After the Rains (33 page)

Twenty–Seven

A
re you sure you have everything?” Cole asked for the tenth time. His face was drawn, and the sadness in his eyes clutched at Natalie’s heart.

“I have everything, Daddy,” she assured him, her tone of exasperation covering for the tears that threatened to spill over.

“If she had one more thing, we’d have to charter a separate plane for her luggage,” Aunt Betsy teased.

They stood in a tense knot on the concourse at Kansas City International Airport—Mom and Daddy, Grandma and Grandpa Camfield, and Uncle Jim all there to send her and Aunt Betsy off. Natalie’s throat was full. She dreaded the goodbyes, wished she were already in the air, winging her way toward her future. Her nerves were raw with excitement and, if she was honest, a good measure of fear. Now that the day had finally arrived, she was more grateful than ever that Betsy had agreed to travel with her. Betsy would stay a week in Timoné before returning. More than once, her parents had reminded Natalie that she could always come home with Betsy if she changed her mind.

A velvet-smooth, dispassionate voice came over the public address system, announcing boarding for their flight—as though it were nothing to step onto an airplane that would carry her to a faraway place from which she might never return. She hadn’t told her parents, but she had promised herself that no matter what happened, she would not come home with Aunt Betsy. She didn’t want to give herself an out. There was too much riding on her staying.

The announcement came again over the PA system.

This is it
.

Natalie forced a smile and gave one last hug around the circle, fighting back tears. “Bye, Mom, goodbye, Daddy. I love you.”

“You be sure and e-mail the minute you get to San José,” her mother said.

“I will. I promise.”

Aunt Betsy disentangled herself from Uncle Jim’s arms. “I’ll see you in ten days, sweetheart,” she said, giving her husband one last lingering kiss. She let him go, and she put an arm around Natalie’s shoulder. “Are you ready for this?”

Natalie nodded resolutely and hoisted her carry-on bag over her shoulder. She popped up the handle on her overnight bag and tipped it onto its wheels. Her luggage suddenly felt as if it contained lead.

They fell into line with the other travelers, putting their bags on the conveyor belt and stepping through the metal detector. Once through security, she turned to wave one last time before gathering her bags again. She saw that Mom had slumped against Daddy, weeping, and for one wrenching moment, she felt pulled between two worlds. She forced herself to turn away and keep walking.

They made it to Eldorado International Airport in Bogotá without incident, and the following morning they flew into San José del Guaviare. Nate was waiting when they stepped off the plane into the sultry tropical air.

Natalie spotted her father first, as they waited with the other passengers for their baggage to be unloaded. “There he is!”

Betsy followed her gaze, and when she saw her brother, she shouted his name and started weaving her way through the crowd. Natalie followed.

When they reached him, they both fell into his arms. Natalie pulled away first and looked into her father’s eyes. “Hi, Dad.” She’d forgotten what a beautiful smile he had.

“You two are a sight for sore eyes,” he said, still beaming.

“You, too,” Betsy told him. She looked around the bustling airport. “Is this little airport always this busy?” she said.

He shook his head, and Natalie thought she saw worry etched in the lines on his face.

“Is it always guarded like this?” Natalie asked, watching the fully
armed soldiers that milled around the airport. They had seen soldiers at the airport in Bogotá, too.

“Sometimes,” her father said, obviously preoccupied. He inclined his head in the direction of a group of camouflage-clad men. “The thing is, it’s hard to know if these guys are legit, or if they’re guerrillas—rebels.”

They waited for an hour, Nate going to check flight information every few minutes. Though her father couldn’t get any clear answer, it seemed that the military in San José was on alert due to a rumor that a plane carrying a load of cocaine worth a small fortune was en route to San José.

Nate told Natalie and Betsy that he’d considered staying over in San José, but he had been afraid they might shut down the airport and leave them no choice but to make the trip to Conzalez by boat—a trip that could take as long as three days.

“Even if planes are flying out of San José, we can’t always count on the airstrip in Conzalez being open so we can land,” he explained.

Natalie almost hoped they’d be forced to travel the river all the way. She was anxious to see as much of the country as possible. It was almost noon when they boarded a flight, and by the time their plane finally took off from San José, she was so exhausted she wasn’t sure she could have survived a long boat trip.

The flight to Conzalez took less than an hour. Hank and Meghan Middleton, the young missionary couple stationed in the small village, were waiting with a feast of roasted chicken and vegetables and corn on the cob.

“More corn, anyone? There’s plenty,” Meghan said, as they all sat around the table in the Middletons’ large dining room. The young couple’s living quarters were behind the medical clinic where Meghan, an R.N., saw patients from Conzalez and outlying villages. Natalie was surprised at how modern the house and clinic were. She knew from photographs that the mission office at Timoné and her father’s living quarters there were little more than huts like those in which the villagers lived.

Nate patted his midsection and winked in Hank’s direction. “The whole meal was wonderful, Meg, but I have it on good authority that a prudent man would save a little room in his belly.”

“Hank! You spoiled my surprise!” Meg said. She smiled and went to the kitchen, returning with a frosted chocolate layer cake. She cut generous slices for each of them.

“I thought you guys would
never
get here,” Hank teased, digging into his dessert.

Meg gave her husband a playful punch in the arm. “He actually tried to get me to cut a slice for him before lunch!”

Hank shrugged sheepishly.

“Mmm, I can see why,” Nate said over a mouthful of the confection. “This is a real treat, Meg. Thank you.”

Natalie enjoyed the time spent with the Middletons, but she was eager to see Timoné. While they worked together clearing the dishes from the table, Nate glanced at his watch. “I hate to eat and run, but if we don’t go pretty quick, we won’t make it home before nightfall.”

Natalie shivered involuntarily at the thought of being on the river after dark.

