The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  “I would guess…” I croaked, hoping that the sound of my own voice might force my mind to right itself, stop the downward spiral toward passing out. “I’d wager they were having lunch then, ol’ Mike and Ike. Looks like a noon sun, if I had to guess. Maybe late breakfast, this would make sense... They seemed… a very busy sort.”

  Whispers turned to murmurs, and then grew to voices, anxious voices that popped up around me. The sun darkened a couple times as a handful of people stood over me, trying to get a look, like I was some sort of bushman traffic accident.

  As my body became light and began to lift across the ether, right when I was starting to enjoy the sensation, I felt a thumb under my chin, jarring me back to full consciousness.

  It was the boy, my wide receiver. He’d come back. However, his smile had been replaced by a grim expression, and his eyes were darting from me to the direction we’d come from minutes earlier. The young boy’s youthful appearance belied a quiet cunning born of the daily struggle to simply stay alive and now, a real danger approaching, his carefree veneer fell away. He knew this wasn’t a game for me, and if they caught him helping me, this wouldn’t be a game for him either. His words were strained, pinched by his fear, as he tugged at my fingers, trying to get me to stand.

  “I can’t… “ My tongue was sticking to my teeth. I could barely speak. “I just can’t.”

  He said: “Pub.”

  “I know… I’m just… tired.” My eyes fell closed again and, one more time, he jabbed me under the chin with his thumb. His face was close to mine, and to see fear in his kind eyes broke my heart.

  He said: “Pub! Pub, pub.” Then added: “Bud-weiser.”

  Oh… oh my. He wasn’t a boy… he was an angel. A beer angel!

  With some difficulty, I rolled forward up to my knees, and surprisingly strong for a kid his size, he helped me to my feet, and we were running again. For my part, it was more like a long, protracted fall with my feet, alternately, just barely keeping me from hitting the ground.

  He led me around a corner, then another. Every few yards, he’d look back over his shoulder— either at me, to be sure I was dutifully in tow, or that just beyond me to be sure my pursuers were not. After a couple more minutes of weaving down a winding path only he could see, the tall boy finally stopped, looked past me and puffed his cheeks out. Blowing the air out, he put his arms up, motioning me to stop.

  Parting the bushes next to us with calloused fingers, he nodded for me to head into the bush. I nodded and stuck my dirty hand out. He stared at it, at first… then took it happily between his own two hands and shook it vigorously. With the return of his smile, I felt we’d made it to safety—even if it were only temporary. He then turned and ran, cut between two shacks and was gone.

  Slipping through the brush wasn’t easy. They were thorny and poky in places but at least the patch of bush was marginally cooler than in the blazing sun. After about ten minutes of walking the straightest line possible, the bush came to an end, and I found myself at the rear of an old concrete building that had been slapped onto a stone foundation. The back entrance about three feet above the dusty ground. At some point there’d been stairs from the ground to its threshold, but maybe the sun had simply dried them over time and they’d blown away as dust.

  Reinvigorated by the sight of the first architecturally sound building I’d seen all day, I hopped up to the six inch wide ledge at the base of the door, twisted the handle, and slipped inside.

  For a moment, my surroundings were midnight dark, and as I waited for a moment for my eyes to adjust, the cool interior air pleasantly washed over my burnt skin. Scattered sunlight peeked in through a small circular window at the top of the small room, a fan pushing the air inside, out.

  The area was not much bigger than a walk-in closet and just as suffocating.

  My vision clearing, I could see the large basin next to me, and my hand jutted out toward the spigot. Rinsing my hands first, my wounds had begun to heal a little but unfortunately the soft tissue that was beginning to form, the very early stages of a scab, that tissue was darkened by dirt. First, I took a few mouthfuls of warm water to quench my thirst, then just let my hands rinse under the water, trying to rid the wounds of grit and mud.

  Over the next half minute, I cleaned my wrists and hands, noting the damage to my right wrist—blistered and chafed— was a little worse than my left but neither looked damaged beyond repair.

