Diamond dust frost
glinted from the cars. Here and there lights dimly lit windows as he drove slowly through the old neighborhood.
He pulled into the shadows next to the house, cut the lights and ignition, and waited silently, weighing the risk of being
seen by an elderly insomniac.
Feeling around the floor, he located the duct tape. He tore off two six-inch sections, and slapped them over the dome
light. Patting his jacket pocket to make sure he had the keys, he picked up the flashlight and got out, easing the door
shut silently. A few blocks away a frightened dog barked a challenge into the night. A trucker downshifted coming
off the interstate, ignoring the ordinance against jake braking. Otherwise nothing disturbed the early morning stillness.
He paused for a quick
breath at the knife-edge of shadow and then stepped deliberately into the street light glare, turned purposefully, and climbed
the stairs as if he belonged. The third and final key worked, eliciting a sigh of relief. He stepped inside, closed
the door, and leaned with his back to it, listening intently. No one could be in the house, but his pulse continued
to race as it had since he had taken the first irrevocable step in the afternoon.
Using a flashlight masked with duct tape,
he picked his way to the bathroom. Once inside, he flipped the switch, noting in alarm a frosted window over the bathtub.
Then he reminded himself that no one would think twice about a bathroom light coming on in the middle of the night.
Squinting in the harsh fluorescent glare, he checked the medicine cabinet for prescription drugs. A medical condition
would greatly complicated things, but he found to his relief only over the counter medicines and ointments. He fetched
a pillowcase from the bedroom and put them all in it along with toilet articles, makeup paraphernalia, hairdryer, and curling
iron. The latter two were useless without electricity, but he took them for appearance sake.
He went to the bedroom and packed two large
soft leather suitcases with an assortment of suitable clothes, towels, washcloths, and a box of feminine napkins. A
paperback lay on the nightstand. He took it along with several others from atop the dresser, pens and pencils, and two
spiral notebooks.
She leased by the year, so there would be no problem with a curious landlord. Her friend would be a different story.
He went to the computer and touched the mouse. As soon as the monitor lit, he clicked the e-mail icon, and scrolled
down the list of addresses, selected one, and began typing. He proofread the message and then sent it.
Fifteen minutes later
he pulled to the shoulder on a hill overlooking the lake and turned off his lights. When he saw no headlights shone
in either direction, with only the waning moon to light his way, he followed the old lane through the junkyard down to the
deserted marina. After loading, he drove back to the junkyard and parked between two wrecked vans. He checked
his watch, nodded in satisfaction, and then popped the trunk to get the tools.
When finished he inspected his handiwork by the light
of the moon. The tireless car now looked like just another derelict. The license plates were packed in the trunk
along with the hair drier and curling iron. Satisfied with the camouflage, he ran back down to the marina and shoved
off. He paddled out into the cove, listening carefully for the sounds of boats nearby. Detecting none, he started
the engine and headed out at low idle.
The morning wind had yet to freshen so the water was still relatively calm. Using his flashlight to check the compass,
he took bearing slightly north of a bright star low in the western sky and slowly brought the speed the boat up until the
big Merc planed her off. Richard sped into the dying night away from everything normal and sane. Cold numbed his
face as the boat made steady progress westward across mercifully calm waters. The big lake was cooperating---so far.
Somehow I've got to make
her understand what's really happening or . . .
He didn't want to think about the alternative, about what he might be forced to do.
Chapter 1
Pere Marquette University, 1998
(Eight months earlier)
Cartier, September 30
Cartier was no more the same than he was. The six years had worked its inevitable
change on both of them. Shrugging acceptance of the undeniable, he leaned against the warm concrete stairway fronting
Academic Hall and cupped his hands against the onshore breeze to light up. The seductive tickle in his chest was a memento
mori. He should quit of course, just as he should also quit this other thing, but he lacked the will to quit anything.
With another mental shrug Richard Carter continued surveying the swarm of class change, hoping to catch a glimpse of the auburn-haired
girl.
Most of the oncoming faces
belonged to kids fresh from high school. He wondered where they were when he was in the Mog. The boys were most
likely playing Pop Warner football or park league baseball, and she was playing with dolls if little girls still did that
anymore.
He smiled wryly.
A total stranger---and half your age,
he mocked himself.
