by Lisa Samson
At least some people, anyway.
“You still want to go on this trip, May-May?”
“Hmm.”
“You have to think about it?”
“Oh, I want to go. I’m just trying to think how to explain why.”
“Just make a list if you want. No need for prose.”
She laughed.
He loved the way she laughed all the time. And sometimes, when she was slicing tomatoes, she smiled even though she didn’t realize anybody was watching. Even his mother didn’t smile like that. He hoped her parents delighted in her. She deserved that.
She turned the Fudgsicle sideways and sucked that last, stick-clinging bite into her mouth, then set the stick on the walkway.
“Hmm. Okay, so here’s one reason. I’ve never done a big trip like this. I mean, I’ve seen Europe and stuff, but that was just vacation.
I’ve lived a pretty sheltered existence, if you want to know the truth. And my dad is a sociologist, so it’s not like there’s never any discussion around our house about the human condition. But I’ve never really put myself out there.”
“I know what you mean.” Yes, he did. Of course, he had different reasons.
“And so, like, before I really go out and get a job and all that, I figure I should see what life can really be like for some people.”
“You are going to be a journalist, aren’t you?”
She rolled her eyes. “I wanted to work at a fashion magazine.”
“You do have a way with your clothes.”
Even when doing farmwork, he noticed, she was always, at the very least, color coordinated.
“I love fashion. And it doesn’t mean I can’t write for a magazine and still do good things on a volunteer basis.”
“That’s true.”
“But it’s always good to have a more well-rounded perspective no matter what you do, right?”
“Uh-huh. So it’s a self-improvement program of sorts?”
“In a way. But I’d like to think of it as a self-expansion program. I hope there’s a part of me that wants to do it for the best of reasons. In any case, I don’t have any better place to go.”
“So, start where you are.”
She leaned down and scratched Girlfriend behind her ears. “Isn’t that all any of us can do?”
“I like your honesty. That’s a fine start.”
“And yet, at the same time, do you remember St. John the Baptist saying about Jesus, ‘He must increase, I must decrease’?”
“I sure do.” He didn’t realize she was religious.
“So, in my expansion, I have to implode too.”
He pulled his bottom lip together. “You’re going to do just fine, May-May.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You understand the importance of a good paradox. I see that all the time here on the farm, death bringing forth life time and time again. A seed is lost in the earth and is found again by the sun and the rain. Maybe you’re going to find lost people.”
“Maybe I’m going to be found. Maybe the people of the village have more to give to me than I will ever give to them.”
He laughed. “You really don’t want to be a missionary, do you?”
She leaned forward in her rocking chair, put her arms around him and squeezed. “I’m so glad I met you.”
“Me, too, honey. I’m sure going to miss you when you leave.”
He washed his face and hands later that night in preparation for bed. While he was throwing his clothes in the hamper, he heard her footfalls through the ceiling, the overhead lamp clink-clinking.
• 4 •
When he dropped her off at the Bluegrass Regional Airport, he figured he knew a little bit about what fathers feel. A heavy heart joined him as he accompanied her to the gate. First she was flying to Charlotte, then to Atlanta, and then to Rwanda. Almost an entire day of travel!
“You’ll be exhausted when you get there.”
“I know. Father Isaac said he’ll pick me up and take me back to the mission where I can sleep as long as I need to.”
May was Catholic. “But not a very good one,” she’d told him. “I just don’t pretend that I am. I’ve been to church about five times since I graduated from high school.”
Claudius didn’t know much about the Catholics. Other than they ate vegetables like the rest of Beattyville and they had a nice little church right by the river. His parents would sometimes buy dinner boxes when they sold fish suppers during Lent. Usually whiting, deep-fried to a perfect crisp, homemade coleslaw, and baked beans. And they called that a fast? He had to admit that sounded pretty good to him!
“Good, then. You’ll be able to write, I hope. And I’ll write you back.”
