Beneath a Southern Sky

by Deborah Raney

The terrible screams had stopped now, but he ran back into the burning hut, groping desperately for another heavy hammock. A loud crack split the air, and a wall of the hut fell outward, admitting fresh air, exposing the rows of smoldering cots and mats, but also fanning the flames higher. He had to get the rest of them out! He lifted a body from a mat. Then everything went black.

  Nathan Camfield opened his eyes and sat up on one elbow. His heart was beating violently in his chest. He had dreamed the dream again. And as they had so many times before, the tears came. For the dream was real. It had happened. And no matter how he tried, he couldn’t escape the horrifying visions being replayed over and over and over again. Day after day, night after night. Every time he closed his eyes the fire raged anew.

  He shaded his eyes and looked up. The sun burned brightly through the narrow gap in the roof of his tiny hut. He knew that the light would soon move on, and he would be left in the grey-green shadows that had colored his existence for what seemed an eternity.

  But for now, the sunshine was blinding—and he welcomed it. He struggled to pull himself to a sitting position. He knew from experience that the ropes of vine that bound his feet were loosely tied, affording him reasonable movement, but he also knew—again from experience—that the ropes that lashed the door of the cagelike hut were expertly knotted and closely guarded.

  He sucked in a breath of the heavy jungle air, scarcely aware of the searing pain in his lungs, pain that had been with him now for as long as he could remember—since the fire, since his nightmare had begun.

  Too quickly, the sun crawled lower, leaving him in the shadows once again. He felt his spirits sink with it, and he forced himself to think of hopeful things. Sing the songs, recite the lists, say the prayers. He’d played the games for so long that they came almost automatically.

  “A is for air.” He would never again take even one breath for granted.

  “B is for bananas. C is for coffee.” The two staples had sustained him day after day.

  “D is for Daria.” Oh, Daria. Are you safe? You must be sick with worry. Why haven’t you been able to get help? Has something happened to you, too? Surely the men from this village hadn’t followed Tados and Quimico to Timoné. No! Stop it. Stop it! he silently chided himself.

  “Go on now,” he said aloud.

  “E is for elms.” Thoughts of his childhood tree house in an ancient elm cooled him on sticky tropical afternoons.

  “F is for family.” Oh, Daria… No! “Go on… G is for God: ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” He continued, picking up I through Q. Then, “R is for rice.” Another life-sustaining gift. He went the rest of the way through the alphabet, forcing himself to visualize each blessing as he counted it, not just to recite it by rote.

  The Scriptures were next: “ ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…’”

  Then the bones in the body: “Mandible, scapula, ulna, radius, tibia, fibula…”

  And, finally, the books of the Bible: “Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers…”

  The afternoon rains had come and gone when he finished these litanies of sanity. Though he wasn’t sure why, it helped give some purpose to his days to have those tasks before him.

  The days and nights melded into one another, and he could not guess if he had been here for weeks or months or years. He remembered picking up little Miguel from the fire, discovering that he was already dead. He remembered going back into the flames, then the wall of the hut falling outward. He remembered moving toward the opening as though in slow motion. Everything was a blank after that. Until he woke up here in this hut, in agonizing pain, burns searing his legs and arms, his lungs on fire. He wondered now if perhaps he had also contracted the illness he’d come to cure, for he had been delirious, drifting in and out of consciousness for days—or perhaps it was weeks. If that were true, it was a blessing, for when he’d begun to regain consciousness for short periods of time, the pain from the burns was excruciating. He was ashamed to remember that he had prayed to die—he had screamed in agony for death to come. In his anguish, he’d cared nothing for Daria’s grief, for the safety of Tados and Quimico, for the Timoné people he’d been called to serve. He’d wanted only to be released from the unbearable, torturous pain.

  Though he had no memories of being cared for during the time immediately after the fire, at some point food had begun to appear at the door of his hut and eventually a drink that he suspected contained something that eased the pain and caused him to sleep deeply. As time went on, his delirium ceased and his wounds began to scar over. His were second-degree burns, and he knew if he could stave off infection, they would heal completely. Then he would find a way to get home.

