Drought (23 page)

T
hey lit a fire in a natural hollow in the rocks. From the soot-blackened granite and the heaps of ashes they could see that campers had lit fires in this hollow many times before, because it acted as a natural hearth. For them, though, the greatest advantage was that nobody on the highway would be able to see it, and it was sheltered by so many trees that it would be difficult to spot from the air.

‘Before dark tomorrow we should reach Lost Girl Lake,' said Santos. He had taken three Tylenol with the coffee that Susan had brewed, and now he was sitting upright and his eyes were brighter. ‘To start with we can make a camp in the cave there, and then we can think about building a better shelter.'

They grilled hot dogs in front of the fire on sticks, and heated up cans of baked beans and vegetable soup by burying them in the embers. When they had eaten, Peta and Susan made up blanket-beds for the younger children in one of the cabins so that they could settle down to sleep. The moon had risen over the treetops, and Camp Knobcone was now illuminated by a hard white light.

For Rita's sake, they had taken nine six-packs of Budweiser from the Chevron food mart, and she had already managed to drink five cans. None of them had been happy about bringing along so much alcohol for her, especially Peta, who never drank; but even Peta understood that if Rita suddenly stopped drinking altogether, she was liable to suffer from hallucinations and tremors and even a stroke or a fatal heart attack.

‘Let's sing something!' said Rita. ‘Here we are, sitting around a campfire, we should sing something! How about
Great Green
Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts
? We always used to sing that when I was at camp! Come on, all of you! Join in!'

She started to sing, shrill and off-key, waving her beer can from side to side so that it sprayed into the fire.

After she had finished, there was silence, except for the crackling of the pine branches on the fire. She looked around her – at Martin and Peta and Saskia and Ella and Tyler and Santos and Susan, and Mikey, too, because Mikey had been allowed to stay up later.

‘Do you know something?' she slurred. ‘You are the stuff – I mean, you are the stuffiest people I have ever come across – ever – in my life. And I mean
ever
. But do you know something else? I love you. I love all of you. I love you from the bottom of my heart.'

Susan put her arm around her and said, ‘Come on, Mom. I think it's time you hit the sack. It's going to be another long day tomorrow.'

Rita took a last swallow from her beer can and then tossed it into the flames. ‘You're right,' she blurted. ‘You're absolutely right.'

She allowed Martin and Susan to lift her up between them, and then she staggered with Susan to the cabin where she would be spending the night.

‘You don't mind sharing with her, do you?' Martin asked Saskia. ‘She'll be dead to the world for the next eight hours.'

‘Me too, probably,' said Saskia. ‘I don't think I've ever felt so exhausted in my life.'

‘Can't we have a ghost story?' asked Mikey. ‘I never went to a camp before, and aren't you supposed to tell each other ghost stories?'

‘Aren't you scared enough already?' Tyler asked him.

‘Me? Nah. I'm not scared of nothing.'

‘OK,' said Martin. ‘Once upon a time there was a boy who really hated school. One day he drew a picture on the chalkboard of his teacher Mr Wolfe looking like some kind of a monster, and underneath he wrote “Werewolf”. Well, actually he spelled it wrong and wrote “Where wolf”.'

Mikey pulled a face. ‘That's not a
ghost
story. That's about me. You know that. The principal asked you to come to the school and he showed it to you.'

‘Just hold on,' said Martin. ‘I'm not finished yet. Not too long after, this boy who really hated school spent the night in a cabin, way up in the mountains. That same night, back in the classroom, when the moon came up, it shone through the window on to the chalkboard. The chalk drawing of the werewolf came to life. It jumped down from the chalkboard and it left the school and it ran through the streets with its chalky claws scratching on the sidewalk. It followed the boy up into the mountains.'

‘Now that
is
scary,' grinned Santos.

