Irony wasn’t Okello’s strong suit and he never seemed to know how to react when Connor talked like this. This time he started ranting and threatening execution and Connor quietly stood there and took the abuse, even when he came up and jabbed him in the chest with his stick, hollering at him so close that Connor could smell his breath and feel the spit upon his face. It took all of Connor’s self-control not to punch him but he figured that this was exactly what Okello wanted. The fact that he seemed to need a pretext to beat him suggested that he must be under strict orders not to harm him without good reason and Connor drew some comfort from this. Even so, the encounters always left him shaky.
The marking of the days on his wall was his only indulgence, for he knew that to watch the passage of time was the surest way to slow it. Instead, he tried to occupy himself in the detail of his daily routine, in the cleaning of his hut, in his washing and his exercise. And every morning and evening he would sit cross-legged and still and silent with his eyes closed and for an hour or more clear his mind of all thought.
There was always an armed guard outside the hut and they all seemed to have been instructed not to talk or become friendly. Only one of them, a tall young man called Vincent who regularly did the night shift seemed prepared to take the risk. He spoke a little English and when he was sure nobody else was around he would ask Connor questions about America and teach him a little Acholi. He even helped him cut his hair and trim his beard.
Otherwise, apart from mosquitoes and spiders and scorpions and the occasional visiting rat, the only company he had was his Bible. He had already read it once straight through and now was going through it again, but lingering this time and savoring its stories. Neither of his parents had set much store by religion and although he had a passing acquaintance with the Gospels, he had never known till now what a treasure trove of tales the Old Testament was.
He read again of Daniel and the lions and of his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who were cast into the fiery furnace and how an angel appeared among them and saved them. And he read in the Books of Samuel of the great friendship between Jonathan and David and of David’s love for the married Bathsheba and how he arranged to have her husband killed so that he could marry her himself. Connor played these tales over and over again in his head like movies and at night, after he had put the Bible down and turned off the lamp, he would ponder long upon their meaning and what lessons lay in them for his own life.
When he reflected on what had brought him to this place, he knew that many would consider his mission insane and his methods reckless. Perhaps it would have been wiser over the past year to have let those who loved him know where he was and he regretted the pain and worry that his disappearance must have caused them. But he knew too that the journey he had made was part of his own private destiny and that it was somehow ordained, though by whom or what he had no idea, that he should travel its path alone and without reference.
He knew the truth of this destiny only in fragments that twirled in his mind like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle floating in a pool: the elk with its flaming antlers, the walk through the desert along the invisible river, the rock paintings, both the ones in the roofless cave and the one that hung on Julia’s bedroom wall; the story of the kudu and the skeleton of the whale and the old lion staring with its firelit mirror eyes. All these images he knew to be connected and sometimes, in moments of calm, on the edge of his vision, the pieces of the puzzle seemed to float so closely together that he thought he was about to see the whole picture and at last to understand. But when he looked directly at it the pieces would twirl again and quickly drift apart. And he soon came to realize that whatever the truth might be, it was not a thing of mind but of being and that he would know it by living and not by looking.
During the past two weeks, when the guards let him out into the compound for his morning workout and for his evening walks at gunpoint through the eucalyptus trees, Connor had become aware that there were many more soldiers and vehicles around than there had been when he arrived. At night he heard the drone of planes landing and taking off up on the plateau. Some great mustering or preparation seemed to be going on. He had asked Vincent about it but the boy either didn’t know or wouldn’t say.
This evening however when he took his walk everything was quieter. The guard who accompanied him was new and nervous and belligerent. He kept shouting at him not to walk too far ahead and ordered him to turn back much earlier than the other guards ever did. When Connor tried to argue the guard grew angry and came at him, jabbing with his rifle. Instead of letting him sit outside to eat his supper, as Vincent and most of the other guards now let him, so that he could watch the sun go down, this tyro tyrant shoved him inside and locked the door.
Such petty assertions of power happened from time to time, and Connor always tried not to take them personally. But tonight he couldn’t help it and as darkness crowded in he sat brooding and feeling cheated and bitter and sorry for himself. He tried to meditate but his mind was fizzing and wouldn’t clear. He lit the lamp and opened his Bible to the Book of Exodus, where earlier he had been reading again of the great plagues that God sent upon Egypt to free the children of Israel but he couldn’t concentrate and found himself reading the same verse over and over again. He undressed and blew out the lamp and lay on his bed mat in the dark, closer to despair than he had been for many weeks. Finally he fell into a troubled sleep.
He woke in the middle of the night and knew something was going on outside. He opened his mosquito net and looked across the hut. There was a slatted square of moonlight on the mud floor and as he watched he saw a shadow move across it. Then he heard voices outside. One of them was the guard’s and he sounded riled, as if he were challenging someone. Connor got up and walked naked to the door and peered out through the slats.
The compound was silver with moonlight and the long shadow of a palm tree reached across it. The guard’s chair stood deserted outside the hut with the padlock key dangling from its back on a string. He could still hear the voices but couldn’t make out where they were coming from. He moved to another gap in the slats and craning his neck at last he saw them.
