“Okay. This is getting ridiculous.” I tossed the field guide onto the dash. “We need to talk.”
“We do?” Henry glanced at me, a slight smirk tilting his lips. “The last time someone said that to me, they broke up with me.”
“No. I mean we need to talk. About anything. The quiet and the scenery are getting to me. I’m about to start singing, and believe me, my rendition of ‘Wrecking Ball’ is cringeworthy. So let’s talk or chat. Your ears will thank you.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“Anything. I don’t know. Like, how did you end up working at a refugee camp with Chuck?”
“Tell you what,” Henry said, steering the Range Rover past a woman with a basket balanced on her head. We’d passed a town of sorts—a couple of ramshackle stucco and thatch buildings, a little rough around the edges—a mile or so back. The woman seemed to be hauling something in that direction. “Why don’t you finish telling me the story of how you ended up here? My story doesn’t involve a gun.” Not even the humidity in the air could dampen his dry tone.
“Mine’s not that interesting, really. It was kind of a wrong-place, wrong-time type of thing.”
“What I want to know is how you managed to be sent to visit your father rather than be arrested for possessing a gun in the first place. That’s a pretty big deal.”
“You know that phrase, being able to sell ice to an Eskimo? I’m pretty sure they made it about my mom. She’s a negotiator extraordinaire. Not only did she make sure I wasn’t charged with anything, she made a deal that, if I complete this summer of extreme community service, my arrest record will be expunged and sealed.”
Henry didn’t say anything for a minute. He shook his head. “Do you have any idea how lucky you are?”
I snorted. “Oh, yeah. I didn’t like the thought of going to jail or of the rest of my life being fucked up because of it.”
“Yet you took the gun.” It wasn’t a question, but his raised eyebrow told me he expected an answer.
“Well, yeah. First, I didn’t expect to actually get caught with it. Second, it would have been worth it to keep Wendy from doing something stupid.”
“And it didn’t occur to you to report her having the gun? It would have solved the problem of her doing something she’d regret and keep you out of it.”
I started to answer but shut my mouth. Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me. Maybe because I knew Wendy’s father.
“I knew it.” Henry slapped the steering wheel. “You’re a bit of a do-gooder, yourself, aren’t you?”
I scowled at him. “No way. This was the exception, and look how that turned out.”
We’d made it about a mile before Henry spoke again. “Is it that bad, coming here? I know Cameroon isn’t high on the list of summer vacation destinations, but a lot of people would consider it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“It’s not that I object to Cameroon, or anywhere, really.” I scrubbed my hands across my nose. “I don’t even object to helping out refugees and working at the camp doing whatever. But there are other things I’d rather be doing. I should be working and hanging out with my friends. I should be going out and having fun.” There was more to it than that, but what else could I say? Whine about my daddy issues some more?
Apparently Henry was psychic. “Your dad’s pretty excited to see you.”
“Right. So excited that he had to send you to pick me up. He couldn’t even be bothered to come and get me himself.”
“You don’t know anything about it. He’d have come if he could.” Henry’s voice was laced with disapproval. Who did he think he was to disapprove of anything?
“You would say that, Hank.” I crossed my arms over my chest and stared blindly out the window.
“Do you want to know why he sent me, why he didn’t come himself?” Iron was less hard than his tone.
I shrugged.
Henry took a deep breath as if preparing for an unwelcome task. “A six-year-old girl came in. Her foot had been blown off when a land mine exploded. She couldn’t get medical attention right away, and it was so infected, everyone thought she was going to die. She was lucky, though. Her eight-year-old brother didn’t survive the explosion. Lucky, too, that your dad is as good as he is. He managed to clear away most of the infection, but it’s been touch and go. So tell me, would you rather he abandon that sick little girl to give you the kind of welcome you figure you deserve?”
