the future.
Mr. Nnodi was a firm believer in the age-old practice among his people of exclusively training the eldest child in order to ably invest him with the responsibility of doing the same to his younger siblings - in Amos’s case, Chinecherem, Onyemachi, and Jonathan, three of them.
Predictably, Mr. Nnodi’s training of Amos took the shape of signing him up, after his primary education, for a five-year apprenticeship with a kinsfolk of his and dealer in second-hand cars and motor spare parts. On why it had to be the importation and sale of second-hand cars, Mr. Nnodi observed, chuckling, “These people never lack enough to eat, drink and discard!”
Mr. Nnodi couldn’t have managed sponsoring Amos further than he had done in Academics. One thing might lead to another: the temptation to extend Amos’ training to the tertiary level and make him a degree holder, after dragging him through a post-primary school career, all at the expense of their original plan of an earliest attention to the career prospects of his younger ones.
“And talking about degree holders, haven’t they begun, dishonorably, to lose out in the labour market, often ending up as shameless dependents on the same person who had painstakingly funded their tuition?”
The serious barriers to Amos induction into the second-hand cars dealership would have been posed by his mother with her high rating of the Tailoring Trade and earnest wish that Amos give it a trial; just that her husband, Mr. Nnodi, could authoritatively condemn the idea, accusing her of plain overestimation of the not-too-fantastic profits tailors would make at festive periods of the year.
For two years, Amos was performing the very easy tasks of the trade for which he was apprenticed to Chief Chiguzo- a dealer in fairly used vehicles, namely, opening their business premises to customers at 7:30 am, tidying up the premises, receiving payments for purchased cars and parts and running emergency errands for the chief in connection with the business. Then, from his third year, with the chief’s official consent, he began to shuttle between their offices at Onitsha and Apapa in quest of their shipped vehicles and the clearance procedures for getting them released. It became a period for him to start noting the careless differences between the make and quality of otherwise similar motor spare parts they sold to interested buyers.
Without tear nor strain, Amos lasted out his tenure of apprenticeship under Chiguzo. It proved to be an enriching five-year of meritorious service, but also close watching of the trends on the automobile world.
As painless was his rise to greatness in the same business, while on his own at neighboring Asaba. He became pretty comfortable, pretty rich and later strikingly so.
It was as if Mr. Nnodi -now late- had done his calculations too well by pushing him into the business.
By now, Amos had fully developed a weakness for the flattering military salutes his fellow civilians were giving him from respectful distances, each time they had an encounter. Gradually a fixed price the money equivalent of a bottle of big stout beer was attached to it while on Brass Monkey Weather anybody who needed a stick of cigarette or cup of hot tea or coffee was sure to get one from Amos!
“Perhaps, you’d need something like this” Amos would say sometimes to the closest assumed smoker around him, meaning the stick of Benson ‘n’ Hedges Cigarette he had trapped between his lips, often simultaneously blowing an irresistible cloud of aromatic smoke in his direction.
Then, people began to notice that he would sooner buy an ice-cream for a girl, who had asked for one than offer the amount for it to a brother of his in dire need of an analgesic for his body-aches and pains.
But this was not what Amos and late Nnodi had discussed. It was rather miles and miles away from what both of them had arranged, putting a seal to it - of course to the extent that the old man, if he had been still alive, would have gone ahead to engage him in a duel and run through him like Cancer!
Amos could not have chosen a worse time to make himself unreachable to Chinecherem and the rest. Siblings in true need of nourishing food, presentable clothes and occasional medications; shelter apart
To them, Amos suddenly became incommunicado and seemed to have been wishing that along the street he would also pass them incognito.
Meanwhile Amos had been frequenting fund-raisers and making a point of not disappointing the expectations of their organizers, whenever he did.
“Please, I shall do better next time…” he would say. “Try to make do with the little sum in this envelope, until I get back to you, next week…”
And it would be discovered on slitting open the insulted envelope, that the little sum in question was some heart-warming cheque of N300.000:00 or above. In short, Amos, in the realm of Charity, concentrated on people who weren’t by any stupid accident members of his community: men and women whom he had run into under casual circumstances.
Painfully enough but deservingly, it was these same beneficiaries of his wealth who went public with megaphones to proclaim him “A Most Uncharitable Fellow,” citing as their defense his pitiable neglect of his siblings and kinfolks.
