“This old machine’s in good shape. Just how many vehicles does the mission have?” Hanley asked.
“We have three trucks; this one, the English one and a bigger truck for hauling supplies. It is German, I think. Sister Marie Claire drives the big truck. She can drive as well as any of the men, better than some, I believe.” Jumma smiled slightly after saying this.
Hanley said, “I suppose she has never driven off the road and always pays strict attention when she drives.”
“So you know of Sister Marie Claire?” Jumma asked. “Is she known for her driving in America?”
“I know of Sister Marie Claire, but not for her driving,” Hanley said.
“How is it you know of her then?” Jumma asked.
“She has a friend, another nun, in America that is also a friend of mine. They met in college before becoming nuns. They were exchange students, visiting each other’s family while studying abroad. They’ve been friends since then. Our mutual friend’s name is Sister Mary Kathleen.” Hanley pursed his lips and looked at Jumma. He asked, “Jumma, do Father Robineau and Sister Marie Claire like each other? I have the impression Father Robineau finds the good sister a bit difficult at times. Is that so?”
Jumma’s face went blank and his eyes grew large, startled. “I cannot say,” he said softly, barely audible against the racket of the truck.
“Have I made you uncomfortable, Jumma?”
Jumma looked at Hanley, shook his head and said, “Sister Marie Claire wants Father Robineau to be stronger, stronger for the people we help. The good Father tells her she can only be as strong as the church allows her to be. I have heard this. The Sister says that is not strong enough. She says, if the church will not be strong for the people, then she will be strong for them. That if the church will not help her, she will find the help by herself.”
“What help does she need?”
“You must ask her that yourself,” Jumma said. Picking up the wooden box Hanley filled with his belongings, the young man turned to load the box in the old truck.
***
In his room, Hanley discovered he overestimated the amount of space available for storing his belongings. The old black foot locker was not capable of holding everything. The gym bag full of whiskey went in first and then as much else as he could squeeze in. The rest remained in boxes which he stacked in a corner. Hanley felt no guilt for having smuggled liquor into a Catholic mission, telling himself there were probably many other bottles stashed in foot lockers and in holes all over the compound.
He laid a photo of Elizabeth and Carrie on the cot. From the leather satchel, he took the one photo of Rocky he had and laid it on the cot next to the other. Staring at them, he allowed himself to think just how far from home he was. Even if he flew the Beech to Cairo to catch a jet to the states, it would still take him two or three days to get home. Flying the Beech meant more than a week with no long stops, assuming the plane did not break down. The picture of his daughter and granddaughter was framed and he sat that on the small table beside the cot. The picture of Rocky had no frame. Hanley sat it on a ledge above his cot, the ledge created by a two by four used to frame the building. If possible, he would buy a frame for Rocky’s picture in one of the larger towns when he had a chance.
Hanley left the barracks and found Jumma waiting for him sitting cross-legged beneath a tree. In his lap was a large book. Looking up, the younger man smiled and asked, “Do you know Julia Child?”
“Yes, everyone knows Julia Child,” Hanley responded.
“I like to read her recipes. She is so thorough. I think she gives her work much thought. This is important, don’t you agree?”
“Yes.”
“I like to cook. Someday, I want to attend a school to learn to make great food. Maybe in Paris or New York. A place where food is so plentiful you can use it to decorate other food. We don’t decorate in Sudan, not with food. Not with anything really, not now.”
“Maybe someday you can study with Julia Child,” Hanley said.
A smile that Hanley thought could not possibly get bigger did. “Julia Child teaching me to cook coq au vin would be a dream come true,” Jumma said. He closed the book and rose effortlessly from the ground. “Let me put my book away and we will help with the children.”
The wasteful practice of using food for decoration had not occurred to Hanley, but it had to Jumma. Hanley felt stupid. When you must fight each day to find food, it would matter. Sister Mary Kathleen told Hanley that starvation was now a weapon being used against the people in western Sudan. The war being waged in Sudan was ugly, even for war. Starvation, rape, mutilation and slavery were now weapons and tactics. Killers changed tactics and alliances to the point that understanding the nature of the conflict and its participants had become difficult. Human rights groups and relief organizations, including the Christian organizations operating in the area, struggled with identifying who to cooperate with and who not to trust.
***
Dinner at the mission that evening consisted of a thin soup, bread and fruit. Water in bottles was all that was available to drink. That people drank bottled water was not a surprise to Hanley; its availability was. Cigarette smoke divided the air in the room into two layers the smoke floating among the exposed trusses, creating shifting halos around the bare lightbulbs. A disinfectant smell overpowered the odors of the food, the bare-wood floor damp in the corners, small puddles reflecting the light bulbs overhead as quivering eggs in the pooled water beneath.
“How difficult is it to find bottled water?” Hanley asked no one in particular as they ate. The same group of people sat at the table eating as the night before, less one doctor, the younger one who fetched a glass for Hanley and Father Robineau. The doctor and the priest were visiting a family at their tent not far from the compound. A child was too sick to come in for treatment, requiring a house call, one of the other physicians explained. He was the oldest of the Slovakian physicians, nearer to Hanley’s age. His name was Dr Ivor Malsoiak.
