After the Rains

by Deborah Raney

  “You two are a sight for sore eyes,” he said, still beaming.

  “You, too,” Betsy told him. She looked around the bustling airport. “Is this little airport always this busy?” she said.

  He shook his head, and Natalie thought she saw worry etched in the lines on his face.

  “Is it always guarded like this?” Natalie asked, watching the fully armed soldiers that milled around the airport. They had seen soldiers at the airport in Bogotá, too.

  “Sometimes,” her father said, obviously preoccupied. He inclined his head in the direction of a group of camouflage-clad men. “The thing is, it’s hard to know if these guys are legit, or if they’re guerrillas—rebels.”

  They waited for an hour, Nate going to check flight information every few minutes. Though her father couldn’t get any clear answer, it seemed that the military in San José was on alert due to a rumor that a plane carrying a load of cocaine worth a small fortune was en route to San José.

  Nate told Natalie and Betsy that he’d considered staying over in San José, but he had been afraid they might shut down the airport and leave them no choice but to make the trip to Conzalez by boat—a trip that could take as long as three days.

  “Even if planes are flying out of San José, we can’t always count on the airstrip in Conzalez being open so we can land,” he explained.

  Natalie almost hoped they’d be forced to travel the river all the way. She was anxious to see as much of the country as possible. It was almost noon when they boarded a flight, and by the time their plane finally took off from San José, she was so exhausted she wasn’t sure she could have survived a long boat trip.

  The flight to Conzalez took less than an hour. Hank and Meghan Middleton, the young missionary couple stationed in the small village, were waiting with a feast of roasted chicken and vegetables and corn on the cob.

  “More corn, anyone? There’s plenty,” Meghan said, as they all sat around the table in the Middletons’ large dining room. The young couple’s living quarters were behind the medical clinic where Meghan, an R.N., saw patients from Conzalez and outlying villages. Natalie was surprised at how modern the house and clinic were. She knew from photographs that the mission office at Timoné and her father’s living quarters there were little more than huts like those in which the villagers lived.

  Nate patted his midsection and winked in Hank’s direction. “The whole meal was wonderful, Meg, but I have it on good authority that a prudent man would save a little room in his belly.”

  “Hank! You spoiled my surprise!” Meg said. She smiled and went to the kitchen, returning with a frosted chocolate layer cake. She cut generous slices for each of them.

  “I thought you guys would never get here,” Hank teased, digging into his dessert.

  Meg gave her husband a playful punch in the arm. “He actually tried to get me to cut a slice for him before lunch!”

  Hank shrugged sheepishly.

  “Mmm, I can see why,” Nate said over a mouthful of the confection. “This is a real treat, Meg. Thank you.”

  Natalie enjoyed the time spent with the Middletons, but she was eager to see Timoné. While they worked together clearing the dishes from the table, Nate glanced at his watch. “I hate to eat and run, but if we don’t go pretty quick, we won’t make it home before nightfall.”

  Natalie shivered involuntarily at the thought of being on the river after dark.

  The Middletons walked with them to the dock, and Meghan helped Natalie and Betsy slather on insect repellant before they climbed into the boat.

  Conzalez was barely out of view when Natalie began to see why Meghan had been so insistent about the foul-smelling repellant. She and Betsy swatted at mosquitoes almost as big as dragonflies, and other insects that she didn’t recognize buzzed around them like flies on honey.

  There was a primitive beauty to the river. The water of the Rio Guaviare was dark brown, like milky coffee, Natalie thought. At many places along the waterway, the trees hung low over the river, the branches on one bank laced together overhead with those on the opposite shore, forming a sort of tunnel through which they traveled. Inside the tunnel it was dark and cool, the air dead still. Natalie felt as though she were traveling back in time.

  The river looped south and then back east again where it widened. Though Natalie didn’t think the native pilot spoke English, he seemed amused as she and Betsy bombarded Nate with questions about the things they saw along the way.

  “Are there villages back in the trees?” Natalie asked, trying in vain to peer into the dense forests on either side of them.

