12

TWO WEEKS LATER

There was a routine to their days. The clapping of hands announced that it was time to leave camp. Not once had they woken up in the morning and gone to sleep at night in the same place.

Nyuma geuka. Left right, left right.

As soldiers and students, girls and babies, slaves and goats trudged through the bush, Commander Opiro and his band of sergeants climbed into a truck with loppy tires and drove down rutted paths until they reached furrowed roads. From there the truck disappeared from view.

Scouts led the way through the bush. The scouts were small boys who were well-fed and ran fast. Some were paces ahead, some hours ahead. Everyone had a designated job. Jacob, Norman, and Paul were slaves, like most of the schoolboys. The slaves carried all manner of things: bed rolls, tents, cooking pots, spare guns without bullets, pails, chairs, old red plastic gasoline cans filled with gritty water, crates of live chickens. Wounded soldiers were carried in gunnysacks strung between poles. Most died of their wounds since there was no first aid; there was none to give. Anyone else who was hurt or wounded was left to die. Only soldiers were buried.

Jacob carried a jerry can filled with water—water they were not allowed to drink. Paul hoisted a battered suitcase on his head and held a pail of cow slop in his free hand. Norman was given the most difficult job—to carry a jug of oil. The jug was big, maybe thirty liters. It took two boys to hoist it up and place it on a coiled rope on Norman’s head. It seemed to press down on him, making Norman appear even smaller than he really was. He looked like an ant scurrying under a load twice his size. Neither Jacob nor Paul had a way to lessen his burden.

The day was long, the walk endless. They needed to stop, to rest. “Jacob, water.” Norman spoke like a runner after a long race, breathless and exhausted. Together Jacob and Paul lifted the jug of oil off Norman’s head. Norman slumped forward. Jacob pulled leaves off the underbrush and held them up to Norman’s mouth. The dew on the leaves had already evaporated, but Norman sucked the leaves anyway. Food, they needed food. They ate what they could scavenge along the way: insects, wild fruits, and lizards—difficult to catch and harder still to skin.

“Here.” Jacob broke twigs off a tree. Norman stuck one in his mouth and bit down. They all sucked on wooden sticks to keep the hunger and thirst away.

Jacob saw something beyond the elephant grass. “Wait, I’ll be back.” He batted the grass aside and raced down a slippery path toward a muddy water hole. There he scooped up a handful of mud, and he ran back and used it to moisten Norman’s cracked lips.

“Norman, it will be all right.” Over and over Jacob whispered these words in Norman’s ear, and sometimes Paul’s ear, too. “Help is coming. We just have to wait.”

The scouts kept returning with bad news. More and more villages they came upon had been abandoned and so there was no food to steal.

On days when a scout did return with the news that there was a village ahead, an assault team was formed and off they went into battle. Except that there was no real battle. They just killed the villagers and made off with their food, animals, and sometimes children. Some days they fought off government soldiers. Seldom were the schoolboys involved in these fights. Girls, small children, slaves, and those who had yet to prove themselves in battle were told to sit in the long elephant grass and wait. Since Commander Opiro was seldom around, Lizard and another rebel named Eddie gave the orders.

Tony and the other boys who had killed Adam had guns—and not little wooden training guns either: real guns. It was as if the commanders were trying to make them special, different from the students and different from the regular recruits who had to train for weeks before getting a real gun.

Tony slung his gun across his back and walked a few paces ahead of Jacob. The metal of the gun must have grown hot under the sun because Jacob could see blistered burn marks on Tony’s neck and upper arms. The scouts had seen another village and Lizard ordered the assault team to move out. Tony was part of the team. He marched away with his head hanging down. It was hours before they came back, and when they did, Tony was more dirty and distant than ever.

“Tony?” Jacob tried to get his attention. Tony would not look him in the eye, would not even acknowledge his existence.

Oteka crouched in the elephant grass and motioned to Jacob. “Come, come,” he hissed.

Jacob crawled toward him, head swivelling, eyes looking every which way.

“Do not trust him,” Oteka said. “He is a rebel now.” As always, Oteka would whisper news or warning then disappear.

During the day Tony walked behind Lizard but at night he always seemed to want to be near the boys from school. Maybe Oteka was right. Maybe Tony could not be trusted. Maybe Tony was spying on them, but … maybe not.

When the boys were too exhausted to move, they were told to sit and listen. A rebel leader was their teacher. He was short, wore torn and soiled army clothes, and stomped around the clearing swearing and yelling. Perhaps he was twenty years old. Tony and the other students who had proven to be good soldiers sat right up front.

The teacher, if he could be called such a thing, held guns up in each hand and waved them like flags. He pointed out anti-tank mines, anti-personnel mines, and rocket launchers with red tails. The guns had English alphabet letters—SPGs, SMGs, B10s—and there were SAM7 missiles and RPGs, rocket-propelled grenades that could puncture armor. The boys learned to dismantle and assemble the guns and clean them, too. Their teacher finished the lessons by screaming, “You will obey your commander above all else. The very best soldiers are given many wives. If you prove yourself in battle, you too will be given many wives.”

Wives? Who would want a wife?

