Her humming reached him first, soft and melodious. She had a good singing voice from what he heard, singing to the children, to the workers unloading a truck. Hanley wondered if she was trained to sing, like an athlete trains to run. The humming stopped, followed by the sound of a knock on thin wood.
“I’m over here, beside the building,” he called out. There was a creaking of wood and then silence. She stepped from behind the building, smiling brightly as she saw him.
“A man of your age risks much sitting in a chair like that, don’t you think?” she asked.
“Yes, I suppose so. But men of my age take a risk just by getting out of bed in the morning, assuming we wake up at all.” Her smile widened a bit more. “Sit here,” he said, as he pushed himself up and out of the chair. Hanley sat on the ground beside the chair before the nun could protest. He noticed her shoes, well-worn running shoes, split where the thick rubber soles joined the nylon tops, once white, now a dull grey. Beneath, the nun wore dark blue socks, her dress was a light blue, on her head the same white kerchief he had seen her wear before. The kerchief was always bright and clean.
“I thought we might talk before dinner. I have questions. You are the person I believe has the answers,” he said as she sat in the chair.
“I have the answers? Oh, my, you could have picked a better chair than this. I will need help when it comes time to stand up.”
“There wasn’t much to choose from. Your friend, the overwhelming Sister Mary Kathleen O’Brien, said you, more than anyone else here, knew what was what, as they say.”
“She did?” The nun turned to look at Hanley. She shook her hand to dislodge a fly that landed there, gripping the arm of the chair tightly as the chair swayed with her movements. A shout from the camp beyond the clinic caused her grip to tighten even more.
“My conversations with her were full of references to your command of the political and social situation here. And, as I’m now your aerial courier, I thought it might be beneficial if I learned some of what you know. I’m about to meet and interact with people in cities in this country and others as I move about, carrying medicine and people. I simply thought it might be to my advantage to understand a bit more about this country, above what I learned on my own or with the help of the good Sister back in Indiana. A little bit of nuance may go a long way,” he said. The sun was now half-hidden behind a low hill, the tree a black shape in the low evening light. Hanley stared ahead, listening to the sounds of the camp and the chair as Sister Marie Claire shifted her weight seeking comfort.
“By the country, you meant the government?” she asked.
“Yes, the government.”
“The local leaders, even the leaders in Rumbek, are not bad but they do little to help. Perhaps they cannot. Perhaps I expect too much,” the nun said, looking off toward the clinic and the campfire beyond. “Yes, I may expect too much.”
“What about the church? Do they do as much as they should?” he asked.
“What did Kathleen say?” she asked, the use of her first name only surprising him. Hanley thought he heard caution in her voice. He wanted to look at her face, to gauge her reaction, but didn’t.
“She said they did what they could, more than most,” he told her. “I had the feeling she was somewhat more defensive than she needed to be when answering the question. You know, the old ‘I think thou dost protest too much’ or however it goes. Like, she was defending the church but not sure she should.”
Movement to his right made him look, squinting into the setting sun. Two of the doctors and a nurse were walking to dinner, laughing together at a remark, the nurse a full head shorter than both physicians. She wore a blue baseball cap, her blonde hair done in a ponytail and held in place with some sort of tie, pulled through an opening in the back. He estimated she was in her early thirties, some years older than his daughter. Her face was brown and freckled. He thought she was pretty, her body trim, not quite petite, but close. She looked over at Hanley, saw he was with the nun and frowned. Odd, he thought.
“We all defend the church as we defend ourselves. Our lives are the church,” the nun said. She stood with her hands pressing the small of her back, bowed backward as she stretched. “That chair is dangerous,” she said. “Are you hungry?’
