The Mentor (28 page)

Whispers
turned to murmurs, and then grew to voices, anxious voices that popped up
around me.  The sun darkened a couple times as a handful of people stood
over me, trying to get a look, like I was some sort of bushman traffic
accident.

As my body
became light and began to lift across the ether, right when I was starting to
enjoy the sensation, I felt a thumb under my chin, jarring me back to full
consciousness.

It was the
boy, my wide receiver.  He’d come back.  However, his smile had been
replaced by a grim expression, and his eyes were darting from me to the
direction we’d come from minutes earlier.  The young boy’s youthful
appearance belied a quiet cunning born of the daily struggle to simply stay
alive and now, a real danger approaching, his carefree veneer fell away.
 He knew this wasn’t a game for me, and if they caught him helping me,
this wouldn’t be a game for him either.  His words were strained, pinched
by his fear, as he tugged at my fingers, trying to get me to stand.

“I can’t… “
 My tongue was sticking to my teeth.  I could barely speak.  “I
just can’t.”

He said:
“Pub.”

“I know…
I’m just… tired.”  My eyes fell closed again and, one more time, he jabbed
me under the chin with his thumb.  His face was close to mine, and to see
fear in his kind eyes broke my heart.

He said:
“Pub!  
Pub, pub
.”  Then added: “Bud-weiser.”

Oh… oh my.
 He wasn’t a boy… he was an angel.  A beer angel!

With some
difficulty, I rolled forward up to my knees, and surprisingly strong for a kid
his size, he helped me to my feet, and we were running again.  For my
part, it was more like a long, protracted fall with my feet, alternately, just
barely keeping me from hitting the ground.

He led me
around a corner, then another.  Every few yards, he’d look back over his
shoulder— either at me, to be sure I was dutifully in tow, or that just beyond
me to be sure my pursuers were not.  After a couple more minutes of
weaving down a winding path only he could see, the tall boy finally stopped,
looked past me and puffed his cheeks out.  Blowing the air out, he put his
arms up, motioning me to stop.

Parting the
bushes next to us with calloused fingers, he nodded for me to head into the
bush.  I nodded and stuck my dirty hand out.  He stared at it, at
first… then took it happily between his own two hands and shook it vigorously.
 With the return of his smile, I felt we’d made it to safety—even if it
were only temporary.  He then turned and ran, cut between two shacks and was
gone.

Slipping
through the brush wasn’t easy.  They were thorny and poky in places but at
least the patch of bush was marginally cooler than in the blazing sun.
 After about ten minutes of walking the straightest line possible, the
bush came to an end, and I found myself at the rear of an old concrete building
that had been slapped onto a stone foundation.  The back entrance about
three feet above the dusty ground.  At some point there’d been stairs from
the ground to its threshold, but maybe the sun had simply dried them over time
and they’d blown away as dust.

Reinvigorated
by the sight of the first architecturally sound building I’d seen all day, I
hopped up to the six inch wide ledge at the base of the door, twisted the
handle, and slipped inside.  

For a
moment, my surroundings were midnight dark, and as I waited for a moment for my
eyes to adjust, the cool interior air pleasantly washed over my burnt skin.
 Scattered sunlight peeked in through a small circular window at the top
of the small room, a fan pushing the air inside, out.  

The area
was not much bigger than a walk-in closet and just as suffocating.

My vision
clearing, I could see the large basin next to me, and my hand jutted out toward
the spigot.  Rinsing my hands first, my wounds had begun to heal a little
but unfortunately the soft tissue that was beginning to form, the very early
stages of a scab, that tissue was darkened by dirt.  First, I took a few
mouthfuls of warm water to quench my thirst, then just let my hands rinse under
the water, trying to rid the wounds of grit and mud.  

Over the
next half minute, I cleaned my wrists and hands, noting the damage to my right
wrist—blistered and chafed— was a little worse than my left but neither looked
damaged beyond repair.

Next to the
big sink was a small, ancient washing machine.  Inside, it was just rag
after rag but unfortunately not a clean shirt or pair of shorts--
no, not
shorts: long pants.  He said long pants, long sleeves
.  These
were only cleaning linens, a little damp and virtually useless to me, but I
pocketed one anyhow, remembering something I’d read a long while back that the
long distance traveler would find no more useful item in his packed gear than a
good, serviceable towel.  

Just beyond
the washing machine was a collection of mops, brooms, and other poled-devices
which were in such disrepair, I had no idea what their use could be.  Next
to that was another door, leading farther into the building.  Uniquely
familiar with the smell, I knew what I’d find somewhere on the opposite side of
that door.  

