Abundance

by Fine, Michael;

  LURD, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, held most of Monrovia including the port where the Bright Moments would land. On August 14, 2006, at 11:30 in the morning, the day before the Bright Moments docked, a convoy of Nigerian troops under UNMIL’s command moved in to occupy the port once LURD withdrew.

  There was a rumor about rice in the warehouses. People gathered. They waited for rice.

  Two U.S. Navy helicopters from the USS Iwo Jima circled overhead and a single U.S. Marine Humvee, which held three men from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, joined the Nigerian convoy.

  There was a ceremony as the UN and UNMIL flags were raised over the port. LURD withdrew. The people who came for rice swarmed over the warehouses, stripping them. One of the U.S. helicopters landed on the pier. A unit of munitions experts who were U.S. Navy Seals deployed throughout the port and searched for mines, depth charges, other hidden explosives, and booby traps, and then returned to the helicopter, which took off over the ocean. The sky was grey. A light rain had begun to fall.

  By nightfall, most of the Nigerian troops withdrew, leaving only a small guard unit at the gate. Everyone was relieved that the day had passed without bloodshed. The Nigerians drank themselves silly. By the following morning all was quiet in this land God had abandoned. The Bright Moments slipped into port without a tug at 10:30 in the morning on the incoming tide when the sun was already bright and the air was hot and thick with the sea’s moisture. Knowing something—but still not enough—about the situation on the ground, the captain dropped a launch with four armed crew members. The Scottish harbor pilot eased the Bright Moments up against the third pier as the landing crew tied her fast to her berth, moving as quickly as they could, since all the harbor men had vanished and the stevedores and longshoremen had become militia or had been killed long ago. The AK-47s strapped over the shoulders of the landing crew were a wise but that day unnecessary precaution.

  Then the Bright Moments dropped a ramp. A few minutes later, seventy battered white vans full of wiry, thin, dark-skinned men drove in from the Monrovia road and parked near the ramp. The captain of the Bright Moments walked down the ramp and met a man from one of the vans. The captain and the man then got into that van, which gunned its engine and drove onto the ship. That van came down the ramp again a few moments later, and the wiry men left the vans, swarmed up the ramp and into the waiting ship.

  The cars on the Bright Moments started. They came off the ramp, one after the next, and were parked in seventy rows of ten cars each, seven hundred pickups and SUVs, all different.

  Carl, Levin, and Terrance were in the very last SUV, a red Toyota RAV with Massachusetts plates and a U.S. flag over the hood, a U.S. flag tied to the antenna, two U.S. flags flapping from poles that they had duct-taped behind the rear windows, and a U.S. flag tied to the back door over the spare tire. Terrance drove. Carl was in the passenger seat. Levin was in the back, so it looked like there were two soldiers escorting a U.S. diplomat or other dignitary. Maybe the red Toyota RAV looked like a diplomatic vehicle. Maybe. Maybe. But only if you didn’t know what the vehicles of U.S. dignitaries actually look like. If you didn’t look too close.

  The ramp rose off the pier and was pulled onto the ship. The lines were cast off. The men with AK-47s jumped off the pier into the launch, which pulled alongside of the ship. Cables were attached. The men in the launch climbed rope ladders up to the deck and the launch was hoisted onto the deck and secured. Then Bright Moments set sail.

  The vehicles on the pier restarted their engines. They drove off single file, a strange convoy of vans, SUVs, and four-wheel drive pickup trucks wending their way out of a destroyed port in a destroyed country before the so-called peacekeepers were even awake, passing only the two bribed soldiers at the gate, lounging on white plastic lawn chairs, their legs apart, and smoking cigarettes. When one of the men driving a pickup waved to them, one of the Nigerians waved back.

  A red RAV came roaring past the convoy to its left.

  Terrance hit the gas. He pulled to the left and passed the convoy the second he saw that they were using only one lane. The RAV whipped past the SUVs and pickups, moving so quickly that the air between them made a whooping sound, like the sound a train makes as it rattles over the crossties of the track.

