Benchere in Wonderland

by Gillis, Steven;

  Aaarggh.

  The children continue to peek from behind the half wall. Benchere pictures his Kadugli sculpture as she was before in the truck; no more than metal scraps and wires. He sees her as she is this evening and soon to be what again? Shit, he turns and runs back into the street.

  Harper shouts and tries to stop him. Abebe appears suddenly and also tries now, too. Together they call out, but Benchere pays no attention. Huffing, he runs with his bruised hip and mounts the base of the sculpture. The timer has already counted down past 12 … 11 … 10 … The explosive itself is big as a microwave, large enough to blow the sculpture into a thousand jagged pieces. Benchere bends to pick it up, imagines the shrapnel passing through him, tries to understand what is happening, how maybe this was what he wanted once but it isn’t anymore, and yet in the moment he can only think, Well, yes. Here I am.

  The charge is heavy in his hands. He says no prayer, says nothing more than “Fuck.” The timer clicks. Harper shouts. Benchere with eyes clenched, throws the explosive into the street.

  An eternity of the most absolute silence in the seconds before the children stand.

  Slowly, others who have run for cover peek from behind previously damaged walls and inside empty buildings. They, too, are surprised the device has not gone off. They look at the explosive, look for the soldiers, look at the sculpture and at Benchere. One by one they reappear, approach where Benchere remains at the base of his work. Everyone is quiet at first, unsure exactly what they’ve seen, though knowing they’ve seen something they surround the sculpture. Benchere tries to speak, tries to make sense of it all. Trembling, he rubs at the soreness in his hip, feels the racing of his heart, shakes his head then starts to laugh. Soon the others join him. There is music again and everyone is dancing and singing even wilder than before.

  WHEN THE SOLDIERS return, the reaction from the crowd is different. They do not scatter this time, but remain in the area, laughing and singing even as the soldiers push through. In the chaos, everyone is upbeat, convinced what happened with Benchere is providential and uniquely divined.

  Benchere resists attaching miracle status to his good fortune, is content to think of the charge not exploding in his hands as dumb luck and leaves it at that.

  The soldiers repair and remount the explosive before returning to their jeeps. From thirty feet away, Benchere resists rushing the sculpture again, understands there is just so much tempting of fate he can get away with. The others, too, seem to realize this. However heartened by their initial triumph, they are realistic now, and knowing what was gained from the sculpture can’t be stolen from them, they take shelter.

  Benchere runs behind the half wall and ducks down. When he peeks out a second later, the area is cleared. Relieved, he is glad he came, and begins to duck once more. Only here is the reality Abebe spoke of, the way of the world advancing from across the street; the drummer woman and one of the men racing toward the sculpture. The woman has black hair and luminous brown eyes. She mounts the base and tugs at the charge while Benchere in a panic stands and shouts, “No, no, no.” The woman turns only for an instant and smiles. The lamp on the rooftop has not come back on. Benchere in the dark howls as loud as he can, calls out just as the explosive gives way and the street is again bathed in light.

  19.

  STERN WITH ROSE, REVIEWS THEIR NOTES. “THE DAYS are a daze,” he says.

  Rose knows. “First one thing.”

  “And then oh brother.”

  INSIDE THE TRUCK, the following afternoon, Benchere, Harper and Abebe leave Kadugli for Abyei. Already the wire services have picked up the story, have presented theories regarding Benchere’s role and report the possibility of his having died in the blast. A harsh condemnation of al-Bashir is attached to every article. Salva Kiir is pleased. Benchere less so. He growls and slaps the dash, blames himself for the two deaths.

  “My fault,” he says. What did you expect? Who else is there to blame? The soldiers? al-Bashir? Kiir and Ani Risha? But they did not send you to Kadugli. He sits sullenly and says nothing for a long time, considers his arrogance, attributes the disaster to his ignoring what was right in front of him before he left Abyei and swears now, “I should not have come.”

  Abebe disagrees, has changed his opinion completely and says, “Shukran, bru. But did you not see?”

