by Dan Pearce
I pulled against my camel’s reigns and stopped the caravan. One final jingle sounded as my riches bounced and rested. “What is your name, woman?” I said as I looked down at her.
She looked up at me and attempted to speak, but the dryness of her mouth prohibited her from doing so at a decibel level I could hear. I instructed a member of my party to give water to the family and another to give them bread. I didn’t know exactly how, but I knew this moment and this woman were an important part of my journey. They were all that mattered just then.
I lowered myself from my camel and took the container holding the water from the hands of the man who fetched it. I held the water carrier to the woman’s mouth and helped to support her neck as she drank, then did the same for the girl. The boy insisted on holding the pouch himself and gulped a great deal of it down. I took the water again and gave more to the woman. Eventually she found enough energy to speak more clearly. “I am Nada,” she said. “Thank you, stranger.”
I looked back at my caravan and at all the hanging cargo. I certainly had no need of so much. I let go of Nada’s neck and approached the hanging satchel of the camel which had followed behind me. I loosened its binding and pulled a leather sack of coins from it, then held it up to the woman. It was heavy. “Can you carry this?” I asked the woman. She attempted to reach her hand for it, but soon dropped it with fatigue. I turned my attention to the boy. “Can you carry this?” He nodded his head and I placed the sack upon the ground in front of him. “Show me how strong you are,” I said.
He lifted the bag a few inches from the ground and dropped it again, spilling a few of the coins from within. “It is fine,” I told him and then instructed the same man that had fetched the water to take the coins, along with the family, and hire a caretaker I could trust to nurse them all back to health. “You will easily catch-up with us when your task is done,” I told him, after a worried look appeared on his face. “Take care of this for me now. I trust you to do this.”
Nada again attempted to reach a hand up to me, and again failed. “Nada, it is illogical for one man to have so much while a mother and her children starve. Take this money and buy a home and live the remainder of your life without the fear of never knowing where you will find your next crumbs.” Two tears began to form at the base of her sunken eyes. I grabbed the container of water and helped her sip more of it. “The name of this man is Brux,” I said as she drank. “I trust him with you and your children and your money. Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” she said. “What is your name, stranger?” Nada said.
“I am Cain.”
“Cain.”
“Yes, now go with Brux. You and your children need far more than what I can give you from the backs of my camels.”
Her tears welled big enough that they each broke free and slid down the length of her skullish cheeks. I nodded to Brux who scooped two arms beneath the young girl and lifted her. “Help your mother,” Brux instructed the boy, who immediately stood and reached to pull his mother to her feet. Realizing they were too weak to walk any real distance, I summoned the help of two other men in my group, and we transferred and redistributed the cargo from one camel to the backs of the animal I had been riding. “I will walk for now,” I told my men. We carefully loaded Nada and her daughter atop the unburdened camel, and Brux led them all toward the city while they nibbled at the small bits of bread their stomachs could handle.
I quietly kept my focus on them until they had disappeared around a building in the distance. This is happiness, I remember thinking.
My men each stood wearing looks which spanned from confusion to appreciation when I put my attention back on them. Such generosity was something they hadn’t witnessed before, and it was not lost on them that I had just given the woman far more than any of them had seen in their own short lifetimes. “Think nothing of it. I just wanted this camel to have an easier time walking,” I said with a wink, as I grabbed my camel’s lead from the hand of the youngest in our group. “Let’s all of us walk together for a while,” I told them. “We may see more if we do not sit so high.”
We didn’t walk far before we came across another in dire need. The man shared with me that he hadn’t eaten but a nibble of a rotting rat in four days. Judging him by his condition, I believed what he said and gave him enough money to build a roof to sleep under and food to fill his belly for an entire harvest.
After that man there was another. And then another woman. And then two young orphaned sisters. We stopped and administered help to each of them and then to several others.
With each purse full of coins I gave, or each object I gifted for those people to take and sell, I felt a an increasingly greater high which somehow equaled that same weightless and unburdened feeling that the Humplant had always given me, and I could not get enough of that feeling. Unlike that week in Vim when I distributed my fortune, this distribution came from a place that didn’t need to appease any conscience, and so it lifted a previously unknown burden from me that was so much bigger than myself. I wasn’t just giving my money and things to other people; I was giving them my desired security for my upcoming journey. I was giving them the ease I would have of finding food and lodgings along the way. I was giving them all that which would make my life, and the lives of my men, comfortable and easy even as we ventured through the unknown.
At that point I had sent three of my men away to find care or shelter for those we helped who lacked the energy to do so themselves. The men who remained watched each time we stopped and became increasingly worried as I continued to halt our caravan and give to those who had nothing. My men became even more worried as I aimed our walk back toward the center of the city instead of towards its outskirts. Their looks said first what their words eventually said aloud. “Please save some for our journey, Cain,” a man called Shon finally pled.
