Truth, by Omission Read online

  As we entered the outskirts of Kayonza the father finally addressed me with a jerk of his neck. “Help us move these.” He pulled the blackened tarp back and we shuffled the two dozen remaining food sacks toward the back of the truck bed. “Lay down here, tight to the front. We’ll cover you with the tarp.”

  “Thank you, but I’ll just jump off here before he stops and sees me.”

  “After he unloads these at the market he goes north on Route 5 with an empty load for another one hundred miles. You might as well stay and ride. He’ll never know.”

  The truck turned off the main road and was slowing as we approached the market ahead. I thought about jumping off but chose to stay put for the free ride farther north. I laid down with my rucksack and let them cover me with the old tarp. The father then kneeled down on top of me, trapping me under the tarp. Peeling it partially back he stuck his open palm in my face. “The other two hundred.”

  “You fucker,” I said, regretting having let my guard down to trust anyone.

  “Hey, it’s a cheap ride if you make it all the way to Nyagatare. You saw what he wanted to charge you just to come this far.”

  The truck was slowing to a stop. I reluctantly reached into my pocket and pulled out my last two hundred francs from there. He covered me back over as the truck door slammed. I could hear the boys and the father as they helped the driver unload. The bed of the truck bounced and swayed as they jumped up and down and moved the sacks around. After they had finished and the family had departed, the truck bed bumped once more. I heard the sound of footsteps approaching, and then I felt the heavy weight of a knee come down on my ribs through the tarp. The tarp pulled back and the barrel of a small revolver was pressed against my temple.

  “I told you it was one thousand francs to ride here.”

  “I haven’t got any money. Those people took everything.”

  “Give me the bag.” He reached under the tarp, yanked out my rucksack, and turned it upside down dumping out the contents on the floorboards. He easily found the five hundred francs in the bottom of the bag and the other five hundred in the side pouch.

  “Now get off my truck.”

  Crawling from under the tarp, I attempted to pick up my food, but was discouraged with a hard kick to the side of my head from his boot. Clutching the empty rucksack, I scampered down and walked backward from the truck. I kept my eyes fixed on his, having learned long ago that a dog is less likely to bite if you’re staring it down rather than turning from it. I didn’t stop watching him until he had stowed my food in the cab of his truck and parked his own ass in the seat.

  I scooped a drink from the well in the market square, then spent two hundred of my last francs, which I had hidden in my shoes, on bananas and plantains. After asking directions to Route 5, I set out on foot. There was almost no traffic on this road. It seemed that anyone who was heading to the UN camps in Tanzania was continuing straight east from Kayonza. The border was only twenty-five miles from there. But I took the road heading north, seeking territory that I was more familiar with.

  I walked the remainder of that day and then all of the next before I started to see small groups of people also walking the road north. Here and there, from out of the bush along the road, families and small bands emerged, pushed their carts through the ditch, and plodded along with the rest of us. I was healthier and better fed than most of those who came from the small villages that were tucked back into the jungle. My relatively prosperous time at the convent school was evidenced by the contrast with the swollen bellies of the children and the protruding rib cages of adults. There was a cautious camaraderie among the common travelers and a good handful of languages bantered about. Most of them I could understand well—Kinyarwanda, Swahili, a couple of the northeast dialects. A few spoke some French and a few others, Arabic. I’d had no chance to learn any Arabic in the past, and I passed time on the road learning a few words from anyone who would converse with me.

  As careful as I was about conserving my food it only lasted three days. I wasn’t sure what to do. Water was never a problem, as creeks and streams ran steadily this time of year, but food was scarce. I had seen several of the walkers selling and bartering from among their supplies and I thought of buying something from them, but after my experience in Kayonza I didn’t want anyone to know that I had any money. I certainly didn’t have anything with which to barter: shorts and a T-shirt, shoes with no socks, and an empty rucksack were all that I had.

  I walked the fourth day with no food, and on the fifth I encountered a family of eight. A father and grandfather carried dried firewood and tools on their backs, the mother and grandmother had their heads piled high, each with three large baskets stacked one on top of the other. One of the daughters, about twelve, carried a crippled young boy on her back, and a younger daughter of about seven cradled a crying infant in her arms. The children were emaciated. It took three tries at a language before they understood me.

  “Here. Put the baby in here.” I opened my rucksack and we sat the little fellow down inside it with his head sticking out the top. Then I traded the older daughter the rucksack for the crippled boy, taking him in my arms. She strapped the rucksack on her back, and we continued on our way. The father came up beside me on the road.

  “Thank you. We had no food to leave with. I don’t think my kids will make it much farther.”

  “Do you know how far to the next village?” I asked, contemplating buying something for us all.

  “There are no more villages until we get to the Bganga road, maybe two or three days’ walk yet. Soon we’ll see the vultures, though.”

  I didn’t understand his reference. “Vultures?”

  “The scavengers among men. Soon those with food will bleed the rest of us of everything we have. And when we start to fall behind, others will pick anything that is left from our carcasses.”