  Next to the big sink was a small, ancient washing machine. Inside, it was just rag after rag but unfortunately not a clean shirt or pair of shorts-- no, not shorts: long pants. He said long pants, long sleeves. These were only cleaning linens, a little damp and virtually useless to me, but I pocketed one anyhow, remembering something I’d read a long while back that the long distance traveler would find no more useful item in his packed gear than a good, serviceable towel.

  Just beyond the washing machine was a collection of mops, brooms, and other poled-devices which were in such disrepair, I had no idea what their use could be. Next to that was another door, leading farther into the building. Uniquely familiar with the smell, I knew what I’d find somewhere on the opposite side of that door.

  Taking a deep breath, I turned the knob and found myself, sure enough, standing along one wall of a small, dimly lit pub. The five patrons that had parked themselves at the long, wooden table that served as a bar, each noticed me, and stopped their conversations, one at a time. The bartender’s skin was noticeably darker than the other men and this made me wonder if he had originally been from another part of Africa. He had been casually leaning against the back wall, chatting with a few of his customers, but now he also just looked and stared, momentarily unsure what to do about the only white man likely to ever walk into his bar.

  At the other end of the room, there were three men around a small table, younger than those at the bar, watching a soccer match on the television in the corner. One of them slowly stood and began moving toward the door.

  Clearing my throat and stepping toward the bar, I said, “I would like a beer please.” The bartender blinked at me, obviously a little stunned that the grungy white guy had spoken his language. This was just one of the two sentences I knew in Pulaar. In fact, I knew that particular phrase in one hundred sixty-two different languages never thinking that stupid knowledge could just save my life.

  The man who’d been edging toward the door straightened and seemed to relax a degree. Shrugging, he said something to his two friends and before they had a chance to respond, there was a sudden flurry of activity on the tiny, televised soccer field, the three men then shouting at the television, each contributing to an incomprehensible burst of agitated conversation about what they’d just seen in the screen.

  Needing a place to hide, I said my remaining phrase, in local Guinean.

  As I spoke, each man stopped what they were doing and simply stared.

  Getting no answer the first time, I repeated myself:

  “Where exactly is the restroom in your fine establishment?”

  Finally, the bartender nodded slowly and pointed to a door at the far wall. I walked toward it, briefly debating if I should wait for my order first. Alas, my very survival taking slight precedence over my extreme desire for a bottle of beer, it would have to wait.

  The bathroom was just a small room off the bar. Inside was a sink striped with mildew, a sheet of metal for a mirror and two ovals cut in the wooden floor.

  Each of the two toilets were capped with a slab of warped wood, a rope tied to one edge. Anyone needing to use the facilities, it appeared, would pull on the other end of the rope, which had been fed over a large nail. Another pair of nails would hold a knot that had been tied into the rope until the deed was done, and then the lid would be returned to the down position. Even with this valid attempt to cover the hole, a blanket of flies surrounded the lids’ warped edges, a twisting, angry black rope, all nosily fighting to get a shot at the buffet below.

  Walking over to the sink,
I looked at myself in the polished steel that served as a mirror.

  The bathroom was just another temporary hidey-hole, while I tried to come up with the next move. Looking in the mirror, though, just hideous, so I began to wash away the grime and streaks of blood. Between scrubs, my mouth sucked down the warm water and it tasted wonderful. After a full minute, my stomach was so loaded with water it actually hurt.

  Looking again at the face in the reflection, this was someone who I didn’t immediately recognize— and that was not entirely about the dirt. And, honestly, it also wasn’t entirely bad. The person I’d become over the past few years was not a man who filled my chest with pride.

  The Mentor had given me desert facts before knocking me cold again. From what he said, I was going to have to trek north, and eventually east, if I remembered my geography correctly.