I turned and looked the man up and down who had finally dared say what I knew they all must have been thinking. He fit the description of everything I had looked for when recruiting all of my men. He was young, probably eighteen. He had been poor his entire life, and never had journeyed beyond the borders of Shedet. It was important to me that my men were humble and appreciative, and that they knew poverty enough that it wouldn’t cause panic among them should we find ourselves destitute at some point. He was filled with excitement at the thought of discovering a bigger world that he did not know. He also was honest. I tested this by leaving Shon alone in a room next to a table covered in coins. Certainly, I wouldn’t notice if one of them went missing. I am guessing that is the thought many of those who applied to be in my caravan must have had, since only a handful of them didn’t steal a coin or two while I was out of the room.
“Tell me of your family, Shon,” I said after he shared his concern on behalf of the group.
He looked at me sheepishly. “My father met death as he built the temple. My mother sings in the city for coins.”
“Do you have a brother or a sister?” I asked.
“I have two sisters.”
“Your sisters and your mother. Are they often hungry?”
He nodded. “Even when they eat they are still hungry.”
His words immediately made me think of Dishon, who had told me the exact same thing more than once. “A starving person,” he once told me, “is still starving even if you fill his belly one time.”
I summoned the remaining men to approach me. “Do you all remember that the only real plan was to have no plan as we made this journey?”
They nodded and grunted in agreement.
“Though it is the first day, for some reason this is what is supposed to happen. I thought I would need this wealth. I thought I would need all of you. The truth that rides upon the wind of this moment is telling me that none of this is true.”
“Are we not taking the journey then?” one now-desperate man asked. The others eagerly turned to me with the same desire for a reply. They all had given up their security to come with me.
“I am taking the journey alone,” I told them. “And I am taking it without my riches. I will give two camels and a quarter bag full of coins to any man from this group who spends this day with me, giving what I have left to those living in Shedet who have none.”
A single camel would bring them each enough money to feed their families for the next several years. The coins would give them security far beyond that. Each of them eagerly agreed to my unexpected offer, and at my instruction they loaded one camel with enough coins to distribute evenly between them, as well as coins for the others who would soon return. When they finished, there was still enough wealth that it took many more hours to distribute. We did it in a way that brought little attention to our efforts, and eventually all but a tiny portion of it was gone.
Having been released of the continued worry for their own immediate futures, my seven men each began to appreciate that same high I had not stopped feeling since Brux had taken Nada and her two children away. We helped dozens by the time no shiny things were left to give, and even through the complete exhaustion now consumed my men, they all smiled with that smile that only the truly happy are ever capable of wearing.
With seven extra camels I now didn’t need, I instructed them to each take one and find one last person to help. I would wait there with their coins and their camels and we would end the day together.
They each led a camel away, and after an hour they had all returned empty-handed. I gave them what was promised to them, and one by one they led their own camels away to live the comfort of a life they had never before been afforded.
Shon was the last of them to leave. He let the others choose their camels first and stayed behind to make sure I didn’t need any further assistance. I gave him the last remaining camel as a gesture of my gratitude and assured him I was okay.
It was only when Shon and his camels disappeared around a corner that I realized I was now a very poor man. I had left only that which I could carry on my person and had saved only a tiny handful of coins for myself. I laughed at the irony of it all and began my walk to the borders of Shedet. As I walked, the genuine smile on my face grew. There was no jingle of coins now. There were no grunting camel squawks. There were no baskets and bags filled with weeks’ worth of food and water.
There was only me, along with a dried sheep stomach pouch with enough water to get me to tomorrow, my book, and a meal’s worth of food. Yet somehow, I felt I was the richest man in Egypt.
CHAPTER 25
My unplanned journey from Shedet presented me with a handful of hints and possible clues, but I never did find whatever answer it was Osman once found. I think back often to those many years in the wilderness, though, and I have only fond memories of the lessons I learned during that trying journey.
It was thoughts of that journey, and of Vim, and of Shedet, and of Osman, and of sex and drugs and Unbato, and of love now gone which accompanied me to sleep after Dishon asked if I thought real happiness actually exists.
He and I didn’t openly discuss happiness that night in Ocongote after he asked the loaded question that I knew was one of the most complex and difficult concepts in human existence. Happiness is such a moving target for all people, and to me it seems there are very few universal truths to it that can be applied to all people. I have come to believe that happiness simply exists any time one compares his current moment with the best and hardest moments of his past and is satisfied with where he currently finds himself.
