Despite the International Red Cross banners draped on the truck’s sides, Ruslan recognized the big green Fuso diesel as one his father had worked on. The driver, with the trucker’s standard aura of cigarette smoke and road grime, lounged on the front seat, suspiciously examining an unwrapped stick of chewing gum. His frown turned to a smile in cordial response to Ruslan’s interruption.
“Haven’t seen him,” he said after studying Ruslan’s sketch. “Not too many Ujung Karang residents survived, you know.”
“My father did.”
“They all say that,” the driver said. “People running around showing pictures of their kids, their parents, their family. Nobody wants to accept the reality that they’re dead and probably won’t be found.” He grimaced in apology. “Sorry, kid, I shouldn’t be so blunt.”
An image of the Calang dump truck rose like a specter. Ruslan forced it away. “No, he really did survive. A friend saw him after the tsunami.”
He glanced up at the sky as he said that, but the helicopter was no longer in sight. Sarah had said she’d be back, but he wondered how, wondered when, even wondered why. He’d only known her for a few days, but even so, he felt a bewildering ache, of something wonderful gone before it was even glimpsed.
“You’re one of the very few lucky ones, then,” the driver said. He held up the stick of gum. “An American soldier gave this to me. You think it’s poisoned with pig fat?”
Ruslan had been astounded to see the U.S. military on Acehnese soil, but that astonishment had quickly faded when he also noticed soldiers from France and Australia and Singapore, and civilians from a dozen Western and Asian countries. One of the French soldiers had offered him a curious elongated loaf of bread, which he had devoured in seconds.
“Poisoned with pig fat?” he said. “Why on earth would you think that?”
The driver shrugged. “That’s what some people are saying. Westerners trying to corrupt us.”
“That’s stupid. If you don’t want it, you can give it to me.”
The driver winked and stuffed the gum into his mouth. “Hey, kid, good luck with your father. Really. God knows we need all the happiness we can get.”
Ruslan walked down the bumpy street, which looked as it always had, dusty weeds along the sides, wires tangled up in tree branches, chickens scratching in the front yards. But the evidence of the tsunami was everywhere. In one front yard a family rinsed tin sheets and buckets of nails salvaged from their downtown hardware shop. On other porches sat listless people who had no jobs to go to, many sharing what little they had with homeless relatives who had nothing left. They listened kindly to Ruslan but regarded his sketch with drained eyes and shook their heads.
At the corner, where the street intersected the main road to Bergang, several canvas tents had been erected on the grounds of a small neighbo hood mosque. Refugees crowded its patio, catching whatever cool breeze they could. A hand-lettered cardboard sign, the ink still wet, had been placed on the waist-high fence, announcing in both Indonesian and English that Muslim attire was mandatory for all those entering the property. Two Western men, wearing the T-shirts of an emergency civil engineer corps, their plump pink legs extending out of khaki shorts, were taking photos of the sign.
“Bunch of narrow-minded fundamentalist jihadists,” one man said to his companion. “Chop off your head if you step foot inside.”
Sharply angered, Ruslan said to him, “They ask only for common courtesy. And you do not have trousers to wear in public?”
The man whistled. “Hey, you speak good English. Want to earn some money as our interpreter? You look like you could use a pair of pants yourself.”
Ruslan ignored him and opened the gate. The refugees were from another district of town, and although many knew Ruslan’s father, they hadn’t seen him. They suggested he try the refugees camped out on the enormous front lawn of the mayor’s splendid building.
The half-mile trudge to the mayor’s office under the searing sun made him thirsty, and as he lined up for drinking water at an emergency tank, he showed his sketch. A woman told him that some Ujung Karang refugees were sheltering at the Grand Mosque, and after he’d slaked his thirst, he continued his march.
The Grand Mosque had been untouched by quake and water. He showed his sketch along the rows of tents. At the last row, beside the mosque’s gleaming portico, a woman bent over a wood fire cooking relief-aid noodles. “He looks familiar,” she said. “Was he here? I’m not sure. You can ask the Imam.” She nodded over Ruslan’s shoulder.
Ruslan turned his head. There in the shade of the portico stood the bearded cleric who had denounced Ruslan’s art as ungodly. His hooded gaze took in the notebook, and he summoned Ruslan with a curl of his fingers.
With a sour exhalation Ruslan obeyed and handed him the pad. The cleric might tear up the sketch, but he’d draw a dozen, a hundred.
“My father,” Ruslan said defiantly. “Have you seen him?”
The cleric stroked his beard as he studied the drawing. “Yusuf the mechanic. Excellent likeness.” His eyes twinkled, and his mustache stretched out with his broad smile. “He was here this morning looking for you.”
Ruslan’s heart leaped. “Where is he now?”
“I saw him get on an ambulance carrying corpses to Bergang, where they are being buried.” The cleric handed back the pad. “I have a motor-cycle with some fuel. You may borrow it.”
After profuse thanks, Ruslan drove off sedately, as befitting an unlicensed boy borrowing a cleric’s well-kept motorcycle, but once around the corner, he threw open the throttle and bent over the handlebars.
He didn’t have to ask directions for the mass burial ground at Bergang. He caught up to a truck turning off onto the unpaved road leading past the Raiders’ hill camp, where he had been detained and from which he had escaped days before. Six men wearing boots, gloves, and face masks stood in the back of the truck’s bed, loaded with several dozen dark green plastic bags. Despite the plastic, the stench was overpowering, and Ruslan slowed down.
A soldier sat at the guard post, holding a handkerchief to his face. He was not in the least interested in Ruslan, who followed the truck past a sawmill. Beyond the mill, the truck stopped by the side of a small stream, where a fifty-foot-square pit had been dug in the ground, the gouge of orange earth raw as a wound. The truck backed up to the pit, beeping loudly. A dozen men stood around the pit, all wearing gloves and masks, including the cleric, ready to lay a symbolic white cloth on the plastic body bags and to say the prayer for the dead. Two men stood by with tanks of disinfectant strapped onto their backs and spray hoses in their hands.
Ruslan parked the motorcycle beside several others. He didn’t see his father. As the men on the truck began to sling the body bags into the deep hole, he climbed the stream embankment. Within the mass grave three people stood on its steep sides, two women and a man, white masks over their faces. They reached out and unzipped the tossed body bags, looking at the bloated corpses within. The women examined only the children, but the man, his back to Ruslan, carefully studied the larger corpses. With the last one checked, he climbed up to the top of the pit and pressed the back of his visibly trembling hand against his forehead, pressing hard, as though he wished to crush his skull, his fingernails clenched deep into his palm.
At that gesture, each cell of Ruslan’s skin prickled. He felt as though he were floating off the ground. He opened his mouth to call out for his father but could make no sound.
His father’s fingers sprang open. He lowered his hand and turned to meet Ruslan’s gaze. For several seconds he stood still.
And then he ran to meet his son.