According to the Aussie, only the locals know about this wetland in the middle of a forest. The Batwa people have been living here for centuries in huts of sticks, mud and banana leaves, hunting for berries and small mammals in the impenetrable thickets of trees, moss and vines. Henry hadn’t even been certain he was on a real trail as he stumbled over mossy bamboo roots, a flashlight in one hand and a compass in the other, under a sun-mottled canopy of leaves. And then, suddenly, the jungle opened up on a clearing with a handful of huts surrounding this painter’s palette of a lake. He widens the lens and shoots: pink flamingos, blue-black starlings, lavender-breasted rollers and yellow finches all in one photo. That’s got to be worth some decent money. The perfect backdrop for a perfume ad. Good ol’ Jerry, throwing him some freelance work, even though it’s on the condition that the check is deposited directly into Merilee’s bank account. Fair enough.
Henry flips up the collar of his corduroy jacket as the sky turns purple-gray with dusk. This is when the real action begins: armor-plated rhinos and twisty-horned kudu, two kinds of zebra, and sometimes the rare okapi. You never know who’s going to show up for Happy Hour. The gorillas come after dark, ambling down from the Virunga Mountains that straddle Uganda, Rwanda and Congo, at least that’s the rumor. But it’s been a month, and still nothing. That’s okay, he can wait. Henry settles into the nest of tall grass and sips a warm beer. The bitter liquid releases a heavy sigh; the divorce papers Merilee sent last month to the PO box he keeps in Nairobi made it clear he has all the time in the world. Integrity. Intention. She used both of those words several times, apparently they were tools of her transformation, said he should try them sometime. He can’t blame her for giving up on him.
The thing of it is, it’s not like he ever planned on staying away so long. One month turned into three, and then six; the adventure has become a new life during the past year, driving from Reverend Morton’s orphanage near Mt. Kenya, through Tanzania and Uganda, with only a vague notion of finding Lillian and photographing her farm. Somewhere in Rwanda. That’s all the preacher knew, or would say, about her whereabouts. Exploring this rugged and varied terrain, sleeping in his Jeep most nights and taking photos during the day—good photos, judging by the sales he’s made—he has rewired his brain to view the world differently. For the first time since Atlanta, he sees all the possibilities. And yet, it came with a high price.
Henry’s heart quickens as a small ripple breaks the smooth surface of the pond, and the spiny back of a crocodile floats by. Other than that, it’s surprisingly quiet tonight. His mind wanders, the calm water a screen. He replays the delight on his daughter’s face as she opened her birthday present just weeks before he left, a real camera now that she was a big girl of eight. The two of them spent one Saturday afternoon at the zoo, the next at the botanical garden, Rachel following him around with her little point-and-click Brownie, snapping photos when he did. The water turns murky and dark. Will he ever see her again?
He pulls a pen and postcard out of his camera bag: a lion sunning himself on a rock. Rachel would get a kick out of that. Writing to his daughter every so often is the only real habit he has that connects him with his old life. Not that he mails these cards anymore. A few came back to his PO box in Nairobi, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Merilee tossed the rest of them in the trash. But it seems important to keep writing, saving these connections with his daughter in the photo album he’s keeping for her.
“Dear Cricket,” Henry says as he writes, “it’s funny how I came here searching for one thing and found something totally different.” He came hoping for excitement and, instead, found peace. Tranquility. “Here’s a bit of wisdom from your old man: It’s the search that really matters. The adventure of living your life. You can quote me on that.”
A thick gray fog settles on the lake and still no gorillas, so Henry heads back to the two-room hut made of sticks and a banana-leaf roof where he rolls out his sleeping bag on the dirt floor, instead of under the stars, when it rains. His hosts are a Batwa couple, eighteen or twenty years old, who looked at him in confusion when he offered them money. So, instead, he gave away his Swiss army knife, a blanket, and several jars of peanut butter they use sparingly and keep wrapped in newspaper on a high shelf.
