Night Must Wait (28 page)

"Did you have one servant who tried to take care of you? For love or loyalty or the fee your people promised to send him? How long before you finally ate again, even as the villagers around you began to run out of food for themselves?"

Maybe months or more tied in the village among thin brown children afraid of his size and blackness, until the cord broke. A dog searching ever since. The fouled rope still hung on his neck, the hair worn and matted under it.

"But dog," she said to him, "the scent died at the river, at the tarmac, at the dock. There is no home without your people, is there?"

Wilton saw Gilman's shadow then on the floor, but Gilman chose not to come into the hut, not to interrupt them. Wilton knew Gilman thought the dog would comfort her. Gilman believed in the innocence of dogs just as she believed in the innocence of children.

The dog shifted a little and she felt the warm lean of his bony flea ridden flank. She could see the ways for the future splaying out before them, the dog happiness that snatched from moment to moment seems to a watching man so complete. Women know better. She could see his dreams, the flickering hope that finding her had brought him closer to his own. Did he smell in her some remembrance of his pack? Or merely a moment of refuge before he moved on?

Through the gaps in the broken wall Wilton saw the village, thatch slumped upon crazed earth. Palm fronds, mud walls tumbled like giant's tantrums had scattered them. People standing, sitting; members of a dismissed cast. Dusty with red earth they did not brush away.

She looked down. What white man's hand once cupped this smooth head and ran along the curve of his neck? She heard the dog's sigh and the skin twitched along his ribs.

Now she saw him drinking this small comfort of a human being who understood a dog, and Wilton knew he would never be hers or anyone else's. She imagined the tears his child might have shed. She heard the yearn in an Englishman's voice who knows he asks the impossible and dreams of faith restored. "You will take care of him, Daniel? Until they let us come back? The war will be over fast. We'll return in a couple of months as soon as the peace comes."

"No one knows what they do," Wilton said to the dog. He lifted his eyebrows, tired, and sighed again. She didn't know either. He had lived all these months on a rat snatched here, a mouthful of lizard. And carrion. Not garbage. Biafra had no garbage. Humans ate it all. There are worse things than eating garbage.

"You terrify me more than the children," she said. She looked into his eyes and saw there no promise and no beginning.

"Dog is good meat—" she said to the old woman watching her from the doorway. "Bleed it fast and cook the meat well."

The woman panted to move him. Fifty odd pounds of slack weight, bone and gristle and offal with some lean meat. The woman was old with want, weak beyond weariness. Others came, and she would have beaten them back if she could. Of course she would have to share. Wilton could not even see the dog any more, there were so many people. So busy like ants.

"What have you done?" Gilman screamed behind her, and Jantor caught Gilman around the waist. Her hair tore loose red and gold in the sunlight, spinning out against his camouflage jacket.

"There wasn't anything else to do," he said.

"We could have kept it..."

"And starved what one of our people to feed it? And taken it with us? Kath, we can't even take one patient, how could we take a dog?" So gentle, his arm still reaching to hold her back.

"It was happy with Wilton and she killed it."

"It's not the kind of dog to be happy with anyone but its own people. They're never coming back, Gilman. Never. A moment's comfort and shot fast. Never felt a thing. Wilton did right."

Wilton turned away. Never felt a thing. In all the months of the dog's searching, only enough to break a village of hearts. To even break hers. Never felt a thing, Jantor said.

Wilton hoped he had not seen how easy the gun lay in her hand.

Chapter 57: Wilton

December 1968

In Transit, Biafra

Wilton headed North from Uli in the early black morning before Gilman rose. Gilman didn't want to talk with her anyway, still smarting over the dog's death.

Wilton's hands ached on the Citroën's steering wheel after an hour of driving, the scars tugging, throbbing. Once a gang stopped her at an intersection. They'd set up a block with trunks cut from the forest, but a phrase in Ibibio sent the men melting back into the black trees. Twisted branches rose skyward on both sides of the road, seeming to writhe in the feeble gleam of her headlights. She felt the frustrated presence of the old gods all around her.

