“Very all right,” the little girl said. She glanced back in the direction they’d come from. “I hope my mama and papa are well. I have prayed to Jesus to watch after them. And he will do it. I know he will. Jesus is with us, is he not, Mr. Boyce?”
Her question tugged at Amber’s heart. She had no faith in heaven right now. They were on their own in a harsh and brutal place, like sailors cast overboard into a storm-tossed sea. A sea of dirt, rocks, heat, and danger. She tried to avert her eyes before Boyce read her feelings in them.
In the distance she heard a wild animal howl, and a new fear seized her. She had once read The Call of the Wild by Jack London, and now she recalled vividly the law of the wilderness: Kill or be killed. Eat or be eaten.
Boyce lifted Amber’s chin so that she was forced to meet his gaze. “Yes, Rosemary. He is with us. God tells us, ‘Fear not, I am with you. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness.’ Don’t ever forget that. We are not alone.”
15
They moved forward under the cover of night, heading north, following Boyce’s lead, stopping often to rest. Amber’s thirst seemed unquenchable, but their stash of water bottles was so meager that she felt guilty even taking her allotted sips. She battled hunger, and images of food constantly flirted with her mind—fat waffles smothered in butter and syrup, crispy french fries with hamburgers, and slices of rich, red, juicy watermelon.
The night sounds of hunting animals frightened her, but when she mentioned it to Boyce he said, “They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”
“Want to bet?” she countered.
They created a litter for Rosemary, similar to the ones villagers used to carry their sick to the hospital in Lwereo. Using sturdy tree limbs, strips of one of Boyce’s cotton shirts, and grass that Ruth expertly wove into a mat, Boyce and Patrick carried the little girl by balancing the long poles on their shoulders. It was easier on her, and it helped them make better time.
Rosemary never once complained. Yet Amber knew the child hurt, because sometimes she heard her whimper. “Her bones are very fragile,” Ruth explained during one of their rest breaks. “We must be careful not to break any of her bones.”
By the time dawn approached on the fifth day, Amber was so weary that she had grown stuporous—absolutely numb. “I don’t think I can go on,” she confessed to Ruth once they’d settled beneath some concealing bushes and tall grass along the side of a hill to sleep.
“Yes, you can,” Ruth said. “We are making good progress.”
Amber didn’t know how Ruth figured that. To her it seemed as if they were going around in circles. The scenery never seemed to change; the mountains in the distance never seemed to get closer. She recalled how Heather had gone off to some kind of boot camp before boarding the Mercy Ship. Amber had had no such preparation. Except for physical education class and a few paltry workouts in the gym at their house, she did little in the way of physical exercise. She vowed to herself that once she got home, she’d begin a training regime that would keep her in tip-top physical condition. Home. The thought of it made tears fill her eyes.
“Are you all right?” Ruth asked. The sun was rising, and the filmy grass had turned gold in the light.
Amber wiped her cheeks. “Sure. Just tired and hungry. This wasn’t exactly how I planned to spend my time in Africa, you know.”
“It is strange how things work out,” Ruth said. She glanced toward Patrick, who, along with Rosemary, was sound asleep a few feet away. “I spent so much time thinking about my wedding night and how difficult it might be, I never thought that I might not have a wedding night at all.”
“You never got to do anything?” Amber realized it was none of her business, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking.
Ruth shook her head. “I dressed for bed, we lay in the dark talking for a long time. Then the runner came with the news about the rebels, so we had little time alone. And now we have no time at all.” Ruth’s smile looked sad and tired. “Sometimes no matter how hard we try to plan our lives, the journey takes an unexpected road. The things we worry about never happen. The things that happen are the things we never think to worry about. It is a mystery.”
Boyce squatted down beside them. “You both had better get some sleep before the sun gets too hot.”
Ruth rubbed her eyes. “I will join my husband.” She crawled to where he was lying and lay down next to him. She was sound asleep in seconds.
“I’m tired,” Amber admitted. “But not sleepy.”
