Appearing behind the nun, carrying the smallest child in her arms. Aisha told her the children were frightened, but alright. Leaving Hanley, the nun turned and led Aisha and the children from the plane, sitting all of them on the ground beneath the Beech. The morning air was now warm and the shade comfortable.
“I will go to the village for help. You will stay with the children right here. Do not leave or let any of the children leave. If someone comes near you, put the children back on the plane and close the door. Wait here until I return. Do you understand?”
Aisha nodded and the nun immediately turned toward the village and started off at a trot.
***
The girl watched the nun until she was perhaps three hundred yards down the road. She turned, counted the children, told them to stay where they were and entered the plane.
Moving toward the cockpit, she looked at Hanley, who was still unconscious, his head resting against the window frame. His mouth was open, his breathing a shallow wheeze. A thin line of blood ran from his lip and onto his shirt. Turning, she took a blanket from the floor of the cargo hold, placed it over the American, tucking it around his shoulders and arms. Putting her lips to his ear, Aisha whispered in Masalit, “You did it,” then turned and went back to the children.
33
Too much sugar; Elizabeth looked at the teaspoon and shook some back into the sugar jar. Putting sugar in tea was frowned upon by her friends or former friends, that is, but she didn’t care. She liked hot, sweetened tea, especially on cool fall mornings. From the kitchen window, she could see Weed lying in the sun, where she had chained him next to the garage, the flagstones of the patio freezing beneath her feet as she ran back to the warmth of the kitchen.
Just as she was about to stir her drink, the doorbell rang. I’m not expecting anyone, she thought. Maybe it’s Rocky. No, Rocky comes to the back door, taps and then comes in. Laying the spoon next to the cup, she turned and went to the front door. Carrie was sleeping over at her grandmother’s, which had allowed Elizabeth to sleep in on this Saturday morning. It was already ten o’clock and she was still in her underwear and a robe.
When she peeked through the side glass, Elizabeth was startled to see a nun standing on her front porch. She was puzzled for perhaps two seconds and then fear seized her and she slumped against the door. What else could it be?
Opening the door, she heard, “I’m Sister Mary Kathleen, a friend of your father and a friend of a nun serving in Sudan with your father. I’m sorry to have come here unannounced but I need to speak with you. May I come in?” Elizabeth tried to say yes, come in but could only manage a nod and waved her inside.
“What’s happened to him? Is he dead? Is he?” Elizabeth was close to crying, trying to control her panic as she asked the questions. Standing in the foyer, the morning sun through the side windows warmed Elizabeth’s feet.
“Is there somewhere we can sit?” the nun asked. Hanley’s daughter pointed to the living room then followed the nun as she walked to a wing-backed chair and sat. Elizabeth sat on a large sofa covered in a floral print fabric. The room was large, bright and airy. Elizabeth noticed the nun looking about the room, approval seemingly on her face.
“My friend is Sister Marie Claire. I believe you may know who she is. She has been working with your father for the past eight months at the clinic in Mapuordit. Yesterday, she and your father attempted the rescue of some children. These children had been taken into slavery in the cities of central and northern Sudan. Some people, a network or underground, committed to freeing the children, took them to a city called Kosit where your father, my friend and a young African man named Jumma flew to meet them and return the children to their families in the South. Soldiers fired on the plane as it sat on the runway. Jumma, the young African was killed. A member of the network and a young girl being rescued were also killed. Your father was wounded and taken to a clinic in Shambe, a small town between Kosit and Yirol. Your father’s plane was damaged by the gunfire and he was forced to land on a roadway near there. Sister Marie Claire walked to the town and received aid from people she knew in the town. People from the mission arrived and carried your father and the children to the town and then took the children on to Mapuordit. Sister Marie Claire stayed with you father and the doctors from the clinic.”
