Twilight (5 page)

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Authors: Brendan DuBois

BOOK: Twilight
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I rubbed my hands together, not sure what to say next, and Jean-Paul said, “I know your father. How is he?”
“All right, I suppose. Where did you know him from?”
“In Mogadishu.”
“Oh,” I said, not wanting to say any more.
Jean-Paul dropped the cigarette butt on the brown grass, ground it out with his boot heel. “If you write to him, tell him I said hello, will you?”
“If I write, I will.”
“Another thing—but not to be mentioned in any letter to him.”
“All right,” I said.
“The thing that happened to him after Mogadishu … Not his fault. For what it's worth, I think what happened to him was unfair. All right?”
“Sure,” I said. “But you'll excuse me if I don't agree with you. It was his fault. From start to finish. He was the CO. Period.”
“And that will have to be discussed at another time,” Jean-Paul said,
opening the door. “Look. Take some more time off. Go for a little walk. Keep in view of the farmhouse and Charlie and don't go into the woods. But clear your head some, all right?”
“Sure,” I said, and when the door slammed behind him, I looked out again to the little dirt driveway and Charlie still standing there, our coffee-drinking sentinel.
 
 
I FOLLOWED JEAN-PAUL'S
suggestion and got up and walked around the muddy yard, looking at the empty clotheslines, the thin ropes moving slightly in the breeze, and at an overturned tricycle, and a picnic table with peeling green paint. The woods were mostly pine, about fifty meters away from the rear of the house, and it just seemed right to me that the men with guns had come out of these woods sometime during the night, for that was when they preferred to work. At night, when everything was dark and everything was permissible, especially if you were from far away, you were hungry, and you wanted to take what you didn't have.
I went behind the barn and saw that the fog had burned off so much that I could make out a rise in the land, some distance away, and two other farmhouses on the crest of the ridge. Woodsmoke eddied up from chimneys at each of the houses, and I wondered who was in those two homes. Were they local refugees, back home now because of the accord and because of the UN force? Or were they survivors of what had happened, only now emerging from root cellars and hidden shelters in the forest, having been terrorized here after fleeing one of the big cities?
Or maybe they were collaborators or former members of the militias, who had kept watch on their neighbors all these years so that when the night fell after last spring's attack and the knives and guns came out they could so efficiently do their work. How could they still be there, I thought, just hundreds of meters away from this massacre site? Hadn't they seen the men with guns come across the fields, or drive up in pickup trucks and cars? Hadn't they heard the shouts, the screams, the gunshots? Hadn't they seen the muzzle flash of gunfire, the flames coming out of the windows, the smoke billowing from the house?
Hadn't they noticed a damn thing?
Out behind the barn the tilled earth stretched away, and I walked for a while in the muddy soil, remembering again the farms back home in Ontario, farms larger and better maintained than this one. But, even then, I felt a pang of homesickness as I trudged across the field, trying to clear my head. My fingers ached from working my equipment and my head ached from the helmet and my shoulders and back ached from the body armor,
and for about the thousandth time since I came in-country I wondered why in hell I had volunteered.
Then I tripped and fell into the mud.
I stood up. “Moron,” I said to myself, and I looked down, wondering what I had tripped over. Something in the dirt. I nudged it with the edge of my boot.
A woman's shoe.
I stepped back as if the damn thing was electrified. I looked around this part of the field and saw that something was wrong, very wrong.
The dirt didn't make sense.
All across the field were muddy furrows, running straight and true from the rear of the barn to the nearest fence. But in this place, where I had tripped, the dirt was different.
It had been disturbed, and recently.
I turned and ran back to the farmhouse. Halfway there my chinstrap came loose and I had to hold on to my helmet with a free hand while the mud stuck to my racing feet.
 
 
PETER FROWNED AS
he moved the thin metal probe up and down in the dirt. “Looks like we've got something here, Jean-Paul. Dirt's moving around easy enough, and I'm getting soft resistance at the other end.”
Jean-Paul had another cigarette between his fingers. “Good. Miriam?”
She was on her knees in the mud, gently probing with a flexible thin hose that she dipped in and out of the dirt. The clear plastic tube ran back to a small open case, which she examined. There were dials and digital readouts and I stood there, still breathing heavily from my burdened run back to the farmhouse. Karen and Sanjay and even Charlie were standing nearby, in a semicircle. Karen and Sanjay looked angry. Only Charlie looked calm, but with him I would never think that I could guess what was going on behind those quiet eyes.
