But now Jean-Paul was there and he said, ‘Peter! Please join us.’
I grabbed the shovel and went back into the hole, feeling emboldened now. I didn’t know who I was going to uncover, what I would find or how I would react, but Miriam was there, Miriam had prepped me. It would be all right. I carried on digging, the stench now trying to overpower the peppermint still wafting through my nostrils, and then I winced and my stomach heaved as the shovel struck something soft and yielding.
Now Peter was there, saying, ‘Hold on, try this,’ as he passed down a long-handled spade. Everyone was clustered around the hole, blocking most of the light, but I didn’t care. I was the center of attention, I was doing something real, doing more than just record words or images, and I kept those thoughts in the forefront of my mind as I moved the spade around carefully, scraping away more of the dirt. I silently said a prayer for whoever I was uncovering, and I pledged the pledge of the young and innocent, that I would help make the guilty pay for what they had done to the people in this little farmhouse.
‘I’ve got a head here,’ I said. ‘Give me some more light, please.’
The crew backed away and I felt an irrational sense of accomplishment, because they were doing as I requested. I worked on as painstakingly as I could, uncovering the eyes, the long heavy nose, the rest of the short-bearded face, and—
I said something loud, dropped the spade and recoiled, trying to get out of the hole. I fell back into the mud. The crew clustered around, looking at what I had uncovered as Peter grinned down at me.
‘Congrats, Sammy,’ he said in a sarcastic tone that I didn’t like. ‘You’ve dug up a bloody cow.’
~ * ~
CHAPTER FIVE
We made our camp that night in the dirt turnaround in front of the burned-out farmhouse. By the time we had gotten out of that muddy field and had cleaned up and established what was really there—two dead cows and a calf—dusk had come, chilling the air. Charlie told us it was too dangerous to ride back to the motel and we were too tired to complain that much. Sanjay said, ‘I thought this area had been pacified,’ but Charlie, who was cleaning his weapon on the hood of one of the Land Cruisers, replied, ‘Daylight you can pretend all you want about how safe things are out here, but I don’t like the dark. We start out now, we’ll be in darkness in less than five minutes, going back with headlights and tail lights bright and shiny, telling the world our business. Sorry, Sanjay, that ain’t gonna happen.’
So we moved the vehicles around so that they were in a triangular formation, to provide some semblance of protection, and the tents and mattresses and sleeping bags were brought out. Nobody suggested spending the night inside the farmhouse or the bam, and I didn’t find that surprising. While we were unpacking one of the Land Cruisers, Peter leaned in and said, ‘We could have had proper beds and hot water tonight if it hadn’t been for you and your bloody dead cows.’ I pretended not to hear him and took out a bundle of aluminum tent poles.
The tents were set up near the Land Cruisers and dinner was a quiet affair, with Peter muttering about how bloody unfair it was to have to cook supper when he had been digging out three stinking cows just a few hours earlier. His attitude was reflected in the food: sticky pasta and lukewarm tomato sauce, eaten off metal plates. I sat by myself, leaning up against one of the Land Cruiser’s tires, exhausted. My back ached, my wrists throbbed and it hurt even to move my fingers. A small fire was set up in the middle of our little camp, and Charlie was in charge of it tonight, making sure it didn’t get too large, too bright. It was nothing like the cheerful blaze we’d had the night before in the motel parking lot. It was a tentative, frightened fire that didn’t do much except light up the immediate surroundings.
Jean-Paul broke away from the group, came over to me and sat down. He passed me a small metal cup and I sipped it, and started coughing. ‘What the—’
‘Some cognac, that is all,’ he said. His voice had a touch of humor in it. ‘Everyone gets some cognac tonight, no matter what the High Commissioner thinks about consuming alcohol while we are working. We worked pretty hard today, especially you.’
‘Thanks—I think.’
‘What do you mean, “think”?’
‘I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic, that’s all,’ I said. ‘Peter and the rest of the team look like they’d get me on the next airplane to Toronto if they had their choice. All that work this afternoon, over three dead cows. And to top it off we get to spend the night here, instead of at the motel.’
Jean-Paul said, ‘We had no way of knowing what was in that gravesite. We would have been remiss to drive away and leave it. And don’t be so sure that we would have gone back to the motel. Charlie might not have allowed it. So we were doing our job here today, and doing it well. You have no reason to feel bad. Tomorrow we will keep on working.’
‘Site A, am I right?’
I could sense his shoulders shrug. ‘Among other things. We will look for Site A, sure, but we will do other work as well. We should not flit from village to village, town to town, without having better information. And the information we have about Site A is nearly nil. But unfortunately there is plenty of work to be done up here. Just be grateful we are not down south in Manhattan, eh?’
I shivered, thinking of what had happened there. ‘You’re right. I’m glad I’m not in Manhattan.’
‘So true,’ Jean-Paul said. ‘It is so bad down south that it is said you can smell the bodies from many kilometers away, even before you get to the new Ground Zero. Be thankful you are here. At least the air is clean, for the most part.’
I finished off the cup of cognac and passed it back to Jean-Paul. ‘Thanks.’
‘You are so very welcome.’
