Night Must Wait
Page 39
"You know better than I can tell you," she said. "All I did was speak with her and wait with her."
"But you didn't stop her."
"No. That was in God's hands."
"You do not weep."
"You'd done all of your crying before I met you. Maybe that is true for me also. Now you've talked too long. You shall have to let me go."
"We can use you," he said.
"If you do not let me go, you will have to kill me later, for the wrong reasons. You know what I know. You know what I have done. Killing, I think, is too kind. It is my sorrow that you agree with that. I go to exile, in a cold land."
"Come," he said, using the revolver to indicate where he wanted her, taking a firm hold of her upper arm. She walked with him out of the room, down the stairs flight after flight, past dozens of worried men in uniform, to the ground floor. None of the guards questioned. No one hesitated to let them pass.
He guided her along a side hall to a back alley exit he unlocked, the revolver pressed to her spine. Then she obeyed the push of the weapon and he followed her out under the hazy stars.
He stood without motion, one long breath in that heavy scented air, garbage and flowers, spilled booze in the street and the thick scent of Lindsey's blood on his shirt and knees where he had knelt. Even here on the raggedly paved street with only a few rank straggles of flowering bush poking over the broken-glass-topped walls around them, insects shrilled and clicked, scuttling in the urban night. As if their lives were only transferred by the changes men had made, not deleted, not quelled. Oroko slipped a hand inside his coat jacket and drew out her passport, handing it over.
She wanted to stop Oroko, beg him, but the panic rising in her throat choked her so no sound emerged. No friend, no home, no place. The tears she had denied flooded up, now that he would not see them. She tried to open her mind to God, but all she heard was the night of insects and lonely men. Oroko lifted his hand from her arm, stepped back deeper into shadow and Wilton went from him into the night.
Chapter 115: Oroko
December 1971
The Road to Borno, Nigeria
"This is your country," Oroko said. "I think you will stay."
Gilman met his glance, her face defiant as if expecting reproach, or perhaps some determination to force her agreement. He saw no call for any of those things. After the flight, he'd taken her on in the Jeep alone, knowing there'd be no further need for extraordinary force.
He was enough. She had no idea how clearly her compliance showed in her face and body. He would have no trouble from her. Her bones knew it as well as he did. The Jeep bumped along the rough roads, through the buff and dull olive of the dry Northern country. They swerved around a straggling group of women moving alongside the road. Each balanced a load on her head, a bright print cloth limp around her waist, dusty limbs lined with sweat in the breezeless morning. Then there was only landscape again.
"Like a dog returning to its vomit," she said suddenly.
"Proverbs 26:11." Oroko spoke without thinking.
"So you had missionary schooling? Bible study?"
"Long ago," he said. "Have you considered that a dog does this because it is his nature, as returning now is yours? Not so much the definition of a fool, only nature calling to its own. You will never leave."
"I could," she said, because it was her nature to argue. He could feel it in her. "I can go straight to the Embassy."
"You have no record of admission to the country," he said. "Your visa exists in no records except for the page on your passport. You are illegal. There is no exit from your past or your present. Take what is yours, Doctor," he said. "This is all you get. There are other friends of Sandy's who would try to revenge her if they thought you living. Don't return to the big cities. Do not walk in the lights there."
"Won't you tell them yourself that I'm innocent? So you don't look a fool for failing to punish me?"
He shrugged and did not answer. He didn't want to explain that he had no audience to tell. No judge, now that Lindsey Kinner and Sandy Hemsfort were gone. He heard Gilman sigh in frustration, but she still feared him—he could tell from the way she held herself within the rattling vehicle.
"What happened to your friend Wilton? What really happened?" he said.
"We broke her."
She was quiet a few more miles. "Did you know Wilton?"
Oroko nodded. He knew the mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes.
"Was she good to you?"
Gilman looked at him as if she might catch some clue whether or not he listened, and out of some impulse he couldn't fathom, Oroko nodded.
She fell silent and perhaps half a mile passed before her voice sounded again, this time bursting out as if she'd finished the previous sentence a mere breath ago.
"Once I lost someone I wanted to protect."
"Your mercenary lover."
"Yes, Tom Jantor."
She shook her head, the loose hair whipping about her face until she reached up and fought the strands into the coil of hair knotted at the nape of her neck.
"Wilton couldn't have felt each individual death as hard as that, but there were so many, and they ripped her apart because she was both American and Nigerian. Have you ever been to America?"
She didn't seem to need his response, so he gave none. Of course, she assumed he never had.
"You probably never saw anything like the America Wilton knew," Gilman said. "Never imagined it. But it's real too. If you knew, Oroko…It was too big a difference for her to bridge. No one could stretch between without breaking."
He turned on to the smaller side road and the light grew long, the shadows of tall rocks and stubby trees reaching into each other. He slowed at the next turnoff, going up the pebbled rise on the beaten track. The corrugated tin roofs of several long, low buildings came into view, euphorbia bushes ranked into defensive walls about the large compound. Oroko brought the car to a stop and looked at Gilman. He pulled a folder of papers from the glove compartment and handed them to her.
"Did you kill Wilton?" she asked as if she might surprise a new truth out of him.
"God will give her peace," he said.
She got out of the jeep as if now at the end she simply had nothing else to do. But he knew better. She had work to do, another woman to become. She turned with a half salute, not really looking at him, the papers flapping once, and walked away toward the hunched hospital buildings waiting for her, into the dust and the brilliance until even with his sunglasses he had to close his eyes for a moment before he took the wheel again and backed the vehicle around.
Oroko glanced once into the rearview mirror before he turned down the curving drive, but it was as if the sun had eaten her. All the mirror held was the light itself.
Message from the Author
Thank you for picking up this book and traveling with me for a while. As mentioned in the acknowledgements, the references I used fill shelves. This is fiction; only a few established historical figures herein ever drew breath, and I wanted to serve my story arc, not simply recount events. I've stretched time and shifted historical events, placed my words in the mouths of historical figures.
I always felt guilty for leaving when the war broke out, even if I was a child and had no choice and could have made no difference, so this is my answer to my past—I never really left at all.
Here's an abbreviated list of books you might like to look over if you are curious about this remarkable and beautiful country. I apologize because there is no way I can possibly recall every one I read or skimmed in search of material and knowledge.
Dr. Luke Nnaemeka Aneke, The Untold Story of the Nigeria-Biafra War
Zdenek Cervenka, A History of the Nigerian War 1967-1970
Robert Collis, African Encounter: A Doctor in Nigeria
John de St. Jorre, The Brothers' War
K.M. Buchanan and J.C. Pugh, Land and People in Nigeria
Harry Williams, Nigeria Free
About the Author
Robin started writing with a fully illustrated manuscript on 'Chickens and their Diseases' as a second grader in Nigeria. In 1967 she and her family were evacuated as the Nigerian Civil War began.
As a child she lived in a number of places beginning with 'N'—Nebraska, Nigeria, New Hampshire and New York. Now living in California, she has no intention of going back. She has published short stories under the name Robin Tiffney.
Her other career centers on oil painting—both landscape and figure. Her husband, a paleobotanist, corrects the science in both her paintings and her writings, and has acquired considerable skill in ducking flying objects. They have a teenage daughter who also loves to write, and three cats that don't.
www.robin-winter.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/robin.winter.144734
Blog: robinwinter.wordpress.com
You can also view her paintings under her painting name at: www.sullivangoss.com/Robin_Gowen
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