Once past the compound, everything appeared as it had the day before. Today there was less cloud cover and more sunlight; more heat. Today there was a greater sense of everything baking. It was only the end of March. What would the summer be like, he wondered? Hanley knew the plane would be like an oven inside. Tomorrow he would fly and he welcomed that; the dangers in the air could not be any greater than on the ground, he reasoned. It would be something familiar, something he could control. Control; would it be a problem for him now? Was that it? All his adult life he believed he had been in control. He was wrong. Belinda, his ex-wife and Elizabeth were proof he had had little control over his life for the past twenty-five years. He had controlled his businesses but his businesses weren’t his life, not his real life; business was just a means, an effort. Someone had once told Hanley that eating and sleeping were the biggest wastes of a man’s time. Even though he had benefited greatly from it, there were times when he considered business the third. He had been, was, proud of what he accomplished but it did not have the meaning it once did.
Ruts like logs strewn across the dirt road caused the nose of the truck to begin swaying back and forth. When the brush alongside the track cleared, Hanley drove the truck off the path and the ride smoothed for a bit. Dust covering both sides of the windshield made seeing difficult. Squinting in an attempt to see better, he could feel the pain of the headache he had growing in strength between his eyes, just above the bridge of his nose. He was sweating a lot and the dust was beginning to cake in the wrinkles that spread from the corner of his eyes onto his temples. Sweat was running down his neck and his back. He could feel the heat escaping from beneath his shirt around his collar. He had not been this hot in many years; not since working on his uncle’s farm during the summers as a teenager. Air conditioning in his home, office and his truck had shielded him from even the relatively mild heat of the Indiana summers. This heat was something else. He would need to adapt, to train himself to bear it. Suddenly, he was as thirsty as he could ever remember being. “Did we bring water?” he asked.
“Yes, there is a can and a cup in the back. We always have some water. We never go anywhere without some water,” he said.
Flashes of light appeared and disappeared from a distance as the truck neared the landing strip. The sun light reflected by the plane’s surface was broken by the brush and trees as Hanley and Jumma approached. Hanley’s headache had matured into a distinct pain at the front of his head, a pain like a thumb pressed between his eyes. Trying to see the plane, the flashing light made his head hurt even more. Pushing the truck faster only made things worse but he wanted to get there, to make certain it had not been damaged, to know that he could fly home if he wanted. Earlier, as he watched the two doctors walk back to the main clinic after examining the murdered girl, the idea that, if his plane was ever damaged, if it could not fly, he would feel trapped. Repairing the plane would be difficult if not impossible. Parts and the skilled labor needed to affect the repairs would be tough to find. That thought was the start of his headache. Now dreading what he might see, Hanley ignored the road’s deplorable condition and pressed the truck hard into the clearing.
No damage to the plane was immediately apparent as the truck entered the area near the old shack, the airstrip terminal. Two young Sudanese men sat near the plane, both different from those Hanley had seen the day before but whose dress was similar.
“Are they from the same tribe?” Hanley asked.
“Yes,” Jumma said.
Without looking at the truck, the young men rose and walked away into the bush. Turning off the truck’s engine, Hanley sat and enjoyed the silence for a moment and then said, “I need some water.”
The water was warm but Hanley didn’t care. He drank two cups and then stopped. You’d better learn to pace yourself, he thought. His thirst was still strong, so much so that he wondered how he would ever adjust to it. Thirst had never been something to be afraid of. Now he started to fear it. It’s just a reaction to everything that’s happened today, he told himself. The wind blew off the plain, bringing dust and spores, irritating his eyes. The headache moved around a bit and settled into a different, more painful position. Rubbing first his forehead and then his eyes, he walked to the plane.
Everything looked as it had yesterday. Hanley wondered just who knew he was here. Were the SPLA or the Janjaweed aware of his plane and the mission’s plans to use it to move medicine to the compound and doctors back and forth from Kenya and Ethiopia? Hanley was aware that Khartoum was supplying the Janjaweed with shoulder-launched missiles which they now used to down planes flying in food and other humanitarian supplies. The Beech was small, too small to bring enough food to make a difference in a conflict like this. As he stood rubbing a spot just above his left eye, he thought that perhaps this shiny plane that he
