by Dave Eggers
Four realized that technically he would not be leaving the RS-80 unattended. Nine, a member of the company staff, was remaining with it. Again he cursed Nine and the situation he’d created. He could not let him die, which would ultimately reflect on Four. He had no choice but to seek help, but to do so he would be riding into the wilderness with a stranger and would be leaving the RS-80, an invaluable machine, and would be leaving Nine, too. If Four was wrong about Medallion, it would take no time at all for Medallion and his companion to dispose of both Four and Nine and do whatever they saw fit with the paver and all within it—its weapons and cash.
“How far is it?” Four asked.
“Not far,” Medallion said. He was already on the motorcycle.
Four strode to the tent and ducked inside. Again he was assaulted by the smell, its feral violence. He held his breath and saw that Nine looked very much like a corpse, with his hands at his side, his palms open and pale. His face was oily and inexpressive. Four crawled into the tent, his nose in his shirt, and put his finger under Nine’s nostrils. He felt the faintest of exhalations. Nine’s powerlessness, the way he had pulled the efforts of all these men toward his rescue, brought a new fire to Four’s lungs.
“Did you give our medicine away?” he asked.
Nine made no indication he could hear or respond.
“If you stole it, you committed a crime. And you might have sealed your own fate. You could die. Do you understand? Do you understand the consequences of your actions?”
Nine’s eyes remained closed. Four left the tent.
“This is my cousin,” Medallion said, and Four shook the hand of Medallion’s cousin. Cousin bore little resemblance to Medallion. Where Medallion was tall and thin, with high cheekbones and feline eyes, Cousin was shorter, rounder, with a slablike face and small round eyes tucked into his flesh like the buttons of a pillow. He said nothing to Four.
“He doesn’t speak much of your language,” Medallion explained. “But he will watch over the man and the vehicle. He was a soldier in the war. He is very capable.”
Medallion started the motorcycle and inched up on the seat, making room for Four. Four swung his leg over the seat, and Medallion sped into the woods, winding through low trees on a path that Four could not discern.
The land was uneven and dry, and the ride very rough. Medallion routinely had to slow and walk the bike around a tight turn or down a sudden slide. Four’s arms and legs routinely scraped against the brittle branches of the low scrub. Thirty minutes had passed when Four asked if they were getting close.
“Not far,” Medallion said.
It was another hour, the sun having set and night coming quickly, when they saw, up ahead, a broken mosaic of light visible through the woods. Medallion turned to Four, making sure he’d seen it.
“The clinic.”
When they came upon it, Four saw that the building was no bigger than a trailer, but by the standards of the region it was lavish. The building was new, the grounds well kept. A satellite dish stood on the roof.
They approached the compound, their feet crunching on a path of small polished stones. Inside, two people were watching soccer on a large screen. Medallion knocked on the door, producing a tinny sound. Neither figure inside moved. Medallion knocked again.
“Come back in an hour,” a woman’s voice said. “Barça’s on.” And then she let out a low, breathy laugh. Four peered through the door and saw a blond-headed figure sitting on the couch facing the television. He could not see her face. On the overstuffed chair next to her, a man’s dark-haired head sat in profile, looking both at her and the game, as if unsure if she truly planned to ignore the visitors.
“Excuse me?” Medallion said.
“We’re closed!” she said.
Four assumed she was joking, that she would get up now and come to the door. But the woman stayed where she was and resumed watching the television. Medallion turned to Four, as if to confirm they should proceed. Four nodded.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” Medallion said. “We have a sick person here.”
“How sick?” she asked, but still did not get up. The other person in the room said nothing. Again he looked to the door and back to the blond woman before returning his rattled attention to the game.
“We don’t know, miss,” Medallion said. “He has not moved for two days.”
“Food poisoning, probably,” she said.
“I fear it’s worse,” Medallion said. “The symptoms are like typhoid.”
Finally she turned to see who was speaking to her. She glanced at Four, then leveled her gaze at Medallion. “He looks okay to me.”
“This is not the sick person,” Medallion said.
The woman had turned back to the television. “Where is he, then?” she asked.
“About ten kilometers west,” Medallion said.
“Our truck’s broken,” she said.
“I can take you to him,” Medallion said.
“Who is he?” she asked.
“He is a worker for the new road. This is the other worker,” Medallion said, nodding to Four. “They are building the highway to the capital.”
Four assumed this information would motivate the woman to quicker movement, but it had the opposite effect.
“Well, we’re not here to treat visiting construction workers. Our mandate is indigenous women’s reproductive education and the health of newborns and children.” She took a tall plastic container of water that had been sitting on the table in front of her and drank from it.
“But I have seen you in the villages helping others,” Medallion said. “You gave medicine to my male cousin.”
Now the woman stood and came to the screen door. She was no more than thirty, with a smooth oval face and small eyes, a blond bob gripping tight to her skull like a helmet. Her T-shirt recommended eating a certain kind of kale. She remained on the other side of the screen, her face gray behind the tight aluminum grid.
