A Fly in a Spider’s Web.

Photo by Ryan Hyde on Unsplash

An electrician was standing at a bus stop. It was the second rush hour of the day, the eventide when traders, artisan, the self and the underemployed shuffled back to their hovels.

It was survival of the fittest during rush hours. And he, having fought to enter three cabs and five buses and lost out on all of them, was not the quickest.

He suffered the unbalancing gait of those whose fibula is shorter in one leg, in his case, the right leg.

A pronounced limp. When he ran, it was as if he lost the right leg of his high heel boots and had stubbornly refused to take off the second one.

At any bus stop, at any rush hour, if they were there, the only people not in haste to get anywhere were the hawkers.

They were blessed most times by the august presence of thugs and pickpockets. Of the two scavengers, the pickpockets were the most dangerous.

You could always tell what the thugs wanted and, if you could, avoid them. With the second set of foragers, your chances were even.

One of these professional wallet lifters tailed the Electrician. He watched him for a while then swooped in. A fly in a spider's web.

A professional that he was, he blended with the crowd. Jostled when they ran; settled when they acquiescenced, waiting for the next motor to come by; looked one direction and the other in show of solidarity with the expectanct passengers.

In this manner he moved, until he was now standing beside the Electrician who had his tester and testing lamp and screwdriver and pliers out in his hand — the tools he took along when he went to render his services to a client.

The devices were too small to warrant a bag, and too sharp to be left in the pocket. His pocket held his other treasures, that is, his 'torchlight phone', loose change that were badly squeezed, black tape, and one or two rubber bands.

Like a snake glides along green grasses and lying logs, the Pickpocket slid his hand into theman's pocket. It was the wrong pocket, so it was empty. He waited and bided his time. He strolled off to wait beside other people for a moment.

Presently, the Electrician took the plier from his left hand and held it in his right. If you hold anything for long enough, however light it is, you begin to feel the weight of the world in the muscles of that hand.

But the man still had to fight for a space on the motor so he needed his strong hand free. Which was why he held most of his tools in his left hand that was now going numb.

He took out the heaviest device, the plier and put it in the other hand.

A bus came by, the usual rush, the same fate for the man with disability. The spider was back.

He was in a hurry to get what he wanted and get out of there. The herd was thinning out.

Like a kite flies into the ground with such fine finesse, he stuck his hand into the man's treasure hole. His finger found the rumpled naira notes and gathered them.

He was not quick enough.

The first time he dipped his hand in the electrician's pocket, the man with the limp felt it.

When he did it again, about to make off with the man's money, the Electrician caught, with his pliers, the Pickpocket's fingers while they were still in his pocket, and clamped it tight.

Disbelief.

Shock. Terror.

When you steal, the real reward is not in what you have stolen, it is in the thrill that you got away, especially if you almost got caught.

If you get caught, your mind tells your head that you have dropped the ball, not for stealing. For getting caught. It's a dissonance, a rejection by your own thinking faculty, putting the blame flatly on your head. You disown yourself.

When the Pickpocket got caught, he screamed.

It startled the Electrician, the wail for help, so much that he almost let go of the pliers.

The Pickpocket rammed himself into the Electrician hoping to destabilise him and gain his freedom. But the Electrician had opened his legs wide and so his body withstood the impact.

In return, he tightened his grip on the clamp.

Darkness was reclaiming its stolen territories from the Sun, killing off any soldier of light left behind. And people don't like to get into a fight when they can't see the lines of their own palms.

Fights like that was how you end up being the casualty. Except of course you were danger yourself.

So people stayed off the two men, both bent, struggling for something no one could see, but everyone heard one of them baying like a horse on fire.

The thugs closed in on the two men like vultures around a carcass. The vultures had only one motive, to seize the opportunity in disaster. One of them shone light, then another, then more lights.

People joined them to gauge for themselves the entertainment value of the incident. Even before they heard any of the two men out, the event was very pleasing to them, particularly the crudity of the trap itself.

A rotund woman dragged her young children and fled the scene. She heard only the beginning, but decided she had heard enough. It was possible, she told her younglings, that if one pickpocket was caught, others may be lurking around to take advantage of the distraction.

In fact, she believed the whole charade was a distraction.

Hence she wasn't there when the thugs begged the Electrician to let the pickpocket go.

She didn't witness the man's refusal, claiming he would only let his trapped game go if he returned the money he stole from his other pocket.

The claim hit the Pickpocket in the gut like a herder’s club. He denounced doing such a thing, saying that he didn't find any money in the other pocket.

The plier was tightened just a little so, but the effect was such that the trapped man responded in decibels of agony.

How much was taken? Where is it? Stop lying and tell the truth!

The negotiation danced round and round like a ballerina on a spindle. The Electrician settled for three thousand naira, two thousand lesser than his claim. The Pickpocket still didn't have that.

Someone volunteered to pay for him because he was a friend.

The Electrician took the money, gave the thugs one thousand naira, they got him a space on a bus and he went home.

The Pickpocket will have to work twice as hard to pay off his debt.