Beneath the Darkening Sky

by Majok Tulba

  I duck behind a building, cutting to the right. Where is Priest? I can see his hut.

  ‘Go! Go!’ I hear from the fleeing boys behind me.

  Now I hear other, different explosions – hand grenades. I run back towards Priest’s hut. Another boom! Shards of wood fly into my face, hot and sharp. My back hits the corrugated metal of the hut. My ears ring. A huge cloud hangs. My breath is muffled, but loud inside my head. A group of troops come towards me, leapfrogging positions with covering fire.

  My feet kick at the loose dirt and my hands claw against the wall, trying to get my body up. Three boys run out onto the path. They see the troops and turn away without breaking stride. One face bursts open. Another jerks in the air and drops lifeless to the ground. The third spins as a round clips his leg. He hits the ground and tries to get back up. Three more rounds and he stays down.

  Finally I’m on my feet, making for the trees near the creek. Another explosion and I jump into the thick green before me, landing on hard roots. I lunge forward, rolling into the creek. The cold hits me and my pain dies in shock.

  I push through the waist-deep water for the heavy foliage on the other side.

  A flash of red against the green makes me turn and drop into the water for cover.

  A trail of silk fabric hangs among the plants and snakes into the lush green.

  The sounds of gunfire seem far away now. I get up and slowly, quietly push in the direction of the fabric. As I reach the edge, I part the broad leaves and see a face. Arms grab and pull me into the undergrowth.

  Someone shushes me. It’s Christmas. She huddles next to me. Her chest heaves against her untidy sarong. Even fleeing for my life, sure that we’re about to be cut to pieces by gunfire, I hope the sarong will loosen a bit more.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re alive,’ she whispers. Then she lunges forward and hugs me. I fall backwards under the unexpected weight. The machine guns bang far, far away. A warm, soft body is in my arms. Her breasts press against my chest.

  My heart beats a hundred miles an hour and her breathing is fast. After I don’t know how long, she pushes herself up and peeks back through the leaves.

  ‘Oh,’ she whispers, ‘I was so scared, Baboon.’ She’s kept my old name.

  ‘Me too,’ I tell her.

  At first I thought it was just someone doing target practice. Until that first explosion. That was when I ran.’

  ‘Yes.’ I don’t have anything else to say.

  ‘I didn’t see any of the other wives. I just ran.’ Her voice is tinged with surprise. ‘The guards were gone.’

  ‘There was a lot of running.’

  Again we fall into silence. There isn’t much gunfire now, just pops in the distance every once in a while. I feel like going to sleep. It is the aftermath of the adrenaline rush of fighting.

  ‘Is this what it’s like?’ she whispers. ‘On missions, when you attack a village?’

  I don’t answer.

  She looks at the sky framed by leaves.

  ‘I was a gift,’ she says. ‘We heard that a town nearby had been attacked. The elders gathered up a bunch of us girls, all the pretty virgins. Then they sent a messenger to the rebels, saying our village supported them. We gave them goats and some fruit and six girls. I think they left my village alone.’

  ‘Not mine,’ I reply.

  ‘Was it like that?’ she asks. ‘When they came?’ Not even Priest has asked that before.

  I imagine the government troops raping Mouse. It doesn’t make much sense, I can’t picture it. Those men in their proper uniforms, raping. ‘It was dark,’ is all I can say.

  More silence. The wind makes leaves rustle in the trees and we both jump before realising what it is. Christmas laughs. I join her and we laugh in silence, letting the fear go. We are just kids hiding in the jungle. I’m not a kidnapped soldier. She isn’t a traded peace treaty. No camp or war or world, just me and her alone in the wild.

  We both know where we have to go. We know what the government troops would do to each of us. We know what we are.

  We return together, just as the sun begins to set. The plan is to tell people that I rescued Christmas from the camp, protecting her from the government troops.

  But when we return, no one notices us. Paradise is smouldering. Not one building has been left untouched. Just a few walls remain, tombstones for what had been there. The hospital tent is in shreds, the General’s house is no more than a pile of tin. Even the fowls have been taken from the kitchen.

