Incompatible…
AARON ANSAH-AGYEMAN
INCOMPATIBLE
A ChrisEffe Thriller
CHAPTER 4
His hard eyes drilled into Brand Bawa, and suddenly a sad expression crossed the man’s face, and tears gleamed in his eyes. He looked so dejected that Chris felt the compassion rising heavily in his breast. The conference room was hushed into silence. Chris’ grandmother was staring balefully at Brand Bawa, her lips pressed tightly together with anger.
“Good,” Stan Yeboah said and licked his lips. “I’ll instruct my accountant to bring you the cheque later today, Brand. Now to –”
“He’s not selling the land,” Chris spoke and sat forward slowly.
There was an electric shock in the room. No one really ever dared interrupt Stan Yeboah or counteracted him when he spoke. All eyes swung to Chris with sudden venom.
“You shut up over there, Chris!” Lois Yeboah said icily, and Stan held up his right hand as his eyes drilled into Chris.
“And what did you just dare say to me, Chris Yeboah?” Stan Yeboah asked icily.
The fury was a roiling venom that blasted through Chris as he leaned forward and his eyes drilled back relentlessly at his grandfather.
“That land was bought fair and square with my father’s sweat and toil!” he said darkly. “Now you want to take it from him simply because of your friendship with Mr. Ken Kedem? Now what kind of justice do you think that is, sir?”
“I’ll pay your father twice the price of the land, triple even if he wants!” Stan said coldly. “I just don’t want the good relationship we have with the Kedems to be soured by the irresponsible and stubborn behaviour of your father!”
“Soured?” Chris asked icily. “Soured by whom? Ken Kedem knows that land belongs to my father, and yet he wants to have it by bending every rule in the book. He came to see you yesterday, and instead of defending my father, like you defend every other member of your family, you rather agreed with Ken Kedem to buy off the land? That, sir, is an injustice! If one of your children had been the owner of that land, I’m pretty sure you would’ve come to a different agreement with Mr. Ken Kedem than you did in my father’s case. Well, we are not selling that land! Not to you, or to anybody else for that matter!”
The silence was electric.
Suddenly, Esther Yeboah, Chris’ grandmother, jumped to her feet and began raining insults on Brand Bawa.
“You see what you’ve brought into this family, Brand Bawa?” she asked fiercely. “A damn stubborn boy! An infidel! An imbecile, a fool, a brainless little twerp! A rogue who shows no respect to his elders! I knew it! Evil man! The bad omen of your family follows you everywhere you go, and you sought to curse this family with it! If my daughter had not left you I would’ve died by now! Fool! I wonder why such a filthy, cursed piece of evil –”
“And you shut your damn mouth, you foul-mouthed witch!” Chris said coldly, getting to his feet and bristling with anger. He pushed a chair savagely out of his way as he moved forward.
All eyes turned to him again.
His grandmother looked at him with sudden apprehension, her face filled with unbridled fury, but the wrath she saw in Chris’ eyes made her sit down slowly.
Chris saw how dejected and absolutely hurt his father was, and his fury knew no bounds now.
“We’re done here, Pops,” he said gently. “Let’s get out of here. We don’t belong to this collection of evil souls. This is the very last time we show up here, Pops. I ain’t setting foot here ever again.”
Brand Bawa nodded and stood up.
“You sit back down, Brand!” Stan Yeboah bellowed angrily. “We’re not done yet! You leave when I say you should.”
Chris’ eyes met his grandfather’s unflinchingly.
“Yes, we’re done, and we definitely aren’t part of your damn stooges now, sir!” he said coldly. “Come, Pops, let’s roll. The stench here is rolling my stomach.”
As Brand Bawa began to walk towards Chris, Lois Yeboah jumped to her feet, her face filled with uncontrollable anger, and she pointed a hand at her ex-husband.
“Sit down this instance, Brand! Now!” she hissed furiously.
Brand Bawa paused with sudden trepidation and looked helplessly at his son.
Chris held out his hand to his father without saying anything. Brand held his son’s hand, and they began to walk toward the entrance.
With a furious curse Lois Yeboah pushed back her chair, rushed towards Brand and landed two hefty slaps across his face, and as Brand Bawa tried to move back from the onslaught of his ex-wife, he tripped and crashed rather heavily to the floor.
“Go and sit down this instant!” Lois screamed. “Show some respect for my father!”
Chris could not see through the haze of his fury.
He moved forward balefully toward his mother, his face was so fatally cold that it sent shards of fear through is father’s heart. Brand Bawa, still dazed and lying on the floor, got to his feet quickly and put a hand on Chris’ chest.
“No, no, no, Chris, please, no!” Brand said desperately.
