CARL STEPPED ON THE GAS OF THE RENTED RED RAV4, ONLY HALF SURE OF WHERE HE WAS going. Hot day, good AC. What do they call it? Ice cold air.
Hard to imagine that this is one planet. Here, driving down Route 146 on a hot day in July, the air-conditioning keeping his skin cool. There, used RAV4s and CRVs are strike vehicles. They come in to the villages after the motorbikes have come through, loaded with small boys and small girls popping pills. Taylor’s boys liked the four-wheel drive pickups better, because you can jam six or eight of the boys into the back, but the RAV4 would be good enough for one of the militias. It was four-wheel drive, perfect for rutted red dirt roads that had potholes as big as lakes. Its high undercarriage let you go places you couldn’t get to otherwise. They burned through RAVs like this one in a couple of months over there. Drive it hard. Burn it out. Abandon it, all shot up, in the jungle or just off the Monrovia road, and then find yourself another one.
Off the highway on Atwells, and then a right on Westminster. He passed Classical High School, and then found himself on Cranston Street, which meant he’d gone too far. He drove a couple of blocks, looking for a place to turn, made a left after a cemetery, and then made another left to come back on Elmwood Street.
Elmwood and Cranston Streets and the places to their south and west were where the immigrant communities lived—the Guatemalans, Dominicans, Hondurans, Hmong, Liberians, Gambians, Nigerians, and the Ghanaians. They lived all together in a colorful part of town between Elmwood, Cranston Street, Broad, and Broadway, near the armory and the parade grounds, their churches and restaurants the only way an outsider could tell each community was there.
South and West Providence had once been the richest part of the city. The grand old Victorians near the armory and on Parade Street and Princeton Street had once been the homes of rich manufacturers. Then a hundred years ago, the old WASP mill owners, bankers, and merchants moved to the East Side, and their houses became the second or third steps for Irish factory workers, Italian restaurant owners, and Jewish merchant junk dealers after the immigrants started to succeed. Those grand old houses were crumbling now. There were fire escapes and paved parking lots where stained glass and grand lawns used to be.
In South Providence were now acres and acres of old wooden houses that needed paint, punctuated by squat brick buildings put up by social agencies that had walls covered in graffiti and storefronts that had signs painted in bright colors right on the glass; storefronts with metal gates that would pull down over the windows at night. The grand old churches and synagogues had been sold years ago. Now they were Pentecostal churches and mosques, with new neon crosses or crescents and bright colored banners and flags. The side streets seemed deserted. There were houses and parked cars but almost nobody in the street.
Carl drove past the restaurant he was looking for twice before he recognized it. He parked out front. Sally’s Liberian Restaurant. It was in an old VFW hall. There was a handwritten sign on the door. They were open from noon to seven but closed Sundays, Mondays, and Wednesdays.
Bells over the door jangled when he opened it and jangled a second time when he slammed the door shut.
There was a big red white and blue Lone Star flag on the wall next to the kitchen, plastic flowers in vases on each table, and a menu written in red magic marker on a white board propped up on a chair near the door. The menu listed three items but had no prices. The place felt deserted, but, hell, the door was open, so Carl took a table in front of a window and made himself at home.
After a few minutes, a big woman wearing a yellow apron came out of a back room with a plate of fried plantains as if she had been expecting him.
“You waitin’ on somebody?” she said and laughed.
“Ya Mama. Waitin on one. Lookin for another. Just home,” Carl said.
“Le me fee ya. Ga stew. Ga jollof rice,” the waitress said. Let me feed you. We have goat stew and jollof rice.
“Okay, okay, jollof rice then. And more plantains. Love plantains. And a coke,” Carl said.
The bells over the front door jangled again. A white man with a beard came in and looked around. The bells jangled a second time as he closed the door. He looked past Carl, expecting someone else. Oh yeah, Carl thought. America. I’m invisible again.
Carl raised his hand in a half-wave and started to stand.
“Dr. Levin?” he said, when the man didn’t acknowledge him.
“Carl Goldman?” Levin said, catching himself. “Sorry to be late.”
He shook Carl’s hand and pulled up a chair. He had a real grip, though. Carl wasn’t expecting that.
Levin was older than Carl expected. He was wearing jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. He had stringy swept-back white hair and big glasses with thick lenses that made his eyes look large and bulging.
Levin ordered. “You Liberian?” he asked.
“Me? Not Liberian. Not African either. Just plain old African American—a little African, a lot of everything else—a little French, a little Spanish, a little Jew,” Carl said.
“How did you get out?” Levin said.
“Your friendly U.S. Marines. They landed Saturday. Two days ago. Seems like a hundred years ago. Picked up the USAID and State Department folks. Grabbed a few NGO people while they were at it. I’m NGO. That’s what Uncle Sam’s helicopters and Humvees are for, I guess. Semper fi.”
“What were you doing there?” Levin said.
“NGO stuff. Hydrology. Building village pumps,” Carl said.
“Good stuff. Sounds crazy over there, though,” Levin said
“Crazy enough,” Carl said. “You’re Julia’s mentor, right? She looked up to you. Talked about you.”