  IT TAKES TWO days to reach Abyei. Harper’s Maule is where they left it. Benchere and Harper say goodbye to Abebe, give him the few dollars they have in their pockets, stumble through some parting words before flying off.

  “HOME AGAIN, HOME again,” Rose goes with Stern out to the plane.

  “A sight for eye’s sore.”

  “These two have cat lives.”

  “Cat lives for sure.”

  IN THE LATE afternoon, three days before, the Africana gathered as Mund’s men waved their weapons. All threat and bluster, in defense of their friends the Africans mounted a charge, came with knives and sticks and handmade bows and arrows. Caught in the middle, Deyna’s group dove for cover. Rose drove the jeep down the hill. Stern stood in the front seat, the Savage FP10 assembled and held in one hand, a bullhorn in the other. He identified himself and Rose as the cavalry, the regional authority and officers from the United States of America. “If you fire another shot,” he shouted at Mund’s militia, “I will drop you like a tea cup.”

  A good line. “Like a tea cup,” Rose approved.

  Seeing the Africana in full assault, Dancy and Gabriella turned and ran. Dancy took an arrow in the ass, fell and flailed around on the ground. Certain he was about to die, he peed himself, offered in heavy whimpers all the current cash he had in reserve if someone would save him. Gabriella sprinted past her husband, headed out into the desert, running as far as the hills until Rose brought her back.

  In order to slow the attack, Stern fired a shot through the thigh of a man wielding a Wesson M&P45. The Africans drew up and Mund’s men raised their hands. Rose and Stern used zip ties for cuffs, put Mund’s group inside the newly built storefront while the Africana were told to pack and go. “Under the circumstances,” Stern confirms, “given who did what.”

  “The counterattack was warranted,” Rose adds.

  “A righteous aggression.”

  “A defense of allies.”

  “Pack and go seems fair.”

  Stern radioed for transportation, had Mund’s crew removed from camp, taken to hospitals and held by the local authorities in Tshane. Everyone else was encouraged to leave as well. By the time Benchere and Harper returned fifteen people remained: Deyna and Zooie, Julie and Naveed, the BAA students, Daimon and Linda and the Iowa three. As for the Africans, Rose says, “It’s fortuitous they only lost the one.”

  Brought into the shade, the boy was laid out on a tent tarp taken from the main group. Before Kayla and the others prepared the ground to bury the boy beneath the crusted sand of the desert, in a dry brown clay and loam, Deyna knelt and put the boy’s head in her lap, cradled him as Jazz paced back and forth, confused and wondering what to do.

  QUICKLY EVERYONE GATHERS. The BAA students rush over with the Iowa three. Jazz barks. Benchere looks about, finds Deyna, Zooie and Daimon. He notes the absence of the Africana, sees Mund and his followers are also gone. Stern and Rose are there. Staring back across the expanse of the three camps, Benchere spots the marker where the boy is buried and wonders, “What gives?”

  BY THE FIRE, later that night, Benchere sits with Deyna. His hip is bruised and still sore to the touch. He has on his BU sweatshirt and a clean pair of jeans. Deyna wears her leather jacket unzipped. The breeze this evening comes from the north. Deyna talks about the boy. Benchere talks about Kadugli. Both try and explain.

  “In the street,” Benchere describes the people dancing and singing, how they got him to join them, willingly and completely so. He resists telling her yet about his handling of the charge, does not say that as he lifted the explosive and prepared to toss it in the street, fully expecting the worst and wishing fo
r something else, that he thought of her. He repeats instead what Abebe said after the bomb went off, with Benchere grieving the two people killed, as he railed and wished he’d never left Abyei, Abebe said, Shukran, bru, did you not see?

  “I think the sentiment is valid,” Benchere tells Deyna. “But I can’t get there yet.”

  Deyna listens then says the one thing she can, as has been there since well before Benchere came to the desert, she answers, “You will.”

  KYLE AND CLOIE rent a U-haul, drive their stuff across town to Broad Street where friends help carry boxes and furniture inside. Construction on the other row houses is now complete and the remaining members of the cooperative also begin moving in. Cloie and Kyle greet them, provide everyone with a notebook containing contact information for each unit, an overview of the co-op’s mission, its guidelines and philosophy and what to expect. “Excellent, excellent,” the other members are excited and can’t wait to begin.

