Do-Gooder (4 page)

“Come on,” he said, pulling at my elbow. “We’d better get to the cots. You’re about to crash.”

I stumbled to my feet and had to hold on to Henry’s arm to keep from dropping back into the chair. “Sorry,” I muttered to Mrs. Okono. “I didn’t mean to—” I broke off with a yawn that Henry echoed.

“Wow,” he said, “all that driving must have gotten to me too.”

“You boys go, get some sleep.” Mrs. Okono stood up as well and led us back out the front. Complete darkness had settled around us, and there weren’t enough buildings to give up much light. If it weren’t for the grip Henry still maintained on my elbow, I would have tripped over the deep ruts probably created by cars that had driven up and parked there over time.

The space Henry had described as a lean-to looked to me like an attached carport made up of a couple of sheets of plywood. It would keep the rain off of us and maybe deter some animals, but not much else. Two cots that looked like old Army castoffs lined the space, with a contraption draping mosquito netting above each one.

“Not exactly the Ritz,” I mumbled. “Not even a Super 8.”

“And yet, compared to some of the places I’ve been, it’s a resort.”

I squinted at Henry but couldn’t read his face in the dark.

I sat on one of the cots, ready to let unconsciousness claim me. I barely managed to stay upright. “I need my bag.” My tongue felt thick, and I couldn’t seem to remember how to make my mouth work.

“I’ll get it,” Henry said. He reached under the opposite cot and pulled out a small lantern. The minute Henry and the light disappeared from sight, gravity got the better of me. From one second to the next, I was out.

I WOKE
up wet. Sweat drenched my entire body. Kind of gross, actually. Nausea churned in my gut, and my joints ached. I jerked upright, moaning when my head spun.

“Hey, are you okay?” Henry sat up on his cot, the mosquito netting shoved behind him.

I might have gotten a little sidetracked at the sight of Henry’s bare chest. Maybe. He had some seriously defined muscles. Not bulky—he was too thin for bulk—but seriously ripped. The concerned expression on his face, when I finally dragged my eyes up that far, distracted me from my ogling. And reminded me that I felt like crap.

I could actually feel the blood drain from my face. Shakiness, nausea, sweating. All were symptoms of hypoglycemia. I yanked the monitor from my belt. It took a very shaky moment for the numbers on the little screen to come into focus. I blinked. My glucose level was fine. Stupid to panic. It took longer than an overnight to mess me up that much.

“Isaiah, are you okay?” Henry shifted from his cot until he sat next to me.

“I’m fine. Just, you know, a little out of it, I guess.”

“Jet lag?” he asked. He didn’t sound convinced. His eyes continued to scan me, no doubt looking for signs of something more serious.

“I’m sure that’s it.” I ignored my queasy stomach and pushed aside the mosquito netting, looking for my backpack. “What time is it?”

“Almost seven.”

A flash of red caught my eye. My backpack sat under the cot by my feet. I lifted the bag and—“Holy shit!” I tossed the bag across the small enclosure and swung my legs up onto the cot. There, where it had apparently nestled in for the night under my bag, was the biggest fucking spider I had ever seen. Nightmarishly big. Huge. As big as my hand at full spread. As big as a fricking pie. A furry fricking pie. Rust-colored fur encased its freakishly large body. “
What the fuck is that
?”

I didn’t appreciate the gales of laughter coming from him. On the whole, spiders and bugs didn’t bother me. But when the spider was big enough to crush my skull, I got a little squeamish.

Henry stood up and reached for the mutant arachnid.

“Don’t touch it!” I may have squealed like a girl. Maybe.

“It won’t hurt you. Unless you’re allergic to spider bites, a bite from this guy wouldn’t do more than irritate your skin for a couple of days.”

“Screw that. If that thing bit me, it could take a finger. Or maybe an arm.” I scooted back on the cot until I hit the plywood board of the wall. I was pretty sure, if it came down to it, I could break through the cheap particleboard to get out. I thought it might have become necessary when Henry actually
picked it up
. Its legs, no exaggeration, were as long and thick as my fingers and wriggled madly as Henry turned it so that I could see its face.

“It’s a giant baboon spider. Its mouth isn’t big enough to do more than take a nip.”

