Fletch, Too

About one-thirty, a diesel truck carrying bags of cashews ground its gears slowly up the track. Juma asked the driver if they could ride to Shimoni with him.

Of course they were welcome.

Lying on the bags of cashews on the back of the truck, they jounced along to the coast. The truck generated a little breeze, and the cashews smelled good.

Fletch never did know if that was the truck for which they had waited all morning. It was a truck. Eventually, it had come along the track. It did pick them up. It did transport them to Shimoni.

Fletch wondered how to ask Juma if it was the right truck.

After wondering a long time, Fletch found himself asking himself the question, What does it matter?

“What do you think, Juma?” From their table at the roofed, wall-less restaurant on the crown of Wasini Island, Fletch looked across the ocean at mainland Africa. “Is it possible there is a lost Roman city in East Africa, or are our friends just wasting their time and money?”

Juma shrugged. “How can you decide, until you know?”

Barbara said, “Carr said some documentary evidence exists in London. The appearance and military traditions of the Masai are a kind of evidence, I suppose.” She smiled. “And then there’s what the witch of Thika said …”

“She was right about one thing,” Fletch said. “I sure am carrying a box of rocks.” Under the table, Fletch stretched out his legs.

Juma studied Fletch’s face.

Barbara fingered crab meat into her mouth. “I sure would like to help out Sheila and Carr.”

“I don’t know.” Fletch shook his head. “There are a lot of little things, impressions, things I’ve heard, rattling around inside my head. I haven’t quite sorted them out, focused on them yet.”

“Are they helpful?” Barbara asked. “What sort of things?”

“I don’t know,” Fletch answered. “I won’t know until I sort them out.”

In midday, Juma was eating steamed crab with them. This was a special picnic, in a special place, Juma had arranged for them.

The afternoon before, the cashew-bearing truck had stopped for them to climb down onto the road outside Kisite/Mpunguti National Park. They walked the fifteen kilometers into the park, past the ruins of the district commissioner’s house. Fletch carried the knapsack. They had to pay a few shillingi to enter the park.

Originally just a fishing camp, still there was little evidence of tourists there. Tents were sparse, well hidden, virtually invisible. The few visitors were so acclimated to the jungle, the beach, the sea, they did not jar the landscape, seascape. The few officials were casual, unobtrusive, helpful. And the commercial fishermen were still curious about, kind to, these visitors to their world.

Immediately upon arrival, Barbara, Juma, Fletch jumped into the Indian Ocean. It being almost as warm as they were, it welcomed them easily, held them a long time.

Later in the afternoon, they stood upon the lip of the cave, Shimoni, the hole-in-the-ground, and looked down. Fletch and Barbara did not know what they were seeing. To them, Shimoni was a hard-packed mud descent into darkness. Something, not a sound, not a smell, something palpable emanated from the cave.

“Do you wish to enter?” Juma asked.

Fletch glanced at Barbara. “Why not?”

“Going down is slippery.” Juma looked at the knapsack on Fletch’s back.

Fletch put the pack on the ground.

“There are bats.” Juma looked at Barbara’s hair.

“It’s a cave,” Fletch said.

“Is it a big cave?” Barbara asked.

“It goes along underground about twelve miles,” Juma said.

“What am I feeling?” Fletch asked.

Juma nodded.

He led the way down the slippery slope.

They stood in an enormous underground room, partly lit by the light from the entrance. Barbara remarked on the stalactites, then giggled at the hollow sound of her voice.

Fletch noticed that all the rock, every square centimeter of floor, all along the walls two meters high, had been worn smooth. Even in imperfect light, much of the stone looked polished.

“What was this place used for?” Fletch said.

A bat flew overhead.

“A warehouse,” Juma said simply. “For human beings. A human warehouse. People who had been sold as slaves were jammed in here, to await the ships that took them away.”

Only the slow drip of water somewhere in the cave punctuated the long, stunned silence.

When Barbara’s face turned back toward them, toward the light, her cheeks glistened with tears.

“How afraid they must have been,” she said.

Juma said, “For hundreds of years.”

“The terror,” Barbara said. “The utter despair.”

Juma said, “The smell, the sweat, the shit of hundreds, maybe thousands of bodies. The crying that must have come from this cave, day and night, year after year.”

The entrance to the cave was wide, but not so wide it could not be sealed by a few men with swords and guns, clubs and whips. The rear of the cave was total darkness. That damp, reeking, weeping darkness extending twelve miles underground, no way out from under the heaviness of the earth, however frantic, however intelligent, however energetic the effort, to light, to air, to food, back to their own realities, existences, their own lives, loves, expectations …

There was only one way out of that cave: docile, enslaved.

Juma asked, “Did your ancestors buy slaves, do you think?”

“No,” Fletch answered.

“I’m pretty sure not,” said Barbara.

Juma ran his bare foot over the smoothness of the floor stone. “You see, that is how we must think of things.”

“What do you mean?” Fletch asked.

“I’m pretty sure my ancestors sold slaves. Do you see? Which is worse—to buy people or to sell them?”

They bought a couple of handsome fish at the ice/trading house just after the fishing boats came in, and cooked them on the beach as the sun dropped into the jungle.

Just before full dark one of the casual officials found them. He brought them to a small tent among the palm trees just off the exposed beach, not far from the dock. There was scarcely room for the official, Fletch, Barbara, and Juma to crawl into the tent, but they all did.

Later, standing outside the tent, Fletch asked Juma, “Where will you be?”

The official had wandered off.

Juma said, “I’ll be here.”

Deciding everything like that, all the time … is very hard. Do you mean difficult? … or harsh? … Does he mean have a nice time? … Or we had a nice time?… You said we’d be picked up by a truck which would take us to Shimoni, and, after six and a half hours, we were … but was it the truck you were expecting…?… What is worse—to buy people or to sell them? … I’ll be here…

In fact, after being in the tent together awhile, Barbara and Fletch were too hot to stay there. Their skin was sticky from the salt water, abrasive with sand, wet with sweat.

They crawled out of their tent in the dark. Hand in hand, naked in what moonlight there was, they ambled