‘When the boy was asleep, the chalk werewolf crawled through the gap under his cabin door. It could do that, because it was only a drawing. It tippy-toed over to the boy's bunk and it used its claw to write on the wall – “
Where
wolf?
Here
wolf !” When the boy woke up in the morning and saw what the werewolf had written right above his bunk, his hair turned as white as chalk.'

‘Hey,' said Mikey. ‘That's a really cool story. Nobody ever put me into a story before.'

‘Maybe
you
could,' Martin suggested. ‘Maybe that's what you could be one day. A story writer, with you in all of your stories. The continuing adventures of Mikey Murillo.'

For a fraction of a second, Martin saw in Mikey's eyes a flash of that enthusiasm that he always looked for when he was trying to give difficult children a reason to behave and to knuckle down to their studies. But then Mikey said, ‘Nah. You have to learn all of that spelling. I couldn't even spell “werewolf” right. That was the whole point of that story, wasn't it, me not spelling right?'

As midnight approached, and the fire was dying down, they retired to the cabins. Peta was sharing a cabin with Ella, while Saskia went in with Rita, who was already deeply asleep. Tyler and Mikey took the next cabin together, and Martin shared with Santos.

‘Goodnight, everybody,' called Martin, but not too loudly, in case he woke up the children. Peta was standing by her cabin door, under the moonlight, as if she were a character in an amateur stage play. She looked at him but she didn't say anything and she didn't wave. She just went into her cabin and closed the door behind her.

‘“Goodnight, everybody”?' said Santos, who was already pulling up his blanket over his shoulders. ‘You sound like
The Waltons
.'

Martin closed the cabin door and eased himself back on his bunk. It was hard, of course, but he had slept in much more uncomfortable places in Afghanistan, like the back of a Buffalo, or a trench so narrow that his arms had been pinned to his sides all night.

‘We
are
doing the right thing, getting out of the city like this?' he asked Santos.

‘Are you asking me if I think that you are a coward, for running away?'

‘Not really. But maybe we should have stayed there and toughed it out, like everybody else.'

‘My people learned a very hard lesson, when your people came to steal our land. It may be brave to face up to adversity, but it is no disgrace to survive.'

Martin turned over to face the wall. Every muscle in his body felt bruised, almost as badly as when he had been beaten by the Taliban. Even his brain felt bruised, as if he just couldn't think any more. But he did think about Peta, standing in the moonlight looking at him. Had she been wondering if they could possibly start over, and live together again? Or was she simply resigned to the fact that he would never change?

He slept for about two hours and then he was woken by a soft groaning sound. He opened his eyes and lifted his head a little. The moon must have gone down because the interior of the cabin was completely black. There was silence for a while and then the groaning sound was repeated. At first he thought the wind might have risen, because the cabin door was rattling, too.

The next groan, however, was very much louder, and ended in a thick, phlegmy cough.

‘Santos?' he asked.

‘I am sorry, Martin. I did not want to wake you.'

Martin found his flashlight and switched it on. Santos was perched on the edge of his bunk. His shoulders were hunched like a vulture's wings and his face was glossy with sweat.

‘So much pain,' he said. ‘I never thought that such pain could exist.'

‘Do you want to take some more Tylenol?'

He nodded. ‘I will have to. I left them in my truck.'

‘I'll go get them for you. Where are they?'

Santos shook his head. ‘I will get them myself, and maybe stay in the truck for the rest of the night. You have all of these people to look after. Your wife, your children, my grandchildren, too. You need all the sleep you can get.'

With that, he stood up and wrapped his blanket around his shoulders. Martin stood up, too, and helped him out of the cabin, shining his flashlight across the clearing so that he could see where he was going. Santos reached his Suburban and laboriously climbed inside. Martin waited until he had closed the door and given him a salute, and then he went back to his bunk.

Santos had been right. It was no disgrace to survive. But sometimes survival could be more than anybody could bear.