Taking a
deep breath, I turned the knob and found myself, sure enough, standing along
one wall of a small, dimly lit pub.  The five patrons that had parked
themselves at the long, wooden table that served as a bar, each noticed me, and
stopped their conversations, one at a time.  The bartender’s skin was
noticeably darker than the other men and this made me wonder if he had
originally been from another part of Africa.  He had been casually leaning
against the back wall, chatting with a few of his customers, but now he also
just looked and stared, momentarily unsure what to do about the only white man
likely to ever walk into his bar.   

At the
other end of the room, there were three men around a small table, younger than
those at the bar, watching a soccer match on the television in the corner.
 One of them slowly stood and began moving toward the door.  

Clearing my
throat and stepping toward the bar, I said, “I would like a beer please.”
 The bartender blinked at me, obviously a little stunned that the grungy
white guy had spoken his language.  This was just one of the two sentences
I knew in Pulaar.  In fact, I knew that particular phrase in one hundred
sixty-two different languages never thinking that stupid knowledge could just save
my life.

The man
who’d been edging toward the door straightened and seemed to relax a degree.
 Shrugging, he said something to his two friends and before they had a
chance to respond, there was a sudden flurry of activity on the tiny, televised
soccer field, the three men then shouting at the television, each contributing
to an incomprehensible burst of agitated conversation about what they’d just
seen in the screen.

Needing a
place to hide, I said my remaining phrase, in local Guinean.

As I spoke,
each man stopped what they were doing and simply stared.

Getting no
answer the first time, I repeated myself:

“Where
exactly is the restroom in your fine establishment?”

Finally,
the bartender nodded slowly and pointed to a door at the far wall.  I
walked toward it, briefly debating if I should wait for my order first. Alas,
my very survival taking slight precedence over my extreme desire for a bottle
of beer, it would have to wait.   

The
bathroom was just a small room off the bar.  Inside was a sink striped
with mildew, a sheet of metal for a mirror and two ovals cut in the wooden
floor.  

Each of the
two toilets were capped with a slab of warped wood, a rope tied to one edge.
 Anyone needing to use the facilities, it appeared, would pull on the
other end of the rope, which had been fed over a large nail.  Another pair
of nails would hold a knot that had been tied into the rope until the deed was
done, and then the lid would be returned to the down position.  Even with
this valid attempt to cover the hole, a blanket of flies surrounded the lids’
warped edges, a twisting, angry black rope, all nosily fighting to get a shot
at the buffet below.

Walking
over to the sink, I looked at myself in the polished steel that served as a
mirror.  

The
bathroom was just another temporary hidey-hole, while I tried to come up with
the next move.  Looking in the mirror, though, just hideous, so I began to
wash away the grime and streaks of blood.  Between scrubs, my mouth sucked
down the warm water and it tasted wonderful.  After a full minute, my
stomach was so loaded with water it actually hurt.

Looking
again at the face in the reflection, this was someone who I didn’t immediately
recognize— and that was not entirely about the dirt.  And, honestly, it
also wasn’t entirely bad.  The person I’d become over the past few years
was not a man who filled my chest with pride.

The Mentor
had given me desert facts before knocking me cold
again
.  From what
he said, I was going to have to trek north, and eventually east, if I
remembered my geography correctly.  

Also very
helpful was the dog-eared posters on the bathroom wall with the word “Kols”
across the top— probably a favorite local, micro-brew.  Just beneath those
four letters was a map of the western continent.  Just guessing, it seemed
the marketing message here was Kols is the top choice of all of West Africa.
 Just below that, the gorgeous, naked woman whose naughty bits had been
strategically covered by a huge, thick snake may have been designed to imply
the antediluvian temptations of Eden, and given that parts of her nakedness had
been hidden, the shame then that she embodied as she lay there alone, having
acted as the leaven that precipitated her mate’s banishment from that perfect
garden, leaving her helpless, alone, and coveted by the embodiment of evil.

Or the
message could have been: drink Kols beer and pretty ladies will have sex with
you.  So, pretty much the same message that we have back in the States.

Staring at
the map (mostly the map), it certainly seemed like the most logical route was
north, like The Mentor had suggested for me.  But… why would I have to do
what
he’d
said?  It was my life; I could change the rules if I
wanted to.  Of course, he might have considered that as well… and bad-ass
‘rule-changing’ might be exactly what he’d hoped for.

Having
spent some time in the southwestern U.S., I pretty much hated the desert.
 

