“No one will steal it. This isn’t the big city. Why, nervous about it?” said Kevin.
“I do want to get back home, eventually, and we’re a long way from anywhere if this car isn’t here in a week.”
“It’ll be here.”
Liz looked at Beth. “It better be,” she sighed, “or I’ll kill him.”
“Why wait? Do it now and we can both go home,” said Beth, walking down to the water.
That’s just great, thought Liz, watching her skulk away and considering for the briefest moment faking a heart attack.
Instead, she trudged to the boat. Despite her mood, emerging from under the shadows of the trees into bright sunlight felt good.
Kevin directed her into the canoe and she climbed awkwardly over their gear into the front. The boat rocked with each step and she was sure she’d tumble into the lake, but Kevin held it firmly until she got herself seated. Beth and Hampton followed, taking their places in the middle.
Kevin gently slid them away from the shore and hopped into the back. Liz held tightly to both sides as the boat shifted unsteadily before settling into the water. She quickly found that any movement caused them to tip, as though they were balanced on a tightrope and the slightest shift might capsize them. She heard Kevin and Beth pick up their paddles and then they were gliding silently away, the bow of the canoe casting a ripple across the otherwise glassy smooth water.
Liz tried leaning slightly to the left and right until she persuaded herself that they were not as precariously balanced as she felt, and then picked up her own paddle and rigidly struck at the water with it.
It was late afternoon and she had to admit the view was spectacular. In every direction tall pines carpeted the rolling hills down to the edge of the lake, except off to her right where a sheer cliff loomed over the water. A few stunted trees clung to the cliff face, their roots snaking across bare stone into crevices to secure an anchor. Occasional granite boulders thrust up from the forest cover like the exposed bones of the earth itself. The sun formed a long blinding pillar of yellow light across the water.
What was most odd, Liz realized, was the quiet. No radios, no cars and no machines of any kind to unleash the constant sea of vibration that bombarded her every day of her life in San Francisco. All she heard was the splash of their paddles stirring the water.
Twenty feet away a bird surprised her by mysteriously popping up from the lake. It shook its dark black head, and then its black-and-white striped back, tossing off drops of water. Its most striking feature, however, was its red eyes. Liz could not remember ever seeing a red-eyed animal before, and it was both attractive and eerie. It stared at them a moment, then lifted its head and shrieked, a high-pitched voice as hollow and plaintive as the wail of a dispossessed ghost. It was the last sound Liz expected this duck-like creature to make, and yet also exactly the call she might have expected from a bird with blood-red eyes. Then it dove forward, vanishing into a swirl of dark water.
The canoe pitched violently to the left and Liz just barely kept from tumbling headlong over the side, dropping her paddle as she grabbed the boat to steady herself. A crashing splash behind her rained down cold water across her neck and back.
She swung around to see Hampton swimming to where the bird had disappeared.
“Damn it, Hampton,” shouted Kevin, “get back here!”
Water dripped from Beth’s hair as she also called after the dog.
Hampton circled where the bird had been, barking softly.
“That was a loon,” said Kevin.
“It looked like a duck and sounded like a banshee,” said Liz, carefully retrieving her paddle.
Kevin steered them to the dog. When he was beside Beth, she grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back into the canoe. Buckets of water poured off of his sopping wet coat, and the dog stood and shook, spraying water across everyone.
“I’m all wet,” complained Beth, shielding her face.
“Keep an eye on him next time,” said Kevin. “He’s your dog.”
“Neither of us would be a problem for you if you’d just left us home,” Beth retorted.
Hampton barked, his pink tongue hanging over his black gums.
“Are we having fun yet?” said Beth.
“Hampton is,” said Liz.
Chapter 7
Africa
Kevin got his first look at Bill’s camp. Next to a large lake, he thought the view would have been spectacularly beautiful except for the more than fifty thousand displaced people huddled there. The scarred, barren land was stripped of all brush and trees for miles around, cleared for firewood, Bill told him. The red clay earth had hardly a blade of grass on it. The green and forested hills in the distance stood in sharp contrast, too far from the camp to be reached by scavengers.
