The Blue Moon Review - Fiction

"On the table where we had eaten, a baby, charred black and crusted with congealed blood, lay on a white towel. His arms were raised and trembling but he made no sound and his eyes were closed."

On the afternoon the war started again, my brother and I waited on the covered porch for our father's Jeep to enter the yard from behind the line of coffee trees that bordered the road. But for a long while the road, dim in the half-light of the passing storm, was empty except for the rain. Water splashed in puddles and rivulets that formed and reformed on the hard-packed dirt of the road and in the yard, and water ran black over the leaves of the coffee trees and shook open the broad white blossoms of the frangipanis by the porch. There were the smells of dust upturned by rain, and through the open screen door to the kitchen, of coffee, hot rolls and vegetable stew. The voices of the housegirl, Ditowagi, and our mother moving around inside were warm and low, muffled by suppressed concern and the thunder of rain on the aluminum roof. We thought they might come at any minute to check on our progress, but no one came and so we just sat there with our backs against the house, pretending to do our lessons, not talking, watching the empty road.

Beyond the yard, the hillside dropped to the river, which was crowded on both banks with huts. Wood smoke curling above the thatch roofs stood out against the muted green of the jungle rolling skyward beyond the village. In the distance, the lower elevations of Mount Wilhelm's snowy northern slopes were visible through breaks in the mist. This storm, I was sure, was passing. Two hours ago it had been clear and bright, the air still, no hint of what was coming. The village had teemed with playing children and dogs and with women carrying sacks of sweet potatoes in from their gardens. The men were at the war. Now I could imagine the people crouching around fires in their huts, sticks poking at sweet potatoes in the embers, feet scuffing the dirt, the sudden voices of children. Everyone would want the rain to stop and know that the wait would not be long. Storms like this in the Papuan Highlands never lasted. It was the wet season, but downpours came and went and only interrupted you for a little while before you were back out in the sun and heat. The water on the road and leaves could dry so fast you'd almost forget it had rained just hours before. Even in the middle of heavy rains, though, the air was warm and the rainwater itself warm--something that had seemed strange and pleasant to me after the cold rain back home in Seattle. Once my dad had gone in shorts into a rain like this and lathered himself with a bar of soap while we watched him from the porch. He had shouted at us, looked up at the sky and then started some kind of clowning dance.

My reader was open on a bleached, watercolor picture of Daniel kneeling on the stone floor of the lion's den. He looked very young. A torn robe was gathered around him. His eyes were white and wide and cast heavenward through the gloom while behind him, in shapes that suggested movement and restlessness, the shadowy figures of lions pressed forward against his periphery of light. There in the darkness, amidst the bright glints of fangs, the swinging tails and the squared shoulders of beasts, was suspended the faint oval of a woman's face. Behind her, the white folds of her gown trailed off into invisibility. She held up two fingers before a lion's muzzle. The lion, coiled to spring, glared at Daniel with a fierce hunger. He was quieted, not willingly, beneath the uncompromising command of the woman's hand. Her lips were rounded--Silence.

I looked at my brother. His face was calm and oddly gentle, his skin pale and eyes softly unfocused as he looked at his reader and occasionally made a languid gesture with his pencil over an open page. He looked younger and smaller, like he had just awoken from untroubled sleep except for sudden instants when he glanced up with sharp eyes at the road, and then, as if forgetting what he watched for, let his gaze drift back down to the book.

The screen door opened and our mother came onto the porch. She looked at us for a moment, considering, and then smiled. "I think we should eat here." She went back inside and Ditowagi helped her bring out the steaming bowls of stew and the plate of rolls. I closed my book, and the four of us sat at the table and folded our hands. The stew was made with the potatoes, carrots, and turnips that my brother and I had dug that morning in the garden. On the plate with the rolls and bowl of butter were a small knife and four passion fruits with shiny purple skins. The rain drowned out my mother's prayer.

Ditowagi, still learning, handled the silverware carefully and deliberately, pinching her spoon tightly between her thumb and forefinger. As we were eating, the rain stopped and suddenly we could hear everything, spoons scraping bowls, knives drawing butter across bread, the distant shouts of children running from the huts. But none of us spoke until my mother began to halve the passion fruits and pass them around. My brother put down his spoon and asked to be excused.

"Don't you want your passion fruit, Simon?"

He shook his head. "Let Pete have mine."

"I don't want his," I said. "I only want mine."

My mother looked at us, puzzled, but then her face relaxed. "Okay, but stay close to the house." Ditowagi accepted the extra fruit and slipped it into her apron.

Simon went to float bamboo fronds in the drainage ditch behind the garden, and I helped carry dishes into the house.