One awful
memory in particular that springs to mind when the subject of deserts comes up,
involves a buddy of mine who dug mushrooms and peyote a little too much.
 On several occasions, he’d convinced me to join him on a trip to the high
desert so we could tromp around a bit, while he was blasted and trying to catch
lizards.  I didn’t indulge in the mushroom-peyote pizza (hold the pizza)
because of my former
seriously-need-to-be-in-control
issues.  I was
just there to make sure my friend didn’t die—because that can really put a
damper on just about any buzz you got.

But during
those moments, standing in the desert, as my friend pranced about like some
sort of furless Wile E. Coyote, even when I was certain which direction that
car was, I’d be more nervous every step we took in any direction that led away
from it.  

And, the
auditory memory, of course, for me is always the most intense-- the sounds of
the insects, sometimes, was deafening… as if they were trying to confuse you,
get your bearings all messed up.  Then you’d die and they’d have a big
buggy snack.

So, no, I
didn’t trust the desert much.

Again,
checking out the map (mostly the map), it looked like the desert trek would be
hundreds of miles.  I might be able to find some bus heading toward Egypt,
but if I had to walk the entire way… well… my walkabout prospects didn’t strike
me as too good.

I wished
that there were just a road with a pole, on top of which a sign with an arrow
saying: “Marietta, Georgia, USA. 4700 miles.”

As it often
does with my audio memory, voices sometimes just push themselves up from the
deep folds of my mind.  I heard my large, Hawaiian friend Allejo talking,
remembering what he’d said about “roads.”

“Sometimes
they disappear all together.  But, there is always a road.  Sometimes
you just have to look harder for it.”

I took a
few steps back from the poster and leaned up against the concrete wall.
 It was surprisingly cool.  I tried to clear my mind.  Maybe
inspiration would lift from the deep, up into my mind; I could just let life
around me help dictate my next move.

At first,
my ears were filled with only the buzzing of the hungry poo-bees a few inches
from my feet.  Then, remarkably, I heard it.  I heard what life was
telling me.

Life was
telling me that scary, angry men were now shouting about something on the other
side of the bathroom door, and it would be best if I once again jumped out the
nearby open window because if this were Mike & Ike and co., they would not
likely be overly impressed with either of my two phrases of local dialect.

Chapter
Fifteen

For a few
summers when I was a kid, my father took the family to Wisconsin to camp in a
rather small camper-trailer at a nice little family-owned campground.
 Every now and again, he’d take me fishing.  For the most part,
casting a line anywhere in Wisconsin is a fisherman’s wet dream.

Unfortunately,
my father was a fish's wet dream (or, at least, one of the better ones) since
he'd been the worst angler in the history of fishing.

He’d, on
more than one occasion, tried to be “one with nature,” but nature had serious
misgivings about the arrangement and gave him the woodsy version of “it’s not
you, it’s me” until he finally gave up and lived out his days on asphalt slabs,
between concrete walls.

But, years
before, he did seem to love fishing.

In truth, I
think he just loved that ancient monster of an outboard motor. We didn’t own a
boat,
but we did possess a boat
motor
.  To me, that made as much sense to
owning suitcases of .38 caliber bullets but had to borrow the gun.

So, Dad
would rent the boat and put the oldest outboard motor in the world on the back
of it.  He affectionately called the Johnson motor “L.B.J.”, after the
former commander-in-chief.  I was convinced this was appropriate because
the motor obviously had been slapped together sometime during that man’s
presidency.  And, like L.B.J’s handling of that rabble-rouser Kennedy, I
was half convinced a suspicious death could very well be in my immediate, young
man's future as well.

However,
during that first summer, as I sat in the metal boat listening to the pinging
of the water striders against its hull, while working on a couple second-degree
sunburns at the tops of my thighs... I’d begun to wonder if my father had
sought out such a very old motor because,
back in the day
, there’d been
less of those pesky laws and regulations about how fast certain motors were
allowed to go.  

Only one
time do I remember him twisting the hulking motor’s wee, black handle all the
way until it wouldn’t go anymore.  And while I believe we’d briefly rocketed
forward fast enough to actually go back in time,
technically
, because of
that particular time-shift, ergo, the event never really happened in the first
place.

By the end
of the summer, it became clear to my father’s “husky”-sized twelve year old son
that I served a singular purpose on that boat.  My job was, as it was
explained to me, to sit at the front of the boat and watch for stumps and
alligators.  Since we were in the middle of the river most of the time,
not so many stumps.  Since we were about two hours away from the Canadian
border, not so many gators.  Turns out, my father had been too cheap to
rent a boat of appropriate size—one that was large enough to handle L.B.J.
 Instead, he’d get the tiniest little, metal rowboat he could find, strap
the motor down at the stern, and put the chubby boy at the bow.  My job: I
was ballast.

