The evening was starting to chill. A small fire burned in the dust nearby, the heat warming a young man and a tiny child, a girl, huddling beside him. The man stared blankly into the rising smoke, as if looking for his dream. The smoke came and flowed over Hanley, nudged to him by the always shifting breeze. His eyes began to tear. With the back of his hand, he wiped the tear away and said, “There are things you probably haven’t considered; using the mission’s fuel for an unsanctioned purpose, space in the plane for a least a dozen people; not to mention just how easy it is to disable a plane like mine. Parked, it is a sitting duck. Anyone with any knowledge of a plane’s construction and a rifle can do a lot of damage in a short time. Then there’s the noise. You know that’s true. How long can you hear that plane coming before you see it? We’re not going to sneak up on the good folks of Kosti, now are we? That’s right, shake your head,” he said.
“Jumma and I have…”
“Jumma! Oh, for Christ’s sake! Are you crazy? You can’t involve him, he’s just a kid.” Hanley’s reaction made the young man and the little girl turn from the fire to look at them.
“Don’t yell,” the nun said. “I think we should stop and talk again tomorrow. I’m tired and need to think more about this. Don’t say anything to Jumma. He respects you so and if he sees a bad reaction from you, it will hurt him.”
“Good. I hope it does. It’s a bad decision by both of you.” Hanley looked away from the nun and into the face of the small child beside the fire. She was watching him. Her eyes were large, too big in a face showing a hint of malnutrition. The eyes reflected the firelight, the only kind of light in the eyes of a child running from war, he thought. He felt his shame coming out, as if the girl took it and held it before him. He said, “We’ll talk tomorrow,” then walked away.
***
The chirps from within the grass were carried to him by the wind, as were the cries of the sick and smell of smoke. He read Elizabeth’s latest letter again and then Rocky’s last letter before turning to an old copy of the International Herald Tribune. After that, with an arm over his eyes, he tried to sleep. The evening’s events, the request from Sister Marie Claire, their argument kept him awake. He did not know what to think or do about this. The struggles and challenges of Africa were so far from what he knew. He had not adapted, could not get used to it. All his experience failed him. But he knew one thing; it was time to make a decision, to test his theory about fate and its role in his life, to put up or shut up.
22
The first week in September, Hanley returned from Nairobi with medical supplies and bottled water, after delivering an American surgeon, an ophthalmologist, back to Kenya. The surgeon performed five cataract procedures while at the mission, and now was off to Zimbabwe to hunt lions. Sister Marie Claire was in the second seat, with Jumma strapped into a jump-seat behind the nun. The supplies took up little room in the rear of the hold, covered in a blue plastic tarp and strapped to the right side, across from the rear door. Wanting to spend some additional time with the doctors that Hanley shuttled from the larger airports to the mission, Sister Marie Claire had come along on four trips. Usually, she sat in the one of the two jump-seats attached to the bulkhead that separated the cockpit from the cargo area. Hanley removed a storage box and attached the second jump-seat, a folding seat with a three-point seatbelt, to hold the passenger securely. The first jump-seat was attached to the bulkhead on the other side of the cockpit door, where Jumma sat. The doctor being transported usually rode in the second seat in the cockpit, where the co-pilot would normally sit. When there were no passengers but she and Jumma, the nun occupied the second seat.
With the key to the intercom open, Hanley could talk freely with Sister Marie Claire, as there were no air traffic controllers to interrupt. Even with headsets, the noise of the C-45’s engines intruded on their conversation. They were about forty-five minutes from Mapuordit, heading northwest, with the plane in a slight sideslip due to a north by northwest head wind. Hanley checked the manifold pressure and rpm’s, gave his gauges a quick visual sweep and said, “It won’t be long. The weather is clear all the way in. If you look just off the nose of the plane to the right, you’ll see Torit.”
Hanley pushed the nose of the plane down slightly as the nun rose in her seat to peer into the haze below. Torit looked to her more like a rough patch scratched in the dust than a major city in southern Sudan.
“It doesn’t look like much from either the ground or the air,” she said.
Hanley said, “You’re right, it doesn’t look like much from up here, but really, what does? The larger cities, I guess. I’ve only seen them from commercial aircraft. I don’t fly near big cities myself, unless I can help it. They can be dazzling at night, the really large ones. I didn’t see Paris at night but I suppose it’s spectacular. You’ve been in Sudan for seven years, isn’t that right? How much longer will you be here?”
“I do not know. For as long as the church wants me here. It’s not a decision I have to make, it’s made for me. I don’t worry about it; there are too many other worries here for me.”
Squinting into the sunlight coming from the West, through the window beside Hanley’s head, the