“Teacher once, a long time ago. Friend and colleague now. I have her car in my spare garage. Start it once a month and try to drive it once in a while. When I remember,” Levin said. “Now she’s the shining star. I’m just a guy with a telescope, looking for her in the sky from a hundred million miles away.”
They fell silent.
“It’s not good,” Carl said. “She got caught in a fight between Charles Taylor’s people and a group of rebels moving up from the south. Taylor is the president, so-called. Taylor’s men burned her vehicle. They killed her driver and her guard. No way to know what happened next. I saw her maybe forty-five minutes before all that. Her vehicle had broken down. She was waiting on the side of the road for a repair truck. She was fine when we left her. When we came back, her truck was on fire, her guys were dead. And she was gone.”
“Damn,” Levin said. “Damn. Damn, damn, damn. No word from her?”
“Nothing,” Carl said. “I called the State Department. Next morning the marines showed up to evacuate Americans. But Julia wasn’t there. I called them. I was worried about Julia, not for the rest of us. The rest of us were okay.”
“Damn. Where is bloody goddamn American imperialism when you need it most?” Levin said.
“When the marines landed. I thought they would go for Julia first,” Carl said. “I thought she’d be there on the beach when they came to airlift us out. But she wasn’t there. It all happened fast. I can’t believe they left her.”
“It’s a war zone. Shit happens. Where the hell is she?” Levin said.
“Anybody’s guess,” Carl said. “Liberia is the size of Tennessee. She could be anywhere. She’s probably in Grand Bassa or Bong County, just north of Buchanan,” Carl said. “Short of an air force or an amphibious assault, it’s not possible to move around in Liberia right now.”
“Anything we can do?” Levin said. “Strings to pull? Chains to yank? This is Rhode Island. We always know a guy who knows a guy.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know who has her. Or where she is. No way to know if she’s alive,” Carl said.
“She’s alive,” Levin said. “There’s real grit underneath all that privileged white girl crap, all that insecurity and self-doubt. She’s a street fighter, that girl, and don’t you ever forget it.”
“That’s the sense I got from the State Department. That she’s alive,” Carl said. “They aren’t confirming or denying. I think maybe they got some wires crossed. I think they thought she was out. What we’ve got now is just some kind of cover-up. But it sounds like they know where she is and who has her.”
“I got the same bullshit,” Levin said. “They know. They just ain’t talking.”
The food came.
“So are you going in to get her?” Levin said.
“You can’t get to Liberia now,” Carl said. “I checked all the airlines. Even the little African ones. You can’t move around in Grand Bassa County, where she got nabbed. There are roadblocks and militia everywhere—bridges out, trees across the road, checkpoints, you name it. But I’m open to any and all bright ideas. Yes, I want to go in and get her. I just don’t know how.”
“How well do you know Julia?” Levin said.
“Just from Buchanan,” Carl said. “There are about thirty expats in Buchanan, give or take. We’d hang out nights and weekends. Have dinner together. That kind of thing. Potlucks. Drive out to the beach on Sundays.”
“Answer the question. You an item?” Levin said.
“Not exactly yes, not exactly no,” Carl said. He paused. “More yes than no. Maybe more than that.”
“Got it. More yes than no. Enough to be here. Not enough to stay there. Okay, no way in and no plan. So why the email?” Levin said.
“Misery loves company, I guess, “Carl said. “And I’m looking for ideas. I need an army. And an air force and marines. I need help. I need a strategy, and I need a plan. You got any of that?”
“I barely have the clothes on my back. But its sounds like you got religion, brother. Kind of a day late and a dollar short, though,” Levin said. “Anyway, I’m a different kind of guy. I’m a peacenik, not Rambo. And this isn’t about me.”
DOOO-IPPP, DOOO-IPPP, DOOO-IPPP.
The sound was sudden, brilliant and piercing. Painful. Right outside. Close by car alarm.
DOOO-IPPP, DOOO-IPPP, DOOO-IPPP.
Not my problem, Levin thought. No car alarm on his fucked up old car. Barely any car.
Carl turned his head away from the noise. DOOO-IPPP, DOOO-IPPP, DOOO-IPPP. He pulled the keys out of his pocket and looked out the window. Then he jumped up, went to the door, and pulled it open. The bells on the door jangled. Levin felt a blast of hot air. The bells snapped as the door slapped shut and the DOOO-IPPP, DOOO-IPPP, DOOO-IPPP blasted out again, dying out halfway through its cycle.
Suddenly Levin felt ashamed. Ashamed of himself. Ashamed of his life. A great big empty life filled with pot smoke in which nothing was accomplished. He hadn’t really ever loved anyone. All those stupid big ideas signifying nothing. Julia was lost in Africa and nothing anyone, Levin or anyone else, could do to help. This Carl seemed like the real thing, but Carl didn’t have a clue either. Nothing was working. Levin couldn’t do one thing to help the one person in this life he loved and wanted to protect. Nothing else mattered. He was useless.
Then Levin heard a shout from the street.