“Elizabeth, your father’s wounds are severe. He was shot through the side and the bullet damaged a kidney and a fragment lodged in his spine, nicking the spinal cord they believe. The doctors believe, but they’re not certain. It is infection and the loss of blood that is causing the most problem. He has been flown to Juba and will be evacuated to Nairobi and then to France.” As the nun explained what had happened at Kosti, Elizabeth covered her face and wept hard into her hands. She heard little of what the nun said after hearing her father was wounded. Her head swam as she thought of what to do, about Carrie and Rocky and the goddamned dog. Would her mother even care? How could this be happening? Why didn’t he stay in America? She wanted Rocky here.
***
Hanging up the phone, Rocky returned to her den to sit across from Elizabeth, still curled up on the sofa, Weed lying beside her. She held a ball of tissue against her mouth; her eyes were red and swollen. She held the dog’s ear in her hand, rubbing and stroking it for comfort.
“We are on a flight to New York at 6:10 in the morning. From there we fly to Rome. I know you won’t sleep but you must try. Everything is packed and the hotel has a reservation for us near the airport. If we leave now, we can be there by eleven and get some rest before we get up. I have some pills that will help you sleep.” Rocky was exhausted, having dealt with the news about Hanley while providing support to Elizabeth and arranging their travel. She was thankful she was able to call on Beverly, Hanley’s office manager to help her. She wanted to lie down and sleep but knew it was impossible. The worst had been dealing with Belinda, who was astonishingly uncaring. She did, however agree to keep Carrie while her daughter traveled to Africa. Elizabeth had refused to speak with her mother, leaving it to Rocky.
Having been a doctor’s wife gave Rocky an unfortunate ability to guess at the severity of Hanley’s condition, if the information the nun had delivered was anywhere near accurate. Who knew? Hanley’s survival would depend on how soon he had received medical treatment and how good that treatment was. Rocky knew that southern Sudan would not offer Hanley much hope, or her.
***
The red light on his answering machine was blinking in the dark as Michael Campbell walked past his den on the way to the kitchen. He was thirsty and needed a drink. Sophie had insisted they attend a small party thrown by their neighbors, even though he had resisted. Now, just home, he wanted a Scotch and water before bed. Stopping, he took two steps backward, walked to the phone in the den and punched the button. The voice was that of Sophie’s uncle Jean-Robert. The message made the Englishman sit heavily in the arm chair next to the phone. Hanley Martin had been shot during an attempt to rescue some children in a town in Sudan with a name Michael had never heard before now. “What the bloody fuck had he been thinking?” Campbell said aloud. It did not seem like something his friend would do. How did he get pulled into that, he wondered? Maybe it was the French nun; must have been. The message said that Hanley was in bad shape. Sophie’s uncle was back in France, near Paris. Jean-Robert said he had received a call from the diocese in Rumbek and called his niece when he had received the news. “Michael, are you in the kitchen?” Sophie called from the stairs. “If you are, will you bring me some water?” she asked.
He did not answer right away, thinking about the news and what he should do. “Michael, did you hear me?” his wife called to him.
“Yes, I heard you,” he yelled to her. “Come into the den, will you?”
As she entered the den, Sophie saw her husband slumped in the chair, his right hand cradling his forehead. “Michael, what is it?”
“It’s Hanley. He’s been caught up in some sort of botched rescue attempt and hurt, badly.
Maybe fatally, who knows. The message is from you uncle. Listen to it while I get a drink.”
Sophie listened to her uncle’s voice, trying to picture what might have happened. Michael came back to the den saying, “There were no real details in the message. The nun, Sister Marie Claire, must have been involved. Your uncle was right, what he said in his letters. Hanley and the nun had grown close. Remember, he said she was not happy with the church’s lack of involvement in the conflict in Sudan. From his description of her, she would be very capable of trying something like a rescue and drawing Hanley into it.” He took a long sip from his drink before sitting in another wing back chair in the den. “Do you think I should go to Sudan?” he asked.
“No, I don’t want you going there. It is bad enough that Hanley has been hurt; I don’t want you hurt too. No, you won’t be going to Sudan,” she said emphatically. Sophie’s voice was tight and her tone irritable. She seemed mad and Michael suspected a bit shocked as well. For years Sophie had expected news of this sort to come to them about her uncle.
