Michael Bishop: No Enemy But Time

Monicah had left me a note. It was written on the back of the birthday telegram from my mother:

Dear Daddy,

You can give me your permission to do this by not trying to bring me back, okay? We’re crossing Lake Kiboko into Uganda in a motor launch, and if you want to catch us you probably can. I really, really hope you won’t try. You had your turn, this is mine, and maybe one day Dirk and I can point everyone toward their tomorrow by stepping out of it back into today. Tell Grandma Jeannette and Aunt Anna I love them. Lots and lots o’ love to you too.

I rode the elevator down to the lobby, then walked out to the marina in the strength-sapping heat. In spite of the heat several vacationers were out on the lake in paddleboats; a light breeze fluttered the fringes on the colorful parasols beneath which these hearty tourists labored. Despite my daughter’s note and her conviction that we could catch up with her if we tried, she and Dirk Akuj must have already reached the lake’s western shore. Although it might still be possible to overtake them in the treacherous hinterland between Zarakal and Uganda, I was not going to blow the whistle on their escape.

In spite of this decision, I returned along the pierlike arm of the marina to the walk running north and south along the lakeshore. Here I turned north and made my way to the water-purification plant servicing the entire complex. My keys admitted me to the fenced enclosure surrounding the plant, and my status in the Zarakali government short-circuited the objections of a pair of uniformed guards who clearly wondered what business I had in their little bailiwick.

I hiked through a maze of metal tubing, pressure gauges, and wheels to the clean sandy area where an immense water tower rose up into the desert sky. I climbed the narrow iron ladder on one of the tower’s colossal legs and from the catwalk looked over Lake Kiboko after my daughter. The guards and several other plant personnel watched me ascend, dumbfounded by my audacity.

Then I leaped out and caught a support rod with both hands. The plant personnel gasped. When I began a long slide inward, my feet dangling like window-sash weights, they cried, “Be careful, Mr. Kampa!

Please be careful, sir!” Their shouts were reassuring hosannas. I slid the rod to an intersection beneath the tank, then hung there in the arid breeze gazing westward after Monicah. For the duration of my stunt, at least, I was a very happy man.

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Copyright ©1982 by Michael Bishop

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Quotation from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien copyright © 1965 by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Lines from William Butler Yeats’s “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz” from Collected Poems , copyright © 1933 by Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., renewed 1961 by Bertha Georgie Yeats.

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Cover art by and copyright © 2000 Jamie Bishop

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