In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills

by Jennifer Haupt

  “Ray, I know you tried your hardest to do everything right,” Mick continues, facing her now. “Both times. So, then, what went wrong?”

  Rachel sits down fast, as if she’s suffered a blow. Does he expect her to answer? To know?

  “Last year,” he says, “the embryo didn’t take or something. I get that. But this time, our baby was kicking, doing somersaults. She was perfectly healthy one day—”

  “Mick, no,” Rachel says. “Don’t go there again.” The night of the miscarriage, at the hospital, she reached out for him—how could he blame himself?—and he moved out of her grasp. Now, she places a protective hand on her stomach.

  “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into going to work,” he says. The look on his face—the splotchy crimson of anguish and anger—she’s seen it only once before.

  Last year, she came back home from the doctor’s office, the ache of the D&C still fresh, and hauled nearly everything in the nursery down to the basement storage unit. Mick returned from work that night to find her disassembling the crib. He stood in the doorway, surveying the near-empty room as if a hurricane had blown through. “Jesus, Ray, why didn’t you wait for me?” he asked, and then asked again, much louder. She couldn’t respond. She couldn’t say why getting rid of all reminders of the baby, as quickly as possible, had seemed like the logical way to erase the pain.

  Now, Rachel rubs her arms. “You don’t blame me,” she says, the chill of her fingers penetrating her blouse. “Do you?”

  “I’m just trying…” Mick pounds the rail of the crib with his palm. “I’m trying to make sense of it all.”

  The sound of rushing blood floods Rachel’s ears as her husband keeps talking. Maybe if she had stayed in bed. He should have hired a nurse. Her head’s light; she might faint. All he had to do was say no, I don’t blame you. She leans back against the big stuffed dog for support, her head in the vice of her hands. “Stop, please stop. Just go,” she says. Then, there’s the flick of lights, the click of the nursery door shutting, and she’s alone. She lies down on the alphabet rug, a shaft of frosty light from the streetlamp sending a shiver through her. Flakes of snow fling themselves against the window and melt away.

  Her mom never cried, at least not in front of her, not even the time she slipped on a slick patch near the stove. Rachel jumped up from the kitchen table where she was working on multiplication problems, alarmed to see her mom crumpled on the linoleum floor, holding her wrist. Merilee’s face was waxen, lips pursed tightly, as if crying would be the worst possible thing—worse than the pain. The same waxen mask was on her face the morning after her husband left and for many days to come. Each morning, Rachel tried to forget the knot in her stomach by picking marshmallows out of her Lucky Charms, one by one, and counting them aloud. Who was she to cry?

  A few weeks after her father had left, it occurred to her for the first time that he might not keep his promise to return. Merilee was across the table, sipping coffee and tapping her pencil tip against the TV Guide crossword puzzle. If she saw the shameful tears welling up, she didn’t acknowledge it, an act of kindness—of love—Rachel thought at the time. She squeezed her eyes shut. Twenty-four marshmallow half-moons, thirteen stars. It worked. The tears seemed to back up into her chest and turn to ice.

  Now, lying here in the darkness, her entire body is icy, mind numb. And yet she distinctly feels something brush her cheek. A feather falling. She places a finger to her skin and traces the soft imprint, following it down to her heart. A memory. Her father at the kitchen table, hunched over, shoulders shaking. She is afraid for him, wants to comfort him, now as then, but she was only a child. She stood on the stairs and watched, helpless and terrified. She holds her fist to her chest. The warm tingling path from her cheek turns dull and then it’s gone.

  A chilling thought replaces the warmth: What if this unbearable empty space, cold and barren, is where the memories of her father once lived, a missing piece of her heart that Serena had briefly shaded in, translucent and fragile? Too fragile.

  The air is thick with the unnatural silence, a noxious gas that propels her out of the nursery. She shuts the door tightly, as if the danger can be sealed in this room but only if she never re-enters it. Her hand slides from the knob. What if it’s not only the memories of her father she has lost, but also something intrinsic to her future happiness? Something only Lillian Carlson can help her recover? Perhaps if unlocking the place where she remembers her father might repair the piece of her heart that knows how to love, really love. Like a daughter. Like a mother.