“I can be there as fast as anyone, especially if the head of the order helps arrange my transportation from Khartoum to wherever Hanley is being treated. Hanley will need someone with connections outside the church and his family will need someone with resources who can help them with the government if that is an issue. Airbus and the church together with the US government may be capable of getting Hanley out of the country and to decent medical care. Anyway, I will just be a friend coming to help with no affiliation to the church or America. I will call Alexandre Ganier right away and explain the situation. I’ll get his opinion and then we’ll talk.”
“There will be no talk. I don’t want you to go. That’s all I have to say and it should be enough.” She looked at the glass in his hand, rose and left the room. Michael picked up the phone and punched in the number for the president of Airbus. “I can at least get his opinion,” he told himself.
34
Waving her blue handkerchief about, Rocky tried to chase away the flies tormenting her. They were after the tears on her face. Damn you, she thought, get away from me. The wooden bench she sat on pinched the back of her legs. Wiping her tears, she stood and straightened her blouse. The evening was cool but not chilly, not in Kenya she thought. Since arriving that morning, she and Elizabeth had remained with Hanley until late afternoon when Elizabeth had given out. The young priest, Father Laslo took Elizabeth out for some food and perhaps some wine.
Sister Marie Claire had met them at the hospital, which was a mistake, Rocky now realized. The nun accompanied Hanley on the flight from Juba to Nairobi. She tried to explain to Rocky and Elizabeth why Hanley was involved and what happened but Elizabeth exploded the instant they were introduced. What little of her mother Elizabeth had in her came roaring out, blasting the nun and the mission, Sudan and anyone else Hanley’s daughter could think to include. Father Laslo intervened, allowing one of the doctors to take the nun from harm’s way. Sister Marie Claire, who had so desperately wanted to stay with Hanley, left to fly back to Sudan on Father Laslo’s orders, accompanied by the same doctor. The priest said the nun would only remain in Sudan a short time.
Hanley was semiconscious. He had been that way since landing his plane almost five days ago. Two doctors from the clinic in Mapuordit found Hanley in the plane thirty minutes after he had landed and ten minutes before the nun and a friend made it back from Shambe. By then, the doctors had Hanley on a canvas stretcher beneath the plane, intravenous bottles and antibiotics already administered. Hanley was taken to a small, ancient clinic in the village where he was placed on a wooden platform with a thin, tick mattress covered in graying linens. There he had lain, his condition worsening. The doctors found the bullet had shattered a lower rib, fragmented into pieces that had cut into his right kidney and nicked his spinal column. The bleeding had stopped and he was stabilized. Despite his condition, the Sudanese government demanded his arrest, then removal from the country, but after the Catholic Church interceded, he was flown to Juba and then Nairobi.
After his daughter had left, Rocky told Hanley that the children had all been taken to Mapuordit. A search of Jumma’s room had yielded his notebooks, one of which contained contact information with the families of the rescued. The mission would attempt to reunite them, Father Laslo had told her. She hoped Hanley had heard her.
Spots covered the front of her linen skirt, the stains left by the tears she had wept for Hanley. Not one for prayer, Rocky had been pleading with God since Elizabeth had called her on Saturday. No one had listened, certainly not a caring God, she thought. She feared he would die in a corner of the world that time and other men chose to ignore.
***
Wherever he was smelled sickly sweet, like rotting flowers in a vase. He tried to speak, to call out for Elizabeth but could not.
He saw milky light and vague shapes, then things went back to complete darkness, and this went on back and forth for some time and then there was only light and shapes. The light he saw was weak but steady. Steady was good. The darkness was gone, at least for a while.
He thought of the streetlight at the entrance to his uncle’s farm, obscured by the morning mist which brought a dampness to his skin. He wished to feel it again, the mist, chilling, raising his flesh wherever it touched, but he couldn’t. At least for now he had this steady light. There was something else he felt, something new.
It was odd, this new feeling; this lightness, strange after having lost the feeling in his feet and legs.
