After Sister Marie Claire turned away from Hanley and sent one of the other nurses for a doctor, Hanley saw Jumma leaning against the wall of the clinic. With his rear pressed against the block, the young African leaned over with his hands just above his knees, his legs straight down to the ground; his eyes were fixed on his sandals. Hanley noticed Jumma was shaking slightly as he approached his young friend. “Where were you when the gunshots started?” Hanley asked.
“I was near the front of the large truck when I heard the first shot. It sounded closer than many of the shots we hear but then I heard a scream. I fell to the ground to wait for more shots. You see, Mr Martin, we never know if these are bullets just passing through on their way to somewhere else or if they are meant for us. We never know, it seems strange to say that but it’s true.”
Jumma straightened up and started to move away from the building toward the truck. Hanley said, “I want to check the plane; will you go with me?”
Turning slightly toward Hanley, the young man said, “Yes, I will meet you at the old Land Rover in a few minutes. I want to put some water on my face before we go. Please wait for me; I would like to go with you.”
In the truck, Hanley stared dumbly at nothing, unfocused, unsettled. He came around to again notice the driver’s side mirror was cracked. The edge of the mirror casing had a half-moon shaped gouge in it; a bullet had cut through the edge of the metal and cracked the mirror. Hanley began looking around the old truck; at buildings, trees, vehicles even rocks; everywhere was the small round stamp of war; the pockmark of that human disease, that scar peculiar to man and his ways. He had not noticed before but now worried he would see them everywhere. Someone approached.
Jumma got in and sat still for a moment, then said, “These are the times when I think I will never see what is beyond the horizon. I will never know what I might become because soon life will have no more time for me. That girl, she thought she had time, everyone thinks they have time. I don’t think that way, not any more. I think I will never see Paris. You have been there, tell me about Paris.”
Water hung from his ears and sat in tiny round disks on his cheekbones. He was still shaking slightly and stared at the dashboard of the truck, his eyes now unfocused.
“I know little of Paris.” Hanley said. “I can tell you it is beautiful; different. I can tell you there are places on this earth, cities, mountains, canyons, that, when you see them, you know they are special places. There’s just something, you feel it in your chest as well as your eyes and in your brain. That’s Paris. You know that no matter where you look, wherever you go in that city, it will be special; and that, if you don’t look, you’ll regret it. I know because I didn’t look and I wish I had. That’s all I can tell you.”
“That is enough. Thank you. It is what I hoped you would say.” He wiped his brow with an old handkerchief, the water and his sweat now simmered to a blend by the day’s heat. Hanley started the truck, turned around in the grass of the compound and set off down the track in the direction of his airplane. Dust followed them; dust blew over the road in front of them. That part of the year that brought the rain was just ending. The rain fall was much lower than normal this season, as happened last year and the year before. Drought, it seemed, was now another weapon to be used against the people of southern Sudan, but by what enemy, Hanley wondered.
Once past the compound, everything appeared as it had the day before. Today there was less cloud cover and more sunlight; more heat. Today there was a greater sense of everything baking. It was only the end of March. What would the summer be like, he wondered? Hanley knew the plane would be like an oven inside. Tomorrow he would fly and he welcomed that; the dangers in the air could not be any greater than on the ground, he reasoned. It would be something familiar, something he could control. Control; would it be a problem for him now? Was that it? All his adult life he believed he had been in control. He was wrong. Belinda, his ex-wife and Elizabeth were proof he had had little control over his life for the past twenty-five years. He had controlled his businesses but his businesses weren’t his life, not his real life; business was just a means, an effort. Someone had once told Hanley that eating and sleeping were the biggest wastes of a man’s time. Even though he had benefited greatly from it, there were times when he considered business the third. He had been, was, proud of what he accomplished but it did not have the meaning it once did.
