The Governor of the Northern Province (28 page)

The Governor General's face was full with vague uplifting identification. She extended her hand with a swoop, dangling three pink wristbands from her fingers.

“Monsieur le Président, I underestimated you and apologize. You have made an eloquent case and I assure you Atwenty will receive the very strongest consideration when Canada sets its Africa aid budget for next year. More immediately, at another point in the conference proceedings I'll be pleased to introduce you to some members of our business community who are with us today. But before all of that, please accept these symbols of our concern and interest, and do pass one along to that brave sister governor you mentioned. In Canada, these are worn to show that we are thinking of Africa these days. And when we do, we Think Pink. Because, as you no doubt know, pink means the colour of the dawn in the homelands of Africa. And with Canada's support, Africans will at last greet rosy pink morning with the hope of a new day for themselves and their nations!”

He stopped grinning and nodding. His face and voice were suddenly very tight. He asked her to repeat what she'd said. Just the last part, about Africans greeting rosy pink morning. Madame GG obliged, unsurprised; it was a very elegant turn.

“Madame, may I ask where you discovered that description?”

“I wish I could claim it as my own, but in fact it came courtesy of my colleague, Miss Thickson.”

He snapped to Jennifer, who was ready with the phrases and story and curious to see if it would have the same effect on this listener as it did back home. Though he didn't exactly look curious. Something more intent than that. His nostrils, she noticed, were flaring and his eyes were wide. She thought of how a horse looked just before it kicked out or bolted. But she could bridle this one too.

“And so, my dear, where did you find this phrase? Did you read it on the Internet or see it in one of these so-called documentaries?”

“No, Monsieur President, I know better than to trust anything I haven't experienced directly. Think Pink.”

“Good for you. What?”

“I learned about the colour of dawn in Africa from a very courageous young man from there—sorry, from here, who joined our community in Canada recently. He's well spoken and very talented and has worked hard against adversity to become what he is today.”

“Which is what?”

“My chief attachment—attaché.”

“My goodness! Good for him. And congratulations to you for seeing such potential where others might not have. Oh, if only we could meet such a man, he'd be such an inspirational message for people over here.”

“Of course! From what I've heard from Miss Thickson and seen and learned for myself, he's been the same thing for Canadians in his time with us. Would you like to meet him?” Madame GG had decided that was enough prime-time face time for Jennifer and so intervened, sensing possibilities.

“You mean he's here already?”

“Yes. Shall I send Miss Thickson upstairs to fetch him?”

“No, no, just tell us his room number and my associate Charles can go up with my assistants and escort him down.” Here the General gestured to the elegant and assured man sitting to his left and to the arm-crossed, lip-pursed wall of men in sunglasses and berets and camouflage that was arrayed behind him. Jennifer hadn't noticed them since sitting down, having grown accustomed to their presence behind every African leader they'd met that day. She hadn't thought of them as anything more than a thick stand of green-clad trees. But they were moving now.

“That sounds fine, Monsieur le Président. I'm so very glad we're making this young man a bridge between our homelands.”

“As am I. Yes, everything sounds fine. And now we can watch a short video together before his arrival!” The President's giddiness filled the room. He dimmed the lights.

V.

“He went homeland, back to his people, returned to his old way of life.”

Jennifer repeated the phrases she'd earlier practised with Madame GG for the fourth reporter to come back to her seat and ask about Bokarie's absence on the return flight. When, as a follow-up, she was asked how much she felt this loss personally, by grubs hopeful of a little jungle-fever sidebar story to liven up their closing reports on the trade and aid conference, she claimed airsickness and ended the conversation, leaving them a little journalistic licence. But Jennifer wasn't feeling sick, she was just trying to remember one speech and forget another. Trying to remember how LBJ had explained his decision not to stand for a second term. Trying to forget what she'd seen and heard in that video.

