Bad Juju

Prologue

Tom Novak looked lovingly into his wife’s deep brown eyes
as if he could read her mind. 
This wa
s as close to perfect as it gets.
The young couple always dreamed of serving God b
y volunteering as missionaries.
The op
portunity had presented itself.

Twelve members of their church, Christ Our Savior, arrived outside of Port au-Prince the first week of th
eir children’s summer vacation.
They signed up to help with the island’s reconstruction several months after the fatal Haitian earthquake.

Tom was especially worried about H
enry, his fifteen year old son.
Although intelligent and highly functional, Henry’s Asperger’s Syndrome risked setting off a
n array of behavioral problems.
New surroundings, communication, and decision making were not the boy’s fort
e.
 
But Henry loved to fixate. 
The 7.0 e
arthquake became his obsession.
It was Henry who suggested the family volunteer after their minister announced sign-ups for the trip during a previous sermon.

Christ Our Savior’s mission would assist other volunteers in erecting a health clinic, women’s shelter, and c
ommunity washroom with showers.
Other missionaries and rescue organizations established a camp with portable kitchens, restrooms, tents, and other essentials back in February, shortly
after the earthquake occurred. 
They welcomed the needed extra hands from Christ Our Savior.

The missionary encampment resided a few miles west of Port-au-Prince in the town of
Leogane
, t
he epicenter of the earthquake.
After a few days of detangling organizational kinks, the new volunteers were fully aware of ho
w the volunteer camp operated. 
Each person had a specific duty to fulfill, making them
work like a well-oiled machine.
Progress was slowly being made.

The past week had been lif
e-changing.
Besides the new construction, they were interacting with some of the natives and spreading the Gospel.
 
At the end of the day, Tom would drag his family to a clearing on top of a hill and look out to the sea at the spectacular pink and orange sunsets.

“This is really beautiful.
  I love this place.  What about you guys? 
Feel the presence of God?” Tom asked.

“Dad, I love it here,” Henry said.

“Love it enough to stay longer?
I only put us down for a wee
k, and our stay is almost over.
I can extend it.
What do you all say?” Tom asked as they watched the sun shrink into the ocean.

“Let’s stay!”
exclaimed
Henry.
 

Tom gave Jessica an ‘I told you so’ look as Henry beamed. Vacations were something they had given up on years ago after Henry’
s violent tantrums.
Change
did not come easy to the boy. 
Tom knew Haiti would be different.

“Don’t I get a say in this?  I miss my friends.  And this is hard work. 
Not exactly a vacation,” whined Natalie.
 
She was almost fourteen and about to enter high school.

“Of
co
urse you get a say.
Can you
stick it out another two weeks?
You’d still have
more than
half of your sum
mer left,” Jessica compromised.
She hung her arm around her beautiful, waif-like daughter, looking more like her sister than mother.

“I guess.
It’s God’s work, right?  How bad can it be?
Sorry to complain.”

“Tom, you’re right.
W
e’re doing something good here.  They need us.  Look around this place. 
Wreckage everywhere.
  It could be such a paradise.
Poverty, disease, and now this,” lamented Je
ssica.  Her eyelids began to droop.  “I’m getting sleepy.  Let’s go. 
Been another long but wonderful day.”

As they headed back to their encampment, Henry began inundating the
family with more island facts. 
“Mom, did you know more than 200,000 died in the
quake, and 300,000 are injured?
Over a million are misplaced
…
”  When Henry was interested in a subject, he strived
to learn as much as possible. 
He acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of the island.

Natalie bickered as he constantly saturated them with t
rivia.  “Shut up!
I’m so sick
of you acting like an expert!”

Tom nudged his wife and smiled.
The b
ickering didn’t seem to matter.
Things were as close to perfect as they could be.

Their missionary camp was two miles away from one of the main Haitian rescue camps.
 
In spite of the various world relief programs, the island
remained a security nightmare.
Rape
s and child abuse were rampant.

Each night a dozen m
en from Tom’s camp stood guard.
Although the area was heavily patrolled with police, the island had a population of nine million with an ultra-
lean staff of
nine thousand police officers.
The criminals knew they were the
majority and acted accordingly.
For months the missionaries had patrolled their own camp with radios, Tasers, Billy clubs, and handg
uns on high alert for drifters.
To date, they had been spared from attacks.

