2006 - What is the What (30 page)

—Please believe me, William K said.

The man softened, and after a moment, believed that William was sincere.

—Where are you from, Red Army? he asked.

—Marial Bai.

The man’s face relaxed.

—I’m from Chak Chak! What’s your name?

—William Kenyang.

—Aha, I thought I would know your clan. I know Thiit Kenyang Kon, who must be your uncle.

—He
is
my uncle. Have you seen him?

—No, no. I wish I had news for you, but I’ve been gone longer than you. You’re not far now. A few days more and you’re in Ethiopia. We just came from there.

We sat with the soldiers for some time, and some of the boys were cheered by seeing them, but their presence was troubling. The men had guns and were part of a unit called The Fist, which to me sounded very capable. But then, the men of The Fist were starving, dying. What kind of place were we going to, if grown men with guns had left there and were starving on their way back to Sudan?

The dead soldier disturbed me more than any death of any boy along the way, and when my belief in our journey wavered my steps became reluctant and slow.

In the mirror of William K, I did not look well that day. My cheeks were sunken, my eyes ringed in blue. My tongue was white, my hipbones were visible through my shorts. My throat felt lined with wood and grass. Attempting to swallow caused enormous pain. Boys were walking with their hands on their throats, trying to massage moisture into them. I was quiet and we continued to walk. The afternoon was a very slow one. We could not walk at a pace near to what we had when the walk began. We were covering so little ground. This day, William K asked to stop frequently.

—Just to stop and stand for a moment, he said.

And we would stop and William would lean on me, resting his hand on my shoulder. He would take three breaths and say he was ready again. We did not want to fall behind.

—I feel so heavy, Achak. Do you feel heavy this way?

—I do. I do, William. Everyone does.

The afternoon cooled and the air was easier to breathe. Word came down the line that someone had found the carcass of a dik-dik. They had chased away the vultures and they were trying to find some edible meat on the bones of the animal.

—I need to rest again, William K whispered.—We should sit for a while. I did not agree that we should sit, but William K was already making his way to a tree, and soon was sitting beneath it, his head against the trunk.

—We need to walk, I said.

William K closed his eyes.—We need to rest. Rest with me, Achak.

—They’ve found a dik-dik.

—That sounds good.

He looked up to me and smiled.

—We need to get some of the meat. It’ll be gone in seconds, William.

I watched as William K’s eyes flickered, his eyelids closing slowly.

—Soon, he said.—But sit for a second. This is helping me. Please. I stood above him, giving him shade, allowing him a few moments of peace, and then said it was time to go.

—It’s not time, he said.

—The meat will be gone.

—You get some. Can you get some and bring it back to me? God forgive me, I thought this was a good idea.

—I’ll come back, I said.

—Good, he said.

—Keep your eyes open, I said.

—Okay, he said. He looked up to me and nodded.—I need this. I feel like this is helping me.

His eyes slowly closed and I ran to get our share of the animal. While I was gone, the life in William K fell away and his flesh returned to the earth.

It was easier to die now. With Deng, there had been a night between the living Deng and the departed Deng. I had assumed that dying always took place over those many hours in the dark. But William K had done something different. He only stopped walking, sat under a tree, closed his eyes, and was gone. I had returned with a finger’s worth of meat to share with him and found his body already cold.

I had known William K since he was a baby and I was a baby. Our mothers had placed us in the same bed as infants. We knew each other as we learned to walk and speak. I could not remember more than a handful of those days that we had not been together, that I had not run with William K. We were simply friends who lived in a village together and expected to always be boys and friends in our village. But in these past months, we had traveled so far from our families, and we had no homes, and we had become so weak and no longer looked as we had before. And now William K’s life had ended and his body lay at my feet.

I sat next to him for some time. In my hand his hand became warm again and I looked into his face. I kept the flies at bay and refused to look up; I knew the vultures would be circling and I knew that I could not prevent them from coming to William K. But I decided that I would bury him, that I would bury him even if it meant that I would lose my place with the group. After seeing the dead and dying of the lost Fist, I no longer had any faith in our journey or in our guides. It seemed only logical that what had begun would continue: that we would walk and die until all boys were gone.