Ruts like logs strewn across the dirt road caused the nose of the truck to begin swaying back and forth. When the brush alongside the track cleared, Hanley drove the truck off the path and the ride smoothed for a bit. Dust covering both sides of the windshield made seeing difficult. Squinting in an attempt to see better, he could feel the pain of the headache he had growing in strength between his eyes, just above the bridge of his nose. He was sweating a lot and the dust was beginning to cake in the wrinkles that spread from the corner of his eyes onto his temples. Sweat was running down his neck and his back. He could feel the heat escaping from beneath his shirt around his collar. He had not been this hot in many years; not since working on his uncle’s farm during the summers as a teenager. Air conditioning in his home, office and his truck had shielded him from even the relatively mild heat of the Indiana summers. This heat was something else. He would need to adapt, to train himself to bear it. Suddenly, he was as thirsty as he could ever remember being. “Did we bring water?” he asked.
“Yes, there is a can and a cup in the back. We always have some water. We never go anywhere without some water,” he said.
Flashes of light appeared and disappeared from a distance as the truck neared the landing strip. The sun light reflected by the plane’s surface was broken by the brush and trees as Hanley and Jumma approached. Hanley’s headache had matured into a distinct pain at the front of his head, a pain like a thumb pressed between his eyes. Trying to see the plane, the flashing light made his head hurt even more. Pushing the truck faster only made things worse but he wanted to get there, to make certain it had not been damaged, to know that he could fly home if he wanted. Earlier, as he watched the two doctors walk back to the main clinic after examining the murdered girl, the idea that, if his plane was ever damaged, if it could not fly, he would feel trapped. Repairing the plane would be difficult if not impossible. Parts and the skilled labor needed to affect the repairs would be tough to find. That thought was the start of his headache. Now dreading what he might see, Hanley ignored the road’s deplorable condition and pressed the truck hard into the clearing.
No damage to the plane was immediately apparent as the truck entered the area near the old shack, the airstrip terminal. Two young Sudanese men sat near the plane, both different from those Hanley had seen the day before but whose dress was similar.
“Are they from the same tribe?” Hanley asked.
“Yes,” Jumma said.
Without looking at the truck, the young men rose and walked away into the bush. Turning off the truck’s engine, Hanley sat and enjoyed the silence for a moment and then said, “I need some water.”
The water was warm but Hanley didn’t care. He drank two cups and then stopped. You’d better learn to pace yourself, he thought. His thirst was still strong, so much so that he wondered how he would ever adjust to it. Thirst had never been something to be afraid of. Now he started to fear it. It’s just a reaction to everything that’s happened today, he told himself. The wind blew off the plain, bringing dust and spores, irritating his eyes. The headache moved around a bit and settled into a different, more painful position. Rubbing first his forehead and then his eyes, he walked to the plane.
Everything looked as it had yesterday. Hanley wondered just who knew he was here. Were the SPLA or the Janjaweed aware of his plane and the mission’s plans to use it to move medicine to the compound and doctors back and forth from Kenya and Ethiopia? Hanley was aware that Khartoum was supplying the Janjaweed with shoulder-launched missiles which they now used to down planes flying in food and other humanitarian supplies. The
Beech was small, too small to bring enough food to make a difference in a conflict like this. As he stood rubbing a spot just above his left eye, he thought that perhaps this shiny plane that he loved so much would look better painted a dull gray or something that would be difficult to see at low attitude; something that would not reflect the relentless Sudanese sun; something not easily shot down.
The heat from inside the plane rolled over Hanley as he opened the rear door. He walked to the cockpit and opened the side windows to get air moving inside the plane. Outside again, he sat under the wing and hoped for a breeze to cool him. None came. He would wait fifteen minutes before returning to the cockpit. Jumma sat under a nearby tree, writing on a tablet held to a clipboard. Jumma’s intensity interested Hanley. Their conversations were always light, with the young Sudanese always smiling. When he would begin working, his concentration was startling. This was now particularly noticeable as he sat writing. With a furrowed forehead and lips pursed, he wrote slowly, seemingly with great care. Occasionally, his lips moved as he formed the words he deposited on paper. He was alone; the world around him had disappeared. Jumma stopped writing with the pen poised above the clipboard, the look of concentration gone. Slowly he rolled his eyes toward Hanley and stared at the American for a second and then lowered his pen.