“Since I’ve been in Sudan, I’m always hungry but I’ll adjust. May I ask you something?” He waited a second and said, “This may sound odd to you, but, as you are a person of faith, I thought you might find this interesting. I…”
The nun held up her hand to interrupt and said, “My faith is not as strong as you may think. Sudan is draining my faith from me, takes a drop each day or so, it seems. I try to stop it, pray that I don’t lose more, but it leaks from me as I walk about, as I sleep, as I pray. I may not be the best person to ask.”
He blinked and said, as if she had not spoken, “I have for years wondered about my good fortune, about why I succeeded when many others didn’t. My success was, it now seems, effortless, at least. So much so that luck must have played a major role in it. So, I began wondering if I should do something to make up for my good fortune.”
“Why would you?” she asked. “If your good fortune was God’s will, should you not accept that? Giving back is something we all should do. You are no exception. I would not recommend that you think there is something special about your circumstance.” Turning away, she said, “I’m going to dinner. Please join me.”
Getting to his feet, Hanley said, “I don’t think I’m special. I just feel this deep need to repay fate or God or whomever for my good fortune. I’ve been lucky, that’s all. Too lucky, it seems.” Hanley noticed how dark it had become. Hurrying to catch up with her, he said, “I just need to know if I’m doing enough, that’s all. I thought, with your background, you might guide me.” Night sounds swelled around them, dampening the sound of their walking, overcoming the sounds created by the few humans scattered about the mission.
“A woman walks into the bush to bring water back to her family. In Africa, the path leading to water is known as the Death Path. A lion, having found the remains of a dead cow near the water, does not bother the woman as he is no longer hungry. That is luck, good fortune. Her life is spared, her children still have a mother to love them. Yours is not luck or fate. You’re simply a wealthy American, confused, but wealthy still. You can afford to fly your plane to Africa and indulge yourself in a search for an answer to a question that is no more than self-interest. You can search for the answer while you’re here, but do not allow it to get in the way of helping people not as fortunate as you.” The nun walked away.
The words stung, the rejection a mild shock, then anger followed. His face flushed, Hanley felt the pressure in his head growing, the blood surging in his temples. Staring down at the sparse grass and dirt, he sucked in air through teeth, filled his lungs to clear his head, to damp down the urge to fight, an urge he seldom felt. Looking up, he said, “Fuck this” and followed the nun to dinner.
***
Hanley watched her striding toward the dining hall, looked back at the silhouette of the tree that moments before held the sun in its grasp, saw it appeared thinner in the dimming light and thought he should change his approach. After coming this far, he could not fail to find the answer. His commitment to the work was important and he would do it. The work was the payment. She should understand that. The answer was something else; it would not affect the work.
As he walked, a slow wind pushed at him from the south, warm and dry, carrying a smell of dried vegetation and even drier earth. There was an undertone of wood smoke and something else, something less recognizable. Hanley thought it might be the smell of wildness, pungent, rendering the air of Sudan elementally different from the air back home, as wild game differs from the chicken sheathed in plastic in a supermarket. Was there wild game nearby? How wild? Would he be eaten alive before being shot by the local militia or rebels? A rattle from the brush made his heart thump, but he saw nothing there in the failing ligh
t. Walking faster, he caught the nun just before she mounted the steps to the dining hall.
“Has anyone ever been attacked by a wild animal since you’ve been here?” Hanley asked, a bit of an edge to his voice.
“We lose a doctor a week on average,” she replied, looking back over her shoulder. As the nun entered the dining hall, she said loudly, “The doctors are weak and the lions carry them away, but bring them back as they taste bad, especially the Slovakians.”
“Why don’t you taste one for yourself and see,” said one of the Slovakian doctors. “The lions do not appreciate a good-tasting doctor, although, in the lion’s defense, Slovakian doctors are an acquired taste.”
“Like the Mopane,” a nurse said, causing those at her table to smile.
“Yes, very much like that, now that you mention it,” the same doctor said, smiling down into his bowl of soup.
“You’re a pig,” the nurse replied, realizing why the doctor smiled.
