Mr. Coffee sputters out a slick of black fluid that is slowly eating away the lining of Henry’s stomach, along with the gin and greasy bar food. He tips a splash of gin into a cloudy coffee mug, swirls it around. How long will it take for time to stop altogether?
His eyes lock onto the photo above the sink: a close-up of a young girl’s face, a machete at her throat, her eyes dull and resigned. A web of memories, fragile strands connected by this photo, momentarily paralyze him. The knife blade is also dull. He knows this because he saw Rahim Kensamara use the same machete to hack through tendons and bones, like a butcher at the market. At first, he could pretend he was also simply doing a job: taking photos that nobody else could take, photos the world needed to see. The chaos at the church was surreal at the time.
Months later, developing the film in Uganda where he could finally get his hands on some processing materials, it hit him: He had been wrong. No one should see these photos. He has kept the gruesome images as a reminder of why he can never go back home. All of them are buried in an envelope in the bottom desk drawer, except this one that he barely recognizes as Nadine, which he taped on the wall after Lilly left for the last time.
Mr. Coffee hisses and Henry pours black sludge into the mug, stirs it with a finger. The first gulp always burns going down. He winces, his eyes falling on the open drawer below the counter: chopsticks and crumpled take-out menus, keys that don’t match any locks, a few forks but no spoons. He plucks out a serrated bread knife, tests the blade with his thumb. What Lilly doesn’t understand, what he can’t possibly explain, is that he didn’t actually choose to leave Rwanda. He didn’t choose the gin over her. It’s not that he doesn’t want, more than anything, to go home again. For chrissakes, who would choose this life? Who? If she had seen the photos, she would know there are no options. He had to leave, couldn’t return, even if the Hutu soldiers hadn’t been threatening him. But his last shred of solace is his one good choice: Lilly hasn’t seen the photos. Nobody has.
Henry squeezes droplets of blood from his thumb onto the white tile counter, slowly, like seconds ticking away. There was so much blood; it was everywhere, soaking into the dry clay like rain. At first, when Henry showed up at the church, he had been relieved to see Rahim. But it soon became clear that this wasn’t the same good-natured guy who had sold him new batteries for his camera at the hardware store in Mubaro just weeks earlier.
“So, Mister American, big-time photographer,” Rahim said. “You want us to spare the girl Nadine? Then, make use of your camera. Show the world the Hutu glory.”
Henry fell to his knees in the dirt, begging for Nadine’s life, for his own life, his voice quickly hoarse from shouting over the screams, warrior whoops, music blaring from a boom box somewhere. “Where is she?” he finally asked, taking a different tact. “Show me. I need proof she’s still alive.”
But there was something else Rahim wanted him to see. They went into the church and on the stage was a long line of women, waiting. Henry sat in the first pew and watched as Rahim and the others butchered them, one by one, like animals at the market. He tried to turn his head away to vomit and his neck met with the cool resistance of a blade. “We can add your head to the cabbage pile,” a jubilant young voice said, setting off a round of jeers. “Mzunga cabbage. Tasty flavor with cockroach!” Henry glanced out a gaping hole in the wall behind the altar where a window had been busted out. Men in pink uniforms, Hutu prisoners bussed from massacre to massacre on work detail, were tossing cadavers into a dump truck and carefully placing the heads into big plastic garbage bags. Cabbage, that’s what they called the heads; thirty cents each was the going rate. Henry shuddered as his stomach gave one mighty lurch, but nothing came up. There was nothing left.
“Take our photo, take our photo!” the men onstage chanted like some twisted church choir. A part of Henry, the part that had already left his body, watched with morbid fascination as his finger clicked on the shutter button. There was a reason the Hutus called the murder sprees their work. It was grueling; they were sweating. And the Tutsi women, for the most part, didn’t even try to fight back. It was a given: they would die. It was the law. God’s will. They had no choice.
