by Dave Eggers
“My cousin home,” Cousin said. “Wife sick.”
Four and Cousin followed the medicine man into the tent, where they found him kneeling near Nine’s ashen head. After examining Nine and talking for a time with Cousin, the man uncapped a small plastic bottle he’d brought, full of milky liquid, and tried to bring it to Nine’s mouth. Nine was too weak to lift his head. The doctor dipped the bottle into a cloth and brought it to Nine’s lips.
The medicine man was exquisitely patient. Passing an ounce of the liquid into Nine’s mouth took half an hour. There was some faint indication that Nine’s body was accepting the fluid and was wanting more. The man continued for a spell, and was able to get a few more tablespoons past Nine’s lips.
Finally Nine closed his mouth and turned away. The medicine man spoke for a time to Cousin without looking at Four. His tone was indignant, as if he had been brought to the patient too late to be of use. He gestured at Nine and then Four, showing his lower teeth, all of them crooked and irate. After he was done speaking, Cousin turned to Four with sympathetic eyes, as if apologizing for the man’s strident tone.
“Man very sick,” Cousin said. “We go. My cousin come again.” Quickly Cousin and the medicine man got onto their motorcycle and, before Four could argue, the two men were gone.
Four was alone with Nine, whom he now understood to be a dying man. After sitting with him for a time in the tent, its walls aglow with the rising sun, he felt an unfamiliar strain on his eyes. His throat grew dry. He had not cried since he was a boy and would not cry now. But the helplessness overtook him. He could not leave Nine, but if he stayed, and Nine died here, what then? He would bury him by the road and continue, yes, but then Four would be fired, fined, shamed. How does one man let another man die while paving a road? The company would suffer grave damage to its reputation in the region and around the world. The deadline would be missed and the parade would be lost.
Four left the tent and stood on the road. A rooster wailed. A small airplane flew low and crossed the sky, trailing a neat white line that bled messily into the cloudless blue sky. Four decided that he would not leave Nine and would not begin working on the road again until a plan with Nine was in place. He could spare one day. And he believed that Medallion would return.
Four sat on the side of the black highway, his legs extended down the sloping shoulder. He installed his earphones and in the warming sun he grew calmer and more resigned. He could not do much to save Nine. If he was sick, it was entirely his own doing. Hundreds of thousands had died during this country’s civil war and the world had scarcely taken interest. Now some adventuring imbecile had acquired an elective sickness and was paying its price.
Four thought again about burying Nine. It would have to be near the road, he decided. Or would it be more honorable, and more in keeping with Nine’s embrace of the local people, to allow Medallion to dispose of him in some traditional manner? Four didn’t know what the local custom was. He hadn’t seen a graveyard that he could remember. Maybe they would burn him. There was no correct answer, Four thought, and anyway it hardly mattered. He would be dead, and no one Nine ever knew back home would come to a place like this to visit his burned or buried and decomposing flesh.
A dark object appeared, coming from the south, the heat of the road blurring its shape. When it drew closer Four could see it was a vehicle speeding toward him. He climbed into the cab of the RS-80 and waited, watching through the rearview camera. He expected the approaching vehicle to be another rebel truck, but as it approached he realized it was a blue sedan bearing small rebel flags. Its driver unknown behind tinted glass, it slowed as it came upon the paver, and finally stopped ten meters behind. The rear passenger door opened and a tall man in military dress emerged.
Four had retrieved his handgun and installed it within his jumpsuit. He chose to wait inside the vehicle. It underlined that he was a professional, an extension of the machine.
The military man’s face appeared below his window. He was a broad man of about forty wearing what appeared to be a mismatched uniform. His pants were green and his shirt and jacket were gray, his beret the same dull red Four had seen worn by the men on the jeep. There were three stars on his shoulders, and Four took him to be a general. His catlike eyes were large and wide set and stared at Four impassively until Four rolled down the window.
“I assume you are on schedule,” the man said. His voice was low and hoarse, as if he’d spent the previous night screaming. He scanned the road ahead, squinting into the distance as a pair of mirrored sunglasses, the lenses perfectly round and spotless, hung from the top buttonhole of his uniform.
“I am,” Four said.
“I assume you have not been bothered?” Now the general looked behind them, as if he might catch a glimpse of any past incidents that might have impeded the paving.
Four knew not to mention any encounters. Nothing good could come from involving a rebel commander in this work.
“Not at all,” Four said.
“Excellent,” the general said. “It was my job to make sure the roadbed was clear and without local interference. I am gratified that your work has proceeded without delay. The timing of the parade is crucial, as you know.”
“We’ll make the schedule,” Four said.
“You are alone. You have a partner, yes?”
“He is scouting ahead,” Four said. It was a small lie laden with small risk if the military man heard or saw evidence to the contrary.
“If you have any issues, you contact me,” the general said, and produced a business card with worn, rounded edges. He returned to his car, and his driver swerved around the RS-80 and sped up the unfinished roadway toward the capital.
