Secluded and Completely Exposed

I feed the line in with my left hand so that it hangs slack from the rod just above the reel and begins to coil at my feet. I pinch the line above the slack part with the trigger finger of my right hand so that I will feel if there is a strike and the line will be taut when I jerk the rod to set the hook. It is the late morning and there is a high, warm sun and a sharp, cool breeze. There are no sounds except the river and the birds and the rustling of leaves. Where I stand in the river the water comes to just below my knees. It is cool and slow moving here where it pools shallowly beside the main channel. When I have fed in enough line, I retrieve the fly from where it battles the current and, with a few swift flicks of my wrist and forearm, I dry the fly in the air and then cast it back upstream to where I think there might be trout.

         ‘If there are fish, this is where they will be,’ I have told her, pointing to a similar section of river some ways upstream. She is there now where I left her after I set her rig and saw from the first cast that she knew what she was doing.

         ‘I’m going a ways downstream,’ I said.

         ‘OK. When I catch one, you’ll have to come back to take it off the hook,’ she said.

         ‘When you catch one,’ I said, ‘I’ll show you how to take it off the hook yourself.’

         ‘OK but I don’t want to touch it,’ she said.

         The fly runs quickly down the channel passing through all the good holes as I intend it to. As the current takes it, I feed the line in to keep it taut. When the fly has passed through the good section and is dragging in the current, I jerk it free, sweep it dry through the air, and send it back to the top of the run as I have done several times now.

         As the fly runs downstream and I begin to feed the line in, I think about how quickly the time has run passed. It is our last full day in the mountains outside Telluride where we have spent the last week. We only just got here, I think, only it feels like we have been together a very long time. Then I think about how this is our third week since leaving South Sudan and how far away that feels and how it has all happened very quickly and quite unexpectedly.

Something happened around the New Year, I think as I watch the fly float passed, because we had mostly ignored each other before that and then after we began slowly to be friends. After the New Year, we met a couple times in Juba when one was coming and the other was going and once when there was a coordination meeting for several days at the head office. After that we began to exchange text messages in the evenings as we lie in bed before turning the lights out. I suppose it was a way to get to know someone slowly without the pressure of a proper telephone conversation. It was a fun thing and it helped to make the time pass and it gave you just enough to get you through the lonely nights.

‘So why did it take us a year of knowing each other?’ she asked when we reminisced about it a long time after.

‘I think we were both getting ready for something,’ I said. ‘It’s like our orbits needed time to synchronize.’

‘It sounds nice when you say it that way,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to write it down so I’ll remember it that way.’

Then it happened that we gave notice around the same time so that we would both be passing through Juba at the end of the month on our way out of the country. She drove up a few days early from where she was working in the south to help them in the head office to do payroll and a few days later I flew down from the north. The office had held a party for me the night before and afterwards some of us drank and I drank quite a lot. So in the morning I felt very bad in my head and my stomach but it helped that I was looking forward to seeing her and I did not feel so nostalgic for leaving.

‘I’m a bit hung over this morning,’ I wrote her in a text message as I waited to board the flight.

‘So I don’t get the sharp you?’ she responded.

‘Just the mild cheddar version,’ I wrote back.

When I arrived, she was having lunch at the Indian restaurant where those who worked at the head office went for lunch because it was the best thing within walking distance and not too expensive. When I arrived she smiled and said hello and then went back to her conversation. She mostly ignored me during the lunch and most of the walk back to the office so that I started to wonder if I had read the situation wrongly. Then she caught up with me at the end of the walk and she was very friendly now as if the ignoring me before made the being friendly with me now more seemly.

‘I felt like people were watching!’ she said a long time later when I asked her about the ignoring.

‘Maybe,’ I said, ‘but, if they were, it was only because it looked like you had a grudge against me.’

We spent the rest of that day in the common office and we chatted very easily as we completed the last pieces of our work. Then, in the evening we arranged for one of the drivers to take us to a restaurant. Giorgio who was the new director sat in the front passenger seat and, when we got in, he announced that he was going out for dinner.

‘What kind of food is it where you are going?’ he said in his very strong but understandable accent.

         ‘It’s a Thai restaurant,’ she said in a tone that might have been meant to make it sound less appetizing.

         ‘Thai?’ he said as though it was a lot to consider. ‘Yes, that sounds good. Can I join you then?’

         He saw that we both hesitated and then he quickly added, ‘Unless it is private or something.’