***
Pushing through the door, Rocky made her way to the corner bed. Sick and dying people lay scattered about. A woman cried, softly pleading for help to no one and everyone. Hanley looked bad, only the slight movement of the sheet covering his chest telling her he was still alive. Taking up his hand, she noticed how dry and stiff his fingers were. There was as much to hate about life as to love she thought. She sat by the bed to wait. For what?
Rocky began to cry. How had it all come to this, how could he have thrown his life away so carelessly? She was alone on a bench far from the new start with Hanley she had hoped for. Her exhaustion pushed her down, hunched her over. Now a sudden constricting pressure in her chest made her afraid to breathe. It must be the stress she told herself, a dusting of fear covering her heart. The pressure eased; the crying helped.
The wall behind her was rough and hard but warm. She slumped over, too tired not to. Her head hung over her knees, her hands on rough, dry wood, arms locked in support, tears wetting the closely woven linen stretched over her legs. The bench trembled beneath her as she wept and prayed prayers full of anger even while pleading for mercy. Doubting the effect, she rose and left the room.
Evening had darkened the hallway. The hospital and everything in it smelled of death. As she walked the halls, she remembered her grandmother at night on her knees beside her bed, praying for a consideration or a gift or guidance. Rocky could not remember any proof of those prayers being answered. The wind blew through the open windows of the hallway, carrying her prayers away, pushing them to where they would never be heard. Her eyes burned, her nose ran. She felt sorry for herself and then ashamed.
Rocky returned to the room and the corner bed. Straightening the covers with some care, she pulled the sheet to Hanley’s unshaven chin. The coarse weave of the cloth against his face did not make him stir; the coarse weave or the smell. The old bed linen had the sweet stink of something washed in sulfur water. These rough touches did not rouse him.
They said he would live but not walk again. He would remain in Kenya for weeks before he could be moved, first to Europe, probably France and then to America. Rocky hoped Hanley’s dog Weed lived long enough to see Hanley again. It would be good for both of them.
35
Thin brown dust swirled around his feet and across the hard-packed dirt parking lot onto the gravel road. A small boy of five years sat on an overturned bucket staring at the new running shoes on his feet. They felt good to him. His
new shoes and new clothes were clean and smelled good. His hunger was gone, but he was still scared; he was always scared. Locked in his arms was an old stuffed toy, a bear, its fur now matted and discolored in spots, one plastic eye cracked, a left ear soaked from the boys constant biting and sucking. The noise of the plane that had carried him to safety was still in his ears. He could not quit listening.
Standing beside him was Sister Marie Claire, dressed in a dull blue uniform, her head covered in a white kerchief. At the back of the parking lot, a man in a truck watched the nun and the boy from behind the steering wheel. He brought them to this spot near Rumbek.
The nun talked low and steadily to the boy as he sat in the cool of this late autumn morning. Her words were in French; he could not understand her. The nun and the boy were shaded from the sun by the building next to which they waited. He shivered at times, but was not uncomfortable.
***
As the nun watched the small boy, she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. Looking up, she turned around, but could not see, the old building blocking her view. Sister Marie Claire turned toward the boy and said, “I know you cannot understand me, but the surprise I have been telling you about is here. I think you will be very happy and I hope and pray that God continues to bless you. You have been brave and now your prayers have been answered. Please remember the people that helped you for they gave much for this moment to happen. Two of these people were people I love. I hope that, in some way, God will help you to know this.”
A car, an old gray Peugeot with a red front fender, rolled to a stop at the edge of the parking lot, the dust swirling about so thickly that the boy could not see it for a moment. The boy turned at the sound of the car door opening. A woman’s sandaled foot touched the ground. The woman stood by the car and said his name. The nun watched his face, saw his face contort and the tears begin to flow. He uttered something, the word indiscernible, the bear clutched to his chest, an arm outstretched, he ran from the bucket and into her arms. The nun began to weep. The woman held the boy tightly to her chest and whispered something in his ear. The nun heard him saying one word over and over. Her head fell to her chest, tears trailing down her thin face. Sitting behind the wheel of the Peugeot was the young priest from the mission. The nun looked up to see the smile on his face.
Sometimes the Darkness Page 26