“What did your boss say about my inspection?” Hanley asked. The bureaucrat’s face now resembled a tribal mask, painted on before battle. The red dust and perspiration together created twisted brown lines that ran down his face, surrounding his eyes, lips and exaggerated a nose that did not need the help.
“The chief customs inspector sends his regrets. Tomorrow will be the soonest he can attend to this matter. You must realize he is an important man and his time has a certain value. To inspect your plane now means his time is diminished and he would be forced to work longer today to make up for dealing with you. It not that you’re an American, that has no bearing on this. It must be said that what you are doing is considered irregular. Where you are going and what you are doing are seen as a problem by some. The chief customs inspector is aware of this. However, that is not really the problem in this case. It is simply the value of time. You must understand.”
Finally, there it is, Hanley thought. He considered bringing the gun into the bargaining that was about to start, but decided against that, at least until he saw how it went.
“Yes, I understand and appreciate the value of your time and of the chief inspector’s time. Really, I do. I’m sorry to have caused you such trouble. I know you must think of the Sudanese people first and I appreciate that. I must be leaving soon, at least first thing in the morning. If there was a way that I might express my understanding of the value of both your time and that of the chief inspector, an expression that would allow me to depart in the morning, I would appreciate being allowed to demonstrate that understanding.” Hanley said.
“It is rare to find a foreigner, and forgive me for saying so, an American, that understands the complexities of dealing with such a situation. Time is so valuable in a place such as this. One never knows when time will stop being a friend. We have a saying here, in Sudan, that a hundred thousand candles cannot find time when time is lost. With that many candles, the search is sometimes worthwhile.”
Staring at the man for a moment longer, Hanley turned, entered the plane and walked to the same chest that he had taken the goggles from. He removed a large plastic box marked as a first-aid kit. Inside were an assortment of bandages and ointments found in kits of this nature anywhere in the world. Underneath the medical supplies, Hanley fitted a piece of white cardboard, beneath which he stored the Sudanese dinars he had acquired at the airport in Cairo. He counted out one-hundred-and-twenty-five thousand and rolled them up in a wad. He put the kit back and walked back to the door. The assistant custom inspector was standing with his back to the plane. Hanley said, “Here, I hope there are enough candles here to help you find the time you need.”
The man turned and eyed the money in Hanley’s hand. He smiled slightly and said, “Time is elusive, but can sometimes be found.” He moved closer and took the money, opened the roll and quickly counted the bills. His smile broadened when he realized there was an additional twenty-five thousand Dinars in the roll.
“Please wait here for a few minutes more. I will return soon with the necessary papers.” As he walked away, Hanley stepped from the plane and walked over to the building. Taking the gun from his pants pocket, he dropped it to the ground, covering it with some loose dirt and dust. Looking around, he no longer saw the lizard. Probably booted away during all the commotion, Hanley thought.
He returned to the plane to wait in the heat, aware that he may have given the money away with no assurances he would be allowed to leave Port Sudan.
Hanley just sat down when the assistant customs inspector came storming back with the two guards trailing behind. He looked distressed and the two men were sullen. The larger of the two was still without a gun.
“I’m sorry, but we must clear up a matter of importance. My men say you started your plane in an attempt to leave and they were forced to stop you. This man, Abdul Essam, says he dropped his gun and you now have it. This is very serious and we will be forced to detain you now.”
Hanley held up his hand and said, “I did not try to escape. I started the left engine to insure that dust had not clogged…”
“What is clogged?” the assistant customs inspector interrupted.
“…that dust had not blocked the exhaust. Your man dropped his gun, which he was pointing at my plane at the time, and I believe it’s still where he dropped it. Here, I’ll help you look.”
Hanley jumped from the plane and walked over to the building before his hosts could react. They turned and followed. Hanley stood, pretending to look around for a moment and then bent down and retrieved the gun. He blew the dust off it. Holding it by the barrel, he turned and offered it to the customs inspector. The man’s look of concern instantly turned to anger. He whirled to face the two men and began yelling at them. Both trotted off and disappeared around the corner of the building. The assistant customs inspector turned to Hanley, placed the gun under his left arm, looked at his clipboard, signed a form, flipped over two pages and signed a second form. Taking copies from beneath both, he handed the copies to Hanley and said, “This was an unfortunate incident; very unusual. You are free to depart at any time. If I were you, I would not wait until morning.”
He offered Hanley a grim smile, turned and walked away quickly. Not about to wait another moment, Hanley entered the plane, shut and locked the rear door, made his way to his seat and began the process to depart. He radioed the tower, and with some difficulty notified them of his plans to leave Port Sudan. With a blast of smoke, the big engines of the Beech turned over. Taxiing out and onto the departure area, Hanley waited a bit until he was cleared to depart. Hanley Martin taxied to the runway. It was now three-thirty. No matter, he was leaving and would land in Mapuordit at about seven o’clock. One way or another, he would be in Mapuordit.
