Evil Spirits

"I will cane you and you see if I won't!"

Bibi advances threateningly with her dark hands akimbo on her hips, her lips twisted into an ugly rope knotted with tension. The white of her eyes protrude glaringly at Sam as the air is whipped with fear.

The local fair had come to town. Racing the herd home so that he could make it just in time to watch the elephant show, Sam had left a calf behind, being in such a hurry that he did not count the animals in the stall. After all, he had done it many times, hadn't he, shepherding the animals forth and nothing had happened before? Ok-once Sam had been careless and had left a nursing cow out in the fields while he shooed the rest back home. The newborn calf had died in the night. But Danny, his older brother, in a fit of protection from the wrath of Bibi because Sam was still 'young', in his opinion, had quickly got the cow home, and broke his money bag to present to Bibi the coins he had gotten from 'selling' the calf because he noticed it was getting 'sick'. Both of them narrowly missed Bibi's hellfire judgment after bearing the scrutiny of her piercing eyes, for after all, since when had her boys become so concerned with money for the home?

But Danny was not there to help Sam this time. They had had a fight-he had caught Sam taking money from the money bag that Danny had been saving in from harvesting for a new motorized airplane toy that he had planned on buying at the fair. Danny had caught Sam, smacked him upside down before Bibi hollored from inside the thatched house for them to 'watch it', snatched the money and headed off alone to the fair. How Sam wished for Danny to be there now. Bibi, in her characteristic sadistic way, would march Danny to look for the 'biggest and fattest' stick from the forest for her to strike Sam with, and Danny, in his usual protective but helpless stance, would be careful to choose the thinest one that he could possibly get by without being under suspicion as an ally. Michael, his other younger brother, would have gleefully cantered off to search for something that amounted to a mini tree trunk which could have pinned a medium-sized animal down. At least that was what Sam had done for Michael on a number of occasions when instructed to by Bibi. No, Danny would have been on Sam's side. How unfortunate that we would steal from somebody in whose good-naturedness we most trust.

Sam's heart raced as his eyes lingered on the big stick that Bibi brandished in her hands. Oh how he wished that he had just done the usual to count, how he wished that his mind was not so on the elephant show in town! The tension now became worse than seconds ago when he was listening miserably in a corner at the echo of  the thundering footsteps of Bibi as she had stomped off in anger to hunt down a stick for the deed.

"You have an evil spirit in you", Bibi whispered as she came upon Sam, pushing him under the table. He looked wildly through the legs of the table and chairs in a bid to make a dash for another empty space. "And I am goin to cane it out of  you!" Bibi's voice suddenly rose to a fiery height as her strong brown arms lashed down on Sam's scrambling legs.

"I am goin to cane out the spirit of evil! Do you know how long we had waited for that calf to be born? We need a male calf  munggu damn ni! Come here I am goin to give you spirit of meekness and curse out this evil one!" 

Sam fet tears welling in the corner of his eyes as his calves and feet and arms bore the brunt of lash after lash. The excitment of the elephant show faded away as the searing pain slapped him after the whipping sound of the stick cut abruptly through the air seconds before it hit flesh. At the back of his mind he thought about the jeers that he would get the next day in school with all the stick marks. Oh how he hated the cows and elephants now.