  Bodies lie everywhere. Most have been shot and left to rot, but some have been tortured. Not for information, but justice.

  Christmas cries softly behind me. All this I’ve seen before, it’s what we do. We quickly gather what goods and food we can find among the carnage. The able-bodied are already moving the dead into funeral pyres, and lighting the gasoline-soaked corpses before disease or animals come. I feel I am truly in hell.

  The fallback camp is our next destination.

  The Raid

  The government troops followed our fleeing soldiers into the jungle. By the time they gave up the chase, our reinforcements had arrived. It was just a small raiding party and was easily outnumbered. But it wasn’t enough revenge.

  The Commander tells us that he knows who led the attack on our camp. I don’t know how he knows, just like I don’t know how the government soldiers knew to attack when all the officers were away. But we believe him. So we go to the border, to this little village, the hometown of the raiding party’s commanding officer.

  It’s night when we reach the village, which is of course what we want. First, the Commander orders us to shoot into the air, get everyone good and scared. Then we walk into the village centre and open fire. Open the gates of hell and let the demons run free.

  I’m standing next to Priest as we begin firing, just short bursts. No one’s running around yet, so there’s nothing to aim at except the huts. In the flashes of fire from his rifle, I see Priest’s still eyes, his quiet face.

  As the gunfire pounds the air, the animals panic. Dogs barking, cows and goats mewing between the stutters of our bullets. People burst out of their huts. Some look around dazed. They die quickly. I wonder if they’ve heard of us. The ones who just stand there in surprise, it’s like they don’t know there’s a war on. They hear gunfire and freeze. I don’t understand that reaction. The smart ones run. They throw on shoes, if they have them, and flee.

  ‘March!’ the Commander yells from the centre of our firing circle.

  It’s less of a march than a run, but we break the circle and charge the huts, firing on anyone we see out of uniform. Screaming and more gunfire. Soldiers shout obscenities and cheer. Then quiet.

  A man runs out in front of me, wearing a ragged pair of trainers and nothing else. I don’t really aim, just shoot in his general direction. One bullet wings him and he cries out, spinning into the dirt.

  ‘Nice shot!’ Parasite yells from behind me. He’s watching me again. I thought if I stayed with Priest, he’d leave me alone. This guy wants me dead, I’m sure. ‘Now, go finish him.’

  Bang.

  ‘Fuck his ass!’ Parasite yells, and shoots once into the air.

  ‘Faggot!’ I call back.

  I walk down one of the village lanes. Priest joins me. We’re walking shoulder to shoulder through the darkened huts.

  Aim for the head,’ he says.

  A door opens to our right. Priest swings his gun around and fires at the shapes in the doorway. No screams ring out. I don’t think they even knew we were here.

  ‘Come on,’ Priest says, running into the hut. He pulls a torch from his belt and shines it around the single room. ‘We need to check quickly and get back out there. We have more mercy to deliver.’

  We march back out into the lane. Other soldiers have joined us and are already in the neighbouring huts. Gunfire, screams, crashing. The Commander laughs as two boys drag a screaming woman out of her hut.

  ‘No, no!’ the Commander says, c
huckling. ‘You’re wasting your energy trying to hold the bitch’s arms like that.’ He walks over, pulls out his pistol and shoots the woman once in each thigh. She screams in pain, but her legs stop. ‘That’s how you do it!’

  I turn away, heading for the next hut.

  ‘People’s Fire!’ the Commander bellows.

  I run over. ‘Yes, sir?’

  He grabs my chin and turns my face towards the moonlight. ‘Ah, you got some blood on you, finally. About time you acted like a soldier.’

  Yes, sir.’

  He wraps an arm around my shoulders and pulls me close, the affectionate uncle again. ‘There’s nothing like being a soldier! Nothing better.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Maybe, if you’re lucky, one day you’ll be like me. Tough, strong, with a couple of bright stars on your shoulder.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He laughs. ‘Go get some!’ He pushes me forward.

  Yes, sir,’ I reply, running to rejoin Priest.

