Sudan: A Novel (29 page)

Masapha paused, and each of the men became a 15-year-old boy, staring in disbelief at Arab soldiers and panicked farmers, listening to the crack of gunfire and the cries of the fallen.

“He watched his father be killed,” Masapha said quietly. “He was one of the last ones to fall because he was big and strong and tall and could run fast—that’s what Koto said. His father almost made it to the village.”

Masapha described the convoy of trucks and jeeps full of soldiers in combat fatigues that roared into the village. Koto had frantically searched for his mother and his sister and brothers, but a soldier caught him, stuck his rifle barrel in Koto’s face and gestured toward the trucks.

“He was pushed from behind to the center of the village where the soldiers were loading his people into trucks—the ones not dead, on the ground, bodies to step over. That is when he saw a soldier come from the road, dragging his little brothers. They cried and struggled hard to be away. Koto tried to go to them but a soldier hit him in the chest with his rifle butt and knocked him down. When he was back up to standing, his brothers were in the truck. The soldiers slammed shut the tailgate and drove away. He never saw them after that anymore again.”

Masapha stopped and looked at the boy, who sat quietly listening to him talk.

“He was tied together with others of his village and marched down the road. That is the end of what he was saying. He was telling of that when he could not keep talking.”

They had all seen the boy choke up, watched the tears spring into his eyes.

“Tell him he doesn’t have to unpack the whole trunk right now,” Ron said hurriedly. “There’s no rush. If he wants to wait, we can come back later.”

“No,” Masapha said. “I think he needs to take all the things out of the trunk at this one time. And then it is over.”

Ron glanced questioningly at the doctor. The old man looked at the boy and reluctantly nodded. Masapha turned back to Koto and spoke a few words. The boy took a deep breath.

“We were tied up with thick ropes, each one to the next, in a line,” he told Masapha. “And so I couldn’t see far ahead. I was behind a large woman, and I couldn’t see around her when they marched us down the road. That is why I didn’t see them...until they were there, right there...”

His voice grew thick. He fought manfully to keep his lip from trembling as the image formed in his head. But he couldn’t stop the tears. They streamed silently down his face.

“My mother was in the road. She had been shot... ” He stopped. “Shot in the leg. I could see it as I walked to her. And then I saw they had shot her in the head, too.” 

He drew in a deep, shaky breath and continued. “Beside her on the ground, my baby sister, Reisha. I think. It had to be my baby sister, but I couldn’t tell... ”
And then the words came out in a rush of pain. “Because they had blown her apart!”

Masapha patted his leg and the boy stopped. His breathing hitched in his chest. But he wasn’t crying. He had decided he was never going to cry again.

Koto watched the group’s reaction as Masapha translated what he had said. He could see the shock, the revulsion and the sympathy on all the men’s faces, even on the doctor’s and the tall American’s. No,
especially
on the doctor’s and the American’s. And he decided that he had been right, the white men were good men. Just being light-skinned like the raiders didn’t make them evil. They had helped him, sure. But seeing on their faces that what had happened to him sickened and saddened them, told him they could be trusted. He needed to know that.

The boy continued to talk, and Masapha continued to turn his words into pictures that all the men could see. The soldiers had loaded some of the captives into trucks, and others, like Koto, were herded along on foot for days. The forced march was brutal, he said—the captives were beaten and starved, babies were thrown into the bush, children who couldn’t keep up were left to die.

He described his brief stay at the slave auction, how he untied a rope and got free, but he was understandably vague about exactly what happened after that. He and Masapha talked back and forth for a bit when he finished his story, but Masapha didn’t translate the conversation for the others.

“Does he remember when we found him?” Ron wanted to know.

“I do not think so,” Masapha said. “I am certain that if that was in his memory, he would have told me.”

The doctor pointed out that often trauma victims had blank spots, amnesia about what had happened just before or right after they were injured.

“It is likely he remembers noting about what happened before he collapsed,” Greinschaft said.

Ron exchanged a knowing glance with Masapha.

“Good,” they said in unison.

The doctor got up off the bed slowly, painfully. He’d been in one spot for so long he was stiff. “So, we are done here, yes?”

“I think so,” Ron said. “Looks like we’re finished with Koto’s story.”

“Actually, no, we are not,” Masapha said.

The two men stopped and looked at the small man still seated on the side of the boy’s bed. When he didn’t say anything right away, Ron primed the pump.

“And that would be because...?”

Masapha was uncharacteristically tongue-tied. “What the boy said is, Koto wants...”

“Come on,” Ron said. “Spit it out. What?”

“Koto wants to go with us,” Masapha said bluntly.

Ron was taken totally off guard. “You want to run that by me again?”

“The boy said that when we leave to go to the north, he will accompany us. He wants to find his brothers.”

Ron smiled. “I admire his courage, but you need to teach him about an American concept called ‘looking for a needle in a haystack.’”

Masapha looked blank, then shook his head. “It will not be easy to talk him from this.”

“Talk him
out of
this.”

“Or that either,” Masapha said, and Ron rolled his eyes. “You must understand, he has no one left but his brothers. There is no village for him to go back to. It has been burned on the ground.”

Ron thought about telling him burned
to
the ground, but decided to let it go.

“He understands what is a slave. He knows what waits for his brothers. He cannot leave them to that fate. Among the Lokuta, boys must hunt a lion before they are called a man. This will be Koto’s lion.”

“That’s got a nice ring to it, but...” Ron stammered.

Masapha held up his hand. “He said that you are a white skin, but your heart is not full of worms and maggots like the raiders. He knows because he watched your face when he was telling his life. Your heart is pure. He says that your white skin will make them listen to you. They will not listen to him because his skin is black. They will just capture him again.”

