by Robin Winter
"I've friends in the Umuahia area," she said. "A Doctor Gilman and the Sisters of the Holy Ghost. Foreign nationals working in the Biafran hospital."
"But you're no doctor. You have binoculars and a camera in your car. My boys tear your car seats out while we speak. What will they find?"
"Birds," Wilton said. "Stuffed specimens packed in silica sand and arsenic. Notebooks of sketches and behavior. Lists. Paintings. I hope they don't get the paintings wet."
"Lists." The major sat back down, his forehead lined. "We don't like lists. I knew your father. He taught me all those years ago to speak the Queen's English. I don't want to shoot his daughter."
"You will do your duty," Wilton said. "But I think you won't shoot a student of birds. An American student of birds."
"Thank God, that neither you nor your father ever gave up American citizenship. But you could be deported."
"Almost as bad." She felt the relief she dared not show weaken her knees.
"You look like you're headed away from Umuahia," he said.
"A side trip." Wilton glanced again at the windows scribbled with rain, glimpsing the shadows of passing men. "Do you remember that my father had an old friend, Frederick Brown, a little southwest of here?"
Brown had taken on his former master's name. Not an uncommon happening in past times.
"Yes." He continued to frown.
"Nothing bad happened to him or his family? You frown, do you have news?"
"I can't afford to believe you," he said. "Miss Wilton, you cannot be so naïve as you say and I knew your father. You told my men you want only to leave Biafra, so you contradict yourself from the start."
A rattle on the door and at the major's acknowledgement Corporal Emmaus came in, his arms full of two stacked boxes, followed by two other men with more. They laid their finds upon the floor.
"What have we here?"
"Evidence," the corporal said. "And dead birds."
The major tilted his head agreeing.
"She is an ornithologist," he said. "I knew her father and he encouraged her in this study. What else besides dead birds?"
"Papers, sir. Notebooks, camera, films and glasses." He indicated the binoculars, the prize in his collection.
At the major's gesture Corporal Emmaus lifted the largest box to the desk and opened the top. An indrawn breath and Wilton tightened another degree. The major reached in and drew out a full sheet of meticulously painted bird feet, about three times life size, all colors, each claw and scale lovingly delineated. Next, a purple turacou, painted among the branches of a fruit tree, its smiling beak agape as though with laughter.
"My God," the major said. "Miss Wilton, you can surely paint."
He pulled out another, rising to his feet so that he could look into the bottom of the box. One by one he drew the paintings out, a few spotted with rain, but most in perfect condition, the birds in lively poses, feeding, courting and quarreling on the paper. Orioles, Seedeaters, Storks and Weavers. Corporal Emmaus's breath hissed between his teeth.
"What is your reading, Corporal?" the major asked.
"There is no lie about the birds, sir," Corporal Emmaus said, at attention again. He glanced at her as if now he saw a human being.
"What about the camera, the glasses?"
"We impound, sir, develop the films, check the nature of the photography."
"And the woman?"
"Imprison until the films are developed, sir."
"Very good then," the major said. "Let us make it so."
After the door closed, the major sat back down. "I've wasted enough time on a stray expatriate ornithologist for one day." He smiled. "You will let me keep the painting of the large violet bird for my fee?"
"Of course, sir," Wilton said. "The Lady Ross's Turacou. It would be my pleasure."
They took her to a classroom, gave her a square blanket, a sandwich of dry bread spread with Marmite and a plastic cup of water. The boredom punished her though she tried to use the time in making plans, to make the gray rainlit day plod by. Once the rain stopped, she listened for birds and identified a Senegal Coucal, a set of sunbirds and several sparrows by song.
A while later a soldier set a bucket inside with a small set of square folded English toilet tissue that resembled waxed paper. Remarkably courteous, but she waited until full dark to make use of it, ever conscious of the shadow of a soldier that slanted over the gray glass of the locked louvered window. At night she slept, surprisingly cold against the blanket and concrete, waking with the dawn at the growing chorus of small birds beyond her window. Mannikins, buntings, and too many finches to tell apart. The shadow of the soldier still hung on the glass, but she noted that he was a different height from yesterday's.