“Decomposition gases,” Miriam said. “There's decaying flesh under here. Less than a meter, I'd guess.”
Another nod from Jean-Paul. “Very good. Peter, are there shovels in that barn over there?”
Peter stood there, the probe resting on his shoulder. He was staring down at where Miriam was working.
“Peter?” Jean-Paul asked. “Did you not hear me?”
At first Peter's voice was so quiet that I almost didn't hear him. “ … Difference does it make, Jean-Paul? You know why we're here, why
another half-dozen teams are out wandering the countryside. Looking for Site A. Does this look like Site A? Does it?”
Jean-Paul took a drag from his cigarette. “No, it is not Site A. But it is something. We will do what we are tasked to do, and continue our work.”
“But it's a waste of time!” Peter said, and I could make out Karen and Sanjay nodding in agreement. “We've got a week to find Site A, and we shouldn't be wasting our resources here.”
Jean-Paul's voice was quiet and firm. “You'll have us leave them here, forgotten and in the muck?”
Karen spoke up in Peter's defense. “No, we won't forget them. Make a report and list this site for further excavation. We should leave here and get to work on finding Site A. This is just one more farm family, Jean-Paul. You know how important Site A is to the High Commissioner.”
Jean-Paul looked at all of us through his black-rimmed glasses. “Yes, I do. Perhaps better than the rest of you. And if any of you are someday assigned to supervise a field team, then you can do as you please. But
this
field team is under
my
direction. And I direct that we begin the excavation. Now. Understood? No more time for questions. No more time for back talk. Or you will be relieved of your duties and will be sent out on the next chartered flight to your respective home country. Understood?”
I wasn't sure but I think Charlie was enjoying this little demonstration of the UN in action, for he turned away for a moment, as if to hide the amusement on his face. Peter muttered something under his breath, jammed the thin metal probe back into the ground, and strode over to the barn. After a minute or two he came back, carrying two shovels under his arm. He tossed one at me—which I caught, thankfully—and glared at me.
“You found this spot,” he said. “Least you could do is start digging.”
I said nothing, just took the shovel and got to work. A few seconds later Peter joined me.
 
 
THE DIGGING WAS
hard going, even though it was clear that the soil had been freshly turned over. The earth was thick and muddy and wet, and large chunks of it stuck to the shovel blade. I found that after just a few minutes of work I was sweating underneath the body armor and my helmet. My hands began to get sore, and the sounds—the sickening squishing and plopping noises as chunks of mud were piled up to the side—were obscene. As Peter and I dug we kept quiet. Then Karen and Sanjay went to one of the Toyota Land Cruisers and came back, each carrying a long dark
object, which they unrolled on the wet ground, speaking not a word. Rubberized body bags, in two sizes, for adults or children. How thoughtful.
I dug and dug, my wrists and hands aching, and I wished for a break. But I wasn't about to give Peter the satisfaction of seeing me give up first, so I concentrated on the digging and every now and then raised my eyes to see what was going on around us. I saw Karen and Sanjay laying out the body bags. I saw Miriam looking at the readouts on her black box. I saw Jean-Paul and Charlie talking to each other in low voices. I saw another flock of ravens going overhead, croaking at us as they flew to sit in the nearby pine trees, to watch what we were uncovering for them.
“Time for a break,” Peter gasped, and I shoveled two more loads of muck out before agreeing.
“Sure,” I said, feeling good that I had outlasted our moody Brit. “Time for a break.”
Peter got out of the hole, walked to the side of the barn and leaned back against the dark wood. I stayed in the hole, toying with the soil. Miriam came over and said, “How are you doing, Samuel?”
“I've had better days,” I said.
“Look, you see that?” she asked.
“What?”
“Those white streaks, in the soil. Not good, not good at all.”
“What do you mean?”
She shivered and then hugged herself. “Lime. Helps speed up decomposition. The militias do that to hide the evidence.”
I suppose I should have waited for Peter to return, but Miriam was looking at me and I felt like I had to do something. I started digging again and then it was as though the earth beneath me belched, for something foul and sour started wafting up. I gagged and clambered out of the trench, and Miriam called out, “Jean-Paul, we're getting close now, very close.”