Before Ron had a chance to argue, the doctor ended the discussion. “You can talk about this another time. Right now ze boy needs rest. Visiting hours are over.”

Ron hit the Off button on the tape recorder, picked it up, and they all filed out of the room.

Alonzo Washington walked slowly around Dan’s office and studied the pictures on the walls. An oil portrait of the wife—curly red hair, good-looking woman. Individual studio pictures of the three kids. Even with no front teeth, the little strawberry blonde girl was the image of her mother; the youngest had a mischievous gleam in his eye you could see even when he was posed in a coat and tie. Then blown-up snapshots—those were better. All three of the kids burying Dan in sand at the beach. The oldest at the free-throw line, concentrating hard. One of them, probably the youngest, as a toddler, his hands buried up to the wrists in a chocolate birthday cake.

Washington moved farther down the wall to a picture in an ornate silver frame—an older couple, distinguished man and a wispy-haired wife. The parents, probably, he could see the resemblance. And there were scenic shots, too, arresting, breathtaking black-and-white photos of shadows on sand dunes and a fireball sun on the horizon of some vast plain. The last picture, a portrait of a smiling, suntanned man who bore an uncanny likeness to Dan, only younger, thinner and blond. That must be the brother—the one stirring up so much trouble in Sudan.

“Alonzo!”

The congressman turned and extended his hand as the big man from Indiana strode into the room.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.” Dan made a have-a-seat gesture toward a yellow-and-orange plaid couch. “Make yourself at home.”

The couch and a matching chair had been Sherry’s idea. She’d said his office needed brightening up. So she’d added a couple of touches of her own—lamps, two end tables and the furniture. Dan had hated it at first, but after he’d watched one visitor after another relax in the homey feel of the office, he’d concluded—yet again—that he had, indeed, married the right woman.

Washington sat down on the couch and let out a small sigh. Sherry had scored again.

Dan sat in the chair. “I hate watching you in the gym,” he said.

Washington smiled.

“No, I’m serious. I hate it. You’re out there running laps like a cheetah, and I’m on the basketball court with the old guys, huffing and puffing my way through a game of three-on-three.”

“A cheetah? Maybe once. Now the only cat I look like when I run is Garfield. I’m getting old, man, slowing down.”

Actually, the light-skinned African American was only 34. He appeared even younger than that, with chiseled good looks that had done him no damage as a television news anchor in Detroit and shouted “charisma” on a campaign button.

“If you’re slowing down, I’m a Chinese airplane pilot.” Dan leaned back in the chair and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Surely, you ran track at...?”

“Michigan State.”

“Oh,” Dan groaned. “A Spartan, huh? I liked you a whole lot better before I knew that.”

“And you would be?” As if he didn’t know.

“A Boilermaker!”

“I’ll try not to hold the sins of your youth against you.”

“Big of you, Alonzo. I forgive you, too, and I won’t tell a soul. Your secret’s safe with me.”

The two men talked Big Ten sports, past, present and future. Which team they liked for the NCAA Final Four, and how the upcoming match-up between MSU and Purdue was likely to turn out.

“I’ve got season tickets,” Dan said. “And the next game’s in West Lafayette. You want to go with me?”

Washington laughed. “A Spartan fan sitting smack in the middle of a herd of Boilermakers? I’d be about as popular as...” He stopped, then decided this was as good a time as any. “... as you are among my black colleagues right now.”

Dan had figured that was why Washington had come to see him and was glad to have it out in the open.

“You got that right! What’s up with that? I can’t get anywhere near those guys. Do I smell bad?”

“I’ve never been downwind of you in the gym so I couldn’t speak to the issue of your personal hygiene,” Washington said. “But I can tell you that my friends of the African American persuasion are very uncomfortable with your Sudan crusade.”

“How about you? Do you think I stink?”

Washington reached over to the end table and picked up a hand-carved wooden statue of a lizard with a bright-orange head and tail. Ron had given it to Dan for Christmas, saying lizards like that were to Africa what chipmunks were to Indiana. Sherry had liked it because the orange matched the couch.

“It’s not about whether or not I think you stink. It’s about whether or not I can afford to let your stink rub off on me.”

“You still haven’t answered my question.” Dan looked the young lawmaker in the eye. “Do
you
think I stink?”

“I’m sure it’s safe for me to assume that what’s said in this room stays in this room.”

Dan nodded.

Washington put the statue down, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands clasped between them. “OK,
Readers Digest Condensed Version
of my position: I think you’re right, but if I say so right now I could get tarred and feathered.”

“Who’s heating up the tar and plucking the chicken?”

Washington sighed, stood up and walked to the window. Outside, the trees were swaying in the gentle morning breeze, casting dappled light through the leaves into the room.

“What you need is a birdfeeder right here.” He pointed to the window ledge. “My wife put one outside my office window. Other people stare into fish tanks, I look at birds when I’m trying to get my thoughts straight.”

Dan smiled. “When I want to relax and think, I play my guitar.”

“Oh, I’ve heard about your guitar! Everybody on the Hill has heard the story of the fundraiser where you played
Johnny B. Goode
, holding your guitar behind your head!”

“Evidence of a misspent youth.”

Both men were silent for a beat.

“I think what’s going on in Sudan is abominable,” Washington said quietly. “I started hearing about it years ago from my mother.”

“Your mother.” It was a statement, not a question.

“She belongs to a couple of Christian mission organizations, and she’s been sending me copies of their mailings for going on three years now. Studies from Human Rights Watch and some other organization whose name escapes me right now.”