Nobody wants to believe me at home, but some chickens can fly like eagles. I love God and tell the truth always like our Sunday school teacher advised. The fowl flew out of the cage and went away. Bra Yaw says I am lying, that he saw me go to the coop to play with the akokɔ and now it has escaped. Everyone has gathered outside, calling me akwadaa bɔne, a bad child. Mummy takes off her slippers and I run towards the gate, shouting for help. She follows me to the street for a few seconds before stopping. She says if my name is Kojo Nimo, I should come back to the house without our Christmas chicken. She is screaming that because of me, the family will not eat meat tomorrow. Now everyone is peeping out of their windows and laughing at me. All because of that stupid cock.
I don’t know where to start looking for it. The heat is making my skin itch. When I look at the sky, the sun burns my eyes. I have to find it before Daddy comes home and Mummy tells him, so I am walking all over Manhean Tigo Pole like a street child. I ask our neighbour, Agya Kwame, please have you seen any white chicken with black cloth tied around the right wing? He shakes his head. Yet they said old people knew everything. Maybe he caught it and hid it in his room.
On Cottbus Street, Naa’s gate is open and I see her father open his car’s boot. All his children jump around in merriment because he brought home a new Christmas tree. Naa waves at me from a distance and runs over to tell me that they now have a big tree like the one in films. She asks if I want to see it and I say no. I will bring your gift, I say and run off before she keeps me with her plenty talk. I can’t tell her that I am looking for my family’s chicken for tomorrow. Her parents kill two goats and many cocks every bronya.
I start counting goat pellets on a street and jump over all the mess the cows make when they pass through Peace Village. Mummy hates the smell when the shit sticks to our slippers’ soles and we walk all over the compound. I pause in the middle of the street. I have forgotten why I came outside. A car honks pimmm behind me and I run to the side. The foolish man in his car says I am a stupid boy. I pick a stone, but people are outside. I pray that something bad happens to him. I think about his big jeep upside down and hop over the rough road. Some chickens are clucking kru-kru near me. Chicken! Mummy! I wish that white fowl were like my Mummy’s phone, which always gets missing in the sitting room and we have to call her number to find it.
The chickens by the roadside are six. None of them is completely white, but one has a mix of white and black feathers. If I catch it and tell everyone at home that I found it at Mama Adjei’s charcoal store, they will take it. If they won’t eat it, they should be there. Pastor Boateng says God answers the prayers of little children. As Daddy will say, the Lord has provided bountifully. If I catch two, everyone will have more meat to eat. I chase the chickens and they start running away. Someone is yelling something behind me, but I keep running after all the birds down the road. All their wings are just flapping harmattan dust. I am about to catch one when something explodes ta-ta-ta beside me.
I fall down, calling for help. I hear only laughs. It is Ato and Nana throwing knockouts. They run towards me and say they will tell everyone I was scared. I say I wasn’t and they say I should prove it by joining them to throw the knockouts. I look around for something my mind is telling me to remember, but all I can think of is the pow-pow-pow that will make me happy. I follow the boys down the street, lighting the short sticks and throwing them to pa-pa-pa. Old people keep telling us to leave with our noise. They hate joy, those elders. We are laughing and the ground around us is doing gunshots and more children are coming out from their houses and the sky is turning round as I spin—
The black cloth around white feathers makes me stop. The fowl is coming out of an incomplete building. Is that not your chicken, Nana asks. I hush him up. I whisper to them that it did prison break and I have to bring it back home. Boys-boys offer to help. We crouch and surround it. Please don’t fly at my face like the last time, I pray. Ato and Nana will laugh at me if I run away. We jump on it at the same time, all hands reaching, all legs running, all wings fluttering. The chicken screams kraw-kraw-kraw. The kids from nearby houses have gathered to watch and they chant, catch it, catch it, catch it! The black strip around the wing passes through my fingers and I clutch it because I don’t want Daddy’s belt. Everyone claps for me. The akokɔ struggles in my grip. I raise it up like World Cup.
Rigwell Addison Asiedu is a Ghanaian writer and editor, a 2025 Fellow of The Literary Laddership for Emerging African Authors and finalist for the 2025 Morland African Writing Scholarships. His work has been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and Afritondo Short Story Prize (2025), and the African Writers Awards (2022). His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Lolwe, Isele Magazine, Ubwali Literary Magazine, Lọúnlọún, and elsewhere. An alumnus of the 2024 CANEX Creative Writing Workshop and a Best of the Net nominee, he serves as Managing Editor of Ojuju Magazine and Fiction & Nonfiction Curator for Nenta Literary Journal.
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