AS DARKNESS shadowed the room—a result of the descending sun—activity resumed outside. I hadn’t realized until then things had quieted down during the height of the sun’s heat. Now the murmur of voices and the rev of engines livened the place up a bit.
“What’s the deal with you and my dad?”
Henry looked at me from where he sat on the opposite side of the hut. We’d each drifted to our own side of the building as the afternoon progressed. Our water bottle hadn’t been filled or replaced, and they hadn’t fed us anything yet. I didn’t know if they planned on starving us, or if they knew they were going to kill us. After all, if we were slated to die anyway, why waste the food? I’d decided that my shakiness and dehydration were natural reactions to the heat and lack of food. Sure, the diabetes played a part, but the heat, humidity, and lack of water would have affected anyone. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell Henry was having similar difficulties. Sweat covered his body, and his lips were dry and cracked. His head rested against the wall and his eyes were closed, but I knew he was awake.
“What do you mean?” He didn’t open his eyes when he asked.
“I mean, you’re so… so… you’re like the Dr. Martin fan club. It’s almost like you idolize him. I’m just curious as to why.”
“He’s a good man,” Henry said.
I interrupted before he could say anything else. “But what does that mean? Good is relative. Good men don’t ignore their children. So good doesn’t mean anything to me. What does it mean to you?”
“My first day at the camp,” Henry said, his eyes still closed, “there were three of us new volunteers, and he needed someone to help him out. He picked me. These other two volunteers were recent college graduates. One was premed, the other in civil engineering. Both were eager, practically begging for the chance to do something good.” He opened one eye and stared at me when he said it, then closed it again. “Then there was me, the runaway rent boy. He was the first person to ever actually pick me. For anything. There was no reason for him to, no advantage that I brought, but he chose me.”
He looked up, his face serious. “He’s been the father I didn’t have, the coach, the mentor. He sees me for who I am, accepts me, and helps me be a better person. I don’t know why you and he haven’t talked in all these years. I don’t have that story, but I do know that he loves you, and misses you more than you can know.”
I snorted, but my heart wasn’t in it. I swallowed, afraid to ask the next question, but desperate to know. “How do you know that?”
“He doesn’t have many personal possessions. In fact, he’s got five things that don’t have anything to do with the clinic or the work at the camp. That’s it. Five things. One is a picture of him, your mom, and you sitting on a big rock. You had to be maybe four or five.”
I bit my lip, trying to stave off the prickling at the back of my eyes. I remembered that picture. We were on a day trip in the CAR, and we’d talked someone into taking our photo. It was the closest thing we had to a family portrait. I have a copy of that photo buried somewhere in a box in my closet.
“The second is a school picture of you. He said it was your first official school picture.”
I remembered that picture too. The minute the package of photos arrived from the photographer, I’d carefully cut out the five-by-seven image and put it into the frame that Mom wrapped in a padded envelope and mailed to Dad. I had hoped maybe if he saw it, he might come to us in Milwaukee, or, if not that, ask us to come back to Africa. I believed, I really, truly believed, that the photo would bring us together again.
I never sent him another photograph after that.
“The third is a baby picture of you as a newborn.”
I wanted to tell him to stop. I couldn’t face it. I couldn’t take any more.
“The fourth is a picture of you from your middle school graduation.”
Mom hadn’t told me about that one. I always thought a middle school graduation was kind of silly. It wasn’t like you actually finished something. There were still four years of school left; the only difference was where you went. But it was a milestone, and Mom had shared it with him.
I didn’t think I could face the fifth thing.
“The last is a drawing. It’s a picture of two stick people, one bigger than the other. Someone, I’m assuming you, had drawn it and wrote I love you Daddy on it. He keeps it in a frame, right above his computer monitor.”
Pressure built behind my eyes, but no tears formed. I was too dehydrated for that, but God I wished I could cry. I blinked, trying to ease the sting. No amount of blinking, though, could lessen the pain in my heart. I forced a single word through my constricted throat. “Why?”
Henry knew what I meant. Why did Chuck keep me around him but not talk to me? How could he have maintained the distance he had if he still cared?
“I don’t know. But I think you need to talk with him.”