“That was incidental,” she said. “I have no authorization to treat the tummy aches of foreign contractors. And it’s likely not medicable. And I can’t travel ten kilometers to do it.”
Now the other aid worker came to the door and stood behind her. He was tall and was dressed like a missionary, in black pants and a white dress shirt.
“Missus,” Medallion said. “Actually it is not necessary for you to travel to the patient. If you give us antibiotics we will administer them ourselves. We both have experience in this.”
Now a sly smile overtook the woman’s mouth. “This is starting to sound fishy,” she said. “Conveniently, the patient doesn’t come with you. You don’t want me to see him, but you want me to give you drugs. And you’ll administer them yourself?” Her eyes were alight with mirth. “Who are you planning to sell them to, just out of curiosity? Oh, and tell me the price you’re getting. I should probably know what the market will bear.”
Medallion looked at the ground and spoke in an indignant rumble. “Missus. We are not selling the drugs.”
Four decided it was time for him to step in. “Doctor,” he said, though he guessed she was not a doctor.
“I’m not a doctor,” she said. “And how did you get past the guard?”
“The guard recognized the urgency of this situation,” Medallion said.
“Nurse—” Four began.
“I’m not a nurse,” she said.
“Please!” Medallion barked. His eyes were wide with rage. Four reached over to calm him, holding Medallion’s forearm with his fingertips. The physician’s assistant had crossed her arms in front of her, a show of defiance, but her jaw trembled.
“Okay,” Four said, calmly, “we are part of a major construction concern in the region—”
“So fly in your own doctor,” she said.
“We can do that next time. But for now—�
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“But for now you thought you’d shake down the local clinic first? What is the name of your company?” She said this as though she intended to issue an official complaint to Four’s CEO.
Now Four was finished with niceties. “Miss. You’re being bizarrely unreasonable. We’re in a region devoid of doctors or medicine. But you have medicine. A man is very ill not far from here. Your Hippocratic oath, I believe, compels you to help this man. You stand in dereliction of every ethical norm.”
The woman was no longer smiling. “If you come back here again, I’ll report you to the local police, the authorities in the capital and the UN. You’ll be swimming in inquiries for years, and I know how unhappy your corporate overlords will be with that kind of scrutiny.”
She closed the screen door and then a second, opaque door within. She pulled the shades on the window, and all light from the building was extinguished but for the green glow of the television.
XIII
MEDALLION DROVE SLOWER on the way back, and soon Four realized that he was running out of gas. The motorcycle sputtered into a hacking cough and expired.
“I’m sorry,” Medallion said. “I thought we would make it.”
Four asked how far they had to go, and Medallion guessed it would be an hour’s walk. They took turns pushing the bike on the path that without the motorcycle’s headlight was nearly invisible. Medallion trudged steadily forward, occasionally looking up at the sky’s cloudcover, as if hoping for a break that would reveal the stars or moon and provide some orientation.
“I’m very sorry,” Medallion said again. “Watch your step.”
The path dipped where it crossed the cracked expanse of a seasonal stream.
“No, no. You’ve been a great help. I want you to know that I appreciate it,” Four said.
“I am selfish in my help,” Medallion said. “I want this road finished myself. My wife has been ill, did I tell you this? She has a problem in the liver. The capital is the only place that can help her. She needs maybe a transplant. Before the road, it would be four days’ drive in a crowded bus to the hospital in the city. She could not do this. Now, though, when the road is done I can take her in my tuk-tuk. Do you smoke?”
Four said he did not. Medallion laughed.
“I thought maybe I could borrow a cigarette from you. I think your friend might have cigarettes, no?”
“I don’t know,” Four said. “I don’t think so.”
“Ah, look,” Medallion said, and pointed to the moon emerging from the clouds. With the landscape now illuminated Medallion adjusted their course slightly, and continued pushing the motorcycle.
“Actually the boy is fine,” Medallion said. “The one you carried. But he has something wrong with his mind. During the war there were so many medical issues for the babies. The midwives and nurses went north for jobs, so the babies here were born without help, and problems happened. So many mysterious sicknesses.”
“Yesterday I tried to help a woman who was carrying water,” Four said. “She got scared and ran away.”
“Yes, she would probably not want this. Actually it is not acceptable for a man like you to talk to a woman alone this way. There were so many ugly things that happen during the fighting. The men, they take the women many times. They just take them.”
“They raped them?”
“Yes, they rape them.”
Medallion smiled at Four, as if apologizing for these rapes, for having to inform Four about them.
“Most of the young women go hiding. But if they are found, they are raped. Sometimes it is for enjoyment of the soldiers. Sometimes it is for punishment of some man. They rape the wife or sister or daughter.”
Four didn’t want to talk about this anymore. But his silence implied to Medallion that he should elaborate.
