After the Rains (34 page)

“We’re almost there,” Dad said now, slowing his pace a bit. “Watch it here, you have to jump the stream. Our little footbridge washed out during the last rainy season, and we haven’t had time to rebuild it yet.”

The water glistened under the light from the lantern, and though the stream appeared to be only about four feet wide where it flowed across the path, judging by the rushing sound of the water, the current was quite swift.

Dad held the lantern until she and Betsy had safely hurdled the gully, then he turned and continued down the lane. He pointed to a larger hut that sat on a clearing to the south of two smaller ones. “Over there is the
chapel. It was where Daria and I lived when we first came here. We enlarged it and held church there for a while, but happily we’ve outgrown it again. Now we have services in the commons down in the village and use the chapel for Bible classes and prayer meetings.”

Through the dense thicket of trees Natalie saw a flicker of light in one of the smaller huts.

Her father apparently saw it too. “Oh, good. It looks like David is still in the office.” He shouted into the darkness “
Hollio
? Hey, Dave!”

As he led the two women up the sturdy steps to the covered stoop, the door flew open and a grizzly bear of a man appeared, smiling. Natalie recognized him from Dad’s pictures.

“Hey! You made it!” The man and Nathan Camfield shook hands and clapped each other on the back before ushering Natalie and Betsy into the hut.

The space inside was surprisingly large and quite bright with the light that Nate’s lantern added to the one already burning, suspended from a hook in the middle of the ceiling.

David Chambers towered a good two inches over Dad’s six-foot-three height, and behind his well-groomed beard he had an expression of amusement on his face and a twinkle in his eyes. “David, I’d like you to meet my sister, Betsy, and my dau—” Nate turned proudly toward them, then stopped midsentence and burst out laughing.

Now the restrained amusement on Chambers’s face blossomed into a full-blown guffaw, and the two men laughed until they were red-faced and nearly breathless.

Natalie stared at them in wide-eyed astonishment, then turned to Betsy to see if she got the joke. Betsy turned to her at the same time, and when their eyes met, they both gasped.

Betsy was plastered with mud from her knees down, and her hair and face were speckled with the stuff, now dried and cracking. Only the circles around her eyes were free of mud giving her the appearance of a raccoon in reverse. Natalie put a hand to her own face and knew immediately that she must look at least as bad.

“You two look like you just lost a mud-wrestling contest,” her father said when he finally caught his breath.

Natalie lifted her feet and inspected the bottom of her boots. Her shoes and the hem of her khakis were caked. “I thought my feet felt awfully heavy,” she said sheepishly.

David Chambers was still looking at the two of them with amusement. Natalie felt suddenly self-conscious—this was certainly not the first impression she’d hoped to make on her father’s colleague.

“Be grateful for the mud,” Nate told them, “It’s probably the only thing that kept the mosquitoes from eating you alive.”

Betsy scratched at an arm through her mud-splattered blouse. “I think the mosquitoes must have gotten to me before the mud did,” she groaned.

“Well, in that case, there’s no better poultice than rich Colombian mud,” Nate countered.

Betsy grinned at her brother. “You make it sound like coffee.”

“Oh, wait till you taste his coffee.” David winked. “You’ll see just how apt the comparison is.”

Nate laughed good-naturedly, then put a hand on his sister’s arm. “Don’t worry, Bets. The swelling won’t last for long.”

“Gee, thanks, Dr. Camfield. Must you always be so positive?” she teased. “Can’t I just wallow in my misery for a while?”

“Wouldn’t you rather wallow in a warm bath?”

“Oh,
is
there such a thing here?” Natalie piped up eagerly.

“Well, probably not in the sense you’re thinking of,” her dad said. “But we’ll do the best we can. David, can you help me get some water on to heat?”

An hour later, Natalie and Betsy were mud-free and dry, and stretched out on soft grass mats on the floor of the mission office. David had offered the bed in his hut next door to the office, but they’d declined politely.

Betsy’s calm, even breathing soon filled the room. Natalie had expected that she, also, would fall asleep the moment her head hit the pillow,
but here she was, wide awake, her thoughts careening like a hard-hit pinball.

She looked over at Betsy’s still form under the mosquito nets they’d brought with them and whispered a prayer of thanks that her aunt was here to share the experience with her.

Natalie rolled over onto her back and reached into the darkness to make sure the netting over her own mat was in place. Outside, the sounds of the jungle roared. Yet none of it seemed real. Her dream of coming to Timoné, of living and working among the people with whom her birth father and mother had lived and worked—the very place where she had been conceived—was being fulfilled.

So why, now that she was finally here, was her brain swarming with thoughts of Mom and Daddy and her sisters back home? Of Sara? And most of all, of Evan Greenway?

“Please, God,” she whispered into the cacophony of the Colombian night. “Don’t let this have been a mistake. Let me make a difference here. Let me find what I’m looking for.”

Twenty–Eight

N
atalie woke with a start. The sun was laid in yellow patches across the floor of the hut. It filtered through the gauze of mosquito net that swayed above her with every movement. The light had an ethereal quality that made it seem even more unbelievable than it had last night that she was actually here in the village she’d daydreamed about for so long. She stretched and sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

Beside her, Betsy stirred, then resumed her slow, even breathing.

Natalie lifted the netting and looked around the room, taking in the details that had been hidden in the shadows last night. There were two wooden desks arranged in an L-shape in one corner of the room. One desk was scattered with open Bibles and concordances, stacks of papers, and a collection of stained coffee mugs. A long shelf for books hung over the window, but it appeared that most of the books intended for it had migrated to the desktop. Neat rows of science texts and classic novels were lined up along the back of the other desk, but—except for an open Bible concordance—the rest of the surface was clear. By the titles of the books, Natalie guessed that the tidier desk belonged to her father.