  He was right. Small vendors started to appear along the roadside. They hawked corn and beans and cassava and plantains. One man had three small skinned monkey carcasses, putrid and crawling with flies, which he dangled from a pole. “Fresh meat, one thousand francs apiece,” he shouted. These, like everything else, were being peddled at prices four and five times what they sold for forty miles south in Kayonza. I still didn’t want to admit I had any money, not able to trust even this starving man with his aging parents and children.

  Up ahead, a crowd was gathered on the road. Reaching the mob, I stretched to look over the tops of their heads. From there I could see that they were congregated around the same truck that I had ridden in five days earlier, and the same family that had taken my money was staging a market from the back of the truck. The truck driver lay sleeping on the grass around the front, in the shade of the cab, while the family of sellers teased the starving crowd by asking exorbitant prices for fresh fruit, cheese, and bread.

  “Look after your son.” I set down the crippled child. “I’m going to get us some food.”

  I walked to the front of the truck and then crept quietly to where the driver lay dozing. Swinging my leg back, and with all my heft, I kicked him in the side of the head as hard as I could, twice. Before he could recover I reached to his belt, took the handgun, and pressed it to his temple. I was fully prepared to kill him, my eternal fate having been already sealed; one more murder was not going to alter the ledger of my accounting even if there might be a god.

  “You owe me some food,” I said, close into his ear.

  When his head had cleared, and without moving it, he turned his eyes to the side to see me.

  “Yes … yes … I have some food for you.”

  “And fifteen hundred francs.” I pressed the gun tighter to his head.

  “Certainly.”

  “Turn onto your stomach,” I ordered him. He rolled over, and I pressed the gun to the back of his skull. “Who is the other guy selling that food?”

  “He’s my brother.
”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bagwa,” he answered.

  “You call for Bagwa to come around here.”

  “Bagwa,” he shouted. “Come here. Bagwa!”

  Bagwa was caught by surprise at the sight of me holding a gun to his prone brother’s head, my knee firmly planted in his back. The truck driver’s face was swollen and he was sweating profusely.

  “Bagwa,” I asked, “you love your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go around to the back of the crowd. You’ll find a family there with a crippled boy. You know my rucksack; it has a baby in it. You take a hamper of the best of the food you have on this truck and take it to them—enough for four or five days. Don’t even think about cheating them. Then bring me something to eat.”

  While Bagwa went to get the food I reached into the truck driver’s pockets and found twenty-two hundred francs. I counted out the fifteen hundred francs he and his brother had taken from me and stuffed it in my pocket.

  When Bagwa returned and dropped some cheese and fruit on the ground he said, “You can let him go. I have given them their food and here is yours.”

  “Bagwa, I should thank you for the lesson you taught me on the truck, to bargain in parcels. Now go get up on the truck and pass out every bit of food you have left to the rest of those people. Divide it fairly. Then come back here and I’ll let him go.”

  When Bagwa left the second time, I swiftly swung the butt of the gun in a full arching backhand that caught the driver unaware in the temple. His head dropped forward, and his body slumped beneath me. By the time Bagwa had doled out all the food on the truck, I’d gathered up my share from the ground and made my way back into the crowd, taking the loaded gun with me. Sidling into the girl with my rucksack, I squeezed her hand around the seven hundred francs I still clutched and then slipped away.

  Two days’ walk later, the long file of migrants turned off onto the Bganga road, heading east toward Tanzania. The Bganga road was little more than a gravel cart track. It looked like a well-populated area, judging by all the huts and stone-block homes along the road, but they were mostly empty now—not even enough left in them for the scavengers to pick. At two hundred francs per plantain, my food and money had run out after two days, near where the Bganga road ended. Carts and trailers and wheelbarrows were left abandoned there. A column of people led single file into the jungle following a walking trail, and I followed them, too hungry to venture out on my own. I stepped up beside another traveler.

  “Have you any idea where this will take us?” I asked him.

  “They say the United Nations has built a camp across the border.”

  “They say. But does anyone know for sure?”

  “No one is coming back this way, so there must be something ahead,” he said.

  And that made some sense. So, I walked on with the wretched crowd of humanity, blindly hoping that the world had heard our call and sent something to help us.

  The only way we knew that we had arrived in Tanzania was that the path through the jungle suddenly broke out to a gravel road. Locals living in the homes along this road pointed us another ten miles farther and promised we would find the newly built camp, which the UN was still installing at Nkwenda. They offered us water but had little food of their own to share. Those who sold food asked a fair price and didn’t try to gouge us like our own people had done.

  I was young and strong enough to make it another ten miles, but there were many who died on this last stretch of road. How sad to make it all this way and not be able to go the final few steps. When the road crested a hilltop I could see below in the valley, less than a mile away, a village of blue tents. In sight of our goal, an old lady beside me, struggling along with a walking stick, suddenly dropped to her knees and fell face forward on the road. I loaded the lady’s bags on my empty back and picked her up, putting her over my shoulder, carrying her the last distance to the tent village. As gently as I could, I set her down in front of a large white tent with bold letters stamped on the roof, un. But by then she had stopped breathing.