~ * ~
Sleeping arrangements that night were standard, as when we’d camped out before. Miriam and Karen shared a tent, while Sanjay and I shared another one. Peter and Jean-Paul shared the third one, while Charlie made do on his own, like he always did. As far as tent-mates went, Sanjay was all right. He didn’t snore, though sometimes his legs did kick around a bit as if he was restless at night—dreaming, I guess, about far-off India or nearby Karen. He had an irritating habit of getting up early, murmuring to himself and then getting dressed in his sleeping bag before barreling out of the tent as though he was late for a train. But tonight we both crawled into our sleeping bags and murmured a ‘good night’ to each other without saying much else. I curled up on my side on the thin mattress pad and tried to sleep, still wearing my pants and shirt and socks. The sleeping bag was clammy and cold, and I curled up, trying to warm myself, knowing that the darkness was out there, like it always was.
But I was too tired to sleep. My body ached and my back and my hands and my neck were stiff. All I could see in my mind was the face of that poor dumb cow, slaughtered for who knew what reason, and then probably buried by some kind neighbors who were tired of seeing the bloated bodies slowly decompose in the field. As for the people who lived here, who knew? Perhaps the documentation work that I had done today would end up helping some family in some other country, looking through the pictures of the house and the clothing, to determine what had happened to their loved ones.
I turned over in my bag, stared at the blank tent wall. I blinked my eyes and tried to think of back home, safe and cool Toronto, tried to think of something that would soothe my mind and ease me into sleep, but that didn’t work either. I wanted to think about the Star and my buds there and the night life on the weekends and clubbing in the John Richmond district. But instead Father barreled into my thoughts, and in my mind’s eye I saw the red face, the white handlebar mustache and gray-stubbled head, and heard the comment, always the same comment: ‘Screwed up again, eh, boy? Not going far in this world if you keep screwin’ up like that.’ Good old Father, who had wanted his son to join the family business—the Canadian military—but the boy had disappointed him by entering journalism instead.
Sanjay moved again, then there came the stealt
hy noise of him trying to unzip his sleeping bag. I stayed motionless, not wanting him to know that I wasn’t asleep. With the sleeping bag undone, he loosened the tent flap and a blast of cold air blew in as he went outside. I stayed there, curled up, wondering if he was finding a tree to water or going to get something to drink. But why move so quietly? To be considerate of his tent-mate? Not likely.
Then, from the tent nearby, came the low sound of laughter, followed by a giggle. Oh. But why not? Even in the midst of death and destruction, life—such as it was—went on. I rolled over and got a small battery-powered lantern, which I switched on. It emitted a small beam of light, just enough to read by, and I felt around in my rucksack for one of my two books. Not being in the mood to read Orwell’s essays about the foibles of mankind, I decided to read instead about humanity’s adventurous spirit and found myself flipping through the pages of The Green Hills of Earth,
Just after I’d finished a short story about a couple from Luna City who decided to return to Earth to live—with disastrous results as they reacquainted themselves with smog, overcrowding and poor plumbing — the tent flap suddenly opened and a woman’s voice said, ‘Samuel? Still awake?’
I dropped the book, moved the lantern about. There was Miriam, her hair hanging loose, wearing a blue down vest and red flannel nightgown, on her hands and knees.
‘Sure,’ I said, sitting up. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Of course.’
She said something in Dutch and came in on all fours. I glanced sheepishly away from her suddenly exposed cleavage, and then she rolled over and laid down. ‘There. Sorry, Samuel, I am a grumpy woman tonight, that’s what’s going on.’
‘What’s ... oh, I’m sorry.’
Miriam rested the back of her head on her hands and looked up at the ceiling of the tent. ‘Working with such a small team, when you’re one of just two women, you try to look out for each other. Men have different ways of working, different ways of looking at things. So if you’re one of a pair of women, you help each other out and do little favors for each other. Do you understand?’
‘Yeah, I do,’ I said. ‘Like asking you to be out of your tent for a while, so that... well, so that someone can come by for a visit.’
Miriam laughed. ‘That’s a polite way of saying it. A Canadian way, perhaps. Coming by for a visit. No mind, for what you said is true. Earlier Karen had asked if I would leave the tent at a certain time, for bathroom functions perhaps, so that she could entertain a guest. But now he has been there for over an hour, and I’m cold and tired and I think they’ve fallen asleep in there, and I’ll be damned if I’ll go knock on that tent to ask permission to go back in to my own bed.’
‘Then why don’t you stay here and take his bed?’ I said.
She rolled over. ‘Thank you. I was hoping you’d say that.’
So Miriam threw open Sanjay’s sleeping bag and rolled herself in, and when I was sure she was settled I put my book away and switched off the lantern. I lay still there in the darkness, listening to her breathing, so close to me. I wondered what her hair would feel like in my fingers, what her flesh would taste like against my mouth. Miriam stirred and said, ‘It was a long day today, wasn’t it?’
‘That it was,’ I said.
She sighed. ‘You think we’d be happy, finding three dead cows in a field and not a mother and a father and their children. But no, we’re not happy. A hell of a thing, isn’t it, to hope to find dead human bodies in the mud? But that’s what we do. Even here, in this place. This is what we do.’
