In the Shadow of 10,000 Hills

by Jennifer Haupt

  Rose’s hand slips from his arm as she falls asleep, the brush of long, tapered fingers taking its place. Tucker shuts his eyes tightly against the warm memory of Solange’s touch. It’s the worst kind of torture, knowing he can’t hold her, comfort her. He can’t keep his promise. And then, her fingers go limp and cold. There is only the darkness, wrapping him in the memory that it was his idea to stay in Kigali to help the wounded instead of going to her family’s farm in Uganda.

  A month after the mass killings began, after all the Red Cross medics had left and the hospital closed down, he and Solange, a few other nurses and one doctor from Germany, snuck into the hospital through a broken window and pilfered what supplies they could salvage from the wreckage. They cobbled together a triage center in the basement of a nearby abandoned school, setting cracked bones and stitching up wounds, doing what they could without electricity or anesthesia. By the end of the week, patients were laid out on the floor, wall to wall.

  Tucker was asleep in a room upstairs, Solange’s head on his chest, when he heard the commotion: whistles blowing, people screaming, and the shrill giggle he recognized from the hospital. It was like a parade that had gone terribly wrong. A familiar face appeared in the doorway: Solange’s twin brother Aaron, waving a pistol. “Run,” he ordered, “before they find you. They’ll kill you for helping, they’ll kill you!” There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, voices swelling in the hallway. Tucker smashed his fist through the second-story window and jumped out, thinking surely Solange would follow. He has always been thankful that he couldn’t be certain it was Aaron’s gun he heard firing as he hit the ground.

  The darkness releases its grip and Tucker stands, woozy and unsteady. The lightness of his body is unsettling, as if the darkness has somehow sucked him dry and emptied him of vital organs. He drifts ghost-like out of the room.

  Rachel’s standing by the fuse box at the side of the house, where he left the toolbox before going to check on Rose. “Hey,” he says, reaching for her and then gesturing toward her bum ankle. “You should keep your weight off that foot.” His hands seem giant-like and awkward as he kneels to check her injury. The overwhelming relief of finding her at the roadside earlier in the evening comes back to him. The feel of her in his arms. He loosens the bandage and then tightens it again, stands and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

  “Any idea which of these switches to flip?” Rachel stares into the fuse box, holding a screwdriver as if preparing to stab something.

  “It’s probably one of the cables buried in the ground that needs replacing. I’ll take care of it tomorrow.” Tucker hears the know-it-all doctor, a voice he became all too familiar with as a child, taking over. “Really, you shouldn’t be out of bed.”

  “I just, y’know, wanted to help get the lights back on.”

  “No worries, I’ll take care of it.” Tucker winces. Thanks, Dad. “Let me help you back to your room.”

  Rachel offers him the screwdriver. “Thanks for coming after me. I was pretty awful, accusing you of lying. Sorry about that.”

  “No problem.” Tucker takes the tool, imagines his fingers interlocking with hers. He missed her during the past week. And she admitted missing him too, right?

  He taps the screwdriver against his palm, regarding it as if working out a complex math equation. Right. But not like that. More like the guy who tapes up sprained ankles and fixes blown-out fuses.

  “I didn’t know about the photos,”he says. “But now, it makes sense why Henry never came back.”

  “I’ve been thinking I’ll go look for him.” Rachel grabs onto his arm, as if pulling him along. “Start in London and see where it leads me.”

  “No, I’ll go.”

  “We could go together. Take Rose to see that doctor at the AIDS clinic.”

  “Rose would like having you along.” Tucker’s pulse quickens, Rachel’s grip squeezing life back into the space emptied by the darkness. He backs away and starts fiddling with the toolbox. What would it be like, going to London with Rachel and Rose? Building a family with her? “You should stay here, in case Henry comes back,” he says.

  “My father’s not coming back, even if you find him,” she says. “Is he?”