         Neither of us knew what to say but eventually I managed to speak.

‘No, of course not,’ I said.

At dinner Giorgio did most of the talking. I expected to be very annoyed that he had come along and at myself for not telling him to find his own restaurant. But, I decided later, it was actually for the better.

‘I think it let us just be there together and, since he did all the talking, we did not have to put any work into it,’ I said a long time later when we were reminiscing on it.

         After dinner the driver took Giorgio to the residence and then dropped us at the staff house. Her room was the one beside mine in the block of concrete units outside the main house. In the night, she came over in her pajamas and we put on a movie and we watched some of it together. We watched on my laptop under the green mosquito net that we tucked under the mattress on all sides after we got under. As I think about it, standing in the cold river holding the rod and the fishing line, I remember how the strange green net made the bed feel like an island or a ship at sea and anyway it felt very private and much more romantic than a concrete room with bare walls and a drab curtain had a right to be.

         During the movie, we lay beside each other and I was terribly nervous. I was more nervous than I could ever remember being. Also, the nerves had gone to my stomach, which was already bad from the excessive drinking after the going away party the night before, so that I felt very bad and very nervous and very awkward. Each time when we looked at each other and spoke during the movie I hesitated because I was nervous and, missing my opportunity, I became more nervous.

What’s wrong with you, I thought, lying there not watching the movie and being very nervous. You’ve done this before, haven’t you? Why does this one suddenly have you so inside out?

Finally, when the nervousness was so bad that more of the nervousness would be worse than any possible alternative, I turned and I kissed her on the mouth. It was very sudden and very awkward, but she managed not to be too surprised by it.

‘Very bold,’ she said after that first long kiss.

‘I couldn’t wait any longer,’ I replied.

A long time later when we reminisced about it, she was rather more critical of my first performance.

‘Wooosh! You just came out of nowhere!’ she said. ‘It’s like all of a sudden there was this face in my face and you were attacking me!’ she said, laughing at the memory and being very amused to hold it over me.

‘I know! I was horrible!’ I conceded. ‘My nerves were shot and I was just glad that I didn’t bash your forehead or teeth or something!’

         In the morning we took one of the vehicles into work. She was supposed to leave that day but she decided to miss her flight so that we could have one more day together. So, in the afternoon we had the driver take us to the airline office after she had already missed the flight. She smiled and chatted with the clerks and made them feel that she was very grateful to them.

‘Of course they changed your booking for free!’ I said when we walked out of the office and she carried a new ticket. ‘You have this thing that you do that’s like a Jedi mind trick or something.’

‘I’m just very friendly,’ she said more innocently than was genuine.

‘I think that’s why I was so standoffish with you at first,’ I said when we were remembering it a long time later. ‘I thought that you would use your mind trick to take advantage of me somehow. I can’t stand how it feels to be taken advantage of, especially by a woman, so I guess I was too cautious.’

‘Really? And I always thought you were very intimidating,’ she said.

         That was our last day together in Juba. We had planned to go out for dinner alone that evening but when two colleagues invited us out we decided it was easiest to accept than make excuses. We went to the nice place that is opposite the pumping station where they make the Greek pizza that was very good the first time I had it and never quite measured up after that. We sat in the outside courtyard and had drinks and waited a very long time for our dinner. Mostly we talked to each other while our colleagues talked about work between themselves. I was still nervous but I felt very good and I noticed that she and the courtyard and the drinks and even my pizza were very perfect that night.

After dinner she came to my room in her pajamas.

‘You are utterly incapable of staying properly dressed when you come home,’ I observed a long time after.

‘I know! It just feels wrong to be at home in your outdoor clothes,’ she said.

‘It was that way right from the beginning!’ I said.

We went under the green mosquito net and we began to watch another movie. In the night I lay awake with the nervousness bad in my stomach and I thought how I liked everything about her and there was nothing that I did not like.

She has you turned all inside out and very quickly, I thought later in the night when I slipped outside while she slept soundly under the bed net. I stood outside in the warm, still air with my stomach clenched in knots from the nerves and I thought how it felt different than too much to drink or bad digestion.

‘What did it feel like?’ she asked when we spoke about that night a long time after.

‘Well, not like how you’d imagine butterflies!’ I said.

I left the next day. Her flight was scheduled for later in the day so she spent the morning with me as I packed and, when the driver arrived, she came with me to the airport. Outside the airport, the awkwardness came back and I said goodbye and left her very suddenly.