And,
finally
,
as for being a “fishing outing”... I’m not sure if fish talk to each other but
if they did, and they saw my fisherman father and his ancient motor coming
their way, they’d have only one message for each other: “Do not be afraid.
 We are completely safe.”

That entire
first summer, we didn’t catch a single fish.

But,
looking back now to my days as counter weight, I still remember how beautiful
the water looked as dawn spilt its morning mist.  And because olfactory
sensations (for everyone else but yours truly) conjure up memories better than
any other sensory trigger (CD: "
Memory, Our Personal History
Book", Brookhaven Audio, 1993
), as I lay down next to a greasy marine
engine in the bed of a Guinean ’84 Chevy pickup, hidden under a dirty tarp, the
smell of the diesel reminded me of Wisconsin sunrises, shiner minnows, and
last-minute KFC dinners.

After
jumping from the pub’s window, I looked for the closest place to squirrel
myself away.  Sure, the bush was an option but my guess was that the
bartender had already said that bwana was in the bathroom and, if they didn’t
see my bloody, dirty, chubby butt hunched over one of the poop holes, they’d
likely guess I’d headed back into the cover of the bush.

The truck
had been idling as the two men in its front seat waited for a herd of skinny
goats to pass in front of them.  They appeared pretty focused on hammering
away at the horn, while the animals completely ignored them, so I felt
confident (and desperate) enough to slip under the oil-stained, blue tarp in
the back of their vehicle.

The truck
bed was uncomfortable, and the spot I’d crawled into next to the huge diesel
engine was covered with thick rope.  Sure, my little rope bed was painful
and awkward but, thankfully, the diesel fumes dulled most of my primary senses.

However, on
the plus side, no one trying to kill me at the moment.  So, while the
amenities earned a dismal one star rating, the
no one trying to kill me
earned my sparse digs a personal “lodger’s choice” award.

Over the
next few hours, loopy from the fuel vapors, I had managed to fall asleep
several times, only to be awakened seconds later (or so it felt) by a jostling
from the road.  Poking my head out from under the tarp was out of the
question, but it seemed that there were some infrastructure issues here in West
Africa that had been yet properly addressed.  Along this route, the roads
didn’t have potholes.  The potholes had roads.

Finally, I
fell into a good stretch of sleep, thanks to the mind-roasting diesel fumes
radiating off my blockhead friend.

My
dreamless sleep ended the same moment the truck rattled to a stop, and its
engine had cut.  A second later, doors slammed, and there were voices on
either side of me, both men sounding weary from the long drive as they came to
the back of the truck.  Trying to shake the fog from my mind, panic
gripped me, and I was not sure what my move should be.  We’d stopped
somewhere, and there was no longer any light cutting at the bottom edges of the
tarp.  Night time.

I had no
idea how long the trip had lasted, but if the pain in my back were any indication,
the cluster of rope beneath me had been my bed for three or four hours.  

The two men
sounded like they were arguing but not aggressively—more like two coworkers
bellyaching.  Other than my two handy phrases, I don’t speak much in the
way of Guinean, but it seemed the language being tossed around in the night air
was actually French.  

Which,
naturally, darkened my mood immediately.  

And…
something… a smell in the air.  It was a vaguely familiar odor, but I was
having trouble placing it because my bunk mate Mr. Motorhead was oozing out oil
and diesel fumes next to me, muddying up the scent.

A spotlight
burst to life above me as the tarp was snapped away and standing there under
one brilliant, yet excessively tall lamppost, I saw two men who’d planned on
checking their cargo, suddenly go very weird about the dirty, white dude in the
back of their truck.  Both took a step back but then steadied and inched
back toward me.  

Cocking my
eyebrows, I cleared my throat and politely asked: “Ou est la toilette dans ce
bon etablissement?”

Instantly,
their two faces turned to scowls, and as it occurred to them that they were not
looking at some armed bandit, and that they had the home field advantage, one
of the men barked at the other, this second man racing to the cab of the truck.
 I had to act quickly because there was no doubt when the other man
returned, he’d have some sort of boom stick with him.  

Standing,
the blue tarp draped over my head and shoulders like a monk’s tunic and hood.
 I stepped toward the other man, and he snapped the truck lip back into
its upright position and barked at me in French.  

I twisted
my head toward the cab of the truck and there in the back window there were
only the other man’s fingers, whirling behind the glass like a panicked
underwater sea urchin.  

Sure
enough, he was unlatching a shotgun from the window rack.  

Quick,
quick, quick!
 

