by Evans, Jon
"I don't think we'll make it. But even if we could…I'd love to cross the Congo, but not on this truck."
After a pause she said "Are you talking about leaving alone?"
"What?" I asked, shocked. "No! Definitely not. Together. I want us both to leave. We can fly to Zimbabwe and visit my aunt and uncle. Or to Kenya if you'd rather go there."
"I'm not going."
I hadn't expected so flat a rejection.
After a moment I asked "As simple as that?"
She looked at me defiantly. "These are our people. You know that. And I'm not leaving them. If you want to go, you can go on your own. But I'm staying. And if you want to stay with me, you're staying too."
"That's…that's…this is…" I spluttered.
"What?"
I didn't know what I was trying to say, so I just looked at her.
"Is it the lifestyle you hate?" she asked. "Or the people? I know you're not a people person. But I thought you liked everyone."
"I do," I said. "I know. I mean, you're right, I agree, these are our people. I just can't handle truck life any more."
"You're going to have to."
I finally worked out what I wanted to say. "I thought our being together was more important than staying with the people around us."
"They're just as important," she said, very seriously, looking me straight in the eyes. "I'm not saying you're unimportant. You're not. That should be obvious. You're the world to me, Paul. You know that. But these are our people. They matter just as much. To both of us. I just wish you could see that. But until you can I'm not going to let you make this mistake."
I wish I had listened to her, really listened to her, to what she was trying to say. But I was angry, and I was upset, and I was eager to wallow in self-pity, and what I heard instead was: they're more important to me than you are; and I know you won't leave me; and I'm going to use that to get my way and make you stay.
""Fuck this," I said. "I'm going for a walk."
I stalked out of the tent before she could stop me.
* * *
I was so upset, replaying our conversation over and over again in my mind, layering the worst connotations imaginable on everything Laura had said, that I walked for a good half-hour before looking up and realizing that I was completely lost. For awhile I had walked through a little community of farming huts that adjoined the sanctuary, neatly kept wooden huts alongside a stream and surrounded by fields of vegetables, fields where the locals had wisely retained a few big trees in order to protect themselves from the crippling midday sun. From there I had taken a wide dirt path into the forest. But the path had shrunk and forked and subdivided, and I wasn't sure where I stood could even be called part of a trail at all. I was, however, sure that I could not retrace my tracks.
"Shit," I muttered. I looked around. At least I could see. This was not like the dense mangrove jungles of the south; this was rainforest, where the trees rose a hundred feet into the sky before their branches jutted out, their canopy swallowing so much light that the underbrush was relatively thin. I could see a fair distance in most directions. But it all looked the same. Waist-high bushes, young trees, fallen branches, enormous vines coiled like snakes around mossy fallen tree trunks, all carpeted by golden petals of some flower that must grow high in the canopy.
"Shit," I said again. Lost in African rainforest. A glorious and wonderful place to be lost, but still embarrassingly stupid and potentially dangerous. The vines reminded me uncomfortably of the pythons that lived in the jungle. And there were leopards. I heard something rustle in the distance and twitched nervously before getting hold of myself. Carnivores were extremely rare and not likely to attack something as big as me. The only real danger was not being found. If I stayed where I was they would come and find me. Somehow. The people at the sanctuary would send out locals who would work their local magic and track me down.
I shook my head. Maybe Laura was right for an entirely different reason. Maybe I shouldn't leave the truck because on my own I was too stupid to live.
I decided to look around to see if I could find a more obvious trail. I didn't want to be like Robbie in the desert, walking when he should have stayed put, but ten minutes of casting around for landmarks couldn't hurt. I had a vague idea that I had been going east and downhill. The sun was too high for me to judge directions, so I just went uphill.
After five minutes of walking I paused to silently appreciate the rainforest's majesty and perceived, just barely, at the edge of my hearing, the welcome sound of burbling water. After a couple of false starts I worked out where it was coming from and found the stream that was its source. Some animal had been drinking at the stream but fled before I could see what it was. I wished I had, but it didn't matter. The important thing was I was no longer lost. Triumphant, feeling very intrepid indeed, I followed the water upstream until I found the village near the sanctuary.