  EIGHT

  { November 1, 2000 }

  Dear Lillian,

  Thanks so much for the postcards from my father. It means a lot, knowing he was thinking of me. I always thought he forgot about me after he left. After a while, I gave up on him coming back. You opened the door to a chance to get to know him. I’d like to come to Mubaro for a few weeks and stay near your farm. We could talk at your convenience. You said there are more of his things there. I’d love to see them. I know it’s a lot to ask, but can you help me figure out where my father is now? I need to at least try and reconnect with him.

  Dear Rachel,

  I can see you’re hurting. There are things you want to tell him. Need to say.

  Tucker stops typing, flexes his fingers like an animal protracting his claws before a fight. He hasn’t seen his own dad since he dropped out of the residency program at UCLA nine years ago and came here. You might have been a great surgeon someday. Such a waste of an education. One final diagnosis by the renowned Dr. Daniel Tucker, Sr. No charge. It still hurts like hell when he calls his mom every few months and she tells him the stubborn son of a bitch is performing heart surgery, teaching a class, off somewhere at a conference accepting another award. Sometimes, Tucker hears—or quite possibly only imagines—the tease of a violin in the background and the rustle of a newspaper. Tchaikovsky and the Los Angeles Times.

  He wipes a thin bead of sweat from his upper lip with the back of his fist, and then deletes the email. Who is he to bring Rachel here, raise her expectations of a happily-ever-after reunion? But she sounds so desperate, just like Lillian sounds sometimes. Although, Lil would never admit she still misses the guy. Still loves him. And then, there’s Nadine. Henry can help her this time. He’ll make things right and testify at the new trial. It’s a win-win-win.

  Tucker starts over, typing quickly before he loses his nerve: I’ve thought it over and I agree: you should come here. The best way to get to know your father is to get to know Rwanda, the land he loved. I can send a letter to the last address I have for Henry, a PO box in London, but I can’t promise anything. I haven’t heard from him in years. As long as you realize that, I’ll try. Let me know your flight information and send a photo. I’ll pick you up. It wouldn’t be wise to wander around the Rwanda countryside on your own.

  Tucker hits “send” without signing the email, and releases a breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding. He has to at least give it a shot. Lillian will be glad once Rachel arrives. She’s got to forgive him—eventually. Hell, she may even forgive Henry if he does man up and come back home.

  NINE

  { November 1974 }

  THE HUM OF THE PLANE ENGINE VIBRAT-ing through Henry’s body is rather nice, like those fancy massage beds he’s heard that some hotels in Miami have. He stretches his legs and takes a long pull of Johnny Walker, his belly full after a chicken dinner that wasn’t half bad. He’s never been on an airplane before, always imagined the ride would be bumpier. But this… He sighs. No phones jangling, no meetings where people blather on. No laughter in the halls, jokes he’s rarely in on. At work, he just keeps his head down and gets his job done. Eats a sandwich at his desk for lunch and reads his paperback mystery. Up here, there’s no tense silence that meets him every night when he gets home. It’s like he’s always supposed to be apologizing to his wife for something he’s done wrong, something else he’s forgotten about. She sure as hell wasn’t happy about this
trip, but it’s something he has to get out of his system. He’ll be more attentive to his family after this one adventure, like Merilee is always telling him he needs to be. A month isn’t so long. He’ll send postcards to Rachel every day, or at least twice a week. He’ll be a better husband and father when he returns. She’ll see.

  Henry presses his forehead against the cool window and squints, like he’s activating X-ray vision. The plane will be landing in a few hours. There could be anything on the other side of this sea of clouds below.

  Anything at all.