A shudder wracked my body. “Get that thing away from me. Or get me a shotgun.”

“You’d shoot a spider?”

“Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t try and stomp on it.” My voice cracked. “Come on, Hank. Get rid of that thing, will you?”

“Not if you keep calling me Hank.” Despite the words, he took the spider out of the lean-to.

I checked out the floor to make sure there were no more creepy-crawlies and got off the cot. “Hey, do you think there’s any chance that I can get a shower or wash up? I’m getting a little ripe here.”

I looked up and Henry was gone. “Hank?” A foggy mist hovered over the ground. It was still early and cooler than it had been yesterday afternoon, but incredible humidity still thickened the air. “Henry?”

Movement by the Range Rover drew my eye. Henry stared down at the ground behind the vehicle.

I walked over to him. “Hey, what’s up?” I looked down. Footprints showed clear in the mud, footprints that didn’t match my running shoes or Henry’s hiking boots. “You think someone tried to steal something?”

Shaking his head, Henry looked up. “Probably not. Most likely someone wondering who was here.” Despite his words, he kept scanning the Range Rover as if looking for additional clues. Henry unlocked the back. As far as I could tell, all of the boxes looked the same as they had when we’d loaded them. Maybe one or two had shifted a couple of inches, but the difference could have been caused by the sudden stops and the potholes the day before.

“Everything looks okay,” he said, shutting the hatchback. “What did you ask a minute ago?”

“Oh, I wondered if there was somewhere I could clean up.”

Henry scratched his head, and I realized his ponytail had come out. His dark hair, disheveled from sleep, hung to his shoulders. Was it weird that I wanted to brush it out for him?

“There’s not a shower or anything. You should be able to wash up in Mrs. O’s bathroom, but try not to use any more water than you have to. Clean water is limited, and the plumbing can be a bit unpredictable. When we get to the camp, there will be an actual shower you can use. It won’t be hot and it won’t be long, but it’ll get you clean.”

Nodding, I headed back to the tent. I lifted my backpack up and shook it, listening for any kind of scurrying movements. It seemed safe enough, so I headed around the house. I hesitated outside the door. I didn’t want to just walk in, but if Mrs. Okono was asleep still, I didn’t want to wake her. She came into view, looking much the same as she had the night before. She wore a brightly patterned dress, and a colored scarf held back her hair.

“Come in, Isaiah,” she said, opening the door. “I think you want to clean up, yes? Right through there.” She pointed to the only door on the inside of the house.

“Thanks.”

The bathroom was a tiny box of a room, smaller than my shower at home, with a basic commode and a sink. I stoppered up the sink and turned on the faucet. The water drizzled out, slightly discolored. Once water filled the basin a couple of inches, I scrubbed up. When I reached the point where I’d taped the tubing for the insulin pump down, I saw that the adhesive had mostly come undone. Peeling the useless tape off, I washed the area carefully with an alcohol wipe—no way was I letting the water actually touch the insertion site—and secured the tube back in place.

I finished my basin-bath. It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, but I managed to wash my hair without too much mishap. I got water all over the sink from my attempts to rinse the shampoo using handfuls of water, but on the whole, I called it a success. I felt almost human. The nausea I’d woken with seemed to have disappeared, for which I was grateful. Driving through the wilds of Africa feeling like I was going to hurl didn’t appeal to me at all.

I had opened the door a couple of inches when I saw the soap’s paper wrapping lying below the sink. I crouched down to pick it up. Mom would skin me alive if I even thought about leaving a host’s bathroom anything less than pristine. I heard shuffling and caught a whiff of something herbal and floral as brightly colored cloth went past the open gap in the door. Beads clicked, and I assumed Mrs. Okono went into her room.

She spoke to somebody in accented French. Though her voice was low, I still caught most of her words. “You were late. You were almost caught. I told you four hours. You were more than six.” She paused, then made a zipping sound. “Enough. Someone could have been hurt. Next time, no excuses.”

The back of my thigh cramped, no doubt a result of my awkward position and two days on my ass, and I tumbled into the door, spilling out of the bathroom.

Mrs. Okono’s voice cut off.

I grabbed the back of my thigh and stretched my leg out, massaging the knotted muscle.

“Isaiah?” Mrs. Okono peeked out through the beaded curtain with what looked like a large cell phone in her hand. “Are you hurt?”

