Wole Soyinka
movies; the subculture of marijuana smokers in the criminal underworld
of petty felons and “hired guns” (“thugs”); and fierce professional pride
in his job as a driver of timber-hauling lorries. The moral code by which
he lives is compounded out of these diverse sources and models and is
thus like a pastiche of half-digested ideas, but its rootedness in an under-
lying expectation of destruction is unmistakable and it shows through in
his most memorable act of verbal self-presentation in the play:
: Son of timber!
.: That’s me kid. A guy is gorra have his principles. I’m a right guy. I
mean you just look arrit this way. If you gonna be killed by a car, you don’t
wanna be killed by a Volkswagen. You wanra Limousine, a Ponriac or
something like that. Well thas my principle. Suppose you was to come and
find me in the ditch one day with one of them timber guys on ma back.
Now ain’t it gonna be a disgrace if the guy was some kinda cheap, wretched
firewood full of ants and borers. So when I carry a guy of timber, its gorra
be the biggest. One or two. If it’s one, its gorra fill the whole lorry, no
room even for the wedge. And high class timber kid. High class. Golden
walnut. Obeche. Ironwood. Black Afara, Iroko, Ebony, Camwood. And
the heartwood’s gorra be sound. (Thumps his chest.) It’s gorra have a solid
beat like that. Like mahogany.
: No dirty timber!
.: Timber is ma line. You show me the wood and I’ll tell you what kinda
insects gonna attack it, and I’ll tell you how you take the skin off. And I’ll
tell you what kinda spirit is gonna be chasing you when you cut it down. If
you ain’t gorra strong head kid, you can’t drive no guy of timber.
: Just the same it doesn’t much matter what you are carrying when it
rolls over you.
.: You kidding? Just you speak for yourself man. And when that guy of
timber gits real angry and plays me rough, I just don’t wan no passenger
piss running on ma head. You know, just last week I pass an accident on
the road. There was a dead dame and you know what her pretty head was
smeared with? Yam porrage. See what I mean? A swell dame is gonna die
on the road just so the next passenger kin smear her head in yam porrage?
No sirree. I ain’t going with no one unless with ma own guy of timber.
(CP,–)
Sergeant Burmah’s personal moral code is even more vividly ren-
dered since he is already dead when the action of the play begins and
he is animated for our stultified regard by the impressive mimetic skills
of Samson. Like Say-Tokyo Kid, Sergeant Burmah’s identity revolves
around his professional pride as a driver of oil tankers, but to this is
added his open practice of cannibalizing every salable commodity from
road crashes and their victims, even if these victims are acquaintances