Beneath the Darkening Sky (12 page)

Priest and I eat most meals together, and he even rescues me from the Captain from time to time by volunteering to punish me. Priest is the only one I can trust in this godforsaken place. He,
like me, has secrets – secret thoughts, actions and hopes. I find myself telling him about how I sing the church songs rather than the revolutionary songs. I talk with him about what might be
happening back in our home villages and how our loved ones might be faring. We have a meeting place upstream from the camp, where the rapids start, and with boulders to hide us and the sound of
running water to disguise our conversations. Priest teaches me to be invisible to the Captain, to not stand out. He begins to give me lessons in fighting – with my bare hands and with his
AK-47.

We set up our own shooting range and each day I have to report to him for practice. Priest teaches me how to line the sights up and hold the heavy weapon to my shoulder, so I don’t end up
sitting on my rear from the recoil. Sometimes he laughs at my efforts. Later, he shows me how to control my breathing and squeeze the trigger gently, not jerk it, and not fear it. He teaches me
about being quick to concentrate, aim and fire, so that no one else can shoot you first.

Eventually Priest brings his guitar. I show him the few chords I know from my village. Our time together becomes a lot of lessons. First gun, then guitar and, later the bible. His bible is in
English, the old kind. He loves the psalms and often quotes from them. His favourite is ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.’ And he knows
a lot of English songs.

I like hitting the target, but I love the feel of the strings under my fingertips and the sound of the soothing twang when I get a chord right.

We couldn’t leave the camp, but there were places you could escape to, if just for a little while. Especially if you got up early, you could have a few hours of life
without the commanders and their ‘Yes, sirs!’ The jungle could be beautiful, if you looked at it for a little while, with all different shades of green, and the flashes of yellow from
the parrots and red spikes of the ginger plants. A few thin clouds threw cool shadows under a beautiful sky. The birds sang extra loud and no one was in a mood there to shoot at them. Best of all,
the wind blew the smell of the latrine away from you. That was the time to sit alone, or sometimes with Priest.

Priest told me about the drugs that the Great General seized from some of the trucks we captured, and that sometimes, when they were bored, the officers took with the General. Priest said they
used them to get out of it. I wanted them too, if that was what they did, but Priest said they were too valuable to give to recruits. The General traded them with the white people for guns.

The drink and drugs would take till noon to work their way out of the officers and senior soldiers. Withdrawal always made them cranky. Not all of them took drugs and never very often, because
they didn’t get many. Priest didn’t take drugs. He just said God bless to whoever had them. The drugs made people laugh foolishly, and although I wanted to laugh too, laughing in this
place made me afraid, and angry. That’s when Priest would take me into the jungle to play guitar, or to practise shooting. He said I looked like his little brother.

We’re scared all the time. Sometimes, scary things can seem funny here, and I hate that worst of all.

When it rained in my village, I used to hate it. It meant that I’d either be pulling goat hooves out of the mud all day or, if it was really bad, that I had to stay in my hut with Akot and
do homework. Sums or English. All day. Here in the camp, rain means a lot of things. The bomb crater that we use as a latrine overflows and, luckily, the run-off goes away from camp. We have a good
week after that, with less smell. Rain here means mud too, and lots of it. Mud means we don’t have to run. It means we can fill up our bowls and bottles with clean water without boiling it.
Then, the mice. When it starts really coming down, the rodents all take off. The bad bit is that you know soon the mosquitoes will get really bad. And rain usually means we get to stay inside,
sleeping, or playing cards, or talking.

This rainy day we hear screaming outside in the yard.

‘Attention!’ one of the captains is yelling. ‘Attention! On deck! Everyone out here, you lazy maggots! I’m going to shoot the last of you little bastards that gets in
line.’

The older boys are used to this and jump straight up and run outside. Priest grabs his gun and runs out too. I follow him, but a little behind.

Out in the yard we start lining up, automatically, before we realise the commander is naked. He stands there in pouring rain so thick you can’t see more than three metres in front of you,
and he’s naked except for his boots, his hat, and a pistol waving at everyone. He has a strap tied tightly around the top of his arm.

‘Now, listen here, maggots!’ he yells. ‘There’s a patrol of government troops three kilometres north. We’re going to move out and ambush them and fuck them in the
ass!’ He starts humping the air and I see that he has a large erection swinging against his belly. ‘No guns! We don’t need guns! We’re going to fuck ’em up the
ass!’