Kevin passed row after row of tents, the air rank with the smell of raw sewage. The people grouped around them looked listless and broken.
“Welcome home,” said Bill as they pulled up to one of the few actual houses in view of the camp. It was large, and Bill explained it had been a lakeside resort in another time. He operated his clinic there and he was the only doctor.
It was nearly evening and Kevin was exhausted. Bill showed him to his room, explained that there was no electricity, and pointed to where to he could find candles and matches if he needed them. Kevin fell into bed encircled by a gauzy white mosquito net and quickly fell asleep.
He awoke with a start late the next morning. His internal clock said it was four in the morning back home, but his watch said it was 10:00 am here. In a few minutes he was dressed and downstairs. In the stark morning light the camp looked even more depressing than the night before and the air was thick with the acrid smell of wood-burning cook fires.
A long line of raggedly dressed people led into the house. Kevin followed it and found, as he expected, that it ended at Bill’s examining room.
Bill waved him in and introduced his staff. Most were also refugees with some limited medical experience that included everything from having worked as a nurse to having been a hospital janitor. They all smiled and shook Kevin’s hand, remarking on how much Mr. Bill had been looking forward to his arrival and how glad they were to meet his good friend from America.
Peter was there, and besides being a chauffeur he appeared to be Bill’s head nurse. He was taller than Kevin had realized sitting in the car, and he looked strong. There was also a young boy sitting in a corner who Kevin noticed had some of the same scarring as Peter. He was holding a speckled pigeon in his lap and did not speak.
The sparsely furnished room included an examining table, four cabinets with medical supplies, seven chairs and some simple medical equipment. “It isn’t much,” Bill said, “but it’s more than most of these people have ever seen. Hell, most of them have never even met a doctor before, let alone been inside a clinic.”
A pathetically skinny and mournful-looking woman sat on the examining table holding a shriveled infant. It stared at Kevin listlessly and silent. “He’s suffering from malnutrition and dysentery. The effects are devastating on children of this age. They often die of dehydration in just a matter of hours. Believe it or not, that is the number one killer in this camp. For a time, when I first arrived, it was cholera. It spread like a wildfire through these starving people, passed on by contaminated drinking water. I was losing about a thousand people a day. So many, in fact, that we couldn’t bury them fast enough and the bodies were stacked like cordwood until a tractor arrived to dig a mass grave.
“I was finally able to get a water purification system, and with clean water to drink the epidemic lost momentum.”
As Kevin watched, Bill examined the child and put him on an IV to re-hydrate. He had a nurse explain to the mother how to use the re-hydration salts he would also give her. When he stuck the needle in the infant’s arm, the exhausted child didn’t seem to notice.
Then it was on to the next patient, an old man with cataracts. He was also missing one hand. Kevi
n had seen several limbless people on the way into the office, including a girl who couldn’t have been more than seven years old. There was nothing Bill could do for the man’s eyes and it was on to the next patient, and then the next, and the next until they passed by in a blur, one case of human suffering followed quickly by another.
Bill put Kevin to work as a nurse and supply room manager. They took a short break for lunch and then they were back at it until dark. At the end of the day there was still a line, but after checking to see that there were no critical cases, those left standing were told to return in the morning. They silently drifted away without protest.
After dinner they sat on the front porch overlooking the lake. Stars emerged above in the clear night, and all around the flicker of cook fires on the dark earth seemed to mirror the sky. They sat on a bench swing and Kevin found he could hardly move, he was so tired, but Bill appeared unaffected by the long day.
“I’m glad you came,” said Bill, absently patting him on the shoulder. “How you holding up?”
“I’m worn out,” Kevin said, “and I don’t see how you have any energy left after so many months of working here.”
Bill chuckled. “It was a relatively slow day. Not too many critical cases.”