“Okay. Let’s write.” She laughed and kissed him on the cheek. Her flight was called, and with one of her carefree waves from the middle of the ramp, she was gone.
Scout and Girlfriend waited in the car in the dimness of the airport garage, windows down for air. Claudius pulled out into the sunlight, onto Man O’War Blvd. and finally I-64. Back to Beattyville.
August had just begun.
There were books to read, several titles May had purchased for him at the secondhand store on her afternoon walks into Beattyville, and chickens to feed. A natural bridge made of sandstone from which to view the world he knew so well. He’d thought that world was so small once. But that was a while ago.
Claudius grabbed a quick shower after bush-hogging the front two acres and headed over to Cousin Sassy’s church in town, his heart heavy. Weddings should be joyful occasions. But this, well now, this didn’t seem to be anything but the prophecy of heartbreak and disaster.
Eli, clad in his dress uniform, hurried in through the back door of the church as Claudius pulled his Galaxy into a parking space. The air-conditioning had gone out long ago, and he felt sweaty and large inside his suit.
After taking his seat on the groom’s side, after the seating of the mothers, Claudius heard his cousin Sassy in her peach mother-of-the-groom dress bawling her eyes out. Claudius couldn’t blame her. Eli was marrying the mayor’s no-good daughter. And try as they might to disguise her state of motherhood, even the dim lighting of a candlelit wedding couldn’t hide the bulge of the bride’s belly or take the edge off the stress on her parents’ faces.
It had all just happened so fast.
Claudius thought of May-May over there in Africa, and the three letters she’d already sent. She could write just fine, he realized, reading her vivid tales of the children who followed her around. She always spoke so highly of Father Isaac, how the priest encouraged a sort of awakening of her spirit, and she had been thinking about God for, really, the first time in a lot of years.
Attributing that to Father Isaac, she’d written: It’s powerful when someone’s belief reaches all the way to their actions and you’re in a state to recognize it. I’m thinking that maybe Jesus was a lot like Father Isaac, only not black, and, according to some of the stories I’ve been reading in the Gospels, a little more cranky. Or maybe more direct would be a better way to say it. Father Isaac is even nice to the bugs. You might not know about Saint Francis, but Father Isaac is a dead ringer for the man, from what I’ve been reading. Only Father Isaac is Swazi, not Italian. We even put on plays here with the kids. They love it and so do I.
She said her parents were still traveling and had even visited her in the village once. Mom wasn’t feeling well. I think the trip’s getting to her, but Dad assured me she was going to get a full physical once they return to the States. She hates going to the doctor’s. She always has. I’m kind of like that too.
Claudius could relate.
He asked Sister Ruth about Saint Francis, and she gave him the rundown. “Even a lot of Protestants like that man, Claudius. Sounds like a fellow who’d be hard to hate. You’ve seen him all the time. On bird baths.”
“Oh, the monk with the animals?”
“That’s him!”
Now, sitting in t
he pew at Beattyville Christian Church, Claudius realized he’d raised a ghost of a hope that maybe May and Eli would get together. But then Eli’d gone and gotten Janey pregnant, apparently before he’d reconnected with May. Or maybe he’d been two-timing it between May and Janey. Or maybe he just got drunk and did something stupid with more than stupid consequences. Although he wouldn’t put that description on the child itself. That poor thing. Not even born and already behind the eight ball, as the saying went.
He shook his head sadly as they said their vows, promises they had no intention of keeping, promises the mayor and his wife needed to hear because reelection was always just around the corner and even in a town as little as Beattyville, people liked to keep what they worked so hard to obtain. Even at the expense of the lives of their children. If the stories he’d heard were true, that Janey was known for more than just boy troubles. He sure hoped she would sober up now, for the sake of that little baby she was carrying if nothing else.
He saw that fact in the big cars and houses he drove by on his way to the farmers’ market in Lexington. He wanted to tell people as they walked by his stall with their kids, the tension twanging, “Your children don’t care about those nice clothes you give them. They want times sipping on a cold glass of iced tea or just sitting together in the living room, bored to tears and trying to decide whether or not to play Monopoly for the six thousandth time.”