Neither Alia nor her husband, Jahi, speak more than a few words of English. They watch solemnly as Henry deposits the postcard of the lion in a shoebox. “For my daughter,” he says, pointing to the baby Alia balances on her hip.
“Daughter.” Alia smiles, holding out the squirming bundle swathed in a diaper of antelope skin. Henry brings the little girl to his chest, stroking her fuzzy halo of hair. These postcards are a Someday account of sorts for Rachel. Someday, he’ll give them to her. He likes the idea that she might use these scenes of his life as cairns to follow the path of her own dreams.
Outside the hut, Henry heats up a pot of coffee over a small fire that keeps animals away. He rubs his stomach and offers a tin mug to Jahi. “Good.”
Jahi grunts in agreement as he takes a sip. He points to Henry’s rucksack to begin their nightly ritual. Henry pulls out a map and a red felt-tip pen, runs a finger slowly over a thick red line starting at Mt. Kenya. Jahi points to a spot on the path, a little farther than the one he pointed to the previous evening, saying a few words that need no translation.
“Ah, Tanzania. The Kikulo Plateau,” Henry says. How can he explain the two weeks he spent capturing images of dozens of varieties of rare orchids in God’s Garden, as the locals call it? He digs in his rucksack for photos of sturdy little white-faced flowers splashed with purple and yellow war paint. “These are my favorites.”
Jahi studies the photos, and then points at the map again, glancing toward his hut. “You,” he says. “Where you.”
“Home,” Henry says, the word landing tenderly, somewhere deep in his soul. Where is his home? He sweeps an arm, palm outward, around them, embracing the lake, the rustling grass, the glittering night sky, closing his fist as his hand lands on his chest. And yet, there’s a hollowness there.
Later, lying under the stars, Henry can’t sleep. He throws a fresh pile of sticks on the fire, searches through his rucksack and pulls out a plastic bag with some sticks wrapped in a slipshod web of blue and white yarn: an art project gone wrong that he’s going to fix for his daughter by the time he returns home. He starts untangling the yarn but it’s frayed and knotted. He’s only made more of a mess with his efforts, not even sure what the hell a dreamcatcher is supposed to look like anymore. He sighs. Maybe he’ll start over from scratch.
Next, he slides the unsigned divorce papers out of his bag. Freedom. Merilee’s filing for divorce on the grounds of abandonment. No custody rights, but plenty of freedom. That’s the trade-off. Isn’t that what he has wanted all along, the desire for which he has been apologizing to her throughout their entire marriage? So then why, whenever he thinks about signing these papers, does a kind of vaporous panic release from his chest, expanding into his limbs? An untethered buoyancy sets in, as if without a home and family he could too easily float up toward the stars and disappear into the darkness.
He packs up his camera, sleeping bag, tarp and few other belongings, and leaves his tin plate and silverware for Jahi and Alia. If he leaves now, he can get to Rwanda by sunrise. It’s time to go find Lillian’s farm, take the photos he came for and head back home before it’s too late. It’s not until months later that he realizes he left the dreamcatcher on the rocks near the fire.
TEN
{ St. Augustine, October 1974 }
IT’S TOO WARM TO BUILD A FIRE IN THE backyard, but Henry’s daughter insists. Her second grade class is studying Indians—No, Native Americans, she keeps correcting him. He has to admit it’s been fun spending all day digging a little fire pit, listening to Rachel chatter away. It’s amazing how her mind works, flitting from imagining what it was like to live in a teepee, to what she might give her friend Margie when she turns eight next week, to asking again if she can pretty
please have a puppy. They roast hot dogs that could be venison and make gooey s’mores, feeding twigs into the fire. Now, Rachel sits beside him on a log at the edge of the pit, the flames curling up like smoke signals into the twilight sky. She’s busy twining blue yarn around a web of sticks that are supposed to be some kind of Native American artwork he found a picture of in the encyclopedia.
“What does this do again?” she asks skeptically.