  But where were Tados and Quimico? Since the fire, he had not seen them. When they’d first arrived in Chicoro, his guides were careful to keep a wide berth of the sick hut he’d set up, lest they, too, contract the deadly fever. For that reason, he felt certain they hadn’t perished in the fire with the others. He assumed they had gone back to Timoné for help. Surely they’d had time to get there and back by now.

  When he had begun to remain conscious for longer periods, he had tried to mark the passage of time by scratching marks in the dirt floor of the hut. But he’d soon become confused. There were too many marks. He must have forgotten and tallied more than one mark for each day. Finally he had given up, certain that any day now the Timoné would come for him and the marks would not matter any more.

  The first day he had felt strong enough to leave the hut, he walked several hundred yards, into the village, looking for the chief. The children saw him first and ran away into their homes, obviously frightened of him. Alerted, the village leaders met him near the center of the compound and began to motion wildly for him to leave. He tried to speak with them, but they made it clear that they would not allow him to remain inside the village. At first he guessed that they were still afraid they would contract the disease from him. But as the days went by and he lived in exile in his hut outside the village, he noticed that some of the older Chicoro boys sneaked away and came to peer at him. They kept their distance, but from what little of their dialect he had picked up, he was horrified to realize that their superstitious beliefs had made him into some kind of a god or good luck charm in their eyes. The Chicoro were a very superstitious people, and they apparently held him in awe because he had escaped not only the deadly illness to which he had been exposed again and again, but he had also walked through fire. He had defied the flames of a deadly inferno that had killed twenty-eight people in the sick hut. Of course, he himself believed his escape from the fire to be miraculous. But it was certainly no miracle of his own doing.

  A million times he had gone back in his memory to the day of the fire, wishing he could have had a chance to do things differently. When he and Tados and Quimico had first come to Chicoro, the fever continued to devastate the village, taking ten more lives in the first two days he was there. Nate could not positively diagnose the illness, but he believed it to be a strain of influenza to which these people were highly susceptible. The only way to stop the spread of the disease was to isolate the ill downriver from the stream that supplied their drinking water. And there had been indications that the measure was working. At the time of the fire, it had been three full days since they’d had to isolate anyone new. But when the chief’s young son died on the fourth day, the village leaders had begun to lose faith in Nate.

  Tados and Quimico sensed that the good will of the chief had soured, and they implored Nate to slip away quietly in the night. But he insisted that they remain for a few more days. He should have trusted the judgment of his two guides. They knew the culture, and they understood the malice of the chief toward Nate. But he had not wanted to leave until he knew he had the outbreak under control.

  He knew in his heart that his motives hadn’t been totally altruistic. In his mind, he had written a glowing report for the board of Gospel Outreach, telling of his success in putting down a major epide
mic. His pride had gotten in the way of his good judgment.

  So he had been forced back to the hut outside the village. Night after night he watched the fires from afar and listened to the chatter of the children playing before bedtime. Loneliness overwhelmed him, and he began to make desperate plans to return to Timoné. In his weakened physical state, without a guide, without provisions, he knew it would be suicide to attempt such a journey alone. But every attempt to secure a guide to take him down the river was met with a firm refusal. Finally desperation and the torture of his isolation caused him to toss prudence to the wind.

  Early one morning, he had set out along the Rio Guaviare, planning to follow the river to the next village where he hoped to find a more sympathetic response.

  He hadn’t been walking more than an hour when he heard the sound of a boat’s motor in the distance. He had almost shouted with joy, but remembering the warnings of the mission in Bogotá about drug traffickers and the paramilitary factions that controlled some parts of the country, he stepped back into the trees to wait and watch.