As we cleared the table, I saw Long-long Mary, her sacks of lemons and passion fruits hanging almost to the mud, coming up the road to the house. She moved slowly but with what appeared an irresistible, almost unconscious determination, her wet tangle of white hair hanging down over her face, her bare feet slipping under her. Long-long was the Kuman word for crazy, 'mary' was the pidgin word for woman, and the village children had combined the two to create the name by which she was now known. She would often come, sit on our porch and remain quietly until someone came out to buy her fruits.

I went into my brother's and my bedroom and started to read a Hardy Boys book my grandmother had sent in the last parcel from home, and soon, without knowing it, I fell asleep. A short while later I awoke with a strong breeze stirring the curtain over my bed.

I sat up. A crowd of voices were rapidly approaching the house, and then feet were pounding on the porch and I had an impulse to fall to the floor and crawl under my bed. But then I heard my mother's voice raised authoritatively and went out to see what was happening.

When I came onto the porch, I saw Long-long Mary through the people bustling around the table. She sat, chewing her gums thoughtfully as she watched the crowd, her sacks between her scabby knees.

On the table where we had eaten, a baby, charred black and crusted with congealed blood, lay on a white towel. His arms were raised and trembling but he made no sound and his eyes were closed. My mother put her hand on my shoulder and directed me back into the house.

"Listen," she said. Her voice was even and very firm. "Your dad has the burn kit. Listen. In the shed there is a box. On the shelf over the cases of dried milk. A cardboard box with a big red cross in the middle. Bring it here."

I went the back door, jumped the stairs, and ran toward the shed. The mud clung to my bare feet. I found the box, and ran back through the house. My mother had sent everyone off the porch. The native women, lighting cigarettes, making excited gestures, were drifting across the lawn in twos and threes and gathering at the coffee trees to look back at the porch. Only Long-long Mary remained where she was, her sacks between her legs, watching, chewing.

"Here, tear this." My mother gave me a white sheet, and then she opened the cardboard box and began to sort through its contents--gauze, bandages, tape, scissors. "Let's see, wet or dry compresses, wet or dry compresses?" She looked at me, quizzically, as if she thought I had the answer. "Dry compresses," she said.

She held a torn piece of sheet tentatively over the baby, not knowing what to touch. The baby had dropped his arms and was breathing in long slow gasps. There was ash and cinder stuck all over him. There was a clean unburnt place on the his forehead. My mother touched that.

She stood up straight. "Who is this?"

"Wayonk," I said. "His father's Yambage. I didn't see his mother here. Who brought him?"

"They did," she said. Her voice changed. "He fell into the fire. You've got to watch them all the time. Stay with them, watch them." She unfolded the compress and spread it carefully over the boy's chest. "Your dad has the burn kit."

"What good's the kit?" I asked.

"No good," she said. "We could get him to the Red Cross if there was a coffee truck in the village. No point in that either. At least we have morphine."

I had seen my dad use morphine with patients many times, and knew what caution had to be taken with dosages. "Do you know how to measure it? We could--"

"Yes," she said. "But we'll try not to. I'm pretty sure I know how. Wait here."

I followed her into my parents’ bedroom. She lifted a board at the foot of the bed and withdrew a small black case from the floor. She unzipped the case and looked at the row of syringes and the small labeled vials shining in the light through the bedroom window. She picked out a vial, raised it before her eyes, studied the label with an intense concentration and then I saw, for the first time, that her hands were shaking.

"Go out there," she said. "Go out," her voice a husky whisper, "And wait with him."

I entered the dimly lit living room. Dust motes floated over the furniture and the hardwood floor. Tonight they would wrap him in leaves and lay him on the riverbank. All night they would play flutes over him to ward off the evil spirits they thought were trying to enter his body. All night I would lie awake, stare at the stars through the window and hear the flutes and my brother's breathing on the other side of the room.

I stepped onto the porch. In the shade of the coffee trees, the natives leaned together like dolls, and against the house, Long-long Mary, lost in some contemplation of her own, had begun to coo one of her private songs. Simon sat, head bowed, his right hand on the baby's chest. The sheet rose and fell beneath his fingers. Beyond him, the wind moved across the row of coffee trees, the dark tops of the leaves flashing their bright undersides.

I thought of my mother, now drawing the clear liquid into the syringe, my father, sun on the brim of his hat, accelerating toward us up the narrow mountain roads. If I was going to do anything, this was the moment. What, I wondered, what? Simon's lips moved slowly, the wall of trees beyond him tossing and flashing, and Long-long Mary, singing, rocked gently and fingered her fruits like charms through the weave of her sack.

My body felt very light. I leaned against the house, felt the rough wood against my bare arm and sank to where my brother had sat with his picture of Daniel and the angel. As I waited for my mother and the needle, the sun came out and the jungle shone in the distance over the wet, empty road.

Aaron Baker spent his childhood in the Chimbu Highlands of Papua New Guinea, where his parents were missionaries. He received an MA in English from Central Washington University and taught English at a college in Culiacan, Mexico. He lives in Graham, Washington.