I dug as best I could, though I needed to rest frequently; the activity made me lightheaded and short of breath. I could not cry; there was not the water in my body to spare.

—Achak, come!

It was Kur. I saw him in the distance, waving to me. The group had assembled again and was leaving. I chose not to tell Kur or anyone that William K was dead. He was mine and I did not want them touching him. I did not want them telling me how to bury him or how to cover him or that he should be abandoned where he lay. I had not buried Deng but I would bury William K. I waved back to Kur and told him I would come soon and then returned to my digging.

—Now, Achak!

The hole was meager and I knew it would not cover William K. But it would keep the carrion birds at bay for some time, long enough so that I would be able to walk far enough that I wouldn’t have to see them descend. I placed leaves on the bottom of the hole, enough that he had a cushion for his head and there was no dirt visible. I dragged William K into the hole and then placed leaves over his face and hands. I bent his knees and folded his feet behind his knees to save space. Now I needed to rest again, and I sat, feeling small satisfaction in knowing that he would fit inside the hole I had made after all.

—Goodbye, Achak! Kur yelled. I saw that the boys had already left. Kur waited a few moments for me, and then turned.

I did not want to leave William K. I wanted to die with him. I was so tired at that moment, so bone-tired that I felt that I could fall asleep as he did, sleep until my body went cold. But then I thought of my mother and my father, my brothers and sisters, and found myself invoking William K’s own mythic visions of Ethiopia. The world was terrible but perhaps I would see them again. It was enough to bring me to my feet again. I stood and chose to continue walking, to walk until I could not walk. I would finish burying William K and then I would follow the boys.

I could not watch the first dirt fall on William K’s face so I kicked the first layer with the back of my heel. Once his head was covered, I spread more dirt and rocks until it bore some resemblance to a real grave. When I was finished, I told William K that I was sorry. I was sorry that I had not known how sick he was. That I had not found a way to keep him alive. That I was the last person he saw on this earth. That he could not say goodbye to his mother and father, that only I would know where his body lay. It was a broken world, I knew then, that would allow a boy such as me to bury a boy such as William K.

I walked with the boys but I would not talk and I thought frequently about quitting this walking. Each time I saw the remnants of a home, or the hollow of a tree, I was tempted to stop, to live there and give all this up.

We walked through the night, and in the late morning we were very close to the border with Ethiopia, and the rain was a mistake. There should not have been rain in that part of Sudan at that time but the rain came heavily and for most of the day. We drank from the raindrops and we collected the water in all the vessels we had among us. But just as soon as the rain was a boon, it became our curse. For months we had prayed for moisture, for wet earth between our toes and now all we wanted was dry solid ground. By the time we reached Gumuro, there was virtually no piece of land that had not been drenched, reduced to swamp. But there was one elevated patch of land and Dut led us to it.

—Tanks!

Kur saw them first. We stopped and crouched in the grass. I did not know if the SPLA had their own tanks, so at first I assumed the tanks were those of the government of Sudan and were there to kill us.

—This should be SPLA territory, Dut said, walking toward the village.

Three military trucks stood in the center of the town. The town was burned everywhere but we were happy to see three SPLA soldiers step out from the husk of a bus. Dut stepped carefully.

—Welcome boys! one of the soldiers said to us. He wore fatigues and boots but no shirt. We smiled at him, sure that we would be fed and cared for.

—Now please leave, he said.—You need to get out.

Dut stepped forward, insisting that we were on the same side and that we needed food, to rest on dry land until the rains let up.

—We have nothing, a weary voice said. It was another soldier, wearing only shorts. He looked much like us, malnourished and defeated.

—This is SPLA land? Dut asked.

—I guess it is, the second soldier said.—We hear nothing from them. They’ve left us out here to die. This is a war run by fools.

