The Smoke Jumper

by Nicholas Evans

  ‘I’ve seen it with my own eyes.’

  ‘Then your eyes deceive you. Tell me, did you come here, all this way, to interview me or to insult me?’

  Connor hesitated. The music had come to an end and the only sound now was the chugging of the generators and the muted roar of the gas lamp. It was probably too late, but he took a deep breath and pulled out a sheet of paper from his pocket and held it out to Makuma.

  ‘This is a list of some of the children who have been kidnapped by your soldiers from the Karingoa area. There are seventy-three of them. The last name on the list, Lawrence Nyeko, is the twin brother of Thomas, the boy in the picture there. Please, take it.’

  Makuma didn’t move, so Connor leaned forward and put the list on the table in front of him. Makuma didn’t so much as glance at it, just kept his eyes fixed on Connor.

  ‘Now, I’m all set to do an interview with you and to take your picture and all. And you can say whatever the heck you like, correct all those lies you say I told about you, whatever. I’ll make sure it gets printed. But what I’m really here for is to make you an offer.’

  He paused and pointed at the list.

  ‘I don’t know what you think these children are worth. If they’re in anything like the shape of those I’ve met who escaped, my guess is they’re not a whole lot of use to you. And maybe some of them aren’t here. But those who are, I’d like to buy.’

  Makuma looked at him for a moment, plainly astonished. Then he laughed.

  ‘How is it that Americans always think everything is for sale?’

  ‘All I’m trying to buy is their freedom.’

  ‘With whose money?’

  ‘My own.’

  Makuma laughed in scorn.

  ‘You don’t have to believe me. I don’t give a shit one way or the other. But the cash is ready and waiting in an account in Nairobi. I’ll give you two thousand U.S. dollars for every child on that list. Payment on delivery, however you want.’

  Connor was ready for some proud or outraged dismissal but Makuma made no reply. Instead, he called out to summon one of the guards and waved him over to where they sat. He spoke to the guard in Acholi and then handed him the list and Thomas’s photograph and the man hurried off with them.

  ‘On behalf of what agency or organization are you doing this?’

  ‘I told you, my own. Nobody else knows about it. And nobody needs to if that’s how you want it.’

  Makuma considered this for a moment. Connor studied his face for a hint as to what he was thinking but found none. Makuma looked at his watch.

  ‘Go now,’ he said. ‘We will talk again in the morning.’

  Long into the night Connor lay awake in his hut, shifting on his grass mat and sifting what was said. Every time he went through it he cursed himself for allowing Makuma to rile him so. He had rehearsed his proposal many times and had gone in determined to be strong and calm and polite and instead had promptly jeopardized the whole endeavor by attacking the man. However insane the idea was, he could at least have given it his best shot. The only consoling thought he found was that even if Makuma now detested him, it was the proposal itself that mattered. Either it appealed or it didn’t. Finally, as the sky was starting to pale, he fell asleep.

  For the first time in a long while he dreamed of Julia. They were on a river that looked a little like that stretch of the Salmon that the two of them had canoed many years ago. It had those same tall canyon cliffs but the rock was the wrong color, not gray but the kind of red that you found only in Africa and the vegetation that towered above and into the clouds was clearly rain forest. Connor was in one canoe with all the gear bags and Julia was in another up ahead with Amy behind her and Ed in the stern. Amy was trailing her hand in the water and the mood was calm and blissful. Julia turned once and smiled at him and he smiled back and felt no tinge of sorrow or separation.

  Then he was peering up at the cliff walls because he knew there were supposed to be some rock paintings hereabout, but he could see no trace of them. When he looked ahead again he saw Julia’s canoe disappearing around a bend and Ed, in his dark glasses, looking back at him over his shoulder and waving for him to hurry on. Suddenly Connor knew that there were rapids ahead and a great waterfall and that he had forgotten to tell them and that you had to leave the river and carry the canoes around. And as he listened, he could hear the thunder of the water and he called out to warn them but knew they couldn’t hear him and so he started to paddle after them as hard as he could, yelling for them to stop, the roar of the water getting louder all the time.

