««« one »»»
Kurtz sat on his suitcases. Outside. Smoking a joint. Smiling at the sparks and flames brightening the darkness that surrounded the village.
“Pretty cool, eh?”
“Ass.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“And you are. Much worse.”
The old hotel with their rooms burnt in the night. Housewives, soldiers, neighbors and firefighters rushed buckets of water at the structure. The hotel owner threw fistfuls of dirt at it while his wife dragged ragged smoldering furniture out as it hissed smoke into the dark sky.
“Guess we need to find another place to hang out, eh?”
“Shut up, Kurtz.”
“I’m not hanging out with this asshole. I’d rather be with Tipu Tip. At least he’s an honest rapist.” Amelia grabbed her backpack.
“Hey! I asked and you said ‘yes’. Don’t go blaming me for your loose morals. Your immorality. Your, your…”
Amelia slugged Kurtz with her bag, tearing a gash across his forehead, and stormed off into the darkness.
“Fucking bitch.” Kurtz dammed the blood flowing from his head with his dirty fingers. “Well, guys, I guess it’s just us, eh?” he grunted.
“Fuck off, Kurtz.” Hairball marched after Amelia.
Sakombí gathered his belongings, gave Kurtz an angry stare, pressed the bandage against his bloody nose, and rushed after Hairball and Amelia.
“What now?” Hairball asked.
“Find a place to sleep, I guess. In the morning we head off to the airport.”
The trio walked toward Kigali, knowing they couldn’t walk the entire distance but knew they wanted to distance themselves from the border, the burning hotel, and Kurtz.
They walked in silence, each buried by their own thoughts.
Amelia worked on ignoring the past few days. Worked on rebuilding her emotions; tried to get back to the woman she was before… before that Asshole! and Tip. She feared she was going to become a bitter, revengeful woman. She didn’t want to be that. She didn’t want to be an angry woman who hated everyone. She wanted to be that cheerful — Adventurous — girl she was when she left Australia. She wanted to laugh and jump naked into the ocean without fearing sharks or morons and assholes like Kutrz. She wanted to laugh whenever she felt like it; not looking over her shoulder at the ghosts of life past or ugly creations creeping up on her. Would she ever? Could she ever be that girl again? Or was it time to grow up?
Hairball worried about his future. Would he be able to return to normal society? To normal Wisconsin life? Would he be able to look at people knowing they could explode or die or have a snake wrap themselves around them in an instant? Or kill? Would he demote his Congo experience to just a fleeting moment in his life? Just a few days out of his life that he could ignore, forget, refuse to admit existed when, in fact, they were the most troubling, vicious days of his life? He looked at Amelia as she lead the way to the next town. Would she? he wondered, forget what happened to her.
Sakombí worried about food, a place to sleep, and whether the police would arrest him. If arrested, the best possibility was being sent back to the Congo. The worst was taking a ride out in the lake with three armed guards and finding himself floating in the lake with five bullet holes in his back.
“How far we going to walk?” Hairball asked. He looked back at Sakombí.
Sakombí looked around to ask someone but Amelia interrupted him with an angry stare.
“Until I get tired.”
The two men nodded. She was in charge now. It was her show. They could only assist when she needed them. They walked at her pace and her direction.
««« two »»»
He woke up on an uncultivated part of Lord Bringhurst’s massive backyard; perhaps a patch destined to be a vegetable garden dotting the massive green carpet buffeted Bringhurst manor on all sides undisturbed by vegetation other than grass and carefully manicured shrubs outlining the river stone paths that urged visitors away from the house; he wondered why he was prostate in the dirt.
His first thought was of Bobby’s unique smell, that combination of ambition, intelligence, and anger and how he missed her, her laughter and sarcasm, and never wanted to be separated from her again; he had no such feelings for his father, who abandoned him one day, a rainy day, while he and his sister were at school and his mother was out bargain shopping.