Kevin nodded and was silent, thinking back to their days in high school. When he was with Bill he often thought back to when they were kids. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but that’s what made them so memorable. Those were the glory days, just like in the Bruce Springsteen song.
“You still listen to the Beatles?” Kevin finally said. “Even more than girls, they were your passion in high school.”
Bill smiled. “When I can get batteries I listen to Beatles music on a headset.”
“I’ll never forget the time I walked to your parent’s house and began to hear music playing two blocks away. The closer I got the louder the music grew until I realized it was coming from your home. You couldn’t hear me knocking so I let myself in to find you lying on the living room floor with stereo speakers on either side of your head blasting out Let it Be. It’s a miracle you aren’t deaf.”
Bill laughed and said, “I remember. I wanted to hear every single note of Let it Be, every chord and every word, grunt and murmur. Hell, if Paul McCartney farted I wanted to hear it and discover the deeper meaning. Of course, only later did I realize it was John Lennon’s farts that conveyed deeper meanings.”
“Well, you never do anything by halves, and I’m not surprised to find you in a place like this. I know you quit your job at the veterans’ hospital in Minneapolis, but you’ve never told me exactly how it happened.”
“Nothing complicated. I just got tired of handing out Viagra to old men whose wives were probably happier without them having it. I wanted to do something to change lives and make a difference. So I joined Doctors Without Borders and eventually wound up here. It’s as simple as that.”
Kevin reflected that Bill’s life constantly felt like an indictment of how he lived his. “So I suppose,” he said, “that I should give up my job and come out here to teach school.”
“You could do worse,” Bill said. “It’s not like those white middle-class kids you baby-sit every day would even notice you were gone, would they? If you taught here and left, the kids would weep. Pretend you’re Jimmy Stewart in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, and ask yourself if the world would be any different if you’d never been born given what you’ve accomplished so far.”
“Not everybody can be the second coming of Jesus Christ,” said Kevin, feeling defensive and annoyed. “I didn’t come all this way to have you tell me, once again, how I’m not living up to your standards.”
Bill shook his head. “It’s not a question of my standards, pal, but your own. Are you living up to what you expect of yourself?”
“There are worse things than being a high school teacher.”
Bill shrugged and said, “That’s fine if you’re willing to settle for not doing the worst thing.”
“That really pisses me off and you can go to hell. I have a family, I serve my community, I’m a part of something and I don’t run off at every whim to join the latest flavor of the month social cause. What have you ever stuck to? Those people we saw back in the city photographing severed arms might be disaster tourists, but you’re a spiritual tourist and you always have been.”
Bill remained silent a moment, staring into the darkness, listening to the sounds of the camp settling in for the night. “Do you ever get tired?” he finally said.
Kevin almost laughed despite his irritation. “I’m plenty damn exhausted right now.”
“No, I mean tired in your soul. Isn’t it hard to keep going sometimes? I mean, hard to resist the urge to sleep and not struggle over the cruelty and stupidity of our sorry collective existence. I’ve come to think that life is built on cruelty, or if not that then at least on cold indifference.
“We consume,” he continued, “in every sense of the word. We consume other creatures. We consume the earth, the air, energy and water. America is the land of ‘I want mine and as much of it as I please,’ even if it comes at the expense of everyone else, including the future of our own children. But it’s by no means just Americans. If a human being is born with wealth or can grab it, he considers it his by right and he’ll by God kill anyone who tries to take any of it, no matter how desperate they might be or how much more he has than he actually needs.
“And in this mindless consuming sometimes we’re happy and sometimes not, but as for me, I’ve never been content. You’re right, I do wander from thing to thing. It isn’t even that I’m looking for fulfillment. What I really want is to touch the face of God, and in doing that know that God, and a reason for living, exists beyond just taking up space and resources on this sorry planet.”
Kevin couldn’t see Bill’s expression in the dark, but his voice sounded tired and distant.
