“Come on, you two. Breakfast is ready,” I said, making eating motions for Scholastica. I headed for the door but stopped short for the second time that morning.
Jack was standing there, his eyes fixed on Scholastica. His boots were muddy, sleeves rolled up, one foot forward, but going nowhere, as if he’d been frozen by the sound of her laughter—a little girl in his daughter’s dress, giggling over a tortoise and a balloon.
Scholastica clammed up as soon as she saw him, still wary of his reaction to her from the night before. She kept her head down as he strode into the room toward her. Seconds ticked by in uncomfortable silence as his shadow loomed over her. Then he said something to her in Swahili. She nodded and went back to staring at the tortoise. Jack reached into his pocket for something and popped the balloon.
BANG.
The tortoise snapped its head and limbs into its shell so fast, the air expelled out of its lungs in a long, hiss. It lay on the floor, vexed and disgruntled, with the balloon in tatters around it, like little yellow flags of surrender.
“And that’s the fastest you’ll see Aristurtle move,” observed Jack, before repeating it in Swahili for Scholastica. He knelt beside the spooked tortoise and stroked his shell. “You okay, little fellow?”
Aristurtle poked his pebbled head out warily and looked at Jack with grizzled contempt.
Scholastica burst out laughing. She laughed so hard, she rolled over, holding on to her stomach. Jack sat back and watched her, his Adam’s apple bobbing as if the sound of it was piercing his heart with the sweetest shrapnel. He rose and headed over to the corner where a bunch of other yellow balloons were bobbing and handed one to Scholastica. She took it and pointed to the turtle.
“No.” He shook his head. “For you.”
“Lord.” Goma walked in and gave all of us the stink eye. “I send one to get the other and lose all of you. Everyone in the kitchen. Come along now.”
She marched us to the table and filled our plates with food. “Coffee from our farm,” she said, pouring Bahati and me a cup before sitting down.
“It’s delicious,” I said, after the first hot sip. “Thank you. And thanks for looking after my clothes this morning. I hope I’m half as active when I’m your age.”
“It’s the farm,” Goma replied. “Clean air, hard work, fresh food.”
Scholastica tied her balloon on the chair next to Jack, and sat down beside him. He buttered a piece of toast, slathered it with jam, and put it on her plate. He blinked when she thanked him, as if it was something he’d done out of habit, not realizing until after he was finished.
“I heard you saved an expectant mother and her child during the mall attack,” I said, as Bahati and Goma conversed at the other end of the table. “That’s incredible.”
“Is it?”
I put my fork down and looked at him. “What’s your problem? Every time I try to be nice, you throw it back in my face. Every time I think there’s another side to you, you go back to being a jerk.”
“That’s because I am a jerk. I’m the jerk who let his daughter die. I was in the mall that day. Right there. And I stopped to get a couple of strangers out first. I was too busy saving other lives.”
“Did you ever think that maybe they saved yours?”
“You think they saved me?” Jack laughed. Yet another kind of laugh. This one filled with deep, dark irony. Did he ever just laugh, like normal people? Really laugh?
He leaned across the table, so close that I could make out the gold rings around his icy blue irises. They were the color of parched Savannah grass, waiting for rain. “In a thousand lives, I would die a thousand deaths to save her. Over and over and over again.”
I believed him. Every word. Because of the way he said it.
I had no comeback, so I watched as he got up, opened the fridge and reached for a bottle of Coca-Cola. He placed the edge of the cap against the counter and hit it with the palm of his hand. After discarding the cap, he pulled up a chair, tilted his head back and drained the bottle in one go.
What an odd man, I thought. A coffee farmer who didn’t drink coffee.
Most people drowned their sorrows in something stronger. Jack chose a bottle of Coca-Cola. Maybe he wanted to be fully aware, fully awake to the pain. Maybe Jack Warden liked the pain because he believed it was exactly what he deserved.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do next?” Goma asked me.
I turned my attention away from Jack and focused on her. “I was hoping you know someone who’d be willing to take Scholastica and me to Wanza, with a couple of stops along the way.”
“I know the perfect man for the job. He’s sitting right at this table, and he knows it too, but he’s too wrapped up in himself to give a damn.”
“You didn’t lose a daughter,” growled Jack, keeping his eyes on his plate.
“No, I didn’t,” replied Goma. “I lost my only son, your father. And I lost his wife, your mother, in the same accident. I lost my husband. And I lost Lily, my great granddaughter. That’s four generations I’ve buried out back. And I’m still standing. You think I didn’t want to go to sleep and never wake up from the loss? Each and every time? You think my heart and yours are so different? They’re not. I hurt as much as you do, Jack. But I get up because you’re still here. You’re the only one left, and you know what? You’re enough. You’re reason enough to keep me standing. And it kills me to see you like this, alive on the outside but dead and hollow on the inside. You hear me? It kills me.”