  Also very helpful was the dog-eared posters on the bathroom wall with the word “Kols” across the top— probably a favorite local, micro-brew. Just beneath those four letters was a map of the western continent. Just guessing, it seemed the marketing message here was Kols is the top choice of all of West Africa. Just below that, the gorgeous, naked woman whose naughty bits had been strategically covered by a huge, thick snake may have been designed to imply the antediluvian temptations of Eden, and given that parts of her nakedness had been hidden, the shame then that she embodied as she lay there alone, having acted as the leaven that precipitated her mate’s banishment from that perfect garden, leaving her helpless, alone, and coveted by the embodiment of evil.

  Or the message could have been: drink Kols beer and pretty ladies will have sex with you. So, pretty much the same message that we have back in the States.

  Staring at the map (mostly the map), it certainly seemed like the most logical route was north, like The Mentor had suggested for me. But… why would I have to do what he’d said? It was my life; I could change the rules if I wanted to. Of course, he might have considered that as well… and bad-ass ‘rule-changing’ might be exactly what he’d hoped for.

  Having spent some time in the southwestern U.S., I pretty much hated the desert.

  One awful memory in particular that springs to mind when the subject of deserts comes up, involves a buddy of mine who dug mushrooms and peyote a little too much. On several occasions, he’d convinced me to join him on a trip to the high desert so we could tromp around a bit, while he was blasted and trying to catch lizards. I didn’t indulge in the mushroom-peyote pizza (hold the pizza) because of my former seriously-need-to-be-in-control issues. I was just there to make sure my friend didn’t die—because that can really put a damper on just about any buzz you got.

  But during those moments, standing in the desert, as my friend pranced about like some sort of furless Wile E. Coyote, even when I was certain which direction that car was, I’d be more nervous every step we took in any direction that led away from it.

  And, the auditory memory, of course, for me is always the most intense-- the sounds of the insects, sometimes, was deafening… as if they were trying to confuse you, get your bearings all messed up. Then you’d die and they’d have a big buggy snack.

  So, no, I didn’t trust the desert much.

  Again, checking out the map (mostly the map), it looked like the desert trek would be hundreds of miles. I might be able to find some bus heading toward Egypt, but if I had to walk the entire way… well… my walkabout prospects didn’t strike me as too good.

  I wished that there were just a road with a pole, on top of which a sign with an arrow saying: “Marietta, Georgia, USA. 4700 miles.”

  As it often does with my audio memory, voices sometimes just push themselves up from the deep folds of my mind. I heard my large, Hawaiian friend Allejo talking, remembering what he’d said about “roads.”

  “Sometimes they disappear all together. But, there is always a road. Sometimes you just have to look harder for it.”

  I took a few steps back from the poster and leaned up against the concrete wall. It was surprisingly cool. I tried to clear my mind. Maybe inspiration would lift from the deep, up into my mind; I could just let life around me help dictate my next move.

  At first, my ears were filled with only the buzzing of the hungry poo-bees a few inches from my feet. Then, remarkably, I heard it. I heard what life was telling me.

  Life was telling me that scary, angry men were now shouting about something on the other side of the bathroom door, and it would be best if I once again jumped out the nearby open window because if this were Mike & Ike and co., they would not likely be overly impressed with either of my two phrases of local dialect.

  Chapter Fifteen

  For a few summers when I was a kid, my father took the family to Wisconsin to camp in a rather small camper-trailer at a nice little family-owned campground. Every now and again, he’d take me fishing. For the most part, casting a line anywhere in Wisconsin is a fisherman’s wet dream.

  Unfortunately, my father was a fish's wet dream (or, at least, one of the better ones) since he'd been the worst angler in the history of fishing.

  He’d, on more than one occasion, tried to be “one with nature,” but nature had serious misgivings about the arrangement and gave him the woodsy version of “it’s not you, it’s me” until he finally gave up and lived out his days on asphalt slabs, between concrete walls.

  But, years before, he did seem to love fishing.

  In truth, I think he just loved that ancient monster of an outboard motor. We didn’t own a boat, but we did possess a boat motor. To me, that made as much sense to owning suitcases of .38 caliber bullets but had to borrow the gun.

