“I’m tempted to leave you. A few weeks out here might do you some good. You might learn something.”
Jim stepped up and, resting his hand on Ken’s shoulder, said, “Easy now, my friend. You’re on candid camera.”
Ken turned aside.
“You start early in the varnish-removal business,” Quinette whispered to Phyllis. Looking at her blowsy hair and baggy eyes, and having listened to her snores and intestinal rumblings half the night, she didn’t find the woman quite as intimidating as before.
“Ya, Eismont. Tiyib,” Bashir said, rising with brown hand extended.
She gathered that tiyib meant that everything was okay. Ken shook hands and said thank you in Arabic—shukran. The Arabs, each holding a sack of money, went down the footpath, their white-clad figures growing smaller in the oceanic expanse of grass and trees.
“Do they just walk home, across all that, with all that money on them?” Quinette said, thinking out loud.
“Not something you’d try in L.A. or New York, is it?” Jim remarked with a shrug. He studied his feet, mopped his forehead with his fingers. “I don’t like it either, this end of it.”
“OUR HEARTS ARE heavy with your sufferings.” Ken stood making a speech before the assembled slaves, pausing between phrases to let Manute translate, his flat American voice and Manute’s sonorous bass alternating with chantlike rhythm. “Many people who care about what you have endured. . . . Donations from people in America. . . . I am happy to tell you that you are now free.”
The flies hummed, leaves rustled in a breeze, the people sat in a slack-jawed, dull-eyed silence. Quinette’s hands rested on the camera, loaded with a fresh roll for the photographs that she hoped would match those already printed in her imagination—the emancipated captives singing and dancing, embracing their liberators. Thinking ahead, she saw the pictures projected on a screen whose light reflected the rapt faces of worshippers filling every seat in Family Evangelical; she saw herself at the podium, describing the scene and her own exalted emotions as grateful arms encircled her. It would be the high point of her presentation. Everyone who’d worked so hard would be thrilled to see images of the happiness and thanksgiving their efforts had brought. But what could she tell them now? That the people just sat and stared when they heard they were free? She didn’t feel cheated this time; irritated, rather. Ken’s delivery was all wrong. The people knew they were free, but they didn’t feel it because they didn’t hear any passion in Ken’s voice. The man who’d testified before Congress and the Human Rights Commission with such conviction sounded as if he were reciting a speech he’d given once too often.
Jim did a little better; in the cadences of a radio evangelist he told the story of Jesus, sowing the seeds he hoped would sprout into a whole new crop of souls. People had given money, he said, but in the end it was Christ’s love that had broken their chains. Still, the crowd barely stirred. Maybe they already knew the story of Jesus. When Jim was finished, he asked Quinette if she would like to add a few words.
“Wha—what should I say?”
“Whatever comes to mind. Maybe you could tell them about the kids.”
She hesitated, a mild terror streaking through her. Nothing whatsoever came to mind; then she recalled Pastor Tom’s sermon that one Sunday and tugged her fanny pack around to her front, unzipped it, and pulled her travel Bible from between the bug spray bottle and the squashed roll of toilet paper.
“I want to read you something from one of our prophets. He told about the coming of Jesus, the Messiah.”
She turned to Isaiah, chapter 61, and began, “ ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,’ ” and waited for Manute. Coming from him, Isaiah sounded more like the word of God, even in Dinka; his deep and solemn voice could make a recipe like the word of God. “ ‘He sent me to bind up the broken-hearted’ “—pause—” ‘to proclaim liberty to the captives’ “—pause—” ‘and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.’ ” She was determined to coax a response from her listeners and repeated that last ringing verse. Pastor Tom did that sometimes, recited a biblical phrase three, even four times over, stressing different words with each repetition, building a rhythm that lifted people out of their seats to cry out, “Praise Jesus! Praise His name!”