  As the sound grew nearer, Nate peered through the palm leaves. He didn’t recognize the lone occupant of the boat, but he was a bronze-skinned man wearing the traditional garb of the Chicoro. He racked his brain to think of something of value with which he could bribe the boat’s pilot. His gold watch had been lost in the fire—or perhaps stolen from him while he was unconscious. Never had he regretted its loss as much as he did now.

  Without anything to offer the man in exchange for passage on his boat, Nate took his chances and showed himself on the riverbank.

  “Hollio!” he shouted. “Hello? Can you help me?”

  The man cut the motor and shaded his eyes, trying to locate where the shout had come from. Nate called out again. “Hollio! Over here.”

  The man seemed surprised to see him. He hesitated a moment before sculling slowly toward the bank.

  When the boat touched shore, Nate reached out to hold it steady while the man got out. “Hollio,” Nate said, putting up a hand in greeting. “Could I come with you?” he asked in broken Chicoro, motioning toward the boat.

  “Seshu! Silence!” the man barked. Though he spoke in the Chicoro dialect, his inflection was less nasal, more refined, perhaps that of the Castilian Spanish spoken widely in the country.

  The man circled Nate, looking him up and down. Nate pled with him again—in Spanish this time. “Por favor, can you help me?”

  “Silencio!” the man roared. To Nate’s horror, he took a pistol from the waist of his loose-fitting trousers and turned it on Nate.

  Nate held up his hands in surrender, and the man motioned for him to get into the boat.

  Nate did so, and within twenty minutes he was back on the bank of the Chicoro village, not a hundred yards from the hut he had left an hour ago. His captor led him up the trail toward the village at gunpoint. As they rounded a sharp curve in the trail, they came face to face with Vidalé, one of the young men who often brought Nate’s meals. He was carrying gourds of rice and fruit, presumably not realizing yet that Nate had tried to leave.

  Vidalé appeared surprised to see Nate coming toward the village, but when he saw the man behind Nate, his eyes grew wide and he stopped short. “Juan Mocoa!” he whispered, obviously recognizing the stranger.

  Mocoa spoke to Vidalé, gesturing toward Nate.

  Nate could not understand all of their exchange, but the man seemed to wield an unexplained power over Vidalé. The young man answered him, speaking rapidly, his eyes darting nervously, his dialogue peppered with the word Americano.

  Juan Mocoa motioned for Vidalé to continue on the trail, and, still holding his gun on Nate, he followed the young native back to Nathan’s hut. Shoving Nathan inside, he motioned for Vidalé to give Nate the food, then he took a length of vine rope from the pouch he wore on a string around his waist. Vidalé set the food on the floor and went outside with Mocoa. Nate could hear them tying the door securely with the rope. When he was finished, Mocoa spoke harshly to Vidalé as the door jiggled from the outside—no doubt being tested by Mocoa for security.

  Nate watched them through a narrow crack in the bamboo wall of the hut. Vidalé cowered, but suddenly, Mocoa gave the knot a final tug, smiled, and put a friendly arm around the young man’s shoulders. He took something shiny from his pouch and put it in Vidalé’s hand. He lowered his voice, and Nate could no longer hear their exchange.

  Vidalé remained to stand guard at the door to the hut. Nate couldn’t imagine what kind of threat he posed to Juan Mocoa, but since that time, his hut had been closely guarded at all times.

  Twice each day, food and drink were brought to him, and twice each day his hands were tied in front of him and he was led to the river to relieve himself or to bathe. He had tried to communicate with the young men who had been assigned the duty of escorting him, but though the walls of this prison and the strong vine ropes with which they tied him rendered him harmless, his captors seemed to fear him and refused to speak with him.

  He prayed continually. Though he didn’t understand why God had allowed him to live this nightmare, he knew he was not alone. He had felt God’s touch many times, had often been filled with a quiet peace that only the presence of God could explain. On two separate occasions he had felt an actual physical presence—a benevolent entity that he believed to be an angel—inside the hut with him. He grasped tightly to the memories of those incidents, and they strengthened him when his faith faltered.