Sister Marie Claire laughed and said, “Let’s not offend Mr Martin. Pilots are more difficult to come by than doctors.” She wandered over to the small table where the prepared food sat. Little steam rose from the food that had been set out some time before she and the American arrived. There was a small kettle of soup, a thin broth with what appeared to be cubes of potatoes or turnips, some steamed beans and small pears, brown on the large end and green near the stem. Picking up an old white bowl, the nun ladled in some soup and picked a piece of flat bread from a plate, selected a dulled gray spoon and sat at a table where no one else was seated. Hanley took some soup, two pears and bread and sat with the nun.
“Have you told Mr Martin of your reputation with men?” another doctor asked the nun. There was smoke in the air of the dining hall, cigarettes in the hands of some of the doctors and nurses, the ceiling fan idle, leaving the slow wind through the screened door little help in clearing the air.
“I’m aware of it,” Hanley replied, then to the nun. “I have heard about it, you know.” He tasted the soup, grimacing, crunching what turned out to be a variety of turnip, undercooked and bitter.
“What have you heard?”
“Well, about your reputation with men. You’re known to be demanding and not afraid of confrontation and you’re a ‘hitter’. You like to punch an arm to express your surprise or dismay. Relax, my grandmother did the same thing. Otherwise, you’re known to be dedicated and a bit unhappy with the church’s role, or lack of it, in helping the people of Sudan. And, while you defend the church, publicly, at least, privately, you believe the church could be more of a force for change in Sudan,” Hanley said, holding a pear by the stem, twirling between his fingers while he talked.
“Sister Mary Kathleen talks too, much I think, at least she talked too much to you.”
Biting the pear, Hanley grimaced again. “Is everything bitter in this country?” he asked. “Everything,” she said.
Scratching the worn surface of the table with a fingernail, Hanley looked at the pear, considered another bite, then placed it next to his bowl. The smoke in the room caused his eyes to burn and water. He looked around, noting the faces and occasional smiles, the rigid mechanism of the smokers, the rotation of the forearms, the cigarette clamped between two fingers, the jet of smoke from the pursed lips. The clink and scrape of the nun’s spoon against the bowl brought him back to the conversation. He felt his anger rising again. “So, you think I’m just a spoiled, rich American, indulging himself, assuaging his guilt, trying to forget the thousands of people he screwed climbing to the top? Is that it?” Hanley asked as she placed a piece of bread in her mouth.
Chewing for a moment, she said, “Not exactly. I know you have issues with your good fortune, that you wonder why you were so lucky while many around you were not, why you can’t understand the sequence, is that the right word?”
“Yes.”
“Remembering the sequence or chain of events, or at least remembering exactly the decision you made that made you successful. Looking back, trying to remember only makes it all seem even more out of control, does it not, Monsieur?” she asked, staring intently at Hanley, who was again twirling the wounded and bitter pear by the stem. “We don’t understand, because, I believe, we are not meant to understand, at least not fully understand. In each of our lives, there are too many factors that affect what happens to us each day, things we are not even aware of. A man in a car bumps another man in a car and one of them is delayed in placing an order for airplane parts and so another man places the order for him, but calls your company instead. You are not aware of the two cars hitting each other, but you benefit from it. How can you know? These mysteries happen a million times each day, endless mysteries. They are God’s hand in our lives and we are not meant to know. We are expected to accept this fact. Mysteries flow from God’s hand as sand from the hand of a child playing on a beach.” Tearing off another piece of bread, Sister Marie Claire looked down at her bowl, dipped the bread in the broth and ate it. A nurse, listening to the nun, watched the American’s face, saw his clenched jaw and the rapid scratching of his finger across the table top. Hanley picked up the pear by the stem and twirled it furiously in his fingers.