‘So far, it doesn’t seem like we’re doing much.’
‘True. But we do what we can.’
It was comforting to lie there in the darkness, talking to Miriam. ‘To what end? To deter future gunmen from slaughtering their neighbors during bad times? It hasn’t happened yet, either in this century or the last. And if it can happen here, in the homeland of the sole superpower ...’
There was a rustling noise as she rolled over on her side. ‘Ah, but how do you know? True, there have been killing fields aplenty these past decades, from Cambodia to the Congo to here. But if we hadn’t taken the time to prosecute the criminals, identify and bury the dead, and comfort the living, perhaps more gunmen would have risen up to kill their neighbors. In England. In France. Perhaps in my own country.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But sometimes it just seems futile.’
Another sigh. ‘You’re getting too cynical, Samuel. Too cynical for such a young man.’
‘I’m not that young.’
Another rustle of cloth. ‘You’re right. You are not too young, chronologically. But in everything else, compared to what I and the others have seen, you are still a young man.’
It was my turn to shift in my sleeping bag. ‘Give me time. I’ll grow up.’
‘Ah, this is true. You will grow up here, so fast. So fast.’
Then she yawned. ‘Thank you for allowing me in here. Please, I have to get to sleep, all right?’
‘That’s fine, Miriam, just fine.’
Then I was surprised by her touch, just a feather glance with her fingers across my brow, as she whispered, ‘Good night.’ I wish they had reached a few inches lower, to touch my lips at least, but luck or whatever wasn’t with me tonight. I wanted so much to return the favor, maybe by gently stroking her cheek, but the events of the day crowded in upon me and I could all too easily imagine reaching out and poking her in her eye or ear. So I lay still.
I wished I could say that the rest of the night was magical, that Miriam’s scent and gentle breathing relaxed and quietened me, but that didn’t happen. Dear Miriam was an even more restless sleeper than Sanjay, and she snored loudly for most of the night.
But I didn’t think of leaving the tent, not once.
~ * ~
In the morning the lousy weather returned, penetrating drizzle accompanied by another heavy fog. By some unspoken agreement we stayed out of the house and the barn again, and ate breakfast standing up, wearing our yellow rain slickers, except for Charlie who was dressed in his Marine camouflage gear. Karen and Sanjay made a point of ignoring each other as we ate the hard rolls and drank the lukewarm tea. Peter stood beside me and said, ‘Who the hell do they think they are fooling?’
‘Each other, maybe,’ I said.
‘Hah.’ He slurped noisily from the metal teacup and said, ‘I think people up on the ridge heard those two, they rutted so much.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, wishing that Peter would just go away.
Then he said, ‘Hey, I saw who tumbled out of your tent this morning. Good on you. Just sleeping, or something more?’
I tossed the tea on the ground, as close as I could make it to his feet without looking too obvious. ‘Piss off, will you?’ I grunted and walked over to the tiny fire to try and warm up some, as Peter’s laughter followed me.
Within minutes of our sparse breakfast Jean-Paul was on the satellite phone again, speaking in low tones in French to whoever was on the other end, either at the UN compound down south or to Geneva. I was impressed by how refreshed he looked. The rest of us, with the exception of Charlie, looked like we had spent a week hitchhiking along the TransCanadian Highway in the middle of a thunderstorm. But Jean-Paul looked like he had gotten a solid eight hours of sleep and a hot shower. He talked and smoked and waved his hands about as the rest of us packed away the gear, and I wondered how come his tent-mate Peter looked so much like us and not like him.
As I slung my rucksack into the rear of our white Toyota Land Cruiser, I looked again at the house and thought that I hadn’t taken a photograph of the entire farm. I had taken dozens and dozens of photos of bloodstains and bullet holes and clothing and even of some dead cows, but not a single one showing this farmhouse and its buildings standing alone. I got my digital camera out of my bag and was setting up the shot when Peter’s voice called out, sounding strained: ‘Charlie, we’ve got visitors, coming up the driveway.’
; I turned and saw Charlie standing by the hood of one of the Land Cruisers, his M-16 in his hands, looking down at the driveway. A black pickup truck was grinding its way up, its tires and sides muddy. Karen, who was at my side, whispered, ‘Oh, shit, this doesn’t look good, doesn’t look good at all. That’s a militia truck if I ever saw one.’
I saw what she meant. The truck had a powerful engine and fat tires with thick treads and the windshield was gone, as were the side windows, the easier to fire weapons from inside the cab. Three guys were in the front of the cab, all wearing clear-glass goggles to protect themselves from the wind while driving fast. Four other guys were in the back of the truck, leaning out to look up at us, all of them with their own goggles pushed back up on their foreheads. They seemed to be in their twenties or early thirties, they had on blue jeans and fatigue coats, and the only thing that reassured me—besides the presence of Charlie—was the fact that there were no weapons visible.
Sanjay stood behind Karen, looking over her shoulder. ‘I thought this place was pacified. What are they doing out in the open? Don’t they know Charlie could call in some helicopters, some back-up?’
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