I wasn't really relieved, because I had never really been nervous. The rainforest was too beautiful for me to be frightened. I was glad that I had been lost. How many chances would I ever get to know what it is like to be alone in the African rainforest? If I had been with anyone else I would have talked to them, would not have had the chance to understand how pure, how peaceful it was. I wished Laura had come. We could have sat quietly together and appreciated it. That would have been better than being alone. But anyone else would have spoiled it.
Which, in a nutshell, was my problem with the truck.
When I got back, our group was just saddling up for an expedition to visit the chimpanzees. It was an interesting place, I suppose. Laura and I maintained a cold silence. during the expedition. For once I wasn't annoyed by the presence of the usual crowd. It made it easy to keep my distance from her.
When we got back to the tent we shared she looked at me expectantly. I knew what she was waiting for. An apology and an admission that she was right.
"I'm tired," I lied, and closed my eyes.
We would have been fine. Things were tense and distant between us for the next week, but I think we were just a day or two from an emotional outpouring of apology and understanding and warmth. The fact it was our first fight made it a little more difficult to kiss and make up, that was all, because we didn't yet quite know how.
The backbreaking toil of the Ekok-Mamfe road just inside Cameroon, where we worked eight hours a day for three days to travel twenty-five miles, didn't help anyone's mood and certainly didn't make me want to stay with the truck a moment longer than necessary. It was the worst road in the world, featuring muddy potholes bigger than our truck and numerous detours that gave up on the road and went through raw jungle instead, but each day little Toyotas and Peugeots passed us with relative ease. When they got stuck, the eight or ten passengers jammed into each car had enough strength to simply get out and push their vehicle out of the mud. We had to dig and winch every time. It didn't help that both Steve and Morgan, our two strongest workers, had come down with malaria. Only Hallam and Nicole maintained anything like a good mood, and I suspected it was forced for the sake of the rest of us.
Laura and I maintained a cordial but cold détente throughout the Ekok-Mamfe ordeal. Then she twisted her ankle and couldn't climb Mount Cameroon. She gave me the blessing to go without her. I took it. The conversation was polite, but not warm.
The night I came back we shared a quick kiss and told each other our stories, but that was all. A slow thaw had already begun. I knew that she was just waiting for me to apologize to her and agree to stay with the truck as far as it went. I even knew by then that I would do just that. But, as stupid and petty and childish and sulky and self-centered as it was, I felt like I had been unfairly manipulated, and so I would hold out a little longer. Just a few more days.
The next day the truck went to Limbe, Cameroon, where we camped on the black volcanic sand of Mile Six Beach. Morgan, by now recovered from malaria, hitched down the road along with Lawrence, Claude and Michelle, to stay in hotels in town. But l
ater, after dark, he came back. He came back and found Laura alone on the beach. Alone because I wasn't with her. Alone because I was still pettily angry enough to decline her offer to come swimming. Because of that, because of me, Morgan found Laura alone, and killed her.
* * *
After the meeting with Hallam, Nicole, Steve, and Lawrence, I roved around a few of my favourite London haunts: watched some Covent Garden buskers, browsed idly through some Charing Cross Road bookstores, walked along some of the Embankment, saw a forgettable movie at the Roxy in Brixton, and took the Tube back to Earl's Court when the cold gray fog of jet lag began to close in on my mind. Despite the crowd of rowdy Spaniards that shared my corner of the hostel I slept like a baby.
I woke late and by the time I had eaten breakfast and read the Times and the Guardian it was two o'clock. I spent the afternoon playing tourist at the Tower of London, which was perhaps not an excellent choice considering how blades and torture implements had featured heavily in my dreams of late and the Tower had an entire wing devoted to medieval instruments of death and agony. By the time I got to the Pig and Whistle the other four were already there.
They'd already bought me a pint. I sat and lit up a cigarette. Hallam opened his mouth to say something but I shook my head and waved him quiet.