Doing the quick
math, he corrected. Okay. Three quarters of your age, but still a stranger, so what are you, a stalker?
The languid swagger of a muscular man his own
age caught his attention. A tanned face came into sharper focus: dark, close-cropped hair crowning a wide forehead,
aquiline nose, and square, dimpled chin. The intense dark eyes lit with recognition, and there was that cocky smile.
"Boyd?"
"I knew I'd run into you here---in Cartier that is,"
he said, clasping Richard's hand as if they were old friends. "Sure as hell didn't think it would be on campus
though."
"What brings
you to Michigan, Mic? I didn't think you'd ever leave the Corps."
The smile disappeared, but only for a moment.
"Well the closer I got to reupping, the more I started thinking
about all the peace-keeping and nation-building crap. That's not what we went into the Corps for, right? Life's
short. Anyway, since I didn't want to work, it's back to school. I'm looking around for something I can afford,
and I find Pere Marquette on the net and the price is right. Then it comes to me: the damned place is in Cartier,
Michigan. Hell, I say to myself, that's where my old buddy, Ricky, comes from. So here I am."
They had hardly been buddies.
"Come off it, Mic. You sure didn't
come up here because of me."
"I
did in a way," he said seriously. Then the smile was back. "I mean, why not? Brothers in arms
and all that. We can knock down a few beers and relive our glory days . . ."
He trailed off as he turned to stare after a coed ascending the steps.
"Nice piece. I'd like to get me
some of that," he mumbled, unable to return his attention to Richard until she was out of sight. "So, you
taking classes, or just coming out to check out fresh poon?"
Richard almost took his cue. The gamut of de rigueur responses to the derogatory term came
reflexively to mind.
"Classes,"
he said instead. "Criminology. I worked for the sheriff's department this summer. Thought I might go
into law enforcement as a career. If things work out, I'll transfer to Michigan State next fall. They've got one
of the best programs in the country."
"County
Mounty, huh? Cool. In uniform but still a civilian. Damn! I envy you."
"Don't. So far all I've done is run the back roads on the
graveyard shift. Not much exciting about it."
"Never know," replied Mic with a tight smile. "You could walk into something
you don't know is there and get your damned head blown off. It's kinda like Somalia, Ricky---can't tell the bad guys
from the good guys until one of them pops a cap on you."
Somalia. Richard had done his best to forget it. In Mogadishu Mic had been the perfect
warrior: eager, decisive, fearless, uncursed by doubt or second thoughts. He was everything Richard couldn't be.
"Things are a little clearer than that
here," he said.
"Hey,
buddy. Remember: when you start thinking everything's cool, that's when it comes down. When a guy doesn't
have his eyes open, that's when he buys it." Mic glanced at his watch. "Look, let's get together later
and tip a few."
"I'd
love to, but I've got some stuff to do, and . . . I don't drink much anymore. Getting old, I guess."
"Hey, Ricky. A beer for old times
sake. You know where Tonto's is, right?"
"Yeah, but I ---"
"Six.
I'm counting on it."
Mic turned
and took the steps two at a time without looking back.
What can it hurt? Richard asked himself. I'll have a few beers and then stall all this
at the nodding acquaintance level.
Just
then she appeared, hurrying toward the steps in tandem with the dark-haired girl that was always with her. As they passed
within arms length and he caught a few words of conversation, noting what he thought was a slight accent.
French Canadian, he thought. Wonder why she came
to a small school in Michigan when Quebec has several excellent ones probably cheaper?
Her companion's accent was not nearly so subtle---definitely Hispanic.
Richard lingered until they had ascended the
steps and disappeared through the doors of the domed administration building. He took a last introspective drag on his
cigarette, thinking about being unable to put off Mic and being unwilling to forget about the girl. He flicked out the
coal and field stripped the butt before gathering his books and heading for his car feeling more than a little pathetic.
The few beers that he had allowed as token tribute to a friendship
that never was began an ordeal he couldn't end. So it was that Richard found himself a week later in the college cafeteria
enduring one of Mic's interminable war stories when the girl and her Hispanic friend took a table nearby. When he let
his eyes wander toward them, Mic picked up on it immediately.
"Sweet looking piece," he whispered. "Know her?"
"Uh, no. Never met either one of them."
"Come on then."