But why would Son pointedly trifle with the stiff orders of Father ahead of his special separating journey? Why… Why… Why…?
Might it be all about “let me see you Dad stir from your vault and meet me over the matter!”
Why… Why… Why…?
“I’ll train you and you train your little ones, is that okay?”
At first, Amos nodded his acceptance, then spoke up.
“I’ve heard you, Daddy”
“Fine,” said Mr. Nnodi. To him Amos’ affirmative reply was as profound as a solemn oath to perform an agreed deed. Now, Amos would have no excuse to give for ditching his younger siblings in time of need. He, Amos, had been stripped of the right to dream up reasons why he couldn’t be of financial assistance to his brother anxious to receive one from him in the future.
Mr. Nnodi was a firm believer in the age-old practice among his people of exclusively training the eldest child in order to ably invest him with the responsibility of doing the same to his younger siblings - in Amos’s case, Chinecherem, Onyemachi, and Jonathan, three of them.
Predictably, Mr. Nnodi’s training of Amos took the shape of signing him up, after his primary education, for a five-year apprenticeship with a kinsfolk of his and dealer in second-hand cars and motor spare parts. On why it had to be the importation and sale of second-hand cars, Mr. Nnodi observed, chuckling, “These people never lack enough to eat, drink and discard!”
Mr. Nnodi couldn’t have managed sponsoring Amos further than he had done in Academics. One thing might lead to another: the temptation to extend Amos’ training to the tertiary level and make him a degree holder, after dragging him through a post-primary school career, all at the expense of their original plan of an earliest attention to the career prospects of his younger ones.
“And talking about degree holders, haven’t they begun, dishonorably, to lose out in the labour market, often ending up as shameless dependents on the same person who had painstakingly funded their tuition?”
The serious barriers to Amos induction into the second-hand cars dealership would have been posed by his mother with her high rating of the Tailoring Trade and earnest wish that Amos give it a trial; just that her husband, Mr. Nnodi, could authoritatively condemn the idea, accusing her of plain overestimation of the not-too-fantastic profits tailors would make at festive periods of the year.
For two years, Amos was performing the very easy tasks of the trade for which he was apprenticed to Chief Chiguzo- a dealer in fairly used vehicles, namely, opening their business premises to customers at 7:30 am, tidying up the premises, receiving payments for purchased cars and parts and running emergency errands for the chief in connection with the business. Then, from his third year, with the chief’s official consent, he began to shuttle between their offices at Onitsha and Apapa in quest of their shipped vehicles and the clearance procedures for getting them released. It became a period for him to start noting the careless differences between the make and quality of otherwise similar motor spare parts they sold to interested buyers.
Without tear nor strain, Amos lasted out his tenure of apprenticeship under Chiguzo. It proved to be an enriching five-year of meritorious service, but also close watching of the trends on the automobile world.
As painless was his rise to greatness in the same business, while on his own at neighboring Asaba. He became pretty comfortable, pretty rich and later strikingly so.
It was as if Mr. Nnodi -now late- had done his calculations too well by pushing him into the business.
By now, Amos had fully developed a weakness for the flattering military salutes his fellow civilians were giving him from respectful distances, each time they had an encounter. Gradually a fixed price the money equivalent of a bottle of big stout beer was attached to it while on Brass Monkey Weather anybody who needed a stick of cigarette or cup of hot tea or coffee was sure to get one from Amos!
“Perhaps, you’d need something like this” Amos would say sometimes to the closest assumed smoker around him, meaning the stick of Benson ‘n’ Hedges Cigarette he had trapped between his lips, often simultaneously blowing an irresistible cloud of aromatic smoke in his direction.
Then, people began to notice that he would sooner buy an ice-cream for a girl, who had asked for one than offer the amount for it to a brother of his in dire need of an analgesic for his body-aches and pains.
But this was not what Amos and late Nnodi had discussed. It was rather miles and miles away from what both of them had arranged, putting a seal to it - of course to the extent that the old man, if he had been still alive, would have gone ahead to engage him in a duel and run through him like Cancer!