The guard was standing before a soldier much smaller than himself, prodding him in the chest with his rifle and haranguing him. Then Connor saw a third figure step from the shadows behind the guard and start to move silently toward him. He was as tall as the guard and had something long in his right hand which, as he tiptoed closer, flashed in the moonlight and Connor saw it was the blade of a machete. It glinted again as the man raised it and brought it down in a great arc toward the back of the guard’s neck. The sound of the blow was shocking and although Connor couldn’t see, he knew it must have all but severed the guard’s head. His knees folded and his body crumpled to the ground and a dark stain began to spread from his shoulders.
The two others took his rifle and his knife and hurried toward the hut. The taller one had a bag slung over his shoulder. Connor ran to the bed and unrolled his jeans and shirt and quickly dressed. He could hear the urgent murmur of their voices outside and the rattle of the key in the padlock. Then the door swung open and the taller one stepped in and as his face turned it caught the moonlight and Connor saw that it was Vincent.
‘Put on your boots, quick,’ he said. ‘Get your things.’
Connor didn’t ask any questions.
He found his boots and pulled them on, then bundled his few belongings in his spare T-shirt. In a minute he was outside and ready to go. Vincent had hauled the guard’s body toward the hut and Connor helped him drag it inside. The short one had been kicking dust over the bloodstain and now he came toward them and Connor saw that it was Lawrence Nyeko. The boy looked very frightened. He said something in Acholi and Vincent nodded and turned to Connor.
‘He asks if it is true that his brother is alive.’
Connor told him that it was. Lawrence gave a little nod.
‘Stay close and be quiet,’ Vincent said. ‘If they see us,
they kill us all.’
They ran all three across the compound and into the shadow of the trees along the ridge that overlooked the camp. Vincent went first with Lawrence close behind and Connor at the rear. There was a trail but they kept away to one side of it, scrambling through the rocks and scrub with the insects screaming around them and the moon strobing in through the treetops.
Vincent had the guard’s AK-47 in his hand and sometimes he would hold it up as a signal for them to stop and they would all stand as if frozen, peering into the dappled shadow and barely daring to draw breath. Once they startled some large animal that snorted in alarm and stomped darkly off, crashing through the bush. Vincent turned and grinned. Another time they heard a truck coming along the trail and the sound of soldiers’ voices and they lay down with their faces pressed to the sweet-smelling earth while the lights swung over them.
By the time they reached the end of the ridge, the moon had angled lower and the darkness had deepened around them. The soldiers’ camp was away to their right now and far behind and all Connor could see as he peered down through the trees was the pale mud outline of the dried river curving away to the east.
How long they walked, he couldn’t tell. Maybe two or three hours and not a pause for rest. Only when they came to a small clearing of pale grass and boulders and a first glimmer of dawn brightened the horizon ahead did Vincent stop. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Connor. There was enough light to see that it was a crude map drawn in charcoal.
‘Follow the river east, but do not go too close to it,’ Vincent said. ‘Stay in the high ground, in the trees. And travel only at night.’
‘How far is it to Karingoa?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe sixty, seventy miles south of here. But you must not go south. Between here and the border there are more camps. Many, many soldiers. They prepare a great war. You must go east. Three, maybe four days. Only there is it safe to cross.’
‘You’re not coming with us?’
‘I can’t. Take this.’
He unslung the bag from his shoulder and gave it to Connor.
‘There is a little food and water.’
Then he held out the rifle. Connor shook his head.
‘Take it!’
‘I feel safer without it.’
Vincent clearly considered this crazy and insisted that they should at least take the machete which Connor saw was still smeared with the dried blood of the guard. Vincent laid a hand on Lawrence’s shoulder and said something to him in
Acholi. The boy nodded and murmured a few words in reply of which Connor understood just enough to know that he was offering his thanks.
Connor held out his hand and Vincent shook it.
‘Thank you,’ Connor said.
Vincent nodded. ‘Go now. Take the boy to his brother.’
They went their separate ways and Connor didn’t look back until he and Lawrence had reached the far side of the clearing. But when he did, Vincent had already vanished into the trees.
29
The wake-up call at St. Mary of the Angels was about as blissful as any ever devised. The dawn air was always cool and clear and still and as it filled with light so the birds began to whoop and whistle and scold each other in the jungle of the gardens. For about an hour they had the world to themselves until at six o’clock the nuns began singing in the chapel and Julia would lie and listen with Amy still asleep beside her. Only rarely did she recognize a tune for mostly they chanted African masses which were so powerful and exquisite that even the birds soon stopped trying to compete.
Slowly the old convent building would then start coming to life. There would be a first murmur of children’s voices from the dormitory windows below and then the sound of doors opening and closing and the shuffle and slap of running feet along the corridors and on the stairs. Soon from outside would come the chatter and laughter as the children drifted across to the kitchen compound to wash at the pump.
