Hanley no longer felt trapped in Africa, seeing the people with a deepening understanding of their problems, saw the immensity of their need, understood the barbarity of their tormentors. Six months at the mission brought on a feeling of familiarity with the area and the people working and being treated at the mission. The shock of being in a new world, one so completely different from Indiana and America, had worn off, replaced with a feeling he was now part of the mechanism, knew the systems, the people and how things worked. That is, within the mission itself. There were activities outside the operation of the mission he still questioned. The questions were about the network he now believed existed, an organization with a noble mission, albeit, perhaps, a dangerous one. This network, he believed, was working to rescue children, children taken from their families and sold into slavery. Sister Marie Claire was in the middle of this network, near the center, perhaps the primary organizer herself. She’d certainly been here long enough, had amply demonstrated her impatience with government and church bureaucracies. In a community of officials and volunteers seemingly at a loss on how to protect a besieged people, on dealing with the task of bringing aid to thousands of displaced families, hurt, sick and hungry, a strong personality, someone with the courage and intelligence to confront the problem, would, by some disorganized, informal, natural selection, emerge as a leader. The nun was the one, was at least a part of the original effort, Hanley believed. Yes, he could see her in dark rooms and in the back booths of restaurants, scheming with others, talking to family members of children known to have been kidnapped or missing, identifying known or probable routes used by thugs trading in humans, recruiting people to watch for victims, arranging for rescues.
As he heard her approach, she asked, “A fire in the summer is wasteful, no?” Coming from the direction of the larger buildings in the compound, Sister Marie Claire came around the corner of the barracks building to his left. He had not seen her that day until now. Walking around to the other side of the box, she sat, scooping her skirt beneath her, this night wearing a dark blue kerchief, a white blouse and a skirt the color of the sky he saw that day. “Was your day productive?” she asked.
In his hand was a glass, the typical dirty glass from the mission dining hall, in it whiskey, the remains of the third bottle he tucked into the tail of the Beech, the world’s most expensive rum runner, he thought. Noticing the whiskey did a good job cleaning the inside of the glass, he thought about the cost of washing dinner dishes with expensive Irish whiskey. He was not yet drunk, not close enough, had enough in the glass to get him part-way there, but he would not open the fourth bottle, unless the rest of the glass convinced him otherwise.
“My day was good, and yours?” he asked.
Her profile was still noticeable in the dusk, not a typical French profile, he thought, recalling every political cartoon he ever saw showing Charles de Gaulle’s famous facial protuberance, the nose that France followed from war to peace, forever recognized by millions of Americans as what all Frenchmen looked like, until Bridget Bardot came along. The nun looked more Scandinavian, something her mother might find hard to explain. Hanley, beginning to feel more relaxed, could not recall which part of France she came from. “Which part of France do you come from?” he asked.
“What?”
“Where in France were you born; where are you from?”
Sister Marie Claire looked at him, straightening up, as if good posture were required to speak of France. Rubbing her cheek, she paused, cleared her throat with a mild cough-like sound, looked at him and said, “I’m from an area, Pays de Loire, southwest of Paris. It was once a part of Brittany, but that changed some years ago. My family has been there for many generations. We, my ancestors, were either farmers or public servants, with priests and nuns occasionally breaking the mold. Breaking the mold is what Americans say, oui? Bien.” Hanley had nodded while staring at the flameless embers of his fire.
“You don’t look French to me,” he said. “You look Scandinavian.” Sitting up more, he squinted into the smoke, which flowed over him, curling back as it hit the building, the air around him thick, burned his nose and throat. Standing to find clear air to breathe, he felt light-headed, a bit of worry coming to him, carried in with the smoke. Maybe a bit too much to drink, he thought.
Seeing her watching him, Hanley waved away the smoky air and said, “Tell me something, Sister. When you take Jumma and drive to Rumbek or Juba, you don’t just go for supplies, do you? There’s other business to conduct while you’re there, isn’t there? I watch Jumma after you return from these trips. He walks out to the camps and talks to the people. He takes notes, or reads to them from his notebook. Then he’ll sit under a tree or against a truck and write. I doubt he’s keeping a diary of his trips to Rumbek to buy supplies. What is he writing about? What is he telling the people in the camps?”
“Have you asked him?”
“Of course I’ve asked him. He says it’s about the food they eat, you know, how much, what kind. He never looks at me when he answers. He’s such a good kid. He doesn’t want to look at me when