  “One or two that we know of, but they’re far into the jungle, off of the smaller tributaries. On the shores of this main artery, there’s nothing between here and Timoné. Then once you get twenty miles or so past Timoné, there are several villages right along the river.” He cleared his throat. “That’s where Chicoro is.”

  Natalie’s pulse quickened. Chicoro was where her father had been held captive for more than two and a half years.

  “Oh, Nate,” Betsy whispered. “Do you … have you ever been back?”

  He shook his head. “In all these years, there’s never been reason to. But I would go … if I was called.”

  Natalie wasn’t sure if he meant called by the villagers of Chicoro or called by God. She saw Nate swallow hard and stare into the distance.

  After a few minutes he spoke. “I think God knows it’s best that I stay away from there—at least for now.”

  “Why is that?” Betsy asked tentatively.

  “The people there set me up as some kind of god—because I survived the fire and the sickness. I don’t want to give them any reason to see me as some resurrected savior.”

  “What about the Timoné? When you came back after they thought you were dead, didn’t they think you had been … resurrected too?” Natalie asked.

  “I think there were some who did … at first. But the Christian converts in Timoné back then understood what had happened, and they quickly set the story straight. It became a real testimony of God’s care for me.” He was thoughtful for a minute. “I know it could someday be a testimony for the Chicoro people, too, and if God asks me to go back, I will. But I won’t deny that I’m very grateful he hasn’t asked me to go back yet.” His sheepish smile made Natalie think of a little boy.

  “Do you think they know that you’re back in Timoné?”

  “The Chicoro? Oh, probably.” He smiled. “In spite of the fact that we don’t have a telephone system, news manages to travel pretty fast from village to village.”

  Betsy eyed him. “You don’t worry that they might still want—”

  “Some kind of revenge?” he finished for her. “No. I doubt that whole event is much more than a myth to the Chicoro by now, Betsy.”

  The current grew stronger, and the boat’s pilot cranked up the motor, its roar making conversation difficult. They rode without speaking. Natalie’s thoughts raged like the water around them. But as they journeyed deeper and deeper into the rain forest, her excitement grew. She was almost there. It was really happening.

  Her first glimpse of Timoné was just that—a mere glimpse before the sun faded behind the dense forest, leaving the village in gray-green shadows. She stepped onto the dock while Dad steadied the boat. She would sleep in Timoné tonight.

  Dad helped the pilot tie up the boat and hoist their bags onto the primitive dock. When they’d distributed the bags among them, he led Natalie and Betsy along a muddy pathway. He lit the way before them with a bright lantern, but more than once Natalie slipped and stumbled, catching herself, only to come up with a handful of mud.

  “I thought this was supposed to be the dry season,” she said after falling yet again.

  Her father only smiled and trudged on.

  In spite of the heavy-duty insect repellent she’d put on back in Conzalez, the mosquitoes buzzed around her face and hummed in her ears. She swatted at them with mud-caked hands and dreamed of the warm sho
wer she had enjoyed in the luxurious hotel in Bogotá.

  As the sun slipped farther below the horizon, Natalie squinted into the half-light, seeing wild creatures in every looming shadow. The jungle seemed alive with strange and haunting sounds. Natalie gripped Betsy’s hand tightly as they tried to keep up with Nate. She took some comfort in the fact that her father seemed unconcerned by the ominous chorus. He plodded ahead, occasionally stopping to help them over an especially treacherous spot in the path but for the most part tramping silently ahead of them.

  Without warning, a shrill squawk split the air, and Natalie and Betsy both let out a squeal.

  “What was that?” Natalie asked, her eyes darting from side to side.

  Her father laughed softly. “Probably a macaw,” he said. He waited a beat. “Or it could be a jaguar.”

  The women gasped in unison.

  “Just kidding,” Nate laughed. “It’s a bird—probably a scarlet macaw. After a few nights you won’t even hear him.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Betsy said wryly, as the bird’s ear-piercing screech filled the night again.