Then came more threats, more yelling, but it was so hard to listen, so hard to stay awake, so thirsty, so hungry. At the end of each day—after walking, walking, walking, after lessons in guns and soldiering, and after prayers—Jacob, Paul, and Norman slumped down, too numb to speak. All the students of the George Jones Seminary were sickening for home. The cuts on their backs were healing but the itching was unbearable. They crumpled under a jackfruit tree. Norman’s eyes rolled back in his head. “Norman, are you all right?” Jacob would ask again and again and Norman would nod over and over. Every day Norman seemed to grow smaller. Hope, he was losing hope. Jacob had to do something, anything, to make Norman and Paul think of something else.

But what?

Do not think about home. Do not think that the people who care for you are far away. How far? Hard to know. Think of something else entirely.

He had an idea. Jacob looked around. The soldiers were eating and paying them no mind. He motioned to Paul and Norman to come closer.

“Paul, tell us about America,” whispered Jacob.

Norman perked up just a tiny bit and edged in still closer.

Paul’s eyes widened in surprise. Then he shook his head. It was hard, too hard to think about that other life.

“Tell us about their clothes,” Jacob egged him on. Paul thought for a minute, then said, “In America, many people wear strange things on their heads, hats of all kinds, caps too, some round and others made of wool, no matter what the temperature.”

Jacob nodded. There were lots of books in the school library that were sent from people in America. One book was called The Cat in the Hat. Jacob looked up into the darkening sky and pictured white people all over America wearing tall, stripy hats.

“And they have every color of hair—yellow and orange and blue. Some of it sticks up in points. Many have long hair that curls.”

Blue hair? Jacob almost laughed.

“Is everyone rich in America?” To Jacob’s amazement, it was Norman who asked the question.

“I think so. Everyone uses electricity, even children are allowed to touch a switch on the wall. There is a lot of electricity. The ground is covered in cement and there are no cows. There are no animals anywhere! Except dogs. They walk dogs on the end of a rope and the dogs are made to wear clothes. And the little kids are impolite to their parents and they don’t get beaten.”

Both Jacob and Norman sucked in their breath. Imagine being rude to a parent and not being punished. But dogs wearing clothes! How could that be?

For a minute it worked. For a sliver of time their thoughts were elsewhere.

…

Nyuma geuka. Left right, left right.

The rainy season arrived, slowly at first, droplets in the middle of the day. The drops turned to showers, the showers turned into storms, and color was brought into existence. And when the rain abated there were green mango trees standing under a yellow sun that shone down on the red earth.

The rain should have cooled their skin but it did not. It was hot, sticky water that evaporated in an instant. The ground became slippery scarlet rivers of muck. Mud caked their feet, ran up their legs, and splattered into their faces and eyes. Sitting in mud. Sleeping in mud. Mud for food. Mud for brains. Lightning threatened, thunder clapped, and the rain came down. They walked. Multiplying helped. Only in a civilized world did numbers mean anything.

 

89 times 99 equals 8,811.

66 times 97 equals 6,402.

Nyuma geuka. Left right, left right.

 

Jacob’s shirt stuck to him like a crust. His shoes would not come off. His feet were so swollen that his ankles bulged and his toes curled under. The only way to remove his shoes easily would be to cut them off and—what then?

He looked down at Norman’s bare feet. Gingerly, with his mouth clamped shut to hold in a cry, Jacob strained and yanked off his shoes. Jacob worked the shoes onto Norman’s feet. They lasted a few days, then fell apart, leaving Norman barefoot again.

When he could, Jacob washed Norman’s feet in muddy streams and checked for infection. At least Norman didn’t have chiggers—ticks—that burrowed into feet and ate up the foot from the inside out.

“Norman, can you feel this?” Jacob flicked the soles of Norman’s feet with his fingers. Norman shook his head. Jacob made shoes for Norman out of banana leaves. He whispered as he wrapped the leaves around Norman’s feet and tied them with vines, “Norman, what is 154 times 29?”

Norman shook his head.

“What is 12 times 10?”

“120,” he whispered. “Good, that is good.”

Paul was barefoot too. His shoes were now on the feet of a soldier.

95 times 78 equals 7,410. Maybe.

To pass the time, Jacob counted the number of soldiers and students in their unit. There were two hundred soldiers, slaves, and women in their group, including the thirty-seven students from George Jones. That number swelled and shrank. Sometimes they met up with other units of the LRA and more soldiers joined them.

Nyuma geuka. Left right, left right.

The only relief came at night.

“Did you hear?” A boy came out of the dark and squatted in front of Jacob and his friends. His name was Abraham, another student from their school. Abraham shuff led closer to Jacob and whispered, “Kony is nearby. They say that he will inspect the troops.” Abraham was jubilant. He was beginning to turn, beginning to see a place for himself as a rebel soldier. It was starting to happen to many students. The lies told by the commanders were starting to take root. “We should pray that he comes to bless us.” Abraham leapt up and went off to spread the gossip to the next group.

“What do you think Kony is like?” whispered Paul. There were rumors that Kony had magical powers, that he had thirty wives and two hundred children and lived like a king in the Sudan. Some said that he was three meters tall, while others said that he was powerfully built, with the body of a mighty warrior.

The next day came and went, and the day after that, and still Kony did not come.