Amos could not have chosen a worse time to make himself unreachable to Chinecherem and the rest. Siblings in true need of nourishing food, presentable clothes and occasional medications; shelter apart
To them, Amos suddenly became incommunicado and seemed to have been wishing that along the street he would also pass them incognito.
Meanwhile Amos had been frequenting fund-raisers and making a point of not disappointing the expectations of their organizers, whenever he did.
“Please, I shall do better next time…” he would say. “Try to make do with the little sum in this envelope, until I get back to you, next week…”
And it would be discovered on slitting open the insulted envelope, that the little sum in question was some heart-warming cheque of N300.000:00 or above. In short, Amos, in the realm of Charity, concentrated on people who weren’t by any stupid accident members of his community: men and women whom he had run into under casual circumstances.
Painfully enough but deservingly, it was these same beneficiaries of his wealth who went public with megaphones to proclaim him “A Most Uncharitable Fellow,” citing as their defense his pitiable neglect of his siblings and kinfolks.
But why would Son pointedly trifle with the stiff orders of Father ahead of his special separating journey? Why… Why… Why…?
Might it be all about “let me see you Dad stir from your vault and meet me over the matter!”
Why… Why… Why…?
“I’ll train you and you train your little ones, is that okay?”
At first, Amos nodded his acceptance, then spoke up.
“I’ve heard you, Daddy”
“Fine,” said Mr. Nnodi. To him Amos’ affirmative reply was as profound as a solemn oath to perform an agreed deed. Now, Amos would have no excuse to give for ditching his younger siblings in time of need. He, Amos, had been stripped of the right to dream up reasons why he couldn’t be of financial assistance to his brother anxious to receive one from him in the future.
Mr. Nnodi was a firm believer in the age-old practice among his people of exclusively training the eldest child in order to ably invest him with the responsibility of doing the same to his younger siblings - in Amos’s case, Chinecherem, Onyemachi, and Jonathan, three of them.
Predictably, Mr. Nnodi’s training of Amos took the shape of signing him up, after his primary education, for a five-year apprenticeship with a kinsfolk of his and dealer in second-hand cars and motor spare parts. On why it had to be the importation and sale of second-hand cars, Mr. Nnodi observed, chuckling, “These people never lack enough to eat, drink and discard!”
Mr. Nnodi couldn’t have managed sponsoring Amos further than he had done in Academics. One thing might lead to another: the temptation to extend Amos’ training to the tertiary level and make him a degree holder, after dragging him through a post-primary school career, all at the expense of their original plan of an earliest attention to the career prospects of his younger ones.
“And talking about degree holders, haven’t they begun, dishonorably, to lose out in the labour market, often ending up as shameless dependents on the same person who had painstakingly funded their tuition?”
The serious barriers to Amos induction into the second-hand cars dealership would have been posed by his mother with her high rating of the Tailoring Trade and earnest wish that Amos give it a trial; just that her husband, Mr. Nnodi, could authoritatively condemn the idea, accusing her of plain overestimation of the not-too-fantastic profits tailors would make at festive periods of the year.
For two years, Amos was performing the very easy tasks of the trade for which he was apprenticed to Chief Chiguzo- a dealer in fairly used vehicles, namely, opening their business premises to customers at 7:30 am, tidying up the premises, receiving payments for purchased cars and parts and running emergency errands for the chief in connection with the business. Then, from his third year, with the chief’s official consent, he began to shuttle between their offices at Onitsha and Apapa in quest of their shipped vehicles and the clearance procedures for getting them released. It became a period for him to start noting the careless differences between the make and quality of otherwise similar motor spare parts they sold to interested buyers.
Without tear nor strain, Amos lasted out his tenure of apprenticeship under Chiguzo. It proved to be an enriching five-year of meritorious service, but also close watching of the trends on the automobile world.
As painless was his rise to greatness in the same business, while on his own at neighboring Asaba. He became pretty comfortable, pretty rich and later strikingly so.
It was as if Mr. Nnodi -now late- had done his calculations too well by pushing him into the business.
By now, Amos had fully developed a weakness for the flattering military salutes his fellow civilians were giving him from respectful distances, each time they had an encounter. Gradually a fixed price the money equivalent of a bottle of big stout beer was attached to it while on Brass Monkey Weather anybody who needed a stick of cigarette or cup of hot tea or coffee was sure to get one from Amos!