  America

  The pale-yellow moonlight has been replaced by a blue-gray that signals impending dawn in the beautiful Colorado sky, finally. I’ve slept very little after the hours of making love with Anna, the first time in seven months, and then still more sleepless hours spent reliving that first year with Anna in Paris. Yet I feel reasonably refreshed, rekindled by the intimacy shared with Anna and the hope that we can somehow start our lives all over again. We still have each other, and we still have the cherished memories of our stricken angel. The funk that has been dragging me down for the past month since Steph’s death is waning. I recognize this feeling. I’ve been waiting for it and I want to hasten it, but past experience tells me, It’s coming, be patient a little longer.

  Kissing Anna and leaving her to sleep, I climb from the bed and make my way to the kitchen. The coffee is brewed and the smell alone stimulates me. I flip on the light and another level of consciousness takes hold. A quick coffee and my mind is working, almost normal, certainly a lot more positively than it has over the past month. Twenty minutes on a spin bike in the basement, rehashing Anna’s suggestion. Yes, this will be good for us both, a vacation, the honeymoon we never really had, somewhere warm, Jamaica, the Caribbean. First thing in the new year is ideal, we’ll do Christmas here with Anna’s family—it’ll be good to have them around—and then we’ll get away from Colorado during the coldest time. Twenty minutes at the weights feels good after missing a few days. Twenty more minutes with a shower and another cup of coffee. Throw the curtains open. “It’s time, baby.” A kiss on her cheek, like I make sure I do every single morning when I wake her. “Thank you for last night. You’ll start looking into flights and places today? Maybe confirm what’s happening with your parents and brother at Christmas?” Anna gave a sleepy nod. “You here when I get back tonight? See you around six. Love you, hon.” An easy forty minutes this time of the morning on the 36 downtown to Sun Valley.

  I’ve been making this drive in from Boulder to downtown Denver for the past five years. That was when I was invited by the three founding partners, Dr. Mark Su, Dr. Brie Ferguson, and Dr. Luis Davila, to join them at their clinic. The three of them had established the Sun Valley Family Health Center four years earlier to provide family care to the poorest of Denver’s old inner city. They were all passionately dedicated to their Hippocratic oath, and it only took Anna and me one night to accept their invitation to join them. I’d been doing emergency trauma at St. Joe’s hospital for three years after finishing my residency, but I was low on the totem pole and I was still drawing mostly night shifts and almost every weekend and holiday. Stephanie was four at that time, and I wanted something more regular, stable. I negotiated a buy-in to the practice with Mark, Brie, and Luis, and Anna and I bought our house in Boulder soon after. It was a little farther to Anna’s parents in Colorado Springs, but the schools would be better for Stephanie, who would start pre-K in the fall. The commute wasn’t too bad for me since I went in before morning rush hour and came home after the afternoon rush.

  This morning there is no traffic at all at 6:40 when I pull off the street into the clinic parking lot. There’s parking only for the staff since most of our patients don’t own cars. We try to make it our policy not to turn anyone away, coverage or not. Staff is lean, just three others in the office full time. Rosa has been there since it started; she does office admin, fills in on reception, helps with translation, and will even do cleanup when the janitorial company can’t make it out. Abi and Jamie split the reception, scheduling, and filing duties.

  The clinic space itself is a bit tight, but we make do. It used to be the office portion of the McGill Bros. Bindery Company, then sat empty for several years before Mark, Brie, and Luis got together and bought up the entire old factory building. They took the offices for their clinic and rented the factory
floor back to the city at cost for use as a drop-in space for kids’ after-school programs. There’s always a lot of activity around the property, and because of the work that we do, and the kids’ space in the building, we’re pretty much spared a lot of the criminal activity that the neighborhood is generally known for.

  Entering my office, I see that Abi and Jamie placed a small stack of charts, scans, and lab results in my in-basket before they left last night. These will be the things that need attention right away, along with the files of my patients scheduled for today. The office is small, but it’s adequate. The other partners endure equally tiny quarters so that we can have more exam-room space. We never have enough space in the waiting room, largely because in addition to our scheduled patients we also operate as a sort of drop-in clinic. We try not to encourage it, but everyone in the neighborhood knows that we won’t turn anyone away, and it’s a lot easier for a single mom with three or four small kids to come by our place rather than take the bus to the community health-care centers on the edges of town.

  I’ve just started to peruse my inbox when Mark Su knocks on the open door and steps in. The partners arrive early, all of us wanting to pull our share of the endless load.

  Mark has a file in one hand. “Morning, Doctor,” he says.

  “Morning, Mark.”

  “Mind if I sit down?” he asks as he drops into the seat across from my desk. “I’ve got the Nunez boy’s file here. Ricky.”

  “Oh yes, he’s my patient. Did the girls put it on the wrong desk?” I ask.

  “No. Rosa brought his CT scan results to me last night. She thought that maybe I should deliver them to you.”

  Ricky Nunez is the oldest of five brothers; he’s fourteen. His single mother works two jobs to support them and Ricky quit the varsity basketball team to take a job after school to help her out. He’d noticed a small lump in his testicles about four months ago and said that he didn’t come to see me because he didn’t want to lose a paycheck. This may have been partially true, but more likely he was too embarrassed. A week ago his testicles were so swollen that he finally made the trip in.