After another twenty minutes or so he managed to sink back to sleep again. He dreamed that he was sitting in a bare room in Afghanistan, with a single high window covered by a cotton blind. There was a desk in the opposite corner of the room, and a black-bearded man in a black turban and salwar kameez was sitting at this desk, engrossed in writing.

Martin could even hear his pen scratching.
Scritchety-scritchety-scritch
.

Eventually the man set down his pen. He studied what he had written for a while, and then he stood up and came over to where Martin was sitting, holding up the sheet of paper in front of him. He held it much too close to his face, so that Martin found it hard to focus on it. He could see that it was covered in Pashto characters, although he couldn't understand any of it. To him, Pashto writing had always looked like nothing more than a procession of black wriggling worms.

‘You know what this means?' the man demanded.

Martin's mouth was so dry that he could hardly manage to say ‘No … I don't have any idea … they just look like worms to me.'

‘This is because they
are
worms!' the man snapped back at him. He gave the sheet of paper a violent shake and all of the wormlike writing dropped off it and fell on to Martin, squirming and convulsing. He had worms in his hair, worms down the back of his shirt, and worms all over his clothes.

He twisted around and slapped at his sleeves, gasping in panic and disgust. Somebody, however, seized hold of his wrists to hold him down, and breathed hotly into his face. ‘Sshh,
sshh
! You're having a nightmare, that's all. Ssh!'

He stopped struggling. Somebody was sitting on the bunk next to him, still gripping his wrists. It was still dark, but it must have been growing lighter outside because he could make out a silhouette. It was a woman, and he could smell a woman's perfume, too, jasmine and musk. It was Saskia.

‘Are you OK now?' she asked him. She sounded sympathetic, but also amused. ‘That must have been some scary dream you were having. It wasn't about chalky werewolves, was it?'

She released his wrists and he sat up. ‘What's wrong?' he said. ‘Rita's not sick, is she?'

‘Rita's fine, except she's been snoring all night like a cow elephant on heat. I haven't been able to sleep at all.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry. You can stay in here if you like. Santos didn't feel too good so he's gone to sleep in his truck.'

Saskia looked across at the opposite side of the cabin, and then she said, ‘Great. Thank you.'

Instead of going over to Santos' bunk, however, she lifted Martin's blanket and climbed in close beside him, putting her arm around him and crossing her left leg across his thighs. He had taken off his shirt and his chinos and was only wearing shorts, and he could feel that she had taken off her pants, too, and was dressed in nothing but her blouse.

For a moment, he thought about telling her that this wasn't what he had had in mind, but then she snuggled in even closer to him and pressed her breasts against his chest and she felt so warm and smelled so womanly that the words just wouldn't come out.

‘Santos doesn't trust me at all, does he?' she said.

‘I don't think he trusts any white people. He doesn't even trust
me
all that much, but he knows that I'll take care of his family, mainly because it's my job.'

‘How about you? Do you trust me?'

‘Do I need to? We're both in the same boat, aren't we, so trusting each other is kind of irrelevant. It's a question of mutual self-preservation.'

‘I like that,' she said, and spontaneously kissed him on the cheek. ‘It makes us sound like Adam and Eve. A man and a woman, running together from the wrath of God.'

He turned his face toward her, and as he did so she kissed him again, on the lips this time. He kissed her back, and then she slipped her tongue into his mouth. They kissed again and again, with increasing passion, scarcely pausing for breath. When Martin pushed his tongue into her mouth, she teasingly bit it, and wouldn't let it go. As she did so, she reached across and took hold of his penis through his cotton shorts. It was already half-stiff, and she needed only to rub it up and down three or four times before it was totally hard. In fact he felt that it had turned to bone.

Neither of them spoke. They didn't need to pretend that they needed permission for what they were doing, or that they loved each other, or even that they liked each other. Saskia took hold of the waistband of Martin's shorts and wrestled them down around his thighs. He lifted up his knees so that she could pull them off altogether and drop them on to the floor.