Junkyard Blues

Chapter Thirty-nine

159 C Chapter Thirty-nine ’m never going back there. He had made that resolution and he intended to keep it. Just the thought of walking back into Derrick’s house was enough to tear through his heart and divide it into two and sprinkle those seeds of guilt again in the torn heart. It was not the thought of the screaming child nor the dragon lady and her sharp tongue, but it was something else, something else he did not actually want to think about… hot flaming guilt. But at the end of most days he told himself that it had been time to leave, and that he had left because he had had enough of the sad drama. The sad drama that for a time had had no sort of excitement but just the monotony of the boring acts and scenes. And during those times, he told himself that no one would’ve even stayed there for the length of time he did. “You tried, man,” Niba would always say, “I couldn’t have stayed for a minute in that prison.” But he had stayed, stayed and watched the drama till the drama had just become a monotonous bore, a nostalgic everyday movie, with the same actors standing at the same landscape, repeating the same lines and the same pitiful soundtrack playing in the background. But even as he told himself most of the days that the monotonous drama had sent him packing, he knew it was just a well oiled lie. The truth was that one day the coin had suddenly turned and he had seen his face on that side facing up at the sky, a face that he could no longer bear to look at while living under the same roof with Derrick. It had been pure guilt! Yes, it was that guilt and having to listen day after day to Derrick’s constant murmuring, and seeing that look of pure defeat and disappointment on his face. The murmuring had started after the results of the recruitment examination which he was supposed to have registered and written were out and his name was not among the successful candidates, “I can’t believe it,” Derrick had kept murmuring the constant look of defeat and disappointment taking hold of his face. Jude had felt a hurt he had never felt looking at that face; that face that said it was already tired and did no longer know what else I 160 to do. That face filled with disappointment had kept haunting him even as he tried to tell himself that it was okay, that it was going to pass for he had known that face would be there when he had used the money destined for the recruitment examination for his own evil deeds. He had known Derrick would feel hurt just as always when the results would be out and he would not be successful. But somehow, he had not foreseen that that look and the murmuring would affect him to that extent. “I can’t believe it,” and Derrick had kept murmuring shaking his head, the patronizing side of him gone and only that disappointment taking hold of his normally solid face. It was that murmuring and the look of pure disappointment that had planted the tiny seeds of guilt in his heart. The tiny seeds of guilt that had started growing as the days went by and the murmuring and disappointed look continued, growing and sending deep roots into his heart. Then the guilt had blossomed one night as he had tried to sneak his way into the house one evening. The dragon lady had caused that guilt to blossom just by making a quiet innocent sounding statement almost to no one, “Are you even sure he used the money to compile the documents?” “What did you say?” Derrick had asked his eyes glued to the television screen as it was always the case when there was a cease fire between them and they wanted to create an image of a perfect couple (another act of the sad monotonous drama). Jude had stopped in place every fiber of nerve in his body suddenly going dead. The only thing that had not been dead in his body that evening had been his heart, his heart that had started pounding noisily in his chest like a sledge hammer. “Nothing,” she had said. But it had not been nothing and he had heard her well enough. That...