Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) (10 page)

Half an hour into this work, she leaned too far out reaching for a moss and fell, thudding down through the branches to land on her back. She lay there, flapping her mouth at the sky, eyes wide as a goldfish's, until her breath came back to her. Sitting up slowly, she tested her limbs for injury, held the heel of her hand against her forehead until it stopped bleeding and then she climbed back into the trees.

 

About halfway through the morning, someone called below her. “Tombayyyy. Where are you?” Perhaps the person had been calling for a while, for this yell was loud. A bellow.

Max startled, had to claw at a branch to catch her balance.

At the noise, Yoko swiveled to look up. She seemed as surprised as Max. “Shit. What're you doing up there?”

Max eased her way back into a sitting position. “A botanical survey. I need to learn the local plants.”

“Hey, I don't want to teach you your profession, but the plants, they're down here.” She patted a nearby blackberry bush as confirmation.

“A lot of them grow up on the trees.” Max held out the fern in her hand.

There was a pause. “What happened to your forehead?”

“I fell.”

Yoko stayed tilted back as she considered Max. Max crushed one of the fern's fronds and took a few sniffs of it.

“You should know,” said Yoko, “the nearest hospital is three hours away by foot and I'll tell you frankly it's not the kind of hospital you want to visit.”

“Acceptable risk.” Max zipped the fern into a plastic bag and crotched her way unsteadily a little further up the branch, reaching for an unfamiliar monocot.

“If I asked you nicely, is there any chance you'd come down?” asked Yoko.

“No.”

Since Yoko said nothing more, Max forgot about her. Later on, while she was eating lunch, she was surprised to see Mutara was down there also. They were watching her, talking quietly. She felt no need to converse. Her concession to the danger was to try to stay at least twenty-five feet up. From here she hoped she had a good chance of dying if she fell. Logically this seemed better than being permanently crippled.

Life, she figured, might be designed for neurotypicals, with all its social rules and expectations. But death . . . She pictured open space, soft gray fog in every direction, no bodies to jostle her or eyes to avoid. Peace of a permanent kind.

At some point Yoko and Mutara went away and came back with a long coil of rope.

“Yo-hooooo,” called Yoko until she got Max's attention again. “If you're going to insist on being up there, we figure at least you can wear a safety rope.”

Mutara climbed up to her, the rope over his shoulder. As when he walked up the mountain, he climbed smoothly and deliberately, no unnecessary effort.

Once he reached her branch, he stayed a yard back and didn't try to tie the rope on for her. Simply handed her it and described where to tie it and how. Perhaps Yoko had explained Asperger's to him. The rope where he'd touched it smelled of sweet potatoes and cooking oil. Once Max had the jerry-rigged safety harness on, he threw the end of the rope over a branch above her and then caught it and had her tie it back onto her harness.

“This way, you fall, you don't die,” he said.

“You'll just swing around up there like Peter Pan in a grade-school play 'til we come back to rescue you,” said Yoko.

Confused for a moment by the image, Max forgot to say thank you, but she did yank on the rope to make sure it was secure. Then turned back to her work.

 

At some point, she realized she was having difficulty seeing the plant in her hand. Wondering why, she glanced around and noticed the sun had set. Darkness seemed to have arrived with surprising speed. Or perhaps she'd been concentrating too hard to notice.

Using her harness, she lowered herself out of the tree. The rope was quite useful now, for in the growing gloom it was hard to judge the exact distance of any foothold. On the ground, it took her several minutes to untie the rope and pack up her equipment. Then, looking around, she understood she no longer had any idea in which direction the meadow lay. Very slowly she swiveled about on one foot, peering between the trees, methodically angling her head this way and that, thorough as always. The noises of the jungle were starting to change into night sounds. The birds louder and more insistent. Animals coughing. Something roared, far away and enraged. She finally spotted a tiny flicker of light through the trunks. A lamp in one of the cabins. Walking in that direction, she stumbled a bit over branches and bushes, then felt space opening up around her as she reached the meadow. The light guided her forward. Walking through the field was easier than the jungle, although the ground was still uneven. She was carrying a fair amount of equipment and concentrated on stepping so she wouldn't stumble.

