Do-Gooder (7 page)

Silence filled the Range Rover. I didn’t know what to say, and I figured Henry must have fallen back asleep.

“In about a half hour,” he said, proving me wrong, “we’ll have to take a right onto P4.”

Henry picked up the discarded field guide that lay on the dash. He flipped through the pages fast enough that I doubted he read any of the descriptions or even glanced at the pictures. It looked like something he did to keep his fingers moving.

“So, what’s the deal with the books?”

Henry’s page turning paused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I can kind of see the animal books. You clearly have an interest in the subject. But
Perks
?”

“Have you read it?”

“I saw the movie. Does that count?”

“Hardly. But you know the story, right?”

I nodded.

“My freshman year of high school, before my mom and the stepmonster kicked me out, I had to do a book report for English class on a banned book. Something about the story—this out-of-place kid looking for his place to fit in—stuck with me. It reminded me of me a bit. Not for the same reasons. But I didn’t have a lot of friends. The summer before I started high school the city redrew the school district maps, and I ended up the only one of my friends at my high school. The rest had been assigned to a school on the other side of town. A fluke of geography. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and I didn’t know anyone at all. Of course, I had also figured out about that time that I was gay, which just added to that outsider attitude. Anyway, I loved the book.”

While he talked he kept his eyes glued to our surroundings. I had noticed that the scrub desert we’d been passing through was changing—more trees, more bushes. Cameroon really was a cool place. In one day we went from hilly grasslands to hardwood forests to scrub desert to rain forest. Crazy.

“You should read it,” Henry said, glancing at me from the corner of his eyes. “It’s pretty freaking cool. Anyway,” he continued, turning back to the scenery, “there’s this line. I don’t remember it exactly, but it has something to do with people accepting what they think they deserve. Like, if we hang out with people who hurt us, it’s probably because, on some level, we believe that we deserve to be hurt. I don’t know how true that is, but for me, well, let’s just say when my mom and the stepmonster kicked me out, it helped to remember that. I deserved more than they were willing to give. Then later, when I realized that if I didn’t do something to change my life, I’d end up dead, it helped again. I deserved more than that life. I wasn’t going to accept it anymore. I had a chance to do something different, something better.”

I swallowed. The decisions, the choices he’d had to make. I couldn’t even imagine them. I hoped to God I never had to find that kind of strength.

TWENTY MINUTES
later movement on the road ahead caught my attention. A huge procession of people trudged in our direction, many carrying bundles of belongings. Those without the cargo had a child, or sometimes two, strapped to backs or settled on hips. I pulled the Range Rover as far over on the road as I could. The bright colors they wore contrasted sharply with the somber expressions on their faces. Some of the people were shoeless. I didn’t know why that stood out so much, but it did. Maybe because I wore shoes that cost more than a hundred bucks, and they had nothing, not even cheap sandals. I tried to count them, but when I reached 120 and hadn’t even made it to the halfway point, I gave up.

“Who are they?” I asked in a hushed voice. “Where are they going?”

No one looked at us as they walked past. Faces blank, eyes emotionless. Even the children, solemn enough to be part of a funeral procession, stared ahead as though neither their origin nor their destination made a difference.

“Refugees from the CAR. We’re not too far from the border right now, and the conflict there is getting worse.”

“Can you imagine,” I asked, licking my lips, “how bad things must be there to make this the preferable option?”

“War is never pretty.”

“I was born there, you know.” I watched a boy of about twelve walking next to his mother. He had a pack almost as big as he was strapped to his bony shoulders and held the hand of a girl half his age. His other hand was missing.

I had to swallow several times to keep my gorge down. I wanted to cry or hit something. I wanted to pack them all into the Range Rover with us and take them somewhere safe. These people, they were so absolutely defeated. I started to see why Chuck chose to stay and help. At least a little.

“In the CAR?” Henry kept his voice as quiet as mine. Somehow it didn’t seem right not to whisper in the face of this kind of devastation. Destroying a place is bad enough, but to destroy the human spirit this way was somehow much, much worse.

