And she brought dinner.
“Oh God,” Carl said. “Pizza strips and Del’s Lemonade. You trying to kill me with bad food? Finish what Charles Taylor started and failed at?”
“Could have worse,” Naomi said. “I could have brought doughboys from Iggy’s. Pizza is a vegetable. Comfort food. Good for the soul. Bad for the body. The body is temporary. The soul is forever.”
They sat on the deck behind Naomi’s kitchen and living room next to a stream that ran in a low place, a fold in the hillside where the builders couldn’t put more condos because the ground was too uneven. It was summer. The stream was reduced to a trickle, and the water was green with algae in the brackish pools. Scrub trees, black locusts, and buckeyes, with the occasional white birch and maple, grew along the stream, all spindly and with more branches than leaves. But they made enough of a screen that you couldn’t quite see into the windows of the condos across the divide. You couldn’t hear the breeze in the leaves, though you could imagine it. There was the constant hum of air-conditioners. Each unit had an air-conditioner that looked exactly alike and they all emitted a pitched hum that had a high and a low note that was both irritating because it was there and calming because it was so damned constant.
“Pretty crazy in Liberia?” Naomi said.
“Crazy enough,” Carl said. “What’s happening here?”
“That what goes around keeps coming around. Different day, same stuff, same struggle,” Naomi said.
“Your love life got flares and rockets yet?” Carl said.
“I am waiting for the ultimate black man to appear in Providence, Rhode Island, take me out to dinner, and then sweep me off my feet. Or the ultimate white man,” Naomi said. “And it is quiet around here.”
“That’s good,” Carl said. “There is enough craziness in Liberia to fill the globe. We don’t need no more of that craziness here.”
“So what happened in Liberia? You ducked that question,” Naomi said.
“I duck a lot of questions. You read the news. They got a little war on. Nasty guy running the country, which is filled with other nasty guys. Rebels from the north moving south. Rebels from the south moving north. All sorts of people with guns working both sides against the middle. They don’t care who is in the way. I was in between, in the right place at exactly the wrong time. Ergo, the U.S. Marines and semper fi. I got pulled out when the going got rough. Easy for Americans. Much harder for Liberians,” Carl said.
“What’s next for you?”
“Maybe stay with Water for Power and head south to Central America or the Caribbean. Maybe head to someplace else, back to Africa or Asia. It’s July. Too late for the GREs or the LSATs. I don’t have the energy for graduate school or law school. Anyway, when you get done with school like that you have to be a college professor or a lawyer. Can you see me teaching at Brown and hitting on the sophomores? Not my gig.”
“You could stay in Rhode Island and make some trouble here. I could use a little real family close by just because or in case of the other kind of trouble,” Naomi said.
“Rhode Island? I don’t think so,” Carl said. “Too white. Too suburban. Too good old boy Italian and Irish for me. Though a little color and a little attitude might be good for this place. But too much history for me, Naomi. I have full faith and trust in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, may they lock the door and throw away the key. I don’t know how you do it. Stay so close by. I’m not expecting any trouble. I just don’t want to be anywhere near here. Cursed ground. More for you than for me. You’re what brings me back. Nothing else. What keeps you here?” Carl said.
“This is not about me,” Naomi said. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you want. If you want to drive me to work and pick me up, you can have the BMW and lose the rental.”
“Now who’s ducking questions?” Carl said. “Naomi, I’m going back.”
“Going back where?”
“To Liberia.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Naomi said. “You can go back in six months when their little war is over. It took a battle group of the U.S. Navy and a landing party of the U.S. Marines to get you out. Give George Bush his due. Give it a rest.”
“I don’t think so. Somebody got left behind,” Carl said.
“Somebody isn’t your problem. That’s what the State Department is for. Besides, how are you going to get there? I doubt Delta is ready when you are. Airlines don’t fly into war zones. Their planes get shot down. U.S. citizens can’t go there now,” Naomi said.