  Fifteen minutes later the path widened, and the mud puddles became fewer and farther between. Now, on either side of the trail, Natalie could make out the skeletal forms of huts raised on stilts.

  They came to a large open-air pavilion covered with a thatched roof. Nate held the lantern high. “This is the village commons,” he told them. “This is where your mother held Bible classes for the children, Nattie—after our hut got too small to hold all the kids. The village meetings are held here, and the féstas. Parties. Festivals,” he explained.

  “Like fiesta,” Natalie said, proud of herself for making the connection.

  “Right,” he confirmed.

  She had studied Spanish for three years in high school, along with the advanced class at the junior college. Dad had told her that a few Timoné words were similar to the Spanish. She’d picked up quite a few Timoné words from listening to the tapes her father had made when he’d first come to Colombia. She was hopeful that the language barrier wouldn’t be too difficult a hurdle.

  “We’re almost there,” Dad said now, slowing his pace a bit. “Watch it here, you have to jump the stream. Our little footbridge washed out during the last rainy season, and we haven’t had time to rebuild it yet.”

  The water glistened under the light from the lantern, and though the stream appeared to be only about four feet wide where it flowed across the path, judging by the rushing sound of the water, the current was quite swift.

  Dad held the lantern until she and Betsy had safely hurdled the gully, then he turned and continued down the lane. He pointed to a larger hut that sat on a clearing to the south of two smaller ones. “Over there is the chapel. It was where Daria and I lived when we first came here. We enlarged it and held church there for a while, but happily we’ve outgrown it again. Now we have services in the commons down in the village and use the chapel for Bible classes and prayer meetings.”

  Through the dense thicket of trees Natalie saw a flicker of light in one of the smaller huts.

  Her father apparently saw it too. “Oh, good. It looks like David is still in the office.” He shouted into the darkness “Hollio? Hey, Dave!”

  As he led the two women up the sturdy steps to the covered stoop, the door flew open and a grizzly bear of a man appeared, smiling. Natalie recognized him from Dad’s pictures.

  “Hey! You made it!” The man and Nathan Camfield shook hands and clapped each other on the back before ushering Natalie and Betsy into the hut.

  The space inside was surprisingly large and quite bright with the light that Nate’s lantern added to the one already burning, suspended from a hook in the middle of the ceiling.

  David Chambers towered a good two inches over Dad’s six-foot-three height, and behind his well-groomed beard he had an expression of amusement on his face and a twinkle in his eyes. “David, I’d like you to meet my sister, Betsy, and my dau—” Nate turned proudly toward them, then stopped midsentence and burst out laughing.

  Now the restrained amusement on Chambers’s face blossomed into a full-blown guffaw, and the two men laughed until they were red-faced and nearly breathless.

  Natalie stared at them in wide-eyed astonishment, then turned to Betsy to see if she got the joke. Betsy turned to her at the same time, and when their eyes met, they both gasped.

  Betsy was plastered with mud from her knees down, and her hair and face were speckled with the stuff, now dried and cracking. Only the circles around her eyes were free of mud giving her the appearance of a raccoon in reverse. Natalie put a hand to her own face and knew immediately that she must look at least as bad.

  “You two look like you just lost a mud-wrestling contest,” her father said when he finally caught his breath.

  Natalie lifted her feet and inspected the bottom of her boots. Her shoes and the hem of her khakis were caked. “I thought my feet felt awfully heavy,” she said sheepishly.

  David Chambers was still looking at the two of them with amusement. Natalie felt suddenly self-conscious—this was certainly not the first impression she’d hoped to make on her father’s colleague.

  “Be grateful for the mud,” Nate told them, “It’s probably the only thing that kept the mosquitoes from eating you alive.”

  Betsy scratched at an arm through her mud-splattered blouse. “I think the mosquitoes must have gotten to me before the mud did,” she groaned.

  “Well, in that case, there’s no better poultice than rich Colombian mud,” Nate countered.

  Betsy grinned at her brother. “You make it sound like coffee.”