“I had an uncle, he’s dead now, who told me I needed to give to others as a form of payment for any good fortune I have. He said that working hard, being a good person was not enough, but was a start. He called it ‘the debt’ and that I needed to remember that as I got older. I loved him, but I wish he had not said that to me. I listened, hell, I was just a kid, I’m surprised I listened. What he said stuck in my head like a splinter, festered, never working itself out. The combination of wondering why I was so lucky and what I needed to do to pay back that debt has eaten away at me for years,” he said, the pear spinning between his fingers.
A sound came from outside the dining hall, causing everyone to stop talking, the small hums and creaks of the building vying for the attention of the diners, then the sound came again, the low roar of a lion, distant, causing the skin on Hanley’s neck to crawl.
“I wish I had my 8 mm with me,” one of the doctors said. The listening continued for a moment, then the nun said to Hanley. “What your uncle said is true, we all must give. We all must give, no matter that our luck is good. Even when our luck is bad, we should give. Giving is all that matters. It is the taking that matters little.”
Gathering her bowl and spoon, the nun stood, moving to a sink in a corner of the room where she rinsed her bowl in a tub of water and placed on a small table nearby. Squeezing the shoulder of a doctor as she passed, Sister Marie Claire left the dining hall, the screen door’s sharp bang signaling her departure. Hanley watched, thinking about what she said, concerned that he was making little progress in finding his answer. Maybe there was no answer.
***
Insomnia was nothing new to the American. The rickety porch moved as he moved, sitting with his legs out stretched, propped against the door into the barracks near his room. Small red lights pierced the darkness beyond the compound, campfires of irregular shapes provided irregular warmth, he supposed, to the poor people sleeping nearby. It was the middle of the night, a small amount of chill to the air, comfortable enough to sleep if he could sleep.
After the nun left the dining hall, Hanley sat by himself for a time, listening to the talk of the doctors, nurses and nuns, who smoked and told stories of their lives back home in Košice or Charleroi. When he got up to leave, the talk had turned to the church’s role in Sudan and in the plight of its children. As he was rinsing his bowl in the tub, he heard a doctor say, “The Diocese is still dealing with its troublemaker,” which caused a momentary silence around the table. A nurse asked if she had been a rebel in the convent or had Africa brought this trait out in her. The conversation stopped for a moment, a break Hanley saw as an opportunity to leave. He said goodnight over his shoulder as he left, the silence changing to murmurs and then laughter.
“God, what am I doing here?” he asked softly, keeping the question on
the porch and to himself. No one cares and why should they. “Perhaps you’re making too much of this,” he said aloud. His approach to the nun had not worked. She saw his need for an answer as purely self-interest. I must try something different, he thought. But what?
Still, the question remained. Was he here for the wrong reason, here to help himself more than to help others? He would talk to the nun again. He would work on his approach.
10
The next afternoon, Hanley sat listening to Father Robineau and Sister Marie Claire discuss a letter from a doctor in Italy who planned to visit the mission in July. As he listened his thoughts drifted back to Kokomo and his old life and back, again, to the question. Letters from his daughter and staff told him his businesses were doing well, as well as could be expected without him, he supposed. He was proud of his success, as proud as his upbringing would allow him to be. For as long as he could remember, there had been strings attached to all he had done, strings that came from his parents and grandparents, strings that controlled, to an extent, the decisions he made, how he dealt with people, his business, certainly his family. These attachments ruled his life, he thought, which was natural. Then there was his uncle. What he was doing now was because of his uncle.
Summers, his young summers, belonged to his uncle and aunt. They were farmers, more full- than part-time, part-time because his uncle worked at the county’s only farm supply business to help them make a living while maintaining the farm. Hanley moved in with his aunt and uncle each summer, beginning when he was twelve years old and each year thereafter until he left for college in Ohio.
Small, perhaps eighty-five acres of rolling land in southern Indiana, the farm was divided into twenty acres of grazing pasture, sixty acres for crops, mostly corn and wheat with a new crop, soy beans worked in and a small bit for the farmhouse and buildings.
Sometimes the Darkness Page 9