She kept her eyes on the dim track. Pitted asphalt and dirt, potholes and broken tree limbs...

"'Oh God, who dost punish sin and willingly forgive,'" Wilton whispered, remembering a book in Wellesley's library. It had fallen open in her hands like a sign from God. "'I have loved this people. If I have loved them too well, pray forgive me, for I did not know.'"

But she'd known. Surely she had. In those days at Wellesley when she looked at the controlled purity of Lindsey's profile and saw in her a leader, when she had looked at Gilman's intemperate enthusiasm, her passion for the medical arts, she'd known she loved them. Too much. Adored them for the spirit and power in them, but she pretended it wasn't love. Then the flyaway vulgarity and soft heart of Sandy who could always make her smile, who understood that Wilton prayed whenever she looked down. Sandy would fall silent too in that brief moment of grace before rattling on with her stories and impious jokes.

"You shall have no other gods before me, thus saith the Lord."

But she had. She'd looked upon these women and seen how they could serve her Nigeria, help create the vision God gave her, imagined them rising to be greater than human, and she'd forgotten that all love and loyalty belong to God, first. She bent her faith to fit human love and ambition. Now she saw the fearsome greed in Lindsey and how Sandy avoided confronting it, the amorous lust in Gilman, the corruption of purposes. The war itself. Had God inflicted it upon them for divine sin? So, what was to be done?

Always, sacrifice was the price of salvation.

To receive the Grace of God would take the putting away of worldly things and worldly loves. She must sacrifice who she was and who they were to her. All must be remade in His Image.

Her mind wandered then, veering.
This hurts. I promise to act in due time. I will consider later. Think of something else now.

Out in the bush she imagined refugees, curled in the darkness waiting for another day of the unending search for food and safety. She perceived a few lumpy shapes alongside the verge that might be sleeping travelers, but her attention remained too fiercely on the road to allow her to make sure. She kept straining her ears to hear some sound other than the uneven firing of her engine, fancying rustles and chirring little sounds in the brooding darkness.

Just a few things to do, Lord, before I make Your sacrifice. You understand, don't you? You who understand all things and see all things.

She saw a cavernous hole in the road. The tires skidded in the dust, then on the rough pebbled surface of the asphalt. Swerving back to the center of the road where the surface remained best, Wilton shuddered. None of the night seemed warm, nor any part of this route familiar.

She had so far to go before dawn, could endure no delay. If He would grant her this little time to accomplish one more task, set up Christopher in a safe place with enough to live on. She owed him that. Surely God understood. Surely God loved him too.

Chapter 58: Gilman

January 1969

Uli, Biafra

The dry light of the Harmattan filtered through the dulled windows of the surgery, the dust gritting in her teeth. Days like this lasted forever.

"Keep away from me, motherfucker—I'll blow your fucking head off."

Gilman looked up from the suturing of a gash. She and Sister Catherine exchanged a glance then the nun held out her hand for the needle. Gilman backed up, stripped off her gloves and automatically checked the time. Ten in the morning with a list of surgeries that didn't need an interruption like this. Something, however, about that raised tone suggested more than a simple disagreement.

Allingham's voice reached them.

"Major, be reasonable. I can't treat you like this."

"That's the point. Get me a real doctor."

Gilman nudged the door to the clinic exam room open. Allingham stood, his back up against the wall, his eyes fixed on Taffy Masters, who lay on the examining table. Supporting himself on one elbow, Masters gripped a revolver in his free hand. Beneath the grime of combat, his skin washed paper white. The tense crouch of his body told Gilman as much as the torn blood-soaked pant leg.

"Dr. Allingham, may I speak with you in the next room?" Gilman managed a tone both firm and reasonable. Masters lowered his Colt with a shaking hand, Allingham followed her out. He moved fast.

"What the hell was going on in there?" Gilman said.

"Nothing," he said. "He was brought in by his boys. I started to treat him and he pulled a gun on me and refused to let me touch him. I didn't think he'd..."

