Chapter Thirty-Three

When a cunning man dies, it’s a cunning man who buries him.

—Krio Proverb

When Tejan slammed into Von, the impact knocked Caitlin to the deck of the boat.

“Tejan!” she cried as Tejan’s momentum carried him and Von overboard. She saw Von’s pistol on the deck. She picked it up and called 911, then waited at the edge of the boat, calling Tejan’s name, the pistol at the ready. For just a moment, she heard them struggle in the water. When those sounds faded, she heard the river lapping at the side of the boat and a faint siren in the distance, but there was no sign of Tejan. She laid the pistol down on the deck and fetched the small bat she used to kill gar and waited, hoping it would not be Von’s face she would see next.

The police arrived, and they called the Ouachita Sheriff’s Department and the Wildlife and Fisheries requesting boats to search for Tejan and Von. A half-hour later, a Sheriff’s boat with spotlights arrived and chugged slowly downriver. Caitlin begged the police to go to the gallery and check on Hunter. A patrol car went at the gallery and found the dead Biko, the machete, a great deal of blood, and a severed hand, but no Hunter. The deputy called the hospital on a hunch, and sure enough an injured Anglo had been dropped off at Emergency by a young black boy. His hand had been amputated and he was still in shock. The man fit Hunter’s description. The deputy radioed the other car waiting at Caitlin’s boat and the deputy there relayed the news to Caitlin.

“You’re sure they said his hand was amputated and that it was Hunter?” Caitlin asked.

“That’s what the report said, Caitlin.”

“What about Tejan?”

“The emergency nurse said that after he set the man down, he dashed out.”

Inside her heart, Caitlin cursed herself for being the cause of Hunter’s tragedy. She cursed Von, and she cursed Africa. She saw the rattle Von had given her, and she hated the sight of it. Feeling an indescribable rage at Von and at anything that reminded her of him, she picked it up and smashed it against the cabin door, blow after blow until she heard the gourd crack and the leather tear, and the small rocks inside spilled onto the deck.

The officer with her picked up one of them. “Looks like some kind of quartz.”

Caitlin knew they weren’t just rocks. “They’re diamonds,” she said. “Blood diamonds.” What a laugh Von must have had using her as a smuggler.

“You’re shitting me,” the officer said.

“I wish I were. What should I do with them?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Are they stolen?”

“No. No more stolen than any other diamonds people wear.”

“Then keep them.”

She saw flashing blue lights pull into the parking lot, and then a weary, wringing wet Tejan rushed from the car, up the boat ramp, and into her arms.

****

On the third day in the hospital, Hunter opened his eyes. Caitlin and Tejan sat by his bed. Caitlin had one black eye and a scrape on her face. Caitlin stood, her lip quivered and she leaned over to kiss him. “You lost so much blood. I was afraid we had lost you.”

“I’ve never wanted to do anything but play guitar and sing.” Hunter held up a bulbous gauze-wrapped stump. “But I guess I’m out of the music business now.”

Hunter cried, and it was the first time Caitlin had seen him cry without a guitar in his hands. His sobbing was the sound of despair and heartache.

“Not hardly.” She laid a sack on his chest. “There’s three harmonica’s there—a D, an A, and a G—and a tape called, ‘How to Play Harmonica for the Musically Hopeless.’ Tejan said I should get them for you. He remembered seeing a harmonica player once in Sierra Leone. And besides, you can still sing. We’ll figure out a way. I’ll take care of you till you get back into the groove. You’ve got a lot of practicing to do.”

“How is Tejan?”

“He’s fine, thank God. He saved us, Hunter—both of us. And you know what?

He wants to go to a regular school now, and then go to college. He also says he wants to return to Sierra Leone someday and use all he learns to help the people there. I don’t know what I think about that.”

“It’s his homeland. One’s sense of home runs deep. I guess that’s why I never could get out of Northeast Louisiana,” Hunter said.

****

Because of fever and infection, Hunter wasn’t released from the hospital as quickly as Caitlin had hoped. As she sat by his bedside, she flipped through the dozen channels on the television, and for a while landed on KNOE News. The reporter related an abbreviated account of the attack on Hunter, the story of how Tejan had rescued him, and how two local benefits had been arranged to help Hunter financially. The hospital darkened and grew still and Caitlin left Hunter to check on Tejan.

****

Hunter woke, rang the nurse, and asked for a sleeping pill.

When the R.N. came into his room and offered him a white paper cup, he inadvertently held out his left arm to take it. The nurse hesitated.

Hunter studied the bandaged stub in the air, turning it over, as if he were searching for the lost hand. He saw the pain in the nurse’s face. “Sorry. I forgot my hand’s gone. I swear I can still feel my fingers moving.”

“Those are phantom pains. Don’t think about them,” she said softly. “They’ll fade eventually. Here, open your mouth.” She placed the pill on his tongue, then held a glass of water to his lips. “Nighty, night, Hunter. These pills work well.”

Even with the help of the pill, sleep still didn’t come quickly, and the phantom pains blurred with the real pains as sleep continued its evasion, but eventually he drifted into sleep, and he slipped inward into his dreams.

Hunter heard Tejan singing and the words told their stories and were such as he and Tejan could have written together, happy songs of family and love that had been found. Soon unknown musicians joined, playing rattles and drums that kept time with Tejan’s song. As Tejan sang, he began to see those about him. Two men who looked like brothers drowning in the river. Boys and girls who in sadder times had been soldiers, diamond miners, sex slaves, and porters. Some tapped drums with stumps and prosthetic hands, others shook rattles and danced together in the street outside the Lost Bazaar. A circle of boys raised handless arms and danced around Hunter and Caitlin as Tejan sang. The stars above them were blood red at first, but as his song continued, they became sparkling splashes of white in the sky forming familiar and unknown constellations. The stars shined and sparkled like the cut and polished diamonds on the black cloth of a diamond merchant

An angel, bearing Caitlin’s face, floated down from heaven. She kissed the sad children on their foreheads, then made her way to Hunter and kissed his wrist and took away the guitar.

And somehow Hunter felt in his heart that all they had lost, all that had been damaged, all that had been taken from every one of them because of man’s greed for wealth and power, all of themselves that they had sold—all would be returned. All of the hands, the dignity, the opportunities that had been lost would blossom in future serendipity and epiphanies. All the lost souls faded with the song, and Hunter walked with Caitlin and Tejan into the Lost Bazaar, a gallery where one can find one’s self, one’s friends, or the love of one’s life. A bazaar, but one where nothing and no one was for sale.