“Perhaps, you’d need something like this” Amos would say sometimes to the closest assumed smoker around him, meaning the stick of Benson ‘n’ Hedges Cigarette he had trapped between his lips, often simultaneously blowing an irresistible cloud of aromatic smoke in his direction.
Then, people began to notice that he would sooner buy an ice-cream for a girl, who had asked for one than offer the amount for it to a brother of his in dire need of an analgesic for his body-aches and pains.
But this was not what Amos and late Nnodi had discussed. It was rather miles and miles away from what both of them had arranged, putting a seal to it - of course to the extent that the old man, if he had been still alive, would have gone ahead to engage him in a duel and run through him like Cancer!
Amos could not have chosen a worse time to make himself unreachable to Chinecherem and the rest. Siblings in true need of nourishing food, presentable clothes and occasional medications; shelter apart
To them, Amos suddenly became incommunicado and seemed to have been wishing that along the street he would also pass them incognito.
Meanwhile Amos had been frequenting fund-raisers and making a point of not disappointing the expectations of their organizers, whenever he did.
“Please, I shall do better next time…” he would say. “Try to make do with the little sum in this envelope, until I get back to you, next week…”
And it would be discovered on slitting open the insulted envelope, that the little sum in question was some heart-warming cheque of N300.000:00 or above. In short, Amos, in the realm of Charity, concentrated on people who weren’t by any stupid accident members of his community: men and women whom he had run into under casual circumstances.
Painfully enough but deservingly, it was these same beneficiaries of his wealth who went public with megaphones to proclaim him “A Most Uncharitable Fellow,” citing as their defense his pitiable neglect of his siblings and kinfolks.
But why would Son pointedly trifle with the stiff orders of Father ahead of his special separating journey? Why… Why… Why…?
Might it be all about “let me see you Dad stir from your vault and meet me over the matter!”
Why… Why… Why…?
“I’ll train you and you train your little ones, is that okay?”
At first, Amos nodded his acceptance, then spoke up.
“I’ve heard you, Daddy”
“Fine,” said Mr. Nnodi. To him Amos’ affirmative reply was as profound as a solemn oath to perform an agreed deed. Now, Amos would have no excuse to give for ditching his younger siblings in time of need. He, Amos, had been stripped of the right to dream up reasons why he couldn’t be of financial assistance to his brother anxious to receive one from him in the future.
Mr. Nnodi was a firm believer in the age-old practice among his people of exclusively training the eldest child in order to ably invest him with the responsibility of doing the same to his younger siblings - in Amos’s case, Chinecherem, Onyemachi, and Jonathan, three of them.
Predictably, Mr. Nnodi’s training of Amos took the shape of signing him up, after his primary education, for a five-year apprenticeship with a kinsfolk of his and dealer in second-hand cars and motor spare parts. On why it had to be the importation and sale of second-hand cars, Mr. Nnodi observed, chuckling, “These people never lack enough to eat, drink and discard!”
Mr. Nnodi couldn’t have managed sponsoring Amos further than he had done in Academics. One thing might lead to another: the temptation to extend Amos’ training to the tertiary level and make him a degree holder, after dragging him through a post-primary school career, all at the expense of their original plan of an earliest attention to the career prospects of his younger ones.
“And talking about degree holders, haven’t they begun, dishonorably, to lose out in the labour market, often ending up as shameless dependents on the same person who had painstakingly funded their tuition?”
The serious barriers to Amos induction into the second-hand cars dealership would have been posed by his mother with her high rating of the Tailoring Trade and earnest wish that Amos give it a trial; just that her husband, Mr. Nnodi, could authoritatively condemn the idea, accusing her of plain overestimation of the not-too-fantastic profits tailors would make at festive periods of the year.
For two years, Amos was performing the very easy tasks of the trade for which he was apprenticed to Chief Chiguzo- a dealer in fairly used vehicles, namely, opening their business premises to customers at 7:30 am, tidying up the premises, receiving payments for purchased cars and parts and running emergency errands for the chief in connection with the business. Then, from his third year, with the chief’s official consent, he began to shuttle between their offices at Onitsha and Apapa in quest of their shipped vehicles and the clearance procedures for getting them released. It became a period for him to start noting the careless differences between the make and quality of otherwise similar motor spare parts they sold to interested buyers.