  Something in her voice, the questioning lilt, implies she’s sheltering a small flicker of hope. “No,” Tucker says, dousing the flame. “I don’t believe so.” It’s not fair to her, the hope. For years he looked for Solange in the crowded streets of Kigali. For years, he saw her in his dreams. Every morning, there was a moment before he was fully awake when he harbored hope. And every damn morning, he heard her scream his name as he opened his eyes fully and faced the hard, cold fact that he had to endure yet another day alone.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, “for bringing you here. I thought I could make things right for Henry and Lillian, for you. For everyone. But if he was going to come back, he would be here by now.”

  “At least I learned the truth,” Rachel says. “For years, I thought there was something wrong with me. I mean, why wouldn’t a father love his own daughter?”

  Tucker opens his mouth to tell her she’s wrong but she rushes on, her voice high and shaky. “And then, I thought he was the one who didn’t know how to love. Now, I realize that he did love me. It’s this place. The genocide. He had to stop feeling, stop loving because it was too painful, right? That’s what turned him into a monster.”

  “C’mon, let me get you inside and take a better look at that ankle,” Tucker says, letting her be right. She needs it. Besides, how can he tell her the entire truth about what happened to her dad without revealing the truth about himself? If anything, Henry cared too much. That’s what destroyed both of them during the genocide.

  THREE DAYS OF WALKING ALONG the highway, trying to get to the one place in the country where Tucker thought he might be safe. No one would stop to give him a ride. There was no room in the cars stuffed with belongings. No time. On the fourth day, he hitched a ride with a Hutu family heading for Uganda and got out at the dirt road leading into Mubaro. It was a moonless night, but he could smell the chaos as he walked into town. The headlights of trucks—one, two, and then ten—stabbed the road and he hid in a ditch. Men were standing atop what he thought were truckloads of logs. When they passed, the smell told him these were dead bodies.

  He ran, his legs rubbery, Rosie and Lillian his only thought, but as he got to the main road in Mubaro something stopped him. One way was Kwizera, the other was a field at the dead end past the town square. The clouds parted and a slice of moon lit up the cross atop the church, just across the field. He was drawn toward the cross even though he hadn’t stepped inside a church since he was a kid. He needed, for some strong but inexplicable reason, to pray before seeing whatever was to be found at Lillian’s farm.

  Take It Easy. That was the insipid Eagles’ tune that he hummed over and over, placing one foot in front of the other, not thinking about whether it was a stick or a limb he was stepping on in the tall grass. Crossing the field between town and the church was surreal: abandoned luggage everywhere, some popped open and empty. At first, he thought the swatches of denim and batik, white cotton undergarments and silky flowered scarves, were all simply the contents of emptied bags strewn in the dirt. The skin and bones were already decomposing, blending into the rust-colored clay.

  When he was nearly to the church the tinge of tobacco infused the air. He imagined a curl of smoke that he followed to the shack behind the church. There was Henry, sitting in the grass, leaning against the door, smoking a cigarette. He didn’t get up, didn’t so much as acknowledge Tucker until he was standing right over him.

  “I figured, one lone guy,” Henry said flatly, a sigh of smoke escaping from his nostrils. “Someone was either here to kill me or rescue me.”

  “We’ve gotta get out of here,” Tucker said. “The trucks, they’ll be back.”

  “I heard them loading the bodies from in there.” Henry cocks his head toward the shack.

  “How
?” Tucker locked onto his eyes. How had he survived?

  Henry took a final long drag off the butt, until the filter snuffed out the ember. “I was under a tarp, some cans stacked in front. Funny, they were so quiet loading the trucks. None of the singing and laughing. Maybe some of them realized what the hell they had actually done.”

  Tucker gave Henry a hand up, pulled him in close and clung to him. He heard a strangled sob and pulled away, horrified, a hand to his chest as if he might take back the sound that had generated there.

  Henry tapped a finger to his lips. “She’s finally asleep.”

  “Who?”

  “The girl.”

  Tucker wiped his nose with the back of his hand, the runny mucus coating his throat, choking him with a gurgle that was repulsive to his ear. He looked at the ground. The glint of something shiny caught his eye. The blade of a knife. No, it was a single silver earring near Henry’s foot. He bent down in fascination, and then jumped back. The triangle of silver was still attached to an ear. He took Henry’s arm. “C’mon, let’s go home.”