Times came when he was glad not to have had children of his own, not with all the worry that accompanied their presence. He felt bad enough when one of the animals got sick and died. He was already dreading the passing of Scout and felt a little silly about that. That dog would probably outlive him.
No thanks on fatherhood. Definitely not anymore.
—And why are you protesting so much, Claudius?
He was glad May would be gone for a while. Maybe that would get him back on track. He was feeling a little too parental. He realized that one night when he ate a buttered biscuit and began to mist over. May had parents already.
Sister Ruth visited him that night after the small church hall reception of Ale-8 and lime sherbet punch, white cake with vibrant yellow roses, bridge mix, miniature meatballs, and pimento cheese sandwiches. They popped some popcorn and listened to the “Old-Time Radio Hour” that was always broadcast live from the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington. Claudius riffled through the seed catalog as Ruth hooked a small rug, resting over her legs, for the daughter of one of her teacher friends who was getting married.
“You ever regret not having children, Ruthie? Not remarrying?”
She drove the hook into the mesh. “Not really. Especially with all my students. I loved my husband, but I doubt I could have found someone else I loved enough to give up my independence.”
Claudius knew Sister Ruth took that verse in Ephesians about wives submitting to their husbands seriously. So, no husband, then. Sister Ruth wasn’t capable of living on two sides of one fence.
“Mama and Daddy found the balance, I guess. Nothing like that ever seemed to be an issue. He knew what was important to her, and she knew what was important to him.”
“Then they were lucky.”
“Or not so bullheaded like you are, Ruthie.”
She laughed, then reached for her teacup. “You’re right.” She sipped. “What about you? Miss having kids?”
“I didn’t used to, but then—” Should he admit it?
She threaded a snippet of moss green yarn onto the hook. “May came along, and now you’re feeling all fatherly.”
“Hmm.”
Dulcimer, banjo, bass, and guitar were jangling out a mountain tune from the cream-colored plastic radio. The golden hands on the clock part had stopped for good years before, and black dots threatened to overtake their surface. The Ready Brothers. He did like those fellas.
Sister Ruth laid a hand on his. “Then just enjoy it! She’s a special girl, and to tell you the truth, I don’t know why. There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly amazing about her.”
“But there could be!” he cried out, jumping a little in his seat at his own intensity.
“Yes. There could be. I agree. When does she get back?”
“She says she’s going to stay awhile now. No use hurrying back, since she hasn’t heard from that magazine.”
Claudius missed her more than he could say to Sister Ruth. He imagined this was just what fatherhood was like. Wishing they were with you, worrying terribly they wouldn’t return, or if they did, they’d be broken beyond anything you could heal or they’d have some no-good in tow who’d give them nothing but heartache, and you nothing but trouble, for years to come.
“You need to be extra attentive to your prayers for May,” Sister Ruth said as she sorted through her wool bag. “The unrest is increasing in Rwanda.”
Claudius felt the weave of his stomach tighten. “What’s going on?”
“Just the Hutu. Spreading more and more hate about the Tutsi. Convincing people they’re not even human and that stomping them out would be like stepping on a cockroach, nothing more. It’s complicated.”
Like women, Claudius thought.
“There’s years of ugliness going on there. The Tutsi, when they were in power years ago, weren’t so good to the Hutu either. And believe it or not, it was the Belgians who years ago decided who was Hutu and who was Tutsi. A false delineation that wasn’t there before. At least some people say that. It’s hard to know the truth from over here.”
Claudius felt as if he couldn’t hope to understand. He felt tribe-less himself, never part of one people or the other.
“Well, it’s late,” she said, laying down her hook. “I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow after church. We should go to Dooley’s afterward. In the meantime, you just be praying for that little girl, is all I’m saying.”