  A decade ago, he drove to Atlanta in a beat-up Skylark: no radio or air-conditioning, a wall of thick August air that smelled of car exhaust and fast food, but none of that mattered. It was his first trip across the state line except for a bus ride to the nation’s capital back in high school. At first, Atlanta didn’t look that much different than Jacksonville, less than an hour from his hometown of St. Augustine. But walking into the red brick building that could as easily have been a courthouse as a church, he felt like a foreigner. In all his twenty-one years, he had never seen so many Negroes assembled in one place. Women in starched summer dresses swooshed by him like he didn’t exist, greeting each other with the exuberance of long-lost sisters. Men in shiny suits, some sporting fluffy hairdos that would guarantee an ass-kickin’ back in St. Augustine, regarded him with a semi-tolerant nod as he strode toward the wooden doors of the sanctuary. He kept his eyes on the camera at his chest, not so different than the way the elderly black grocery baggers at the Piggly Wiggly lowered their gaze and mumbled Yes’m, while young white ladies with a kid or two perched in the front seat of their grocery carts curtly reminded them to double bag.

  There was a knot of photographers, mostly white and considerably older, plastered against the back wall. Nobody moved to make room as he sidled in between a gray-faced guy who smelled of mothballs and a tall kid with a massive Adam’s apple bobbing up and down his neck while he snapped spearmint gum. Henry loosened his narrow black tie and tried to blend in, polishing his camera lens with a chamois cloth, at the same time blotting moist palms. He had been hired as a junior photographer for the St. Augustine Record straight out of high school. After two years of shooting car accidents, fires, and cats stuck in trees, this was his big break. A road assignment! You only get one chance, Shepherd, Dick Cromwell, the photo editor, had warned him. Don’t blow it.

  Henry settles back into his seat, lulled by the hum of the plane. Used to be that everything changed as the camera met his eye; he controlled the view and the rest of the world faded away. He’s missed that old surge of confidence coursing through his veins like a drug. That day in the church, there was only the hunt for one perfect shot, the shot that would wind up on the front page of the St. Augustine Times. The shot that would propel him one step closer to New York City and the magazines with luscious photo essays that had fueled a longing for adventure since he was a kid.

  He still feels the taut thread of excitement that connected everyone in the congregation as the preacher approached the podium. People in St. Augustine want to know what all the fuss is about, Cromwell had said. Show us why this King fella is so magnetic. The surprisingly diminutive man seemed to make eye contact with every last one of the hundreds of people crammed into pews, capturing their attention—drawing Henry up the aisle, his camera clicking away—as he began to speak. Reverend King’s low voice rumbled like the roll of thunder paving the way for an impending storm: One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. Now, it’s time to bridge that gulf.

  A wave of emotion swept everyone to their feet, the air punctuated with chants of Yes, sir; Say it, now; Make it plain. Henry’s blood seemed to speed up in his veins, his senses sharp, hands steady as he scanned the crowd through the lens, knowing that his shot—his big chance—was somewhere in the audience, not up onstage.

  Now, his breath catches deep in his chest, a private and protected place, as he spots her once again in his mind: the girl in the third row, dressed in a prim navy suit, her hair in a perfect updo, who had waved to him—a brief flick of her hand—before the sermon began. He sees her as she appears in his dreams: in profile, face tilted up toward the podium, neck craning gracefully forward, full lips parted. She is beyond beautiful, the light streaming through the stained glass window above reflecting slightly gold off her dark skin. Henry sees his younger self standing beside her, his heart beating so loudly he barely hears a man in the pew behind her grumbling, “It’s not right, Estelle, that’s all I’m saying. Not proper.”

  He bent down on one knee, as if proposing marriage. Through his camera lens Lillian seemed to be pulled closer to him. Pieces of sunlight aligned around them, creating an insulated bubble, a moment in time that might last forever. And then, the man he would later learn was Lillian’s father clamped a thick hand on his shoulder and spun him around, pointed him back up the aisle. Later that night, when Henry cleaned out his camera case, he discovered a high school ID card.

  The pilot announces that they’re beginning the descent into Nairobi. Henry pulls the plastic photo ID out of his wallet and runs a finger over the girl’s face. That took real chutzpah, as his gramps used to say. How did she know he would track her down at Spelman and call? They talked not so much about the lives they were living but their future selves, like they were also real flesh-and-blood people. Lillian’s enthusiasm was as good as a blood transfusion that pumped energy into his dull existence.