Mic was moving toward the girls' table before Richard could stop him.
It was hardly the way he wanted to meet the girl, but Mic had taken charge in his usual to-hell-with-it way, and all Richard
could do was follow his lead. He braced himself for a chilly and permanent rebuff, but somehow Mic pulled it off.
Before he knew what was happening, they were seated at the table and talking to the girls. It turned out that her name
was Jill Belbenoit, the first letter of which she gave a sibilant pronunciation as in je ne sais quoi, the only French
phrase he knew. Her friend was Marta Florez.
"I've seen you at the bookstore, haven't I?" Jill asked, addressing Richard politely although he
could see that she had taken an instant interest in Mic.
"Yeah," he stammered. "I was picking up some stuff for my criminology class.
I remember seeing you."
"You
are a graduate student?"
"Just
getting a late start . . . went into the Marines . . . right out of high school."
"Yes, I can see you as a soldier," she said before turning
to Mic. "Are you also an ex-Marine?"
"You never stop being a Marine. They just make you stop wearing the uniform when you leave the
Corps," he said with an easy smile. "Ricky and I were in together---put our lives on hold, you know.
But a guy does his thing for his country. Now, we're all square with Uncle Sam and back---trying to make up for lost
time."
He nodded toward Richard.
"My friend heard you speak earlier and
thinks you might be Canadian. Is he right?"
"You heard me speak?" she asked, turning to Richard.
"Yeah. The other day when I passed you in front of Academic Hall,"
he said.
"I am French,"
she said. "Marta is from Merida---"
"The Paris of the Yucatan, right?" interrupted Mic.
"Yes," said Marta, obviously impressed that an American would know such
a thing.
Mic flashed his smile.
"And what brings you fine ladies to a place like this?" he asked.
The trite inanity of the line made Richard groan inwardly.
"I'm ‘discovering my roots' so to speak," said Jill.
"Grandfather was American."
"And
I am improving my English," explained her friend.
Richard
let Mic carry the conversation after that---not that he had a choice. Mic surprised him with his charm, and plainly
impressed Jill. He thought, with some satisfaction, that Mic had miscalculated when he began telling war stories, but
she leaned forward when Mic mentioned the Somalian famine relief expedition.
"Really? I am considering writing my thesis on European colonial administration
in Africa," she said enthusiastically. "Although that will be a year from now."
"From what I saw, the Europeans should never have left," said
Mic. "At least not Somalia."
"But
how can you say that?" she objected. "Your own country was once a European colony. Should the British
still be here?"
He frowned,
shaking his head slowly.
"Different
circumstances, I think. I don't know much history---and nothing at all about African politics, but those people didn't
need anything so much as a decent government to end the chaos."
"They were starving," she objected with youthful idealism. "In
such a situation societal order is bound to break down."
"It was a man-made famine," he countered. "Their so-called leaders did it to
them. There was plenty of food in the country, but the government couldn't, or just wouldn't distribute it. Damned
thieves were everywhere. Even we had trouble getting food to the people who really needed it. Whole convoys got
hijacked, and except for the ones who were supposed to get the food, no one seemed to give a damn."
"But, do you not see? That is a direct result of the Europeans
destroying the native social order. When they were given their independence in the 1960's, most Africans were no more
prepared for it than the Russians were when they suddenly plunged into democracy and the market economy. The Europeans
deliberately kept the Africans from learning to rule themselves."
"The Africans had almost forty years in Somalia to get their act together,"
said Mic. "It didn't seem to make a whole hell of a lot of difference as far as I could see."
"Before colonization Africa was organized
along tribal lines," she explained patiently. "Today's so-called countries are just collections of
arbitrarily drawn areas created by whites for their own administrative convenience just like in the Middle East. They
had little appreciation for the native societies. Had they organized the countries along tribal lines, perhaps things
might be different."
Mic held
up his hands in a gesture of surrender.
"I
can't argue political theory with you, Jill. All I know is that when a Mom is trying to figure out how to keep
her baby from starving, it don't mean jack whether the government is run by black natives or white foreigners. Unless
I'm wrong, there weren't any wide-spread famines in Africa when the Europeans were running things."
"You are excusing over a century of colonial exploitation by saying
that the blacks are incapable of governing themselves?"