Henry slams shut the kitchen drawer with such force that he takes a step backward, reaches for the counter to steady himself and instead lands a hand on the coffee carafe. “Shit!” he sucks at the scalded fold of skin between his thumb and finger, sinks to his knees as if praying to the girl in the photo with a machete at her throat. What kind of fucking choice did he have? And then it’s another girl in a very different photo he sees: Lilly, the way she had looked at him as they stood side by side, two strangers enraptured by a commanding voice. Now is the time to take a risk. It was as if they shared a secret, back in that church in Atlanta: The two of them were up to the task. They were brave.
He pulls his throbbing hand to his chest. Lilly made him think he was brave, at least for a while. But by the time he came to Africa to find her, he had lost all illusions of taking photos that would change the goddamned world. He told Merilee he had to find himself, just like she was doing with EST—what a crock. Truth is, he only wanted to prove to her and to himself that he could be a big-time photographer.
Now, he just wants to find that younger version of himself who stood beside Lilly in Atlanta and truly was brave. Braver than the man who travelled all the way to New York and then couldn’t face his daughter. Braver than the man who left Rwanda instead of turning the photos in his desk drawer over to the Tribunal two years ago. He untacks the picture of Nadine from the wall. He doesn’t want to change the world now either, simply the fate of his family. Maybe, that’s brave enough.
Two weeks later, Uganda
Henry has no idea how long he’s been sitting here at the side of the road, hands frozen on the steering wheel, staring at the long line of trucks, the mesh fence, the young men with ammunition bandoliers draped over their shoulders like Boy Scout sashes studded with merit badges. A nearby sign reads: Rwanda Border Crossing.
The sun is barely starting to sink behind the Virungas. Two hours and he can be at Kwizera. Two hours, if he leaves right now. He places a hand on the pink soapstone locket around his neck that he used to wear as a good luck charm and has become part of his penance. The spring is jammed but he doesn’t need to open it to see his daughter Rachel’s face: a full-on grin, chin jutted forward and squinched-up eyes. This isn’t just about making things right with Lilly and Nadine.
He pulls into the long line of cars—he can do this, it’s not like the last time. Rodent-Eyes had it wrong: it’s not about reimagining the past, or skipping over the nightmares and pretending they never happened. He has to go back and try to fix his mistakes. Maybe if he is able to take the photos in his backpack to the court in Arusha, then he can also find the courage to face his daughter again—not for himself this time, but for her.
TWENTY-NINE
TINY PARTICLES OF SOOT INFILTRATE through the cracked window, prickling Rachel’s skin like a battalion of paratrooper no-see-ums. The eucalyptus was tingly and soothing when Lillian slathered it on not long ago, but now a gooey mess is oozing out from under the bandage on her ankle. She kicks off the blanket, but then rolls halfway back under the protection of the sheet, stuck in almost-sleep purgatory, eyes shut but blinking. Maura’s words keep coming at her, rapid-fire: Photos. Rape. Murder. Working for Rahim. Did the genocide change her father or, as her mom maintained, was Henry Shepherd always a selfish man who didn’t know how to love?
She should open the window to get more of a breeze, but the soot… Maybe, readjust the sputtering fan. No, that would mean opening her eyes and then starting the getting-to-sleep process all over again. She squeezes her eyes shut tighter and takes a deep, resolute breath: gasoline and lavender. The smell is at odds with itself, inviting and not, impossible to ignore. She wrinkles her nose and inhales into a memory. The smoky-sweet tang of her father’s cologne. Sandalwood. It permeated the house: the living room sofa where
he devoured paperback mysteries in the evenings, her bedspread where he sometimes dozed off during a story, and even the fresh towels. After he left, as that smell faded, their home became unfamiliar and bleak. It didn’t help that her mom sold a lot of the furniture and kept the heat off, even on chilly winter nights, to make ends meet. Sometimes, it was warmer to sit by the fire pit in the backyard.
Rachel gropes for the satiny purple quilt, smooth and cool, and brings it to her cheek. That winter after her father left, she and her mom sat on a thick red-plaid blanket, feeding Christmas tree twigs into slow-burning flames. It occurs to her that Merilee might also have found comfort in the pop-and-sizzle of glistening pockets of resin sparking with the warm, earthy aroma of Henry Shepherd.
