“You meant attached. Close is right too,” Hanley said.
“Have you eaten?” Hanley asked.
“Yes, but I will go with you if you want.” Leaning against the building, the young man stared toward the crying child, his face blank. Hanley wondered how many children Jumma had seen slapped in his young life; countless probably.
“Is Sister Marie Claire in the compound this morning?” Hanley asked as he stood, rubbing his hands together, watching the child, now standing, crying while looking about, lost. The child’s helplessness made him think of Carrie his granddaughter. He did not want to start that.
“Yes, she’s here,” Jumma said. “If she hears that child crying, she will be at that camp soon.”
“Yeah? I guess that’s not a surprise from what I’ve heard. Come to the canteen while I find something to eat.”
“Canteen?”
“The dining room or whatever you call it. Come on, after that, we’ll look at our first flight. It will take some planning. I’ll need to file a flight plan by telephone and I’ll need your help. Then we’ll need to go over the plane, review its operation and what you can expect,” Hanley told Jumma.
“You talk as if I will fly with you. Why? I do not know if I will fly with you. No one has said I will fly with you. Father Robineau has said nothing about that. Has he?” Jumma’s expression appeared to be one of true alarm to Hanley.
He smiled, “No, he hasn’t. I’ve been thinking about it; you should fly with me, often, I think. Maybe always.” Jumma, sweat now dotting his forehead, looked, squinting into the washed-out sky, as if gauging its ability to support him. After a moment, he looked at Hanley and said, “If I fly, I’ll see new things. I’ll look down and see what a bird sees, see what is beyond the trees, see what I can’t see standing here on earth. That should be better should it not?”
“It doesn’t always help,” Hanley said.
***
The cement block building where the children were examined and treated was on the eastern edge of the compound. Forty feet long and twenty wide, it had a wooden roof and beneath its eaves were long openings for windows, but the windows had no framing or glass. Off to one side, perhaps twenty feet away from the far end was the remains of another building, a pale brown mud brick, a dull, roasted color. The bricks were rough, some misshapen, the exposed beams even rougher. There was no roof and one end wall and a portion of a side wall were gone, the rubble lying about in the scrub grass around the old building.
Hanley came around the new block building and stopped. It was just after noon. He skipped lunch, believing he was not missing much as far as the food was concerned and he did not wish to face the Slovakian doctors again. He came to look over the new building and to find Jumma whom he had left in Father Robineau’s office around ten o’clock. What stopped him was the singing.
The same voice he heard the night before while lying in the dark of his room was coming from somewhere near. It took a second but he soon realized the singing was coming from the ruined building. It sounded like a lullaby, soft and flowing, soothing. Hanley walked toward the sound, transfixed. Conscious of his intrusion, he softened his steps as he neared the old building.
The wall facing him was intact, with two openings for windows high up to allow for the movement of air but to keep the rains out, when it rained. He walked to the end where a wall had been and stepped around to look inside.
Sitting on a stool in the middle of a dirt floor was a woman of forty or so, slender, with a back as straight as a child’s, wearing a plain blue dress and a white scarf around her head. She was holding an infant of about six months, bathing him with a sponge, a bucket of water at her feet. On her hands were latex gloves. The baby’s dark head was practically bald; its wet scalp reflected the sun’s light as if painted a bright gold. The child made no noise but waved its arms around as the nurse sponged water over its body and head. A towel lying across her lap, under the infant, was soaking wet. The woman sang as she worked, the song flowing over the child with the water. Hanley could only stare. It was like a scene from one of his dreams; for some reason beautiful but strange.
From the side, Hanley saw that the face of the woman, once fair, was now brown from the Sudanese sun. She had deep wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes. Her hair was light brown, with some gray showing where it was visible just above her forehead. Years of hard work in places such as this had rendered her features weathered, but she was still lovely he thought. Her eyes never left the face of the child. The singing stopped and she said in French accented English, “You’re the American, the friend of Mary Kathleen?”
“Yes, I’m Hanley Martin. You must be Sister Marie Claire.”
“You do not look as I thought you would.” She had not turned to look at him, had not seen him as far as he could tell. “She said you were handsome. I suppose I expected someone else. My friend has a very odd sense of humor. She said you were sincere and sincerity goes a long way here in the bush. This child has