"I just wanted to say," I said, "that I don't even know if I've done the right thing by asking for your help, and honestly I'll be almost as glad to hear nos as yeses. It's… I don't know. It's crazy. I know it's crazy. Maybe I'm crazy. But one way or another, I'm not going to stop, I'm going to go after him. Any of you who are crazy enough to want to help me are welcome, but anyone who isn't, believe me, I completely understand."
"Oh, stop torturing yourself, you angst-ridden lout," Lawrence said impatiently. "That sick fucking bastard needs killing and I for one am very happy to help."
I turned to Hallam and Nicole.
"We thought this over pretty hard," Nicole said. "We wanted to come up with some brilliant alternative plan that would keep him locked away for life. But we can't imagine what that would be, and if you've been chewing on it for some time now and you can't think of it either, then I guess it doesn't exist. That old long arm of the law is too short for Morgan."
"He needs to be dealt with," Hallam said, "and it has to be us that do it, because nobody else will. Simple as that."
I turned to Steve. By now I was smiling.
He grinned back and said, "Course I'm with you, mate. Somebody has to keep the rest of you lot out of trouble. And next time come to us sooner. Bloody hell. Sounded like you could have used a little help down there in Indonesia."
"So we're off to Morocco," Steve said, a couple of pints later. "Bloody big place as I recall. Where did you have in mind for catching up with our old mate?"
"Todra Gorge," I said.
Four heads nodded slowly.
"Todra Gorge," Hallam repeated. "Perfect."
Chapter 24 The Pillars Of Hercules
Three days later Crown Air flew us from Luton airport, a little strip of a runway some distance north of London, to Gibraltar. It was the only flight that got us to the area for a reasonable price, and there was no need to pay two thousand pounds more to fly to Casablanca. We had plenty of time. Morgan had bought the special offer hook, line, sinker, and rod, and in two days' time he would fly into the country. Two days after that, if all went according to plan, he would arrive in Todra Gorge.
It had all been surprisingly easy to arrange. It helped that Nicole worked in a travel agency. We had put together a travel package that consisted of return airfare to Marrakesh, one night in Marrakesh, two nights in Todra Gorge, two days of camel-trekking in the desert, and two nights in Essouaira on the Atlantic coast. As far as the hotels knew, or Morgan for that matter, we were a new package-tour company called "Marrakesh Express Holidays" which specialized in Moroccan packages for solo travellers or couples. I spent a few hours in a London copy shop using their computers to create official-looking documentation, using samples from real companies as a guide. It was Nicole's friend Rebecca, thinking that we were arranging a surprise birthday party, who called Morgan and gave him the last-minute cancellation story. He accepted on the spot.
Hallam, Nicole, Steve, and Lawrence had all managed to get one of the four weeks of vacation allotted to British employees despite their minimal notice. We were due to fly back from Gibraltar one week from today. If all went even remotely according to plan that gave us ample time and opportunity.
Once in Gibraltar we got off the plane, picked up our bags, and hiked across the enormous military-sized runway, which actually had an traffic light on it to indicate when it was safe to cross. The Rock of Gibraltar loomed above us, taking up a good third of the sky.
"Remember the last time we got here?" Hallam asked.
"I remember being bloody happy to get here," Nicole said. "First place that wasn't bloody freezing. I'd had enough of sleeping in car parks for one life, thank you."
"Sleeping in Dover car park because of Steve's minor oversight," Lawrence added.
"Come on now, I think I've heard enough about that for one life," Steve objected. "How was I supposed to know that Australians need to get their visas in advance for bloody France?"
"That's true, how was he supposed to know?" Lawrence asked. "Nation of penal convicts, you can't expect them to be able to read."
"Well, at least we don't bloody well abuse our sheep for unnatural sexual practices the way you Kiwis do —"
The usual Anzac bickering continued well into town. We were in no rush; the ferry didn't leave for a good six hours yet. None of us wanted to climb up the Rock, we'd done it last time and it didn't seem worth a repeat. We made a few last-minute purchases, found a pub near the waterfront, and whiled away the afternoon with cigarettes and beer and a truckload of nostalgia.
