by Ninie Hammon
Dan had never complained, had never told Ron, “Go sleep in your own bed.” He’d just scooted over to give Ron room. And better than that, Dan had never said a word about it. Not to their father, not even to Ron.
Whenever their father was home at bedtime, the big man always came in and said prayers with the boys. They’d all three kneel beside Dan’s lower bunk, his father in the middle, and pray. Though Ron struggled now to remember what they’d said in those prayers, he couldn’t recall a word.
But he could remember vividly the first time he had refused to pray. He’d been home from college; Dan, from law school. Aunt Edna had asked him to say grace before supper and he said no. It just popped out. He didn’t mean for it to. Dan had swooped in to save the day, as he always did, so the moment wasn’t awkward. That night, though, they had it out on the front porch, Dan yelling at him that he had been rude; Ron countering that he was only being honest.
“Why bother to pray?” Ron shouted at his older brother. “You think God listens? You think he cares?”
Dan stopped shouting then and just looked at him. Ron wasn’t expecting what he said next.
“You think God’s just like Dad, don’t you.”
Suddenly, it all made sense to Dan. He understood. “You think God created us and then bailed, left us out here to fend for ourselves, to sink or swim.”
Dan stood for a moment, shaking his head. When he spoke, he sounded sad. “Ron, just because you think Dad was a lousy father doesn’t make God one.”
He opened the screen door and went back into the house, leaving Ron outside staring up at the stars in the Indiana sky.
Ron couldn’t see the stars here. The cell was almost completely black now, and Ron’s heart pounded in his chest like a fist on a door. There are no atheists in foxholes, he thought.
OK, God, I’m here, and I’m scared, and there you have it, my life in a nutshell, he said inside his head. The scared part... I really am scared. It’s so dark! And he thought miserably, Oh please, God, help—don’t let me cry!
He drew in a deep, shaky breath. Then another. And another. Gradually, his heart stopped its tap dance and began to beat normally again. And he didn’t feel alone anymore. Maybe it was his friend’s presence nearby, but somehow he didn’t think so. It was something more than that.
God, I need to do this like a man. With dignity. I need to die like--he could hear his father say, "Now son, you remember, you're the child of a King. Act like it!"
OK, G... He stopped himself. OK, Father, help me die like a man.
Then he remembered an old Bible story and added in a rush: But you got the Apostle Paul out of jail. Please, please—get us out of here!
Pasha suddenly appeared beside Akin as she scrubbed a pot blackened in the fire when the cooks prepared breakfast. The woman took her by the arm into the dining tent and gave her a loaf of warm bread to eat! Akin was stunned, but quickly gobbled it down before Pasha could change her mind. Then the head mistress returned with two female servants who carried towels and soap, and indicated that Akin was to go with them down the path to the river.
At the water’s edge, the women pulled off Akin’s ratty T-shirt, so filthy and faded the smiley face was almost completely gone. They took her into the water and gave her a thorough soapy bath, then dried her with towels and dressed her in a small white wrap. Akin had not felt so clean and so comfortable since the day she’d been stolen from her village, and she was totally mystified by what was happening.
The women took the child back to her shelter. One of them had a small blanket, and she placed it on the ground for Akin to sit on. The other woman produced a swatter made of horse hair to drive away the flies from her clean body. Then the women left Akin alone under the tarp.
Why? Why the special treatment?
The little girl had seen too many horrible things to be naive enough to believe that what was happening to her was a good thing. Nothing here was ever a good thing. But whatever bad thing was about to happen, it was not happening right now. If captivity had taught her anything, it was to live in the moment, and she seized it, savored the small measure of humanity shown to her. She picked up the fly swatter and made up a game. How many of the huge, green latrine flies could she swat? The pile of them would be something to talk about when the others returned to the shelter that night.
The sun had risen above the riverbank trees and the streets were already filled with people who’d brought their goods to the Kosti market when Idris stepped out the door of the lodge. Though normally an early riser, he’d slept a little later than usual this morning. When he awoke, he’d found many of the room’s occupants already gone, including Omar and Koto. He saw their beds empty, and his heart had risen into his throat, but then he saw Koto’s small roll still on the bed where he had been sleeping, and he knew they would return.
Omar and Koto had left the lodge that morning before anyone else was awake. Omar had taken the boy with him to the market to buy food so he could question him more about what had happened to the American and his Arab friend.
Among a group of men across the street from the spot where Idris waited for Omar were two men who knew exactly what had happened to the American.
Joak had returned to the lodge before first light and awakened Leo, whispered in his ear, “Get out of here, now!”
Leo knew enough about fast exits not to ask questions. He simply stood up and left the room as silently as a cat. Once outside, Joak told him about the villager. Now, they waited across the street for the tribal to emerge from the dormitory room so Leo could confirm for himself that it was the same man they’d swindled.
Leo’s mind had been spinning ever since Joak awakened him. How had that Dinka tribal—villager, farmer!—made it all the way to Kosti by himself? The only possible answer was: he hadn’t. Somebody had helped him. But who? That was a good question, one Leo considered as he waited. Finally, the tall, slender villager with his familiar ebony spear came through the doorway.