Along the wall opposite the desks, there was a primitive bench made of hollow cane poles lashed together with a thin, jutelike rope, and on the north wall was a small table that held the two-way radio flanked by two straight-backed chairs. A large bulletin board cluttered with maps and photographs and a calendar hung on the wall above the desks, but other than that the room was devoid of decoration.

Natalie rolled over onto her stomach, rested her chin on her hands, and listened to the sounds outside the window. The birds still sang in a discordant chorus, but the sound had a different quality than it had last night. Pushing aside the mosquito net she got to her feet, stepped over Betsy’s prone form, and went to the window that overlooked the front stoop. She bent to peer through the taut mesh screen. The hut apparently
faced east, for the arc of the sun was an orange sliver just climbing over the farthest emerald swell of trees.

This hut, which served as the mission office, sat in a clearing at the top of a rise. From her vantage point, Natalie could peer down into the village, which still seemed to sleep in darkness under the canopy of foliage. The peaked, thatched rooftops of dozens of stilted huts jutted through the greenery, and here and there thin curls of smoke rose from outdoor stone grills like the one just outside the window. Natalie’s stomach growled as she caught a savory whiff of something cooking. The Middletons had sent food with them for the boat trip from Conzalez, and Dad had even cut down bananas for them to eat along the trail last night, but suddenly she was ravenous.

She was just about to rouse Betsy when she heard footfalls on the steps of the hut. A soft knock sounded at the door.

She grabbed a wrinkled chambray shirt from her duffel bag and threw it over the cotton nightshirt she’d slept in. Finger-combing her hair, she opened the door to find David Chambers towering over her.

“Good morning,” she muttered.

“I hope I didn’t wake you,” he said quietly. Then looking past her to Betsy, who was stirring again, he said, “I apologize, but I forgot to get something I need for the laptop last night. I’m pretty much at a standstill without it.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, stepping aside to let him in.

He ducked beneath the doorframe and went to the desk on the south side of the room. Natalie watched as he slid a drawer open and rummaged quietly until he came up with a computer floppy disk.

“Oh, I’ll need this, too,” he whispered to no one in particular, closing a large dictionary and tucking it under one muscular arm. He was obviously making an effort not to wake Betsy. Natalie appreciated the gesture and felt guilty that they had taken over his office.

She tipped her head toward the gold watch he wore. “What time is it anyway?” she whispered. “Should we be getting up?”

He shook his head and matched her hushed tone. “Nate—your dad said to let you sleep as late as you like this morning.”

“Is Dad awake?”

Behind the neatly trimmed beard, the corners of his mouth turned up. “Your dad is up long before dawn every morning. He’s put in half a day’s work already.”

“Oh.” She wasn’t sure if his words were meant to be scolding because they’d slept so late, or if David Chambers was simply stating a fact. “Well, I’m awake,” she told him. “I’ll get dressed and be out in a minute.”

He didn’t respond, but held up the computer disk in tacit thanks before ducking outside and disappearing down the steps.

Natalie closed the door behind him and went to her duffel bag to find something presentable to wear. As she unfolded the creased and rumpled clothes, she saw movement from the corner of her eye. She turned in time to see a tiny brown lizard slither into an open compartment of her duffel. She screamed and kicked the bag into the corner of the room.

Natalie’s screech brought Betsy bolt upright on her sleeping mat. “What? What is it, Nattie?”

The lizard chose that moment to come out of the bag and scurry toward Betsy.

Betsy spotted it and leapt to her feet, shrieking even louder than Natalie had. But when she tried to run, she got tangled in the mosquito netting and fell back to her knees. Her sudden movement sent the lizard running back in Natalie’s direction.

Natalie jumped onto the sleeping mat beside Betsy—as if the two-inch-high pallet offered one iota of protection from a lizard. The two women clung to each other squealing, then laughing, then screaming again when the lizard zipped up the wall.

Suddenly the door flew open and David Chambers rushed in. “What happened?” he asked, his eyes darting around the room, his broad-shouldered form poised for combat.

Sheepishly, Natalie and her aunt pointed to the now empty wall.

“There was … a lizard,” Natalie explained, breathless.

“A big one?” he asked.

“Well … he wasn’t really big, but he was—”

“Fast—” Betsy filled in for her. “He was so fast.”

“Did he look like that?” David asked, pointing toward the ceiling above their heads.

They looked up, and Natalie saw the lizard clinging to the thatch directly above their heads, beady eyes blinking at them, tongue flicking in and out like a snake’s. She squealed and jumped off the mat, running to stand at the far end of the room. Betsy started to giggle like a little girl, and Natalie couldn’t help but join in.

David Chambers reached up, knocked the lizard easily into the palm of his hand, carried it to the door, and tossed it over the stoop. “Better get used to those little fellows,” he said when he ducked back through the door. “Would it help if I told you they eat mosquitoes?”

“A little, I guess,” Natalie said in a small voice.

“You’re both okay?” David asked as he turned to leave.

They nodded in silence. He left the room, closing the door behind him, but when they heard him burst into laughter at the bottom of the stairs Natalie and Betsy turned to stare at each other.

Natalie gingerly shook out a long cotton skirt and blouse and started to dress. She worried about the first impression she must have made on David Chambers. Dad had assured her that his colleague had given his blessing on Natalie joining them. So far the only thing he’d seen of her was a giggly, skittish adolescent. Of course, the same thing could be said of her forty-something Aunt Betsy. But then Betsy wasn’t planning to stay.

As she pulled on her socks and boots, Natalie made up her mind that she would redeem the silly schoolgirl image she’d established. Somehow, she would prove that she had plenty to offer the mission at Timoné.