  Now Terrance was free. Back home. Unchained. Terrance was a bird in a cage on board ship. There was no place for him there. There was nothing for him to do. The sailors were from all over the world—Filipinos, Malays, Indonesians, Somalis, Ethiopians, Cape Verdeans, and couple of Lebanese. When they weren’t working they huddled in groups of two or three who spoke the same language. They didn’t know what to make of Levin and Carl, and they looked at Terrance like he was from another planet. In the USA Terrance was invisible. On board ship they looked like they were afraid of him, as though he was going to bring them bad luck.

  Free at last. Oh man, Terrance thought. There is life after death. Driving this car. Important. Driving two big men. Flying past the convoy. Home. His own country. He never thought he would survive that place with the couch and broken screen door. His ma was good to him but not good like this.

  They flew past wrecked warehouses—one-story concrete buildings pockmarked by bullet holes with rusting metal roofs and weeds growing out of the cracks in the walls and near the roofline. Some of the warehouses were missing a wall. Others were missing a piece of roof, so a there was now a pile of rubble where a wall and a roof used to be. Still others were missing corners or sides, and there was underbrush growing out of the rubble where the walls had fallen in and the roof had collapsed.

  Carl, the thin black man, was on edge the whole time they were on the ship and maybe was less of a badass when he was on the ship, waiting to arrive. He sat on the computer, paced, used the ship to shore when they let him, and looked at maps. Once in a while he talked to Terrance, though, talked about Liberia, about who was who among the big men, about who Terrance knew around Buchanan, about the roads and the villages in the bush, like he was looking for that woman doctor in his mind’s eye every second. Terrance knew the villages and roads around Buchanan, but he didn’t know what places were called or how close or far apart they were in miles. He knew in time. Carl knew the country. He showed Terrance maps. Terrance had never seen maps before. You could see the badass come back into Carl when he looked at those maps. You could see him planning, measuring hours and days, pissed as hell that the boat was taking long, pissed more that they weren’t in Liberia yet, pissed when they got stuck at anchor waiting for a pilot and a place to berth. He paced and he talked to himself. He looked through you, not at you. That Carl. Terrance didn’t think he ever slept.

  But now Terrance was home. His land. His own country. His talk. Wild and free.

  They drove past old shipping containers that were torn open and lay on their sides, and they passed rusting trucks with their windshields smashed and their hoods raised.

  My place, Terrance thought. My life.

  Levin also turned out to be different than Terrance thought. Terrance knew Levin as the big doctor-man, big important man with a white coat who his ma put up on a pedestal. Levin was just an old preacher man. Those moves in the hospital that day when Levin busted him for breaking into his old car were bullshit moves. Levin didn’t have the whatfor to make any of that stick. Go to school. Read a book. Talky-talky about this and that. Not real life. Not the real world. A big man only in his own mind.

  On board ship, Levin read and walked around the deck, dressed up like he was going for a hike. And walked. Ten, twenty, thirty, fifty times around. He talked to Terrance, though. Pie in the sky shit. The history of Liberia. Slaves from Africa. Rum to someplace else. About colonies and rich people getting richer. The man did not seem to understand that everyone wants to be richer, that nothing happens if you just sit still. He didn’t get that if you ever want something in this life, you got to take it, that no one is going to be giving you whatever you want just because you want it. All he talked about wa
s people and villages, like there is anything special about being dirt poor and stuck in the middle of no place, a sitting duck for the next badass with a gun.

  All crazy-crazy talk. But Levin talked so much that some of the talk stayed in Terrance’s head. Liberia was a country, like the USA. You got to wonder why they have cars and television sets in the USA, and nobody in Liberia has nothing. You start thinking things that you didn’t plan to think.

  But you sure can make a preacher man like Levin grin if you ask him a question while he babbles on. He gets juiced if you say anything about what he was babbling about yesterday or the day before that.