A sound came. A distinct grinding noise, closer to the jungle and off to her left. Probably two branches rubbing against each other in the wind.

For dinner, she'd have rice. Tomorrow she'd see about getting herself some bananas.

The grinding noise came again. The substance sounded harder than wood. More gritty, like rock or bone. The motion deliberate.

Teeth.

Teeth grinding together, large enough to be heard from twenty feet or so.

“Fuck,” she said.

Mistake.

The animal snorted, surprised. A sound louder than a horse's snort, rougher, more cavernous.

There followed a short pause while the two of them stood there, considering each other's presence in the dark.

Then, with a grunt, it began to run. Hoof beats and a sloshing heavy stomach.

Charging toward her.

She paused. Not bravery. Disbelief.

Then bolted. Sprinting toward the light, toward human life. The objects in her arms tumbling to the ground. She vaulted through the grass, stumbling over puddles. Her pale sneakers floating through the night. The light jouncing closer. A staticky roar in her ears. The hooves beat louder, the wheezing stomach, the huffing breath.

She caught its scent of grassy slobber and digestive juices.

Death she might not mind that much, but this . . . An image of its furry closeness, all that weight, the ultimate too-close hug, crushing her. Her nightmare.

She flailed up the cabin steps and through the door, slamming it shut behind her.

Outside came the sound of a grunt and then the hooves arcing away.

She slid to the ground, limbs sprawled. Her head flat on the floor. Her vision misty at the edges, but the center so crystal clear that—staring up at the corrugated metal ceiling—she could taste tin in the back of her throat. Her body vibrated like a hovercraft, some huge motor started inside her. Some energy she never knew she had. Holding her hand up in front of her, she saw her fingers shaky with that power.

Over her breath, she heard a noise inside the cabin and jerked around to face it. Dubois, Yoko, Mutara, and a woman she didn't know sat at the table with spoonfuls of stew halfway to their mouths, staring at her.

“What the hell just happened?” asked Yoko.

The demands of English seemed well beyond Max. Adrenalin, such a powerful drug, mobilizing the body's resources, flooding the muscles, shutting other systems down. Right now she could probably straight-arm Yoko over her head and carry her around, tendons creaking, like a Russian weightlifter.

And the strangest aspect of all this was she realized she was looking directly into Yoko's face (short disheveled hair, a smudge of mud on her cheek, a startled expression of straightforward interest). Max's vision didn't flicker, no cold metal shivered up her nerves. She didn't need to glance away, overwhelmed. She could just look, for as long as she wanted, like normal people did.

Stunned, she turned to the others. Taking in the essentials while she could.

Mutara's face was surprisingly round for how thin his body was: a chipmunk's head on a greyhound's body. Mid-twenties, emotions locked away inside, dark practical clothes. For the formality of dinner, he'd put on his boots.

Dubois was under five feet, blue eyes, wild hair, the upturned nose of an imp. (Reminded Max of a troll doll she'd loved as a child because it was motionless and its oversized head and dumpy limbs were so clearly not normal. However, in order to keep the doll in her room, she'd had to put duct tape over its big eyes.)

The other woman here, the one she hadn't met yet, had eyes sharp as a bird's and held her head canted a little back, like she might flutter off at any moment. The velour bathrobe she wore—with the name “Pip” written in script across the chest pocket—seemed incongruous in this remote cabin, wild animals with thundering hooves living just outside the door.

“Earth to Tombay.” Yoko repeated, “What just happened?”

She turned back to Yoko. She couldn't seem to find any words so she settled for imitating hoofbeats instead. “TaDump taDump taDump.”

“A forest buff,” said the woman with the “Pip” bathrobe. She cocked her head to the side, just like a robin. “Getting chased by one through the dark's a bit dodgy, isn't it?” An Australian.

“The buffaloes come out of the jungle to graze at night on the field,” said Yoko. “So long as you don't startle them, they'll leave you alone.”