“People get in. It’s not hard to cross borders,” Carl said.
“And what do you do when you get there? Assuming you can find your way across a border. Hitchhike? No rental car counter at the river you have to wade across in the middle of the night,” Naomi said. “And who is somebody?”
“Just somebody,” Carl said.
“Tell me more about that somebody, please. Do you have a wife and a kid stashed in a village? Or four wives?” Naomi said.
“No. It’s not like that. There’s a doctor. She got lifted by a militia the last day I was there. The marines left her behind. I thought they were going to get her, but then she wasn’t with us at the end, when they brought everyone on board ship, and it’s driving me crazy,” Carl said.
“You were crazy already. This doctor is a woman, yes?” Naomi said.
“This doctor is a woman, yes,” Carl said.
“And there is more to it than that?” Naomi said.
“Not much more. Some more. Very little more,” Carl said.
“But enough more that you want to trade a safe, cool, dry house in Lincoln, Rhode Island, for a war zone in Liberia where you have no place being and risk you ass and your life with no viable plan and no reasonable hope of doing anything other than getting yourself killed?”
“At least nothing has changed,” Carl said. “I’m the same guy. Not corrupted by success or fame.”
“Change is good,” Naomi said. “Especially changing away from doing things that are just stupid and dangerous. Tell me more about this doctor.”
“Not much to tell. She actually spent some time in Rhode Island, at your very own hospital. Pretty pie in the sky. She likes saving little kids in the bush from dread diseases. She’s good in bed. What more do you need to know?” Carl said.
“A lot of women like saving little kids. Some are even good in bed. What’s her name? I like calling women by their names. Particularly women my only brother is talking about risking his life for,” Naomi said.
“Julia. Julia Richmond,” Carl said.
“Never heard of her.”
“She was a resident.”
“I never remember the residents. Big egos. Little impact. They think they are important. And color-blind. But that’s another story. Why Dr. Richmond?” Naomi said.
“No why. I didn’t think this was anything,” Carl said. “I was thinking of it as convenient. Situational.”
“Some not anything if my brother is thinking about this woman at all ten minutes after she’s out of his sight. And?” Naomi said.
“No and either. Look, I told her some of it,” Carl said.
“We don’t even talk about it,” Naomi said. “Maybe it’s better she stays in Liberia.”
“Not the whole thing. Not your part. I didn’t say anything about you,” Carl said. “We keep talking around it. My part and your part, I’m not sure that’s so smart.”
“Speak for yourself,” Naomi said.
“I live in abstractions. I live in ideas, in movements, in vaguely promoting change in the lives of others halfway around the globe,” Carl said. “I duck my own life.”
“Get more therapy. Therapy is cheap. They threw enough at us. Liberia in the middle of a war is idiocy, not therapy,” Naomi said.
“I’m done with that kind of talking,” Carl said. “No one else can live your life.”
“So are you in love with Dr. Richmond?”
“I don’t know what love is,” Carl said. “I know
I love you. I loved your mother. Maybe I even loved him once, though it tears me up to admit it. This is different. I talked to her, Naomi. I can’t even really talk to myself. I can’t just leave her out there,” Carl said.
“Let’s go into the house,” Naomi said. “Thank God there is no way for you to get to Liberia. I hate doctors and their egos and their stupid institutional racism. And Liberia. And things the way they are. And changing.”
“Change is good, remember?” Carl said. He stood up and piled his glass and silverware on a plate. “Somebody taught me to clean up after myself.”
“Change is just change,” Naomi said. She opened the door. “That was your mother and your grandmother who taught you to clean up after yourself. Women who knew about cleaning and who believed that God is good.”
“The god of cleaning up after yourself is good,” Carl said. “My mother and my grandmother taught me that women are good, and that you better listen to them or the god of cleaning up after yourself might strike you down.”
Naomi closed the sliding glass door behind them and locked it.
