Chris Abani - Song for Night

“I shot the sheriff,” I mumble under my breath, mentally walking through my memories, examining each one like a stranger walking through my own home, handling all the unrecognizable yet familiar objects.

It was a Wednesday. How I remember that detail is unclear given that nearly all my memories are mixed up, as though I have taken a fall and jumbled the images: probably a result of concussion brought on by the explosion. Wednesday, late afternoon: and the sky heavy with dark clouds. The muted light that fell like a hush was darkened by the deep green of foliage to one side, the red unpaved road scarring the middle, and to the other side a clearing covered with the gleam of white gravel and a church, not much more than a low whitewashed bungalow with a cross atop its corrugated iron roof, half of which had collapsed — maybe from a shell or a mortar, it was hard to tell. Another bungalow, the priest’s house, was off to the back, set close to the encroaching greenery. In the front of the church was a battered pickup truck that was idling in the shade of a tree. A white priest, neck and face red against his white soutane, sat in the cab. In the shadow of the bombed-out church, two women were washing a statue of the Virgin with all the tenderness of a mother washing a child. A seven-year-old girl played in the gravel by their feet. I stared at that sight unbelievingly. Of all the things they could have salvaged, I remember thinking. Just then, a man came round the corner carrying a statue of Jesus, cradled like a baby. I fought tears. There was something matter-of-fact about it all that was heartbreaking.

John Wayne stopped us with a casual wave, and we spread out wordlessly into the formation we had been trained to. The people in the church tableau froze as we approached: the man holding Jesus, the women washing the Virgin, and the priest in the truck whom I assume meant to carry the statues to another church or parish where they would be safe. As we moved forward in a loose fan that tapered into a point, with John Wayne leading, only the child moved. Smiling, she ran toward us. John Wayne bent down, arms spread, a father home from work, except he didn’t look like a father, more like a bird of prey. He picked up the seven-year-old girl and held her to his side. Something about him in that moment must have terrified her though because she began to cry.

“What is your name?” he asked her.

“Faith,” she said, still crying.

John Wayne touched her face tenderly, and then when she smiled tentatively through her tears, he threw his head back and laughed.

“This one is ripe. I will enjoy her,” he said, looking right at me, as though he expected me to challenge him, like I did the first time he had forced me at gunpoint to rape someone, but whatever he saw in my eyes made him laugh even louder. Without thinking, I lifted my AK-47 and opened fire. He moved, instinctively I think, the way an animal will, to escape the shot, and the bullet went through the seven-year-old and found John Wayne’s heart. They both looked at me, faces wide with shock for a long moment, then John Wayne fell, taking the girl with him. Everyone scattered for cover, the women, the man carrying Jesus, still carrying Jesus, and the rest of the platoon; everyone except Ijeoma, who stood behind me, and the priest, who leapt out of his car and ran toward John Wayne and the girl.

Without a word the priest bent down, said a prayer over the child, kissed her forehead, and drew a cross in the air above her with two fingers. He pried her from John Wayne’s arms and held her to his chest, her blood staining his white soutane. He seemed confused, unsure what to do next, and his eyes locked on mine were filled with tears and an expression I have seen too many times. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. I was numb to John Wayne’s death. Gladness would come later. For now, all I could think was that the only real casualty was Faith.

I became aware that Ijeoma was rubbing my back gently. Without a word I turned and put my head on her shoulder. When I looked up, the rest of the platoon was gathered in a circle around us. Nebu had unpinned John Wayne’s rank insignia and was holding it in his hand like a burning coal. He approached me silently and pinned it to my shirt, saluted, and turned around. The rest of the platoon came to full attention and saluted. I was now the leader, months into the war; our war.

I turned to Ijeoma. She looked at me with a mocking smile, then we all set off. In the weeks to come, we would see the old women eat the baby and Ijeoma would die.

Perhaps I should change my name to Unlucky.

Perhaps this is karma.

Perhaps this is how we learn love.

I wonder what Grandfather would have made of it.

Hiding is all I seem to do: from myself, from the enemy. But doubt never leaves, not even here in this tree. Like a spider busy spinning a web, my mind weaves the night into terror.

What does it mean to hide in a ceiling, in that narrow hot crawl space crouched like an animal smelling my own scent, full of it and grateful for it, while my mother stays below, in what seems like the brightest sunlight although it is only the light of a sixty-watt bulb, waiting to deflect the anger of people intent on murder, my murder, waiting so that I may live, and I watch what happens below and I am grateful that I can smell my smell, smell my smell and live while below me it happens, it happens that night bright as day, but I cannot name it, those things that happened while I watched, and I cannot speak something that was never in words, speak of things I cannot imagine, could never have seen even as I saw it, and I hide and am grateful for my smell crouched like an animal in that dark hot space.

I shake my head. Imagine good things , I say to myself, forefinger pressed firmly between my eyes, block out the horror and imagine good things , I say, but all I can think is that it would be nice to have a hot meal.

I sigh, turn over, and close my eyes, dropping the cigarette into the wet black.

Morning arrives in a shout, parting the protective cover of leaves as surely as a hand. I blink and wipe at my eyes furiously. Time is like that here. No gradual change, no softening of the light or gentle graying of night. Instead everything happens rudely, at once: like this war. I stretch carefully so as not to fall out of my perch. My trained eyes scan the terrain, ascertaining very quickly that it is safe. I scramble down. It is a quiet morning, no sound of gunfire, only birdsong and the landscape, the grass flowing like a green mossy carpet from where I stand at the edge of the forest down to the river. But then the war intrudes again: floating past in the river like a macabre regatta is a cluster of corpses. Riding them like barges, and breakfasting at the same time, are a bunch of vultures. I light a cigarette and scratch my belly. Time to move on, maybe catch breakfast on the way. I know to go against the flow of the bodies. They are washing downstream from the killing zone — a town, judging from the number of bodies in the water. I set off.

Life and death are like this river, Grandfather said. You can go anywhere on its spread as long as you don’t try to stop or alter the river’s course. But he was wrong. I have cheated death’s course many times and I am still here, like an undercurrent, full of a hate dark as any undertow.

I scan the road ahead and try to figure out what the enemy might have in store for me, if this is their territory now. Ambush is a standard procedure — for both sides. This is how the enemy set their traps: they plant mines in the road verge, in the brush, then they ambush an oncoming troop. The initial volley of fire from them is aimed a little too high so that it kills only a few oncoming soldiers. Naturally, and in spite of the three weeks of boot-camp training and the formations we have been taught to assume, we scatter for cover, stumbling onto the mines, blowing up ourselves and our friends. It is a particularly cruel way to take out an enemy, but since land mines are banned in civilized warfare, the West practically gives them away at cost and in this way they are cheaper than bullets and other arms. If they could, the enemy would have jerry-rigged the mines so they could throw them like grenades, but the firing mechanism of a mine is too sensitive to take such risks. Instead they lay them like a metal undercarpet. When a mine explodes, anyone directly on top will usually be killed. They are lucky. For the rest, shrapnel tears off arms and legs and parts of faces. Mines are like little jumping jacks. You step on one, they arm, you step off, and they jump up about mid-torso high and then explode, ripping you apart. For us, the rebels, mines are as valuable as bullets. We have no generous superpower sugar-daddies and we reuse every mine that we successfully defuse. Waste not want not.