“Catches dreams—the bad ones, so they can’t slip into your head,” Henry says, absentmindedly fiddling with the clasp of the pink soapstone locket on a chain around his neck. A gift from Rachel last Christmas that he wears on the weekends to make her feel special. In his other hand is the light blue airmail letter he has practically memorized since it arrived at his office yesterday. He still can’t believe Lillian wrote to him after nine years. He glances from his daughter to the letter, a bittersweet warmth washing over him as he starts reading.
Dear Henry,
Where to begin? I’ve started this letter in so many different places. This is what I most want to tell you: I remember. I remember seeing my photo on the front page of the newspaper, right next to Reverend King. That’s when I knew, without question, that I had a responsibility to do my part in changing the world. I remember how you encouraged me to pass along the gift of my education and teach children who have nothing. I remember every day of the year we spent together, especially you standing beside me at the student rallies even though not everyone agreed with the reverend’s stance on nonviolence and including white folks in our fight for equality. Thank you for all of that.
Rachel makes a sound like a frustrated colt. Henry looks up and takes the dreamcatcher, unwinds the yarn from around the sticks. He has tried, over the years, not to think about Lillian, as if that might qualify as cheating on his wife. But this letter gives him permission to wander back in time, back to April 1965 at Ebenezer Baptist Church. He sees the shy smile as her hand fluttered in a wave and then went to her hair. He hears her voice over the phone, the first time he called. She listened—really listened. Of course he would travel around the world, photographing people and places that mattered, things folks should see. She had always dreamed of going to Africa, never told anyone, afraid it sounded foolish. No, it didn’t sound a bit foolish to him. Heck, they might even meet up there someday.
What if he had chosen the other path?
“Dad,” Rachel whines, one long drawn-out syllable of defeat. “I can’t do this.”
“Now, Cricket, you just keep wrapping yarn in between the four sticks.” He takes his daughter’s hands in his, guiding her fingers as he retraces his steps during the fall he moved to Atlanta, after a summer of talking on the phone with Lillian. He took the first job he was offered: photojournalist for a weekly alternative newspaper. It wasn’t a magazine in New York or even the St. Augustine Record, but he was happy, particularly in the evenings up on the rooftop with Lillian in his arms. She called that cement square—barely big enough for two corduroy cushions from his pullout couch—their own private island.
He feels the gravitational pull of that world: just the two of them, time seemingly suspended by the stars. Many nights, they fell asleep on the roof—just slept. It was the dawn of the sexual revolution, people hopping into bed together simply to prove they could, but Henry appreciated that Lillian was saving herself for marriage. Besides, he was a little afraid of the way that folks—black and white—cut them nasty glances or sometimes downright stared as they walked hand in hand. Lillian never seemed to notice.
In hindsight, he sees it was the danger that made their relationship so exciting. He had been dating Merilee since junior year in high school, never questioning whether or not they were truly in love. Certainly, he had never fought for their right to be in love. Daily, he and Lillian proved that the bond between them was stronger than the whispers loud enough for them to hear. Their love was stronger than the quiet disapproval of Lillian’s parents at the Sunday dinner table. Stronger than the police brutality, burning crosses, and angry faces he photographed. That entire year, he felt as if he had magically stepped out of his life, stopped the clock from running. He and Lillian were so certain that they were the future. The rest of the world simply needed a bit of time to catch up.
Henry touches the scar on his temple, less than an inch from his eye, the doctor’s words throbbing in his head: Split…twelve stitches… lucky there’s no damage to the cornea. It all comes back to him: The screech of tires, the glittery explosion of glass on the sidewalk in Sweet Auburn where he and Lillian had been window shopping; a trickle of something sticky-sweet running down his face, into his mouth. Cola, he had thought, as he sank to the sidewalk. Blood smeared on Lillian’s plaid skirt, that scratchy wool against his cheek. Blood on her fingers that he saw out of the corner of one eye, his other eye swollen shut. An ambulance siren. Screaming. All of it mashed together, like an alarm he couldn’t shut off. Afterwards, he couldn’t sleep and developed a tic that made it impossible to take photos.