  Terrance wanted to be in Buchanan already so he could grab the cash. You know what two thousand dollars is in LD? He would do right by them, by Carl and Levin, anyway. His ma would be proud. They were real people, big men in their own way. He and they were doing something righteous together, however crazy-crazy it was.

  The RAV turned right onto a larger road, and suddenly there were people everywhere. Women in red, yellow, blue, and green lapas carrying big multicolored bins on their heads. Men wearing tattered tee shirts. Children just milling about on the road. Tiny shops built out of tree branches lashed together, covered with rusted metal roofing scavenged from buildings that had collapsed, shops that sold roasted corn and bottles of yellow liquid and pots and pans.

  God is good, Terrance thought. People back on the street. My people. Alive again. Wild and free. Life after death.

  “How are we gonna get to Buchanan like this?” Carl said. “It’s gonna take a month.”

  “Dri tro pepl. Fla tro pepl. Na stop us na,” Terrance said. He shifted from second to third gear, and then shifted back to second again. Drive through people. Fly through people. No one is going to stop us.

  “You are one crazy motherfucker,” Levin said.

  “Crazy mutherfucka. Crazy, crazy, crazy,” Terrance said. The RAV swayed and jerked as Terrance steered around people and potholes.

  “Where are all these people from?” Levin said.

  “This Liberia. This Monrovia. Plenty-plenty people,” Terrance said.

  “There are always people in the street during the day,” Carl said. “People walk. Do business. Hang out. Walk to school. This is a people culture, not a car culture. Liberia is made of six-year-olds. These kids are everywhere and spend their days in the street.”

  “How long are we going to be in Monrovia?” Levin said.

  “Quick-quick,” Terrance said.

  All of a sudden Terrance realized that Levin and Carl had no idea what Liberia was really like and how hard it was going to be to get to Buchanan, find that woman doctor, and bring her home. Carl, maybe some idea. But Levin didn’t have a clue. All of a sudden Terrance realized that he was their teacher now, and that they needed him way more than he needed them.

  “Only as long as it takes to drive through,” Carl said. “Too long, if some of these damned people don’t get out of the road.”

  “Where are we headed?” Levin said.

  “Buchanan!” Terrance said. “Quick-quick. Got a missy to find and free-up.”

  “There’s a hotel a few miles down the road,” Carl said. “First stop. We might learn something there, if we get that far today.”

  “Damn. Is there a bar at this hotel?” Levin said. “I could use a beer. And I don’t like beer.”

  “There’s a bar,” Carl said. “And woman, usually.”

  “That’s a surprise, coming from the man who launched a thousand ships,” Levin said.

  “I’m good. We were on the boat four weeks. I got my eyes on the prize. But I’m not traveling alone.”

  “I’m staying with beer,” Levin said. “Or a good whiskey if they have it. What I really want is a stand-up shower and hot water that stays hot. What about the rogue?”

  Terrance grinned. “De badass rogue. Plenty-plenty women Buchanan,” he said. “We go Buchanan na.” I’m still a badass trouble maker. There are plenty of women in Buchanan. We are headed to Buchanan now.

  “Terrance you are a changed man,” Levin said. “That sea air must have done you some good.”

  “Na chan. Different. Ha ta fli. Go to ler ya. Ge ya ready. Ma ya meh. Ge ya invisible. Strong-strong. Invincible,” Terrance said. Not changed. Different. I have to fly. I have to teach you. I have to make you both men. Invisible. Strong. Invincible.

  “For today I’ll take invisible,” Levin said.

  “Strong-strong wouldn’t be bad,” Carl said. “And invincible. There is a lot of Africa between here and Julia, and a lot of Liberia between Julia and home.”

  They drove onto a bridge and saw a city on the other side of the river. Red roofs on low houses everywhere. The roofs looked like rice paddies seen from the air, red patches with trees poking out between them. Smoke rose over the houses and the streets. Some gray-green concrete buildings that were two, three, five, or ten stories tall pushed up between the red roofs.