A drop of rain splashed against his eyelid. Immediately he thought of the two of them, him and Bobby, running through a shower, laughing and splashing each other before collapsing in mirth in a small out-of-the-day pub with a half dozen disgruntled long-time customers nursing beers where the author of Far From the Madding Crowd once sat, also probably nursing a warm beer, possibly during a thunderstorm or summer shower.
The drop of rain awakened his memory of meeting a strange alluring woman, a long-legged, fedora-wearing chain smoker who wanted to buy a second edition of a Fielding book which was, because Timmons couldn’t make it, why he was in England without Bobby, who he missed and never wanted to be separated from again.
««« three »»»
What did he do with the book Ms Fedora wanted to buy? He remembered buying it cheap in a bookstore in Madison during a sudden shower that inundated the city as if douching out the dirt, grime, and laziness but he also remembered walking away from the Greyhound bus station in Chicago late at night worrying about muggers but seeing a store alit as if for Christmas; an antique book shop doing business near midnight.
He walked in, plopped his three Madison-purchased books on the counter. The owner looked at him as if he were crazy, grinned at the three books and made an offer too good for him to refuse. It was a profit. Selling all three of his books and making a tidy profit – a huge profit, really – on all three including the Fielding one – a second edition Fielding bought for $10 – selling it for $500.
Ms Fedora was willing to pay substantially more that $500 for her husband if he could find it; he wished he had it now, but the extra money made his mother happy because he shared the profit 50/50 with her and she squandered her half on food, paying off one overdue gas bill, offering up enough to have the electricity turned on again, and buying his sister a used Spanish textbook that hadn’t been marked up too much by the previous student and not at all past its Chapter 2: Introducing Relatives
««« four »»»
Another rain drop fell on his head. He struggled to sit up but the world was spinning too fast. He sat up. In the far distance. In the rain. Near Lord Bringhurst’s massive front door, he thought he saw a man caught by the lightning. He was dressed in black topped with a black bowler hat – like Vladimir & Estragon wore – rushing to a waiting car, an elegant Rolls Royce with darkened windows like those used by pimps in Baraboo, Madison, Chicago, and other places Hairball traveled with his mother, younger sister, and a not-so-elegant Ford with a loose exhaust pipe.
“Hey, you gonna get outta ta rain, boy?”
Through the pain and rain Hairball barely made out the portly figure in the gaudy clothes that could only be attached to an American. In England. At Lord Bringhurst’s mansion.
“Who’s Bobby?”
“Huh?”
“You were mumbling Bobby Bobby Bobby the entire time I’ve been sitting here. Boyfriend?”
“In the rain? You’ve been sitting in the rain? Why?”
“Picked up a bumbershoot, eh? Or whatever this country calls these things.” The man waved his umbrella up and down, keeping himself dry but allowing Hairball to be splashed and drenched. “Wasn’t always raining, ya know. This ain’t Noah, the Bible, rain. Floods.”
“What?”
“Besides, I’ve been blessing the rains down in, well, whatever country.”
“Kravick.” Hairball slipped himself up to sit in the mud. “Why am I here? Sitting in the mud. And my head hurts?”
“Couldn’t tell ya, buddy. I mean in there,” he looked up at Lord Bringhurst’s library lurking on the second floor of the massive building, “you just kinda passed out, ran out, and fell down. Don’t know why. Having a stroke or something? Gone crazy on that gawd awful warm British beer?”
Hairball urged himself to stand up. He struggled, slipped, and grabbed Kravick’s extended hand. “Where’s my… Oh.” He bent down, slipped again, and ended up sitting in the mud again but with his bag in his cold hand. He stumbled to his feet. “Did I find what I was looking for in there?”
“Nope.”
“I gotta get me some dry clothes.”
Together, with Hairball limping and Kravick holding the umbrella — barely covering Hairball but keeping his own head and bag dry — like a knight’s lance parading before the King on the eve of an important festival that included farm girls frolicking, beer awash, merchants peddling dubious foods, clothing, and farm tools, and knights jousting their opponents to the ground as a lance smacks them off their horses in front of cheering farmers, lords, weeping maidens with handkerchiefs and the king with his queen.
“So, who’s Bobby?”
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