At the church’s gate, until the town people surrounded them, the women not spoke the horrible truth.
They not talked about the man’s wives who, when they saw him, dropped on the ground at his feet like fallen twigs, about our town people, including men, who ran away from the man like they running away from an incoming lightning.
The truths they tentatively spoke, they spoke, after looking around, making sure no one around to hear them—except me and I not mattered because, like everyone in town, they not really looked when they looked at me—in hushed tones as if the man inside the wooden casket hear them if they spoke loudly.
You hear what the man doing when the lightning struck him?
The man’s dog next to him when it happened.
They talked about the land the man owned, about his cattle.
When the town people started arriving at the gate, their tones changed, they spoke louder.
He be missed.
No secrets in my town. There things people not talk about, but there no real secrets—Wro. Woineshet who only talked to herself, no one went to Ato. Dejen’s hut alone, Wro. Shita who walked the long way to the river at night, to talk to the water, the man who did bad things.
We all hated the man, I began speaking, hesitantly, why you . . .
The three women, in front of me, turned and stared at me like our sky fallen.
When they and the town people walked inside, I stayed at the gate, I not wanted Emama to see me. In the morning, before she left for the church, a funeral no place for you, she said. When I asked why she going to the bad man’s funeral, even though we alone, she looked frantically around our hut, and kept quiet. I asked her again, and again, until she said, we not say bad things about the dead.
Now, I stared ahead, at the closed wooden casket next to a priest, in front of the church. The priest said prayers, in a quiet voice as if he speaking to himself, until his voice changed, became louder.
The man raise thirteen children, he fed three wives, three mouths.
God rest man’s soul.
Everybody bowed, heads almost touching the grass, and it felt like the bowing washed away the night the man barged into our hut, ordering Emama to give him her cows, or else, and that time he bit me with a stick because I, a girl, sat in one of the chairs in our park, like rain washing away dirt from the ground.
And then I saw it—what everyone not saying.
In my town where everyone stood close to each other at a funeral, people, wearing black from head to toe, stood in front of the church, to say goodbye to a man who scared us like a scary wind that shook us, but the farmers stood—away from the casket, Ato. Dowle’s family stood near an enset—away from the farmers, Mariam and her adult children sat on a bench—away from the enset, Ato. Agamo and his family stood near a fig tree—away from the bench, the old man who sold mats stood alone—away from the fig tree, Emama stood alone—away from the old man, and even the bad man’s children and his wives stood—away from each other.
Everyone looked at the priest, or the grass beneath their feet. Except for the birds, a scary silence filled the church.
I heard it then—the unexpected growling, disturbing the silence.
Behind me, the man’s dog looked behind him as if looking for something—or someone—and he barked as if he not believed he allowed to bark. The dog, when I seen him with the man, he always whimpering.
Now, he stared at the front of the church and began running.
While barking, he circled the casket, and when he started circling the church, people ran after him, trying to quiet him, but the only one not lying in the entire church barked louder. And for the first time, though it scared me to feel this way, I said quietly to myself what I really feeling.
The bad man deserve dying that way.
