They stopped in front of another bulkhead. Curtis rapped with his knuckles, a signal that was returned a few moments later from inside. “Reiff’s ready for you. Now go in there and do your job, Lieutenant. And let Reiff do his.”
* * *
Kareem was hooded and strapped to the table, which was inclined slightly toward his head. The hood was soaking wet. Reiff was pressing it tightly to the boy’s face while drizzling water on it from a kettle. As the seconds ticked by, Kareem’s back arched and he began to fight the straps with all his strength. Gus moved protectively to his side, but there was nothing to do except wait.
Reiff’s lips moved as he counted. He stared at the hood with great intensity, as if he could see through it.
When he finally lifted his hand, and Kareem’s gasping and retching confirmed that the timing had been just right, he turned to Gus and grinned. “I took it too far with the other one,” he said. “It’s a new method. New to me, anyway.”
“There’s something you need to know,” Gus said. He told Reiff the same thing he’d told Curtis, but Reiff wasn’t interested. “Not my department,” he said.
“What do you mean, ‘Not my department’?”
The hood turned slowly toward Gus’s voice. Kareem called him Doctor and started to plead for help.
“You see?” Gus said. “He wants to talk. He’s my patient. Give me a few minutes with him. He trusts me.”
Reiff shook his head. “Tell him about his brother.”
“Tell him what about his brother?”
“Just tell him.”
Gus figured the boy had a right to know. As quietly and simply as possible, he explained that Adnan was dead.
Kareem went very still.
“Did you mention the hand?” Reiff said. “Tell him it’ll happen to him, too, if he doesn’t talk.”
Gus shook his head. “I’m not going to be a part of this,” he said.
“Say it,” Reiff said, “or so help me, I’ll shove his brother’s hand right up his ass.”
Kareem, Gus said, please believe me. Adnan is dead.
No, Kareem said. No no no.
I saw with my own eyes, Gus said. They cut his hand. This man has proof.
The boy cursed Gus, cursed all foreigners, shook his head fiercely, then, choking, fell back and started to cry.
“Good,” Reiff said. “You got to him. Now tell him we’re going to feed the body to the vultures—no, wait; say that we’re going to hang it from the gantry. But be sure to mention the birds.”
Gus shook his head.
Reiff flashed a prim smile. “No? Then I guess I’ll just keep going.”
* * *
Reiff had a way of using a rib spreader in the boy’s mouth that required the hood to come off. There were surgical masks on hand for those brief occasions. Gus didn’t want to cover his face. It felt villainous. He told Reiff there was no point, since Kareem already knew him from the clinic, but Reiff was a believer in protocol.
Breathing through clean linen, if only for a few minutes, gave a welcome reprieve from the stench, but each time Gus tied the familiar knot behind his head, he silently added a year of service in the marshes as his punishment. This was a way of wearing a surgical mask he’d never imagined.
At one point, when he was alone with Kareem for a few minutes, Gus loosened the hood and gingerly peeled it back. The boy’s jaw hung crooked. The left side of the mandible was bulging where it had fractured. The bone had given way with a wet snap. There had been two sessions with the spreader since then.
Gus poured a bit of water in the open mouth, then slipped in some pills, aspirin he happened to have in his pocket. Swallow, he said. For the pain.
The boy spat out the pills along with several broken teeth. No, he said. Unclean.
Please, Gus said. Reiff’s mincing footsteps echoed down the hall. Quickly. Where did Adnan get the powder?
Kareem licked his upper lip. His eyes fluttered shut. For the first time, Gus noticed his long, thick eyelashes. Marsh girls liked thick eyelashes. Thali had told him that once.
Gus resecured the hood and went to wash his hands. He kept his back to Reiff so he wouldn’t see how they were shaking.
“Guess what?” Reiff said. “We’re out of this shithole. You’re wanted up on deck. Curtis is getting ready to make the announcement.”
* * *
It was late afternoon. Gus had been below so long, the sunlight completely blinded him. He listened, swaying gently, with his eyes closed. Apparently, the invasion had begun during the night. It was unfortunate, but the marshmen had proven to be unworthy stewards of their own destiny. They’d begun using their barbaric tactics against the very forces that had helped with their liberation. The plan was to get in, dismantle this dangerous new insurgency, and get out.