She reached into her coat pocket, took out a small container of a white salve. She unscrewed the top and said, “Over here, Samuel. Just for a moment. For the smell.”
Miriam delicately inserted her index finger into the open jar and pulled out a dollop of the salve on the end of her finger. She gingerly smeared the gunk on my upper lip, right under both nostrils, and a blast of peppermint seemed to roar right through my nose and into my head. I looked at the jar. Vicks VapoRub. She managed a smile and I smiled back at her, standing in a muddy field with the odor of decaying flesh now all around us, and the moment was so intimate that I wished I didn't have to move.
But now Jean-Paul was there and he said, “Peter! Please join us.”
I grabbed the shovel and went back into the hole, feeling emboldened
now. I didn't know who I was going to uncover, what I would find or how I would react, but Miriam was there, Miriam had prepped me. It would be all right. I carried on digging, the stench now trying to overpower the peppermint still wafting through my nostrils, and then I winced and my stomach heaved as the shovel struck something soft and yielding.
Now Peter was there, saying, “Hold on, try this,” as he passed down a long-handled spade. Everyone was clustered around the hole, blocking most of the light, but I didn't care. I was the center of attention, I was doing something real, doing more than just record words or images, and I kept those thoughts in the forefront of my mind as I moved the spade around carefully, scraping away more of the dirt. I silently said a prayer for whoever I was uncovering, and I pledged the pledge of the young and innocent, that I would help make the guilty pay for what they had done to the people in this little farmhouse.
“I've got a head here,” I said. “Give me some more light, please.”
The crew backed away and I felt an irrational sense of accomplishment, because they were doing as I requested. I worked on as painstakingly as I could, uncovering the eyes, the long heavy nose, the rest of the short-bearded face, and—
I said something loud, dropped the spade and recoiled, trying to get out of the hole. I fell back into the mud. The crew clustered around, looking at what I had uncovered as Peter grinned down at me.
“Congrats, Sammy,” he said in a sarcastic tone that I didn't like. “You've dug up a bloody cow.”
W
e made our camp that night in the dirt turnaround in front of the burned-out farmhouse. By the time we had gotten out of that muddy field and had cleaned up and established what was really there—two dead cows and a calf—dusk had come, chilling the air. Charlie told us it was too dangerous to ride back to the motel and we were too tired to complain that much. Sanjay said, “I thought this area had been pacified,” but Charlie, who was cleaning his weapon on the hood of one of the Land Cruisers, replied, “Daylight you can pretend all you want about how safe things are out here, but I don't like the dark. We start out now, we'll be in darkness in less than five minutes, going back with headlights and taillights bright and shiny, telling the world our business. Sorry, Sanjay, that ain't gonna happen.”
So we moved the vehicles around so that they were in a triangular formation, to provide some semblance of protection, and the tents and mattresses and sleeping bags were brought out. Nobody suggested spending the night inside the farmhouse or the barn, and I didn't find that surprising. While we were unpacking one of the Land Cruisers, Peter leaned in and said, “We could have had proper beds and hot water tonight if it hadn't been for you and your bloody dead cows.” I pretended not to hear him and took out a bundle of aluminum tent poles.
The tents were set up near the Land Cruisers and dinner was a quiet affair, with Peter muttering about how bloody unfair it was to have to cook supper when he had been digging out three stinking cows just a few hours earlier. His attitude was reflected in the food: sticky pasta and lukewarm tomato sauce, eaten off metal plates. I sat by myself, leaning up against one of the Land Cruiser's tires, exhausted. My back ached, my wrists throbbed and it hurt even to move my fingers. A small fire was set up in the middle of our little camp, and Charlie was in charge of it tonight, making sure it didn't get too large, too bright. It was nothing like the cheerful blaze we'd had the night before in the motel parking lot. It was a tentative, frightened fire that didn't do much except light up the immediate surroundings.
Jean-Paul broke away from the group, came over to me and sat down. He passed me a small metal cup and I sipped it, and started coughing. “What the—”
“Some cognac, that is all,” he said. His voice had a touch of humor in it. “Everyone gets some cognac tonight, no matter what the High Commissioner thinks about consuming alcohol while we are working. We worked pretty hard today, especially you.”
“Thanks—I think.”
“What do you mean, ‘think'?”