I flexed my feet and looked up at her. “I’m fine. Just a cramp.”

She looked at me for a long moment before reaching into her room and setting the phone somewhere out of my sight. “Maybe some food will help. It’s going to be another long day.” She held her hand out to me.

“I’m fine, but thanks.” I stood and tested my weight on my leg. “But I’m totally in favor of breakfast.”

HENRY HAULED
in my duffel bag for me so I was able to change into clean clothes. After a breakfast of some kind of cassava porridge and warm hugs from Mrs. Okono, Henry and I were on our way. The going was slow, though. Apparently a man leading a string of three goats took precedence over vehicles on the road. He didn’t move over, and there wasn’t enough room for Henry to pass him, so we crawled along until the man and his goats turned onto a small path leading away from the main road. We’d barely increased our speed when we ended up behind a lumber truck loaded down with trees that had to be three feet in diameter. Needless to say, that vehicle didn’t go very fast.

The pace didn’t seem to bother Henry. He drove as though he had all the time in the world. He even waved at people he saw along the side of the road. Some waved back and others watched us with narrowed eyes. Either way, it didn’t faze him. I, on the other hand, was slowly going out of my mind.

Yaoundé had been a city. We weren’t anywhere near a city now. The areas we passed through more closely resembled the stereotypical Africa portrayed in those “for the cost of a cup of coffee a day, you could change the life of a child” commercials. Small children with big dark eyes stared at the road, faces serious and bodies that were made up almost entirely of knees and elbows. I was willing to bet that if I went into one of the buildings, there wouldn’t be an ancient television or love seat like I saw at Mrs. Okono’s place. There would probably be one room and a few pallets on the floor for sleeping.

An hour into the trip, I dug out one of Henry’s animal books in an attempt to keep myself occupied. After another hour I had flipped through all two hundred pages and would now have nightmares starring a couple of the freakier things I’d seen in those pages. Some were cool—a lion is a lion after all—but I could have done without the spectrum of reptiles and amphibians.

I would have asked to read
Perks
(I’d seen the movie, so at least it wouldn’t creep me out with seven-foot-long lizards), but Henry must have tucked it away somewhere. Besides, I got the impression that the book meant something to him.

“Okay. This is getting ridiculous.” I tossed the field guide onto the dash. “We need to talk.”

“We do?” Henry glanced at me, a slight smirk tilting his lips. “The last time someone said that to me, they broke up with me.”

“No. I mean we need to talk. About anything. The quiet and the scenery are getting to me. I’m about to start singing, and believe me, my rendition of ‘Wrecking Ball’ is cringeworthy. So let’s talk or chat. Your ears will thank you.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Anything. I don’t know. Like, how did you end up working at a refugee camp with Chuck?”

“Tell you what,” Henry said, steering the Range Rover past a woman with a basket balanced on her head. We’d passed a town of sorts—a couple of ramshackle stucco and thatch buildings, a little rough around the edges—a mile or so back. The woman seemed to be hauling something in that direction. “Why don’t you finish telling me the story of how you ended up here? My story doesn’t involve a gun.” Not even the humidity in the air could dampen his dry tone.

“Mine’s not that interesting, really. It was kind of a wrong-place, wrong-time type of thing.”

“What I want to know is how you managed to be sent to visit your father rather than be arrested for possessing a gun in the first place. That’s a pretty big deal.”

“You know that phrase, being able to sell ice to an Eskimo? I’m pretty sure they made it about my mom. She’s a negotiator extraordinaire. Not only did she make sure I wasn’t charged with anything, she made a deal that, if I complete this summer of extreme community service, my arrest record will be expunged and sealed.”

Henry didn’t say anything for a minute. He shook his head. “Do you have any idea how lucky you are?”

I snorted. “Oh, yeah. I didn’t like the thought of going to jail or of the rest of my life being fucked up because of it.”

“Yet you took the gun.” It wasn’t a question, but his raised eyebrow told me he expected an answer.

“Well, yeah. First, I didn’t expect to actually get caught with it. Second, it would have been worth it to keep Wendy from doing something stupid.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to report her having the gun? It would have solved the problem of her doing something she’d regret and keep you out of it.”