3
The bottom of the Beech’s windshield was aligned with the horizon. The setting sun, low in the sky to his right was enlarged by the denseness of the atmosphere, bright but not glaring, a perfect glowing orb, bright orange with a streak of dull blue across it, a thin cloud mixed with dust carried high in the air from the dried-out land below. Hanley’s hands were dirty. The dirt and sweat of his palms made the yoke feel greasy. Red dust covered his clothes. If he moved his arms quickly, dust raised, creating a small cloud that fell to his lap and onto the seat between his legs.
Below was Sudan, a brown landscape, patches of green appeared, but were scattered. A long ribbon of green marked his passing over the White Nile, a sibling river, not great, but good to the land that touched it. Studying the charts of Sudan over the past year had given Hanley a good knowledge of the major features over which he flew, so different from what he knew. From the air, Africa was different from the other lands he crossed, as different as Greenland was from Ireland. In America, the land he flew over was much the same, looked much the same. He was glad he came. Fear aside, Africa thrilled him.
***
The old priest’s knees ached, as did his arms. No one else will do this, he thought. Just me, the one that everyone waits for. There would be no water if I refuse to fix this fucking pump. Now I must also wait for the American. He’s not coming, I think; saw the folly and stayed home to drink bad beer and watch American football. A joke, American football-helmets and padding.
Father Jean-Robert Robineau crouched beside the water pump, the various parts and pieces of which lay scattered about his scuffed boots, one with its heel glued on. The pump was essential to the mission. The water, whenever available, was produced by the vigorous and, for the priest, tiring pumping of its handle. Its surface was a mosaic of black paint, red primer paint and rust. At sixty-seven years of age, the priest was at least as old as the pump and worked about as well.
The box-wrench he pushed on slipped, his finger scraping against a flange in the middle of the pump shaft. A thick piece of knuckle skin curled back, allowing blood to well and then run around to the other side of the forefinger on his right hand. The priest felt the sting of the scrape, but did not stop, only put the wrench ba
ck on the nut and pushed again.
The pump was leaking water near the base. In Sudan, water was too precious to waste and so it was time to attempt an overhaul. The priest was aware when he started that he would be forced to improvise once he discovered the problem; a worn seal, a broken bolt perhaps. On his knees, his lips pursed, the priest stared at the pump. Over the past twenty years, he had experienced most of the failures the old pump managed to produce.
He scraped muck from the inside of the main shaft, a slight sewer stink coming from the filth. As he worked, he heard the two-way radio inside the compound’s office building bleat static and then a voice began calling contact information for someone to hear. The priest’s head snapped up and he got to his feet. The tingling of his thickened blood working back into his legs joined for a few moments with the arthritis in his knees to render him immobile. Again, his condition reminded him of Saint Francis of Assisi, who considered his body the weak, useless relative of his brilliant mind. “Brother Ass” was how the saint referred to his weak body. The priest could relate.
It must be Mr Martin, the American. He was due today, the priest believed. The priest could not remember the exact time. Too many things to remember, too many unimaginable things were happening now. It was not as bad here as in Darfur, but who knew where it would lead. The priest walked as fast as his tingling legs could manage, stumbling into the office and to the radio. He sat heavily onto an ancient wooden chair, picked up the microphone and answered, “This is the Mapuordit mission station. Is this Mr Martin, out?”
“Affirmative. This is Beech T806D on approach to the Akot airstrip. Who am I talking to?”
“This is Father Robineau Monsieur Martin. I will leave now but, it will take me about one half hour to get to Akot. It is about fifteen kilometers from here. We expected you today, but did not know your exact time of arrival. Please be patient.”
The American acknowledged the response and said he would wait. What else could he do, the priest thought.
Hanley Martin would be bringing news of Father Robineau’s family. The old priest was excited to hear about his niece Sophie and her English husband. The French priest did not think himself to be prejudiced, but, like many of the French his age, he was not especially fond of the British; or Americans, for that matter. He did not see anything wrong in feeling this way. Everyone did. He tried to remain contrite when it happened.
Sophie’s father and mother had been concerned when she first mentioned Michael Campbell, thinking it was a temporary thing, a fling of sorts. After a while, their concern grew. When finally they realized this was a serious matter, Sophie’s parents consulted Jean-Robert, first by mail and then when he had returned to France for a visit and some study. Eventually, the three conferred with their other brothers and sisters, discussing various ways to intervene. In the end, nothing came of it and, once married, all welcomed Michael to the family. When he thought of his niece’s husband, he thought of him as the Englishman.
The plane must be getting close. It was almost dusk. The runway might be difficult to see. Finding the keys to the old Land Rover, the priest picked up his hat and walked to the truck to make the drive to the airstrip. He was mildly aware that there was some danger being out after dark, but if all went well, he and the American would be back soon enough.