  Henry yanked away and opened the door to the shack. Curled up on the cement floor littered with broken bottles and garbage was, in fact, a young girl. Dahla and Enoch’s daughter, who sometimes sang to Rose and played a flute. Nadine was wrapped in a filthy, too-big flannel shirt. Tucker noticed Henry was bare-chested under his denim jacket.

  TUCKER SITS AT THE END of Rachel’s bed after changing her bandage. A warm breeze carries the soothing smells of the nearby forest: eucalyptus and pine. He leans back, resting his head against the wall. “If I nod off, just wake me,” he mumbles, but she doesn’t answer. Probably sound asleep. That’s good. He should go across the hall and check on Nadine. Make sure Rose is still asleep. He should go.

  Suddenly, the wind shifts; the air is ripe with the smell of the dead bodies he and Henry buried among the ferns and moss. Red shirt. Kitten barrettes. Green eyes.

  He takes a deep breath and sets his jaw, bracing for the next wave to crash over him, pull him under. It’s not that he can’t shut off the memories but he chooses to let them come, that’s what he tells himself. In high school, during his stoned-and-stupid phase, he and his pothead bros hung out at the beach at night. They drank cases of Coors around a bonfire and talked trash about girls who wouldn’t give them the time of day. They walked slowly into the ocean to play chicken with the waves. It was a rush, scary-exciting, proving he was a man to his friends.

  Red Shirt. Kitten barrettes.

  Now, this game of playing chicken with his memory is just fucking terrifying. What he’s proving has become unclear. The worst part is, he’s completely alone.

  Green eyes.

  Their faces haunt him, doll-like and innocent, eyes closed as if asleep and yet still seemingly staring up at him from the field. He saw all of their eyes as green: his own eyes, reflecting back at him. Every morning there were more children, more eyes demanding something he did not have the power to give them. He clenches his teeth, releasing a rumbling in his head to drown out the voices chanting his name. Tucker, Tucker… He curls into himself, rocking back and forth, palms clamping his temples like they’re the only thing holding the bones of his skull together.

  “Tucker!”

  Solange. He heard her clearly among the screams and gunshot, that night in Kigali as he ran away. He couldn’t help her. He couldn’t help the children in the field. Rose… He moans, presses harder against his temples as if to shut off a thought.

  “Tucker? Hey…”

  “Sorry,” he mumbles into his chest. Shit. Rachel’s awake, probably thinks he’s a lunatic. He should say something; he owes her some kind of explanation. Something. “Every morning,” he says, “sunrise, before Lillian woke up. We went out into the field. Henry’s idea. I sure as hell didn’t want to go.”

  “Why did you go?”

  “We had to find them, before Lil…” Tucker’s throat constricts. He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. They would look for the dogs, house pets turned wild, hunting for fresh kills. That’s how they found the dead bodies.

  “What were you looking for?” Rachel asks.

  He shakes his head. Those eyes, wide open and staring, accusing, while they shoveled dirt over their bodies. She can’t possibly want to know.

  “Tucker.”

  The sound of his name, soft and imploring, like maybe he really could help her. “Children,” he says into his hands. “Injured children.” He keeps his head down as he explains how Henry helped him in the clinic. They repaired machete wounds, cracked skulls and broken limbs. It’s true, some of them were only injured. What he doesn’t tell her is how every morning for weeks, they took the dead bodies into the forest to bury them. Henry didn’t want Lilly to know that children had been murdered trying to reach safety, trying to reach her. And then, there were too many bodies to hide. They buried them the best they could in the field where sunflowers now grow.

  “Thanks for telling me that my father did something good,” Rachel says.

  Tucker’s hands relax and fall to his sides, his head drops to his chest. “He’s not a monster. Not perfect, nobody’s saying that. Just human.” So fucking human.

  “It helps, knowing that he did care about the children.”