The soldiers, eleven of them waiting at Gumuro, were from another lost battalion, this one without a nickname like The Fist. These men had been left in Gumuro without supplies and with no means of communicating with their commanders in Rumbek, or anywhere else. Dut explained that he did not want to add to the woes of the soldiers, but he had more than three hundred boys who could not walk through the night and would like to rest.

—I really don’t care one way or another, the second soldier said.—Just don’t take anything. We have nothing to take. Do what you want.

Thus Gumuro was chosen as the day’s place to rest, and we spread out under the trucks and in the shadow of the tank, anywhere where the rain was deflected. It was not long before some of the boys wanted to look for food, or for fish in the swamps. The first soldier, whose name was Tito, urged them to stay put.

—There are mines here, boys. You can’t wander off. The Sudanese army left mines all over here.

The message was not getting through to the boys, so Dut stepped in.

—Does everyone know what a mine does to a person?

Everyone nodded, though Dut was not convinced. So he led a demonstration. He knelt on the ground, and asked a volunteer to pretend to step onto his hand. When he did, Dut made the sound of a great blast, and he took the boy’s foot and threw the boy onto his back; he landed with a slap. The boy, his eyes tearing with anger and pain, got up and returned to his spot under a bus.

It was not long before boys disobeyed. Dozens of boys walked off in all directions. Many were hungry, and were determined to find food. Three boys went into the grass. I asked them where they were going, hoping that they would be fishing and that I might join them. They did not answer me and walked down the hill. I sat under a truck, my head between my knees, and thought of William K, about the carrion birds who might be curious about him. I thought of Amath and my mother and her yellow dress. I knew that I would die soon and hoped that perhaps she was dead, too, and that I could join her. I did not want to wait in death to see her.

The sound was like the popping of a balloon. Then a scream. I did not investigate. I did not want to see. I knew the boys had found a mine. The movement of many men followed, those coming to help the boy. It emerged that one boy had lost his leg; two others had been killed. These were the boys who I had asked to join. The boy who had lost his leg died later in the evening. There were no doctors in Gumuro.

Some boys rested but I decided that I would not sleep. I would not close my eyes until I reached Ethiopia. I did not feel like living, and I was very sure that I was dying, too. I had eaten the eggs in the tree, and the nuts from the bicycle man, and so had eaten more than some boys, but the wound on my leg would not heal, and each night I felt the insects explore its crevices. When we walked, the boys in front of me were a blur and their voices, when they came to me, no longer made sense. My ears were infected, my vision unreliable. I was a very good candidate to be taken next.

After the soldiers had helped Dut dispose of the dead boys, one of the soldiers saw me under the truck and crouched before me. The rains had abated.

—Come here, Red Army, he said.

I did not move. I am not rude this way by nature, but at that moment I did not care about this soldier or what he wanted me to do. I didn’t want to help bury bodies or anything ideas he might have for me.

—That is an order, Red Army! he barked.

—I’m not in your army, I said.

His arm was quick and his grip was immediate. In one quick motion he had taken me from under the truck and lifted me to my feet.

—You’re not part of us? Of this cause? he asked. Now I saw that it was the soldier named Tito. His face was heavily scarred, his eyes yellow, ringed in red.

I shook my head. I was not part of anything, I decided. I was not even part of the walking boys. I wanted to return to the man with the bicycle, to his oranges and cold hidden water.

—So you’ll just die here? Tito demanded.

—Yes, I said. I was even then ashamed at how insolent I was acting.

Tito took me roughly by the arm and led me across the village to a pyramid of logs and kindling, and behind it, the legs of a man. The rest of the man’s body was hidden under the leaves. His feet were pink, black, white, covered in grubs.

—You see this man? I nodded.

—This is a dead man. This was a man like me, a man my age. A big man. Strong, healthy. He had shot down a helicopter. Can you imagine this, Red Army, a Dinka man shooting down a helicopter? I was there. It was a great day. But he’s dead now, and why? Because he decided not to be strong. Do you want to be like the dead man? I was so tired that I didn’t react at all.