Sometimes the
Darkness
Will Campbell
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
Copyright
This book is dedicated to my wife Tresa Davis-Weir
I would like to thank the author Kathie Giorgio, founder of the All Writer’s Workplace & Workshop for her help in the development of my book. Without her guidance, this work would not have happened.
After Kosti
Her prayer was answered, but the language of answered prayers is God’s language. The nun had failed to understand God’s message. Much had been gained, but much had been lost.
The plane, the tool she had hoped God would send, shook relentlessly, the children screamed and cried as the nun’s shoes slid off the pedals. Sister Marie Claire brought them back to the worn metal once more. Pushing as hard as she could, the nun applied the brakes while Hanley kept the plane on the roadway. Thirty seconds after touchdown the plane rolled to a stop. Hanley cut the ignition, silencing the roar and thrum of the big engines and slumped over, his wounded body failing faster now. Struggling out of her seat, the nun slowly pulled him upright. Taking water from a bottle, she splashed his face and patted it while saying, “Hanley, wake up. I’m going to check on the children and go for help.” She called out, “Aisha, are the children safe? Aisha?”
Appearing behind the nun, carrying the smallest child in her arms, Aisha told her the children were frightened, but all right. Leaving Hanley, the nun turned and led Aisha and the children from the plane, sitting all of them on the ground beneath the Beech. The morning air was now warm and the shade comfortable.
“I will go into Shambe for help. You will stay with the children right here. Do not leave or let any of the children leave. If someone comes near you, put the children back on the plane and close the door. Wait here until I return. Do you understand?”
Aisha nodded and the nun immediately turned toward the village and started off at a trot. The girl watched until the nun was perhaps three hundred yards down the dirt track, then turned, counted the children, told them to stay where they were and entered the plane.
Moving to the cockpit, she looked at Hanley, who was unconscious, his head again resting against the window frame, his mouth open, his breathing a shallow wheeze, his body shivering. A thin line of blood dripped from his brow staining his shirt sleeve. Turning, she took a blanket from the floor of the cargo hold, placed it over the American, tucking it around his shoulders and arms. Putting her lips to his ear, Aisha whispered, “You did it,” then returned to the children.
1
For Hanley Martin, time had become an obsession. The effect of time on his existence was maddening. An uncle, his mentor, told him years ago he would need, if he was lucky, to balance the scales, to account for any good fortune that came his way. It had and he hadn’t, and now he felt time was running out.
He was fifty-one years old, felt older, was successful at business but not life. He tried to understand where that life had taken him. By all accounts he was lucky, but it was not the kind of luck that made him feel good, in fact it made him feel bad, especially of late. Years ago this feeling began to press against him, made him uncomfortable with himself. His twice daily walks with his old dog turned into self-analysis sessions used to deal with these feelings of guilt and inadequacy.
His head seemed to always ache, the strain of trying to sleep wearing on him, the pain always dull, a hammer face pressed to his forehead. The Jack and water was not helping. The effects of his drinking and thinking made his nights sleepless. It’s not what he wanted, but is what he got.
He sometimes felt poor, ridiculous for a wealthy man, the founder of three aircraft industries all bearing the name Martin. He owned airplanes. But this was not about money; he was poor of spirit, an empty soul, as empty and dark as his house.
Hanley and his old Airedale Weed tried walking out his issues but only gained the exercise. He was unlucky with answers he sought, not knowing why fate had picked him and not someone else. Now he thought he knew what to do. He must take his search elsewhere.
Fate stepped in to make him believe someone actually had the answer. Chance meetings over the past year revealed a woman, a Catholic nun, who might help him. She was good at it her friends said. Hanley could use the change and the opportunity to give to others through helping a charity in need. A new acquaintance, another nun, had given him her name. He now believed this woman of God could tell him what he needed to know about his fated life. Friends and family thought he had gone over the edge, but he believed it. It is the answer he needed to a question he chased around for years, and that answer is with her in Africa. Now he knew where to go and how to get there. It wouldn’t be easy but he welcomed it.
There was now this belief, a correctness to what he was thinking, to his plan. The indecisiveness, the concern, the weight of not knowing, had been lifted from his shoulders. Things had fallen into place. He knew who to ask. He knew where to look. She was what he needed. When he was a child, he loved to dig to the bottom of a box of cereal searching for the toy buried there. She was the prize he hoped to find.
***
Hanley fiddled with the cargo net, the fiddling a balm, a necessity, like an old woman in church working beads, keeping his mind focused on something other than the conversation he was having and his trip across