Shame washed over me, like I’d stepped into a cold, slimy bog. “No,” I admitted on a deep sigh. “But just once, I’d like to be put first in his life. I don’t want dying little girls to suffer so he can hold my hand or some shit, but is it too much to ask for a phone call or an e-mail? Honestly, after all this time, I’m surprised he even remembers he has a son.”
“Communication is a two-way street, you know. Have you tried calling or e-mailing him?”
“He’s the adult, damn it. I shouldn’t have to make the first step.” My eyes burned—one more thing I could lay at Chuck’s feet. Soon I’d be blubbering like a baby and calling for my mommy. Screw that. “Tell me, Hank, do you have a great relationship with your folks? The perfect little family of Good Samaritans, I bet.”
Henry’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, his face shuttering closed. He started to say something—probably to tell me to get over my whiny-ass self—but I cut him off. “Forget it. I don’t want to talk anymore.”
THE NEXT hour sucked. The tension in the front of the Range Rover was as thick as the humidity outside. Both were liable to choke me if given half a chance. The little towns along the hiking path Cameroon called a highway showed up less frequently than they had before, and I saw fewer people along the way.
The Range Rover slowed, and I pulled myself out of my sulking. Yeah, sulking. I wasn’t proud of it, but there wasn’t anything else to do, and clearly, conversation was a bad idea.
Before I could ask why we stopped, I understood. Ahead of us, a dozen or more logs—huge logs—lay scattered across the road. It looked like one of the lumber trucks lost some cargo.
“What are we going to do?” I asked. “Can we get around them?” I looked at both sides of the road. The forest was thick along this part of the route, and it didn’t look like the Range Rover would fit between the logs blocking the way and the trees on the side.
Henry put the truck into Park and released his seat belt. “I don’t think so. Let’s go check it out.”
I jumped out of the vehicle and followed Henry to the spread of logs. There weren’t as many as I had thought at first, only eight. They were still enough to block the way, though.
I went left and Henry went right, examining the area around the road. The Range Rover definitely wouldn’t make it around. Even on foot, there were at least two logs I had to haul myself over because the alternative was swinging above them from an overhanging tree branch like Tarzan. Dense, waist-high bushes crept onto the road. I refused to walk through those bushes. I hated walking anywhere I couldn’t see my feet, whether tall grasses, murky water, leafy brambles, or whatever. If I couldn’t see my feet, it meant I couldn’t see anything else that might decide to bite me. Or trip me. Or whatever.
“Maybe we can move them?” Using his foot, Henry tried to rock one of the logs. “We might be able to roll a couple of them far enough out of the way to make a path to get through.”
I looked at the logs. I somehow didn’t think it would be that easy. Those things had to be at least forty feet long—maybe more—and two feet in diameter. I didn’t know about Henry, but I didn’t have superhuman strength. Henry must have caught my doubt.
“I’m serious. See, these two are at the right angle that if we roll them into the bushes, it should make enough room for us to get through. I don’t see anything in the way, no big rocks or roots or anything that we’d have to roll them over.”
I saw what he meant, but I still wasn’t convinced that we could pull it off. On the other hand, what choice did we have? How far would we have to ba
cktrack to find a different route? It wasn’t like there were all that many cross streets along the road. We’d stopped forty-five minutes or so ago and filled up with gas. Had there been anything since then? And what was the likelihood the logging company would come back for these anytime soon?
“It’s worth a try,” I said finally, mentally psyching myself up for the attempt.
“The angle on this one is a little off.” Henry paced the length of the log with his hands on his hips. “If you can brace that side while I try and shift this side, I think we should be able to get it lined up, and then we can push it over. What do you think?”
I shrugged and said again, “It’s worth a try.”
He rolled his eyes at the doubt in my voice.
I stood with my back to the forest and leaned onto the log. Most of the bark had been scraped away at some point during the lumbering process, so I didn’t have to worry about it scraping my hands too badly. I braced my feet as best I could, angling them for the most traction. My running shoes, with their cool teal-and-orange design, were made for jogging paths and gyms, not Cameroonian backcountry and logging, but they were all I had. Henry, on the opposite side of the log, adopted a similar position.
