Emeka wasn't a man of remarkable stature. His size was what the local man would describe as "small stout". In fact, one time the village drunk had said that Chukwu Okike's (our creator's) true intention was to create him a dwarf, but he changed his mind halfway. His head sat on his neck like a big ball of watermelon on a stake. He had this small belly that always pressed against his Ankara shirt. You would always wonder if his tailor had never taken his measurements before cutting his clothes. He was that kind of man whose eyes you passed over without stopping.
Every morning he would trek long distances to the Local Government secretariat, where he worked. Stamping forms nobody truly reads.
His wife, Ngozi, was just the opposite of him in stature. She was a well-built, tall, beautiful woman whose skin glowed like the sun. Everyone admired her beauty and wondered how Emeka had managed to capture such a goddess. Apart from her physique her character was nothing to write home about. She was that troublesome neighbor who found fault with everything. They had two kids, Nkechi and Obinna, king and queen of mischief, who, at first glance, you'd notice that they had stopped hoping for much.
Except for their father who always hoped for rice. Not the regular homemade rice that tasted like an afterthought Ngọzi always prepared in wide iron pots set over firewood in their backyard, smoke working its way into every grain, stirring with her wrapper knotted at her chest, sweat at her temples, the sharp warm smell of crayfish and stockfish climbing into the air like sacrifice to the heavens.
But the ones cooked at Burial. It had changed something in him. Every time he tasted burial rice it made Emeka feel whole. Briefly, completely, undeniably whole.
Emeka was nineteen years old when he attended his first burial. That day he thought there was something special in the taste of the rice. He had given accolades to the caterer, but not until he attended a few other burials. Somehow he thought to himself that it was the agony in such moments that added that special taste to the food. From that day, he hunted for the burials of people he knew and even total strangers. He would hunt for obituary posters on electric poles, note the date and address, and arrive with a composed face and a very empty stomach.
Nobody challenged him or asked who he was. In Umueze, you don't interrogate a man's grief.
But by 2022, his cravings for burial rice increased while the number of deaths in Umueze decreased. It was as if the elderly were clinging on. The young showed no interest in leaving. Between funerals,
"People weren't dying fast enough." He had thought in his mind one day. With a heavy weight lodged behind his ribs, heavy and patient and very wrong. Not the kind of thought a man should harbour.
He turned the idea over in his mind for weeks before he took his first crazy idea.
First was Odogwu, his neighbour. A big-voiced man who always played Flavour N'abania's songs in his Sienna packed just outside Emeka's gate every night without an apology.
Emeka had tampered with the brake cable.
The next day the news of Odogwu's death spread like wildfire. He had died on a slope behind the market. The burial was that Saturday. And Emeka was present, to him the rice was outstanding, the tender and generous meat added a different flavor to it all. He ate three plates and wept at the graveside so that people had to hold him down. Little did they know that his tears were for Odogwu but for the rice. For that particular grief of watching something that tasted so good come to an end.
Within eight months four people connected to Emeka had died. Different causes, different locations, different families mourning.
The people of Umueze thought the gods had sent them bad luck. Their old women shook their heads and blamed it on generational curses. Nobody was able to connect the dots.
Except for somebody in Umuahia State CID, Detective Amara Nwosu. Amara was a compact woman with natural hair and reading glasses she was constantly misplacing. She had a habit of tapping her pen against her teeth when a problem refused to open up.
"Four deaths." She tapped her pen against her teeth as her eyes hovered over the spread files across her desk. "Different causes. Road accident. Generator fumes. A fall from a ladder. And this one—" she leaned closer to the paper "drowned in a shallow well."
Her partner, Corporal Bulus, shook his head. "Do you think there is a link?"
Amara nodded. "One link." She tapped her pen again and picked up a picture. "This man." She pressed her finger against her face in a burial photograph. "He appears in the background of every single burial with a plate of rice."
Bulus took the picture from the get and studied it with squinted eyes. "Coincidence, maybe."
Amara looked at him over the rim of her glasses. She scoffed. "I don't think so."
"So what's your plan?"
"I'll set a trap for him."
And just as she said she set the trap at the burial of Chief Ezeudo, a man who had died genuinely, peacefully, at ninety-one, in his own bed. Amara made arrangements with the family. Plain-clothes officers at the gate. She herself wore a black lace blouse and took a seat near the food tent, a plate in front of her, which she had no intention of touching.
Soon Emeka arrived. Black kaftan. His usual attire. Not long after he signed the condolence register with a name that wasn't his, he settled in a seat near the food tent close to Amara and exhaled slowly. Soon came the food in wide trays of rice moving through the crowd
Amara picked a plate and Emeka rushed one too.
For minutes Amara stirred at the rice on her plate without eating it. Then she sighed loudly enough for Emeka to hear.
Emeka glanced at her.
Then she said quietly. "I don't understand why burial rice always tastes better."
Emeka's eyes lit up. He turned to look at her properly for the first time. "Don't tell me you noticed too?" he asked.
"Every single time," Amara said slowly before taking a spoonful. "My mother's rice, even my aunty's rice, none of them comes close to burial rice. It's just..." She pressed her lips together like she was searching for the right word.
"Differently," Emeka said.
Amara pointed her spoon at him. "That's the word."
They sat with that for a moment, two strangers bonded by something they couldn't explain. Then Emeka leaned slightly forward, lowering his voice.
"Can you believe, I've been to over forty burials. Since 2019."
Amara's eyes widened she was a good actress. "Forty?"
"That's the least I can remember." He smiled. "The best rice I ever tasted was in Osisioma. A woman called Mama Blessing. The crayfish alone—" he kissed his fingers.
Amara laughed softly. "I've had that thought too, you know. I think there should be more of them."
Emeka laughed. The tension in his shoulders dropped away. "And here I was thinking I was the only one."
There was silence. Amara knew she was getting there but just needed that evidence.
She adjusted herself and turned to face Emeka this time. In a low voice, she said. "I once wished my landlord would just — you know." She gave him a sideways glance and shrugged.
Emeka studied her face. His eyes almost popped out of its socket. On his face was that recognition, relief, that reckless comfort of a man who believed he had finally found his kind.
"I did more than just wish," he said quietly.
Amara kept her face perfectly still. She was about to hit the jackpot "What do you mean?"
Emeka looked around to be sure they were alone before leaning close. Like a confession he had been waiting years for the right ear, he told of Odogwu and the brake cable, of the generator fumes and the ladder. Down to the shallow well.
All of it.
He spilled it all.
Outside, in a white Hilux parked beyond the compound gate, Corporal Bulus pressed his headphones tight and hit record.
"I've got it all on tape." He said over the headphones.
Emeka finally relaxed on his chair, looking lighter than he had in years, Amara set her plate down carefully. She reached into the fold of her blouse and produced a small black wallet. She flipped it open.
A badge. A police badge
Emeka looked at it in disbelief. His eyes moved from her face, back to the badge.
"Emeka Okafor," Amara finally said, her voice no longer warm. "You are under arrest."
Emeka didn't shout. He didn't run. He only looked once more at the food tent, at the trays, at the rice cooling slowly in the afternoon air. Then stretched forth his arms as Amara handcuffed him and took him out through the compound gate.
"Don't worry, they have rice in prison," Bulus mocked from the driver's side as he drove them to the police station.
"Not that kind," Emeka replied with completely empty eyes.