The smoky garden and forest beyond churn up the embers of memory; a dreamy fog fills Rachel’s head. She is seven, sitting in the backyard on a log next to her father, the glow of a fire warming her face. Fireflies swirl around her, landing on the ground and her favorite blue windbreaker. She jumps up and waves her arms, but they are always just out of her grasp. She reaches toward the fire pit…the dreamcatcher that her father’s helping her make for school is floating toward the flames. Suddenly, he shoves her to the ground. Drop it, Cricket! Drop the damn thing!
“No!” The force of Rachel’s voice exploding in her lungs pulls her completely out of sleep. She’s tangled in the sticky sheets. Blood. That’s her first thought. She jolts upright, shaky fingers patting a moist thigh. The heat is unbearable. What the hell happened to the fan? She tries to flip on the bedside lamp but it doesn’t work. Her hand sweeps the table for a pack of matches, landing on something dry and skeletal: feathers and bones. Her heart pounds in her fingertips as she swats it away, sending the lamp and something wooden-sounding crashing to the floor.
Another power outage, that’s all, she assures her younger self, a shaky hand reaching for the gas lantern hanging from a wire on the wall. She lights the lantern and examines her legs: slimy eucalyptus, no blood, of course there’s no blood. Of course. Her gaze drops to the floor and lands on the dreamcatcher—twigs, not bones—that should be in the closet. She leans over the edge of the bed to take a closer look. Twigs, not bones, twigs. But how did it get there?
Rachel shines the lantern on a photo album splayed open: Henry Shepherd’s round face smiles up at her from behind the wheel of a Jeep. His features seem to move a little as her fingers sweep away shattered glass crusting the yellowed cellophane. She could swear there’s a flicker of light in his eyes, and his lips are parted slightly as if there’s something he wants to say.
“Dad,” she whispers. “Jesus, where the hell are you?” She waits, perfectly still, but then the cellophane puckers up again; his lips close. Once again, her father is merely a stranger in an old photo. Henry Shepherd.
Rachel excavates the thick photo album from the mess on the floor. The leather cover crackles against her fingers, like the trunk of an old tree. She pulls the quilt around her, a chill emanating from her bones, and flips quickly through the pages of desolate beaches, castles and churches, marketplaces swarming with people and yet there’s a lonely quality in the mass of faces.
There’s only a single photo of Henry Shepherd. It was as if after he left their home, he simply disappeared behind his camera. He was alone. Was he lonely? He had called and asked for her, Merilee admitted as much. She scans more postcards he never sent, evidence that he wrote to her, thought about her. There’s a brief note on the back page: Cricket, I think of you often on my travels. This album is for you. Love, Dad.
He wrote to her. He thought about her. He missed her. Why doesn’t any of this make her feel better?
The silence is suddenly deafening without the whir-and-click of the fan, the air thick, almost curdled with the smell of her own sweat. There’s the low moan of an animal, wounded or maybe just longing for its mate. She goes to open the window wider and investigate, leaning out into the dark night; the sound is so close, so human-like it’s eerie.
On the night of the campfire-gone-wrong, after her father had tucked her into bed, a faint noise seeped through the wooden slats of her bedroom floor. Her parents were arguing; she was used to that, hugging her stuffed dog, Old Gold, to her ear to muffle the sharp voices. But this was a gasping sound like a ghost might make, or a jinn in the bedtime story her father had just told. She crept downstairs with her stuffed dog and froze on the bottom step, stunned: her father was in the kitchen across the hallway, bent over the table, shoulders shaking. Sobbing. Maybe if she gave him Old Gold, maybe that would make him happy again. But he was the parent. It was his job to make her feel better. She turned around and crept back up the stairs. The next morning, he was gone.
The wind picks up, opening a black hole in the layers of shifting clouds. Rachel closes her eyes, face tilted toward the warm breeze. Why was her father crying that night? What was he looking at… holding. The smell of the ashen garden below raises chill-bumps on her arms along with a memory: Blue ashes in the fire pit. Her father had been reading a blue letter—airmail, quite possibly from Lillian—while they were making the dreamcatcher. He was reading, not listening to her, not helping. She tossed the dreamcatcher into the fire to get his attention. The letter must have fluttered into the flames, too. She could see smudges of ash on the Formica kitchen table the next morning; it seemed to infiltrate her glass of milk, turning it gritty and sour.