She amused herself for a while trying to dissect the seesawing sound of a copper sunbird flock from the chitter of sparrows. Finally, the door opened and Corporal Emmaus stood framed in the opening.
"You are free to go," he said. "I regret to inform you that your films are all spoilt. You seem to have overexposed them, or perhaps there is some flaw in your equipment. However, my orders are to let you leave."
Wilton could only surmise that their old servant Ephraim had volunteered for darkroom duty. Her father taught Ephraim how to develop black and whites, though he had no expertise in color. He wouldn't have guessed that every photo had birds in it, even if certain buildings and intersections featured prominently. Ephraim hadn't known, but she thought a prayer in his praise, because maybe he'd tried to help her.
Stiff from the night on the concrete she went less swiftly than she might have liked back out to her car. The soldiers had tossed the seat stuffing and cloth back onto the seating frames, but once she drew away from the grounds she breathed free at last. More care next time. Now she needed to find Brown's place to leave the Volkswagen before she went on the next part of her journey West.
She thought with a lift of her heart of seeing Sandy and Lindsey, of sharing her warning. But the hope brought back the question Gilman hadn't answered. Something different about Sandy, something that held her separate.
Something more than affection made her continually write to her parents in that little Midwestern town and made them write back, but never did Sandy make plans to go home. It was simpler this way. Wilton didn't have to worry about Sandy disturbing the balance here, but she didn't like not knowing, not understanding. Maybe a mistake to have asked Gilman if she knew something about Sandy. Not used to making mistakes.
Chapter 25: Wilton
August 1967
In Transit, East to West, Nigeria
Two days after leaving the military post where she'd been detained, Wilton crossed the Niger to the West in a dugout canoe. The Volkswagen would wait for her in the yard of her father's old servant Frederick Brown, but it was decrepit enough that she might not trouble to retrieve it.
Gulls and terns gave plaintive cries, circling in the hazy sky. The Western shore fringed with palms loomed near, and Wilton kept nodding off, coming to whenever the dugout lurched or someone sang out warning. The canoe jerked and swayed in the strong currents until she had to rouse and swallow back her bile, fixing her gaze upon the distant greenery that crowded the shore. Could that be Sterna bergii flying over the muddy sands? She doubted it. There wasn't a reliable report of the great tern here and she couldn't rely on her tired eyes.
The prow grated aground on the mud amid cries of greeting. Wilton splashed over the side, legs trembling and heavy from inaction. Clutching her bag and box, she steadied herself against the dugout's rocking side, then pulled her feet free of the sucking mud to make her way past surprised riverside folk staring after her dirty white face as after an apparition.
But she had nearly three hundred miles to go before she'd reach Lagos. Her money belt was near empty. Wilton bargained for a seat on a mammy wagon to take her to a lorry park where she could transfer. She'd stitch her way across the Western Region at shillings a ride until she reached walking distance to the US Embas
sy.
Well, what she'd bought wasn't a real seat, but space to crouch on the open back. Wilton clung, one of the last passengers allowed on the overloaded mammy wagon. She hooked her arm around one of the stakes in the bed of the roaring vehicle. Motion and motion. So much racket and so slow. She dimly realized that the other passengers, taken aback by the presence of even so dirty a white person, had edged aside to give her all the room they could afford. One clasped her right ankle, another hooked fingers through her belt as if her companions did not trust her to stay put without help. She would not take offense this time at their uninvited touch, kindly meant and anonymously offered.
The diesel fumes nauseated and she nodded with fatigue, no more able to acknowledge her position than a patient in a fever. Dependent on inertia and those protective hands. White people mean well, she could almost hear them thinking around her, but you have to take care of them when they go where they don't belong.
Chapter 26: Sandy
August 1967
Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria
Sandy stepped out of Lindsey's office, and stopped at the sight of Wilton's filthy face and shabby dress. Out of place in the white walls and teak of this room, all right angles and polish.