  The roar woke him and it turned out to be Okello’s Jeep pulling up outside the hut. And a moment later the man himself was in the doorway and yelling muzungu! muzungu! as if it were yesterday all over again and Connor found himself wishing that it were, so he might have another chance.

  He could tell at once that the mood had changed. As he stepped out of the doorway, Okello gave him a shove between his shoulder blades. Connor turned on him.

  ‘What the hell was that for?’

  ‘Get in.’

  The two henchmen in the back were grinning but it wasn’t the kind of grin that he had been trying all these days to elicit. They seemed to be privy to some joke that no one had told him yet. They drove down the winding trail that led to the lower camp with birds cackling and whooping in the trees as if they were in on it too.

  The camp was a lot more squalid than it had looked from the ridge. The red earth was churned to mud and the shelters were pitiful. Vultures picked at piles of garbage and the smell of human filth hung heavy in the sultry air.

  Connor looked over his shoulder and saw another Jeep was right behind, Makuma in the front passenger seat with his head held high, gracing all they passed with a regal wave and his sanctimonious smile. They drove through the camp and stopped at the edge of a mud clearing where a group of the youngest soldiers Connor had yet seen stood waiting on parade. He estimated that there were about forty of them and their ages ranged from maybe nine or ten to about sixteen. All but a handful were boys. On command, as Makuma alighted from his Jeep, they snapped to attention and shouldered their weapons and chanted some kind of battle cry. Everyone else got out of the Jeeps too and Connor stood by the hood, watching Makuma come sauntering toward him.

  ‘These are your so-called “abducted” children. There are forty-two of them. Nineteen of the others on your list are not here because they are currently serving with active units. For reasons of security, I cannot of course disclose where. The other twelve names on the list we know nothing about. Probably they were taken or killed by the forces of the government. ’

  ‘I thought you told me last night that the young ones weren’t used as soldiers. Some of these kids can’t be more than nine years old.’

  ‘It is not a question of years but of spirit. If they are passionate to fight for the cause, who are we to stop them?’

  ‘Is it okay if I take some pictures?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘For reasons of security, I suppose.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘A photograph would at least let their parents know they’re alive. I’ve never seen these children. I need some way to identify them.’

  Makuma nodded to Okello who on cue held up the list and started shouting out the names. One by one the young soldiers piped up in answer. Connor watched, shaking his head. He had little doubt that this was a setup. The last name that Okello called was Thomas’s brother, Lawrence Nyeko.

  ‘Let me talk to him,’ Connor said.

  Makuma nodded to Okello and the boy was called forth. Makuma handed Connor the photograph of Thomas.

  ‘Perhaps you need this to remind you.’

  Connor didn’t. He knew the twins were identical and he could see the likeness in this boy’s face when he was still twenty yards away. His fatigues were tattered and billowed big and as he came nearer Connor could see how his collarbones jutted and how his skeletal little wrists had sores on them. He halted b
efore them and gave Okello a brave salute. But although he was trying to carry himself like a grown soldier, there was a child’s fear in the eyes that flicked nervously from Makuma to Okello and on to Connor. Connor smiled at him but he didn’t smile back.

  ‘Lawrence?’

  The boy looked at Okello, glancing at the horn-handled stick with which he was clearly acquainted. Okello spoke gently to him in Acholi and Lawrence looked briefly again at Connor and nodded. Connor held out his hand.

  ‘Jambo. Jina langu ni Connor.’

  ‘He does not speak Swahili,’ Okello said. ‘Nor English.

  Only Acholi.’

  Lawrence looked at the hand and then at Okello who nodded permission to shake it. The boy’s little hand felt cold and limp and bony. Connor showed him the picture of Thomas. Lawrence looked at it briefly then looked up again at Okello to check how he should react.

  ‘Ask him who this is.’

  Okello did so and Connor heard the name Thomas in the boy’s reply but couldn’t understand the rest. He cursed himself for not having learned more than a few words of Acholi. Okello translated.