‘I thought it might have just been a fling for you,’ I said a long time after when she asked about the abrupt goodbye.

‘No!’ she said. ‘I liked you and it was much more than that.’

‘Well, I know that now,’ I said, ‘but at the time I didn’t want to be the guy who gets all sappy outside an airport.’

Inside the airport as I stood in line with all my things about me, sweating profusely in the crowdedness and the heat of the terminal, I received a message on my phone.

‘Damn, I’m gonna miss you…’ it said.

I like you very much, I thought after I read the message, and I hope we are not through yet. Then I thought about the nervousness and the awkwardness that was in how I had kissed her and how I had said goodbye and in almost everything else I had done. It’s either how you’d ruin it or how you’d win her over, I thought, or maybe she just didn’t notice.

Some days later, when we were both gone from South Sudan and that life immediately felt very far away, we were speaking by telephone and I said, ‘We could meet somewhere between LA and Toronto.’

Then I remembered how one night in Juba I had asked her preference on holidaying: ‘Would you rather a condo on the beach or a cabin in the mountains?’

‘What about Montana or Colorado?’ she said over the phone, remembering that same conversation.

So we decided on Telluride and I found a beautiful cabin in the mountains above the town. It was rustic and modern and secluded and completely exposed to the mountains for miles around. It had high ceilings and walls that were mostly windows and the bedroom was a loft. It got the sunrise in the morning and the sunset in the evening and a view of everything all throughout the day.

Some mornings we went running or went for a hike but most days we stayed inside and we did not come out until late in the afternoon when we were desperate for food. Then we drove into town and found a restaurant, and we ate well and drank beer or wine and we never had a shortage of things to say to each other.

On the third day we drove through the national forest and into Durango and back again in a circuit. We listened to music as we drove and she read trivia questions and the country was very beautiful. The next evening we ate pizza and drank beer at a restaurant in town. I was beginning to realize that I could find nothing wrong with her and that made me very nervous again. Also, the being together was only getting better and I was not needing any alone time from her as I had always needed before. I realized that I liked her a lot more than I had been prepared for and that made the awkwardness come back.

‘You’re not finished?’ she said.

‘I think I am for now,’ I said.

‘But you’ve barely eaten anything,’ she said, ‘and this is our first meal of the day!’

‘I know!’ I said with exasperation. ‘I don’t eat enough when I’m with you. You make me lose my appetite!’

The next day, I went for a hike and she spent the afternoon at the spa and in the evening the awkwardness continued when we met for dinner. We sat at the bar and we ordered drinks and then she ordered a steak. I went to the restroom and when I came back I had reached a decision.

‘So I was standing at the urinal and I got some thinking done,’ I said.

She nodded and smiled and did nothing to stop me from barreling into it.

‘I was thinking that I don’t want this to end,’ I said. ‘I want you to come to Liberia with me.’

She looked very happy and she waited a moment to answer while she enjoyed the feeling of it.

‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she said.

‘Good,’ I said and I must have looked very happy also.

‘That’s what you thought while you were peeing?’ she said.

         That was only last night, I think as I stand in the shallow pool in the river and watch the fly float past. Then I hear a noise in the bushes upstream beside the river and I turn to see her coming. She emerges from the bushes and then stops beside a low tree to untangle the tip of her rod from one of the branches. It seems like we’ve lived a long time together but it has been almost no time at all, I think, and it’s all been so very good and unbelievable. I feed in more line until the slack part coils in the water at my knees. Then I whip the fly out, swing it overhead, and cast it back upstream. She comes alongside me and she looks for the fly in the river.

         ‘Did you get any strikes?’ I ask.

         ‘Not one,’ she says. ‘Did you?’

         ‘One good one that took my fly but nothing since then,’ I say.

I feed in line as the fly passes downstream and, when it drags at the end of the line, I reel it in. Then we stand there with our feet in the water, saying nothing and just being there with each other.

‘Are you getting hungry?’ I say eventually.

‘Very hungry,’ she says.

‘Where should we go?’ I ask.

‘The Blue Grass Festival started today so probably the parking will be impossible,’ she says.

‘So let’s drive up past where we turn off to the cabin and see if there’s someplace to eat out that way,’ I say.