I had met the Big Yellow Truck and its inhabitants for the first time within sight of the pub in which we now waited. The truck had set out from London but Rick and Michelle and myself had bypassed the first week and flown to Gibraltar. Rick and I did this in order to gain an extra week's worth of pay. Michelle, typically, had missed the rendezvous in London and had to scramble to catch up.
I had mixed emotions at first. The truck was older and creakier than I had expected. Its denizens had already bonded into a group, with their in-jokes and their newly formed couples, and I felt very much an outsider at first. But everyone seemed nice enough. Hallam and Nicole were friendly and easy-going and self-assured, and you could tell that there was steel beneath their laid-back exterior. Steve seemed like a stereotypical loud, boisterous, jovial Aussie lager lout at first. It took me some time to realize that that was only half his story. And Lawrence and I got on famously from the start, when I climbed onto the truck and he wordlessly offered me a beer. We fell into a conversation about the merits of San Miguel versus Kronenbourg. Then a dark-haired girl came over, draped an arm around Lawrence’s shoulder, and smiled at me.
"Hi," she said. "My name's Laura."
* * *
The trip was supposed to go straight across Africa to Kenya, but we separated in Cameroon. War had broken out in the Congo, the border to Chad was reportedly closed, but those were side issues. Laura's death had been shattering for everyone. Me most of all, of course, but it took the spirit, the joy of adventure, out of everyone. We stayed together only long enough to arrange our flights out of Cameroon. Most of the rest of the group flew to Kenya. A few gave up and went back to Europe. I alone flew to Zimbabwe. Partly to visit my family there. Mostly to escape the memories of Laura that crowded around every corner of the truck, every familiar face, like an army of ghosts. I was drinking heavily, every night. It didn't help.
On our last night, camped beside a dirt road just outside Douala, after a while it was just me, Hallam, Nicole, Steve, and Lawrence. Everyone else had said their tearful goodbyes and climbed into their tents for the last time. My mood was black despair, and when Nicole told me, gently, that it would eventual
ly get better, I flared up angrily.
"How would you know?" I demanded. "How the fuck would you know?"
"You're not the only person to have a terrible thing happen to them," she said quietly.
"Yeah? What happened to you?"
There was a moment of silence as Nicole considered my challenge. She exchanged glances with Hallam, and then she spoke.
"I had an older sister," she said. "Four years older than me. She had cystic fibrosis. You know what that is? It's when fibres grow in your lungs and slowly, over a period of many years, choke you to death. It starts young. Usually you're dead by twenty-one. But Helen was a fighter. She lasted until twenty-three. The last three years, the way she breathed, it was like living with Darth Vader. And she knew, of course, she knew all along that she was going to die soon. So she was angry. Furious. And sick, and weak, and demanding, and manipulative. And who could blame her? You know? Who could blame her? I'll tell you who. Her little sister. Try living in the same room as your dying sister for three years, trying not to hate her for dying and for being the center of everyone's life, especially yours. Will that do? Is that terrible enough for you?"
I had never seen Nicole lose control of her emotions, never seen her even faintly aggressive before. "I'm sorry," I muttered, looking down. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
"I am too," she said, immediately contrite. "Paul. That didn't come out right. I'm not angry at you. I'm not. I'm sorry."
There was a moment of silence.
"The worst thing that ever happened to me was in Bosnia," Hallam said. "Peacekeeping. A little town, I still can't pronounce it, one of those names that don't have any vowels. There was a woman there, about fifty years old. She was Serbian, but it didn't matter to her. She was the only one there who didn't go crazy, absolutely bugfuck crazy, about whether you were Serb or Croat or Bosnian. She lived all alone in this little house outside the village. I never really found out her story. I always had business to talk to her about. She'd spent a year in London, so she could translate. And we were busy. We were very busy. And one day she says that she thinks she knows where this local warlord is hiding. War criminal. Pretty penny-ante by Bosnian standards, we're not talking Srebrenica here, a little monster, but still a monster. She says she'll find out from her nephew, the next day." He paused. "We found her about a week later, about five miles from town. Her and her nephew both. What was left to them. Tied to a tree. It was… " Again he hesitated. "I'll spare you the details. It was ugly. It was extremely ugly." Another pause. "We never got the fucker either."