The Perpetrator

Near the end of the summer, some years ago, when I was still a young man, during harvest time, the beginning of harvest time, actually, a man died in the fields. His death was incomprehensible—not incomprehensible in the usual way: of potential unfulfilled, obligations left behind, children left without a father—incomprehensible in that he died for no reason. His heart and valves were healthy and unclogged, his lungs free of fluid, he could not afford cigarettes and thus he did not smoke, he ate the same maize and goat diet as the rest of the villagers, he had no history of disease, and he was not yet twenty-three years old. He simply collapsed and ceased to live. The other villagers were greatly agitated and, as we are wont to do, began to search about for a cause, a perpetrator, starting first by closely examining the body for signs of infection or shock or a pernicious, hidden snakebite. None was found, of course, and thus their agitation grew. Burn him and be done with it, several of the younger men who had disliked him urged, but they were ignored and the villagers began to search. They did so, searched, by loading the dead man into a teak coffin and putting the coffin on eight of their shoulders, four on each side, following where it led, and, at the unfortunate hut to which it led, they went inside and beat the perpetrator to death.