“You’re the last person I ever expected to turn into a Jesus freak.”
Bill chuckled. “And I never will. Organized religion is a social club for the lazy and stupid. People of that sort don’t search for an understanding of God, they want religion handed to them in a neat package for the easy comfort of blindly believing what they’re instructed to by men only too happy to control them for their own purposes. It’s so much easier than going on the long hard journey of soul searching and doubt that’s required to really find God; and the primary sins of humanity, in my experience, are gluttony and sloth. If it can be provided, no effort required, we’ll take it. But don’t ask us to use our God-given brains to think about our convictions or challenge them. Your average Joe Six-pack would far rather shoot you than let you make him think about the crazy nonsense he so often accepts on faith about his God. Faith is blindness, an instrument of the demon and one of the greatest evils of our race. It is what passes for religion in most of the world, but it is as opposite to true religious experience as death is to life.
“But I do get tired, Kevin. I stopped looking for God in all the usual places and came here. Here, where the worst is happening and where evil is palpable, I thought I might touch the face of God if God exists. I thought I might see Him in a pillar of fire, and this is as great a pillar of fire as you will ever find, my friend.
“But I haven’t found God and I am bone tired. Every day I see one suffering victim after another in an endless parade of misery, and each one looking for something I can’t give. They want a miracle, and all I can do is bind their wounds and sometimes heal their afflictions, but I cannot make the suffering stop.
“I don’t find God in it at all, just more demands, each one more impossible than the next until I begin to hate them. I want to shake every last one and say, if this is all you can be then die! Or make a stand, for God’s sake. What is it just to live when all you can do is barely survive from one miserable hour to the next? Why don’t you resist? Get mad! Curse God or the devil or life itself!
“And I really hate them and f
eel disgusted by their victimization and their blind drive to endure at any cost. That scares the hell out of me because I begin to see the crazy twisted logic behind brutalizing them. They were made for it. What difference does it make?”
Kevin shook his head in the dark, thinking that this was the one thing he could count on with Bill. As hard as he was on everyone else, he was harder on himself.
“You make a difference,” said Kevin. “You save lives. In just one day I’ve seen at least a hundred you helped.”
“People live and people die,” Bill answered flatly. “All of us, and there is nothing extraordinary about it. What makes a difference is how we live and how we die. I don’t know if I’m really accomplishing much. Ironically, what you do by educating people probably has more impact. I keep their bodies together, but knowledge could set them free.”
Kevin shook his head. “I can’t stay, Bill. I’m not like you. I don’t belong here, I’m just passing through.”
“Well, you have your daughter, Beth. She’s a good kid, and she needs her dad. But when she’s old enough to go out on her own you ought to leave your wife. That you don’t belong here is maybe true, but that you don’t belong with Morgan is certainly true.”
“I don’t know why everyone is so hard on her,” Kevin said.
“Because she’s mean, fractious and unhappy.”
“You don’t know her,” Kevin retorted.
“In that I am blessed. Come on, Kevin, who among your old friends gets along with her? More importantly, who does she get along with? She drives everyone off. She’s jealous of anyone who gets close to you and is suspicious of anyone who’s nice to her. How you got saddled with her is to me one of the great mysteries of your life, when you could have had Liz.”
This was an old argument for Kevin, and he dearly wished it was one Bill would drop. Kevin had seldom been comfortable around women, with a few exceptions. In college there had been Liz, whom everyone, including Bill, had expected him to marry. Maybe it was that expectation that had perversely driven him off. Or maybe it was that Liz was strong and hadn’t needed him, and not needing him, he didn’t know why she wanted to be with him or trust that she would stay. Morgan was aloof, intelligent and, while not classically attractive, she made up for it with a passion that Kevin had never known before. She suffered from intense insecurity, but after an initial period of keeping him at arm’s length she had suddenly devoted herself to him heart and soul with a hunger that responded to Kevin’s need to be needed.
The Demon Stone Page 3