“I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, that's all,” I said. “Peter and the rest of the team look like they'd get me on the next airplane to Toronto if they had their choice. All that work this afternoon, over three dead cows. And to top it off we get to spend the night here, instead of at the motel.”
Jean-Paul said, “We had no way of knowing what was in that gravesite. We would have been remiss to drive away and leave it. And don't be so sure that we would have gone back to the motel. Charlie might not have allowed it. So we were doing our job here today, and doing it well. You have no reason to feel bad. Tomorrow we will keep on working.”
“Site A, am I right?”
I could sense his shoulders shrug. “Among other things. We will look for Site A, sure, but we will do other work as well. We should not flit from village to village, town to town, without having better information. And the information we have about Site A is nearly nil. But unfortunately there is plenty of work to be done up here. Just be grateful we are not down south in Manhattan, eh?”
I shivered, thinking of what had happened there. “You're right. I'm glad I'm not in Manhattan.”
“So true,” Jean-Paul said. “It is so bad down south that it is said you can smell the bodies from many kilometers away, even before you get to
the new Ground Zero. Be thankful you are here. At least the air is clean, for the most part.”
I finished off the cup of cognac and passed it back to Jean-Paul. “Thanks.”
“You are so very welcome.”
 
 
SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS THAT
night were standard, as when we'd camped out before. Miriam and Karen shared a tent, while Sanjay and I shared another one. Peter and Jean-Paul shared the third one, while Charlie made do on his own, like he always did. As far as tent-mates went, Sanjay was all right. He didn't snore, though sometimes his legs did kick around a bit as if he was restless at night—dreaming, I guess, about far-off India or nearby Karen. He had an irritating habit of getting up early, murmuring to himself and then getting dressed in his sleeping bag before barreling out of the tent as though he was late for a train. But tonight we both crawled into our sleeping bags and murmured a “good night” to each other without saying much else. I curled up on my side on the thin mattress pad and tried to sleep, still wearing my pants and shirt and socks. The sleeping bag was clammy and cold, and I curled up, trying to warm myself, knowing that the darkness was out there, like it always was.
But I was too tired to sleep. My body ached and my back and my hands and my neck were stiff. All I could see in my mind was the face of that poor dumb cow, slaughtered for who knew what reason, and then probably buried by some kind neighbors who were tired of seeing the bloated bodies slowly decompose in the field. As for the people who lived here, who knew? Perhaps the documentation work that I had done today would end up helping some family in some other country, looking through the pictures of the house and the clothing, to determine what had happened to their loved ones.
I turned over in my bag, stared at the blank tent wall. I blinked my eyes and tried to think of back home, safe and cool Toronto, tried to think of something that would soothe my mind and ease me into sleep, but that didn't work either. I wanted to think about the
Star
and my buds there and the nightlife on the weekends and clubbing in the John Richmond district. But instead Father barreled into my thoughts, and in my mind's eye I saw the red face, the white handlebar mustache and gray-stubbled head, and heard the comment, always the same comment: “Screwed up again, eh, boy? Not going far in this world if you keep screwin' up like that.” Good old Father, who had wanted his son to join the family business—the Canadian military—but the boy had disappointed him by entering journalism instead.
Sanjay moved again, then there came the stealthy noise of him trying to unzip his sleeping bag. I stayed motionless, not wanting him to know that I wasn't asleep. With the sleeping bag undone, he loosened the tent flap and a blast of cold air blew in as he went outside. I stayed there, curled up, wondering if he was finding a tree to water or going to get something to drink. But why move so quietly? To be considerate of his tent-mate? Not likely.
Then, from the tent nearby, came the low sound of laughter, followed by a giggle. Oh. But why not? Even in the midst of death and destruction, life—such as it was—went on. I rolled over and got a small battery-powered lantern, which I switched on. It emitted a small beam of light, just enough to read by, and I felt around in my rucksack for one of my two books. Not being in the mood to read Orwell's essays about the foibles of mankind, I decided to read instead about humanity's adventurous spirit and found myself flipping through the pages of
The Green Hills of Earth
.
Just after I'd finished a short story about a couple from Luna City who decided to return to Earth to live—with disastrous results as they reacquainted themselves with smog, overcrowding and poor plumbing—the tent flap suddenly opened and a woman's voice said, “Samuel? Still awake?”
I dropped the book, moved the lantern about. There was Miriam, her hair hanging loose, wearing a blue down vest and red flannel nightgown, on her hands and knees.