But Chris could not stop himself.
Years of bitterness and the great love he had for his father had now taken over his heart as he bore down on his mother.
“What?” Lois said disdainfully, pointing a finger at Chris. “What, Chris Yeboah? You’ve now become a man? You will now raise a hand against your mother, you little impudent twerp?”
“I’ll never raise a hand against my mother!” Chris hissed furiously. “But you haven’t been a mother, have you? But, just so you know, nobody ever hits my father! No-bloody-body!”
“This is between me and Brand!” Lois Yeboah said scathingly, but there was stunned incredulity in the depths of her eyes now because his words had shaken her.
“Next time you hit anybody, ma’am, just make bloody sure it isn’t my father!”
Chris shoved his mother, quite unkindly, and she went flying backward with a screech of fear to crumple rather alarmingly into the chairs.
The people in the room screamed with horror as many of them got to their feet and gesticulated wildly.
Ato McBaiden was screaming furiously as he raced toward them, his hands balled into fists, his attention focused on his step-son. It was evident on his enraged face that he wanted to hurt the young man.
Perhaps, he didn’t know that Chris Bawa was an ardent disciple of the unarmed combat, GojuFist and that at a very young age his father had enrolled him in the Wailer Vroom Gojufist Dojo to learn the art of self-defense.
McBaiden swung his fists wildly, but Chris Bawa side-stepped him and, taking hold of his step-father’s outstretched hand, he turned in a graceful semi-circle and slammed the man into a cement pillar on his right.
Ato McBaiden screeched with pain as blood gushed down his nose.
He spun from the wall with a scream of rage as Chris’ moved backward from him. McBaiden rushed at Chris with his bloodied face, his eyes blazing with hatred. He swung a terrible right fist at Chris’ head, but the boy turned his head to the right, and the blow swung past his face. McBaiden wanted to hold back his blow, but he was too late. His fist crashed into the concrete pillar, and his knuckles made a horrible breaking sound.
This time his scream was fierce and pathetic, but it didn’t move Chris in any way as he smashed a fist against the man’s jaw, and he was flung back hard to crash into Lois, and the two of them fell down in an explosion of limbs, torsos, and groans of pain!
McBaiden, still bleeding from the nose, was now holding his injured hand gingerly as he moaned pathetically.
“Chris Yeboah!” Stan screamed with horror, getting to his feet, his old face lined with absolute shock and disbelief.
Chris pointed a finger at his grandfather.
“I’m not a Yeboah!” Chris hissed angrily. “Since I was five, and your daughter left my father, none of you has ever given me or my father a pesewa! I went through life on my own and worked with my own hands to help my father take care of my education. He worked with his hands on his carpentry bench to make money to push me through life! I don’t believe I owe anyone here anything. I’m Chris Bawa. You have never accepted me, nor my father, into your family, so let’s just cut the drivel!”
“Chris!” Esther screamed. “This is sacrilege! You imbecile!”
Chris looked at her, and she flinched with fear.
Chris turned and looked into the horror-struck eyes of his father.
“Oh, Chris!” Brand cried, shaking his head slowly. “What have you done? What have you done now, my son? You can’t raise a hand against your own mother! That is a taboo! That is a bad omen!”
“I’m sorry, Pops!” Chris said bitterly. “I’m sorry I raised my hand to her, but I didn’t hit her, just pushed her off you! When I was a child I saw her hitting you constantly, Pops, at the least excuse, slapping your face so often. But you never hit her back, not even on a single occasion. She listened to her parents, and she was cruel to you! She slapped and insulted you, or hit you with anything her hand could reach, she beat me, and she landed both of us in a hospital many times. I swore to myself that I will never ever let anybody alive put a hand on you when I grow up! Anybody that raises a hand against you, will have me to contend with! Let’s get out of here, Pops.”
Lois Yeboah was on her feet, and she was speaking on her phone angrily, calling her bodyguard.
A moment later the door slid open and the uniformed bodyguard entered.
He was a huge man, and he pulled out a gun as he walked toward Chris.
“Arrest him, Abdul!” Lois screamed as she wiped a drop of blood from her husband’s nostrils with a handkerchief. “He hit me! This boy dared to hit a Member of Parliament! He assaulted me and my husband! Call the police! Lock him up!”
Most of the family members were shouting and speaking almost at the same time, filling the place with a babble of unintelligible words.
Brand Bawa was suddenly scared. He turned to his ex-wife and clasped his hands in supplication toward her.
“Lois Yeboah!” he implored, his face anguished. “He’s your son! You’ll have him locked up in prison? Please, I beg of you, spare him! He was only defending me and himself”
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