He had looked a little thinner and younger and his English was much better than what he'd used when he spoke up for Little Caitlin in Centennial Park, though she recognized some of that in it too. But this was definitely Bokarie at his business—cutting back and forth across the stage, frothing up the audience with his words and moves, smiling out at it all. After the last lines of the speech,
This is why we will at last greet rosy pink morning from the moist earth that your fathers' fathers left to you. Brothers! When they desire mercy, you shall make of them a sacrifice! For our sons, for our General, for our nation!
, Madame GG had shuddered beside her, digging fingernails into her wrist, then gone hard metal and ready to do business.

Jennifer only caught snippets of the President and the Governor General's rapid negotiations, which both sides wanted concluded before anything was brought back to the room. She was wrapped up with what Bokarie had been before, what he was now, what to make of that. Of him. Meanwhile, there had been an efficient and detailed agreement worked out. First, the turn-over of the suspect so as to help along the woman governor of the northern province in her efforts at returning justice to her lands. Second, Canada would relinquish any claim on the suspect, who had forfeited its support by becoming a citizen under wrongful assumptions. Third, the episode would remain confidential. Fourth, the episode would remain confidential. Fifth, an explanation would be prepared that was suitable for Canadian audiences as to why the suspect remained in Africa. Sixth, Atwenty would claim to have caught the suspect in another African nation. Seventh, the episode would remain confidential. This was a question of homeland safety on both sides, it was agreed. The President assured her that it would stay between them, especially since the suspect required a delicate interrogation to determine what had happened to the General mentioned in the speech. They gave each other their word.

Both wanted more.

Soon there were pledges of future visits from freight-heavy C-130 Hercules to Atwenty. These were conditional on the Governor General's possessing political capital back in Canada that only an
entirely
successful trip to Africa would bring, or else she couldn't press for these to be sent. The President understood her situation and said he would do all in his power to make sure no bridge was burned or broken between their glorious nations.

As he was showing them out after the video was done rewinding, the President wanted to break through the young one's numbness. He couldn't resist. Imagine the notes they could compare, trade. He asked Jennifer about what she had said earlier, what she thought they had in common. But when her lips opened, she had nothing to give.

Jennifer and the Governor General didn't speak until they'd been in the elevator for a few floors. There had been a tense moment outside the Atwenty suite when a group of swaggering men came towards it from the right. Each decided she didn't recognize any of them and ducked past. Which was understandable. There were so many such entourages moving around the conference.

“I can't imagine what you must be feeling, my dear. Your Gannibal has turned out to be a cannibal. Living under an assumed identity like that—oh, what an affront! But let me give you some advice. Put all of this out of your head and come back to my suites and we'll work out a good plan for what to do when we go back to
our
homeland, where the people and other things are more reliable. I'm sure you don't need any explanation for why news of this incident would be as devastating to your career as it would be to mine. The PM will never let me go anywhere again. But let's leave aside our professional concerns for a moment and concentrate on you.” Madame GG had decided that den mother to wayward cub was a better tack than worried farmer to suspected mad cow. Here she moved in and up to Jennifer, a look of fevered concern on her face.

“You must be feeling so duped by that monster, by how he capitalized on your and my and all Canadians' tolerant natures, on how we go about accepting people from far away and take them at their various words for what they say they are. That such a terror and trickster could do such things to us! Well, it's worthy of a Royal Commission. Not anytime soon, of course—we can't let that rotten apple ruin everything we hope to pick and gather here. You're quiet, and I completely understand you must still be in shock at such betrayal, so just follow my lead about what to do from here on until we're through this. And as far as that Bokarie, that Grin Reaper, is concerned, let such inhumanity be a dangerous lesson learned from and leave it at that.”

His inhumanity. That was what Jennifer kept thinking about, as the plane took off and returned to Canada. Because more than that speech, or the things the President had told them about Bokarie, or how uncontrollably things had been mashing and blending and colliding in her head since then, she couldn't get past Madame GG's conclusion. Such inhumanity. But that wasn't what Jennifer had found in the speech. Because he wasn't just a poor suffering new immigrant, but something more, something else. And yet he wasn't just a videotape of a genocidal African warlord either. Even if it had just been more rewarding, more politic, plain easier for everyone, himself included, to see him either way, to celebrate and punish and make use either way. But these were, because these were, shells. The whole thing. A shell game.