The finish on the old English vehicle was a dark green and dull, its faded swirls and cloud patterns covered the larger, flat areas of the hood and doors. The roof was white, a hedge against, but no real match for, the Sudanese sun and the heat they suffered through almost daily. The spare tire on the hood was soft and probably useless. He needed to patch it and spend the hour or two it takes to pump air into it by hand.
With an old rag kept under the front seat, he wiped the windshield of its thin dusting and then the driver’s side door window. Getting in was hard for him. Crawling into the seat, he started the truck, found first gear and moved forward. Smelling of old grease and used oil, the truck traveled so many miles, the odometer stopped, showing only thirty-two miles, as if the old vehicle was new.
The drive was a difficult one. Two months ago, rain rendered the roads almost impassable. The rains stopped and now the rutted roads were hardened. The ruts assumed control the truck’s direction, moving it from one side to the other. The priest gripped the wheel tightly, thinking that a run through the brush might be better than the road.
As the truck lurched forward, electric lines of pain shot across the old man’s lower back, the sprung coils beneath the seat’s heavy leather coverings offering little support. As he drove, he heard a heavy drone with thunderous undertones approaching from behind. The sound overpowered the sound of the truck’s engine through a bad muffler and the rattles of its body. Faint for a moment, it quickly grew. A small wave of fear came over the old priest, making him feel ashamed. It was the American, faster than he anticipated. Yes, it was the of sound of an approaching airplane.
The noise continued to grow, a rhythmic beating of the thin Africa air, rising in intensity until the plane passed over the truck at a very low altitude, perhaps five to eight hundred feet. Involuntarily ducking his head, Father Robineau craned his neck, twisting to look out the windshield. A dark form flashed overhead, the noise startling in its massiveness. It beat down on the Land Rover and rushed ahead, seeming to push down the grass and bush, while the plane continued its descent. Until that moment, the priest had not thought of the condition of the landing strip, but now worried that it might be a hazard for the pilot. Would an American flier, accustomed to paved airfields, be prepared for what he would find in the middle of the Sudanese scrub desert?
Twenty more minutes passed before he neared the landing strip. Already, he could see the plane, sitting next to the small, crumbling building, a shack, that served as a terminal. Inside was a single table, a bare light bulb, an old Clansman crank-powered two-way radio and a telephone that connected the building to the mission and the office of the local government official. As the priest’s truck cleared the last bit of brush to enter the clearing where the terminal stood, he could see the brightness of it, its shine a contrast to the dull brown surfaces of grass, brush and rock. Nearing the plane, Father Robineau stopped the truck, then got out, hoping nervousness wasn’t showing on his old, dusty face. There was a hole in the front of the shack where tin had once hung, open like an eye, awakened by the noise of the plane. The plane itself was not what the priest had expected. It was dust-covered but otherwise looked new, not the kind of plane normally found in southern Sudan, old planes with faded paint over dents, oil blackened metal near motors that belched smoke. The plane was certainly old, but if cleaned of the dust, would be almost immaculate. To see a plane in this part of the world that looked like this was rare. A man was sitting in the pilot’s seat, his head bent forward. He was obviously writing; or maybe praying, the priest thought. No, just writing.
After a moment, the pilot twisted around and then left the seat. The brush area of this part of Sudan had little noise outside the birds, crickets and frogs who sang to the evening wind. Now near the plane, Father Robineau could hear the pilot walking down its length. He heard the sound of the rear door opening. The door was lowered to rest a foot or so from the ground, held there by a strong cable. A middle-aged man peered from the doorway, saw the priest and smiled. He stepped from the plane and walked toward the priest. As he neared, he extended his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Hanley Martin. You must be Father Robineau.”
“Yes, yes, I am.” The priest was immediately aware that his accent probably sounded thick to the American. The priest hoped his English was good enough for the American to understand. They shook hands and briefly looked each other over.
“I must admit, when I passed over this airstrip, I thought about returning to the Port of Sudan. And believe me, that’s not a place I want to see again anytime soon.” Hanley’s smile seemed odd to the priest, like he was hearing a private joke, but one he did not enjoy.
The priest said, “I was afraid
the shape of the runway might prove to be a problem for you. I’m pleased you are in a good condition after landing.”
“Oh, it was bumpy, but manageable. The gravel helped. I’m glad to see you made it out here. I didn’t want to sleep in the plane tonight. Let me get the plane secured and we can go.”
In front of the plane was a large stone buried in the ground with an iron ring secured to it with a hasp imbedded in the center of the visible surface. Twenty feet of chain was attached to the ring. The stone itself, or what was visible to Father Robineau, was an oval about six feet in length. The entire stone must be enormous, he thought as he watched the American drag the chain toward the front of the plane. The pilot must have seen the stone and taxied to it.
“How will you secure the plane?” the priest asked.
“I have a lock. It’s an S&G 833, made for outdoor conditions. It can stand up to about anything, would be hard for someone, anyone, actually, to pick or cut,” Hanley said. “Let me show you my plane.”
Sometimes the Darkness Page 3