A black boy wearing a green pant and half of an old checkered red and black shirt, walked barefoot on the empty path that cut across the bush to the river. Behind him the line of the bamboo village buildings blended smoothly into the undulating landscape of the Guinea highlands. He was surrounded by green and blue sky, white sky, and gray sky. The heat of the sun broiled the earth and sky together in a transparent hotness.
The boy stopped and looked back in the direction he had come, for the fields he had left behind. That way stood his little hut, and his mother and the girl who lived with them. The way he was going, all he could see was the green and brown bush stretching desolate away to the horizon. This was all he could see because, on reaching the river, there was no way to go but down, into the water.
There was nobody to see, nobody to speak to for many weeks now. But the boy felt apprehensive as he stepped into the water, feeling the mud squelch up between his toes, leaving dark prints as he walked into the water. The water was warm and slimy and his toes curled as they pressed against the slimy mud and roots. He stepped into the center of the stream where it was deep enough to swim and he was able to clean up and swim. But it was also deep enough that it could come to his shoulders and cover his head if he should fall. The current would be too strong for him to escape from the grip of the dark water.
Behind his back he left the stick top cane that had been pressed into the earth to mark his way along the banks of the river. He pushed it down into the mud. Other canes were already pressed in along the bank, marking the way for him and whoever would come after him.
Once in the water he stopped for a moment and looked behind him. The line of cane marking his way disappeared into the bush behind. He took another step. Now there was no more cane to be seen. He could only depend on memory.
In the water he understood that he needed to swim farther than he had been able to before. Giving up on the cane he waded out as far as he could, leaving his clothes behind as he did so. He was completely naked now. The only covering for his nakedness was mud and slime. He swam under water, twisting and turning to avoid the roots and the weight of the branches above. He swam back toward the shore, skimming deep under the water. His lungs felt sore and he was gasping for air as he crawled through the muddy shallows. The stream was slow and gentle, not rushing and head-high as the river it hailed from would have been. There were no schools of fish nearby and the current was so slow that he could have walked without fear of being swept away; but the boy was nervous. He was glad when he finally reached the bank on the other side of the river.
There were no canes where he was to walk, so he began following the trees along the river edge. At first it was simple enough. He could keep his bearings by following the trees and the line of the bank. But there were bigger trees on the other side of the river, where some had decided to begin the walk to the edge. He looked along the line of trees that grew in regular rows along the river bank. He stopped and rubbed his feet in the mud at the edge of the water. He plunged his feet into the dead leaves of the forest floor, covered with a layer of cold silt that settled on the ground each year as the water retreated.
Then he took a step, and another and another, going deeper and deeper into the forest. He did not know what he should do when the trees stopped. He turned and looked back, but he knew that somebody would be following him. He could feel it.