Normally that was when Amy would stir and rub her eyes and she and Julia would lie and talk awhile until Cringle started singing Scottish ballads next door in the shower which was their cue to get up and take a shower themselves.
But not today. For just as Cringle started up, there was a scream from outside and then a yell and soon the whole world seemed to be doing it. Julia and Amy leaped out from the mosquito net and ran to the windows and pushed open the shutters. There was a group of about a dozen excited children down in the compound and more running to join them, while out of the kitchens came a jabbering war party of maids and cooks, some armed with frying pans and brooms.
‘What are they saying?’ Julia asked.
‘I can’t hear. Let’s go see.’
By the time they got out to the compound there were a lot more children there, all gathered in one corner. Françoise was already there at the back of the crowd and so was Peter Pringle, his fuzzy ginger head still dripping and making splotches on his T-shirt. He turned excitedly as they ran up.
‘It’s a snake. I think it’s a python.’
‘It’s taken a duck,’ Françoise said.
‘Wow! Mommy, come on, let’s see!’
There weren’t many animals that gave Julia the creeps and even in the presence of those that did - most especially spiders - she always tried, for Amy’s benefit, to appear relaxed. Back home, if Amy was watching, she had been known to pluck big hairy ones from the bathtub with her bare hands as if it were nothing and carry them outside to release them, saying, ‘There you go, little fella,’ when really inside she was screaming. But on a scale of terror, nothing, absolutely nothing, came close to snakes. And now her dear daughter was hauling her by the hand through the crowd toward a monstrous one.
‘Amy, hold on there! Don’t get too close! Amy!’
They broke through into the front row of children and there, about four yards away, cowering in the corner and trying to hide under a straggly scarlet hibiscus bush, was the python. It was about five feet long but to Julia it might as well have been twenty. It had a great bulge behind its head which was presumably its breakfast, the late lamented duck. How it could have gotten the darned thing through its nasty little mouth, Lord only knew. Two of the older boys had found sticks and were trying to pitchfork the terrified creature out into the open.
‘Wow, look at that,’ Amy said. ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’
‘Frankly, that isn’t the first word that springs to mind.’
The snake was a greeny yellow with rounded dark-chocolate markings edged in white. The children were yelling at the boys who had the sticks, urging them on. And now, pushing through the crowd came Sister Emily and old George, the gardener, who was carrying a shotgun which Amy immediately saw.
‘You’re not going to kill it?’
He grinned down at her. ‘You like snakes?’
‘Yeah, they’re fine. Don’t kill it. Mommy?’
Julia didn’t know what to say. Even Sister Emily beside her seemed lost for words. To protect itself the python had coiled into a bundle and kept moving its head from side to side, keeping as low as it could. But the boys weren’t going to give up. One of them hooked his stick into its coils and managed to drag it out into the open. The children were all shouting for them to kill it. Sister Emily stepped out in front of them and raised her arms and called for calm but her voice was drowned and no one paid any attention to her.
The boys were prodding the creature now and when it suddenly made a halfhearted lunge at one of them they both raised their sticks and started to beat it. Amy grabbed onto Julia’s arm.
‘Mommy! Stop them!’ she wailed.
Julia was about to lead her away, when someone elbowed past from behind and ran out in front toward the boys. He had a piece of sacking in his hand and he pushed the boys aside and turned to face the crowd. Suddenly everyone stopped yelling. It was Thomas Nyeko.
He positioned himself between the boys and the python and for a moment there was utter silence. Both of the other boys were
older and taller than he and now one of them raised his stick and tried to step past him to finish the job. A few of the children started to yell again. Thomas blocked the boy’s way and as he did so he opened his mouth and shouted. The boy stopped in his tracks. It was the first time he or anyone present had heard Thomas’s voice and the effect was electrifying. The boy lowered his stick and Thomas went on, not shouting now but talking, addressing everyone.
Julia didn’t understand all that he said but what little she missed she found out later. He said that there had been enough cruelty and killing, that they had all seen too much of both. There had to be an end to it. They had all known hunger too and stolen food to live and this was all the snake was doing. They should respect his courage and let him live. And he turned and threw the sacking over the python and then knelt beside it and wrapped it up. Then he stood with it bundled in his arms and came past the boys toward the crowd. And everyone stood aside for him to pass and watched in silence as he walked away across the compound and into the trees.
Until that day, all that was known of what had happened to Thomas and his twin brother had been gleaned from others: from neighbors who had witnessed their kidnapping and then witnessed their return as avenging devils with Makuma’s men, killing and looting and burning the village; and from the government soldiers who later found Thomas wandering naked and near death in the bush. Now, over the weeks that followed his rescue of the python, he told the story himself.
Every child at the center had his or her own special saga of horrors, and Julia knew it was wrong to compare or to grade them. But Thomas’s was about as shocking as it got and worse than anyone had suspected. The story emerged in a slow flowing of words and drawings during many hours of counseling, both in one-to-one sessions and in group sessions with the other children.
The Smoke Jumper Page 39