  ‘He says it is his brother, Thomas, who died a traitor and a coward.’

  ‘He didn’t say that. If he did, tell him that’s not true. Tell him his brother is alive.’

  Okello glanced at Makuma and Connor told the boy himself in Swahili but he could see that he didn’t understand. The boy’s eyes were darting with fear. He was obviously afraid that he might already have said the wrong thing. Okello spoke to him again and when he replied his little voice cracked and he had to pause to clear his throat.

  ‘He says you are lying,’ Okello said.

  Connor had had enough. ‘This is just bullshit. I don’t know what the hell either one of you is saying, but any damn fool can see this poor kid’s terrified.’

  ‘I think it is you he fears,’ Makuma said. He spoke to Lawrence again and the boy listened, then shook his head violently.

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘That you had come here to buy him. I asked if he wants to be sold.’

  Connor shook his head and looked away. What a fool he was to think this could ever have worked.

  ‘I will ask all of them the same question.’

  ‘Yeah, right. I bet you will.’

  Makuma put his arm around Lawrence’s shoulders and turned him around so that he was facing the other children. He spoke for about a minute and simply from the tone of his voice Connor had a clear enough idea of what he was saying. He could imagine the pious bullshit rhetoric and the lies he must be lacing it with. The speech ended with what was clearly a question and all of the children stood silent, too terrified even to look at each other. He repeated it and still no one responded. Makuma turned and smiled at Connor with a smug regret.

  ‘I asked if any of them want to be sold to you. And you see? Not one.’

  ‘Tell them that I will take them home. They will be with their families again. Tell them that.’

  Makuma spoke again but Connor knew damn well that he wasn’t saying that and so he began to shout it out himself in Swahili. At once Okello turned on him and yelled for him to stop and when Connor didn’t he came at him and struck him across the shoulder with his stick. Connor lunged at him but Okello’s two henchmen grabbed him from behind by his arms and Okello struck him again hard across the face this time and punched him in the stomach, knocking all the air from his lungs.

  Connor sunk to his knees gasping for breath and Okello kicked him in the chest and sent him sprawling backward so that his head hit the ground. Connor lay there and looked at their faces scowling down at him with the clear and cobalt sky behind. And the last thing he heard before the blow that delivered him to darkness was Makuma calling out the Warriors for God battle cry and the shrill automaton chant of the children in response.

  27

  The town of Karingoa lay at the head of a valley in that part of Uganda where the arid grass and acacia flatland of the east began to crumple and roll and grow ever lusher as it spread west toward the Albert Nile and the jungle and mountain of the Congo beyond. It was a single street of terraced stores with a church at one end and a police station at the other. In the distant days before the war it had been a sleepy, unassuming place of only a few thousand people, though many more would come daily from the surrounding countryside to trade their produce in its marketplace. Now, however, they had come to stay and Karingoa’s population had grown fiftyfold while homesteads and villages for many miles around lay plundered and burned and deserted.

  The government had set up ‘protected’ camps to which they urged the dispossessed to move but many resisted for the camps were far away and riddled with disease and even there the rebels still came at night to steal their children and what little else they had. So, instead, many had flocked to Karingoa and its squalid shanty camp that now sprawled for a mile at either end of town. At least from here those who were brave enough could from time to time sneak back to their villages to plant or gather crops. And often when they did, they found children who had escaped from the rebels or been cast aside, cowering in the bush or wandering the ruins of their homes like bewildered ghosts, searching for their families.

  The rehabilitation center of St. Mary of the Angels, where many of these children were eventually brought, stood in the southern outskirts of Karingoa’s shanty-town. Glimpsed from its gateway of crumbled stucco, the old convent building looked a proud and imposing place. It was three broad stories tall and stood square and stalwart at the foot of a gently sloping driveway of red dirt. The driveway was lined with flame trees and beyond them, on either side, were palms and giant mango trees colonized by fruit bats who at dusk would spread their large and leathered wings and clatter forth to feed. Both the convent and the chapel that slid into view alongside it as one came down the driveway were whitewashed and garlanded with crimson bougainvillea. It was only as one drew close that the impression of colonial confidence begin to fade.