  AFTER MIDNIGHT, BENCHERE lies with Deyna in his tent. They are quiet now, in need of a moment. Deyna stretches her feet bare along Benchere’s shin. The cot is a snug fit. A fully extended spooning is required, with little room for error. Deyna has her left hip flat, her right hip up where Benchere rests his hand. Her back is to him, curled in. She looks at Jazz on the floor. Benchere says her name. The stillness soothes, allows them a chance to catch up. Alone, they address the personal, ask each other, “How are you?”

  ZOOIE LIES WITH Daimon in what is still their tent. Nearly all of their belongings are packed. The moon is lambent, shines white above what remains of the camp. The sculpted moons rise as sentries. Daimon whispers, asks Zooie if she is good. “Are you?”

  “I am,” she says this.

  Inside their sleeping bags combined, he feels her welcoming. Zooie holds Daimon close. She thinks about the Africana and the Munds, about Rose and Stern, about Benchere as he returned. A relief to have him back for sure. She thinks about the wells outside Serowe, about Marti here once, and still here now; the desert so vast it feels capable of holding everything. The internet hints of incidents Benchere experienced in Kadugli, but he has yet to tell her. Zooie thinks of this, too, of how crazy it all is and how much she also has to tell him.

  For a while she talks with Daimon about Providence, about what is to come and what they have planned. Their conversation serves as a gift for having traveled this far. Daimon whispers again and Zooie answers. Afterward, they slip even closer together, as wild thatch weaved, then sleep on sands made warm beneath them.

  LINDA GIVES HARPER the butt of her smoke. “Last one, sailor,” she straightens her shirt, looks for her boots, makes as if to go. Harper lies back, brings the cigarette to his lips, jokes of Linda’s need to always make a grand exit. “But of course I do,” she fills her reply with an exaggerated Tallulah Bankhead inflection.

  In the time Harper was gone, Linda monitored the news for updates. “Crazy man,” Linda said of Harper then, says the same now. When others asked, she denied her concern, said hers was nothing more than a casual interest. “Tell me honestly,” she wants to know now what really happened in Kadugli.

  Harper offers her the full account. Linda considers the narrative, pictures it all in cinematic hues.

  “My turn then,” Harper says. “I heard you missed me while I was gone.”

  “In your dreams, flyboy.”

  “In my dreams, definitely. Tell me,” he keeps his free hand behind his head, stretched out on the cot. “Why were you keeping tabs on the news so closely?”

  “Who says I was?”

  “Mindy and Heidi.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Linda pulls on her boot. “I was following the timeline is all. I just wanted to know how the story ends.”

  “Is that right, Darling?” Harper moves his hand in circles, creates a trail of smoke. The eternal question. “In that case,” he says, “come here and I will tell you.”

  ONCE DEYNA IS asleep, Benchere gets up and walks outside. Stern is sitting at the foot of the old Africana camp, where he and Rose have relocated their chairs, their table and tent and umbrella. The jeep is parked to the right of the store. Stern closes the lid on his computer as Benchere approaches, settles his arms behind his head.

  Benchere sits down in Rose’s chair, stretches his legs and rubs at his hip. Rose is inside the tent. The lantern is placed to Stern’s left. The light glows around the table. “Who’s there?” Rose calls out.

  “Our man,” Stern answers.

  “Man of the hour,” Rose in turn. “Can’t he sleep?”

  “Apparently not,” Stern reaches beneath his chair into a cooler, pulls out a bottle of water and tosses it to Benchere. “Grade A filtered,” he says. “Perks of the profession.”

  Benchere removes the cap and drinks.

  “So,” Stern again, wants to know, “what brings you out this late?”

  “Jetlag?” Rose now.

  “Could be.” Stern says, “It’s our job to make sense.” He repeats what he said at dinner, explains the reason he and Rose have spent the last ten weeks atop the hill, their training as assessment specialists sent in to monitor the effects of Benchere’s project.