“Bottled water is not easy to come by,” one of the French nurses answered. “We have been to Yirol and Rumbek several times in the past month and were able to stock up. When it’s not available, we use tablets or boil the water. Bottled water is better.” Her name was Estelle. She was also a nun, from the Mary Knoll Order, as were all the French nuns.
“Father Jean-Robert said a report had come in over the radio, saying the SPLA was in the area north of Rumbek, searching villages for supporters of the government. He suggested everyone stay near the compound for the next few days until we know what’s going on,” Dr Malosiak said.
This was the first such report Hanley heard since arriving. For some reason, he thought it likely he would find the compound surrounded and the countryside full of war.
“The SPLA must be running low on food. They try to fool the outsiders by disguising their confiscation of food and supplies as searches for government sympathizers. They’re just looters like the GOS forces or the Janjaweed. They don’t rape as many women or kill as many children, so they think they’re the good guys,” Sister Estelle explained to Hanley. Her look bordered between sad and bored.
The soup tasted vaguely like vegetable soup, but stronger. It was made of mostly onions with some beet or potato-like ground fruit and something long and green, but definitely not a bean; more like grass. It tasted strongly of pepper, but sweeter. In a chipped white bowl were apples and pears, all small and misshapen, sculpted by birds and bugs before picked by humans. Jumma was not present. He ate with the other native workers. This form of segregation was expected here and Hanley was certain he was the only one that noticed. He was hungry and ate his soup, which seemed to surprise the others. Not noticing until he was almost finished, he asked, “You all seem to be watching my progress through dinner. Am I making a mistake or is watching an American eat more entertaining than I realized. If so, thn I will be happy to entertain all of you each evening as long, as I’m fed that is.”
Everyone s
miled. Dr Milosiak said, “No, we don’t find Americans especially entertaining, other than your Saturday Night Live, it’s just that not many find this soup to their liking. We are pleased you like it, that is all. Tell me, Mr Martin, we hear you are very wealthy. Why would you come here to do this work? You’re not hiding from something back in Coco Indiana, are you?”
“I’m not that wealthy. And, no, I’m not hiding. Please call me Hanley. I’m from Kokomo, not Coco; although my granddaughter would find Coco funny. A friend of mine says she thinks of monkeys whenever she hears the name Kokomo.”
“But the plane is yours, is it not? It looks new even though it is old. You have the money to keep an old plane new, do you not? We have been told you left behind several businesses to come here. So, it seems you may be wealthy. We don’t see many wealthy people coming to Sudan to work, that’s all.”
Hanley did not like the direction this conversation was taking. Not certain whether the doctor was merely curious or something else, he wanted to move off his past and why he was here. “I worked hard all my life and was lucky to have some success. I did leave my businesses to work here for a year, maybe a bit more, we’ll see. It was a difficult decision, one that I wrestled with for some time. I am here and I want to make a difference, if possible. I was raised to believe that everyone must contribute. Even though I did that, I gave back by giving people jobs, paying taxes and doing it as honestly as I could; it didn’t seem to be enough. Maybe this will tell me if it was.”
Hanley realized the doctors and nurses knew of his background. Between letters from Father Bertrand to Father Jean-Robert and letters from Sister Mary Kathleen to Marie Claire, his background was known to the staff. Pilots willing to fly relief work in areas such as Sudan were rare. It was dangerous and other flying jobs, even in this part of the world, paid better. It was also generally known that Hanley was flying for the cost of his fuel only. That was not seen as unusual; many of the doctors that rotated in an out of the country were volunteers working through churches or relief organizations. He knew there was nothing really rare about that.
“Don’t get me wrong, Mr Martin. I am glad you are here. I hope you will be with us for some time. Pilots are hard to find and even harder to keep.”
“So I’ve heard,” Hanley said.
***
Sometime before midnight, Hanley awoke to the sound of a large truck entering the compound. Hushed conversations followed and then the sound of people working; cardboard scraping across wood and metal, supplemented by grunting and the occasional laugh or curse; mostly, the sound of movement and eventually silence. Then came the sound of a woman singing, soft and clear. A song he did not recognize; could not. It was sung in French. It was her.
7
Hanley woke to a dull morning light, shivered under his thin blanket, knew he was awake for the day, rubbed his eyes. Since childhood, rubbing his eyes had been comforting. With his hands balled into fists and using a circular motion, he massaged both his eyes together. The massaging stopped, turning into a quick rub of his face, Hanley stopped, sat up, stood and stretched. Pulling on his pants and a shirt, he picked up his watch, wallet and pocket knife and left the room, pulling its door shut behind him.
His room was the last room used as an apartment on the end of the hallway of the barracks that would be his home for the year or so he spent in Sudan. Across from his room was another used as a supply closet. He knew he would look in the room across the hall someday, but not this morning.