"No. But Kipling once spoke of the white man's burden, that he had a moral responsibility
to uplift his little brown brothers. Now wait---I know how that sounds. But Kipling was no fool, and
I believe there is a responsibility the more advanced civilizations have to shoulder. Once we destroy
a Stone Age people's culture, once we yank them into the modern world, we ought to at least stick around long enough to make
sure they've got the hang of it."
"That
is sophistry," she said.
"Again,
that is theory. But after what I saw such arguments seem meaningless. What I saw---and I'm not exaggerating here---it
was enough to make God cry."
Subdued
by his apparent sincerity, she hesitated to rebut.
"I wanted to help, Jill. But nothing we did seemed to make one damned bit of difference,"
he said earnestly. "I remember . . . we came into this village once. The stink was almost . . . well it was
the smell of death . . . and . . . the place looked deserted. We were searching the hooches and I found a dead woman
on the floor, still holding her baby in her arms. Only it didn't look like any baby you ever saw . . . all gray . .
. eyes sunk in their sockets . . . arms and legs looked like parchment stretched over pencils."
Richard stared at the table, finding it difficult to believe that what
he was hearing was actually coming from the lips of Mic Boyd.
"We raised rabbits when I was a kid," Mic said softly, as if the memory had carried him
far away. "I remember going out to feed them one winter morning and I found this newborn bunny lying half-frozen
on the wire floor of its cage. It must have held onto its mother's nipple when she hopped from the box sometime in the
night. The poor thing was barely moving . . . kinda in slow motion, opening its mouth like it was trying to speak .
. . only no sound came out. That's what this kid reminded me of. I held it in my hands and I remember thinking
that it was moving like some toy with its batteries running down."
He paused to sip his soft drink.
"Then it just---stopped moving. I've never felt so helpless in my whole damned
life. After that, all I wanted was to get the hell out of there because if we couldn't stop something like that from
happening---well, what the hell good were we doing?"
"How horrible," said Marta.
"Hey. We got to go home where no one ever thinks about being hungry. Those poor
people were living in hell. They still are."
Jill nodded somberly. Then she looked at her watch.
"Oh! We must go or be late for class," she said, hurriedly gathering
her books.
She stood. Before
turning to go, she favored Mic with a smile. "It's been very interesting talking to you---both of you," she
added, nodding quickly to Richard.
"Hey
don't run off," Mic said. "There are plenty of classes. Where are you gonna find a couple of old Marine
veterans?"
Jill brushed back
her hair as she clutched her books to her breast.
"Perhaps we shall meet again."
"I certainly hope so, Miss Belbenoit," he said.
Richard lit a cigarette. "I never realized you were so sensitive," he said sourly.
"She believed that crap about the starving
baby," snorted Mic with a laugh. "Give me one of those."
Richard slid the pack and his Zippo across the table.
"Gotta tell them what they want to hear, Ricky. Little Miss
Liberal's heart bleeds when it comes to the Africans," he said, emphasizing the last word mockingly.
He blew twin plumes of smoke through his nostrils.
"She sucked it right up, Old Buddy.
She'll be doing anything I want."
Mic
paused, savoring the thought.
"I
could see it in her eyes as soon as I sat down."
Richard felt like putting a first in Mic's smug face, but he had no claim on the girl. He should never
have brought her to Mic's attention.
"She'll
take some work though," continued Mic. "Uptight intellectuals like her got to fool themselves that
there's more to it than your garden variety fornication. That girl's got to do the calculus---get the precise
angle before she decides to spread them."
Richard smiled, adhering to the adolescent male code that the situation would have called for had they indeed
have been adolescents, but inwardly he fumed---as much at the girl as at Mic. She had bought into the fake sensitivity
and had swallowed his lies. The worst of it was that at the back of his mind hovered the suspicion that Mic may have
correctly evaluated her.
During the winter, however, Mic's crude appraisal
proved not just wrong, but laughably so. Richard saw that she was not only smart and witty, but also compassionate to
a fault and somewhat reserved in an old fashioned way. Neither did she give herself to Mic as he had predicted.
Either that or Mic was keeping it to himself, which was hardly likely. Richard's initial attraction to her grew into
admiration and more. Unfortunately, she still seemed captivated by the man he was beginning to loathe. Yet he
continued to play the part of buddy because it allowed him to be near her. He clung to the periphery, hating his inability
to walk away, and unable to feel differently about her. What he was doing had gone beyond the pathetic to the grotesque.
