The Cricket and the Clay

By Isaac Attah Ogezi We alight from the school bus onto the pavement in the front of our house. With our school bags strapped on our backs, my younger sister and I race to our gates and climb up the stairs. After a couple of rings of the doorbell, Ori, the housemaid, ushers us in. As usual, we don't expect to see either of our parents at home by this time of the day, but as from four p.m. above. Instinctively we pause in our strides at the sight before us. Who is this? For reclining on one of the sofas in our sitting room is an old woman, half-asleep. Our parents didn't tell us that we were expecting any visitor. Perhaps awakened by our loud cheery entrance, she opens her eyes. 'Is that you, Egwurube, Ogabanya?' she asks rhetorically. ‘Come to your grandmother's arms, children,' she invites with outstretched arms. What a surprise! Happily we run into her arms. She doesn't call my sister and me by our English names, Edward and Evelyn, but our native names. We are always delighted to see her because of the air of hilarity that pervades our house with her arrival. Again she tells us children stories of yesteryears. 'Grandma, could you please tell us a story?' requests my younger sister, Ogabanya. 'Dear me! Don't you see that she's tired and needs some rest after a long and tedious journey from our village?' queries our mother. We have all trooped outside to sit on benches in the open-air verandah after we have had our supper. It is a breezy, moonlit night and the heat within is unbearable, coupled with the power outage. 'You didn't hear me complain, did you?' asks our grandmother. 'Besides, we can't begrudge her of such a privilege which you yourself enjoyed at her age,' she adds mischievously. Turning to my sister, she asks, 'What story will you have me tell tonight, my dear?' 'Just any one with animals in it.' 'All right. Here you are.' There is a slight pause as grandmother stuffs her pipe with tobacco leaves and sets it alight. Suddenly a faraway look comes on her face as if she is magically beholding the bygone period of the story she is about to tell. 'Long, long time ago, in the animal kingdom,' she's begun, 'there lived Cricket and Clay who were always at loggerheads. As at the time I'm talking about, crickets' teeth were as spotlessly white as peeled cassava tubers. One day, Clay brought a complaint of stealing against Cricket before Lion, the King of all animals in the kingdom. According to him, Cricket stole some yams from his barn under the pretext of foraging for food. After listening carefully to the allegation, Lion asked Cricket if what Clay had said about him was true. Cricket denied vehemently, muttering curses under his breath. He challenged Clay to prove it. In those days, one of the ways to settle a dispute, as the custom was, was for the accused to challenge his accuser publicly to a fight or contest. In order to prove his innocence, Cricket challenged Clay to a contest, and a day was fixed for it. Before the race, Cricket went and held a secret meeting with the ancient rainmaker of the land and paid him a hefty sum of money. Unknown to Clay of what Cricket had done, he went about boasting, thumping his chest that he would defeat Cricket in the contest. At last, the long-awaited day of the contest dawned with fanfare, and all the animals in the kingdom gathered at the grandstand to watch the great contest. The drums rolled, the flutes sang. The okanga, the talking drum, sang praises of both contestants, regaling the audience with the exploits of each of their ancestors, which made their bare bodies throb with palpable excitement. The starter's shot was fired into the air from a dane gun and the two contestants swung into action. As Clay, a mere lump of clay that he was, leaped from one point to another on its head, Cricket sprinted away. No sooner had the contestants begun the race than the rainmaker unleashed torrents of rain from the skies upon them, pelting the earth mercilessly. Both of them were thoroughly beaten by the rain, soaked to the skin. It was a downpour never witnessed within living memory. Unfortunately for Clay, at every step he took, he began to disintegrate. At first, he was alarmed, but he vowed never to lose the race to Cricket. He continued to melt away gradually until nothing was left of him except for some wet soil spread haphazardly all over the place like ashes. Meanwhile, Cricket panted ahead despite the poor invisibility induced by the heavy rain. On arrival at the agreed point, he began to feel cold and went to dry himself by a nearby tripod hearth. It was while he was comfortably warming himself that news got to him that his challenger, Clay, was no more alive. He had been slain by thunderbolts and shafts let loose by the rain, his remains melted away in the flood which flowed down the stream. When Cricket heard of this, he burst into laughter, chirping jubilantly. He laughed and laughed and laughed until tears were coursing down his cheeks. How dared Clay imagined that he could defeat him in a race? Seized by an uncontrollable paroxysm of laughter, he didn't know when he fell into the fire. Though rescued quickly by kind bystanders, it was too late as his once handsome face had been severely burnt. The healer did his utmost but he could not restore Cricket's face to its former state; his teeth were burnt beyond repair and have remained ever so. That was how Cricket got his burnt teeth and his generations after him.' At the end of the story, we children are asked to tell the lessons we have learned from Cricket's downfall, his vices that should be avoided like the plague such as cheating and its attendant repercussions, and how over-confidence in life and excessive celebration of one's achievements could ruin a man.