At first I felt a little silly. Here I was, ready for some serious exertion, but actually doing nothing, while Henry heaved and pushed against his end. Twice he lost his footing and had to scramble back into position. I was about to suggest we head back to the nearest town, when the wood under my hands jerked. I pushed against it, and watched as Henry, muscles clenched, shoved the stubborn thing around an inch at a time. When the log was finally parallel to the edge of the road, he stood up straight, gasping for breath and holding his sides. “Okay. Ready to push it all the way?”
“Let’s do it.” I shifted so that we both faced the same direction and took a position about a quarter of the way in from the end.
“On the count of three?” Henry brushed his hands together before placing them on the log.
I nodded.
“One. Two. Three.”
Something I learned: trees were not round, and they did not roll easily. They had bulges and dips and were more than content to stay in one place. We pushed and it was like trying to push my mom’s Buick out of a snowbank. While it was in Park. With the parking brake on. I dug my toes into the packed dirt of the road and shoved with all my body weight. Twenty or so feet away, Henry did the same.
I remembered something about motion and momentum. “Ease up, let it rock back for a second, and when it starts to roll forward again, push hard.”
“Smart,” Henry said with a nod.
We stopped our forward thrust, let the log do its thing and, when it rocked forward again, we pushed. Just like the time Mom and I freed her old Buick from a snowbank, the log started to move forward. It seemed to take forever, but after a long series of rocking and pushing, we reached the edge of the road.
Henry sat on the ground and flexed his hands. “I’m going to be so sore tomorrow.” He shrugged his shoulders a couple of times while I stretched my back out. After a minute he stood. “Ready for the other one?”
I looked at the second log. It wasn’t quite as thick as the first, maybe only a foot in diameter. “I guess we’d better. We’re not going to get any further without doing it.”
We did the rock-and-roll thing with the second log, and it lined up with the first one with significantly less effort. When we were done, there was enough space to drive the Range Rover through. Barely.
I headed back to the vehicle but stopped at the last second when Henry squatted to tie his boots. I wasn’t really prepared to stop so suddenly, and I tilted forward, windmilling my arms to keep from falling on top of him. In the process I knocked the insulin monitor off my belt. It landed in the bushes. I hissed at the stinging pain when gravity and the weight of the monitor pulled the pump’s needle and tubing out of my side.
“Damn it.” I crouched down next to Henry and tried to find the monitor in the bushes in front of it. I caught the glint of blue plastic and reached for it.
“Stop!” Henry lurched next to me and covered my hand with his.
“What the…?”
It happened too quickly to stop. The snake struck, scoring Henry’s hand—the hand covering mine—with wicked sharp fangs. The long greenish-gray snake hissed, and I dove backward, pulling Henry along with me.
“Are you okay?” Not the smartest thing to ask, probably. After all, the dude just got bit by a snake. It was all my panicked brain could come up with, though.
Henry stared down at his hand, eyes wide, face pale. His breathing started to speed up, but he didn’t say anything.
Crap. I shook his shoulder. “Henry. Is it poisonous?” When he didn’t answer, I grabbed his face between my hands and forced him to look at me. “Is it poisonous? What do we need to do?”
“Green bush viper.” The words were soft, almost wondering.
“What does that mean? Come on, Henry. I need you to tell me what to do. I’m freaking out a bit, and I really need you to tell me if it’s poisonous and how to handle it.”
His wide eyes focused on me, and I could tell he was making the effort to slow his breathing. “It’s poisonous. Get the snakebite kit. It’s behind the driver’s-side seat in the big first-aid kit.”
I jumped up and ran to the Range Rover. It took me a couple of tries to get the door open. When I did, I pushed the seat forward and tried to find something that looked like a first-aid kit. There were a couple of emergency packs, and I couldn’t quite focus. Then I saw the big red cross on the blue canvas bag and wanted to curse myself. Duh.