Leo rubbed his coarse beard and stared across the street. That was him, all right, the father so desperate to get his daughter back.
“We’re going to kill him, right?” Joak asked impatiently. He’d thought about it, too, and had it all figured out.
“No, we don’t kill him.” Leo said flatly. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Idris and a plan began to form in his head. “If I listened to you, we’d have been broke, in jail or hanged a long time ago.”
Leo continued to stare at the tribal and what passed for a smile twisted his face under his crooked nose.
“What?” Joak’s eyes shifted from Leo to Idris and back.
“You look at him, you see a dead man,” Leo said. He turned to face Joak. “I look at him, I see a present.”
Joak was lost. “A present?”
“A present for Faoud,” Leo said and returned to his inspection of the tribal. “Faoud paid us well for the American, didn’t he? Why was that?” He didn’t bother to wait for Joak to respond; the fool probably didn’t know the answer. “Because the American was interfering with Faoud’s business, and Faoud never allows anybody to do that.”
Leo pointed at Idris, “Now this man, he’s trying to find a slave and take her back from the master who bought her! Faoud can’t very well let people get away with that, now can he? That wouldn’t be good for business.”
A toothless smile broke out on Joak’s face. No, that wouldn’t be good for business at all.
“And there’s more going on here than this stupid villager.” Leo muttered to himself as he thought out loud. “How did he get here, all the way to Kosti—a tribal, who only speaks Dinka?”
He turned to Joak, and his ugly face grew sinister. “That’s a question I am sure our friend, our partner Faoud will want to ask him.”
Koto totted a burlap bag full of food as he and Omar approached the lodge. Just ahead of them, a cloud of dust made its way down the street and rose over the tops of the small concrete dwellings. The transport bus had come to pick up
the lodgers and take them to the work camps. As the vehicle neared, Omar spotted Idris standing behind the waiting group of workers in front of the lodge, and he smiled. The tall African held his familiar ebony spear and stood faithfully beside Koto’s bedroll.
The bus rounded the corner and pulled up to the waiting crowd; diesel fumes and dust clouds swirled in its wake. The group surged forward to board the bus, but as Omar watched, a figure suddenly pulled out of the crowd of men and grabbed Idris.
Surprised by the hand that encircled his wrist, Idris’s eyes followed the scarred arm up to the menacing face of Leo Danheir. He would not have been more shocked if he’d been attacked by a lion in the middle of the street. As soon as Idris identified Leo’s vengeful face, he also identified the point of steel that applied pressure to the middle of his back. He remembered Leo’s knife. It had been very sharp.
“Come on, my determined little farmer friend,” Leo said pleasantly. “I have someone I think you should meet.”
Leo shoved Idris around the group of men boarding the bus and through the cloud of dust behind it. He held Idris’s left arm, walked about half a step behind him, and poked the point of the knife into Idris’s back often enough to remind him it was there. Joak yanked Idris’s spear out of his hand and tossed it on the ground. He grasped the tribal’s right arm and held on as if Idris were supporting him as he limped along. The threesome moved along the street, turned a corner and headed down an alleyway between two tall warehouses.
Omar had watched the whole drama; so had Koto, his eyes wide with horror. The mercenary turned to the boy and told him quickly in Lokuta to take the food, go back to the lodge with their belongings and wait for him. Then he set out behind Idris and his captors.
For the next half hour, Omar followed Leo, Joak and Idris through the streets and alleyways of Kosti. Well before they got to it, Omar saw the top of a two-story stucco house behind a rock wall on the edge of town.
After he watched the three men disappear through the gate under a stone archway in the wall, Omar began to make a wide circle around the dwelling through the trees and brush. When he got directly behind the house, he saw a gray stone building with high barred windows outside the rock wall. There was a tall gate in the wall opposite a wooden door in the side of the building. He continued his orbit and discovered a trail on the other side of the rock building that wound out to the road on the other side of the house, presumably for the use of vehicles that transported captives to and from the jail, for that was surely what the stone building was.
Satisfied that he knew the lay of the land around the house, Omar made his way back to the stone building. Hidden in the brush nearby, he leaned back against the trunk of a tree, made himself comfortable and prepared to wait.
Faoud sat on the patio, where a servant had just brought him a second pot of mariamia tea to go with his breakfast of mammoui, date-filled cookies. He smiled, chuckled under his breath, in fact. Today was going to be an enjoyable day, he thought—yes, indeed, a most enjoyable day. Then the servant returned and announced that Leo Danheir wanted to see him.
“Most noble Faoud, I know you are a busy man,” Leo fawned. “I have come to you with more information, new information to sell.”
Faoud’s eyes narrowed. He liked small, quick facts, not the long story he suspected he was about to hear from Leo. “Explain.”
“I rented a bed last night in the al Jubari Lodge.” The name clicked instantly with Faoud. That was where he’d found the American and his Arab friend.
“And while I was there, I saw a man from the south who weeks ago had tried to hire me to find his daughter. She’d been carried off from some village by...” Leo paused for effect, “a black-robed man named Hamir riding a white horse. You have a captain who fits that description, do you not?”