The air-conditioners hummed in the evening air, though they could only hear Naomi’s air-conditioner now. The sun had set. Bats were emerging from corners, attics, and the crawl spaces of storage sheds. They swooped and twisted, barely visible against the dark sky. The water trickled from pool to pool, and a barn owl hooted in one of the black locust trees that lined the stream.
Chapter Six
Julia Richmond. Grand Bassa County, Liberia. July 15, 16, and 17, 2003
THE PICKUP CLIMBED A HILL. THE GUN BARREL PUSHED DEEPER INTO JULIA’S RIBS, BUT THE pain and pressure shifted. It still hurt to breathe, but it hurt differently.
The sign at the side of the road said “Members Only.” It was a small sign, near to the ground, painted in gold cursive lettering that looked elegant. There was a checkpoint at the top of the hill where the road opened into a parking lot, and two soldiers with AK-47s in fatigues and wearing red berets stood between green barriers—the ping-pong tables pulled out from near the swimming pool lay on their sides.
They were waved through the checkpoint. Two helicopters sat on the tarmac, one blue and one camouflage green. The pickup drove through the crowded parking lot, through camouflage green Hummers and troop transports, Toyota pickups, Jeep Commandos, beat-up Toyota and Honda SUVs, the pale blue Land Cruisers of the Liberian Police, and a few white UN Land Cruisers, so Julia couldn’t tell who ran this place. They parked next to the building.
“You come now,” Yellow Bandanna said.
The driver got out. Julia leaned away from the gun barrel. The cold steel touched her skin but wasn’t jammed under her ribs now.
Then Yellow Bandanna thrust the barrel into her ribs again.
“You. Now,” he said.
Julia slid her legs under the steering wheel. She used her bound hands to push herself out of the truck. Yellow Bandanna followed and closed the truck door behind him.
The boys in the truck whistled and hooted.
“Missy, missy, missy. Be my missy now,” said a boy wearing pajamas, a print of little bears from a story book.
Then the boy raised his rifle and sighted down its barrel at Julia, who was three or four inches from the muzzle of the gun.
One slightest movement and it ended. Julia’s heart pounded. She couldn’t see the boy’s face. All she could see was dark hole in the center of the barrel of that gun.
The boys in the back of the truck all stood and called to her. They leaned over the truck and put their hands all over her.
But Yellow Bandanna grabbed Julia by the collar and pushed her in front of him so that he was standing between Julia and the gun. It didn’t matter. The boy kept her in his sights. Julia saw the gun aimed at her head follow her.
As Yellow Bandanna pushed her forward, Julia saw the explosion that would drive a bullet toward her. She imagined the bullet. She heard the crack of the gunshot. She saw the bullet leaving the barrel of the gun, the brief burst of flame from the end of the barrel as the bullet spewed forward, and imagined the bullet’s entry through the back of her skull. Then she pictured the bullet’s path as it tore through brain tissue and blood vessels until that bullet was flattened by hitting the inside of her skull, and then Julia saw the hot flattened lead destroy more brain tissue yet before it came to rest.
She stopped at the door. Her hands were bound. Yellow Bandanna pulled the metal and glass door open for her. He shoved her through with his bent right knee and another hard push at the back of her neck.
Julia saw her reflection in the glass door. Her face and arms were black from grease and ash, and her eyebrows had been singed off. Her shirt and shorts were covered with red dust. Her dirty black hair had come loose, so she looked like a hiker after two months in the woods.
Yellow Bandanna opened another door and pushed Julia inside.
Once there had been a bar, a lounge, and a television set, a place where men would come to watch the World Cup, where people sat together, drinking, talking, sometimes singing, and cheering a goal or a great defensive play. Now there were armed boys standing at the bar, armed boys lying on the floor, and a stack of gray ammunition boxes lettered with languages not English stacked next to the bar. Girls with short cropped hair but also dressed in fatigues flitted between the boys. A boom box cranked, the bass rattling the windows. The room stank of gun grease, gunpowder, sweat, beer, cigarette and pot-smoke, all mixed together. More boxes were stacked on the patio where the ping-pong table used to be. Bigger, longer boxes, painted olive green.