  “Your influence,” Rose says.

  “And stimulus.”

  “Given your history.”

  “And celebrity.”

  “For example,” Rose lists the sculptures that have popped up in Somalia and Zimbabwe, Namibia and Yemen, Egypt, Uganda and Chad.

  Stern holds his hand toward the lantern, makes finger puppets in the sand. He talks about the other sculptures, says, “If not for these, you would not have been asked to fly to Abyei.”

  “And then drive to Kadugli.”

  “For whatever reason you chose to do that.”

  “You tell us,” Rose goes.

  “What exactly were you thinking?”

  The curve of Rose’s chair fits Benchere’s frame. He shifts his back, slips his sore hip into the groove. Still inside the tent, Rose says, “It is a risky proposition to truck around the mountains.”

  Stern calls it, “A radical departure.”

  Rose agrees, “Radical, yes.”

  Benchere lets go a loud sigh, accuses Rose and Stern of delivering a routine they’ve worked out in advance. “If you two spies are going to keep on like this,” he says, “I’ll find another place to clear my head.”

  “Spies is it?”

  “And what is this about clearing your head?”

  Stern asks, “Is there something on your mind?”

  “Something we should know?”

  “Tell us then,” Rose now pops his head out of the tent, his face red from sleep, his plump cheeks and thinning brown hair spread out as loose strings across the front of his scalp. Exposed this way to the lantern light, Rose appears like Stan Laurel without the moustache. Stern opens the lid on his computer again, finds the latest news from Kadugli, reads an updated account of all the troubles in South Sudan and elsewhere, while Rose attempts to provide perspective, asks Benchere, “Do you know how many coups there have been in Africa in the last 60 years?”

  “363,” Stern answers.

  “And do you know what came of 361 of these coups?” “Anarchy.”

  “Extended chaos.”

  “Constitutions thrown out and re-written.”

  “A promise of change.”

  “But no plan in place to effect change.”

  “Mauritania in 2008,” Rose lists.

  “Guinea in 2009.”

  “Niger in 2010.”

  “Mali now,” Stern continues. “Toure replaced by Ampoulo Boucoun. Tandja kicked to the curb by his own military.”

  “And now Riek Machar in South Sudan.”

  “In South Sudan, exactly.”

  “It’s an endless cycle,” Rose steps completely out of his tent, a green blanket wrapped around his shoulders. He brings the conversation back to Kadugli and says, “Africa’s been like this forever.”

  “Since Hector was a pup.”

/>   “Since before Homer and the Kingdom of Kush.”

  Benchere taps the arms of his chair, impatient now, sensing an ambush, he asks, “Do you boys have a point?”

  “Do we?” Stern reaches down and adjusts the flame of the lantern, says to Rose, “I suppose he wants to know why we’re telling him all this.”

  “I think he does.” Rose says, “It’s important to make sure you understand.”

  “These sculptures,” Stern says.

  “The two you made and then the rest.”

  “They muddy the waters.”

  “Stir the pot.”

  “Give people a reason to rally.”

  “You have to remember,” Rose says, “war is tricky business.”

  “For every Mau Mau there’s a dozen disasters.”

  “A dozen or more.”

  “Listen,” Benchere stops them, stands up and comes from the chair. He looks toward Rose and then at Stern and says, “You make a cute couple, but your chatter is just that.”

  “Is it?”

  “Honestly?”

  “But that stings.”

  “It really does.”

  “What have we missed?”

  “Have we said anything that isn’t true?”

  “Anything at all?”

  “We’d hate to think.”

  Rose walks around and sits in his chair, the blanket adjusted as a toga over one shoulder, across his chest and down to his thighs. He clarifies Stern’s statement with, “He doesn’t mean hate to think, he means hate to think.”

  Benchere flips his water bottle toward the table, folds his arms across his middle and says, “Are you done? If you’re trying to warn me off, if my going to Kadugli has you rattled and you’d like me to quit, you can save your breath.”

  “Can we now?”

  “And why is that?”