“What are you writing?” Hanley asked.
“I’m sorry; I was just making some notes. Did I miss something you said?” he asked.
“No, I’m just trying to cool-off after being in the plane. No luck with that though. You look so serious. Must be important stuff you’re writing about.”
“No, just a list of the things I know I must accomplish today and tomorrow. Sister Marie Claire wants these things done and I must do them. She is not one you want to disappoint.” Jumma said with a smile.
“I believe that.” Pushing himself up, Hanley got to his feet and turned his attention to the outside of the plane. As he began his inspection, he noticed several spots of dried bird droppings on the wings and tail section. The drops were small and almost pure white. Retrieving a cloth from the back of the plane, Hanley scrubbed at the spots until they came off or at least until most of it came off. He realized keeping the plane clean would be difficult. Water was too precious to waste on an airplane. Thankfully, most of the dirt will be dust and it will come off as he flies, he reassured himself.
“I saw you rubbing your back while you were hiding behind the children’s clinic with Sister Marie Claire. Had she hit you?” the young man asked. He was now standing behind Hanley, the clipboard held at his side. His head was cocked to one side, his hand shielding the sun from his eyes as he watched Hanley scrub the bird shit from his plane.
“No. Well not at first. She did later. Why, does she hit people a lot?” Hanley asked laughing. He found the question humorous. He assumed a nun was capable of hitting, but he normally thought of nuns that hit as older women in severe black habits, smacking boys with their rulers in hallways, while children in classrooms smothered their laughter for fear they would be next. He didn’t see Marie Claire that way, at least not yet.
“If I tell you something, you must promise not to tell the Sister. Do you promise? If you tell her, I will have to leave, I think. Do you promise?” Jumma was starting to think that perhaps he had started in a direction that he would regret and his panic was beginning to show. He did not know this American at all and was already offering to share secrets. Maybe this is why America is so successful, Jumma thought; they get you to trust them but for no reason and then they are always a step ahead.
“I won’t tell. You can trust me.”
Jumma was still uncertain even after the older man’s statement. Trusting someone was difficult to do in Sudan, especially a stranger from another country. Now Jumma was really nervous. He had stopped trusting strangers when very young; perhaps now was not the time to start again.
“She hits people when they don’t do what she says. She only hits men; the white men. Usually the doctors and never a Sudanese or a priest; especially not a priest. The doctors talk about it when she is not around. They say she is a frustrated woman. They say she uses her fists because she cannot use her lips. They call it a nun’s kiss. One said it was the hand of God because God will not come to Sudan himself. They all laugh about it when she is not there to hear.” Jumma looked nervous about what he had just said and Hanley knew it was because he was feeling exposed, having just entrusted a relative stranger with a secret that could cause the young Sudanese some embarrassment if it got out.
Hanley said, “My grandmother was a hitter. She hit only her grandsons. Never anyone else as far as we could tell. She would punch us in the arm or slap our stomachs with the back of her hand. Never hard. I don’t think she started it until we were all bigger than her. She was small anyway. I haven’t thought about that in years. I really believe these were gestures of affection. Some people aren’t normally the type who touch and I think this was her goofy way of doing it.” Hanley explained.
“Goofy?”
“Unusual.”
“Then Sister Marie Claire is making certain she is goofy while touching the doctors because you can sometimes hear her touching them from another room.”
Smiling at Jumma’s description of Sister Marie Claire abuse of the doctors, Hanley turned back to the plane and entered through the rear door. A little more than five minutes had passed, yet the heat still cooked him as he walked to the cockpit.
“Jumma, come here will you?” Hanley shouted down the length of the old plane. He guessed his young friend was curious enough about the inside of the plane that he would not mind the heat. Jumma stuck his head through the front door, grimaced at the wave of heat that greeted him and answered, “Yes Hanley, did you call to me?”