"My God. Wilton. Guess who's coming to dinner, Lindsey?"
She swung around and Lindsey followed her through the doorway.
Wilton leaned in her chair like someone who'd waited a long time, the smug desk clerk looking in surprise at all their faces. Obviously, he'd thought Wilton some trivial missionary kook with her box and bag and dirty sunburned cheeks. Didn't he have better sense?
"You'll remember in the future," Lindsey said to the receptionist, "that Professor Wilton has free access to me always. Immediate personal access."
The man bobbed his head until Lindsey looked away. Then he exited in haste, closing the door.
Oroko stood a little behind Lindsey. No touch of recognition or reaction to Wilton, which made Sandy wonder. Wilton and Oroko knew each other, she had evidence aplenty of that. Yet no greeting or look passed between them.
Wilton looked too tired to care, but she straightened. Sandy scooped up Wilton's things and followed when Lindsey and Wilton went into the office.
Oroko shadowed them, his brown eyes calm behind his steel-rimmed glasses. Once in the office he walked over to the window and stood there as though he could stand so forever.
Sandy took down the bottle of water Lindsey kept on a shelf behind her desk and Wilton accepted the glassfuls Sandy poured, swallowed them with careful greed. She made Sandy feel thirsty.
"You need something to eat," Sandy said. "Bet you're dehydrated."
"Lindsey, use your contacts, use your connection with your head of state, Gowon," Wilton said, as if Sandy hadn't spoken. "Let the appropriate people know. The war comes to you, into your home. Better that you blow up that Niger Bridge, for all the millions it cost. The Biafrans want the Mid-Western Region, the middle of the country, either for part of their new nation or as a cowed ally. They're coming now on my heels. Invading. Forward this warning," she said, and for the first time, Sandy heard the note of an order in Wilton's voice. She saw Lindsey tighten.
"Couldn't you have sent an earlier message?" Lindsey said.
"Not for this. You would have wasted time checking anything else for tampering. You would have doubted."
Wilton sat down and leaned back into the softness of the couch. Lindsey asked Wilton questions about numbers and approaches, jotting notes, and Sandy sensed a tension between them that felt personal. Lindsey never took orders and Sandy could see how Wilton melted down into public exhaustion as if to hide her previous authority.
"Tired," Wilton said, her dust-reddened eyes closing. "I'm too dirty to sit on your couch, Lindsey."
But she didn't get up. Instead she turned her face against the back of the couch as if she'd realized she'd come to safety and could afford the luxury.
Lindsey studied her, but Sandy could tell nothing from her expression.
"We'll stay put here in the capital," Lindsey said. "It'll be crazy, but we want to stay on top of everything. In the long run this place will suffice."
Lindsey jotted notes then got up and left the room, Oroko moving with her. A faint snore came from Wilton on the couch and Sandy hated the thought that kept her watching Wilton's eyelids for any slight flutter that would have spoken of sham. Nothing. Surely Wilton was really sleeping while Lindsey followed Wilton's orders?
"Sarah, Sarah, I need to talk to you."
Sandy woke in a cold sweat at her mother's voice, then in her warm dark room the dream sound melted into a deeper stronger voice and the summons of a fist on wood. Well past four in the morning by her alarm clock.
"Madam, madam." Oroko's fist rapped staccato.
No finesse in him now. No time for it and Sandy jumped from her bed, pulling her pajamas straight before she hurried to the door and peered through the peephole Oroko had insisted on.
Oroko pounded on Lindsey's door across the hall. When it opened, Sandy saw Lindsey's fully dressed distorted shape in the fisheye glass. Maybe Lindsey never slept. Oroko bowed slightly to her.
"The Biafrans are coming, madam," he said. "They've reached Benin."
"Indeed?" she said.
"Yes, madam."
"Where's Sandy?"
"I'm here." Sandy yanked her door open.
"Tell me exactly what you heard," Lindsey said.