  So, Dad would rent the boat and put the oldest outboard motor in the world on the back of it. He affectionately called the Johnson motor “L.B.J.”, after the former commander-in-chief. I was convinced this was appropriate because the motor obviously had been slapped together sometime during that man’s presidency. And, like L.B.J’s handling of that rabble-rouser Kennedy, I was half convinced a suspicious death could very well be in my immediate, young man's future as well.

  However, during that first summer, as I sat in the metal boat listening to the pinging of the water striders against its hull, while working on a couple second-degree sunburns at the tops of my thighs... I’d begun to wonder if my father had sought out such a very old motor because, back in the day, there’d been less of those pesky laws and regulations about how fast certain motors were allowed to go.

  Only one time do I remember him twisting the hulking motor’s wee, black handle all the way until it wouldn’t go anymore. And while I believe we’d briefly rocketed forward fast enough to actually go back in time, technically, because of that particular time-shift, ergo, the event never really happened in the first place.

  By the end of the summer, it became clear to my father’s “husky”-sized twelve year old son that I served a singular purpose on that boat. My job was, as it was explained to me, to sit at the front of the boat and watch for stumps and alligators. Since we were in the middle of the river most of the time, not so many stumps. Since we were about two hours away from the Canadian border, not so many gators. Turns out, my father had been too cheap to rent a boat of appropriate size—one that was large enough to handle L.B.J. Instead, he’d get the tiniest little, metal rowboat he could find, strap the motor down at the stern, and put the chubby boy at the bow. My job: I was ballast.

  And, finally, as for being a “fishing outing”... I’m not sure if fish talk to each other but if they did, and they saw my fisherman father and his ancient motor coming their way, they’d have only one message for each other: “Do not be afraid. We are completely safe.”

  That entire first summer, we didn’t catch a single fish.

  But, looking back now to my days as counter weight, I still remember how beautiful the water looked as dawn spilt its morning mist. And because olfactory sensations (for everyone else but yours truly) conjure up memories better than any other sensory trigger (CD: "Memory, Our Personal
History Book", Brookhaven Audio, 1993), as I lay down next to a greasy marine engine in the bed of a Guinean ’84 Chevy pickup, hidden under a dirty tarp, the smell of the diesel reminded me of Wisconsin sunrises, shiner minnows, and last-minute KFC dinners.

  After jumping from the pub’s window, I looked for the closest place to squirrel myself away. Sure, the bush was an option but my guess was that the bartender had already said that bwana was in the bathroom and, if they didn’t see my bloody, dirty, chubby butt hunched over one of the poop holes, they’d likely guess I’d headed back into the cover of the bush.

  The truck had been idling as the two men in its front seat waited for a herd of skinny goats to pass in front of them. They appeared pretty focused on hammering away at the horn, while the animals completely ignored them, so I felt confident (and desperate) enough to slip under the oil-stained, blue tarp in the back of their vehicle.

  The truck bed was uncomfortable, and the spot I’d crawled into next to the huge diesel engine was covered with thick rope. Sure, my little rope bed was painful and awkward but, thankfully, the diesel fumes dulled most of my primary senses.

  However, on the plus side, no one trying to kill me at the moment. So, while the amenities earned a dismal one star rating, the no one trying to kill me earned my sparse digs a personal “lodger’s choice” award.

  Over the next few hours, loopy from the fuel vapors, I had managed to fall asleep several times, only to be awakened seconds later (or so it felt) by a jostling from the road. Poking my head out from under the tarp was out of the question, but it seemed that there were some infrastructure issues here in West Africa that had been yet properly addressed. Along this route, the roads didn’t have potholes. The potholes had roads.

  Finally, I fell into a good stretch of sleep, thanks to the mind-roasting diesel fumes radiating off my blockhead friend.

  My dreamless sleep ended the same moment the truck rattled to a stop, and its engine had cut. A second later, doors slammed, and there were voices on either side of me, both men sounding weary from the long drive as they came to the back of the truck. Trying to shake the fog from my mind, panic gripped me, and I was not sure what my move should be. We’d stopped somewhere, and there was no longer any light cutting at the bottom edges of the tarp. Night time.