Someone had strung camouflage netting across a rope hung from the ceiling and that divided the big club room in half. The furniture had been pushed to one corner, to the back and left, and was all jammed together next to the big window that looked out on the swimming pool and the distant grey-green hills.
A big man in green fatigues with very dark skin, a broad face, and a broad hooked nose stood in the center of the room with a knot of men and boys around him, waiting their turn to talk.
The big man was six-two or six-three and heavyset. He was bald, dark-skinned, and self-assured, with large hands and powerful shoulders—big, not trim. He smiled when he talked—a coy, controlled smile that kept you from knowing what he was thinking. He was in charge and he knew it. He wanted to make sure that everyone else knew that as well.
They waited their turn.
The big man spoke to each soldier-boy, each of whom peeled off from the group as soon as the big man was finished. Julia thought she heard American English, but the voices ran together and she couldn’t be sure.
Then the big man turned to Julia and Yellow Bandana.
“What treasure have you brought me today, Daniweil?” the big man said. American English. Midwest accent. He moved his eyes from Yellow Bandanna to Julia, looking her up and down.
“Surprised?” the big man said.
“Chicago?” Julia said.
“Well done. St. Paul first. Then Chicago. My parents are Liberian. Born here. Grew up in the States,” the big man said. “Make yourself comfortable. You aren’t going anywhere quick-quick.”
The big man reached into Julia’s top pocket and pulled out her cell phone. He laid the cell phone in his palm as if he were holding a bug that he wanted to inspect. He closed his fist around the cell phone and crushed it. When he opened his hand the pieces fell one by one to the ground.
Then he pulled a hunting knife with the word “Winchester” engraved on its blade from his belt. He lifted Julia’s hands and jabbed the blade between them. Then he cut the cloth that bound her hands together with a single swift jerk, all while looking straight into her eyes, from which she did not turn away.
He held both her hands in one of his. His hand was twice the size of hers, warm and powerful. He dropped her left hand but kept her right hand in his grip.
“Dr. Richmond, I presume?” the big man said. “The cell phone wasn’t much good anyway. No service here. No service in Buchanan eithe
r, anymore.”
“Who are you? What am I doing here?” Julia said.
“Sorry about your men and the Land Cruiser. War sucks. But it sucks worse if you lose.”
“What are you doing here? Who are you?” Julia said.
“Call me Jonathan. I’m the reason you’re still alive. You are a pediatrician working at Buchanan Hospital for Merlin. From California. Trained at Brown. I know everything about you, but you don’t even know my name or who is who in this war.”
“I don’t pay a lot of attention to politics.”
Jonathan turned Julia’s hand over in his, and then pulled her forward, twisting as he did so, so that her hand and arm were under his. Then he walked with Julia to the bay windows, walking arm in arm like a couple coming onto the dance floor for the next dance at a charity ball.
“What am I doing here?” Julia said. “I need to be in Buchanan. They need me at the hospital now.”
“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’m now figuring out how to turn lemons into lemonade. You’re the lemon. I’m the lemonade.”
“And Chicago?”
“Forget about Chicago. Don’t let the accent fool you. Maybe you noticed. I’m not Uncle Sam,” Jonathan said. “Or Uncle Tom.” He stretched his arm out in the light and turned it from side to side.
“I’m not your friend or your babysitter. I’ve got a war to win, and I’ve got to figure out how I can use your inconvenient presence here to win it. At the moment, I’m wondering if a battalion of your marines are going to appear at my doorstep looking for you. Your marines will land on the beach in Buchanan tomorrow and evacuate Americans and Europeans who are here with NGOs. They just might come looking for you. I’d much rather they didn’t arrive on my doorstep unannounced. But I don’t think they know you’re here.”
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