I dashed back to Henry. He looked calm, calmer than I was, in fact. He was positively Zen, sitting there, quiet and still.
“Should we move you to the truck?” I asked, even as I kneeled beside him. “I mean, what if it comes after you?”
“It won’t. It’s more scared of us than we are of it,” he said.
Yeah, somehow I doubted that.
“Besides,” he added, voice serene. “Movement is a bad thing. The more I move, the faster my heart beats, the faster the venom moves through my veins.”
Henry’s weird tranquility was starting to seriously freak me out. And I was already pretty freaked because, as a word, venom was way scarier than poisonous. Poisonous made me think of itching and welts, maybe vomiting. Venom—well, venom just screamed deadly.
I unzipped the top of the kit and searched the contents for a snake bite kit. I grabbed the white plastic box labeled, conveniently enough, Snakebite Kit. I flipped open the top and saw alcohol swabs, cleansing solution, syringes, and vials. “What do I do? Am I supposed to suck out the venom?” I had a vague memory of someone saying to do that, and of someone else saying absolutely not to.
“No.” It seemed to take more effort to keep his voice and breathing even, like he had to concentrate over each breath. “We need to wait a little bit, to make sure it actually injected any venom.”
“What?”
“Just because it bit me, doesn’t mean it actually got any venom into me.”
“But… but….” It seemed like there should be something we could do. It didn’t feel right to just sit there and wait. I took a breath and tried to slow my pounding heart. “What are we looking for? How will we know if there is any venom in the bite?”
“Swelling. Discoloration.”
I swallowed back nausea. Swelling and discoloration. Lovely. “How long?”
“Depends. The more venom, the faster the reaction. If there’s no reaction….” He shrugged.
I didn’t take my eyes off his hand. Blood trickled from the puncture wounds down the side of his hand. It might have been five minutes or five hours later before Henry slumped. He lined up his left hand with his injured right. Side-by-side, the difference was obvious. His right hand was definitely swelling and definitely discolored. A dark rose color, not quite purple but not quite magenta, spread across the back of his hand.
“Okay.”
I cleared my throat. “Okay. We have venom. Now what?”
“Normally, the best thing to do is clean it well and get to a hospital.”
There was a hysterical edge to my laughter. “In case you didn’t notice, we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“So we’ll clean it, and you’ll inject the antivenin.”
I looked at the vials. There were two different kinds. “Which one? And how much?”
“Echin,” Henry said. “And we’ve got to hurry.”
I found the bottle marked Echin and looked for dosing information. Nothing. I pulled out a wrapped syringe. At least I had plenty of experience with those. Under the sealed syringe, I found a small booklet. Instructions. Thank God. I scanned the words. I had to start a couple of times to make my brain focus and comprehend. It seemed like every other line of text contained a warning about serum sickness and anaphylaxis and other horrifying possible consequences.
“Come on, Isaiah. Hurry.” His voice was tight and his face ashen.
“I don’t know how much to give you!”
The little vial of antivenin mocked me. How much? How much did Henry need?
“Just do it!” His serene calm was cracking, and his hand and wrist were swelling.
“Fine!”
I tore open the alcohol wipes. Henry didn’t react when I cleaned the wound, but I flinched every time I touched the punctures. Filling the syringe was easy, no different than what I did every time I filled my pump. When it came to actually injecting the serum, that’s when I had the problem. My hand started shaking, silver-edged black dots flashed across my vision, and bile churned in my gut.
“What’s the matter?” Henry asked. “Just do it already. If you don’t hurry, I could lose my hand.”
“Not helping,” I gritted out between clenched teeth. Before I got the insulin pump, Mom had to give me insulin shots. When I was old enough, we assumed I would give the shots to myself, to save everyone the time and effort. Every time I brought the needle within two inches of my skin, I panicked. It was like some kind of force field surrounded me. No matter how often I tried, I could not get the needle closer than two inches. Apparently that force field also surrounded Henry.
Do-Gooder Page 4
