some other things aren’t done, their spirits won’t answer when you call on them. They might cause you trouble.”
Her immediate thought was that this funeral custom wasn’t fitting for people who claimed to be Christians, but recalling the words Malachy had spoken to her, that Sunday months ago in the Turkana village—“You’ve got to meet them halfway”—she refrained from voicing it. Indeed, these people, with their half-heathen, half-Christian beliefs, might even be a living reproof to her doubts. Their faith in the eternal life of the spirit had not been shaken; why, then, should hers? It must have been the Enemy who’d planted those questions in her mind. Once again her attention was diverted to herself and to the state of her own soul. She concluded that God was testing her. As the Enemy had tempted Christ in the desert, so was he now tempting her to cast off her faith and make the short journey into despair, in which she would be easy prey for his snares and wiles. She mustn’t give in, she mustn’t fail! If, as she’d thought last night, God was calling her to a new field of action, He would need to know some things about her first, like how strong was her faith.
“Satan, get thee behind me.” She felt stronger now, rerooted in the firm soil of certitude. “Like a tree standing by the waters, I shall not be moved.” She watched a woman borrow matches from a soldier and then set fire to the branches. In seconds the pile was ablaze, black smoke ascending pillar-straight into the windless air. Her gaze rose with it, and then she heard the drone of Douglas’s plane.
The doctor had sent blankets back with him. The blankets were turned into makeshift stretchers, which made loading the second lot of casualties easier than the first. When it was finished, Michael and his radio operator climbed aboard and sat down at the forward end of the cabin, Captain Bala lying at his feet. As the engines revved to an urgent roar and the plane made a rough roll down the runway, Quinette was touched to see him clasp the officer’s hand. He continued to hold it through the climb, the leveling off.
“You must be very close to him,” she said.
“I would not be leaving my command post otherwise. But Major Kasli can handle things for a little while.”
He bent down to speak to Captain Bala, who responded in a rasping whisper, and Michael folded the blanket he was lying on over his chest.
“He said he’s cold. It must be the altitude, the loss of blood. Kasli is my second in command because of his rank, but this one I trust like a brother. We were in the army together.”
It took a beat for the tense to register with Quinette.
“I don’t understand, were.”
“Sudan army. We deserted from the same garrison to join the SPLA. We’ve fought side by side from that day to this.” He turned full face to her, and his smile, a bright crescent above his rounded chin, brought a flush to her cheeks. “So now you know you’re sitting next to a fugitive and a deserter as well as a rebel, a man the government would hang without trial.”
“I’m used to traveling in dangerous company,” she said, affecting a jaunty tone.
“Three times I’ve been wounded,” Michael said. “Bala not one time until today. Fighters stayed near him on operations. It was said a powerful kujur had given him a charm against bullets. I wonder if he began to believe that himself. I think that’s why he did what he did, running after the crazy man.”
The captain moaned, his good arm flopped over his waist, his hand slapping his side. Leaning forward, Quinette again fed him her water bottle. He gulped and spit up. She squeezed the bottle hard to squirt the liquid down his throat. He spit up again. “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole.” The words to the old spiritual drifted into her mind—it had been sung at her father’s memorial service in the church he would never enter when he was alive—and she hummed it now. “There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul. Sometimes I get discouraged, and think my work’s in vain. But then the Holy Spirit revives my soul again.”
A short time later she found herself at one more desolate bush airstrip, holding Captain Bala’s wounded arm tight to his chest while Michael gripped a