Chapter 2
The partnership of Davins, Mavins, and Maurice began with hope, but reality was a harsh master. The small jobs Davins found were few and far between. Fixing a wall one week didn't guarantee food for the next. Desperation began to creep back in, colder and sharper than before.
They turned to straight labour—hauling gravel at a construction site, unloading heavy sacks from market trucks, clearing stubborn brush for landowners. The work was brutal, paying by the day in coins that stained their hands and left their muscles screaming. Worse, they often didn't have the right tools or the enduring strength for such relentless work. Mavins was strong, but even his back had its limits, and Davins and Maurice struggled to keep pace.
In their desperation, they always thought of one person: Sam.
Sam was their childhood friend who had taken a different path. While they struggled in the dust, Sam lived in a different world—the world of a "Yahoo boy." He wore flashy clothes and always had cash in his pocket, the product of online scams and shady dealings. He lived fast and talked loudly about his "success."
At first, whenever the three boys faced a crisis—when Maurice's mother fell sick and needed medicine, or when they couldn't afford a single meal—they would swallow their pride and call Sam.
"Sam, we need help. Just a little, until we get paid on Friday."
Sam would usually sigh, but he'd send them a small amount of money. "This is the last time, you guys," he'd say, his voice a mix of pity and annoyance. "You need to get your acts together."
The small transfers became a lifeline, but also a trap. Instead of solving their problems, it just patched them up for a week. They kept taking the difficult labour jobs, and when they inevitably fell short, they'd call Sam again.
The dynamic began to sour. The calls became more frequent, the requests more urgent. Sam's patience, thin to begin with, finally snapped.
One evening, after a back-breaking day where a foreman had cheated them out of half their pay, Davins called Sam. Before he could even finish his plea, Sam's voice crackled through the phone, sharp and dripping with contempt.
"Again? Are you people still calling me?" Sam sneered. "When will you stop being burdens? I'm tired of feeding three able-bodied men who can't even find a proper job."
The words hit Davins like a physical blow. He held the phone away from his ear, the venomous speech still audible to Mavins and Maurice, who stood nearby, their faces burning with shame.
"All you do is complain about 'labour work'," Sam continued. "You don't have the capacity? Then find the capacity! Or find a real job! Stop calling me with your problems. I am not your father."
The line went dead. The silence that fell between the three friends was heavier than any sack they had carried all day. The disgrace was complete. They had been stripped not just of a financial crutch, but of their dignity.
For a long time, no one spoke. The shame boiled inside them, mixing with their exhaustion.
Finally, Maurice, the thinker, broke the silence, his voice low and steady. "He is a criminal, and he disgraces us?"
Mavins clenched his fists, his strength now fueled by anger. "We break our backs every day. We try."
Davins looked from one friend to the other, the dreamer in him seeing a painful but necessary truth. "Sam is wrong about us being lazy," he said. "But he is right about one thing. We cannot keep living like this, begging from a thief. This disgrace... it ends tonight. We either find a better way, or we perish trying."
The shame Sam had thrown at them no longer felt like a weight holding them down, but like a fire lit beneath them. It was the push they finally needed to stop relying on anyone else. Their struggle was theirs alone, and they would have to be smart enough, and strong enough, to conquer it together.