Swinging his head back toward the voice, Hanley asked, “Come on up here, will you?”
9
The late afternoon air was still, hot to the touch, or so it seemed to the American, whose clothes always seemed wet, dank, smelling of sweat and tension, for tension had a smell here in the bush, like hot metal on an electric alarm clock, hot from ringing its shrill tone for years and years, with no one waking, no one to turn it off. Hanley heard it all the time, a high piercing sound, uncomfortable, deep inside his head. It was tinnitus, something he inherited, he supposed - his mother suffered from it. When he concentrated on the sound, he felt uneasy, felt he might begin to slip into a place where he might stay, a place where he could not control it.
Having carried an old aluminum folding chair out to the shade of the barracks, Hanley unfolded it with some trouble, the frame sticking, pressure on the cheap plastic liners, rods and grommets forced against each other, pinching and impeding, making it difficult. The chair was a bit bent, the nylon strapping frayed and faded, from white and blue to a dirty cream and denim, it was uncomfortable in its precariousness, but better than the hardness of the old box back porch or the ground. The webbed seat creaked like a horse saddle when he sat down, allowing him to sink, giving Hanley a sudden tightness in his gut, anticipating he might fall through. His small descent stopped and he relaxed. A search of the storage room in the barracks yielded only one chair. He would give it to the nun if she came.
Hanley watched the activity of the mission compound, breathing the heated air, still surprised to feel the air he inhaled to be measurably hotter than his tongue. He was tired, sleep difficult to find. A small child cried somewhere near, the crying of children a constant piece of the workings of the mission. He would never tune it out, he knew, never ignore it. His days were filled with the same noises; children, shouting adults, bugs, a slow persistent wind, the noise of the heat, the madness over the horizon; his imagination.
Coping with the change in his daily routine was proving to be challenging, more than he had thought, the years of the same routine so deeply stamped into him. He never noticed how repetitive his daily life had been; waking at six o’clock every morning after a bad night’s sleep, toast and coffee for break
fast, quick necessary murmurs between he and his then wife, Belinda, each ignoring the other for years. Shaving, a shower, sometimes walking the dog, many times just chaining him to the corner of the garage, then the trip to his office, the meetings, the deals, the accomplishments. Would he ever settle into a routine in Mapuordit?
He waited for the nun. He needed to talk to her, needed to ask her questions, had to get his courage up. Yesterday, at lunch, he asked her about her history, tried to find out who she is, what she believed about her work at the mission, why she stayed so long, why the church kept her there? He was curious about what she knew about him, his reason for coming to Sudan, what it might mean, about his success, could he give enough back. “How long have you been here? I may have heard that along the way but I can’t recall,” he asked.
“I’ve been here for more than eight years, the longest of anyone but Father Robineau. My first months here were hard, but then all of Africa is hard, at least for Europeans, whites. Soon, I gained some comfort, at least with my work; never with the situation,” she said. “I have been in other countries, in Senegal and then Zimbabwe, but those stays were short, at least compared to my stay at Mapuordit. I hate this country, but love the people. So, I deal with the people and try to avoid dealing with the country.”
The sun was low, hanging over the clinic building, a globe of bright orange cupped in a tree, the bare branches applying a filigree pattern to its lower half. A goblet. Gnats swarmed him, lighted on his lips, one lodged in the corner of his left eye, slamming it shut, the first knuckle of his right hand digging in to push it out. Feeling it moved out, Hanley wiped it away, dragging a tear with it, the relief momentary as the gnat swarmed again. Pushing himself out of the low-slung comfort of the chair, Hanley moved ten feet away, waiting for the gnats to follow. Hovering low over the ground, the gnat seemed to forget about him. The sun was sliding down the tree trunk, split, bulging from each side. The gnats stayed away; so did the nun.
Sometimes the Darkness Page 8