  The whitewash was flaking and blotched by the water that twice yearly in the rainy season gushed through broken gutters from the cracked terracotta tiles of the roof. The facade of the convent building had six large windows on each floor, all with torn mosquito screens and slatted shutters whose green paint had so badly peeled that it looked like patches of mold upon the wood. In front of the building, the driveway broadened into a forecourt from which four wide steps of cracked cement ascended to a pair of hefty doors. Before the war, when St. Mary’s was still a girls’ school, these had always stood open. Now they were always kept closed and at night were locked and bolted.

  Behind the main building was a straggle of smaller buildings that serviced the center’s needs. The kitchens, from whose windows came a constant clamor of voices and clang of pots, stood around a low-walled compound enclosing three tall papaya trees and a well with a hand-cranked pump. Scrawny chickens and ducks scrabbled in the dust for scraps while scrawnier dogs lounged beneath the trestle tables of a vast open-sided tent that served as the center’s dining room.

  There were storerooms, a medical clinic and a workshop and a garage where a motley collection of vehicles stood in various states of disrepair. Towering surreally over them was a red double-decker bus which had been driven a decade ago on an epic fund-raising trip all the way from England. It was called Gertrude and, thanks to the loving attention of George, the center’s ancient gardener, mechanic and allaround saint, was still in good working order. Beside it was a red dirt field patched with dried grass where now, in the late afternoon sunshine, the children were playing soccer and basketball. Finally, beyond it all, lay twelve acres of garden, an overgrown eden of orange, banana, mango and avocado.

  Surveying this scene from her third-floor window, Julia remembered how alien everything had seemed when they arrived here three months ago and how quickly they had come to feel at home.

  She and Amy had just had their daily Acholi lesson with Sister Emily and, as usual, Amy had put her mother to shame.
The girl was almost fluent by now, while Julia still sometimes faltered over simple sentences and made mistakes that prompted howls of laughter from Amy and even a benevolent smile or two from Emily. After the lesson Amy had run outside to play basketball when she should really have been up here doing some schoolwork, but Julia hadn’t had the heart to stop her. She could see her down there now, calling for the ball and running with the other girls, her blond curls bouncing in the dusty sunlight.

  The room they shared was Spartan but spacious. It had a high ceiling with a fan that didn’t work and pale green walls where little pink geckos with suckered feet and bulbous eyes would hang motionless for hours. There were two metal-framed beds pushed together under one big mosquito net, a wooden desk with drawers, a couple of chairs and a giant closet that smelled of mothballs for their clothes. The only luxury was having their own shower and washbowl which were screened off in one corner. The communal toilets were along the corridor.

  Julia checked her watch. She had half an hour before the English class that she had recently started teaching every other evening before supper. The class was voluntary but she made it fun and more and more children were showing up. She turned away from the window and undressed and took a shower, washing her hair and relishing the cool trickle of the water while a gecko watched her from above. Then, wrapped in a towel, she sat at the desk with the sun slanting in on her shoulders and finished a letter to Linda.

  In her last letter to Julia, Linda had asked about Connor and whether the people at St. Mary’s knew where he was. They didn’t. But Sister Emily had more recent news than anyone. Only last fall, about six months ago, he had called from Nairobi and asked her for a list of local children known to have been abducted by the WFG. He hadn’t explained why he wanted it and Sister Emily hadn’t asked. She assumed it must be for an article he was writing.

  It was clear from the way that she and the other nuns and counselors at St. Mary’s talked about him that Connor was greatly loved. Framed photographs that he had taken of the children hung on the walls of the hallway. Julia gathered that he regularly sent money and great packages of clothing and shoes and that on his last visit he had brought them a new video and stereo system. ]ulia had naturally mentioned that he was Amy’s godfather but not, for some reason, that he was also her father.