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They were never going to believe this in Paramus.
Once I had finished with my food I let myself withdraw from the party. The festive mood had not quite caught hold of me, and I was afraid that another gourd of punch would make me lose my cool. I went back to my hut to check on Plum. She was still sleeping, and from the tenor of her breathing she was sleeping well, untroubled by nightmares. I wished her well and stretched out beside her for a few moments of rest. I went through the full cycle of relaxation exercises, all of which were easier on a full stomach and with a modicum of alcohol in my system. Certain muscle groups were stubborn – the eyelids, the solar plexus area, the calf of my left leg, each of them showing a persistent propensity for tightening up of their own accord. But I managed to unwind fairly well, and when I packed it in after a half hour or so and yawned and stretched and yawned again and sat up, I was better rested than I had been in a couple of days.
Outside, the party was just getting into top form. The bloody minded ca
It occurred to me, and not for the first time, that this would have been an ideal time for the three of us to get the hell out of there. I had been thinking this ever since they trotted out the booze, and the more the red crotch set drank, the more sense the idea made to me. But Bowman was still in Sheena’s hut, and there were two sober guards in front of that hut, and Plum was asleep, and we hadn’t made plans, and it looked as though we would have to put it off for a day or two. Not for too long, though, because judging from the familiarity my ca
I did slip outside three or four times looking for Bowman, but it was no use. The first few times the sentry was doing his job and I couldn’t even get close to Sheena’s hut. The final time I got to it and inside it, and I called Bowman’s name a few times and got no response whatsoever. He seemed to be asleep, so I gave it up and went back to Plum. Now and then she would make a frightened noise and I would soothe her back to gentler sleep.
I was in the doorway at sunup when Bowman left Sheena’s tent and staggered across the central clearing, weaving his way through a maze of inert human forms. I gave him a wave and he came over and dropped to the ground, breathing very heavily. “Shee-it,” he said. “That woman ought to be outlawed. I never thought I’d live to have so much I wouldn’t want any more, but the day has done come. I know how Samson felt when he got that haircut. Maybe it wasn’t his hair they cut. You ever think of it that way?”
“Yes.”
“You did?” He shrugged, disappointed. I said something about how nice it would have been if we could have gotten the hell out of there that night, what with all of the others stoned. “Yeah, but we get another chance in two days,” he said. “There’s a party after every raid, and there’s a raid comin’ up tomorrow.”
“Another one?”
He scratched a map in the dirt. “She laid it all on me in between the acts. We’re here now. This here is the Yellowfoot River. It swings up and then winds down and out, and it’s the very same Yellowfoot that you followed north from Griggstown.”
“We followed the highway. That brilliant road the Retriever built.”
“Beautiful, ain’t it? You got to give the man credit.” He smiled and clicked his tongue. “Dig it, this here’s the Yellowfoot, and right at the top of this bend is the leprosarium. We break camp in a couple of hours and head for the river and get ourselves some boats, and then we-”
“The what?”
“The leprosarium, Ta
“I know what a leprosarium is, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, don’t get shirty, man. You asked so I told you. The idea is we spend today getting ready and tomorrow we hit the place sometime in the afternoon. We’ll be headin’ downstream, so that takes the pressure off. It ain’t all that far anyway. We hit the leprosarium-”
“Wait a minute. We hit the leprosarium? We kill doctors and nurses and, God help them, lepers?”
“That’s the drill, baby.” He furrowed his brow, scratched his head. “I get your drift, Ta
“Great.”
“I do. It don’t seem right, killing the lepers, wrecking the leprosarium. It don’t seem right at all.” He sighed mightily. “But to tell you the truth, I don’t see what choice we got open. We maybe can escape when the right time comes, but we sure can’t manage it now. And tomorrow’s the day we hit the lepers. So what else we go
Chapter 11
Fat black flies buzzed in the reeds that lined the riverbank. Bees worried the trumpet-shaped blood-hued blossoms of a puri-puri vine, which in turn worried the trunk of a stately wali tree. To our right, one of the younger members of the company flipped pebbles into the sluggish brown water.
I squatted and explored myself for lice. I felt as sluggish and brown as the Yellowfoot River. It was noon, and it was hot, and after a rough morning’s march to the river we were playing the usual game of hurry up and wait. I stifled a yawn and scratched an itch and tried to remember what coffee tasted like.
Bowman was giving Plum a hard time. “You sure do look like a boy,” I heard him say, “but I know better, don’t I? Because I had a long uninterrupted look at you at that mission, Plum kitten, and that wasn’t no boy I was lookin’ at.”
I don’t know whether Plum blushed or blanched or what. It was impossible to tell beneath the coloring.
“And I sure did like your color, Plum kitten. Earl Grey tea with sweet cream in it. That’s rare, that combination. Black is beautiful, but brown can stick around when it looks like you.”
Plum looked extremely uncomfortable. He was bugging her, and she didn’t like it, but at the same time she wasn’t prepared to reply sharply or get up and walk away. He had that effect on people. And I suppose, too, that in part she gloried in the flattery. It would have been extraordinary if she hadn’t.
I found it a
I said, “Look, we just don’t have time to waste. We have to cut out of here before that raid.”
“Can’t be done, Ta
“It has to be done.”
“During, maybe. If we run into a little resistance at the leper place there might be enough going on so that the three of us could shove one of the dugouts back into the water and get clear before they knew we were gone. Not much chance the lepers will put up a big fight though, is there? Some of the staff will have guns for defense against animals, but the way this gang fights they’ll be out of the play before they get to their guns, and what are the lepers goin’ to do? Beat us off with their stumps? No, tomorrow night’s the time. Everybody be drunk and passed out, and we can slip a boat into the river and be miles away before they know we’re gone.”