The Lioness(89)
Muema looked at Benjamin, his eyebrows raised in resignation, and nodded goodbye. Then he pressed his bound hands onto the floor of the cargo bay and struggled to his feet. Benjamin could see that the Russian was about to execute the guide, and that was too much for him. Muema was no pawn. And so this was the moment, it had without question arrived. Before the guard could shoot Muema, he threw himself into him, knocking both the captor and his captive onto the cargo bed. Benjamin’s hands were bound at the wrists, but he used them like a club and brought them down as hard as he could on the Russian’s neck.
“Not Muema!” he bellowed, and he was about to shout it again, when the drivers of both jeeps simultaneously gunned their engines and started toward them. The lorry driver, who had an assault rifle, started firing and managed to hit a front tire of one of the vehicles, and it skidded to a stop. But the other kept coming, even after the front windshield was obliterated, and then it was upon them, and all around Benjamin there was rifle fire.
And then he felt as if he had been hit in the upper back with a rock. It was like that time when he’d been a boy and he and some of his cousins were swimming in the river, and a few had been skimming stones. He’d emerged from underwater exactly when one of the rocks was careening along the surface—the cousin hadn’t realized that Benjamin was about to pop up right there, that very spot—and the rock had hit him just below his shoulder blade. But then Benjamin saw the blood puddling beneath him, on the Russian’s shirt and neck, and he knew. He knew. His blood was dripping from his own chest onto the man, and it was as this realization was dawning that he felt a deep and awful burning behind his ribs and suddenly it was hard to breathe. The Russian pushed him away, tossing him aside as if he were but a dead little dik-dik, and crawled to his knees, just behind the rear cargo door.
And then there was a pop and he toppled over beside Benjamin. Shot, too.
Their eyes met for the briefest of seconds, but then the Russian was gone.
Benjamin saw that Muema was looking down at him and the captives were all on their feet, and over the guide’s shoulder he saw three Black soldiers climbing into the lorry and the two surviving Russians dropping their rifles and surrendering. Muema looked away from him, shouting at the soldiers that they’d hit one of the hostages, and he was furious, but then he turned back to Benjamin and Benjamin was grateful. He wanted to see Muema’s face, those kind, penetrating eyes. The guide was speaking softly now, telling him that he was going to be okay, to stay strong, they’d send a plane for him. He tried to hang on to Muema’s calm voice because it was reassuring and he was scared, so very, very scared. The guide was thanking him, and Benjamin wanted to tell him he was welcome but he had to do it, he had chosen his moment. But he couldn’t speak. In the sky, which mostly was blue, he saw a trio of birds and a candelabra-shaped cloud that reminded him of the euphonium tree. Euphonium sap could blind you; it blistered the skin. And so the idea that the birds—he thought they were hoopoes, but it was all growing dim, or maybe he was squinting—were avoiding that cloud made all the sense in the world. Yes, he was squinting, he told himself. That was it. He should squint. You never stared into a sky so bright with sun. So, he gave in and closed his eyes completely, even if closing them meant, he had come to understand, that he was never going to tell his father he had met Terrance Dutton, and the great Black actor had wanted him—Benjamin!—to call him by his first name, and the regret was as deep and devastating as the physical pain. But the sun felt good on his face, and he listened to Muema until the voice was gone and the world was dark and he was no longer frightened at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Billy Stepanov
The majority of physicians and nurses in the study said they felt anxiety (64.2%), stress (72.5%), and depression (51.3%). William Stepanov, a West Hollywood–based psychologist who has doctors among his clients, said, “They all had parents who lived through the flu pandemic of 1918–1919 or were children themselves at the time. And so while 1957 might not have been as dire as its predecessor after the First World War, they knew this flu was killing tens of thousands of people in America. Some just wanted to curl up in bed or hide in a closet.”
—The American Journal of Psychiatry, April 1962
Cooper, the Russian, wasn’t going to die. At least not right away. Maybe he would if they were out here for days—an infection, Billy supposed—but Katie had now finished wrapping his hand in all the gauze they had found in the Land Rover’s medical kit, and the bleeding had stopped. But, hell, all three of them would die if they were out here a few days.
It was the damnedest thing, and Billy was trying hard to decide what he was feeling as he leaned against the grille of the Land Rover: part of him just wanted to shoot the bastard and be done with it. Throw the body beside his two dead comrades, which already were covered with insects, and let the animals here rip the flesh from the bones. But another part of him wanted Cooper alive because he just couldn’t bear to see another corpse or, arguably, to shoulder another corpse on his conscience. He thought of the doctors and nurses who were part of his practice and had been on the front lines of the flu pandemic of 1957. He’d been interviewed by a young UCLA grad student who was among a group studying depression in ER doctors and nurses, because Billy had opened his practice that very year and was quoted in a Los Angeles Times article as saying that he was surprised by the disproportionately large number of doctors and nurses he had among his patients, and suggested the pandemic was among the reasons why. A third of his practice was made up of people who worked in the movies, but at least another third were people who worked in health care. The flu was not a pretty way to die. But then, there really weren’t pretty ways to die, unless you were granted that rarest of miracles and died in your sleep. Usually, all you could hope for was fast. Fast and unexpected.