A door at the end of the hallway led outside, where a small, square platform made a porch. The porch was an open box frame made of lumber with a plywood top. The box rested on dirt leveled to provide a stable structure when stepped on. It wobbled badly as Hanley stepped out, the early morning light as dull as that in his room. Sitting on the edge of the box, he took in his surroundings, the smell of burning wood, smoking campfires in the distance marking the small spots where people had stopped to rest and gather themselves, their families, their lives. There was no dew, no dampness of any sort. Small noises, people talking, children, not happy, no cars, trains, television, airplanes, the things he would hear every day. There were the noises of country, birds, bugs, wind. Closing his eyes, he listened and heard the sounds of his youth, the wind and the birds similar, the bugs somewhat similar but not quite; these were more of a presence, persistent, insistent.
He opened his eyes. A man appeared in the distance, near a crude shelter, beside him a small child. Hanley could not tell if it was a boy or girl. The child followed the man about as he moved around the camp, never more than a foot or two behind him. As he neared a fire used for cooking, the man stopped, turn slightly around and slapped the child hard across it face, knocking the child down. A few seconds passed before a thin, faint wail reached Hanley’s ears. The man moved on leaving the child lying in the dirt. “The child is not his,” Jumma said from the corner of the building. “He is making certain it doesn’t become too close to him. Did I say that correctly?”
“You meant attached. Close is right too,” Hanley said.
“Have you eaten?” Hanley asked.
“Yes, but I will go with you if you want.” Leaning against the building, the young man stared toward the crying child, his face blank. Hanley wondered how many children Jumma had seen slapped in his young life; countless probably.
“Is Sister Marie Claire in the compound this morning?” Hanley asked as he stood, rubbing his hands together, watching the child, now standing, crying while looking about, lost. The child’s helplessness made him think of Carrie his granddaughter. He did not want to start that.
“Yes, she’s here,” Jumma said. “If she hears that child crying, she will be at that camp soon.”
“Yeah? I guess that’s not a surprise from what I’ve heard. Come to the canteen while I find something to eat.”
“Canteen?”
“The dining room or whatever you call it. Come on, after that, we’ll look at our first flight. It will take some planning. I’ll need to file a flight plan by telephone and I’ll need your help. Then we’ll need to go over the plane, review its operation and what you can expect,” Hanley told Jumma.
“You talk as if I will fly with you. Why? I do not know if I will fly with you. No one has said I will fly with you. Father Robineau has said nothing about that. Has he?” Jumma’s expression appeared to be one of true alarm to Hanley.
He smiled, “No, he hasn’t. I’ve been thinking about it; you should fly with me, often, I think. Maybe always.” Jumma, sweat now dotting his forehead, looked, squinting into the washed-out sky, as if gauging its ability to support him. After a moment, he looked at Hanley and said, “If I fly, I’ll see new things. I’ll look down and see what a bird sees, see what is beyond the trees, see what I can’t see standing here on earth. That should be better should it not?”
“It doesn’t always help,” Hanley said.
***
The cement block building where the children were examined and treated was on the eastern edge of the compound. Forty feet long and twenty wide, it had a wooden roof and beneath its eaves were long openings for windows, but the windows had no framing or glass. Off to one side, perhaps twenty feet away from the far end was the remains of another building, a pale brown mud brick, a dull, roasted color. The bricks were rough, some misshapen, the exposed beams even rougher. There was no roof and one end wall and a portion of a side wall were gone, the rubble lying about in the scrub grass around the old building.
Hanley came around the new block building and stopped. It was just after noon. He skipped lunch, believing he was not missing much as far as the food was concerned and he did not wish to face the Slovakian doctors again. He came to look over the new building and to find Jumma whom he had left in Father Robineau’s office around ten o’clock. What stopped him was the singing.
The same voice he heard the night before while lying in the dark of his room was coming from somewhere near. It took a second but he soon realized the singing wa
s coming from the ruined building. It sounded like a lullaby, soft and flowing, soothing. Hanley walked toward the sound, transfixed. Conscious of his intrusion, he softened his steps as he neared the old building.
The wall facing him was intact, with two openings for windows high up to allow for the movement of air but to keep the rains out, when it rained. He walked to the end where a wall had been and stepped around to look inside.
Sitting on a stool in the middle of a dirt floor was a woman of forty or so, slender, with a back as straight as a child’s, wearing a plain blue dress and a white scarf around her head. She was holding an infant of about six months, bathing him with a sponge, a bucket of water at her feet. On her hands were latex gloves. The baby’s dark head was practically bald; its wet scalp reflected the sun’s light as if painted a bright gold. The child made no noise but waved its arms around as the nurse sponged water over its body and head. A towel lying across her lap, under the infant, was soaking wet. The woman sang as she worked, the song flowing over the child with the water. Hanley could only stare. It was like a scene from one of his dreams; for some reason beautiful but strange.
From the side, Hanley saw that the face of the woman, once fair, was now brown from the Sudanese sun. She had deep wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes. Her hair was light brown, with some gray showing where it was visible just above her forehead. Years of hard work in places such as this had rendered her features weathered, but she was still lovely he thought. Her eyes never left the face of the child. The singing stopped and she said in French accented English, “You’re the American, the friend of Mary Kathleen?”
Sometimes the Darkness Page 6