Tom and the other men from Christ Our Savior were immediately assigned the rotating job
as the camp’s security guards.
He heard from the others about dozens of escaped prisoners seen insi
de of the rescue camps nearby. 
Their se
curity doubled as a precaution. 
He kept this information from his fam
ily, not wanting them to worry.
Another uneventful evening passed without any of the guards getting sleep.

Minutes after sunrise, Tom woke up his family.
He had a task for his children to perform throughout the morning.
He knew Natalie would hate it, but Henry, with his hulking size, would prove useful.

“Okay.
We won’t have a crane until later this week, but can’t waste time.
There’s a flatbed of cinder blocks parked over by the future showers.
We marked up the perimeter of the building yesterday.
Now I need you to unload each cinder block and lay it down around the painted line,” Tom directed as he shook flakes of cement out of his blonde hair.

“Dad, they’re so heavy!
C’mon, don’t you have something easier for me to do?
I’m a girl!” Natalie grumbled.

“The exercise is good for you.
They only weigh ten, maybe fifteen pounds.
Toughen up, young lady.
  And Henry, you’re so strong.
You’ll be able to carry two or three at a time.
It’ll be a cinch,” coaxed Tom.

“No problem, Dad,” he answered, proud to be needed and capable of doing the work.

“Oh, alright.
But I’m taking plenty of breaks.
Don’t want to throw my back out,” Natalie said.
“Or I’m filing a workman’s comp claim against you!”

“Can you just do something without the lip?
Your mother is finishing up with some of the tile work at the clinic,” Tom said as he pointed a few hundred yards south.
“This afternoon you can both help her paint some of the walls.
Let’s get started.”

The morning dragged on and Natalie continued to bellyache.
As a carpenter, Tom was conditioned
to
hard labor.
His daughter’s moans fell upon his deaf ears as he lifted
three or four cinder blocks at a time and effortlessly carried them
over to the restroom facility.

“Natalie, we’re almost done.
I’m going to check on Mom.
Why don’t you both finish up?
There’s a few dozen blocks left to take out of the flatbed,” Tom instructed.

“Oh Dad, let me go with you.
I really want to see what Mom did.
Tile or something, right?”
Natalie begged.
Her desperation to get out of the labor was apparent.

Henry was in his o
wn world, a zone of repetition.
Like a plow horse, he kept
working without missing a step.
Tom still d
id not want to leave him alone.
Another parish member familiar with their situation stepped in.

“I’ll keep an eye on him,” assured Keith, an elder from their parish.
“Find the fella interesting.
So smart.
All those things he knows about Haiti.
He’ll be okay for a few minutes.”

Tom and Natalie hiked over to the medical clinic and admired their mother’s exquisite tile work in the front lobby of the newly erected building.

“I
got the bathrooms left to tile.
This afternoon the kids can come over here and paint,” she offered.

“Painting sound
s like a breeze at this point. 
My arms are so sore from carrying those heavy blocks,” Natalie griped.

“Think of the c
haracter that you are building. 
Can’t get this at home.
And Je
ss, this is really sensational.
You’ve got to do something like this i
n our bathroom once we’re home.  See you at lunch,” Tom smiled.
He kissed his wife and hiked back to the outhouse.

As Tom and Natalie approached their construction site, his heart raced and weighed heavy with a fearf
ul premonition.
He could see Keith running around the partly constructed shower fa
cility with a sense of urgency.
Tom couldn’t hear from the distance, but knew something was very wrong.

“Natalie, let’s run.
  Something just
ain’t
right.
I can smell it.”

“You think it’s Henry?”

“I sure hope not.”

Tom and Natalie bolted towards the public restroom, catching up with Keith and two other men now involved.
As suspected, Henry was currently missing.

“He couldn’t have gone far.
 
The flatbed is only a few yards away from h
ere.
He was
busting butt with those blocks.  Tom, I’m so sorry.  This is my fault.  We’ll find him.
I’m g
athering everyone up right now.
He might have wandered over to where your wife is working,” Keith cried.

Shouts
of  “
Henry” filled the camp. 
Construction ceased as everyone shifted their
focus towards finding the boy.
All three areas of the site wer
e searched from top to bottom. 
The day wore on, turning to dusk.

“The hill!
Where we watch
the sunset!” screamed Jessica.  “Maybe he’ll go there.
It’s part of
our routine.”

Tom, Jessica, and Nata
lie ran up the hill and waited.
The sun’s colors were unusually red like blood.

Seve
ral minutes of silence went by.
The
Novaks
watched their first sunset in Haiti without their son.