“The what?”
“The leprosarium, Tanner cat. Like a hospital for people with leprosy.”
“I know what a leprosarium is, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, don’t get shirty, man. You asked so I told you. The idea is we spend today getting ready and tomorrow we hit the place sometime in the afternoon. We’ll be headin’ downstream, so that takes the pressure off. It ain’t all that far anyway. We hit the leprosarium-”
“Wait a minute. We hit the leprosarium? We kill doctors and nurses and, God help them, lepers?”
“That’s the drill, baby.” He furrowed his brow, scratched his head. “I get your drift, Tanner cat. I truly do.”
“Great.”
“I do. It don’t seem right, killing the lepers, wrecking the leprosarium. It don’t seem right at all.” He sighed mightily. “But to tell you the truth, I don’t see what choice we got open. We maybe can escape when the right time comes, but we sure can’t manage it now. And tomorrow’s the day we hit the lepers. So what else we gonna do?”
Chapter 11
Fat black flies buzzed in the reeds that lined the riverbank. Bees worried the trumpet-shaped blood-hued blossoms of a puri-puri vine, which in turn worried the trunk of a stately wali tree. To our right, one of the younger members of the company flipped pebbles into the sluggish brown water.
I squatted and explored myself for lice. I felt as sluggish and brown as the Yellowfoot River. It was noon, and it was hot, and after a rough morning’s march to the river we were playing the usual game of hurry up and wait. I stifled a yawn and scratched an itch and tried to remember what coffee tasted like.
Bowman was giving Plum a hard time. “You sure do look like a boy,” I heard him say, “but I know better, don’t I? Because I had a long uninterrupted look at you at that mission, Plum kitten, and that wasn’t no boy I was lookin’ at.”
I don’t know whether Plum blushed or blanched or what. It was impossible to tell beneath the coloring.
“And I sure did like your color, Plum kitten. Earl Grey tea with sweet cream in it. That’s rare, that combination. Black is beautiful, but brown can stick around when it looks like you.”
Plum looked extremely uncomfortable. He was bugging her, and she didn’t like it, but at the same time she wasn’t prepared to reply sharply or get up and walk away. He had that effect on people. And I suppose, too, that in part she gloried in the flattery. It would have been extraordinary if she hadn’t.
I found it annoying, and not merely out of simple jealousy combined with my own protective feelings toward the girl. These factors were there, but so was the conviction that our situation called for more urgent matters than verbal seduction. In less than twenty-four hours we were scheduled to participate in an act of barbarism unparalleled in our experience and unexceeded in human history. The idea of depriving a gaggle of wretched lepers of their few remaining organs was utterly appalling. And the knowledge that every passing hour increased the likelihood that we, too, would be similarly deprived did nothing much for my state of mind either.
I said, “Look, we just don’t have time to waste. We have to cut out of here before that raid.”
“Can’t be done, Tanner cat.”
“It has to be done.”
“During, maybe. If we run into a little resistance at the leper place there might be enough going on so that the three of us could shove one of the dugouts back into the water and get clear before they knew we were gone. Not much chance the lepers will put up a big fight though, is there? Some of the staff will have guns for defense against animals, but the way this gang fights they’ll be out of the play before they get to their guns, and what are the lepers goin’ to do? Beat us off with their stumps? No, tomorrow night’s the time. Everybody be drunk and passed out, and we can slip a boat into the river and be miles away before they know we’re gone.”
“Why can’t we do that tonight?”
“No chance.”
“Why not?”
“Because they won’t be drinking tonight, man. And when they don’t drink they don’t do anything sloppy.” He let out a long sigh. “Used to be different before I came along. They would all sleep at once, didn’t even post a single damned sentry. I changed all that. Taught ’em to post a dozen men at a time on two-hour watches. They ring the whole camp and keep in touch with birdcall hoots.”
“You taught them that, did you?”
He nodded.
“And taught them to fight dirty.”
“Well, if you can’t lick ’em, you join ’em.”
“There’s a difference between joining them and turning them into a professional army.” I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, opening them at the sound of a giggle and a slap. Plum had giggled, and Bowman had been slapped. I did my best to ignore this.
I said, “All right. We’ve got to make our move tonight. It may not be as hard as you think. For one thing, they don’t expect anything. I don’t mean to be critical, but these troops of yours don’t seem geared for long-range planning, Sam. They aren’t the thinking type.”
“True. They live in the moment.”
“In the now. Exactly. Which means that it might be difficult to take them with a headlong rush or a sudden surprise attack, but that calculated subterfuge might have a chance.”
“In other words,” said Plum, “we con them.”
“Or in still better words,” said Bowman, “we think white. We fake out the trusting natives when they least expect it.”
He sounded bitter. “Maybe it offends your black pride,” I said, “but try to live with it. These are desperate times. After all, the odds are something like fifty to three.”
“Two.”
“Huh?”
“Fifty to two,” Bowman said. “You won’t be playing.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Well, she told me last night, man, but I was saving it for a surprise. Sheena, man. Like Uncle Sam in all them recruitin’ posters. She wants you.”
I blinked.
“Tonight,” he said, grinning pleasantly. “You and Sheena, Tanner cat. It’s your turn in the barrel.”
An hour before sundown Samuel Lonestar Bowman and I made our way over a stretch of reasonably clear ground to the site where Sheena’s tent was pitched. Two sentries crouched out in front. They reminded me of the lions at the New York Public Library. One of them was whittling a branch. His knife had a sharply curved blade, and looked menacing. The other also held a knife. The blade was longer and straighter, and he wasn’t carving anything with it. He was just holding it and looking dangerous.
Bowman spoke to the carver, reeling off several ornate sentences of gibberish. The sentry did not appear at first to have heard. He went on whittling for a few moments. Then he straightened up abruptly, put down the hunk of wood, and tucked a knife into the waistband of his trousers. He went into Sheena’s tent. The other sentry contrived to look twice as menacing as usual in order to take up the slack.
The carver reappeared wordlessly, dropped to a crouch, picked up the chunk of wood, and whipped out his knife. He resumed carving, ignoring us completely. This was evidently his way of approving our credentials. Alone I might have been a little diffident about brushing on past him, but Sam led the way and I only had to follow.
Inside, a candle glowed to illuminate the interior of the tent. It was more spacious than I would have guessed, and far more elaborately appointed. When you considered that the tent was a mobile unit, taken up when the troupe broke camp and pitched anew when the day’s march ended, it seemed surprisingly comfortable. It was light-tight, and it had room enough for a lush bed of straw and leaves on which our matriarch was doing her supine white goddess number. Her platinum-gold hair cascaded over bare shoulders. Animal skins covered her breasts and lower body. One leg was extended, the other doubled up, as in Italian paintings of orgiastic pagan deities.