The Middletons walked with them to the dock, and Meghan helped Natalie and Betsy slather on insect repellant before they climbed into the boat.

Conzalez was barely out of view when Natalie began to see why Meghan had been so insistent about the foul-smelling repellant. She and Betsy swatted at mosquitoes almost as big as dragonflies, and other insects that she didn’t recognize buzzed around them like flies on honey.

There was a primitive beauty to the river. The water of the Rio Guaviare was dark brown, like milky coffee, Natalie thought. At many places along the waterway, the trees hung low over the river, the branches on one bank laced together overhead with those on the opposite shore, forming a sort of tunnel through which they traveled. Inside the tunnel it was dark and cool, the air dead still. Natalie felt as though she were traveling back in time.

The river looped south and then back east again where it widened. Though Natalie didn’t think the native pilot spoke English, he seemed amused as she and Betsy bombarded Nate with questions about the things they saw along the way.

“Are there villages back in the trees?” Natalie asked, trying in vain to peer into the dense forests on either side of them.

“One or two that we know of, but they’re far into the jungle, off of the smaller tributaries. On the shores of this main artery, there’s nothing between here and Timoné. Then once you get twenty miles or so past Timoné, there are several villages right along the river.” He cleared his throat. “That’s where Chicoro is.”

Natalie’s pulse quickened. Chicoro was where her father had been held captive for more than two and a half years.

“Oh, Nate,” Betsy whispered. “Do you … have you ever been back?”

He shook his head. “In all these years, there’s never been reason to. But I would go … if I was called.”

Natalie wasn’t sure if he meant called by the villagers of Chicoro or called by God. She saw Nate swallow hard and stare into the distance.

After a few minutes he spoke. “I think God knows it’s best that I stay away from there—at least for now.”

“Why is that?” Betsy asked tentatively.

“The people there set me up as some kind of god—because I survived the fire and the sickness. I don’t want to give them any reason to see me as some resurrected savior.”

“What about the Timoné? When you came back after they thought you were dead, didn’t they think you had been … resurrected too?” Natalie asked.

“I think there were some who did … at first. But the Christian converts in Timoné back then understood what had happened, and they quickly set the story straight. It became a real testimony of God’s care for me.” He was thoughtful for a minute. “I know it could someday be a testimony for the Chicoro people, too, and if God asks me to go back, I will. But I won’t deny that I’m very grateful he
hasn’t
asked me to go back yet.” His sheepish smile made Natalie think of a little boy.

“Do you think they know that you’re back in Timoné?”

“The Chicoro? Oh, probably.” He smiled. “In spite of the fact that we don’t have a telephone system, news manages to travel pretty fast from village to village.”

Betsy eyed him. “You don’t worry that they might still want—”

“Some kind of revenge?” he finished for her. “No. I doubt that whole event is much more than a myth to the Chicoro by now, Betsy.”

The current grew stronger, and the boat’s pilot cranked up the motor, its roar making conversation difficult. They rode without speaking. Natalie’s thoughts raged like the water around them. But as they journeyed deeper and deeper into the rain forest, her excitement grew. She was almost there. It was really happening.

Her first glimpse of Timoné was just that—a mere glimpse before the sun faded behind the dense forest, leaving the village in gray-green shadows. She stepped onto the dock while Dad steadied the boat. She would sleep in Timoné tonight.

Dad helped the pilot tie up the boat and hoist their bags onto the primitive dock. When they’d distributed the bags among them, he led Natalie and Betsy along a muddy pathway. He lit the way before them with a bright lantern, but more than once Natalie slipped and stumbled, catching herself, only to come up with a handful of mud.

“I thought this was supposed to be the dry season,” she said after falling yet again.

Her father only smiled and trudged on.

In spite of the heavy-duty insect repellent she’d put on back in Conzalez, the mosquitoes buzzed around her face and hummed in her ears. She swatted at them with mud-caked hands and dreamed of the warm shower she had enjoyed in the luxurious hotel in Bogotá.

As the sun slipped farther below the horizon, Natalie squinted into the half-light, seeing wild creatures in every looming shadow. The jungle seemed alive with strange and haunting sounds. Natalie gripped Betsy’s hand tightly as they tried to keep up with Nate. She took some comfort in the fact that her father seemed unconcerned by the ominous chorus. He plodded ahead, occasionally stopping to help them over an especially treacherous spot in the path but for the most part tramping silently ahead of them.

Without warning, a shrill squawk split the air, and Natalie and Betsy both let out a squeal.

“What was that?” Natalie asked, her eyes darting from side to side.

Her father laughed softly. “Probably a macaw,” he said. He waited a beat. “Or it could be a jaguar.”

The women gasped in unison.

“Just kidding,” Nate laughed. “It’s a bird—probably a scarlet macaw. After a few nights you won’t even hear him.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Betsy said wryly, as the bird’s ear-piercing screech filled the night again.

Fifteen minutes later the path widened, and the mud puddles became fewer and farther between. Now, on either side of the trail, Natalie could make out the skeletal forms of huts raised on stilts.

They came to a large open-air pavilion covered with a thatched roof. Nate held the lantern high. “This is the village commons,” he told them. “This is where your mother held Bible classes for the children, Nattie—after our hut got too small to hold all the kids. The village meetings are held here, and the
féstas
. Parties. Festivals,” he explained.

“Like fiesta,” Natalie said, proud of herself for making the connection.

“Right,” he confirmed.

She had studied Spanish for three years in high school, along with the advanced class at the junior college. Dad had told her that a few Timoné words were similar to the Spanish. She’d picked up quite a few Timoné words from listening to the tapes her father had made when he’d first come to Colombia. She was hopeful that the language barrier wouldn’t be too difficult a hurdle.