Somalia at least had been fading, bothering
him only in half remembered dreams that were unsettling, but manageable. That changed suddenly, and for no apparent
reason one afternoon as they all sat in a dark corner at Moon Pie's drinking beer and waiting for pizza. A
flashback sandbagged him while wide-awake. Mic had paused during one of his stories, took a drag on his cigarette, and
winked at Richard before delivering the point of some story that Richard hadn't been listening to.
A glowing cigarette. That smile. Suddenly Richard
was four years and half a world away: Wide terror-filled eyes in a black face---faint gunfire off in the distance---the
smell of sweat and urine.
He
managed to shake it off that afternoon, but the pall remained. And later that night he awoke in cold sweat. The
boy soldier had come again. Unable to stay in bed with his ghosts so near, he fled to the bathroom.
It wasn't my fault, he said to himself as he splashed cold
water on his face. I didn't know.
That . . . doesn't . . . matter, came the answer.
He looked into the mirror---into his own unforgiving eyes.
"This is ridiculous," he said in
disgust.
He went back to bed determined once again to leave
the past behind by sheer dint of will. For better or worse what was done was done---and besides, he had done nothing
intentionally. It had just happened. But ghosts are not so easily banished especially in the twilight drowsiness
preceding sleep. Later, he couldn't decide if he had dreamed it or was just remembering.
The minaret towered above a muddy street lined with the shards of
shattered tree trunks. The neighborhood retained just enough residual beauty to hint at happier times in this unhappy
place, though it was hard to believe that Mogadishu had ever been very happy. The squad moved cautiously toward the
next intersection, hemmed in by pockmarked off-white stucco buildings standing shoulder to shoulder. They passed beneath
narrow balconies overhanging the debris-strewn street. Each dark doorway and broken window on the eerily silent street
was a potential sniper's blind.
A
single shot split the air, followed by a fading zing of ricochet off concrete. He dove through an open door and rolled
over and over, not stopping until his back was against the solid masonry of the outside wall. He was shaking.
There was something he knew he should do, but his mind refused to work. Go to the doorway? Scan for the sniper?
Lay down covering fire for the others to advance? But he only sat, back pressed tightly to the wall and shivered---he
had run, and now he was hiding.
After that night the memories struck at will.
He dreamed them while asleep and relived them while awake. Any little thing could be their portal. While he sat
at a stoplight one morning, the spatter of raindrops transported him.
A naked little boy, his brown belly distended by starvation, ran through the rain
and mud between hemispherical thatched huts that had been improved and made more watertight by a miscellany of mismatched
polyurethane sheeting and tarps lashed down haphazardly with various sizes and colors of rope, wire, and twine. Litter
was strewn amid the huts, paper, discarded cans, and unidentifiable trash imported from outside the world of these poor people.
The sight of the huts that the ingenious natives had covered with scraps of plastic looked unbearably squalid.
They came out into the mud and rain, mobbing
the Marines. The false dawn of their hope died to dark resignation. The Americans had no food for them, and had
little hope of recovering the stolen supplies.
The long ago failure seemed Richard's own. He, who had never missed a meal in his life unless to had
chosen to do so, had let people die. It was not the worst of his crimes, but not the least either. Another image
came, paralyzing him until an angry horn got him moving through the intersection.
Fifty or so thin children squatted on their haunches in the dust, waiting to
be fed. A gaunt Somali man tapped a little boy with a long crooked switch. He rose and was herded by the switch-wielding
man to a relief worker dishing out food. A measured amount was placed in the child's bowl. Herded back to his
place he squatted on his haunches again and began to eat the meager meal with his fingers. The next child, a girl, was
too weak to rise and was passed over.
Richard had not fallen into a hole. He
had been gradually and inexorably sucked into it, and now he could not escape the vortex. Sleepless night merged into
listless day, and listless day into sleepless night until he lost the energy to go to classes and took no pleasure in either
companionship or solitude. He surrendered to the ghosts and spent more and more time alone with them. The depression
had all but ended his limited social life when the world turned again, and he started on a road that would teach him that
not all horrible things came from the past.
It
started with an unexpected call from Jill Belbenoit.