* * *
—
It had not been two hours since Cousin and the medicine man had gone before Four again heard the high buzz of the motorcycle. This time, though, it was Medallion, and Four felt a great smile overtake his face. Medallion smiled, too, though his eyes and furrowed brow betrayed his confusion.
“Is the patient feeling better?” Medallion asked. He made his way toward the tent, and Four could tell he had misunderstood Four’s happiness.
“No, I don’t think so,” Four said. “I was just glad you came back.”
Medallion had changed his clothes and was now wearing a bright yellow dress shirt. He stopped at the tent door. “The medicine man told me your friend is so sick. It was too late for him to help, he said. I think we need antibiotics or stronger medicine from the woman at the clinic.” Medallion looked into the distance, his long fingers touching the sharp corners of his chin. He turned back to Four with a grim smile. “So I have been thinking of an idea. But it is not one you will approve of.”
“Please tell me,” Four said.
“The nurse might not want to give you the medicine, but there are other ways to get it.”
“Cousin?” Four asked, guessing that Cousin, an ex-soldier, might have some way to break into the clinic.
“Cousin? No. No,” Medallion said. “My cousin will not steal. But there are other men.” Medallion seemed to be weighing it in his mind, then exhaled quickly as a decision arrived to him. “I think it is the right thing,” he said. “It is the only way.”
* * *
—
Medallion left on the motorcycle to find his men, and Four was again alone with Nine. It was midday and the heat was stifling. Four had propped the tent’s door open and yet the air inside was humid with human decay.
“Medallion went to get medicine,” Four told Nine. Nine did not respond. Four did not bother saying anything else. All day Nine existed in a state of catatonia, his breathing weak and eyes half open. Four had not seen a man die, but Nine looked much like photos he had seen of men on their deathbeds, eyes retreating into the skull like independent creatures giving up before the larger battle was lost. His lips were chapped and
lined with a ghostly purple fringe.
Four could see no outcome but the death of this man, in this tent, and likely that day. But Medallion had been hopeful, had he not? When he had left, Medallion seemed optimistic that he could procure the medicine and that it would bring Nine back from his catatonia. Four had lost all bearings. He paced on the newly paved road as the forest’s insect hiss grew louder. He was aghast at himself, at what he had allowed to happen. He was counting on the medical assessment of a stranger who was not a doctor. The one medicine man had come and gone and had given Nine to the fates. But Medallion had created a raft of hope and Four found himself climbing onto it.
He thought of the schedule. If they could administer the medicine today, there was a chance Nine could be stabilized in a few days. There was still padding in the time line for Four to stay with him until he recovered. Then Medallion could bring Nine forth at some later date. They could meet in the capital.
In the late afternoon Four heard the high whine of Medallion’s motorcycle. He stood on the road and squinted into the distance. Medallion was not alone. There were two motorcycles, each carrying two men. They were coming toward Four, weaving like sparrows, and now Four could see the silhouettes of rifles extending high above their shoulders. Four had the brief and irrational thought that Medallion’s kindness all this time had been a deception, that he had been planning from the start to kill and rob him and Nine. As he had the day before, he envisioned diving into the tent to retrieve his pistol. He knew he should; it was only a reasonable precaution. But now that the motorcycles were only twenty meters away, Medallion was waving while Four stood defenseless.
“Good news!” Medallion roared. His eyes were bright, his mouth a toothy adolescent smile. Behind him, his passenger now grinned, too. The men on the other bike, one of whom was carrying the rifle, were less effusive. They all pulled up before Four, and the passengers jumped off. Medallion set the kickstand of his bike, and from his passenger he retrieved two plastic bags and held them over his head.
“We were successful,” he said. He crouched down on the road and emptied the bags. There were large bottles of Imodium and ibuprofen, a roll of gauze and packets of plasma and intravenous fluid and a half-dozen syringes. There were bottles of ciprofloxacin and Bactrim, and a vial of amoxicillin. “We got whatever we could take without it being noticed. And look,” he said. One of the men gave him a sheaf of papers bound together with tape and with the title TREATING TROPICAL DISEASES. “We have all we need,” he said. “A very fruitful adventure.”
Four thanked them all, shaking each man’s hand, and having no idea what should happen next. He considered asking how it was that they got these things, but thought perhaps they would not want him to know.
“Okay, let us begin,” Medallion said.
Ignoring the papers they’d stolen, Medallion crawled into the tent, filled a needle with amoxicillin and injected Nine through his swollen right arm. At the touch of the needle, Nine’s eyes clenched almost imperceptibly.
“We will provide him with another shot in six hours,” Medallion said. “I think he will continue living.”
* * *
—
Medallion’s men stayed for dinner. Four provided them with a buffet of his nutrition bars and freeze-dried meals, which the men ate with polite curiosity but without visible approval. Medallion explained that the men preferred not to be known by name, given the theft they had performed, and Four thanked them again for their courage and sacrifice. He knew he would have to compensate them at some point, but trusted that Medallion would work out the particulars.
When they were finishing their meals, Medallion told the story of how they came to acquire the medicine.