Faoud nodded, and Leo plunged breathlessly ahead. “And this farmer was willing to pay me a lot of money to find this girl, take her from her owner and bring her back to him.”
Leo cast a glance at Joak and grinned. “Of course, I took the fool’s money and left. I did not think I would ever see him again.”
“So what are you saying?”
“I am saying that this--Leo pointed to Idris with contempt--“farmer could not have found his way from Bentiu to Kosti all by himself.”
Faoud looked at Idris, and the tribal returned his look with an icy stare. All of these men, including the fat one—no, especially the fat one—were as evil as puff adders, and Idris refused to be cowed by evil.
Leo was right, Faoud thought. This was a simple tribal. Somebody must have brought him to Kosti. And who might that be? Who might be helping this farmer find a slave, one Faoud’s men had taken and Faoud had sold?
Leo continued to prattle on. When he said something about the American, Faoud held up his hand for the mercenary to be silent. He wanted to process this information. Leo was suggesting that this tribal was in some way connected to the American. How could that be? Why would the American help him? He had come to Sudan to take pictures of slaves, not to help some farmer find his daughter. But somebody brought the tribal to Kosti, and he was staying in the same lodge the American had stayed in.
“I am tired of guessing who is helping this farmer look for his daughter. We will get him to tell us, and then we will not have to guess anymore.”
He clapped his hands, and two guards with automatic weapons appeared like ghosts out of the shadows.
“Take him,” he indicated Idris, “to Ahkmad. Tell the jailer to find out...” He stopped and turned back to Leo. “What tribe is he?”
“Dinka.”
“Do you speak Dinka?”
“No, but my man here does.” Leo pointed to Joak.
“Then your man will be the interpreter.” Faoud turned back to continue his instructions to the guards. “I want to know who brought this villager to Kosti. I want to know everybody who is involved in any way. Everybody.”
He addressed Leo, “I am going to kill the American and the Arab tomorrow morning. I will kill this man, too, and anybody else who dares to interfere in my business. And when these men die, I want all my problems to die with them.”
The guards grabbed Idris and headed down a stone walkway that led from the patio to the rock wall; Leo and Joak trailed after them.
From his vantage point in the woods, Omar watched fatigue-clad guards put Idris in the jail, just as he thought they would. Two of them, along with the two men who had kidnapped Idris, came out the gate in the wall and knocked on the door. Someone let them in, and the guards came right back out. The others remained—the two troublesome strangers and the tribal who’d insisted on coming along on this quest. Well, Omar had warned him not to sign up for this adventure.
The mercenary shook his head and whispered softly under his breath, “I told you, father, that I might have to use you as bait.”
Chapter 20
When footsteps sounded in the stone passageway outside their cell, Ron and Masapha froze, instantly terrified. But the men who came through the ancient dungeon door had no interest in them.
There was scar-face, the jailer who moonlighted as an enforcer for the Arab Gestapo; a crippled, toothless, black man in a flowered shirt; an Arab whose nose looked like it had been hit with a baseball bat—more than once--and two guards escorting a tall, thin tribal between them.
The guards dragged the tribal across the cell to the far wall where the manacles hung, clamped his hands in the shackles and left.
Ahkmad turned to Ron and Masapha and said something in Arabic.
“He says we are to get from the way so he can work,” Masapha told Ron.
The two of them exchanged a look and moved their injured bodies carefully into a far corner of the cell.
The two other men got out of his way as well when the jailer unfurled his whip and swished it around in the straw on the floor before he reared back and slashed the tribal’s bare back with it. The man jerked forward into the wall, grimaced in pain, but made no sound.
“Joak, tell him he can save himself a whole lot of grief and pain if he just tells us what we want to know right now,” the smashed-nose man said, and the weird-looking man translated what he had said into Dinka.
Masapha leaned over and translated it quietly for Ron.
“Tell him he will answer our questions eventually anyway,” the man continued. “Why not do it now before we have to hurt him, why wait until we break him? And we will break him.”
Joak spoke to the man who hung on the wall, and the man said nothing.
Whap!
The whip ripped a new canyon of agony down the tribal’s back. Again, he jerked forward soundlessly.
“Tell us how you got to Kosti,” Leo said. “Who helped you?”
Joak translated the question, and the man who hung on the wall replied in pain-filled Dinka.
“No one helped me. I came on my own. I got information from farmers who had seen the raiding bands on the move, and I followed after them. I worked in the fields to support myself. I came with no one.”
“Liar!” Leo roared, and Ahkmad went to work again.
Over the course of the next hour, Ron and Masapha pieced together what the men named Leo and Joak wanted to find out from the tribal. But the tribal stuck to his story. And he never cried out. Not once. Ahkmad hit him again and again, and he never made a sound.
Idris believed with all his heart that his daughter’s life depended on his silence. Over the course of the past weeks, he’d become convinced that against all odds, defying all logic, Omar could find Akin, would find Akin. But the mercenary would not have the chance if these men found out about him. They would kill him.