“I know what you mean,” Boyce said. “My eyes feel like sandpaper in a dust storm, but my mind won’t shut off.”
“I keep thinking about home. I’m supposed to graduate next month.”
“You’ll be back by then. Promise.”
She shrugged wearily. “High school feels like part of another life. It’s like I’m watching myself in a dream, except that it’s not a dream. This is real and my other life is the dream.” Her voice caught.
He put his arm around her. “You’ll have a lot to tell your friends once you get back.”
“We will get back, won’t we, Boyce?”
“Never doubt it. I’ll bet we’re halfway there already.”
She bent her head and started to cry. Hating herself for it, she crawled away to be alone but discovered that Boyce was right beside her. “Go get some sleep,” she told him between sobs. “I’m just feeling sorry for myself. You don’t need to waste time on me.”
“You’re not a waste of time, Amber. Not ever. And you can cry if you want to.”
“Oh, as if crying’s going to fix anything. And as if I don’t look bad enough already. Now I’ll have mud caked on my face.” No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shut off her tears. Her nose ran, and she wiped it unceremoniously on her sleeve.
“I think you’re beautiful,” he said.
“Oh, right!” She picked up a handful of dirt and tossed it on the ground, then scooted away from him. “How can you get near me? I haven’t had a bath in days ... my hair stinks ... my clothes smell . . . I haven’t brushed my teeth since the wedding ... I—I hardly remember how I used to look.” If she could just stop crying! She was going to wake up Ruth, Patrick, and Rosemary.
“I remember seeing you for the first time,” Boyce said softly. “You wore pink. Pink shirt, pink shorts . . . even your toenails were pink. You looked like a cloud of cotton candy.”
His reminiscence caught her off guard. “How did you remember that?” she asked in a quivery voice. “I don’t even remember what I was wearing when we met.”
“Because I thought you were the prettiest thing I’d ever laid eyes on.”
Her insides turned to jelly, and more than anything, she wanted to curl up in his arms. “Well, close your eyes and envision that Amber, not this one. Okay?”
“But I like this one too.”
“How could you?”
“Because this was the Amber who never thought twice about bringing a crippled child along when the easiest thing would have been to leave her behind.”
Her tears had finally stopped, and she stared at him. “It was the only thing to do. You wanted to bring her too.”
“Frankly, I never thought of it. But you did. And you thought of it instantaneously, without consideration for the risk, or the fear of her slowing us down. And without a single thought that we’d have to share our pitiful resources with her. And you know what that tells me?” She shook her head, too surprised to speak. “It tells me that you’re beautiful, no matter what you look like on the outside. And it’s made me a little bit ashamed of myself because I didn’t think of it first.”
“I—I didn’t know what else to do.”
His smile began slow, then broke across his face fully, lighting up his eyes. “I know. And that’s what makes it good. It was spontaneous. And it was right.”
Overwhelmed by his assessment, she drew away. He had a false picture of her and she knew it was
time to set him straight. “Please don’t go pinning any roses on me, Boyce.” She took a deep breath. “Do you know why I really came to Africa?”
“Because Heather asked you to.”
“That’s what I told my parents and my friends. But mostly I came because I was bored. Isn’t that the dumbest reason? Bored,” she repeated. “At home I was bored with school, my friends, my boyfriend, my whole life. Now when I think about home, I can’t remember one single reason I had for being bored.”
“It’s hard to appreciate what we have at times. The first time I came to Africa, I thought I’d pop in, do some good deeds, then roll back home and pick up where I left off. But when I got home, I couldn’t get this place off my mind. The friends I made, the work we did together . . . well, it all counted for something. Nobody at home understood. They wanted me to be the same good ol’ boy, Boyce Callahan. But I wasn’t. I lost him over here.”
“Is that why you came back? To find him again?”
“No. He wasn’t worth much.” He grinned. “I like the new one better anyhow.”