She rubs her arms, but the chill is deep within her, somewhere she can’t reach. Her father was crying over the blue ashes… No, it was something more. A flash of pink in his palm: the soapstone locket she had given him the previous Christmas. He was looking at it. He was choosing between her and the letter.
She walks back to the bed slowly, as if in a trance. Her father did love her and chose to leave anyway. He took photos of castles and exotic places she might enjoy, and collected them in an album. He wrote postcards that he never sent. Cricket, I think of you often on my travels. He missed her, but not enough to come home.
Lillian said that he did try to find her. He came to New York. She flips through the photo album and finds the close-up image of her father behind the wheel of a Jeep, traces his face with a finger. The man who left her a fifty-dollar tip at the bar. It was him. He did find her, and then decided to leave without so much as introducing himself. He didn’t even give her a chance to turn him away or forgive him. She slides the album under the bed and steps into her sandals, has to get out of this stuffy room, out of the goddamned silence. Her mom was wrong: it wasn’t that Henry Shepherd didn’t have it in him to be a good father and husband. He simply chose not to be either one.
THIRTY
THE DARKNESS GREETS TUCKER LIKE A living thing with thick, meaty arms and rancid breath as he cracks open the door of Rose’s room. He places the lantern on the floor by her bed and kisses her forehead: skin warm but not hot, smells more like seven-year-old-girl than the bleach and medicine of the hospital in Kigali. All good. She kicks at the sheets as if swimming in her sleep, arches her back and belly-flops away. “C’mon, Rosie,” Tucker whispers, shaking the paper bag of pill bottles like a maraca. “Bottoms up, and then I’m outta your hair until morning.”
“No.” She lifts her head first, and the rest of her body follows into a sitting position. “Stay.”
“Yeah, sure.” Tucker pulls up the rocking chair that Lillian brought in from the porch and pours a glass of water from the pitcher on the bedside table. Eight different pills, every six hours. He used to cut the pills in half and place them in a Mickey Mouse Pez dispenser. Now, Rose takes the bag from him and lines up the bottles on the table. I’m not a child anymore. You don’t need to make a game of it. Sadly, Tucker thinks as he watches her shake out one pill from each bottle, this is true. In the gray light of the lantern, she looks like a wizened old crone, body bent over the table, thin arms sticking out of an oversized Scooby-Doo T-shirt. He smiles; nice of Rachel to give up her favorite nightshirt for the hospital stay.
“Miss Rachel�
��s back,” he says.
Rose pecks his cheek. “Everything is good again.”
“Totally.” Sort of. He still doesn’t know what went down at the Kensamara house. Rachel clammed up on the ride home. He can’t blame her for being pissed off. He hasn’t exactly told her the truth, not the whole story, about what happened to Henry at the church… Like he even knows what the hell that is. The guy took photos? What the fuck! At least that explains why he stayed away after the genocide. But what about now? Why hasn’t he at least called his daughter? And where are the photos?
“One week from tomorrow,” Rose says resolutely, and then downs all the pills in one gulp.
Tucker nods. He doesn’t have the heart to remind her again that she might not be well enough by Christmas to go to church with her friends. He had barely kept it together when she wrote a letter to St. Nick during the car ride to Kigali, and that was the only gift on her wish list.
“Time for some shut-eye,” Tucker chirps, slaps hands on knees as he gets up to leave. Rose seizes his arm. The darkness clamps onto his shoulders and shoves him to his knees. He’s not fooling anyone. He stays there, eyes fixed on thin fingers curled around his wrist. Rose’s other arm is hooked around the scraggly neck of the one-eyed lion that rises and falls on her chest. The lion that Lillian gave her for protection. He makes a fist, nails digging into his palm; how could he be so fucking stupid, imagining she would be immune from death here, convinced that Lillian would give her what he couldn’t.
In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills Page 25