Without tear nor strain, Amos lasted out his tenure of apprenticeship under Chiguzo. It proved to be an enriching five-year of meritorious service, but also close watching of the trends on the automobile world.
As painless was his rise to greatness in the same business, while on his own at neighboring Asaba. He became pretty comfortable, pretty rich and later strikingly so.
It was as if Mr. Nnodi -now late- had done his calculations too well by pushing him into the business.
By now, Amos had fully developed a weakness for the flattering military salutes his fellow civilians were giving him from respectful distances, each time they had an encounter. Gradually a fixed price the money equivalent of a bottle of big stout beer was attached to it while on Brass Monkey Weather anybody who needed a stick of cigarette or cup of hot tea or coffee was sure to get one from Amos!
“Perhaps, you’d need something like this” Amos would say sometimes to the closest assumed smoker around him, meaning the stick of Benson ‘n’ Hedges Cigarette he had trapped between his lips, often simultaneously blowing an irresistible cloud of aromatic smoke in his direction.
Then, people began to notice that he would sooner buy an ice-cream for a girl, who had asked for one than offer the amount for it to a brother of his in dire need of an analgesic for his body-aches and pains.
But this was not what Amos and late Nnodi had discussed. It was rather miles and miles away from what both of them had arranged, putting a seal to it - of course to the extent that the old man, if he had been still alive, would have gone ahead to engage him in a duel and run through him like Cancer!
Amos could not have chosen a worse time to make himself unreachable to Chinecherem and the rest. Siblings in true need of nourishing food, presentable clothes and occasional medications; shelter apart
To them, Amos suddenly became incommunicado and seemed to have been wishing that along the street he would also pass them incognito.
Meanwhile Amos had been frequenting fund-raisers and making a point of not disappointing the expectations of their organizers, whenever he did.
“Please, I shall do better next time…” he would say. “Try to make do with the little sum in this envelope, until I get back to you, next week…”
And it would be discovered on slitting open the insulted envelope, that the little sum in question was some heart-warming cheque of N300.000:00 or above. In short, Amos, in the realm of Charity, concentrated on people who weren’t by any stupid accident members of his community: men and women whom he had run into under casual circumstances.
Painfully enough but deservingly, it was these same beneficiaries of his wealth who went public with megaphones to proclaim him “A Most Uncharitable Fellow,” citing as their defense his pitiable neglect of his siblings and kinfolks.
But why would Son pointedly trifle with the stiff orders of Father ahead of his special separating journey? Why… Why… Why…?
Might it be all about “let me see you Dad stir from your vault and meet me over the matter!”
Why… Why… Why…?
“I’ll train you and you train your little ones, is that okay?”
At first, Amos nodded his acceptance, then spoke up.
“I’ve heard you, Daddy”
“Fine,” said Mr. Nnodi. To him Amos’ affirmative reply was as profound as a solemn oath to perform an agreed deed. Now, Amos would have no excuse to give for ditching his younger siblings in time of need. He, Amos, had been stripped of the right to dream up reasons why he couldn’t be of financial assistance to his brother anxious to receive one from him in the future.
Mr. Nnodi was a firm believer in the age-old practice among his people of exclusively training the eldest child in order to ably invest him with the responsibility of doing the same to his younger siblings - in Amos’s case, Chinecherem, Onyemachi, and Jonathan, three of them.
Predictably, Mr. Nnodi’s training of Amos took the shape of signing him up, after his primary education, for a five-year apprenticeship with a kinsfolk of his and dealer in second-hand cars and motor spare parts. On why it had to be the importation and sale of second-hand cars, Mr. Nnodi observed, chuckling, “These people never lack enough to eat, drink and discard!”
Mr. Nnodi couldn’t have managed sponsoring Amos further than he had done in Academics. One thing might lead to another: the temptation to extend Amos’ training to the tertiary level and make him a degree holder, after dragging him through a post-primary school career, all at the expense of their original plan of an earliest attention to the career prospects of his younger ones.
“And talking about degree holders, haven’t they begun, dishonorably, to lose out in the labour market, often ending up as shameless dependents on the same person who had painstakingly funded their tuition?”