I cleared my throat, then shrugged. “Whatever. That doesn’t change the fact that he’s ignored me for ten years.” It didn’t change the past, but did it change my opinion of him? Did it matter? Should it matter?
Henry jumped to his feet when the door swung open. Two of the guards stepped in, guns pointing forward. I stood as well when the first two were followed by another guy carrying a jug of water and bowlful of rice. He dumped both on the floor, and all three of them left. I hadn’t recognized any of them, so they must be rotating guards.
The mild scent of the rice, almost nonexistent surrounded by the smells of the jungle, drew me to the jug and the bowl. I grabbed the rice and the water and sat next to Henry. My hands twitched to grab fistfuls of rice and sate the hunger that had built over the last twenty-four hours.
“Should we ration it?” I asked. “Will they feed us again, do you think?”
“If we wait too long, the rice will dry out, right? Maybe it’s better to eat it while we can without breaking our teeth?”
We stared at each other. “Compromise?” I said.
“What kind?”
I licked my lips. “Eat some now, enough to dull the hunger, and then eat the rest before we go to sleep. That way, if they don’t feed us again until tomorrow night”—I refused to consider the possibility they wouldn’t feed us again at all—“it won’t have been quite as long. And the rice won’t have had the chance to completely dry out.” I was talking out my ass, but Henry looked so unsure, so uncertain, I had to sound like I knew what to do. One of us had to, and I guessed it was my turn. He agreed with me at any rate.
We each grabbed a handful of rice and ate it as best we could without losing any of the starchy grains. Our captors hadn’t given us any kind of silverware. Maybe they were afraid we’d use them as weapons or maybe they didn’t have any. Either way, I was glad the rice was the sticky kind.
Like the water the night before, the rice tasted better than plain rice had a right to. After the second bite I thought my stomach might rebel, but a couple of deep breaths later, the cramping of a too-empty stomach eased.
We certainly weren’t going to get fat from the food. The rice they gave us equaled maybe three cups, all told. Split into quarters—half for each of us, split into two “meals”—it was barely enough to make my stomach quit growling.
“NO ONE ever wanted me, you know?” Henry lay sprawled across the middle of the room. We stretched out, feet facing opposite directions, with our heads nearly touching. It wasn’t very late, but with the limited windows, the closed doors, and the tall trees outside, the dusk was as good as midnight for visibility.
“When my mom found out she was pregnant, my father told her to get an abortion. He didn’t want anything to do with a baby and some chick he’d had the bad luck to fall into bed with.”
“She told you that?” Once again I had the random urge to hug my mom.
“Oh, yeah. Whenever things got to be too much for her, she’d go off about it.”
We waited in silence for a few more minutes before he spoke again. “My first… boyfriend’s the wrong word, but it’ll do… my first boyfriend liked fooling around with me, but when I came out and got kicked out, he was appalled. Not that my mom kicked me out, but that I’d come out. You see, I was good enough to fool around with, but he couldn’t be seen with a gay guy. People might assume he was gay too.”
“He wasn’t?”
“He totally was, but he didn’t want anyone to know. It would have ruined his reputation or some shit.”
“Damn.” My experiences were so different from his. I couldn’t even fathom what he’d gone through, what he’d done to survive.
“Your father was the first person to ever choose me. And not just that first day. From that point on, I was like his personal assistant. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have a degree or that I’d been homeless on the streets. With him, I don’t know, I could be proud of myself.”
Chuck had been more of a father to Henry than he’d been to me, but maybe Henry needed it more. I had Mom. He’d had no one. I didn’t like the crazy jumble of emotions my mind and body could barely contain. Anger, protectiveness, jealousy, pride, love, disgust. It was too much for any one person to hold in. But there was no outlet, no way to get rid of it. The harder I tried to make sense of it, the tighter the mass of feeling wound, the worse my headache.
Not that I needed it to feel worse. I’d been hit in the shoulder with a rifle, hit on the head with something, punched twice, and dragged around by the elbow, not to mention spending most of the day sitting or lying on the hard ground. My head hurt, my body ached, and I was pretty sure the mercenaries holding us hostage weren’t going to give me an aspirin.
And, to add to the hyperawareness to my body, I panicked at every twinge, every twitch, wondering if it was a sign that ketoacidosis crept closer or if I was just tired and sore.