I had to
get away.  

Turning
back to the other man, I happened to see myself in the driver’s side mirror
and, terrified, just blurted out the phrase that had popped into my mind the
moment I caught a glimpse of me draped in the dark, burlap tarp.

Passing my
fingers through the air between us, I said to the man: “You don’t need to see
his identification.”

His face
twisted, and yelled again at his friend still fumbling in the truck for the
weapon, but his eyes never left me.

Moving
closer, I rolled my extended fingers through the air again.  “These aren’t
the droids you’re looking for.”

“Quoi?”
 He looked up at me, then to his friend, and that was my cue, so I sprung
forward, my right foot stepped up onto the truck lip, and my left foot kicked
at his head like a soccer ball.  He tried to duck, but I still clipped
him, grazing his temple and he went down, falling backwards and clutching his
skull.  My momentum launching me forward, I went over and landed onto the
road, rolled once and came back up to my feet, running nearly full speed into
the night air.  The tarp fluttered then lifted and curved at its edges,
then drifted from my body and fell to the road as I sprinted away.

As darkness
swallowed me whole, their voices called after me.  Not taking chase but
cursing me like some feral cat that had crawled into their truck and nibbled
bits out of their sardine sandwich lunches.  

After
running in near total darkness for more than a minute, my feet slapping against
the blacktop heavier now, I saw more lights up ahead.  Just off the side
of road there were huge boxes, stacked one on top of the other, erecting an
uneven fortress wall to my right.

As I drew
closer, the wooden crates were precariously stacked, so high up, craning my
neck to see them, I got dizzy from a small bout of vertigo.  

Every few
yards, there was a gap where the crate wall receded away from the road about
ten feet, then another row of wooden boxes.  Between the thick walls of
crates there appeared to be a winding path the size of, say, a forklift, so the
effect was that of a labyrinth made from some child giant’s wooden blocks.

Jogging a
little closer, I passed through the splash of bright light from atop another
tall poll and, moments later, could just make out the growl of large vehicles.
 The ground shimmied and thin phantasms of sand danced across the black
top road, everything shaken by the rumble of massive, wheeled machines-- or giant,
likely hungry, prehistoric creatures-- on the other side of the walls.  

Without a
second thought, I slipped into the maze of sky boxes, winding down one of the
many dark, twisting paths as quick as my feet would manage.  

Finally I
came to the end of the trail and tucked back into the shadows.  It was
then when the source of that earlier, unidentifiable smell became clear.

Hidden from
the road behind stacks upon stacks of wooden crates, I stared out at the
splatter of moonlight, drew in a deep breath of salty air and suddenly felt
better than I had all day.  Being born a Midwesterner, and more recently
landlocked Southerner, there was no reason clear to me why the ocean affects me
in this way

The docks
at this low tech port were in part wooden planking but mainly slab concrete
reinforced by thick, iron rods, which protruded in the high traffic areas—
metal spines, burst from cement skin and rusting in the salt air.  

Below me,
the dirt and sand had been packed down with concrete block, which made
sense—whatever was in the crates stacked halfway to the moon, well, you didn’t
want any column to tip and fall.  It reminded me of clips I’d seen from
Japanese television shows where uniformed school kids diligently spend a month
lining up colorful dominoes and then, cameras flashing, one piece is flicked
and all the others fall in succession, colors changing and morphing into weird
patterns like Asian butterflies, thatch umbrellas or glaucoma-stricken cartoon
animals.  

Out here,
one stack of crates tips and it all comes tumbling down.

As a kid, I
went to the third grade at a French school.  Seriously.  I’m not
getting into it, and if I could afford therapy, maybe I would be over the
trauma by now but I’m not and that’s all there is to it.

I’ll just
say that there were verbal lashings (which I
didn’t
understand
because it was a foreign fucking language!
), a busted thermos and a
pee-soaked pair of husky-sized jeans in the mix.  Franco-Dexter relations
are not rosy, that’s all, and I’m not getting into it.

So, I know
a little French.

Over the
sound of varying, grumbling moods of motor boats— six of them, ranging from
fifteen feet to what appeared to be about thirty-five feet long— I could hear
men shouting en Français.  

The men on
the beach were all African, none of which seemed to have the slightest dollop
of European to sully their coffee black skin.  There was no use to even
consider, say, grabbing something heavy-looking and, whistling whilst I worked,
stroll up to a boat and hop on.  If any of these men saw me, there’d be
one of two reactions.  Either I’d be shot, or they’d run, panic stricken
at the sight of the chubby-grubby ghost.  My money was on the former of
the two.