I Could Not Grind It Out

The collision occurred very suddenly and very slowly as all split-second things do. When we hit, the motorbike went down beneath me but I was left standing so that it felt as if I had dismounted very nimbly. I did not see if the motorcycle taxi driver and his passenger went down but, if they did, they were both on their feet when I next saw them. Neither wore a helmet and both looked very young and very scared.

         From the corner of my eye, I saw a man approach quickly from the sidewalk. We were collided on the yellow line between the opposing lanes of traffic and, for some reason, at that moment I was very conscious of not being the one who holds up traffic while he throws a fit. If there was any fit in me to throw, the man who came from the sidewalk stole it all away. While I bent and lifted the motorcycle from the ground, he began to hurl abuses at the motorcycle taxi driver.

         ‘You mother fucker! He was clearly in the right!’ he said. ‘You go the wrong fucking way! You cross the street the wrong fucking way. You are not fucking looking! You should be fucking dead! One less fucking pem-pem driver would be OK!’

         The pem-pem driver looked very scared. He did not try to explain or defend himself and, as the man continued his harangue, I reviewed my motorcycle. It was scratched in several places and the crash-side mirror was wrenched out of place. The crash bar was bent near the frame but it had done its job and absorbed most of the collision. I slipped between gears to check the transmission and I found that the shift lever was bent inward but the gears changed smoothly enough. Then I started the engine and listened but heard nothing troubling as it revved to life.

         The man from the sidewalk shouted all through my revisions but he stopped when I looked up as though realizing he had taken something that was not his. I looked at him and then I looked at the pem-pem driver.

         ‘Are you alright?’ I asked.

         He nodded and I turned from him to his passenger.

         ‘Are you alright?’

         He nodded.

         ‘Alright. Get out of here.’

         The man from the sidewalk slinked away as though I had commanded him as much as them. I did not look at either of them again. I mounted as the boys lifted the fallen motorbike and pulled it out of my way. Then I merged into traffic and continued as I had begun, riding towards downtown. Usually I went uptown but this morning I had a meeting in the other direction.

He just had venom to spit, I thought, thinking of the man from the sidewalk who had stolen the fit that was mine to throw. It certainly wasn’t to help me and it probably wasn’t about the pem-pem boy either. It was just the excuse to spit bile. That thought made me angry with him but not very and pretty soon I thought no more about him.

But what about me, I thought as I drove, not thinking anymore about the man from the sidewalk. How could I not get angry at all? A collision is no small thing and that boy was at fault, and I felt no anger at all. The thinking about not getting angry began to make me angry with myself. You spent a long time training yourself to be a fighter and breaking the meekness in you. All that work sharpening your edges and now this and feeling no anger and a ‘Get out of here’ and then you drive off? The old you would not have been so stoical, I thought. The old you would have shown some gravel!

         I thought this rapidly and angrily for several blocks until the adrenaline peaked and I could not control feeling less angry. They all do it, riding recklessly, and it was bound to happen, I thought. If it wasn’t him, it would have been any other one of them. You’re alright and you can’t expect anything of them, I thought. They aren’t worth your anger. I thought it again and then I thought about what it meant to think it.

Doesn’t it mean to get angry that you expect the person to know better, I thought. That might be true, I thought, at least in some cases. Well, it feels true in this case, I decided. So, if you expect nothing of them, then what respect can you have for them? So, maybe to get angry is actually to show them some respect, I thought. But you expected nothing and so, when it happened, you felt nothing. There was no anger because there was no respect to injury.

It could be, I thought, or it could be something else entirely. If it is that, I decided, it is bad thinking and a very ugly thing. It was a prejudice I had discovered and, usually when I uncover a prejudice, I cannot rest until I grind it out. The realizing it – that it is bad thinking – is always enough because I expect myself to know better. Failing my expectations, I get very angry with myself and the anger compels me to grind it out. But now, as I rode from the accident and towards a meeting that would be about helping these same boys and girls that I discovered I did not respect right now, I realized that the bad thinking was still true for me in that moment and, it being true, I could not grind it out.

The Will Behind It Remains

He is tall and slender and today he wears a black suit jacket as he has worn every Wednesday before. The jacket is very slick and shiny so that he looks as if he might be a pimp or a gambler or a traveling salesman. He is a preacher. The jacket is poorly tailored. It is too broad at the shoulders and then it pulls too tight where it single-buttons at the stomach.