  The little one-room huts are nothing to us. Their occupants are just random people and we kill them to spread fear. We want everyone to know how tough and ruthless we are. We’re strong and brave, we kill unarmed civilians. The real targets, though, are the huts. With the whole place in flames, bodies littering the lanes, the howls of the dying mixing with the protests of captured animals, we turn to the one brick building in the village. Such houses are the houses of traitors to the people. Such houses mark entire villages for destruction.

  How could anyone build one of these? Where did they get the money? While everyone else sleeps in huts of mud and grass walls, these people have nice brick and concrete. They have windows and metal doorknobs. Clearly, they have exploited the people, they have betrayed the people. The villagers might have been silent out of fear, making them complicit in the treachery. We are the voice of the people. We cry out when they are silent. When we kick in the door and open fire, the people have spoken.

  As I enter I tread on crackling glass, it’s strewn everywhere. We knock everything over, kicking at chairs and tables like we think they could hurt us. A picture of a mother and daughter stands on one table, next to plastic flowers. I grab the frame and fling it against the wall. Priest is the last one in, sweeping with his torch through the chaos of young soldiers running about in search of one more thing to break.

  ‘What have we got?’ Priest bellows.

  ‘Nothing!’ Parasite calls back, heading for the door. ‘The motherfuckers have already taken off.’

  I poke around the ransacked building. Anything to keep me from shooting anyone else. I kneel down and peek under the bed, figuring the others have already checked a dozen times. Seems they haven’t. Huddled and quaking are the mother and daughter from the picture.

  I let out a little cry.

  ‘Remember,’ Priest whispers. ‘We are the angels of mercy.’ And then aloud, ‘Pussy! These two are for People’s Fire and me!’

  The American Girl

  As I sit on the edge of the truck, watching the ground whip by beneath my feet, I imagine us being in a village when the government men show up. I could run, strip off my jacket, ditch the gun and pretend to be a villager. By the time they figured out who I was, things would have calmed down. They wouldn’t just shoot me.

  Glancing back into the truck, I see the kids we’ve taken all huddled up together. It makes me wonder how many soldiers who came to my village hadn’t wanted to come. How many dreamed of escape. How monstrous they had all looked to me, hiding in my mango tree. That’s how I must look to these kids. I almost puke again.

  ‘I know what I want to dream tonight,’ says a young soldier, sitting close by me. ‘I want to dream of that girl I fucked in the village.’

  The others laugh.

  ‘Did you see her, man?’ he goes on. ‘Damn, she was beautiful. There was a girl that beautiful back home, I remember.’

  ‘Hey,’ barks Priest. ‘None of that backhome talk.’

  ‘No, no, sir, that’s just it. This gorgeous girl I knew never even looked at me. She would just walk around like everything belonged to her, like she was the queen of all Africa. If I went back to my village and I saw her now, I’d just grab her by the hair, drag her into the closest hut and fuck her right there on the floor!’

  Another chorus of laughter.

  ‘I had a magnificent dream last night,’ Parasite says. Having killed so many, he gets treated with the same seniority as Priest now. He spends so much time with the Commander, I keep expecting to hear he’s become an officer.

  ‘What was it?’ Priest asks. ‘Did you fuck your grandmother’s bones?’

  The boys all say, ‘Oooh,’ like Priest has delivered a big insult, but I know for a fact that Parasite once had that exact dream. He thought it meant his grandmother was blessing him from beyond.

  ‘Nope,’ Parasite says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. ‘An American girl.’

  The boys go crazy. They cheer and laugh and talk over each other. ‘I want that dream!’ ‘God send me to America!’ ‘American girls screw more than anyone else!’ ‘I hear they go crazy when you slap them.’ ‘Their breasts always taste like milk.’ ‘Tightest pussies on the planet!’

  ‘Shut up, you sinners!’ Priest orders with a laugh. ‘Let the man finish his story and maybe you’ll dream about white girls tonight.’

