Uncle Benjy

"Stay away from your Uncle Benjy, he's a bad influence".

That was my Mum warning me then. It was the umpteenth time she had said that. Uncle Benjy was her youngest cousin and of course my favorite Uncle. Those warnings fell on deaf ears.

Every family today has an Uncle Benjy. He's the one who teaches you to make glue out of a mixture of styrofoam and a few quarts of fuel. He's also the one that teaches you to drive a car...as early as ten years old or tell if a girl's boobies are real or merely padded up. Yep, that's Uncle Benjy.
Though such people are usually not the kind of role models parents want for their kids, they often tend to be very good with children and Uncle Benjy was very generous.

Uncle had come to stay with us for few weeks, and during that period he had managed to fill my impressionable mind with a whole lot of bogus facts and ideas much to my mum's consternation. In fact I owed a huge chunk of my childhood enlightenment to his words of wisdom and as a result I was always one step ahead of my peers in the ways of the world. And I was only eleven.

On one particularly windy Friday evening, Uncle Benjy and I were stuck at home. It couldn't be helped; my parents had gone for this cocktail party my Dad's company was organizing. Cordelia the house-help had been summoned to the village because her Dad was sick and probably dying, and my siblings were at boarding school. So there we were, alone.

"What do we do, Lee?" (Growing up then, I loved Bruce Lee movies, so he called me Lee)

"Tell you what, put on your shoes, we are going out."

He grabbed the keys to my Mum's Citroen and we drove towards Ikeja. It wasn't long before we arrived at Titty Bar (Now Club Unique) off Allen Avenue. 

The place was a bee-hive. Though we didn't enter, (Uncle Benjy probably had the sense not to do that, with me around). I could still make out some ashys on the premises.

"This is going to be our secret".

Nobody seemed to care that I was a minor, probably because I was tall for my age or they were all caught up in their own shebangs. We settled for the snooker table/bar outside. My Uncle was a real talent at snooker, he had already won the first two rounds when his friends joined us. We had some beers, a Tandi Guarana for me and suya.

He showed me how to tilt the glass before pouring beer into it to avoid filling it with foam and how to put your finger in the foam to get rid of it.

At some point that evening, a woman passed our table and smiled at Uncle Benjy.

He looked at me and asked, "What's the verdict?"

"Padded", I replied and they all burst out laughing.

Soon it was time to leave. Uncle didn't want my parents to get back and find out that we had gone out. My mum wouldn't hear of it. We got into the car and started home. I can't remember all that he said in the car that evening, but I know he was quite talkative. Tipsy, maybe.

I opened the pigeon hole and brought out some tapes. One of them was Bon Jovi. I slotted it in the player and suddenly Uncle Benjy went crazy. It was the track, Livin' on a prayer. He turned up the volume and began singing along, forcing me to join him. Soon we were shouting at the top of our voices to Bon Jovi.

Whack!

What was that? We suddenly realised we had hit something...someone.

The car veered to a stop by the side of the road.

"Wait here, don't get out", Uncle Benjy was suddenly sober. He got out of the car.

I was scared, what had we done? Then I heard him wail from the back. It wasn't good. I ran out to join him. The man on the ground was covered in blood. He was badly dressed and had a gaunt look. His neck must have been broken, I wasn't sure. But he was dead.

"Open the boot", my Uncle whispered. And he threw in the body.

I guess it was fortunate that at that time of the night, there was no-one around for miles. He drove a few minutes and got to what I believe now was Third Mainland Bridge. He parked close to the edge of the rail and motioned for me to get out. He got the body out, dragged it to the side of bridge and with some effort threw it overboard. A few vehicles passed by but none of them stopped.

I looked into the boot and noticed the man's scuffed shoe. It was stained with blood.

"Throw that in as well", Uncle Benjy stammered.

I wasn't sure but I thought I saw him shiver. I did and it dropped without a splash. All this seemed to happen so fast. He closed the boot and we got into the car.

"That man was a bum. A homeless person with no family, so he won't be missed", he explained.

"You'll keep this quiet and not mention this to anyone, do you hear?"

"Yes", I quipped.

I could barely hear my own voice. The rest of the drive was deathly silent. None of us spoke again until we got home. Fortunately it was only 11pm and my parents weren't back yet. He made me have my bath and get into bed while he proceeded to clean up. It wasn't long before I fell asleep.

The next morning I went down to the back and joined my Uncle as we silently finished cleaning up what remained of last night's encounter from my Mother's Citroen. Even though I had nightmares of the incident for weeks after that, I never once mentioned what occured between us to anyone.
It was our own secret.

Just few weeks ago, Uncle Benjy passed away.

He died of AIDS at Reddington Hospital. A slight parting gift from life for his terrific lifestyle. And I was with him till the last minute. It didn't make me love him any less and I didn't think he was a bad influence, not from the way I looked at it anyway.

I looked at the carton in front of me. It was sealed and had Lee written on the side. Mum said Uncle wanted me to have it. I tore the seal open and looked inside. It was a collection of records, Bon Jovi's all time greatest hits.

I put into the player my favorite track and watched the dusk approach, as the starting tunes of Livin' on a prayer began to play from my speakers.

   In memory of Benjamin Ndukwu (1969-2011)

Listen to Bon Jovi's 'livin on a prayer' here