Bokarie had been torn away from her, but she didn't miss him in any real way. She had only known a shard of blackboard and crocodile tears and outsized grins. But behind, there had been something terrifying, calculating, murderous, laughing at her and the rest. No.
Someone
. Jennifer wondered if he might just talk or dance his way out of this new situation he was in, just as he'd danced and talked his way into his old one. She knew that much about him, at least. He'd try. You had to admire this.

She wanted to go home and be done doing politics. She'd lost her appetite in Africa. She would serve out the one term and then see about something else. Maybe even that gym teacher if he was still around. Or perhaps become a civics teacher herself. She would give up her position, even if people would say this was evidence Jennifer Thickson couldn't compete with the big men in Ottawa and beyond. She could, though, she knew that, which had to be enough for her. Because she'd tried for more and got it and then some. Which had led to something she'd never expected. Too much for her. So now the consolation prize of a return to the town, the farm. A habitat safe from the wide loud world and its pulls and pushes. But not that safe, Jennifer realized, thinking back and then forward. Because there would always be more drowned pigtails to dredge up and new Canadians to welcome. That is, if she wanted to get involved. But she wouldn't, she didn't, and was glad of this. Was glad. She was.

VI.

Jennifer's mystical experience over, she left the mushy hot woods where she had seen the slugs wrap around each other and then the bird swoop down and take them still dangling and doing to each other and go back to its tree to swallow down and look for more. She didn't notice the leech until she got home. There had only been a little itchy pull down by her ankle all the way back. Sitting in the mud room, she wrenched off a soaked shoe. She liked the THWUCK! sound that it made. One of her fingers brushed against a rubbery bump when she took the second off. It felt like a Band-Aid, only thicker, humped, rough, wet from the rain and the sludge it had moved through to get to her. She studied it. She'd seen leeches before.

Once, one of the cows, back when they had cows, had somehow made it over the corduroy road and waded into the crick across the way. After her father had dragged it to the barn by the back of its jaws, she held his hubcap ashtray for him while he cut the bloodsuckers off its belly with the lighter-hot blade of his jackknife. Little pink pucker lines were left where the fat black lines had been. Each one slid into the grey ash and curled up around the stubby butts, singed and dying but, she noticed, still trying to grab on to something and keep at its business. You had to admire this.

The cow had only groaned a little and shifted once or twice while her father cut away. So Jennifer wasn't worried by the prospect of a knife soon slicing across her ankle. She could hear her mother on the other side of the swinging door. She was putting down the butter and bread and milk and corn and that bit of leftover roast on the paint-peeled farmer's table they used for meals.

She watched her father through the small square mud-room window as he wiped his hands on the seat of his pants and walked towards his supper, his Ministry of Agriculture journals, and what news his wife and daughter had to tell of their days.

She looked down again at her ankle. She didn't cry or scream or try to pull it off, not right away. She was tempted by the notion of keeping it until school time, to show off to others, to the town kids who just laughed when she asked to jump in on hopscotch. It would be evidence of how much she could do. Evidence of how much she could take. She would show them. Her mouth contorted with forethought, with impatience for it to be school days already. Ignoring her parents' calls to the table, Jennifer watched the black band have at her, determined, fixed on her white freckled skin. Immovable, throbbing, growing. She felt a little weak from it, from the hot wet walk to her house in the bright close after-air of a sun shower, and now from breathing in the mud room, close and musky with her father's workboots and the sweet tangs of the spare gas tank and old mosquito repellent. She wondered if she could keep it there long enough to get it working for her somewhere else. She could tell it'd keep going, that it would not stop of its own volition, even if it burst. Her either. But the idea made her feel tired with the time to come, with what she would have to go through if she wanted to catch what she wanted. It'd be easier if she were a bird like that one from the mush. Then she could fly down and scoop up and swallow down and go back up to a new perch each time, always with better sights of the next dangling bit waiting to be had. Her ankle started feeling thin around the bulgy bump. It was pulling at her. Taking more than she knew.