Other officers step out. The Captain stands close by, chuckling behind a loosely rolled cigar.

‘Sir,’ one of the younger boys says. ‘Sir, I don’t want to . . . do it with a man. I’m not a faggot, sir!’

‘You think I’m a faggot?’ The commander swings his handgun right at the boy’s forehead. I don’t know what makes that kid so bold. I don’t want to do it
either, but I’m not going to say so.

‘Plague!’ the Great General yells, storming out of his hut in uniform, one of his wives holding an umbrella over him. ‘What are you doing? Where did you hear about these
government troops?’

‘Sir,’ Commander Plague says. ‘A leopard came into my hut and told me in a song.’

Lots of laughing.

‘Are you laughing at me?’ He turns on the boy who’d spoken, pressing the barrel of his gun into the kid’s forehead until he falls over. ‘You think I’m a
faggot and you’re laughing at me?’ He pulls the trigger.
Click.
Nothing.

Commander Plague cocks the slide and tries again.
Click.
He smacks the gun against his palm a couple times. The General says nothing, rubbing his nose. Plague flips the gun around and
peers down the barrel, then smacks it a couple more times.
Bang!
A chunk of the Commander’s face explodes away from his head. The recruits gasp and some scream. I can’t
breathe, but a small part of me wants to laugh with relief. The General just stands there.

‘Shit,’ he says eventually. Then he points at the boy Plague had meant to kill. ‘You. I want this moron’s body out of my yard, right now.’

The boy jumps into action. At first he just looks like he’s following orders, moving quickly out of fear. But there is something in his steps, a kind of bounce and sway. I think he enjoyed
seeing that crazed bastard blow his own head off. Not that I blame him. He disappears into the rain, taking Plague with him.

The grave is a big hole they’ve dug a little way outside the camp. Sometimes, when we come back in the morning, we find half the bodies gone, eaten by wild animals, but the dead are so
many that no hungry animals can eat them all. We don’t bury bodies, we just throw them in the hole. Every once in a while, whenever the hole fills up, we throw some pieces of wood on top, or
pour on some petrol. Light it up. The smell of a burning body isn’t nearly as bad as a rotting one.

Once the boy has gone, the General dismisses the rest of us.

Over the next few days, the kid Plague meant to shoot is put through the grinder. The other officers get him for every little thing. If he doesn’t say ‘Yes, sir’ fast enough
they hit him. If he doesn’t run fast enough, they make him stare at the sun for an hour or two. The Captain ties the kid to a tree branch by his wrists and leaves him there for a day.

They could do that, punish you for no reason. You did something wrong, they’d say. Yes, sir, you say. Take your punishment, they say. Yes, sir, you say. Grab your ankles, they say. Yes,
sir, you say . . .

Today I’m practising the ‘Tambourine Man’ song, with Priest beside me on the edge of the jungle. We have become lost in our conversations and our secrets
when a girl walks up the path. She’s only a couple of years older than me – I recognise her as one of the wives, but when she stops and smiles at my song, for the first time I see that
she is beautiful. I look at the ground and miss a chord. The girl giggles.

‘I like that song,’ she says, ‘but I don’t remember it sounding quite like that.’

‘No, Miss,’ Priest says, nodding to her. ‘Baboon is having an off day. I taught him better than that.’

She giggles again and walks on down to the banana grove. I go on with my practice, although without talking now. I don’t know what to think about. When she returns, she has a dozen bananas
in her hand. She tears one off the bunch and throws it to me. ‘Maybe that will help Baboon concentrate.’

‘I hope so,’ Priest replies in a gentle voice, and bows his head a little.

I hold the banana, looking hard at the ground as she walks back down the path. I still haven’t visited the hospitality house, it’s meant for soldiers, not recruits. I don’t
want to go there, except maybe to see Akidi. Although I don’t want to see Akidi in the hospitality house. I know what happens between a man and a woman and I hate it, but I also want to know
more.

Priest is looking at me. ‘She’s called Christmas,’ he says.

I don’t know what to reply. ‘She seems nice.’

‘And she belongs to the Captain.’

The Captain seems to have forgotten about me a little – he doesn’t train the recruits, and he’s often away on raids. Now other recruits make far worse mistakes than me.