When I arrive he is arranging plastic chairs into tight rows in the small courtyard. The courtyard is an accidental open space that is behind the table tennis hall and in front of the boxing gym and beside the shanty houses. As he arranges the chairs, two women sort shelled nuts that they will sell on the sidewalk tomorrow and three small boys stand soapy and naked as they wash themselves in a large basin.

Inside the gym I change from my work clothes. I stow my backpack and my crash helmet under the bench and I wrap my hands in the thick cloth band that will protect my wrists and knuckles. As I wrap my hands, I watch the preacher through the window grating. He is young. Probably he has only recently finished his catechism or apprenticeship or however someone trains to be a preacher, I think. He starts the small generator that sits beside the wooden podium that is at the head of the plastic chairs. The generator powers the amplifier that, I think, he only needs because the generator that powers it is so loud.

With my hands now wrapped, I skip rope. I start lightly at first, holding my gut firm to exercise the muscles as my body goes up and down. As I warm up, I begin to skip faster. When I am warmer still, I cross my arms so that the rope crosses on the way down and then I uncross them on the way back up. This exercises the arms and the lungs and builds fighting rhythm. When others skip, they watch themselves in the full-length mirror but I watch what is happening in the ring.

The coach is in the ring. First he is jogging small laps between the ropes to warm himself up. Then he is working the mitts with the Lebanese who always arrives before me. He must work close by or else he leaves work early. He is older and heavier and slower than me. He places his phone on the table beside the ring timer. When the phone rings he stops to answer it. He never leaves it to be called back later and he is never too out of breath to answer it. The sound of his gloves against the coach’s mitts is dull, I think as I skip rope and watch them.

The one day I bring my camera, the preacher ditches
the suit jacket for an African casual long-shirt

Outside I hear the preacher speaking in tongues.

‘In the name of Jesus! Bfunnununun ahdaddada jabala-labala-labala…your compassion… gogala gogala golgadala…for the love of the father….romaramanara ahdaddada…show us your mercy!’

There is no audience and his service has not yet begun. He too is warming up, I think.

After ten minutes I finish skipping rope. This has loosened me so that now I have to urinate. I go outside to the end of the courtyard where a hole has been made between two shanty houses. Afterwards, I watch the preacher as I stretch my muscles, preparing for the real work to begin. Now he has an audience. They are three boys and an old man and they nearly fill the first of the three rows of plastic chairs. The old man lives in one of the shanty houses behind the gym. He cleans up around the courtyard sometimes and he has attended the preacher’s services every Wednesday since they began some months ago. For a long time he has been the preacher’s whole audience. I imagined that this must have been discouraging. There were many weeks when I expected that the preacher would not return. Now there are three new boys. Now he has an audience, I think as I finish my stretches and tighten my hand wraps.

I am warm now. I feel light and loose and there is just a hint of that deep soreness. It tells me that yesterday’s early morning workout was a good one. I bend my neck side to side, which is what I do when I am finished warming up, and now I am ready to be serious. The end-of-round bell rings and the coach shouts from inside the ring.

‘Gloves!’

I enter the ring to the sound of the preacher’s singing. It is distorted by so many other sounds: the pounding of gloved fists against the heavy bags, the creaking of the roof beams from the strain of the impacts, the traffic from the main street that is not far away, and, of course, the thundering of the small petrol generator. I, who have no appreciation for church singing, hear only a cacophony as I enter the ring and the start-of-round bell rings. I adjust my hands inside the 16-ounce gloves and then I pound them together as I advance to meet the coach at center ring.

‘Jab!’ he calls out.

I throw a left and the sound from his right mitt is full but does not resonate.

‘Jab!’ he calls again.

I throw another left and this time there is a sharp crack from the place where it connects harmoniously with the mitt.

‘Jab-jab!’ he shouts and my left extends rapidly twice.

Crack-crack

‘One-two!’ the coach calls out and I release a left and then a right.

Crack crack

We move around the ring and as I get warmer he adds hooks and uppercuts and the combinations he calls become longer and more complex. Outside the preacher is singing louder but I do not hear him. My world extends only to what the coach calls out, the crack of the gloves against the mitts, the weaving of my head as I avoid the punches he returns, and the working of my lungs as I synchronize labored breathing with body movements. When the warning bell rings, I am as fast and as strong as I can be. I have worked out the stiffness but I am not yet fatigued. When the end-of-round bell rings I pace and do small jumps in my corner. I am on the balls of my feet and I work my arms like pistons, and I feel all the fibers begging to be turned loose again.