Curtis thanked his men for all their hard work and sacrifice. He held up Reiff as an example of an enlisted man who, by virtue of his exemplary service, was soon to make the leap to the officer corps.
There was plenty of praise to go around. Gus was singled out for his humanitarian work at the clinic. He stood, Curtis said, as a reminder that even in an active theater of war, there was still a place for a soldier’s highest aspirations.
* * *
Curtis had every intention of sending Gus back to the fleet, but Gus made the case that he’d be more useful in the field. Curtis was surprised, but he radioed ahead on Gus’s behalf, then offered him a cigar.
Gus took it, then handed it back. “Save this for someone who needs it,” he said.
“Suit yourself,” Curtis said, propping his feet on a toolbox. If he noticed the edge in Gus’s voice, he didn’t show it. He was in an expansive mood. He cut the head with an old safety blade, then lit up. “I was wrong about you, Lieutenant,” he said. “You’ve got some stones, after all.”
“What will happen to the prisoners?”
“They’ll be transferred to a base near the port city. Don’t worry. Those guys are pros.”
“And the Magheed?”
Curtis waved the cigar. “Relax,” he said. “That’s all been taken care of.”
* * *
By the time Gus made it back to the Magheed’s village to collect his things, the sky was full of helicopters. It seemed that every bird in the marshes was on the wing, too, panicked by the thunderous demolition of the haze.
Gus found Hamza on the sand by the lagoon, polishing the barrels of the cape gun with a handful of grass. He was wearing the Magheed’s headcloth. Gus had never seen Hamza in a headcloth. It dwarfed him. He’d had to double the band to make it fit.
Come with me, Gus said, slinging the gun over his shoulder.
The Magheed got two of them with a pistol before they cut him, Hamza said. I kept the hands, but they took the rest. Help me find him. We have to bury him.
Gus wrapped an arm around him, but Hamza wouldn’t budge.
Smoke billowed from the guesthouse. The roof had burned away, exposing the main ribs, which were smoldering. Apparently, they were too dense to burn.
Where’s Thali?
Hamza shrugged and said, Gone to look for you. She said you’d know what to do.
We have to go, too, Gus said, shouting to make himself heard over the helicopters.
Hamza didn’t seem to comprehend. He just stood there, looking from the lake to the sky, his eyes narrowed to slits by the smoke.
Gus took the boy’s arm and started to pull him away from the beach. Hamza let himself be led for a few paces, then dropped to the sand and started to cry. This is your fault, he wailed. Everything was fine before you came.
Gus kept trying to lead him away, but the boy’s hands were slippery from the grass he’d used to polish the gun. Its sap was thick and white. Gus wondered if it had healing properties. For a precious moment he was himself again, excited by medical curiosity.
Then one of the helicopters broke formation and headed straight for the lagoon. The staccato roar convulsed the waterfowl.
You’ll be safe at th
e clinic, Gus said, scooping Hamza into his arms. I promise.
The boy’s face was yellow with bruises. He resisted, even though his eyelids were drooping. Gus held him tight as he walked. He didn’t know what else to do, so he hummed a tune, something his mother had sung to him as a child, in sickbed.
He’d sung it once for Thali at the end of one of their evenings together, when she was nodding off with a book in her father’s reading chair. Just before leaving, he’d put a soft rug on her lap and brushed the hair from her sleeping eyes. There might have been consequences if someone had seen him leaning in to kiss her forehead, but he’d risked it anyway.
The song had the desired effect on the boy. After a while, he gave up struggling, rested his head on Gus’s shoulder, and slept.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matthew Olshan is the author of several books for young readers, including Finn, The Flown Sky, and The Mighty Lalouche. He lives in Baltimore.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2014 by Matthew Olshan
All rights reserved
First edition, 2014
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Olshan, Matthew.
Marshlands / Matthew Olshan. — First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-374-19939-5 (hardcover)
1. Physicians—Fiction. 2. Treason—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3615.L732 M38 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013034005
www.fsgbooks.com
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eISBN 9780374711634
Marshlands Page 14