THE UNKNOWN HANDS (EPISODE TWELVE)

STORY SERIES

… him as an end to my trouble. My host was never really surprised. “Humans are like water” he had stressed, “We flow in different directions at different times. That’s why we should always endeavor to do good”.

That statement was something I kept in mind for a very long time and indeed had been my guiding principle. A man must strive to be above board at all times. One should abhor to anything that could tarnish one’s image whenever one is and in whatever one does.

For the upright and honest, the sky will always be the limit. On the second hand, the dishonest and dubious man, even if he accumulates all the wealth in the world, will one day leave everything in the hands of children who would squander all he has acquired through foul means. It is simply the law of nature which no man can change, no matter how great, powerful or influential he might be.

The following morning, the man woke me up from where I was sleeping and having thanked my host for his hospitality, our journey to Ayedaade soon began. We had barely set our feet on the path when the man started narrating the cause of the quarrel between him and my father. According to him, the two of them were planning to embark on a joint produce trade at the time and even though, he warned my father against exposing the plan to anyone, my father still went ahead and briefed another friend of his who discouraged him from taking part in the project. Pa Fatokun said it was after he had started the venture all alone and my father realized he had acted foolishly in backing out of it that he made the move to join him and he, Fatokun bluntly refused. That was the cause of their disagreement until he moved to Ayedaade. I determined to know who the devilish friend that discouraged my father could be and from the description I got, it was unmistakably Pa Lapite. When I narrated my own stories of what the man did before and after my father’s death, Baba Fatokun was very surprised.

“He did all those? Human beings can be terrible!” he had emphasized.

I never doubted anything the man told me. Moreso, when some of the bits I heard from him were things I had noticed myself, even before my father’s death. For instance he, he told me how my father had been usually helpful to Pa Lapite in his moments of need, when no one of Pa Lapite’s family members was able to come to his aid. Besides, according to Baba Fatokun, there was a time Pa Lapite was to send some necessary things to his in-laws before his first wife would be handed over to him and had virtually nothing as he had inherited only a barren land from his own late father. It was…to be continued on Saturday

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