I think about the power of the Captain, how he can get whatever he wants.

Priest looks up at the blue sky. ‘Maybe he’s getting bored with her, letting her walk around like that. Or maybe she’s figured out how to earn favours.’ He laughs.

But I’m wrong. He hasn’t forgotten.

I’m on my own, sitting and cooking ears of corn for dinner. Back in my village, men don’t cook. Cooking is done by girls and women, but here we are whatever the commanders want us to
be.

The Captain looms over me, looking twice as big as he ever has.

‘Baboon’s Ass,’ he barks.

‘Yes, sir?’ I reply, forgetting to stand.

‘Were you at the creek today?’ His voice gives no clue to the way I should answer.

‘Uh . . . yes, sir.’

‘At what time?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’ We don’t have watches. The only times I know are sunrise, sunset and meals. ‘Maybe . . . five?’

The Captain sneers. ‘The same time as my wife?’

Now I know. ‘No, sir!’ Now I’m standing. ‘I haven’t seen your wife at all today, sir.’

But the Captain doesn’t keep shouting. He looks at my face for a while, rolling a thin stick between his lips. ‘So, you play guitar?’

‘No, sir. I don’t play.’

‘Liar! You do! My wife says you play. Unless there’s another baboon playing guitar around here.’

‘Well, I used to play in my village, just to keep the birds away. Priest has been teaching me, but I only know a few songs.’

The Captain grunts. ‘You are playing at my house, tonight.’ He turns on his heel and marches into the darkness of the gathering sunset.

I grab my corn and run for Priest’s new hut. Most of the soldiers live in the barracks, but Priest has carried his hut’s materials on his own back, so the officers don’t
object. When I arrive he is cooking a guinea fowl that he shot. He trades me some bird for an ear of corn and we eat together. I can barely speak, which suits Priest. He never speaks more than when
he’s eating. He tells stories from the missions he has been on, and the way different people reacted to facing death at a soldier’s hands. Sometimes he sounds very old, much older than
the Great General, even. The Captain smiles when he hears Priest talk about the fighting and the burning huts. I don’t like listening to their talk.

I tell him I need to borrow his guitar, which he calls Stella.

‘Okay, I’ll come with you,’ he says.

‘Come where?’

‘Wherever you’re taking her.’

‘The Captain’s house.’

Priest almost chokes. ‘What?’

‘The Captain wants me to play at his house tonight.’

Priest looks into my eyes, and the world around us slows down. His gaze is the only thing I can see. ‘Baboon,’ he says eventually, ‘everyone who comes here grows up too fast.
But you need to grow up extra fast tonight. Do not look at that girl even once. Back in her village, she was worth at least three hundred and fifty, four hundred cows. Did your entire village have
that many cows?’

‘Of course. It wasn’t that small.’ I feel offended.

‘Little Baboon, there are no cows here. Only us, and we are worth much less.’

I don’t know what he means, but I know it’s a warning. I know how to keep my head down.

‘And I can’t be a part of this,’ Priest goes on. ‘You play a song he doesn’t like, I didn’t teach it to you. Understand?’

‘Yes.’ I don’t mention that I’ve already told the Captain Priest has taught me. I feel sick that I might already have betrayed my friend somehow.

‘Okay.’ Priest stops staring. ‘Good luck. If you finish after lights out in the barracks, you can sleep here. I want Stella back tonight.’

‘I will. Thanks.’ I pick up the guitar and sling it across my back. A poster in Priest’s hut shows a man doing that, so I do the same, going out with my life depending on this
instrument.

‘See you soon,’ I say.

‘I pray so,’ Priest says after me.

The Captain’s house is a single-room hut with a papyrus-reed fence around a small front yard. Compared to the rest of the camp, it’s a palace. Only the Great
General has a nicer house, and even that is really just two huts with a fence around both.

When I arrive at the gate, the Captain is sitting in the yard in a bath full of water. There is no steam rising from it, but I bet it’s still warm. I haven’t been in warm water since
I arrived here, and even the commanders with wives don’t often bother with it. The Captain looks at me with a still face, like a lion paused in his eating. He is content, but I still want to
stay as far away from him as possible. My body goes on high alert, my adrenaline pumps and I look around cautiously.