Not so long ago a man many openly considered an oddball in his community suddenly disappeared. Word went round that some unspecified persons nabbed him although no one seemed certain what they did with him. What some declared sceptics termed his vanishing act was news because many relied on him for their livelihood, his tainted character nonetheless.
Known for a precocious childhood that featured weekend sales in the town square of crafted ornaments derived from smelted tin cans retrieved from refuse dumps in what he termed recycling rather than scavenging even though other items, including those he deemed still edible made the trip back home in his jute bag, his entrepreneurial spirit was legendary.
Yet, an apparent early commercial success that turned for some into a nightmare albeit for him into his professed self-preservation tactics faced with seemingly insoluble problems, some say explains his prospects of being incommunicado at least for sometime as opposed to being in the custody of imagined foes despite this possibility being real.
In circumstances pregnant with innuendoes occasioned by a history dating back to the inception of the shades of views so entrenched back then the consensus that an alliance that honoured in perpetuity the dichotomy resultant was inevitable, it is, several contend, that the matter even comes up on one so divisive yet crucial to the welfare of many that threatens to rend the community’s increasingly fragile coalition.
With questions starting to emerge on the chances that some interplay of, by all accounts, benign forces seemingly bent on rekindling atavistic rivalries may be operational, what at first appears to be redundant gossips, some openly fear, may soon be pivotal to that of a subterranean past creeping to the surface for the first time in decades.
To think that one man is going to be responsible for raking murk the struggle in the past to situate beneath uncooked perception a matter of honour or determined viciousness depending on who is responding to the query on what in general are agreed its ills itself must make some want to shrink to insignificance, many say.
Others argue that there nothing secretive about an alliance albeit now dabbed in shining grey, to the exclusion it seems of querulous souls that openly defy a dichotomous whole for reasons they claim rooted in the forces that prevailed in the historical struggle to start with, and which still do.
The problem, though, is this man, everyone says. Having seemingly crossed coalition lines yet clearly avows any characterization that suggests an entrenched worldview, that both ends of the spectrum must nurse grudges against him seems probable, although his record as a ruthless shylock is unlikely to endear him to even those on whose sweat the riches he insists he dishes out regardless of the etymological split of what he terms elements of the whole with the rest snuffed out, emanates, his pay checks their livelihood regardless.
That said, the constituency he insists he serves still, evidently, routs for him, the paradox equally obvious it seems, to his declared detractors, who, eager to reveal the truth about the man to keep that about the movie of their historical pictorial frames running in open glare still cryptic, its perpetuation in a chiffon veneer beginning to reveal more than they must consider tolerable, their gurus toil.
Careful it seems not to project the perception in its real form that they so diligently strive many contend to preserve in its current form, one they must imagine cloaks them in an ubiquitous shine in a certainly unflattering shade most declare smoothens the pervasive coarseness that even the man openly abhors his given interest in changing which sometimes antithetical to the operations of his routine conduct, they deploy their minions.
It soon becomes clear that the speakeasy is alive and in good spirits, as a few townspeople old enough to remember not to trump too hard on the streets lest irk the dead declare. This time, however, far from the dead walking the streets unfettered, disguised as the living underground, the living poses as moribund underground, to menace the dead, in a dog-eat-fox game for all to see, minions included.
The stage seems set these elders observe for a showdown like not even they witnessed in flesh although heard much about to not even consider venturing beneath the streets all their lives. They muse that it would be unprecedented even as the benchmark to which they point resides only in their imagination they admit. Suffice they say that there is fusion now of dichotomous forces, what they nonetheless consider a losing coalition, just as in the days one was of necessity forged by both.
Meantime, everyone seems perplexed about the disappearance of the man. This may be just a show though for some who openly among themselves wonder if he was not who is behind the looming showdown that threatens to crack the coalition with every day that he does not show up ominous, which some of them say is part of his plan for a third way to emerge in the schema, something neither dominion would relish they agree.
So the coalition tethers but survives as formed until the day news start to fly of his sightings. A week later, no one has reportedly seen him in person, which many in the coalition consider a disaster, having collaborated on a mock trial in absentia of a foe who in fact is also a kin, albeit a misfit, if not now to the community as presented, to its ilk for certain they say.
They admit that they have created a monster that now haunts them and which they must stop before it causes permanent damage. Some want to negotiate with him, others want him gaoled, and yet others, even worse. They say with the townsfolk behind him, he is unstoppable. He agrees, as he emerges from a side room at the meeting of the top echelon of the coalition, where a crucial discussion on his fate is in session. The silence that follows must be deafening to a hitherto egregious gathering in a huge basement beneath the town square as perhaps most carrying placards in the square would submit although clearly oblivious he was headed for the subterranean meeting after briefly reassuring the protestors he would fight for their cause until the end.