Right now there is nothing else that exists in the whole world, not even you, and I love it.

When the start-of-round bell rings I come charging in. The sound of the gloves against mitts is clear and sharp and captivates the gym as if right now it has conquered all other sounds.

Between the second and third rounds the gym is silent while everyone is resting. Outside, I hear the silence too. I glance out the window and I see that he is finished singing. His papers are in his hand and I hear him begin the sermonizing. He is getting serious now too, I think.

When the bell rings again I forget all this about the preacher and my world wonderfully narrows again so that there is no gym outside the ring, and no you, and no preacher in no courtyard outside that. For the third and fourth rounds I am very strong and I am very fast. The sound from the mitts is the only thing I or anyone else in the gym can hear. Between the rounds I notice that the preacher is strong too.

‘Remember his word and live by it,’ he shouts to his small audience. ‘There is only his word! Do you get me? Halleluiah!’

The bell rings and the fifth round begins. As I advance to meet the coach, I can feel that my arms and my legs are suddenly very heavy. In center ring, the coach raises his mitts and he calls for a combination. I swing my arms and I can feel that my strength has deserted me. It is as if the air has been stolen from my lungs and the blood from my fibers. Now I miss my combinations and I become frustrated. The coach sees my frustration and he is emboldened by it. He swings his mitted hands at me more fiercely between my combinations so that I get struck in the face or upside the head if I do not pay attention. When the warning bell sounds my chest is heaving and I am pleading with my sinews to hold together. At the end of the round, I drop my hands and I slink back to my corner.

‘One more,’ the coach says after me.

I am in my corner and I throw my arms over the ropes and let my body and my fists hang limp on either side. Outside I can hear that that the preacher too is struggling. There are more pauses between the things that he says and he repeats himself over and over as if he has only heart and will and he has lost his strength of vocabulary.

‘Do you get me?’ he shouts. ‘Praise Jesus!’

A few moments pass.

‘Halleluiah!’

A few more moments pass and I unhook my arms from the ropes.

‘Praise him! Praise Jesus!’

My eyes widen and focus.

‘Do you get me? Praise his name!’

I swing my arms once to loosen the rotation of my shoulders.

‘Praise him! Halleluiah! Do you get me?’

My breathing begins to normalize.

‘Halleluiah! In the name of Jesus!’

I rise to the balls of my feet and I bounce.

‘Do you get me?’

I bounce again.

Do you get me?’

The bounces are heavy but now I am on my toes and I am bouncing over and over again, and throwing my arms out to circulate the blood.

‘Praise Jesus! In the name of Jesus! Halleluiah!’

I bend my neck side to side and I pound my gloves together.

‘I say praise him! Do you get me? Praise him! Praise his name!’

The bell rings and the sixth round starts and I am leaning forward as I advance to the center of the ring. Much has been taken and I am lesser now. I am not that speed and strength that I was in earlier rounds, but the will behind it remains. I am on the balls of my feet and I am bouncing and my hands are up and my head is weaving to avoid anything that is thrown.

‘Jab!’ the coach calls out.

I throw a left and the sound is full but does not resonate.

‘Jab!’ he calls again.

I throw another left.

Crack

It is not the gym-conqueror that was before but it is a true sound.

‘Double jab!’ the coach shouts.

Crack-crack

‘Jab-two-three!’

Crack-crack crack

‘Praise him!’

Crack-crack

‘In his name!’

Crack-crack crack

‘Halleluiah!’

Crack crack-crack crack

‘Do you get me?’

Crack-crack crack crack

‘Jab-jab-three-four!’

Do you get me?

Note: During the couple weeks between when I wrote and posted this, the preacher is now using an Acer netbook rather than written pages for his prayers and sermons. It’s a wonderful, modern world we live in!

A Shortage of Clotheslines

‘There seems to be a shortage of clotheslines in this country,’ I said.

         For a moment there was no response from the three others in the car.

‘What now?’ Lachlan said.

         ‘I say, there seems to be a shortage of clotheslines in this country,’ I said.

‘Explain,’ he said.

‘I’m observing peoples homes as we’re driving,’ I said. ‘Now my observations are not scientific, but I’m noticing a trend.’

‘About the clotheslines?’ Nik said.

