Dreams from My Father

for everyone. I started to ask Zeituni more about our grandfather, but just then the band took up their positions on stage. The group looked a bit ragged at first, but the moment they struck their first note, the place was transformed. Immediately, people began pouring out onto the dance floor, stepping to the
soukous
beat. Zeituni grabbed my hand, and Roy took Auma’s, and Amy took Bernard’s, and soon we were all dancing into a sweat, arms and hips and rumps swaying softly; tall, ink-black Luos and short, brown Kikuyus, Kamba and Meru and Kalenjin, everyone smiling and shouting and having a ball. Roy threw his arms over his head to do a slow, funky turn around Auma, who was laughing at her brother’s silliness, and right then I saw in my brother’s face the same look I had seen years ago in Toot and Gramps’s apartment back in Hawaii, when the Old Man had first taught me how to dance—that same look of unquestioned freedom.
    After three or four numbers, Roy and I both relinquished our partners and carried our beers into the open courtyard out back. The cool air tickled my nose, and I felt a bit tipsy.
    “It’s good to be here,” I said.
    “You know it. Like a poet.” Roy laughed, sipping his beer.
    “No, really, I mean it. It’s just good to be here, with you and Auma and everyone. It’s as if we—”
    Before I could finish, we heard a bottle crash to the floor behind us. I spun around to see two men at the far side of the courtyard pushing another, smaller, man down onto the ground. With one hand, the man on the ground appeared to be covering a cut on his head; with his free arm he was trying to shield himself from the swings of a billy club. I took a step forward, but Roy pulled me back.
    “Mind your own business, brother,” he whispered.
    “But—”
    “They may be police. I tell you, Barack, you don’t know what it’s like to spend a night in a Nairobi jail.”
    By now, the man on the ground had curled up into a tight ball, trying to protect himself from the haphazard blows. Then, like a trapped animal who senses an opening, the man suddenly jumped to his feet and climbed onto one of the tables to scramble over the wooden fence. His assailants looked as if they were going to give chase but apparently decided that it wasn’t worth it. One of them noticed Roy and me but said nothing, and together the two of them sauntered back inside. I suddenly felt very sober.
    “That was terrible,” I said.
    “Yah, well…you don’t know what the other guy did first.”
    I rubbed the back of my neck. “When were you in jail anyway?”
    Roy took another swig of beer and fell into one of the metal chairs. “The night David died.”
    I sat down beside him and he told me the story. They had gone out to drink, he said, in search of a party. They had taken Roy’s motorcycle to a nearby club, and there Roy had met a woman. He had taken a fancy to her, and they started talking. He had bought her a beer, but before long another man had come up and started getting in Roy’s face. The man said he was the woman’s husband and grabbed her by the arm. The woman struggled and fell, and Roy told the man to leave her alone. A fight broke out. The police came, and Roy didn’t have his identification papers, so they took him down to the station. He was thrown in a cell and left there for several hours, until David finally managed to get in to see him.
    Give me the keys to the motorcycle,
David had said,
and I can get you the papers you need.
    No. Just go home.
    You can’t stay here all night, brother. Give me the keys….
    Roy stopped talking. We sat and stared at the shadows, oversized and faint off the lattice fence.
    “It was an accident, Roy,” I said finally. “It wasn’t your fault. You need to let it go.”
    Before I could say anything else, I heard Amy hollering behind us, her voice slurring slightly over the music.
    “Hey, you two! We’ve been looking all over for you!”
    I started to wave her off, but Roy jerked out of his chair, tipping it to the ground.
    “Come on, woman,” he said, taking Amy by the waist. “Let’s go dance.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

    A T FIVE-THIRTY IN the evening, our train rumbled out of the old Nairobi train station heading west for Kisumu. Jane had decided to stay behind, but the rest of the family was on board—Kezia, Zeituni, and Auma in one compartment; Roy, Bernard, and myself in the next. While everyone busied themselves with storing their luggage, I jiggled open a