  “I should go.” Tucker tries standing, too fast, churning up a cluster of stars as the blood drains from his head. He reels back onto his heels, the back of a knee meeting the edge of the bed. “Give me a sec…” There is the touch of Rachel’s hand on his back, catching him, the cool pillow against his cheek, the breeze—warm and sweet again—and then, thankfully, there is only darkness.

  THIRTY-ONE

  RACHEL HALF-SLEEPS FOR MOST OF THE night, flat against the wall but not in an uncomfortable way, so there’s plenty of room for Tucker’s lanky body in the double bed. It seemed so natural to pull him back into bed and move her pillow so that his head landed on it. The smell of him, the weight of his body next to her, the slight sound of his breath…so satisfying. It feels a bit like she’s cheating on Mick, even though there’s a barrier of blanket between them. Tucker just needs a good night’s sleep, that’s all.

  During the past year, Rachel has never allowed herself to consider what it might be like to wake up to the smell of a man other than her husband, actively pushing the thought away along with the crumpled receipt she found on the closet floor. Why had Mick paid for a hotel room on a Wednesday afternoon? She would have accepted most any explanation—an out-of-town client, or maybe he just needed a quiet space away from the office and home—hell, it didn’t even need to make sense. So, why did he choose the truth? Just the one time. It didn’t mean anything. Well, not exactly the truth. What sticks with her is how he came home, picked up the receipt from the coffee table where she left it for him to find, and presented it to her again, like maybe she hadn’t read it carefully, hadn’t noticed the date was exactly one week after the first miscarriage. It meant plenty.

  Lucy. That was her name. Why the hell would Mick think she wanted to know the slut’s name? A simple question, but he exploded. Jesus, I needed something—someone. You sure as hell haven’t been there for me.

  For months afterwards, she made her husband sleep on the couch, not as a punishment but because she couldn’t fall asleep next to him. It was his smell, the uncertainty of his scent. It wasn’t that he was wearing extra cologne. It wasn’t that she suspected he showered before bed to cover up more than the smell of sweat from the racquetball club. His scent changed for her, the moment she realized that he wanted her to find out. He wanted to hurt her—to take something from her, although that seemed too cruel—the same way she had hurt him by packing up the nursery alone. At the time, she had thought she was sparing him pain; she had thought that’s what a good wife would do. She still misses the smell of him, the way it used to coat her in a protective shell as she slept, breathing him in.

  Now, lying next to Tucker, it’s Rachel who feels protective. She wants to shush the symphony of birds
tuning up for sunrise. She wants to cover him fully with the blanket, but is afraid of disturbing his sleep. He just needed sleep… No, she admits, moving away from the wall, he hadn’t said it but he needed her.

  I need you, Rachel. God, how she used to crave hearing those words whispered in her ear. At the same time, neediness has always struck her as almost lazy, a weakness of character. Her mom never came out and said it, but Merilee’s extreme self-reliance after her husband left was as good as saying that depending on someone else—their help, their approval, their love—was a distasteful trait. Rachel could see the unattractive neediness of the men parked on barstools, nursing something strong on the rocks and serenading her with sad stories of being misunderstood by a girlfriend (never a wife), undervalued by a boss, dissed by a co-worker, screwed over by a cab driver or waiter. They spoke in the hushed tones of secret desires, the high pitch of possibilities, the bravado of bald-faced lies. She listened gratefully as she mixed generous drinks. These stories served as her menu of reasons that she remained unattached, unnecessary to anyone.

  She’s not proud to admit to herself that sometimes, before she met Mick, after a few shots of Johnny Walker toward the end of her shift and then later in bed, neediness had been a brief turn-on. It gave her a thrill—tenuous and fleeting, but still—that she could be somehow treasured. She could be powerful, like a genie who might choose to grant a wish. She could be, not exactly loved, but essential. This had seemed so much safer than love.

  She studies Tucker in the first light of breaking day and places a hand lightly on his back. Her fingers spring away as if testing the temperature of a potentially hot surface. He has never made a move, not even after she kissed him while they watched the sun set over the chain of lakes in the mountains. He has never asked for a thing from her. And yet…