Claudius promised to step it up. Sometimes prayer was all a man could do.
After he’d washed up the teacups, he took the dogs up the hill and into the woods for a moonlit walk. It wasn’t like the climb up to Natural Bridge, but he’d drive over and do that by himself, in the morning, when the sun was rising and the world was just as quiet as it was right then. And it seemed that nothing had really changed after all.
May had mentioned nothing about the tension in Rwanda in her letters. Maybe the news world was just making a bigger deal about it to sell advertising. He’d been told they did things like that.
• 5 •
August 1993—July 1994
May’s first confession in years lasted four hours, due to the fact that she had a good memory—not always a good thing when you’re Catholic. But Father Isaac sat there patiently, down at the lake, in a little rowboat so they wouldn’t be disturbed. Women washed their clothes at the shoreline, their garments a splash of color against the lush trees behind them. She loved the lake, swimming in the cool waters even when she first arrived during the end of winter.
I feel alive for maybe the first time ever, she’d written to her mother and father.
And yet the tensions were mounting, each day the radio blurting out harsher and harsher invective against the Tutsi. Their village, mostly Tutsi, had already been experiencing hardship, everyone forced to show their cards and declare their race at the school they attended three miles away, being ignored by the Hutu schoolmasters or harshly reprimanded for the smallest infraction.
The two Hutu families in their village were horrified at what was happening, at the radio broadcasts, at the training of militia, boys with machetes and guns, preparing as well. For what? They all could only guess, and their guesses weren’t far off the mark.
“We’re lucky to be in this village,” Father Isaac would say as they huddled around the radio, listening to the mounting hatred. “Our friends would never feel that way about us.”
May and Father Isaac, and a dozen or so neighbors, sat in the mission kitchen at night and listened, hate boiling through the mesh grid covering the radio speaker.
“How can they say th
ese things?” she asked him later as they prepared the mission house for the night. She followed him into the kitchen.
He checked the stove, unplugged any appliance. They couldn’t afford a fire.
“I do not know. We have no such divisions in Swaziland. You’ve probably heard talk more like this in your own country.”
She clicked off the light and followed him into the gathering hall, where he turned off more lights. “But you grew up near South Africa, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “Well spoken. You are right.”
They stood in darkness.
“I mean, don’t you feel horrible that these are Africans saying it about Africans?”
“Yes.”
If she thought racial issues were complicated in the United States, well, they were complicated everywhere.
Maybe she wasn’t so surprised at the hate of the Hutu after all.
“You should leave soon,” Father Isaac said almost every day, and every day May refused. What did she really have to go home to? She’d been rejected for the internship. Perhaps she’d get a job at the Lexington Herald-Leader. Anything seemed better than that.
Then suddenly, the president of Rwanda, a Hutu, was killed. It was all the excuse needed for blood to flow.
The Interahamwe, those calling for the decimation of the Tutsi, began to swarm through the land, locusts eating all in their paths, crunching bones, devouring flesh.
Oh, the prayers she heard that day word got to their village that the Hutu were on the rampage. After months of indoctrination, neighbor was killing neighbor in other towns and villages, the cities too. She prayed prayers of thankfulness they were so remote. Perhaps they’d escape this.
The next day, almost eight months after she’d arrived, blue-helmeted UN soldiers arrived in a dusty Jeep and found her. She wasn’t Rwandan, she was a relief worker; they could get her out. But it was now or never.
So far the violence had yet to reach them, but it was coming, they were assured. “Don’t think any will escape,” the voice on the radio said.
“Believe that,” a soldier confirmed.
They could see smoke from the fires in the distance, and relatives from other towns and cities were pouring in for refuge with tales of horror: the dead filling the streets, rape, torture, houses burning. The roads were impassable, Interahamwe patrolling them, out for blood. And now that the fear and bloodlust had spread, neighbor was killing neighbor. “Kill them all, because if you don’t they’ll turn around and kill you.” No Tutsi was safe.