“We need water”, Whiteman said with a low curse. John looked
at Jeff, who looked at his shoes in the gravel at the side of the road. The native woman with the withered baby sat
placidly in the bed of the scalding truck.
She hummed quietly and rocked.
The open hood blocked John’s view of the vitriolic Swiss girl in the cab
but he bet she was sweating, and cursing too, in French. “There’s a lake over there, through the
scrub”, John said. Whiteman looked glum,
but handed him a cracked pail and slumped against the shady side of the truck where
the engine ticked behind his head like a patient bomb. “I’ll be right back”, John said, hesitating a
little when he squinted through the scrub toward the lake. “Don’t dawdle”; we’ll melt!” Whiteman
guffawed. Soft, vehement French dribbled out the open truck window. The black lady rocked and hummed under the
sun, her head drooped over the baby like a prayer. Jeff put his hands in his pockets and drew
circles in the gravel with his toe, glancing blankly at the yawning compartment
where the engine ticked metallically.
John wove
through thorny scrub that scratched against the pail like fingernails. He
thought about the guavas they’d eaten for breakfast at the mission, plucked
warm and giving from the tree like a kiss, but he was only 18 and didn’t know about
things yet, only that guavas were warm from the sun, and soft, and sweet. The Australian ladies at the mission had
laughed too much over the meager dinner in the lamplight the night before, the sahba rolled into balls and dipped into
spicy peanut tikpindi. They had laughed about the puppies that
chased over their feet, calling them silly
burkes but their eyes said they were glad about the puppies. He remembered when they’d left for Diapaga, the
native lady with her bundle climbed aboard silently and no one said anything so
he sat with her and glanced shyly at her while she nursed. No one saw one of
the puppies sleeping just in front of the back wheel as they rolled away from the mission. John
saw it writhing behind them after a slight bump that could have been just a
root to the others but John knew was not a root. He said nothing about the puppy but his
stomach felt ill, and the woman’s baby with its dull eyes looked listlessly at
him.
Diapaga has waterfalls, and cliffs
with baboons, and miles of waving millet fields that would be a nice break from
work, Whiteman had told them, his mouth full of tikpindi - it was worth the drive. The French girl distractedly
said she knew some people in the village and they would be glad to kill a
chicken and perform the drum circle.
John thought Diapaga would be good. He liked exploring. He liked to ride
in the truck bed and stand facing the wind. Once a bug hit his eye at speed and he just
rubbed it hard, blinked the tears away and smiled as they slowed for the boys
herding goats across the road, their slingshots hung around their necks, their cries
of “Ca va! Ca va! fanned by short, happy waves. The single paved road that ran from Liberia
through Burkina Faso to Niger stretched ahead of his grin in a straight,
diminishing line like a bullet’s track.
Once, as they chugged along, a black Mercedes hissed past, rubber tires singing, hurrying to where there was a great need - or because the passenger had a great need. John hoped the
driver knew about the boys, and the goats. That was when the fan belt broke and
the radiator erupted hot in his face.
He felt dizzy from the heat. The
lake was further than he remembered, lost beyond the scrub, and he hurried
because of the baby under the sun, watered by tears, and humming.
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