“Kind of a family joke. The only red-haired, blue-eyed baby to be born in the province since the French left.” An old man with several teeth missing shuffled past my window. “I loved it there. I loved the people, all of them. The staff. Even the refugees. I was just a kid, so the enormity of it, of this”—I gestured around us—“never sunk in. They were Sudanese refugees then. When I was seven, we left, Mom and I.”

“Why’d you leave?” Henry reached over and covered my hand with his good one. The warmth of the contact helped eliminate some of the empty chill filling me at the sight of hundreds of homeless people.

“I’ve never gotten a straight answer. I don’t know if we left because Mom and Chuck’s relationship wasn’t working out and she wanted to go back to the States or if it was too hard to manage a seven-year-old with diabetes from a run-down clinic in the CAR. I know that their divorce was final not too long after we left.”

He squeezed my hand, and we waited for the train of refugees to walk past.

HENRY DECIDED
he probably wouldn’t lose his hand. Actually, he said the swelling and discoloration weren’t getting worse, which amounted to the same thing. “The antivenin doesn’t actually heal anything,” he told me when I asked. “It just keeps it from getting worse. The rest will have to heal on its own. We caught it soon enough, and the bush viper didn’t get much of a hold. He was a young guy, not that it makes a difference.”

“How do you know it was young?”

“He wasn’t very big. Maybe a foot and a half. The green bush vipers get over two feet long when they get older.”

I measured out a foot and a half and then two feet in my mind. The snake may not have been python sized, but surely it was longer than a foot and a half? I’d have said four or five feet. Then again, I’ve heard people who found themselves at the wrong end of a gun sometimes thought the barrel appeared bigger than it really was. Maybe it was something like that. “How do you know so much about snakes? About the animals in general, I guess?”

“I like them.” He shrugged. “So I learn as much about them as I can. Books, people, wherever I can get something new. The camp is near the Lobéké Preserve, and there you can see some of the big animals, you know, the gorillas or giraffes, lions. The ones people go on vacation to see. But there’s so much more here.”

“Like talapoins and lovebirds.”

“And green bush vipers and giant baboon spiders, and a dozen species of antelope, tree frogs, and hundreds of other things.” I would have said his eyes sparkled in his enthusiasm if it weren’t such a girly thing to think (even though they did). He gestured broadly with his hands and smiled as he listed off the many creatures and plants that could be found in Cameroon and the places he’d like to go to study others.

“Why don’t you go to school for biology or zoology or whatever?”

And, like a pricked balloon, he deflated. “College isn’t in the cards for me.” He crossed his arms over his chest, shielding it.

“Why not?”

“Are you kidding? What, you think I finished high school while living on the streets? Most universities require a high school diploma, with maybe a few extracurriculars thrown in.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that he wouldn’t have finished high school. He was so smart, so confident, that even after his story, it never crossed my mind. “Couldn’t you get a, you know, GED or something? I can’t imagine you’re worried about passing the tests. And I’m pretty sure doing missionary work in Africa would trump any extracurricular activities offered at most high schools.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He tried to sound casual, but he kept his eyes cast down. “I like what I’m doing here. I have a purpose. I’m doing something worthwhile. I think I could be very satisfied here.”

I flexed my hands and adjusted my grip on the steering wheel. Because they were stiff from driving, not because I wanted to reach over and hold his hand. To comfort him. Definitely not to reassure him. No way. “What about you?”

He lifted his eyes from his boots to look at me. “What do you mean?”

“I’m sure you get some satisfaction from doing for others, but what about you? Will
you
be happy doing this for the rest of your life? I mean, the people you work with will change constantly, and the people you help rotate in and out just as frequently. Don’t you want something more… permanent?”

“Your dad’s been doing this for over twenty-five years, and he seems to be doing okay.”

“Yeah, but he was married for a third of that time, and if he gets lonely, he’s got other options. Unless Yaoundé and Doumé are more liberal than I think they are, I don’t think you can go into the city to get laid when you need to… connect with someone. And even if you could go to the university area for a hookup, would you? I mean, even with condoms, how safe is casual sex around here?” Personally, I figured it was dangerous enough to keep my pants zippered up until I stood on American soil again.

