Russell Banks - The Darling

I followed Woodrow into the boys’ bedroom. Dillon lay on his bed, huge, eyes closed, lost in his Walkman, a muscular, barefoot giant of a boy in his green Boston Celtics tee shirt and gym shorts. The other two sat facing each other cross-legged on the floor. They were practicing their newly acquired skill in sign language, learned from a chart I’d brought them after having tried and failed to teach a few basic signs to my dreamers, the signs for yes, no, mother, father, baby , and My name is … William and Paul had quickly mastered the signs and now could carry on lengthy, utterly silent conversations with each other without our knowing a word of what they were saying.

“Come, come, boys, pay attention!” Woodrow snapped.

Dillon opened his eyes and removed the earphones. He sat up slowly, as if waking from a nap. The twins’ hands went silent.

“Hi, Papa,” William said and sweetly smiled.

“What’s the matter, Papa?” Paul asked in a small voice. He looked to me as if for an answer.

Woodrow stepped over the clutter of the small room and went into the closet, where he rummaged through its contents for a moment before emerging with my old duffel bag, unused for nearly four years, except to store temporarily the boys’ outgrown clothes before donating them to the church. He emptied the bag on the floor and tossed it to Dillon. I suddenly noticed that Woodrow was sweating and smelled of anxiety and fear. His movements were abrupt and ill coordinated, as if he’d been drinking. He turned to me and said, “Get them packed,” and I smelled the whiskey.

“Packed? What for?”

“I’m taking them to Fuama,” he said and roughly pushed Dillon on the shoulder and the twins by the back of their heads. “Hurry up! We goin’ now.”

“What about the checkpoints? Prince Johnson controls the road to Fuama, doesn’t he?”

“We’ll get through. I got money. It ain’t Johnson I’m worried about anyhow.”

“Who, then? Not Charles. Charles is our friend,” I said. “Remember?”

He ignored me and set about helping the boys, tossing random articles of clothing, sneakers, and a few books into the duffel. “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” he said. “For God’s sake, hurry up! Hannah!” he shouted and abruptly turned to me. “Go wrap some food, as much as you can. Rice, tinned beef, beans, anything. Hurry!”

I did as instructed, and by the time I’d put together a large string sack of provisions, Woodrow appeared in the kitchen, ready to go, the boys coming along behind him, bewildered and frightened.

“Hurry up,” Woodrow ordered. “You comin’ wit’ us,” he said to me.

“I’m not staying in Fuama,” I said. “What on earth are you running for anyhow? Who are you running from? Look at the boys, you’ve got them terrified. I’m terrified, Woodrow.”

He grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me towards the door. “You go where I say you go. Don’t vex me now, woman,” he warned. “Wit’ you in the car, them soldier boys’ll let us pass the checkpoints.”

“No! I’m not leaving this house, I have to be here for my dreamers. And you can’t take the boys until you tell me what’s happening.”

He looked me coldly in the face, as if at that moment he despised me and wished he’d never married me. “Sam Clement seen you at Toby today, didn’ he?”

“Yes, he came out for a few minutes.”

“An’ you think Doe don’t know that?”

“What if he does?”

He shook his head sadly. He no longer despised me; he pitied me. “This man Doe is crazy, but crazy like a fox. Look, he knows the Americans got their hand in this war from the beginnin’. He knows they been secretly backin’ Charles. He knows you an American, missus! An’ ’cause of that old business ’bout me an’ Charles, Doe been puttin’ two an’ two together. He sent two of his soldier boys aroun’ for me this afternoon, but I knew it was a trick, so I sent Satterthwaite across to the Barclay Barracks where Doe and his top boys all holed up, tol’ him to say I be right along, an’ when Satterthwaite didn’ come back, I know what Doe got in his head for me.” He passed me at the door and scooted the boys outside. “Get in the car,” he ordered.

“What about Bruno and Muhammad Ali?” Paul asked.

“Never mind them dogs, they’ll guard the house. Jus’ get in the car. Jeannine or Kuyo or somebody’ll take care of ’em.” He turned and grabbed my wrist again and yanked me outside.

“Let me get the food,” I said, and he released me, and I returned to the kitchen.

“Wait a minute, Papa,” Dillon said. “I forgot something, too.” He followed me into the house and jogged into the living room, and when he returned he carried the camera bag and video camera. Except for the video I made for Samuel Doe, no one but Dillon had ever used it. He had become fairly proficient and had accumulated a small collection of home movies, mostly of his friends and sports events, but a few family events as well, which we usually watched once after they were shot and not again.

“Might be something interesting out there to tape,” he said, as together we passed out of the house. I locked the door and walked to the car, where Woodrow waited impatiently. Dillon got in back with the twins, and I walked to the gate, while Woodrow backed the car down the driveway and out to the street, where he stopped and waited for me to lock the gate. It was our routine.

This is how it happened. As I turned to clip the padlock onto the gate, I saw them waiting for us, Satterthwaite with three men I didn’t know, civilians in sweat-stained sleeveless shirts and caps and sneakers, street kids, the kind of feral young men without jobs or family whom I’d gotten used to seeing hanging out on corners and stalking the alleys in Monrovia over the last few years. Satterthwaite moved on me, his face expressionless; the others, carrying machetes, went for the car. Satterthwaite lifted his shirt and showed me a pistol against his bare belly. “Go back inside,” he said and pushed me through the gate, then quickly closed and locked it. The dogs, sensing my alarm, barked once; then, having recognized Satterthwaite, stopped.

“Woodrow, go!” I screamed. “Drive! Drive , for God’s sake!”

He didn’t move. Several seconds passed as the men walked to the car, two of them on Woodrow’s side, the other on the passenger’s side. Satterthwaite leaned his back against the gate and watched the car. Woodrow, round faced, wide eyed, looked over at me, a prisoner locked in our yard behind the iron-barred gate, and the boys did the same. They stared at me as if I were standing on the deck of a departing ship and were waving goodbye to them.

“ Leave , Woodrow! Go!” I yelled.

It seemed they had done this many times. The men moved slowly and methodically to the sides of the car. The one on the far side opened the rear door and pointed his machete at the boys and said something to them. Another opened the driver’s-side door, and the third reached in and grabbed Woodrow by the arm and pulled him from the car to the street. It happened in an instant. While the first man stood by the open rear door and kept the boys inside, the other two forced Woodrow to his hands and knees. One of them pulled Woodrow’s head back, forcing the small of his back down and his narrow shoulders up, and the other flashed his machete on a deadly path parallel to Woodrow’s back and shoulders towards his head, then lifted the machete, and with a single blow separated my husband’s head from his body.

There was no sound, not a word or a cry from any of us, no screams, no weeping. Nothing. The dogs remained silent. There was only the sound of the birds and the cicadas and the frogs and the evening breeze in the trees. Woodrow’s body collapsed onto the street and poured blood into the dirt. The boys, as motionless as a photograph, stared out the car window at their father’s body. The man with the machete looked at the other, who held Woodrow’s head in his hands. He pointed at the head with the tip of his machete and laughed, an odd, high-pitched, silly laugh, and the other tossed the head across the street into the gutter like a rotten melon.