I fought to concentrate and remember the little German I’d learned with Solomon. The voice had said, “You’ve crippled him, you idiot! I can’t use a cripple!”
I panicked. That meant they, whoever “they” were, wanted me and weren’t going to be careful about it. I reached for my pocket and the Stone, then felt the sole of a boot clamp down on my elbow and wrist, pinning my arm to the step.
I lay still and waited. With my face buried against the step, I couldn’t see who was above me. The boot moved, then raised and kicked me in the legs. I never felt it. The kicker bent down and whispered in my ear. It was the same man who had screamed at the sailors, but to me he spoke slurred English with a Chinese accent. “Not this time, not this time,” he repeated, then pulled the Stone out of my pocket, thrusting it down in front of my face to let me know he had it. Before I could ask who he was, he stood up and began speaking German again to someone behind him. I understood enough of the conversation to know they spoke of “contracts” and “damaged goods” and the necessity to decide whether to take me “as is” or do something here and now, something quick and final before the police or anyone else arrived.
I had no legs, no Stone, and I was out of options.
“I think I’d leave him be,” a voice said suddenly from in front of me. I glanced up and it was Ray. He gave me a wink, then walked past me toward the others and spoke calmly, as if he’d been there all along. “I think I would, if I were you, leave him alone right here where he is. and take me. He ain’t no good to you now — not this way.” He paused and I heard him walk up behind me, then move me around, shoving and kicking me, just enough to get his point across. “Once one of us is broken. especially like this,” Ray said, “well, he just don’t come back. You might as well take me and let him lie here. If you take him, he’ll be nothin’ but trouble for you.” Ray paused again, then added, “I’m tellin’ you the truth and you know I am, don’t you? You do and you know you do.” He kept rambling on as if he was stalling for time. Then it hit me. That’s exactly what he was doing. He could have stayed somewhere in the crowd, invisible and uncatchable. Instead, he had walked out into the open, putting himself in grave danger and staging some kind of crazy game, trying to buy time. I figured there must be help on the way, but where was it?
“Seize him!” someone shouted in German. Ray almost let them take him, then wriggled free and pretended to fall, landing next to me on the steps, where he could see my eyes.
“Who are these guys, Z?” Ray whispered.
“I don’t know. What are you doing back here?”
“Ah, don’t worry about that,” he said, as if he had all the time in the world. “I think I might know one of them — the Chinaman — I just can’t remember where or when.” Two sailors reached for his arms and he slipped out easily. “Listen up and listen fast,” he said. “I talked to that black girl, the one who delivered the kid. If we don’t make it out of here together, then just do what she says. You’re messed up, Z. She can help you heal.”
“What? Who is she?”
“I don’t know.” Two more sailors joined in trying to hold and secure Ray. He went on talking while he was letting himself be taken. “Just don’t worry about me and don’t worry about her. Find Star, Z. Do that first.” He paused, then winked one of his green eyes and said, “Some Christmas, huh? Damn.”
Just then we heard several whistles and shouts coming from the top of the steps. The high-pitched voice barked out a command and the sailors all turned at once, fleeing back into the crowd, toward the docks, and dragging Ray with them. He was smiling, then he yelled back at me, “And try and learn a little somethin’ about the weather, would you? You’re gonna need it.”
Once again, maybe because I was Meq, or maybe because I had a friend like Ray Ytuarte, I knew instinctively that somehow I would see him again, and he knew the same. He had sacrificed himself for me. He knew that if one of us hadn’t been captured, then they most probably would have hunted one or both of us down — and that would not bring Star back. If he went with them, then it would be over and the search for Star could begin. I didn’t have a clue why Ray was being kidnapped, or who his kidnappers were, but I had no doubt whatsoever they would have their hands full.
The whistles and shouts and commotion from the top of the steps became several men running past me, all waving their arms and brandishing kitchen knives and rolling pins and meat cleavers. They ran into what was left of the Christmas parade, shouting and threatening everyone and everything, yet going no farther than the street in front of the hotel. They were certainly not the police, as I’d assumed. They looked more like an entire kitchen staff gone mad, which was close to the truth. The young black girl Ray had spoken of appeared just then from above. She knelt down next to me on the step. In English, she asked, “Are you all right?”
I nodded and grunted, “I can’t walk.”
“We will fix that,” she said, then added, ‘’ ‘I sing the body electric.’ ” I looked up at her. She smiled and said, “Walt Whitman — the great American poet,” then stood up and shouted over to the men still waving their kitchenware at the unknown assailants. The German sailors were long gone. She spoke in a local language and French, mixing the two as she went along. When she finished, the men all stopped what they were doing immediately and trudged back up the steps toward the hotel. Most of them seemed slightly disappointed they had not engaged the enemy.
“Friends of mine,” she said. “All of them work for the hotel, the kitchen staff. They were there and they came to help. Good friends each one.” Suddenly she dropped her smile. “Your friend — the other one — was he taken?”
“Yes,” I answered, and left it at that. I had too many questions for this woman, but this was not the place to ask. I was paralyzed from a severe blow to the spinal cord and I had no idea how long it would take to heal, if at all. I had to find shelter and find it quickly. There were still a few hours of daylight left and I wanted to be as far away as possible by nightfall. Ray had told me to trust her and I trusted Ray completely. The decision came instantly. “Can you get me out of here?” I asked. “Can you take me somewhere safe?”
“I will take you to PoPo, to our home, and. ” She paused and straightened up, tapping her finger on her lips and turning in a slow circle. “And I will take you in a wheelchair.” She almost laughed, then started up the steps. “Give me a moment,” she said, “I must borrow something from the hotel with the help of one of my friends. Do not move. I will not be long.” She stopped and covered her mouth with both hands, then dropped them slowly. “I am sorry. That was in bad taste, was it not?”
“Just hurry,” I said. Then with a smile, “Please.”
Less than fifteen minutes later she returned with one of her friends from the kitchen staff. She was pushing a crude wheelchair and he was carrying my luggage along with Ray’s.
“What about the sailor from the
“I never saw him,” she said. “My friend, Bakel, retrieved all of your belongings. Should I inquire?”
“No. Let’s go on. let’s leave now.” She helped me into the chair, arranging my legs and strapping me in. She was quick and efficient. “What is your name?” I asked quietly.
Without looking me in the eye or slowing down, she said, “Emme. Emme Ya Ambala.” I told her my name was Zianno, but she could call me Z. When she was satisfied I was secure, she glanced up and, in a curious mix of question and statement, said, “And you are American.”
“Yes,” I said, “and you speak English — better than most Americans.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. Truly.”
She laughed out loud. “ ‘Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace back through the centuries?’ ” Then she looked over at Bakel and said something in the local dialect. We set out around the corner and down a narrow street at a rapid pace. Emme was pushing the wheelchair and Bakel was trailing, carrying our luggage. After a few blocks and several changes in direction, we finally slowed down. I turned as far as I could in the chair and caught her eye.
“Walt Whitman,” she said, never hesitating. “The great—”
“American poet,” I finished.
“That is correct,” she said, then laughed again.
The two of us spoke little the rest of the day and Bakel never spoke at all. By sunset, Saint-Louis was far behind and we had trekked almost five miles upstream on the Senegal River. We stopped for the night in the first settlement where it was possible to get riverboat passage to Kayes. Emme said we could transfer there to the one and only railroad connecting Kayes to Koulikoro on the Niger River. Where we were going from there remained a