“Heather told me the same thing about herself. She felt changed inside once she’d come here. But it’s been hard for me to understand it. I mean, she was perfect before she came. When she got back all she did was disappear into herself. And preach to us about what we should be doing with our lives.”
“You sound like you were mad at Heather.”
The sun had risen fully by now and heat was building, like a fire being stoked.
“Maybe I was,” she confessed. “Just a little. I love her, you know. She’s my sister. But Mom and Dad are always on her side. She’s the star of the family and always has been. Sometimes I feel invisible.”
“I wish I was more invisible in my family. I’m the oldest. I have three kid brothers and for me, it’s like I have to do everything right. And perfectly. They get to make mistakes, but I don’t. They get to pick what they want to do with their lives. I get to carry on my father’s business. It’s expected of me.”
“I thought you wanted to be an engineer.”
“I do, but I want to work over here, not in my old man’s office. I want to make the lives of people like Patrick and Ruth better. I want to help kids like Rosemary live where they don’t have to worry about starving to death because it hasn’t rained and the crops have all died.”
“Can’t you tell that to your dad?”
“I have. But he doesn’t hear me.”
Just like no one truly listened to Heather, Amber realized. All Heather had wanted was for Alice to have surgery so that the baby could have an easier life. But for a long time, no one had paid any attention to Heather’s pleas. And Amber felt like the worst offender, insisting that their sisterly relationship return to the way things had been before Heather had made her trip. She saw now that Heather couldn’t have returned to that image of herself—her experiences in Africa had irrevocably changed her.
Amber said, “If Heather hadn’t gotten sick, I would never have come over here. And I’d never have met any of you all.”
“And you’d never have been trudging through the bush trying to escape from bandits,” he added without humor.
“Well, I’m not bored.”
He laughed.
“If I hadn’t come, if I hadn’t met you all, it would have been a big loss, you know. My loss.” She had leaned her head against his shoulder, and her eyes grew heavy. Heat blanketed the air. Insects buzzed. Sleep began to overtake her.
“There must be something you regret about this adventure,” he said, his lips grazing her forehead.
Her stomach growled. She stifled a yawn. “One thing. That day we went to the lake . . . I wish I had eaten that chicken.”
16
They’d walked six nights straight when Boyce and Patrick decided they might be close enough to the Ugandan border to change their pattern. They would walk during the day from that point on. “I figure we’ve covered maybe eight to ten miles a night since we left your uncle’s village,” Boyce said, nodding at Ruth. “That means we’ve traveled close to the distance we had to come. At this point, we’d like the Rwandan border police to find us. They could escort us into Uganda.”
“Where’s the border crossing?” Amber asked.
“No idea. But police units regularly patrol the countryside, especially near Bwindi National Park.”
“To hold off poachers,” Patrick explained.
They all looked at the mountains as Boyce continued. “But getting closer to the park means a longer walk. I think we should just keep heading in this direction.” He pointed north.
“What about the bandits?” Amber asked.
“It’s unlikely they’d take the chance of operating this close to the border. They prefer to stay inland, farther away from the authorities.”
“By now,” Patrick added, “we have been reported overdue. Perhaps the police will be searching for us on both sides of the border.”
Amber hadn’t thought about that, but of course it made sense. She’d lost track of time. They were to have been gone only a week. She counted up the days and nights and realized they’d been away from Lwereo twelve days— most of those days spent walking through the bush. And she also realized that by now Paul would have contacted her mother at the hospital in Kampala to say that the wedding party had not returned and that their whereabouts were unknown. She groaned. “My mother’s going to kill me when we get back.”
Ruth looked startled. “But why? You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“It’s a long story,” Amber said with a sigh. “I have a history of goofing up. I had to take a vow I’d be on my best behavior to come to Africa. I didn’t expect things to get so messed up.” Then another thought occurred to her. She grabbed Boyce’s arm. “Heather! What if Mom knows something about my sister? I have no way of finding out how she’s doing. This is awful.”
“All the more reason to get out into the open,” Boyce said. “Plus, we’re almost out of supplies. We need to be rescued, and the sooner the better.”