His jaw clenched and he glared at me.

“Speaking of which,” I said, noticing the turnoff for the next highway, “is Chuck sleeping with Mrs. Okono?”

“What? Why would you….” His mouth opened a couple of times like he was trying to form the right response.

“Dude, my parents have been divorced for like ten years. I hardly think he’s been celibate since then, unless he really is shooting for sainthood.”

“It’s none of my… it’s none of
your
business, whatever they do.”

“Oh, come on. You don’t need to be such a prude. I caught the vibe right away.”

“Look, it really isn’t any of my business,
but
,” he stressed, “you’re probably right. I’m pretty sure they have some kind of arrangement.”

“Like he helps make things easier for her, in exchange for a place to stay, and, let’s face it, I’m pretty sure he’s not sleeping in the lean-to when he goes through town.”

“Don’t be crude.” Henry whirled on me so fast his ponytail swung around until it lay over his shoulder. “You make it sound like Mrs. O’s some kind of whore!”

“That’s not what I meant.” His tone put me on the defensive. “I don’t mean that it’s dirty or anything, but you have to admit, it would be a mutually beneficial arrangement.” Hey, listen to that. I made it sound so businesslike.

“You don’t know anything about it. Sometimes we do what we need to in order to survive. Things are tough around here. If she… accepts help from your father or even others, it doesn’t make her a bad person. You have no right to judge her for the choices she makes.” The words erupted from his mouth like lava from a volcano.

“Whoa, dude. I wasn’t judging anyone.”

“Whatever.” Henry rubbed his forehead. “Anyway, let me know when you want me to drive again.”

The problem with no radio and no conversation was it left a guy with way too much time to think. Thinking was dangerous. With Henry stewing in the passenger seat, my options to avoid thinking about stuff were limited. I could sing, but I wanted Henry to like me and maybe even be impressed by me. Not only would I not win a vocal contest, but my tuneless, off-key singing would probably make him beg to be let out of the truck. Since I was driving, and theoretically my eyes should remain on the road, I couldn’t even skim one of his new books for distraction.

So, instead, I was left with thinking. Thinking about Henry, actually. I didn’t envy his family dynamic, not at all. Chuck may not have been in the picture much, but he didn’t actively hate me. And Mom never let on that anything might have been missing from her life. As far as I knew, she didn’t even date. Henry, after being kicked out of his home and living on the streets for so long, well, I didn’t know how he could be as normal as he was.

And what was with that reaction to my comments about Mrs. Okono? It had sounded almost personal. Did he admire Mrs. Okono so much he didn’t want her to be insulted? Or was it more than that? He’d lived on the street for two years. I knew I couldn’t survive that way, couldn’t stay sane at any rate. And Henry was definitely sane.

I’d read about how a lot of homeless gay kids got into prostitution just to survive. That was one of the things my school’s GSA chapter battled. Not our own homelessness, but fund-raising for shelters and services for homeless queer kids. I’d seen some pretty scary statistics.

Was that it? Had Henry been a prostitute? Or rent boy? Wasn’t that the term? He was pretty enough, if that kind of thing mattered. I felt sick to my stomach.

See, thinking led to all kinds of crazy thoughts. I really needed a distraction.

Men with bigass guns were a distraction.

I slammed on the brakes, sending a cloud of dust up from underneath the Range Rover.

“What the—” Henry’s head jerked up. “
Oh shit
.”

Four men in green military fatigues stood in the middle of the road with large assault rifles pointed at us. Big, beefy guys whose faces would make Mount Rushmore look soft. Three were white, one black, all with shaved heads and identical sunglasses. They were like the Secret Service’s older, meaner, steroid-soaked stepbrothers.

“Please tell me I’m only getting pulled over for speeding,” I whispered, not taking my eyes off the men ahead of us.

Two more men in fatigues approached from either side of the Range Rover. The one closest to me tapped the door window with the barrel of his gun.