  More laughs and Parasite begins again. ‘We were in this big, huge bathroom. It was the size of the barracks. It had this giant hot tub and I sat in this big comfy chair. She gets out of the tub and she’s wearing nothing but bubbles.’

  More hooting and cheering.

  ‘Biggest tits I’ve ever seen. As big as your head. She kneels down in front of me and starts massaging my feet.’

  ‘Oh, that’s the best!’ someone says.

  ‘She had this forever-long blond hair. You can’t imagine how beautiful she was.’

  ‘Then what?’ Priest asks.

  ‘You ruined it, man.’

  ‘What? Me? How?’

  ‘You woke me up!’

  Even I’m laughing now.

  ‘You were kicking like a trapped animal! I’m going to have bruises for a week.’

  We lie under the canopy of stars. We are bivouacking in the open. We listen to the soft weeping of the new recruits. We share jokes about rape and murder and food. Rape, murder and food, that’s our life. What else do we have to joke about? We sleep on whatever bits of grass we can find, holding our guns to our chests like babies with blankets. Big, tough men. I’m not even sure how old I am any more. Older than eleven and younger than sixteen. Years don’t matter out here, not in our world. We count age in kills.

  I’m older than I should be.

  We’ll be back into it tomorrow morning, the village of some other government man. A military man who was betraying his people, his family, his Africa. On and on and on. The Commander has no end of speeches, but they all add up to the same thing. In the morning, I’ll get up and make sure my clips are loaded up. Then we’ll jump into the back of the trucks and drive off, looking for more people to kill, more women to rape and more children to steal.

  For some reason I think of Pina. I haven’t thought about her in a long time. I wonder, like I always do, why they left her alone. I wonder what I’d do if I saw her again. Looking for answers for everything is another way to go mad.

  What if she knew? What if she knew what I’d done? Maybe she’d understand. Then I remember the children sleeping nearby, the ones we’re supposedly guarding. I remember my night on the football field, the bruises and the pain and the mosquito bites. Then, I couldn’t understand what this world was. It never occurred to me that the soldiers didn’t want to do what they did.

  The boy who killed my father. If he hadn’t done it, they’d have blown his head off right there. It wasn’t his fault. And yet, if I knew who he was, I’d get up, walk over and put a bullet through him. I understand and I don’t care.

  What about Pina? Would she run away from me?
Hit me? Curse me? Spit on me? I can see her doing it.

  What about Mama?

  No one will ever understand what I’ve done. They’ll never forgive me. Will God forgive me? I look up at the stars and wish I could talk to Priest alone. I wish I could grab a flashlight and read his bible. Maybe someone worse than me is in there, and maybe he was forgiven. If a person like Priest could forgive me, surely so would God. So would my mother.

  I hear a laugh, but it doesn’t come from around me. It’s not a boy’s laugh. It’s a woman’s laugh, somewhere distant. Maybe it’s an angel. Maybe it’s my forgiveness. Who laughs like that? Sleep crawls into my eyes and everything feels far away and unreal. Christmas laughs like that.

  ‘People’s Fire!’ the Commander calls as I stand in line for ammo.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I jog out of line.

  Priest and a couple of others stand with him at the back of a truck. They examine maps spread out with a few other papers. Maybe they really do know who these government men are, where they come from.

  ‘Sir?’ I say, standing to attention.

  ‘I hope you like landmines.’ The Commander smiles.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You’re helping Priest take the new recruits back. Enjoy your walk.’ He laughs again and hits me on the back.

  They trucks are off somewhere else to collect more supplies, and the only unguarded road back to our old camp is mined. They load us up with a few backpacks of supplies. There’s water and food, plus extra stuff we stole from that last village.

  My second day. Yes, I did a lot of bad things yesterday, but it was just one day. One day is easy to forgive.

  Today, I’m not frightened of the minefield. The new recruits are there to protect me.

  We move out.

  On our walk through the minefield, the kids are a pain in the ass. I’ve been trying to be nice to them but they just cry or stop walking. One even hit me. Priest and I would never do what was done to us when I was a recruit, but we have to make them understand there’s no point running away. They have to do what we tell them.