Roland Carlson came to visit one night shortly after the bloody drive-by, while his daughter was waiting tables at a nearby restaurant. He didn’t say much, just handed Henry an envelope and mumbled something about hoping it was enough for a plane ticket. Best for everyone if he went on home. Henry deposited two hundred dollars, all the money the groundskeeper at Spelman could scrape together to try and pay him off, into the savings account he and Lilly had started. He didn’t want to embarrass Roland by returning the money, and he sure didn’t need any convincing that leaving was the best thing he could do for Lilly as well as himself. It was, in a way, a relief, as if Lillian’s father was giving him permission to return to the safety of his own world.
But when did safe become synonymous with a kind of uncomfortable restlessness, a restlessness that is sometimes tamped down into his gut by pouring a finger or two of whiskey into his coffee mug? A restlessness that made him send a few photos he took in Atlanta to Life magazine in the first place. A restlessness that this letter is riling up as he reads the rest of it.
Henry, I apologize for taking the long way around to getting to the point of why I’m writing now. I finally made it to Africa! I should back up a bit: Four years ago last December I married a fine man named Samuel. We had been dating before I met you and then took up again after you left. Samuel was heading off on a tour of duty in Vietnam, so we went and got married at City Hall—just the two of us. The big family affair could wait, but we couldn’t. A month later, my husband’s plane was shot down in Vietnam.
A year later, I was still having a terrible time getting on with my life. I decided to use some of the life insurance money from the army to try and forget about my own sorrow by helping others. Reverend Morton came to talk at Ebenezer Baptist about a school for orphans that his mission was starting in Kenya. I was only going to stay for a few months, but the children here grabbed onto my heart and wouldn’t let go. And every day I was strong enough to teach them and help care for them, we all healed a bit.
You know how people say, God works in mysterious ways? I believe that’s true. I recently spent the rest of Samuel’s life insurance money to buy a small farm somewhere you’ve probably never heard of: Rwanda. The country has a bloody history of the two main tribes fighting for power, but there’s a new government and it’s relatively peaceful now. People are hopeful. I’d like to do my small part and provide a family for four or five orphans, more in time. I thought it would please you to know I’m using the check you sent to supplement whatever money I can raise through the church to fix up my new home once I move in. For now, I’m staying on at the orphanage for a bit so Reverend Morton can teach me how to apply for grants.
Henry folds the letter back into the airmail envelope and places it beside him on the log. They’d agreed that they could wait for the world to change, or they would travel to Africa together. Either way, they were in no hurry as long as they were together. A month after the drive-by attack, a year to the day after he
had first moved to Atlanta, he mailed Lillian a check for nine hundred dollars. All the money in the savings account they had built up for their future. Their Someday account. He included a cryptic but honest note: I’m sorry, Lilly, it’s too hard. I can’t wait any longer.
“Cricket,” he says, an idea crystalizing, “what if…” Over the past six years, since receiving the unexpected check from Life magazine, he’s been squirreling away ten or fifteen dollars each paycheck, not enough to squeeze the household budget but enough to make him feel like this existence is temporary, his real life waiting for him somewhere. Someday.
“What would you think of going away together?” he asks.
“Just you and me?”
“Sure. We could have a great adventure.” There’s a pull in Henry’s chest, like a heavy door cracking open. “We’ll go over summer vacation.”
Rachel frowns at the tangle of sticks and yarn in her lap. “What would Mom do?”
Henry brushes the bangs out of his daughter’s eyes, and then lands a noisy smooch on her forehead to unravel the creases of concern. “Mom might want to go on an adventure of her own.” Merilee has been talking about visiting her sister in California, the two of them going to some self-actualization spa. The time apart might do them both good. “She’ll be fine.”
The slam of a door startles him. Merilee appears on the back porch. That’s his signal: time’s up. “Well,” he slaps his thighs. “Ready to hop in the tub?” Saturdays are father-daughter time; it’s understood, like they share custody.
In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills Page 8