During their arduous journey, they had found berry bushes, root vegetables, and edible plants that Ruth had discovered growing wild. Just the night before, Patrick had hunted and killed a rabbit. That morning they’d built a fire and roasted it. Amber had not been the least bit squeamish about eating it either. In fact, although it had been chewy, it had tasted delicious.
“We’re tired now,” Boyce said, “so I think we should all get some sleep. Especially through the heat of the day. First thing tomorrow morning, we start hiking again.”
He must have known they were running out of energy to take both a day and a night to rest, Amber thought. With rationed food and water, everyone’s energy reserves were low. By now she was used to falling asleep at dawn and rising in the late afternoon. Total exhaustion made it easy. Good training for all-night crammingat college, Daddy, she imagined saying to her father.
Her feet throbbed from all the walking. She’d loosened the laces on her boots as far as she could and still keep them on her feet, but she promised herself that once she returned home, she’d soak her aching feet in warm water for days and pamper them with gobs of cream and colorful polish. They deserved it.
“At least the scenery’s better,” she said as she stretched out on the ground. The weather wasn’t as hot and the landscape was greener, more lush looking.
“We’ll note that in the travelers’ guide,” Boyce said with a yawn. Seconds later he was snoring.
In minutes they were all asleep. Except for Amber. Despite her weariness, she couldn’t make herself go to sleep. Thinking about Heather had upset her, and new worries assailed her as well. If their mother knew Amber was missing, so did their dad. Her family had no way of knowing she was all right. Just as she had no way of knowing how Heather might have taken the news of her disappearance. Would it cause her sister anxiety and harm her further?
Stupid, stupid, stupid, Amber told herself. I did a really stupid thing by coming to the wedding. And y
et, even as she thought that, she dismissed it. Would it have been any easier to wait at the Children’s Home in Uganda, sick with worry about Ruth, Patrick, and Boyce? And what about Rosemary? Would she even have been with them if Amber hadn’t come along? The questions swirled in her head like a dog chasing its tail. By the time the sun was high in the sky, she had no answers. She also had not gotten any sleep.
Sweat poured off her. She felt sticky and itchy all over. Finally, at her wits’ end, she stood and looked around. The others were dead to the world, and she didn’t want to wake them with her restlessness. In the distance she saw a large clump of green and decided to explore it. If she found anything of interest, they could all return in the cool of the evening. She headed straight for the verdant patch of woods.
The area was farther away than it had appeared, and it took her fifteen minutes to get to it, but once there, she was glad she’d come. The air was cooler, the ground covered with a downy, soft grass. She stooped, ran her hand across the velvet blades, and sighed with pleasure. This would be easier to sleep on than the ground where they were sleeping now. She looked up at trees that grew tall and leafy, their branches webbing overhead like a sheltering canopy. And she heard the distinct sound of running water.
Her pulse quickened. A creek? She followed the sound and soon came to a gurgling stream trickling over rocks in a small gorge. Water! She had found water. She couldn’t wait to tell the others. She told herself to get moving, but the siren sound of moving water rooted her to the spot. She knew better than to drink the stuff, but if she could just put her feet in it . . . Quickly she sat and tugged off her shoes and soggy socks. She half slid down the embankment and stepped into the stream—and felt as if she’d slipped into heaven. The cool water flowed up to her ankles, caressing her throbbing skin. “Wait till you see what I’ve found,” she said aloud.
She turned, and a movement on the other side of the ravine caught her eye. She froze, her heart thudding. The foliage shook and she heard twigs snap. An animal? Realizing she was completely out in the open, she stooped, attempting to make herself smaller. Her heart pounded crazily as a shape emerged. She caught a glimpse of a man dressed in camouflage clothing. It couldn’t be the Rwandan police because they wore dark blue. This man looked like a soldier. He carried a rifle. And Ruth’s tales of her long-ago encounter with Rwandan rebel troops washed over Amber like scenes from a bad horror movie.