  They crossed a broad brown river. A green hill covered with houses and buildings stood over the sea. White seabirds floated in the air under the bridge and glided over the river. Green sea grasses on the tidal flats waved in the sea breeze blowing in from the ocean. The air smelled dank, like wet earth, and bitter, of charcoal cooking fires. There were no boats on the river.

  The bridge was blocked by people, many of whom carried bundles and bowls on their head. They were making a mile an hour, maybe two. They would have made more progress walking.

  “Checkpoint,” Terrance said as soon as they crossed the bridge.

  Four concrete cubes set in the middle of the road. A blue pickup was parked to one side. Two soldiers stood on either side of the cars and trucks that threaded through an opening between the concrete blocks. The soldiers each carried a machine gun strapped over a shoulder. Each car in front of them rolled forward and stopped. The windows next to each passenger rolled down. Sometimes the soldiers leaned into the windows. Sometimes they opened the doors, or the driver got out to open the car’s trunk.

  “I got no papers,” Levin said. “I got a passport, but it’s expired.”

  “Day stop,” Terrance said. “Dey just checkin to pay de bill. Small-small bill. Na trouble.” This is a routine traffic stop. They just want a little money.

  “Gimme dash,” Terrance said. Give me small bills for a little bribe

  Carl reached into his pocket. “U.S. or LD?” American Dollars or Liberian Dollars?

  “U.S.,” Terrance said.

  Carl gave Terrance a dollar.

  “Na one. Gi fi. Coppa ta,” Terrance said. Not a one. Give me five. Money will talk.

  “I hope they buy the American flags,” Levin said. “This looks like a lousy place to get shot.”

  “Gi te. Quick-quick,” Terrance said. Give me a ten.

  Carl handed Terrance a ten-dollar bill as space opened in front of them. Terrance put the bill in the top pocket of his shirt and opened his window.

  The soldier on Carl’s side of the car let the barrel of his gun drag against the car window as the car slid forward, making a faint line in the red dust on the surface of the glass. Carl opened it. The soldier leaned over so he could see inside. The soldier next to Terrance also leaned into the car. His hand was on the grip and trigger of his gun, which he slid forward so the barrel, which had been strapped across his chest, was now pointing at Terrance.

  “USA,” Terrance said. “All ga. USA.” It’s all good. USA.

  “USA shit,” the soldier next to Terrance said.

  “Na tra ta,” Terrance said. “Bi ma he. Respe.” Stop talking trash. I’m driving an important man. He deserves your respect.

  ‘Respe earn. Sha respe Liberia,” the soldier said. Respect is earned. Please show some respect for the Republic of Liberia.

  The soldier on Carl’s side opened the rear door next to Levin. He leaned inside so he and Levin were face to face, and he pointed a finger at Levin.

  “Ya na USA. Ya boo-goo-man. Ya tricky.” The soldier next to Levin said.
You’re not USA. You are a boogeyman, trying to trick us. Terrance felt the RAV sink a little to one side with the soldier’s weight. He could smell liquor on the man’s breath.

  “Thank God. He bi man. Take time in life. Sha respe. He white heart,” Terrance said. Thank God (I’m telling the truth). He really is a big man. Be careful. Show respect. He is big enough to forgive you.

  “Who he?” the soldier next to Terrance said.

  “He Doctor Bill Levin, bi docta USA. Ya ga me. He pres from USA,” Terrance said. He is Doctor Bill Levin, and important Doctor from the USA. You are good men. Here is a present from the USA.

  He handed a bill out the window.

  The soldier on Terrance’s side took the bill with his left hand and let go of the gun so it hung from its shoulder strap. He reached over so he held the bill in both hands and pulled it tight, so the bill snapped in the sunlight.

  “You may go,” the soldier said in careful school English. He slammed the palm of his hand on the roof of the RAV, and the soldier leaning through the rear door backed out of the car, stood and closed the door. It clicked shut.

  Terrance moved the RAV forward, and then shifted into second gear. They were able to drive without obstruction for about a hundred yards before the crowd overwhelmed the street again.