Max looked from one face to the other, intent as a child. She marveled at the color of their eyes, their straightforward gaze.

“If you go outside at night,” said Mutara, “walk slow, wave a flashlight, make noise.”

“After a few days, you are not even noticing,” said Dubois. “You want some sweet-potato soup?”

Considering her answer, Max realized she was quite hungry. She got shakily to her feet and took a chair at the table. Yoko put a bowl in front of her. The soup was dark and in it floated many unnamed vegetables and spices. She forked out a single sweet potato chunk. The piece wasn't white and flecks of other food clung to it, adulterating it. Tentatively, she put it in her mouth, closed her teeth. Nothing happened. The different textures and tastes didn't jangle. Just warm soft food. She could smell meat and green peppers, sweet fat. Began to eat. Perhaps they asked her more questions about what happened, but she didn't listen, closing her eyes, concentrating on the food.

Within a few minutes, the hum of adrenalin began to fade. The shimmer in her vision crept back, the jumpy quality to sound. She tried to look at Yoko's face, then jerked her eyes away.

She put her spoon down and looked at her hands.

For dessert, there was a single chocolate bar and the others discussed for a while how to divide it. They brought out a knife and made marks before cutting. When a piece was placed in front of her, Max blinked at it, then shook her head. The others began a second conversation about how to divvy up this piece. From their seriousness it seemed they must be running low on desserts.

Yoko tapped the table in front of Max's fingers. “Hellooo, Tombay.”

Max jerked her hand slightly back. The loneliness of her skin.

“You always been so brave?” asked Yoko.

For a moment Max wondered if she were making fun of her for flinching. “Brave?”

“Yeh, in coming here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you came here in spite of that stuff that happened with the doctors.”

“What doctors?”

Yoko's head swiveled toward her. “The ones who got killed.” She waited for some reaction, then said in a low voice. “Look, Roswell and Stevens told you about the Kutu, didn't they?”

Max felt the others shifting to look at her. “Kutu?” she asked.

The room got quiet.

“Oh bloody hell,” said Pip.

Dubois grunted and brought her hand up to her face, seemed to be pressing her knuckles into her eyes. “American companies are such pigs. A month ago, these four
Médecins sans Frontieres”—

“Otherwise known as Doctors without Borders,” said Pip. “Stop being so French all the time.”

“And how about this French? Go fuck yourself.”

“Hey, let's try to look like we get along, OK?” said Yoko. “Pip, be nice. She's got another migraine right now.” She turned to Max. “The doctors were stationed in Lubero, a town near here in the Congo. They disappeared one day driving to the next village. A few days later some UN soldiers found the doctors' jeep in the hands of three Kutu.”

“The name, ‘Kutu,' is from the leader, this warlord, François Kutu,” said Dubois.

“Warlord?” asked Max. She'd never thought the word would be used in any context having to do with her own life.

Yoko continued, “The Kutu are stolen children. Groups of them sweep through villages to capture more. If a group of kids is found, they're forced at gunpoint to kill one of their own with rocks. Growing up in the same village, they'll have known each other since birth. The child they kill might be their sister or best friend.”

“After that they're a lot less likely to try to escape home, you know?” said Pip. “They feel too guilty.”

“With rocks?” asked Max. None of them bothered to answer. They were too involved in the story, the relief of telling someone new. They leaned forward, voices fast. Mutara was the only one who sat back, looking down at his hands.

“Afterward the captives are kept high chewing qat, forced to work as porters. They see a lot of violence, directed against them or the other kids,” said Yoko. “After a few weeks, they're given Kalashnikovs. By then, they're different. They're Kutu.”

“Qat's a plant around here. Heard of it?” asked Pip. She angled her head, shifted slightly in her seat. Small and nervous. At her movement, Max caught a whiff of a lab chemical, some preservative, like formalin.

“No,” said Max. Laypeople always expected as an ethnobotanist she would know every plant in the world, be able to identify any specimen from ten paces. Having never paid attention to botany, they didn't understand there were over a quarter million different species, just counting the vascular plants.