  Lillian made him believe he could escape from the house that hadn’t been a real home, just someplace to sleep and eat, since his mom split when he was fifteen. He didn’t have money for his own place, let alone college, and his dad was no help, blowing his meager cop’s salary at the greyhound track, certain that the next race would turn his luck and make him a winner. Lillian encouraged him to move to Atlanta, a pit stop on the way to New York, and take photos. The year he spent in the heart of the civil rights movement, people laying down their lives for change while others were fighting equally hard for their world to remain the same, was as exciting as anything he had seen paging through glossy magazines. During that time, he became bigger than his small, dead-end life in St. Augustine. He looks for a hint of his reflection in the window, somewhere in the clouds. What the hell happened to that guy Lillian had so much faith in?

  The solid thud of wheels hitting pavement lands in Henry’s gut. The plane whizzes along, the rumble mixing with the blood pounding in his head. He presses a hand to his chest, unsure where the shakiness of the plane ends and the waves of jittery excitement skittering across his skin begin. For a moment it seems possible to break through some invisible barrier, into an alternate universe. The plane stops abruptly, and he waits for the ding of the bell signaling it’s safe to get out of his seat. His fingers form a fist around the pink soapstone heart hanging from a silver chain around his neck, as if protecting the locket that holds a photo of his daughter from whatever happens next.

  HENRY FIXES HIS EYES ON the silver numbers of the payphone as the line goes dead, his pulse pounding in the receiver in his hand. Flashes of brightly dressed passersby and words punctuated with exotic accents swirl around him like water swiftly circling a drain. Okay, he gets that Merilee’s still ticked off, but to outright hang up on him? For chrissakes, she could at least have let him talk to Rachel. He slams his palm against the phone and replaces the receiver in the cradle in one motion, and then heads toward baggage claim. Man, it’s not like he left them, not like that at all.

  One month away, one measly month. Is that too much to ask for a guy who gave up on his life’s dream to take care of a family that caught him by surprise? Creative Director. The title sounds like something Uncle Jerry made up, just to give him a “real job” at his ad agency in Jacksonville. He was twenty-two years old, still living at his dad’s house on a reporter’s salary, and Merilee was six months pregnant. He walks faster. Nothing creative about what he’s been doing fo
r the past eight years. And the money for the plane ticket was as good as a gift—a fluke. Money that, in essence, he had earned before everything that was his became Merilee’s too.

  After Reverend King’s assassination, he mailed a handful of his best photos from Atlanta to a few magazines on a needling dare from his former self. It’s not too late—take a risk! That hopeful voice in his head became louder and more buoyant when a photo editor in New York called. He splurged on a bottle of genuine French champagne when the contract with terms of payment arrived. A cover photo for Life magazine! Payment? Holy Moses, he told Merilee, the bubbles making him bold, it could have been Monopoly money they were offering. Then again, it could be just the beginning, right? Merilee looked at him funny, and then laughed. Twelve hundred dollars for one of his photos? Of course, he must be joking. Of course. Henry spent two hundred bucks on a new dishwasher and rangetop stove for his wife, and socked away the rest in a savings account all his own. A “Someday” account, for what he wasn’t sure. That was six years ago.

  As he waits for his luggage, he checks his camera bag, making sure there are extra batteries and the lens didn’t get scratched during the bumpy plane landing. He’ll prove to Merilee that this trip isn’t a boondoggle. Father Morton. Teaching orphans. Can see Mt. Kenya from the schoolroom window. That much he remembers from Lillian’s letter. It’s a sign that she wrote to him, after all these years. The Life photo editor said he would be interested in seeing some follow-up shots of the girl so inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. that she devoted her life to caring for orphans in Africa. He had to go for it. Why can’t Merilee see that? He’ll fix things with her but he can’t just turn around and go home, not yet. How often does a guy get a second chance?

  { November 1975, Uganda }

  The tall elephant grass skirting the kidney-shaped lake is the perfect place for Henry to hide, not close enough for the herd of water buffalo sloshing around to see him or feel threatened by his scent. He snaps a few photos, sits back and waits. He has learned to be patient over the past year. Discovering this spot, a tip from an Aussie photographer he picked up thumbing a ride in Tanzania, was worth the wait.