half a foot deep. He could dig no further—he was spent, and the roots of the grasses and shrubs formed a dense mat under the topsoil.
Dragging her by the legs, he laid her in the grave and covered her as best he could, which was nowhere near well enough. Her rigid arm stuck out. The hyenas would be back for her tonight. They could very well devour her within his sight, and there would be nothing he could about that either: He didn’t have enough bullets to kill them all.
Thirsty, weaving from fatigue, he returned to the ashes of the fire and pulled another water bottle from the duffel bag and drank it dry. He had no idea why he was slaking his thirst, no idea why he should endure his pain, physical and otherwise, for another second. He’d done everything possible, and none of it had been enough. He wasn’t able to keep his plane in the air and, once he landed, wasn’t able to keep it from crashing. He wasn’t able to keep Mary alive or straighten her arm or dig her a decent grave. He was overwhelmed by a sense of futility—the futility not only of his own efforts but of all effort, not only of his existence but of all existence. “Why should I?” he cried out, and his answer was the vast African silence. This time he understood its message, and to it, his faith in himself was no reply; indeed, he no longer had any faith in himself. Nevertheless, he sat there as still as the landscape and realized there was yet one more thing he couldn’t do, though the means to do it was at hand. The raw, animal instinct for survival was all that restrained him, and it was enough.
A tug at his boot startled him into consciousness. With a yell, he jerked his foot out of the hyena’s jaws, leaped up, and saw that it wasn’t a hyena but a young man, no less startled than Dare. Tall, bone thin, clad in rags, with one black leg and the other as white as ivory, he had a round face and ruthless eyes. A dozen others were with him, boys not men, gaunt and barefoot. Twenty or thirty more were swarming into and over the wrecked plane like ants. Except for two carrying spears, only the young man with the two-toned legs was armed—a Kalashnikov with a folding stock was slung over one emaciated shoulder.
“Who are you?” Dare asked in a scratchy voice.
“I am Matthew Deng,” came the reply in a British-tinged, mission-school English. “Who are you?”
Dare answered and asked Matthew Deng if he was SPLA.
“I was one time SPLA, before this.” He tapped his artificial limb. “I thought you were died. I wanted your shoes. For him.” He motioned at a kid of eleven or twelve whose feet were cut to ribbons. “Is that your aeroplane?”
That was how he said it, aer-o-plane. Dare nodded.
Another kid ran up and spoke to Matthew in Dinka. “He says there is no assistance in your aeroplane.”
“No, there isn’t.”
He pointed at the duffel. “What is in there?”
“See for yourself.”
He lifted the bag upside down, his stony eyes widening as the bottles, tins, and granola bars tumbled out. A yell went up, and the crowd of boys fell on the stuff in a way that reminded Dare of the hyenas falling on the carcasses of their dead mates. Displaying his SPLA training, Matthew restored order with the help of his two lieutenants, the ones with the spears. Snapping commands, prodding with their weapons, they got the boys to form two lines. Matthew opened a tin of hash and scooped out a mouthful with his fingers. It was obvious he wanted to finish it, but he restrained himself and passed the tin to one of the spear-carriers, instructing him to take only one bite and then to pass it on. He opened several more and rationed them out to the rest, with the water. Their discipline was amazing. One by one they stepped up, took a bite of food, a drink, and stood aside.
While this strange feast went on, Matthew told Dare a fantastic tale.
He and his companions had been on the march for six months. They all came from Bahr el Ghazal, more than six hundred miles away. At the end of last year’s rainy season, murahaleen attacked their villages, burned them to the ground, and either killed everyone or took them as slaves. Matthew himself lost