The first morning I woke up at the Flying Tomato Farm, I was hot and sweating one moment, then cold and shivering the next. My stump was swollen; the skin was red and tender, and pus oozed from the wound. Obviously this was Stumpy’s revenge for dousing him in the muddy Limpopo River and dragging him through the game reserve. For the next two days I drifted in and out of fever-sleep, thankful for the bed, the plates of freshly sliced and salted tomatoes, and the jugs of clean, cool water that Boubacar forced me to drink. I don’t remember much about the Flying Tomato Farm, except that at one point I woke up to find a white woman with blue eyes and blond hair staring down at me. She looked both concerned and sympathetic as she cleaned my wound and rebandaged it, all the while mumbling something about sepsis. Then I felt a sharp prick in my arm and fell back to sleep.
Stumpy must have liked her attention, as the next day he stopped complaining and his swelling subsided. Later, Boubacar explained that she was actually a veterinarian called to the farm to attend to a cow in labor, and the shot in my arm had been an intramuscular antibiotic; the best she had to offer. She’d also given him five days’ worth of antibiotic pills, but warned that gangrene could still happen if I didn’t get to a proper hospital soon.
Gerber, the burly, well-tanned foreman of the Flying Tomato Farm, was less helpful. “I’m running a business, not a hospital,” he said, stopping just inside the doorway to the workers’ dormitory. “Benjamin,” he called out to the old white-haired black man who managed all the farm’s refugee workers. “I want these two gone, first thing tomorrow morning. Understood?”
“Yes, boss,” Benjamin replied, and then turned to Boubacar as Gerber left the dormitory. “I’m sorry. You will have to go. These beds are for people who work here. Tomorrow more will come.”
“We understand, madala,” said Boubacar, using the respectful name for the older man. “You’ll get no trouble from us.”
Benjamin nodded, lifted his hands in apology, and left.
“You feeling better, Patson?”
“A little, and at least Stumpy’s not so swollen.”
“We have to leave tomorrow, Patson. I think early is best. My Congolese friends will pick us up and drive us to Johannesburg. The journey will take maybe six or seven hours.”
“I’ll be ready,” I said, showing him Grace’s latest Mxit.
Where r u BB?!!! I’m in Alexandra township now. Det left me with old man in a shack. Tried to escape but nowhere to go. Det found me. Come soon. xxx
Wed 4/16/08 10.01am
Det took my money. He wants me to work for him when we get to Cape Town. What do I do? Plzzzz come!! xxx
“Tell her we’ll be in Joburg tomorrow afternoon. Get an address. We’re close now, Patson,” he said, laying his hand on my shoulder.
I sent Grace the message, then turned to my last diary entry. “I wrote something, Boubacar. About you. Would you like to hear?”
“About me?” he said with an embarrassed chuckle. “You have me curious now. So what did you write about this fellow Boubacar?”
I opened my diary and started reading the passage I had written about him. When I had finished, Boubacar reached for the diary and flicked through its pages. “But she was at least a pretty cow doctor, yes?” he said with a smile. “Are all the words written here as good as those you just read to me?”
“Not all of them.” I shrugged. “But why, Boubacar? I don’t understand why you are helping me.”
He ran his hand over his face and dropped his head to his chest, avoiding my eyes. Then he clasped his large hands, weaving his fingers together, and I watched them pulse in and out, in and out, like a beating heart beneath his chin.
“Boubacar?”
He shook his head, and, without looking at me, raised his hand, as if he were trying to work out a puzzle. I waited, and when he finally spoke, his voice was strained as he searched for words to explain what I could not understand.
“There is a war in my country. They may call the DRC the Democratic Republic of Congo, but it is not so democratic. Many people are being killed there. Rebel soldiers fight the government. They came to my village when I was fourteen and made me into a soldier. There were other boys who had been stolen from their families, but I went into the bush with the rebels because I hated the government. They had taken my father away and killed him. So I left my sister and my little brother with my mother and joined Reverend Lubango’s Army of Assurance. It was a time of madness. Drugs, alcohol, and words. Dangerous words.
“The Reverend taught us how to fight and kill people. We would sit and smoke marijuana, drink, smoke some more, and listen to his words driven into our heads. We had rifles and bullets and became firing machines fueled by narcotics. We followed every order just to keep the drugs coming. The things I did… terrible things, Patson, I can never tell you. And I was a good soldier. Too good. They made me a leader and gave me my own boys so that I could turn them into soldiers as good as me.
“One day we were ordered to attack a village. It was always the same—words, alcohol, drugs, and more words until we were ready to kill. That night we hid in the bushes waiting for the storm to break. I led the way through the dark rain, firing and running, running and firing at anything that moved. The villagers stood no chance. We cut them down but then, as the sun rose, that village of dead people seemed strangely familiar to me.
“I recognized the tree my brother and I had climbed, the hut where my mother lived, and the toys my sister played with. When I found my family, they looked no different from the other dead bodies. I started crying only because I felt nothing. I was dead inside. After that day, my need for drugs, alcohol, and words to keep my life bearable, died.
“Somehow I found a way to stop taking the drugs. To only pretend to drink and later to understand that Reverend Lubango’s words were lies. Slowly I found a way back to myself. And when I looked at the boys who followed me so blindly, I wanted to save them. One by one I got them off the drugs, and together we found the strength to resist Reverend Lubango’s words. I led seven of them out of the forest until the UN soldiers found us and took us in. They changed my life except that I had nothing left to live for.”
Boubacar paused to catch his breath while I tried to grasp the enormity of what he had told me, ashamed, too, at how selfishly I had been wrapped up only in my own story. When he finally looked up his face was streaked with tears.
“When you came to me in the forest, Patson, holding your sister’s hand, I saw my own little brother and sister coming back to me.” He paused, struggling to catch his breath. “You see, Patson, my sister’s name was also Grace.”
His shoulders started to shake then, as he gave way to his tears, and I leaned forward to clumsily embrace him.
“We will find her, Boubacar, I know we will,” were the only words I could manage.