“Sure,” I said, sitting up. “What's going on?”
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.”
She said something in Dutch and came in on all fours. I glanced sheepishly away from her suddenly exposed cleavage, and then she rolled over and laid down. “There. Sorry, Samuel, I am a grumpy woman tonight, that's what's going on.”
“What's … oh, I'm sorry.”
Miriam rested the back of her head on her hands and looked up at the ceiling of the tent. “Working with such a small team, when you're one of just two women, you try to look out for each other. Men have different ways of working, different ways of looking at things. So if you're one of a pair of women, you help each other out and do little favors for each other. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said. “Like asking you to be out of your tent for a while, so that … well, so that someone can come by for a visit.”
Miriam laughed. “That's a polite way of saying it. A Canadian way, perhaps. Coming by for a visit. No mind, for what you said is true. Earlier Karen had asked if I would leave the tent at a certain time, for bathroom
functions perhaps, so that she could entertain a guest. But now he has been there for over an hour, and I'm cold and tired and I think they've fallen asleep in there, and I'll be damned if I'll go knock on that tent to ask permission to go back in to my own bed.”
“Then why don't you stay here and take his bed?” I said.
She rolled over. “Thank you. I was hoping you'd say that.”
So Miriam threw open Sanjay's sleeping bag and rolled herself in, and when I was sure she was settled I put my book away and switched off the lantern. I lay still there in the darkness, listening to her breathing, so close to me. I wondered what her hair would feel like in my fingers, what her flesh would taste like against my mouth. Miriam stirred and said, “It was a long day today, wasn't it?”
“That it was,” I said.
She sighed. “You think we'd be happy, finding three dead cows in a field and not a mother and a father and their children. But no, we're not happy. A hell of a thing, isn't it, to hope to find dead human bodies in the mud? But that's what we do. Even here, in this place. This is what we do.”
“So far, it doesn't seem like we're doing much.”
“True. But we do what we can.”
It was comforting to lie there in the darkness, talking to Miriam. “To what end? To deter future gunmen from slaughtering their neighbors during bad times? It hasn't happened yet, either in this century or the last. And if it can happen here, in the homeland of the sole superpower …”
There was a rustling noise as she rolled over on her side. “Ah, but how do you know? True, there have been killing fields aplenty these past decades, from Cambodia to the Congo to here. But if we hadn't taken the time to prosecute the criminals, identify and bury the dead, and comfort the living, perhaps more gunmen would have risen up to kill their neighbors. In England. In France. Perhaps in my own country.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But sometimes it just seems futile.”
Another sigh. “You're getting too cynical, Samuel. Too cynical for such a young man.”
“I'm not that young.”
Another rustle of cloth. “You're right. You are not too young, chronologically. But in everything else, compared to what I and the others have seen, you are still a young man.”
It was my turn to shift in my sleeping bag. “Give me time. I'll grow up.”
“Ah, this is true. You will grow up here, so fast. So fast.”
Then she yawned. “Thank you for allowing me in here. Please, I have to get to sleep, all right?”
“That's fine, Miriam. Just fine.”
Then I was surprised by her touch, just a feather glance with her fingers across my brow, as she whispered, “Good night.” I wish they had reached a few inches lower, to touch my lips at least, but luck or whatever wasn't with me tonight. I wanted so much to return the favor, maybe by gently stroking her cheek, but the events of the day crowded in upon me and I could all too easily imagine reaching out and poking her in her eye or ear. So I lay still.
I wished I could say that the rest of the night was magical, that Miriam's scent and gentle breathing relaxed and quietened me, but that didn't happen. Dear Miriam was an even more restless sleeper than Sanjay, and she snored loudly for most of the night.
But I didn't think of leaving the tent, not once.
 
 
IN THE MORNING
the lousy weather returned, penetrating drizzle accompanied by another heavy fog. By some unspoken agreement we stayed out of the house and the barn again, and ate breakfast standing up, wearing our yellow rain slickers, except for Charlie who was dressed in his Marine camouflage gear. Karen and Sanjay made a point of ignoring each other as we ate the hard rolls and drank the lukewarm tea. Peter stood beside me and said, “Who the hell do they think they are fooling?”
“Each other, maybe,” I said.
“Hah.” He slurped noisily from the metal teacup and said, “I think people up on the ridge heard those two, they rutted so much.”

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