‘Yes, about the clotheslines,’ I said. ‘You see, about half of the homes have put laundry out to dry. Of those, about half are using a clothesline or a bar suspended between two poles. But the other half – again this is not scientific – have laid their laundry to dry on the ground.’

‘Or on the zinc roof like these people,’ said Richard.

Richard is a teacher at the American school and Nik’s friend who she met some years ago in Ghana. He sat beside me on the driver’s side of the back seat. We all looked to the small huts that flew past along the driver’s side and we saw the hut where the clothes were partly draped on the corrugated roof and partly hanging off it.

‘I noticed that too,’ I said. ‘Maybe 10 percent of the homes without clotheslines dry clothes on the roof.’

‘But it’s not scientific?’ Lachlan said.
'No, it's not,' I said.

It was late in the afternoon and Lachlan was driving us fast along the mostly good highway between Gbanga and Kakata. We had left early in the morning from the Ma Ellen’s School beside the village of Duazon where Nik is the school administrator. We took the Ganta highway northeast past Kakata and Gbanga and from there along a secondary road to where there are a series of small waterfalls at Kpatawee. It was four hours on the mostly good highway and then an hour and a wrong turn on the dusty secondary road to the ‘Eco-park’.

At the waterfall, Lachlan followed a path that led up to the top step of the falls. Nik and Richard took photos looking up from the pools below and I skipped along the rocks to an island between the two sides and I recorded a video-gram to Jess. I narrated in the silly, awkward way that most of our video-grams go because neither of us performs well speaking to the camera.

‘Hi Jess,’ I narrated. ‘This is the waterfall at Kpatawee. See, the water starts there and goes down to there and then it keeps going. Wish you were here…’

After we had a look around, we brought the cooler from the car to where there was a bench beside one of the pools in the river. We ate a lunch of meat and cheese and chips and cookies and we drank mostly cold water and soft drinks. While we ate, a missionary family arrived in a white hardtop Land Cruiser. When it was parked, the missionaries’ children and some local children filed quickly out. They went down the path and over the rocks and dipped into the pool beneath the main falls. The missionaries applied sunscreen and one retrieved a camera with a telephoto lens. On the doors of the Land Cruiser was the decal of a red cross being suspended from a long horizontal bar as though to resemble a helicopter.

‘Maybe they are the Special Forces missionaries,’ I said.

‘I don’t think so,’ Nik said.

‘Maybe that’s their shtick,’ I said. ‘You know, repel in through the roof, blow everyone away with a sermon and some bible verses, and then bugger off to the next village.’

‘Come on,’ Lachlan said. ‘They helicopter into a remote village to evangelize for Sunday mass and they are back before dark for a cold drink and a hot shower.’

‘Shock and awe,’ I said.

When we finished lunch we loaded the car and we left along the dusty road that circled a forested hill beyond a burned field.

‘I think they lay the clothes to dry on the grass because it gives a fresh smell,’ Richard said after he had considered the question of the shortage of clotheslines.

‘Interesting,’ I said. ‘Let me take a few observations.’

‘It’s not scientific though,’ said Lachlan.

‘No it’s not,’ I said.

I announced my findings as they came.

‘Laying on the grass. Clothesline. Clothesline again. Laying on the ground, no grass. Laying on the ground. On the grass. On the grass. Clothesline. On the grass. No grass that time,’ I said.

We sped past a few more huts and I noted what I saw.

‘No, I’m not convinced,’ I said. ‘In some cases they are on the grass but just as many times they are on the dirt or a rock or something else.’

‘We’re coming up to a checkpoint,’ Lachlan announced.

‘Places everyone. Be cool. We’re rolling,’ I said.

Then I narrated for the video, speaking in a hushed voice that was just as awkward as when I had been recording the video-gram at the waterfall only different.

‘It’s, uh, Sunday, uh, date is, uh. Anyway, we’re driving south on the, uh, Monrovia-Kakata highway. We’re doing a sting to catch a police asking for a bribe. This is our fourth attempt today. We’re approaching the checkpoint. The gate is being raised. We’re being waved through. We’re through. Damn!’

I switched off the camera.

‘I just want to get it on film once,’ I said.

‘Bad luck,’ Lachlan said.

‘It’s probably because we’re taking the green four-wheel drive with the NGO plates,’ Nik said.

‘Probably,’ Lachlan said. ‘The white jeep with the private plates is a magnet.’