"Didn't you forget something?"

"Like what?"

"Anesthesia?"

Allingham glanced at the door, then a smile flickered over his face.

"I don't think it's necessary in this case. He's such a tough guy, I'm sure he can take anything. We're running short, anyhow. It's a little piece of shrapnel, not too deep..."

"Doctor Allingham. A Fed at forty paces could see he needs it. International Red Cross might think anesthesia called for, if I reported you." Gilman headed back toward the examining room.

"Gilman." Allingham's voice stopped her at the door. "International Red Cross and the press especially, might be interested to know who you're sleeping with, as well."

She faced him. God he was ugly with his greasy face and sneer.

"I'll remind you, I'm no employee. I'd love to know what rock you crawled out from under, Doctor Allingham. Just remember that
I
won't lose my license for malpractice."

Leave before you hit him.
She spun about and slammed back into the examining room.

"Now put that goddamned gun away so somebody can get some work done around here."

"Yes, ma'am," Masters said, grinning at her from a face tight with pain. He slipped on the safety and replaced the Colt in its holster. She rummaged in the medicine cabinet. He let himself sag onto the table, the movement wringing a groan.

Gilman's anger vanished. She came over, hypodermic in hand.

"Look," she said. "I'm going to give you a shot. It'll put you out for a bit so I can clean up that leg. Okay?"

"I guess," he said. She swabbed his arm with rubbing alcohol. "But ...wait a minute..."

She paused, needle poised.

"I keep my gun. And you tell that ugly sonofabitching quack not to touch me, or I'll slice his balls off 'n' feed them to him."

"I'll relay the message," Gilman said. She slipped the needle under his skin then set about cutting away his pant leg while the dose began to take effect.

"Works fast," Masters mumbled.

"Yes." Gilman fetched a hot wet compress to soak away the cloth adhering to the wound.

"Masters?"

"Mmm?"

"Have you seen Tom today? Taffy?"

Out cold. Fifteen minutes later she put the final touch on his dressing. She hesitated over the holster, then compromised by relieving him of his ammunition. She called the orderlies.

She helped them lift Masters onto a stretcher. "Listen" she said, "I think the only way to avoid a killing around here is for you to put him on that cot in my office."

Gilman found Tom Jantor slumped in the chair by her office desk, his hat dangling from dusty fingertips. She'd never seen him so tired, unwilling to give even a smile. He'd never come to her looking like this before. He'd never participated in such a military disaster before either. Crossed signals, troops not supporting as arranged, and a complete rout, with a savagely contested retreat. Only the more able wounded had made it to her surgery.

"I'm sorry," she said. He smiled at her then, one side of his mouth only.

He glanced over at Taffy snoring on the cot.

"Don't worry," she said, "he's out for the count. You must be hungry."

Of course he was hungry, they were all hungry, and the best she could offer was scarcely worth swallowing.

"You haven't got much to spare."

"I'll find something."

When she returned with a few pieces of tired fruit, he straightened in his chair and set the hat on her desk. He opened an orange. No protein until the next stockfish and powdered milk came in. Adults couldn't live on fruit, though they lasted longer than the children did. There was hardly a lizard left in all the surrounding countryside.

She shied away from thought of the future. Jantor began to eat, chewing with deliberation, as though doing a duty. Eventually he reached for Gilman's hand, his fingers sliding over hers before they grasped.

"Do you know why it happened?"

"The frigging Biafran generals."

He wiped his hand on the tattered napkin. Gilman leaned toward him and brushed the thick brown hair back from his forehead.

"They got jealous of all the special equipment and special treatment Steiner got from His Excellency. So they made up a conspiracy theory. I don't know how far it goes. This war is fucked."

He seemed restless, his lips tightening. She collected herself, reaching out again to run a hand over his brown forehead, noticing, as if it were important, how light even her tan looked against the weathering of his skin. She felt him relax a little under her fingers. The hazel eyes flickered to meet hers once more, studied her face with a wary kind of surprise. He didn't voice his thoughts.