“So the woman you met with the water, she is worried about what you will do. She doesn’t want to be raped by you. It is likely she was raped before. Sometimes it is a neighbor who rapes. He has always desired the woman and sees the war as a way to have her. Actually my wife was raped by a neighbor this way. And then the neighbor was killed. I’m sorry the woman with the water did not accept your help.”
“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry for your wife.”
“They could hide here,” Medallion said loudly, sweeping his hand across the rough terrain, thick with foliage and outcroppings. “It helped many of us in the war. Men and children, too. We became millions hiding. There are so few roads, such narrow paths. The government army could not get to us, could not find us. But now we are ready to move into this century. There is still some old hatred between us and them, but the road, I think, will be the end of that. The road brings understanding, I think. Have you been to this country before?”
Four said he had not.
“When the work is done, will you return?” Medallion asked. “You have a home with my wife and me.”
Four had never returned to the site of any job he’d completed. “No,” he said. “I won’t be back.”
“Yes, yes.” Medallion laughed. “God loves an honest man. Watch your feet.”
A large plastic bag lay in their path. Four had almost stepped on it. It was the same kind of black bag he had seen all over the countryside. “What’s inside these bags?” Four asked. “I’ve seen them everywhere.”
“The waste of war,” Medallion said dismissively. “But I have a related question for you.”
“Okay.”
“It is delicate, I think.”
Medallion walked in silence for a few moments, his face pained, as if trying to find the words.
“What I would like to ask,” he said, finally, “is do you think you could help me with a university degree?”
Four was flummoxed. “Help you get a degree? I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I have heard about ways to get a degree from universities through correspondence,” Medallion said. “I have to stay here, but perhaps I can study at one of your universities this way, with letters in the mail. Do you understand? Is this a possibility?”
Four told him that when he returned home he would try to send Medallion whatever information he could.
“Very good, very good,” Medallion said.
“But I have to ask you,” Four said, “how is that question related to the bags of waste I asked about?”
“Without the war and its waste,” Medallion explained, “you would not be here.”
XIV
WHEN THEY RETURNED to the RS-80, there was an amber glow inside Nine’s tent and the silhouette of a sitting man. Four had the momentary impression that Nine had recovered, but when he entered, Four found Cousin kneeling above Nine, his palm on his chest. He spoke quickly to Medallion.
“He is checking his heart,” Medallion said. “He was a medic for part of the war.”
Though Four was dubious about Cousin’s ability to assess Four’s heart with such a method, he found himself waiting for a diagnosis. Playing his part, Cousin listened for a moment and then nodded. “Bad,” Cousin said.
“You speak my language,” Four noted, surprised.
“Some,” Cousin said.
“We received no help from the clinic,” Medallion told him.
“Go back tomorrow,” Cousin said firmly. “She change her mind.”
“No. She’ll only grow more determined not to help us,” Four said. “She’ll only grow more stubborn and aggressive.”
Cousin spoke quickly to Medallion, and Medallion seemed to agree. “He says we can find local medicine,” Medallion said. “There are some good people. Perhaps fifteen kilometers from here. Near the marshes.”
They all knelt around Nine.
“We go tonight and come back tomorrow,” Medallion said, and crawled out of the tent. Four followed. Medallion and Cousin siphoned a few liters of gasol
ine from the tuk-tuk and transferred it into the motorcycle’s tank. Four did not want to be alone with Nine. His condition was likely to deteriorate. He had no kit, no tools, no expertise. But he could not express these fears to the two men helping. Medallion started up the motorcycle and Cousin got on behind him.
“You keep the tuk-tuk here,” Medallion said, and gave Four the key to the vehicle. “If the man needs help you follow the road back to us. I think you know the road, yes?” He smiled.
Four watched Medallion and Cousin speed away. He returned to the tent and fought the smell and sat cross-legged above Nine, startled by the extraordinary trust Medallion had just demonstrated. He had left the tuk-tuk. He was spending a night on the road to find a medicine man.
Four had attributed to Medallion so many nefarious motives and plans, but now Medallion had shown himself to be the better man. In any place in the world there were criminals, there were schemers and cowards. And everywhere there were men like Medallion, ignited by purpose. The burden of his wrongful suspicions, the weight of his shallow judgments, brought Four to a state of exhaustion, and though he had planned to set up his own tent, he found himself unable to muster the strength. He lay down with his head at Nine’s feet and let sleep take him.
XV
IN THE MORNING, Nine’s condition was unchanged. Four sat above him, checking his breath, which was still shallow. He leaned down, smelling Four for signs of jaundice or kidney failure, and found his odor normal enough for a sick man who had not bathed in days.
The high-pitched whine of a motorcycle overtook the air. Four left the tent and waited on the road until he saw Cousin speeding toward him. When the motorcycle drew closer, Four could see that there was another man with him. It was not Medallion.
Cousin parked the bike and shook Four’s hand. The second man, far older than Cousin, was wearing a long robe and a fedora. He carried a modern nylon backpack.
“Medicine,” Cousin said, indicating the older man, though the man did not pause for Four. He strode directly to the tent and crawled inside.