"The Biafran army crossed the Niger River. They invaded the Mid-Western Region and declared the sovereignty of the Mid-West as a new nation and ally. The Federal Army is still in the North."
"I see. Thank you. Bring me news when you receive it."
"You do not wish to leave? I have a car ready."
She looked at him, displeased.
"Why?" she asked aloud. "I see no need. Thank you."
He made his bow to the closing door. He looked at Sandy and his face twitched. Yes, these were her teddy-bear pajamas. She felt her face heat.
"Beautiful sleepwear," he said.
"Oroko." Sandy clenched her fists, but an idea hit. She forgot to be embarrassed. Her words tumbled over each other. "Get our neighbors—the Chidikes, the Odufias, those people from Otukpo who live on F Street. Any Easterners. Bring them here before it's light. Keep quiet and get them in downstairs and warn the servants not to talk."
He pushed the glasses back into place on his nose, his face no clue to what he might be thinking. Lindsey's door opened again and she stood listening.
"Please hurry," Sandy said.
"What will you do if the servants tell?"
"Threaten you'll kill them," Sandy said. "For me."
He laughed and gave her that slight bow before he sped down the hall and away.
Sandy faced Lindsey, but all she could see for a moment was the slumped body of the murdered Igbo clerk in Lindsey's old office with his blood-spattered white shirt and the gay red streams writhing over the papers on his desk. She didn't care what Lindsey said. This was something they had to do.
"Yes, a great idea," Lindsey said as if answering her thoughts. "I should've thought of it first. Where's Wilton?"
"Sleeping like the dead," Sandy said after checking the next room. "Like someone drugged her or cracked her one on the head."
"Guess that means she trusts us," Lindsey said.
"Of course she does." Sandy went back into her room to pull on some real clothes.
All day Sandy paced or sat restless in their living room waiting for something to happen. Oroko was with them, and she felt he wouldn't bother to be there if he had no concern.
Wilton read as though catching up on months spent without books. Fiction, nonfiction, classics. She read without discrimination, apparently caring only that there be words on paper.
Sandy watched Lindsey look down from her position well to one side of the window into the muddied street, holding the blind barely out of her way. Oroko had trained Lindsey in this habit. There were always men out in b
uildings across the way looking for a profile at this window, he said.
Right now, he stood silent, apparently approving of Lindsey's caution, since he didn't interfere. Sandy wondered what Oroko thought about behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He had such a capacity for being still, but he never seemed distracted or sleepy.
"How many are you hiding downstairs?" Wilton asked.
"Thirteen Easterners, two Mid-Westerners," Lindsey said.
Sandy went over to the window and peered down, copying Lindsey. The roads seethed with people. In Nigeria, wherever a crowd moved, music and chatter and argument came naturally. Not today. No cheer, no gossip, no bargaining. The crowd held a sinister quiet. They moved about, seeking, shifting from street to street.
Wilton settled on the couch, bearing a handful of paperbacks. Sandy bent to consider the plate of sandwiches on Lindsey's desk. She picked one and handed it to Wilton. Canned ham. Wilton tore a corner from her sandwich. Curiously, she seemed more worn now than upon her dramatic arrival four days past.
"Meat. Canned ham. Biafra will run out of protein," she said. "Nsukka was once one of Biafra's best sources for crops, and you've occupied the town. Refugees don't farm. The bombings will displace more onto the roads. We never grew much meat. All our beef came from your Northern Region herds."
"What is this 'your' and 'our,' Wilton?" Lindsey asked. Sandy saw tension, possibly anger in the line of her mouth and a note of criticism.
"A manner of speech," Wilton said.
"Eat it." Sandy pointed to the sandwich Wilton still held. "It's good for you."
She glanced around the room for something to talk about and stopped at the little bag of kernels on the side table.
"Movie night," she said. "I've got all the reels for The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance and bootleg popcorn to go with it. Let's have our movie night a couple days early and break out that flat of Fantas in the storeroom. Keep all our guests happy."