“This man here”—and he pointed to the smallest of the collaborators, a wiry man of about twenty-five, with his two front teeth missing from his otherwise handsome face—“his cousin is the guard at the clinic.”
This cousin had no keys to the clinic, Medallion explained, but patrolled the compound, watching the front gate. He knew that the blond woman and her two staff members often left the compound to do their work in the nearby communities. So it was just a matter of waiting until they left. When they did, the guard notified Medallion’s two other men, one of whom was clever with locks. He was not, in the end, able to open the lock on the front door, but was able to jimmy one of the windows. The third man was the only one who could read the labels in their language, so he climbed through the open window, and found that the locker containing the medicine was held tight with a padlock. Again the lockpicker was called upon. He climbed through the window, too.
“All the while the guard was watching,” Medallion said, smiling, “but now he was guarding against the nurse!” When he translated what he’d said to Four, all four men burst into peals of laughter.
“This part was very difficult, and so it was very important to have this man,” Medallion said, indicating the lockpicker. He seemed a very serene man, convinced of his competence.
The lock on the medicine closet was a large one, very difficult to pick, Medallion explained, so they knew they would have to use bolt cutters. They cut the lock, and in the locker, Medallion found the appropriate medicines and the booklet explaining the treatment of tropical illnesses. He was careful not to take too much of any one thing, and to take from the back of the closet, leaving the superficial appearance of rows of medicine undisturbed, a closet untouched.
“But how did we make sure they don’t know that the closet had been violated?” Medallion asked, raising an eyebrow. More and more, Four was realizing that Medallion was a leader, an entertainer, a man with great charm. “This is where this man is so clever,” Medallion said. “He brought with him a number of padlocks, and chose the one that looked most like the one he had cut. Then he attached the lock to the door, locked it and left the key to this lock inside the lock. Our hope is that the nurse and her staff will assume that one of them had simply forgotten to take the key out.”
“But what about the other key?” Four asked. “At least one of the clinic’s staff has the real key to the original lock, right? The broken one? Won’t they try this old key on the new lock, and find that they don’t match?”
“Yes, but our new arrangement will confuse them long enough,” Medallion said. “And because inside the closet it will look like nothing is missing, they will not be alarmed. Any other thief would take everything from the closet and would provoke much worry.”
Four thought about this, agreeing that the entire operation was so strange, subtle and counterintuitive that the nurse and her staff would be flummoxed beyond action.
“And anyway,” Medallion said, “that woman will be gone in a month and someone else will take her place, and no one will remember any of this.”
* * *
—
After dinner the men stood and got ready to leave. Medallion took Four aside. “These men should be compensated. What is your plan?”
Four had a good deal of local currency in his pack, in the pocket next to his weapons, and he had a second cache inside the RS-80. He pictured himself getting the money and retrieving his pistol at the same time, in the unlikely event the negotiations deteriorated. But he had no idea of the scale for compensation for such a deed.
“How much, do you think?” he asked.
“It is not money these men want. As you know, the local currency is not stable. The men are more interested in your tents,” Medallion said. “These are not possible to buy in our country. The way they defy mosquitoes and are so quick to be assembled is very appealing to them. The men say they would like one of the tents.”
“But we need these tents,” Four said. “There are two of us, and two tents. And Nine is still very ill.”
“But two men can fit and be comfortable in one tent,” Medallion said. “These men have taken a great risk to get this medicine.” He seemed to be
speaking now not only for the other men, but expressing his own view.
Four refused, offering half of the local currency he had in his pack. He wasn’t sure of its purchasing power, but he had been told it was enough to feed himself and Nine for the duration of their work in the country.
Medallion returned to the men. He spoke to them in a low murmur, and suddenly there was a burst of loud and outraged voices. The men who had seemed so friendly and self-effacing at dinner were now livid and in the violet light took on a menacing cast.
Medallion walked back to Four. “I am afraid this cannot be a negotiation. These men insist this trade is very fair to you. They have done you a great service by saving the life of your friend, and you will not give them a tent.” Again Medallion seemed to depart from simple translation and looked at Four with his own eyes and gave voice to his own thoughts.
In the silence that followed, Medallion put his hand on Four’s shoulder and spoke quietly. “This is the right thing.”
And so Four emptied the contents of his tent and put his things into the one Nine occupied. He folded the tent, stuffed it into its duffel bag and handed it to Medallion, who handed it to the locksmith. All feelings of goodwill were gone.
“Actually there is one more thing,” Medallion said then, seeming a bit embarrassed to be amending the arrangement. “These men might be able to find your quad. If they do, they would like to keep it.”
“I don’t understand,” Four said, though as he said the words, he did understand.
“If you have the opportunity,” Medallion said, “you don’t report it missing. It’s gone now, and these men might eventually have it. And when you go back home you can get another. Does that sound fair?”
Four stared into Medallion’s eyes. “I don’t want any of this anymore,” he said.
“Okay,” Medallion said. “Then we go.”
The men mounted their motorcycles, and Medallion arranged himself on the back of one. “I will return tomorrow,” he said, and they sped away.