The serious barriers to Amos induction into the second-hand cars dealership would have been posed by his mother with her high rating of the Tailoring Trade and earnest wish that Amos give it a trial; just that her husband, Mr. Nnodi, could authoritatively condemn the idea, accusing her of plain overestimation of the not-too-fantastic profits tailors would make at festive periods of the year.
For two years, Amos was performing the very easy tasks of the trade for which he was apprenticed to Chief Chiguzo- a dealer in fairly used vehicles, namely, opening their business premises to customers at 7:30 am, tidying up the premises, receiving payments for purchased cars and parts and running emergency errands for the chief in connection with the business. Then, from his third year, with the chief’s official consent, he began to shuttle between their offices at Onitsha and Apapa in quest of their shipped vehicles and the clearance procedures for getting them released. It became a period for him to start noting the careless differences between the make and quality of otherwise similar motor spare parts they sold to interested buyers.
Without tear nor strain, Amos lasted out his tenure of apprenticeship under Chiguzo. It proved to be an enriching five-year of meritorious service, but also close watching of the trends on the automobile world.
As painless was his rise to greatness in the same business, while on his own at neighboring Asaba. He became pretty comfortable, pretty rich and later strikingly so.
It was as if Mr. Nnodi -now late- had done his calculations too well by pushing him into the business.
By now, Amos had fully developed a weakness for the flattering military salutes his fellow civilians were giving him from respectful distances, each time they had an encounter. Gradually a fixed price the money equivalent of a bottle of big stout beer was attached to it while on Brass Monkey Weather anybody who needed a stick of cigarette or cup of hot tea or coffee was sure to get one from Amos!
“Perhaps, you’d need something like this” Amos would say sometimes to the closest assumed smoker around him, meaning the stick of Benson ‘n’ Hedges Cigarette he had trapped between his lips, often simultaneously blowing an irresistible cloud of aromatic smoke in his direction.
Then, people began to notice that he would sooner buy an ice-cream for a girl, who had asked for one than offer the amount for it to a brother of his in dire need of an analgesic for his body-aches and pains.
But this was not what Amos and late Nnodi had discussed. It was rather miles and miles away from what both of them had arranged, putting a seal to it - of course to the extent that the old man, if he had been still alive, would have gone ahead to engage him in a duel and run through him like Cancer!
Amos could not have chosen a worse time to make himself unreachable to Chinecherem and the rest. Siblings in true need of nourishing food, presentable clothes and occasional medications; shelter apart
To them, Amos suddenly became incommunicado and seemed to have been wishing that along the street he would also pass them incognito.
Meanwhile Amos had been frequenting fund-raisers and making a point of not disappointing the expectations of their organizers, whenever he did.
“Please, I shall do better next time…” he would say. “Try to make do with the little sum in this envelope, until I get back to you, next week…”
And it would be discovered on slitting open the insulted envelope, that the little sum in question was some heart-warming cheque of N300.000:00 or above. In short, Amos, in the realm of Charity, concentrated on people who weren’t by any stupid accident members of his community: men and women whom he had run into under casual circumstances.
Painfully enough but deservingly, it was these same beneficiaries of his wealth who went public with megaphones to proclaim him “A Most Uncharitable Fellow,” citing as their defense his pitiable neglect of his siblings and kinfolks.
But why would Son pointedly trifle with the stiff orders of Father ahead of his special separating journey? Why… Why… Why…?
Might it be all about “let me see you Dad stir from your vault and meet me over the matter!”
Why… Why… Why…?
“I’ll train you and you train your little ones, is that okay?”
At first, Amos nodded his acceptance, then spoke up.
“I’ve heard you, Daddy”
“Fine,” said Mr. Nnodi. To him Amos’ affirmative reply was as profound as a solemn oath to perform an agreed deed. Now, Amos would have no excuse to give for ditching his younger siblings in time of need. He, Amos, had been stripped of the right to dream up reasons why he couldn’t be of financial assistance to his brother anxious to receive one from him in the future.
Mr. Nnodi was a firm believer in the age-old practice among his people of exclusively training the eldest child in order to ably invest him with the responsibility of doing the same to his younger siblings - in Amos’s case, Chinecherem, Onyemachi, and Jonathan, three of them.