  Yesterday morning, Nate had awakened to the sound of the engine of Juan Mocoa’s boat. The sound was music to Nate’s ears as it faded into silence downriver. But his beliefs that the man’s departure would end his confinement proved unfounded. If anything, his guards seemed to take their duty more seriously than ever now that Juan Mocoa was gone.

  As another sun melted into the jungle, Nathan lay back on the hard-packed earth and let his mind drift, waiting for the blessing of nightfall when he would lie awake, as he did every night, fixing his eyes on the split in the roof. The foliage that grew above his hut was thick, but sometimes when the wind parted the palm fronds and the night sky was blackest, he would catch a glimpse of a single star. It was a split-second twinkle of light, but he told himself that it was Spica, the bright star of Virgo that was his and Daria’s. When that happened, hope would swell in his breast again. He would remember his last night with Daria, and he would dream that miles down the river, she was looking at the same star, sending her love to him on a whispered prayer.

  Seventeen

  Colson Hunter rose at five o’clock on Valentine’s Day to find the countryside buried in a thick blanket of snow. He dialed the Haydon’s number, where Daria was staying, while he measured coffee into the coffeemaker.

  Daria answered with an uninterpretable mumble. “Hey, sleepyhead. Do you know what day this is?”

  “Valentine’s Day,” she said archly, that impish grin of hers coming through the line as clearly as if she’d been in the room.

  “So what do you want for Valentine’s Day?” he played along. But she turned serious. “I just want you. Oh, Cole, I just want you. I can’t wait.”

  “Me neither. But, um, have you by any chance looked outside?”

  “Why?” He heard her stumbling out of bed and raising the blinds at her window. He waited for her response, fully expecting her to moan in dismay. But she surprised him.

  “Cole! It’s gorgeous! What a beautiful day for a wedding.”

  “Yeah, if anyone can get there. The roads are pretty bad, Dar.”

  “As long as you and the minister show up, I really don’t care if anyone else makes it.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  “No, just excited. I just want it to be tomorrow!” He laughed his pleasure at her comment. “Well, my love, you just snuggle under those warm blankets for a few more hours. I, on the other hand, have to get out in this white stuff and plow my way through to the clinic. The animals don’t really give two hoots that it’s my weddi
ng day.”

  “But Cole, can’t Travis do it?”

  “I don’t mind. I’m too nervous to sleep anyway.”

  “Are you? Nervous, I mean.”

  “A little,” he admitted. “Now go back to sleep. The next time I see you, you’ll be just minutes away from being Mrs. Colson Hunter.”

  “Mmm,” she sighed. “I like the sound of that.”

  “I love you.”

  “Not as much as I love you.” It was her standard response, but he never tired of hearing it.

  Still smiling, he hung up the phone and poured himself a cup of coffee. He was almost afraid to think about how happy he was. Since Bridgette’s death he hadn’t dared to hope for this kind of happiness again. And now he’d been blessed not only with the most wonderful woman in the world to love and who’d loved him in return, but with a little girl who called him Daddy. He thought of God’s promise to “restore what the locust hath eaten,” and he was humbled to realize how amazingly that had been borne out in his own life.

  At one time he had lost everything that was precious to him. No one, not even Daria, knew just how much he had lost. But he had decided long ago not to dwell on the past. Nothing could ever change the fact that things had happened as they had. It had all been forgiven and mostly forgotten. And now here he sat on a beautiful winter morning about to have the blessing of love restored to him. He felt unworthy. Deep gratitude welled up inside him, and he bowed his head and gave thanks—though it seemed there were no adequate words.

  He drained his coffee cup and went to the mud room to pull on his coveralls and boots. He stepped off the back porch into almost a foot of snow. Crunching around to the front of the house, he saw that the snowplow had yet to make it down the dirt road. He would have to clear the driveway and the short stretch of road to the highway himself. He trudged down the lane that led to the barn and went in to hook the snow blade to his little farm tractor.

  Two hours later the road was clear, the clinic chores were done, and he was back home to shower and eat a quick breakfast.