  “Oh, wait till you taste his coffee.” David winked. “You’ll see just how apt the comparison is.”

  Nate laughed good-naturedly, then put a hand on his sister’s arm. “Don’t worry, Bets. The swelling won’t last for long.”

  “Gee, thanks, Dr. Camfield. Must you always be so positive?” she teased. “Can’t I just wallow in my misery for a while?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather wallow in a warm bath?”

  “Oh, is there such a thing here?” Natalie piped up eagerly.

  “Well, probably not in the sense you’re thinking of,” her dad said. “But we’ll do the best we can. David, can you help me get some water on to heat?”

  An hour later, Natalie and Betsy were mud-free and dry, and stretched out on soft grass mats on the floor of the mission office. David had offered the bed in his hut next door to the office, but they’d declined politely.

  Betsy’s calm, even breathing soon filled the room. Natalie had expected that she, also, would fall asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, but here she was, wide awake, her thoughts careening like a hard-hit pinball.

  She looked over at Betsy’s still form under the mosquito nets they’d brought with them and whispered a prayer of thanks that her aunt was here to share the experience with her.

  Natalie rolled over onto her back and reached into the darkness to make sure the netting over her own mat was in place. Outside, the sounds of the jungle roared. Yet none of it seemed real. Her dream of coming to Timoné, of living and working among the people with whom her birth father and mother had lived and worked—the very place where she had been conceived—was being fulfilled.

  So why, now that she was finally here, was her brain swarming with thoughts of Mom and Daddy and her sisters back home? Of Sara? And most of all, of Evan Greenway?

  “Please, God,” she whispered into the cacophony of the Colombian night. “Don’t let this have been a mistake. Let me make a difference here. Let me find what I’m looking for.”

  Twenty–Eight

  Natalie woke with a start. The sun was laid in yellow patches across the floor of the hut. It filtered through the gauze of mosquito net that swayed above her with every movement. The light had an ethereal quality that made it seem even more unbelievable than it had last night that she was actually here in the village she’d daydreamed about for so l
ong. She stretched and sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  Beside her, Betsy stirred, then resumed her slow, even breathing.

  Natalie lifted the netting and looked around the room, taking in the details that had been hidden in the shadows last night. There were two wooden desks arranged in an L-shape in one corner of the room. One desk was scattered with open Bibles and concordances, stacks of papers, and a collection of stained coffee mugs. A long shelf for books hung over the window, but it appeared that most of the books intended for it had migrated to the desktop. Neat rows of science texts and classic novels were lined up along the back of the other desk, but—except for an open Bible concordance—the rest of the surface was clear. By the titles of the books, Natalie guessed that the tidier desk belonged to her father.

  Along the wall opposite the desks, there was a primitive bench made of hollow cane poles lashed together with a thin, jutelike rope, and on the north wall was a small table that held the two-way radio flanked by two straight-backed chairs. A large bulletin board cluttered with maps and photographs and a calendar hung on the wall above the desks, but other than that the room was devoid of decoration.

  Natalie rolled over onto her stomach, rested her chin on her hands, and listened to the sounds outside the window. The birds still sang in a discordant chorus, but the sound had a different quality than it had last night. Pushing aside the mosquito net she got to her feet, stepped over Betsy’s prone form, and went to the window that overlooked the front stoop. She bent to peer through the taut mesh screen. The hut apparently faced east, for the arc of the sun was an orange sliver just climbing over the farthest emerald swell of trees.

  This hut, which served as the mission office, sat in a clearing at the top of a rise. From her vantage point, Natalie could peer down into the village, which still seemed to sleep in darkness under the canopy of foliage. The peaked, thatched rooftops of dozens of stilted huts jutted through the greenery, and here and there thin curls of smoke rose from outdoor stone grills like the one just outside the window. Natalie’s stomach growled as she caught a savory whiff of something cooking. The Middletons had sent food with them for the boat trip from Conzalez, and Dad had even cut down bananas for them to eat along the trail last night, but suddenly she was ravenous.