I slept deeply that night, despite the muggy hotness of our room or the discomfort of the beds. It was almost ten when the need to pee finally pushed me into groggy consciousness. I reached to put my arm around Samantha but met only empty space. I opened my eyes and remembered where I was. Peru. My thoughts drifted back to Samantha, and I quickly launched out of bed as the urgent need to get going and get back to her flooded me.
Dishon was already awake, freshly showered and dressed in the new clothes I found for him the night before. “There was actually hot water today,” he said as I stood looking around the room deciding what my first action of the day should be. “It was a fucking miracle!” I smiled. “But don’t worry. I used it all.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” I asked as I noticed how late in the morning it was. “I wanted to be out of here hours ago.”
“Relax. You needed as much sleep as possible. No more sleeping now, remember?” He was right. It was officially too risky to sleep again before I got back to Samantha.
I paid the old woman who rented the room to us fifty sols to store my locked suitcase and promised her another fifty if it was there when I returned. As risky as it was, I left my passport and travel documents inside since the road through Ausangat were rumored to be an even riskier option. I crammed two fresh pairs of socks and a fresh pair of underwear into a backpack I brought with me, and then we stopped at a corner store and loaded the remaining compartments with water and snacks. I hired a Rickshaw operator to carry us to the much-discussed road we would be traveling, and twenty minutes later we lost sight of Ocongote as we disappeared into the mountains.
By our best calculations, the village was 17 miles in. On flat ground that distance would require less than a day, but our pace was much slower on this road. The hike was mostly uphill. At many points, it required scrambling over large rocks or cautiously crossing the small river that, for the most part, ran alongside it. There were many points when the canyon narrowed and the trail diverted away from the river completely, requiring us to hike the sides of steep slopes to find the paths others had blazed in order to get through. My phone’s GPS didn’t function there, and so we were left to guess how far we had traveled based on the tens of thousands of miles we each had walked before. As the canyon walls filled with shadows and the sun disappeared from sight, we agreed that we had come at least twelve miles, but not more than thirteen.
We had seen only one other on the road; a lonely wanderer who had no interest in speaking with us. Ausangat was peaceful and beautiful, thick with giant trees and thriving nature. I had all but forgotten of the dangers rumored to exist until Dishon reminded me. “Keep an eye out and an ear open,” he said. “If we hear anything suspicious at all, we hide and wait it out.”
Dusk precedes darkness much sooner in the mountains than it does in more open places. In Ocongote, the sun still wouldn’t touch down on the horizon for a couple hours. That same sun was gobbled up by the peaks surrounding us, taking the color of the world with it. The trees became pitch black and seemed to push closer together. The air dropped several degrees. The chirps of birds and screams of chipmunks lessened until they disappeared completely. “What exactly do people fear here?” I asked Dishon. The world had grown so quiet and the air so conducive that I could whisper and be well-heard while we walked.
“I don’t know. There are many rumors,” he said. “Some say these mountains are filled with the ghosts of those who once died on the mountain. Some say there is a great nocturnal beast who walks on two legs and devours any who pass in the darkness. Some say it is aborigines who kill as a reminder that they still own the mountains.”
“What do you think?”
“If I had to guess,” Dishon said as the road led into a pile of stones taller than our heads, “there are people here who don’t want to be found.” He grunted heavily as he grabbed the edge of a rock and pulled his skinny body up. “Kind of like how that bitch Tashibag has never wanted to be found.”
Dishon continued to climb the rocks and stood to catch his breath once he reached the top. I grabbed hold of the same ledge he had first chosen and began climbing as well. “Do you ever wonder if Tashibag is…” I began to ask as I raised myself higher. I never finished my question, though, as the air wisped unnaturally above me, and I looked up at my friend to see a stick with tail feathers suddenly protruding from his abdomen.
Dishon grunted loudly and immediately cupped his hands around the arrow. “Dishon,” I yelled as another arrow suddenly buried itself in his thigh and another i
nto the right side of his chest. I frantically looked in each direction but saw no one in the shadows. Dishon collapsed to his knees and looked down at me in disbelief, then gurgled as his mouth filled with blood. That was when the arrows started hitting me.
Still halfway up the rock something felt like it slammed into the back of my calf as an arrow sank into my own leg. I lost my grip on the rocks and fell backwards, landing hard on my back. The weight of the fall pushed the arrow completely through my leg and with breath difficult to find, I looked down to see the arrow pointed straight into the sky. Its fleshy blood-smeared tip was made of black stone. Again, I looked into the blackness around me and could see nothing. I tried to look for Dishon, but only saw his limp hand hanging over the edge ten or so feet above me, silhouetted against the still blue sky.