After the checkpoint we continued along the mostly good highway. The sunlight was very warm coming through the windows and we grew drowsy and we were quiet for a time.

‘There’s another one with the clothes drying on the ground,’ I said.

Don't Make Apple Sauce out of Us

‘I don’t know how to explain it without it sounding silly,’ she said.

         ‘Do you think it’s silly?’ I asked.

         ‘No!’ she said. ‘I think it’s wonderful.’

         ‘So, why should it sound silly?’ I asked.

         ‘I just don’t feel like things are any different than they were before,’ she said.

         ‘Do you think things should be different?’ I asked.

         ‘People expect things to be different so I feel silly to mention it since they aren’t any different,’ she said.

         ‘Do you not want to tell people?’ I asked.

         ‘I do want to because I’m very happy,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want to tell them if they are going think it’s silly.’

         ‘I don’t think anyone can take anything away from it,’ I said.

         ‘I know and I want to tell people,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want to tell them if they’re not going to get it because it’ll make me sad.’

         ‘How will they not get it?’ I asked.

         ‘Maybe they will think you don’t really care because you didn’t make a big thing out of it,’ she said, ‘or they will think I don’t really care because I don’t feel like things are any different now.’

         After this there was a pause and I waited for her to say more but then I realized that the call had dropped. I redialed but I got a busy tone because she was dialing me. I tried twice more and then I stopped and a moment later my phone rang.

         ‘We’re getting 20 percent now,’ she said.

         We had registered for a calling plan that gave certain discounts based on the day and time and location of the call. We were spending enormous amounts of money on airtime since she had moved to Zwedru and it had become our habit to start each call by announcing the discount even though it never influenced the duration.

         ‘Do you wish I had made a big thing out of it?’ I asked.

         ‘No. I like how you did it,’ she said, ‘and it’s not a big thing to me except everyone expects it to be.’

         ‘So you like the way it is and you want to tell people about it but you don’t want to tell them because you think they will think it’s silly even though it’s exactly how you want it to be?’ I asked.

         ‘Yes!’ she said. ‘That’s it exactly.’

         ‘You’re exhausting!’ I said.

She moaned and I continued.

         ‘Really I think you’re comparing apples to oranges,’ I said.

         ‘What do you mean?’ she said.

         ‘We all need excitement, right?’ I said.

‘Sure.’

‘I think it’s very hard to do exciting things because it takes lots of time and effort and certainly courage – like that friend of yours that’s mountain biking through Rwanda. I think it’s a lot easier to create excitement out of celebrating what we already have. Does that make sense?’

‘I guess it does,’ she said.

         ‘For me, I want us to celebrate what we have done – together,’ I said. ‘And I want us to make a life that will have plenty of things to celebrate.’

‘That’s what I want,’ she said. ‘I want us to have many, many doing things to celebrate. That’s what I’ve always wanted.’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘So maybe that’s why you don’t feel like it’s a big deal and nothing has changed.’

         ‘Ok, love,’ she said. ‘I’m with you on it.’

The line was silent. I thought she was thinking more about it was actually that the mobile phone network had cut into her end of the line.

‘It’s telling me I only have one minute left! Call me back! Call me back!’ she said and she immediately hung up.

I dialed her number and she answered before I heard the first ring.

‘You know you have a whole minute left when the message cuts in. You don’t have to be in such a rush,’ I said.

‘I know. I like to save it in case I need it before I have a chance to load new airtime,’ she said and without a breath she continued. ‘So I’m with you that it’s not a big deal and on the celebrating the doing. But what do I tell people when they ask why we’re not making a big deal of it?’

         ‘Tell them we’re oranges,’ I said.

         She thought about this and then she said, ‘Yeah, we’re oranges!’

         She thought about it for another moment and then she said, ‘But that’s not enough to tell them.’

‘I think you’re struggling with this because you’re trying to make our orange thing conform to an apple’s expectations,’ I said.

         ‘That’s exactly what I’m doing,’ she said. ‘I’m a closeted orange!’

         ‘Maybe you are,’ I said. ‘If you try to make it conform or you make excuses for it, it sounds like you don’t believe in it.’

         ‘But I do believe in it,’ she said. ‘It’s exactly what I want it to be.’

         ‘I believe you,’ I said.

         ‘So what should I do?’ she said suddenly sounding very tired.

         ‘Tell people or don’t tell people,’ I said. ‘Just don’t make apple sauce out of us!’