Justice

I think I was about 15, with my friend, Scott. Scott and I weren't best friends or anything, but once we found a huge whale vertebrae on the beach, so we had that in common. We'd been walking down the beach from the fresh water inlet in the monkey-infested mangrove swamp where we shimmied up a tree and jumped twenty feet into the water from a skinny branch, splashing into the shallow water being sure not to lock our knees. We were walking back to camp when we saw something on the beach. What's that, I said. It's shoes, he said. It's not shoes, I said. It wasn't. It was a huge-ass, stinky whale vertebrae. We dragged it all the way back to camp. I got to keep it. I forget how we negotiated that, but that's how it ended up. Maybe he didn't want it. Anyway, we had that in common.

So the way I remember it, we were sitting in a restaurant in Douala, Cameroon, on our way to the airport, eating french fries and chicken. My dad's friend was keeping an eye on his car outside, through the open door. So when his alarm went off, he was pretty quick. All of a sudden he was bolting out the door.

Me and Scott ran out after him. My dad sat there at the table, shaking his head at all our foolishness. He sprinkled more salt on his fries. My dad's friend scuffled in the middle of the road with the guy as cars honked and swerved around them. Then we were all sprinting through the city with a spontaneous mob of vigilantes armed with pipes and strips of rubber.

Eventually we caught the poor bugger. The three of us went back to our meal and left him in the mob's clutches. I don't know what happened to him after that.