stash. She shouldn’t have lost her temper. She should have let the kids run themselves out and then gone back to her stupid reading. She just wanted to help and she didn’t know how. She couldn’t deliver a baby or dig a well. She couldn’t even unload the trucks. A forty-pound bag would knock her over.
Where was Hailey, anyway? Her best friend had deserted her. On her birthday. She lay on her cot, buried her face in her pillow until she heard footsteps enter the trailer.
“Gwennie? Happy birthday.”
“I have a headache.”
“No, you don’t.” Hailey tugged at her legs. She had no choice but to sit up. She fake-swiped at Hailey’s face and Hailey responded with a long hiss. In the bars in Missoula, they made a striking pair. Hailey’s dad was black, her mom white. She was tall and light-skinned, with big brown eyes. Guys liked her. Lots of guys. Hence Hailey the Heartbreaker.
“Where have you been?”
“Taking care of cholera patients. Which basically spells cleaning bedpans. I told you I’d be at the hospital today.” She held a canvas bag.
“You did?” Gwen felt stupider than ever.
“Come on, tell Dr. Hailey.”
“I can’t even.” But she did.
“So you grabbed his arm,” Hailey said when she was finished. “Trust me, that kid’s been through worse.”
“It’s not that. Do you know what this is?” She held up
Hailey flipped through it. “The Holocaust, right? The mice are the Jews and the cats are the Germans.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t know, some world history class I took freshman year, maybe.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“Gwen. I don’t know how to say this straight out without sounding condescending, but you are not dumb. You just never bothered to study.”
“It’s the same.”
“It’s not. If you were dumb, you wouldn’t be upset about any of this.”
“This place—”
“Look, we’re not the Army or anything, we’re not even getting paid. We’re volunteers, we’re doing our best. If nothing else, we’re witnesses.”
“Witnesses to what? I can’t even get anyone back home to understand what’s going on here. They send these dumb emails like
Hailey unzipped her bag. “Time to put the pity party to bed. Guess what I have in here.”
“Hailey, I’m serious—”
“You want your birthday present or not?” Hailey reached into the bag and pulled out a bottle of Patron and a jar of margarita mix. “Do not ask what I had to do to get these.”
“Tequila?”
“Come on. Let’s drink our sorrows away. Just like real aid workers. And if Owen or Scott stop by, I’m telling them to get lost.”
It was a fun night. The next morning, Gwen’s head was screaming, but even so she felt better. She came into the canteen, choked down a glass of water. Owen and Scott sat at the center table spooning down oatmeal, a replay of the day before. Neither looked glad to see her. She liked that.
“So Scott wants us to take a run to Lamu,” Owen said.
Moss had told Gwen about Lamu. She made the place sound like paradise. It was an island a few miles off the Kenyan coast, on the Indian Ocean. Turquoise-blue water and an old port. But the Somali border was only about fifty miles away, and not long before, bandits had attacked a resort close by. They’d killed an English tourist and dragged his wife back to Somalia, where she’d died in captivity. Since then, most Westerners had stayed away. “Isn’t it too dangerous?”
“You said that yesterday when I told you I was going to Witu.”
“Just because you didn’t get killed doesn’t mean it was smart.”
“Suggs says we’ll be fine. We drive to Garissa and then southeast so we don’t get too close to the border. Get to Mokowe in two or three hours, that’s on the coast, and from there it’s about a twenty-minute speedboat ride.”
Gwen wished she didn’t have such a nasty headache. “What do you think, Owen?”
“It’s probably okay as long as we have Suggs. Maybe we go one morning, stay a couple nights, drive back in the afternoon. I was talking to an MSF guy last week and he said it really is great. Plus all the millionaires are staying away, so if we go now we’ll have the place to ourselves.”
Owen’s confidence was reassuring. Aside from his doomed love for her, he was a levelheaded guy.
“When?”
“Next week,” Scott said. “Before the rainy season starts.”
“What about the reporter? Aren’t we supposed to be here to talk to her?”
“She’ll be around a few days.”
“I’ll talk to Hailey about it.” Gwen just trying to buy time now.
Scott smiled. “She’s in. Said it sounded great.”
Then Gwen knew that she was going, whether she felt like it or not.
—
The Land Cruiser had the usual supplies that African roads demanded. A full-size spare tire and a spare for the spare. A plastic jerrican of gasoline, two of water. Twenty yards of tow rope and two-by-fours to provide traction if the truck got caught in mud. A jack and a repair kit with every tool a mechanic might want.
“Looks like we’re going across the continent, not on a two-night holiday,” Owen said. The four stood by the Toyota, waiting for Suggs. It was just past dawn. The air for once felt crisp, the stink of diesel gone. Gwen saw why Hailey liked this hour.
“When did you start saying ‘holiday’?” Scott said. “It’s a vacation. Or maybe research.”
“Research for what?” Hailey said.
“The book I’m writing. Still trying to pick a title. Which do you like, ‘I Heart Refugees’ or ‘Kenya on Three Handouts a Day’?”
“Shouldn’t you read a book before you try writing one?”
“I don’t see why.”
“You know what I love about you, Scott?”
“Nothing?”
Hailey laughed. “You think you know how ridiculous you are, but you have no idea.”
Suggs walked across the compound’s central courtyard toward them. He had a big man’s rolling gait, short wide steps. He held a thermos and wore a bright orange polo shirt and lime-green pants. A pistol on his right hip completed the outfit.
“He planning to play eighteen at the Dadaab country club?” Scott said.
“I can never tell whether he’s riffing ironically off the African-fixer look or embracing it,” Owen said.
“That is a very good question.”
“Ready?” Suggs said.
“As we’ll ever be,” Scott said.
“We’ll be in Mokowe in four, maybe five hours.”
“Then the boats?”
“They will be happy to see you, I promise. Real Americans with real American money. Every Kenyan’s favorite.”
“I feel so loved,” Owen said.
No one argued when Scott took the front passenger seat. The other three sat in back, Owen in the middle, splaying his legs for maximum thigh-to-thigh contact with Gwen. Suggs shoved his gun under the driver’s seat and out the front gate they went. Gwen had a knot in her stomach, a mix of excitement and nervousness. She remembered feeling this way at her junior prom, knowing she’d be losing her virginity before the night was through.