Predictably, Mr. Nnodi’s training of Amos took the shape of signing him up, after his primary education, for a five-year apprenticeship with a kinsfolk of his and dealer in second-hand cars and motor spare parts. On why it had to be the importation and sale of second-hand cars, Mr. Nnodi observed, chuckling, “These people never lack enough to eat, drink and discard!”
Mr. Nnodi couldn’t have managed sponsoring Amos further than he had done in Academics. One thing might lead to another: the temptation to extend Amos’ training to the tertiary level and make him a degree holder, after dragging him through a post-primary school career, all at the expense of their original plan of an earliest attention to the career prospects of his younger ones.
“And talking about degree holders, haven’t they begun, dishonorably, to lose out in the labour market, often ending up as shameless dependents on the same person who had painstakingly funded their tuition?”
The serious barriers to Amos induction into the second-hand cars dealership would have been posed by his mother with her high rating of the Tailoring Trade and earnest wish that Amos give it a trial; just that her husband, Mr. Nnodi, could authoritatively condemn the idea, accusing her of plain overestimation of the not-too-fantastic profits tailors would make at festive periods of the year.
For two years, Amos was performing the very easy tasks of the trade for which he was apprenticed to Chief Chiguzo- a dealer in fairly used vehicles, namely, opening their business premises to customers at 7:30 am, tidying up the premises, receiving payments for purchased cars and parts and running emergency errands for the chief in connection with the business. Then, from his third year, with the chief’s official consent, he began to shuttle between their offices at Onitsha and Apapa in quest of their shipped vehicles and the clearance procedures for getting them released. It became a period for him to start noting the careless differences between the make and quality of otherwise similar motor spare parts they sold to interested buyers.
Without tear nor strain, Amos lasted out his tenure of apprenticeship under Chiguzo. It proved to be an enriching five-year of meritorious service, but also close watching of the trends on the automobile world.
As painless was his rise to greatness in the same business, while on his own at neighboring Asaba. He became pretty comfortable, pretty rich and later strikingly so.
It was as if Mr. Nnodi -now late- had done his calculations too well by pushing him into the business.
By now, Amos had fully developed a weakness for the flattering military salutes his fellow civilians were giving him from respectful distances, each time they had an encounter. Gradually a fixed price the money equivalent of a bottle of big stout beer was attached to it while on Brass Monkey Weather anybody who needed a stick of cigarette or cup of hot tea or coffee was sure to get one from Amos!
“Perhaps, you’d need something like this” Amos would say sometimes to the closest assumed smoker around him, meaning the stick of Benson ‘n’ Hedges Cigarette he had trapped between his lips, often simultaneously blowing an irresistible cloud of aromatic smoke in his direction.
Then, people began to notice that he would sooner buy an ice-cream for a girl, who had asked for one than offer the amount for it to a brother of his in dire need of an analgesic for his body-aches and pains.
But this was not what Amos and late Nnodi had discussed. It was rather miles and miles away from what both of them had arranged, putting a seal to it - of course to the extent that the old man, if he had been still alive, would have gone ahead to engage him in a duel and run through him like Cancer!
Amos could not have chosen a worse time to make himself unreachable to Chinecherem and the rest. Siblings in true need of nourishing food, presentable clothes and occasional medications; shelter apart
To them, Amos suddenly became incommunicado and seemed to have been wishing that along the street he would also pass them incognito.
Meanwhile Amos had been frequenting fund-raisers and making a point of not disappointing the expectations of their organizers, whenever he did.
“Please, I shall do better next time…” he would say. “Try to make do with the little sum in this envelope, until I get back to you, next week…”
And it would be discovered on slitting open the insulted envelope, that the little sum in question was some heart-warming cheque of N300.000:00 or above. In short, Amos, in the realm of Charity, concentrated on people who weren’t by any stupid accident members of his community: men and women whom he had run into under casual circumstances.
Painfully enough but deservingly, it was these same beneficiaries of his wealth who went public with megaphones to proclaim him “A Most Uncharitable Fellow,” citing as their defense his pitiable neglect of his siblings and kinfolks.
But why would Son pointedly trifle with the stiff orders of Father ahead of his special separating journey? Why… Why… Why…?
Might it be all about “let me see you Dad stir from your vault and meet me over the matter!”
Why… Why… Why…?
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