Brendan DuBois - Dead of Night

Sanjay moved again, then there came the stealthy noise of him trying to unzip his sleeping bag. I stayed motionless, not wanting him to know that I wasn’t asleep. With the sleeping bag undone, he loosened the tent flap and a blast of cold air blew in as he went outside. I stayed there, curled up, wondering if he was finding a tree to water or going to get something to drink. But why move so quietly? To be considerate of his tent-mate? Not likely.

Then, from the tent nearby, came the low sound of laughter, followed by a giggle. Oh. But why not? Even in the midst of death and destruction, life—such as it was—went on. I rolled over and got a small battery-powered lantern, which I switched on. It emitted a small beam of light, just enough to read by, and I felt around in my rucksack for one of my two books. Not being in the mood to read Orwell’s essays about the foibles of mankind, I decided to read instead about humanity’s adventurous spirit and found myself flipping through the pages of The Green Hills of Earth,

Just after I’d finished a short story about a couple from Luna City who decided to return to Earth to live—with disastrous results as they reacquainted themselves with smog, overcrowding and poor plumbing — the tent flap suddenly opened and a woman’s voice said, ‘Samuel? Still awake?’

I dropped the book, moved the lantern about. There was Miriam, her hair hanging loose, wearing a blue down vest and red flannel nightgown, on her hands and knees.

‘Sure,’ I said, sitting up. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Can I come in?’

‘Of course.’

She said something in Dutch and came in on all fours. I glanced sheepishly away from her suddenly exposed cleavage, and then she rolled over and laid down. ‘There. Sorry, Samuel, I am a grumpy woman tonight, that’s what’s going on.’

‘What’s… oh, I’m sorry.’

Miriam rested the back of her head on her hands and looked up at the ceiling of the tent. ‘Working with such a small team, when you’re one of just two women, you try to look out for each other. Men have different ways of working, different ways of looking at things. So if you’re one of a pair of women, you help each other out and do little favors for each other. Do you understand?’

‘Yeah, I do,’ I said. ‘Like asking you to be out of your tent for a while, so that… well, so that someone can come by for a visit.’

Miriam laughed. ‘That’s a polite way of saying it. A Canadian way, perhaps. Coming by for a visit. No mind, for what you said is true. Earlier Karen had asked if I would leave the tent at a certain time, for bathroom functions perhaps, so that she could entertain a guest. But now he has been there for over an hour, and I’m cold and tired and I think they’ve fallen asleep in there, and I’ll be damned if I’ll go knock on that tent to ask permission to go back in to my own bed.’

‘Then why don’t you stay here and take his bed?’ I said.

She rolled over. ‘Thank you. I was hoping you’d say that.’

So Miriam threw open Sanjay’s sleeping bag and rolled herself in, and when I was sure she was settled I put my book away and switched off the lantern. I lay still there in the darkness, listening to her breathing, so close to me. I wondered what her hair would feel like in my fingers, what her flesh would taste like against my mouth. Miriam stirred and said, ‘It was a long day today, wasn’t it?’

‘That it was,’ I said.

She sighed. ‘You think we’d be happy, finding three dead cows in a field and not a mother and a father and their children. But no, we’re not happy. A hell of a thing, isn’t it, to hope to find dead human bodies in the mud? But that’s what we do. Even here, in this place. This is what we do.’

‘So far, it doesn’t seem like we’re doing much.’

‘True. But we do what we can.’

It was comforting to lie there in the darkness, talking to Miriam. ‘To what end? To deter future gunmen from slaughtering their neighbors during bad times? It hasn’t happened yet, either in this century or the last. And if it can happen here, in the homeland of the sole superpower…’

There was a rustling noise as she rolled over on her side. ‘Ah, but how do you know? True, there have been killing fields aplenty these past decades, from Cambodia to the Congo to here. But if we hadn’t taken the time to prosecute the criminals, identify and bury the dead, and comfort the living, perhaps more gunmen would have risen up to kill their neighbors. In England. In France. Perhaps in my own country.’

‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘But sometimes it just seems futile.’

Another sigh. ‘You’re getting too cynical, Samuel. Too cynical for such a young man.’

‘I’m not that young.’

Another rustle of cloth. ‘You’re right. You are not too young, chronologically. But in everything else, compared to what I and the others have seen, you are still a young man.’

It was my turn to shift in my sleeping bag. ‘Give me time. I’ll grow up.’

‘Ah, this is true. You will grow up here, so fast. So fast.’

Then she yawned. ‘Thank you for allowing me in here. Please, I have to get to sleep, all right?’

‘That’s fine, Miriam, just fine.’

Then I was surprised by her touch, just a feather glance with her fingers across my brow, as she whispered, ‘Good night.’ I wish they had reached a few inches lower, to touch my lips at least, but luck or whatever wasn’t with me tonight. I wanted so much to return the favor, maybe by gently stroking her cheek, but the events of the day crowded in upon me and I could all too easily imagine reaching out and poking her in her eye or ear. So I lay still.

I wished I could say that the rest of the night was magical, that Miriam’s scent and gentle breathing relaxed and quietened me, but that didn’t happen. Dear Miriam was an even more restless sleeper than Sanjay, and she snored loudly for most of the night.

But I didn’t think of leaving the tent, not once.

In the morning the lousy weather returned, penetrating drizzle accompanied by another heavy fog. By some unspoken agreement we stayed out of the house and the barn again, and ate breakfast standing up, wearing our yellow rain slickers, except for Charlie who was dressed in his Marine camouflage gear. Karen and Sanjay made a point of ignoring each other as we ate the hard rolls and drank the lukewarm tea. Peter stood beside me and said, ‘Who the hell do they think they are fooling?’

‘Each other, maybe,’ I said.

‘Hah.’ He slurped noisily from the metal teacup and said, ‘I think people up on the ridge heard those two, they rutted so much.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, wishing that Peter would just go away.

Then he said, ‘Hey, I saw who tumbled out of your tent this morning. Good on you. Just sleeping, or something more?’

I tossed the tea on the ground, as close as I could make it to his feet without looking too obvious. ‘Piss off, will you?’ I grunted and walked over to the tiny fire to try and warm up some, as Peter’s laughter followed me.

Within minutes of our sparse breakfast Jean-Paul was on the satellite phone again, speaking in low tones in French to whoever was on the other end, either at the UN compound down south or to Geneva. I was impressed by how refreshed he looked. The rest of us, with the exception of Charlie, looked like we had spent a week hitchhiking along the TransCanadian Highway in the middle of a thunderstorm. But Jean-Paul looked like he had gotten a solid eight hours of sleep and a hot shower. He talked and smoked and waved his hands about as the rest of us packed away the gear, and I wondered how come his tent-mate Peter looked so much like us and not like him.

As I slung my rucksack into the rear of our white Toyota Land Cruiser, I looked again at the house and thought that I hadn’t taken a photograph of the entire farm. I had taken dozens and dozens of photos of bloodstains and bullet holes and clothing and even of some dead cows, but not a single one showing this farmhouse and its buildings standing alone. I got my digital camera out of my bag and was setting up the shot when Peter’s voice called out, sounding strained: ‘Charlie, we’ve got visitors, coming up the driveway.’