"Shoot," he replied, looking up from some paperwork he'd been about.
"It's . . . it's . . . I don't know where to begin."
He thought she looked seriously nervous, very unPhillielike, as a matter of fact. "Sit," he said, pointing toward the cot. "Think. Relax. Talk when you're ready."
"I thought I was ready. But . . . " Phillie sighed. "Nothing to it but to do it, which is to say, not to do it."
Now Stauer was very confused. "To do what?"
"It. You know, the wild thing? Make the beast with two backs? Make love? Fuck. I mean we can't. Not anymore. Ummm . . . fuck, that is."
He smiled; this was very unPhillielike. "Okay. Just out of curiosity, why?"
"It's the girls," Phillie almost moaned. "Those Romanian ex-slave girls. I laid down the law to them: ‘You will not get laid. Period.' How can I do it when I told them they can't?"
Stauer smiled at the irony. "You seemed pretty put out yourself when I first told you no."
Her head rocked. "Yeah. I know. But that wasn't so much the sex; I was mostly hurt because I thought you didn't love me anymore. And . . . "
Yes?"
"Well. I've been learning a lot here, even if I don't understand it all. And . . . one of those things I've learned is that I have to command myself before I've got the right to command anyone else."
Stauer's smile changed from ironic to something approaching idyllic. "Did I ever tell you what a great girl you are, Phillie?" he asked.
She sniffed slightly. This whole conversation was hard. "Not in those words exactly. Well, not outside of bed, anyway."
"Well you are. And for a lot more reasons than what you can do in bed." The smile disappeared, to be replaced by a very, very serious expression, like someone in deep concentration or-as she would insist later-someone attempting to shit a brick. "Moreover, since I'm not getting any younger, what say that when this is over we get mar-"
He couldn't finish the sentence because Phillie was on her feet, racing the short distance across the tent, throwing herself onto him and, in the process, knocking them both to the mud. After that she was too busy covering his face with kisses for him to get a word in edgewise, except when she said, "Yes!"
"-ried?" he finally managed.
"Yesyesyesyesyesyesyes!" She pulled back from showering him with kisses long enough to ask, "Umm . . . you want a quickie before I become a nun? A blow job, anyway?"
He laughed and reached up to stroke her hair, saying, "Oh, hon, you have no idea how much. But . . . courage of your convictions, Phillie. It can wait."
She laid her head down on his chest and whispered, "Thank you, Wes. That was the right answer."
In the next tent over, Sergeant Major Joshua stuck out one hand, palm up, saying, "Pay up, gentlemen." With fairly bad grace, Webster and George pulled out their wallets, peeling off, each, fifty United States dollars.
"How the fuck do you do that, Joshua?" Webster asked.
"Got to know people in our business, First Sergeant. Got to pay attention. Got to have had Sergeant Coffee come tell you a story about a young woman being assimilated into the military, what she said to some young girls, and what such a woman is likely to do."
"Bastard," said George, sotto voce, as he counted out two twenties and a ten. "How about a bet on something else?"
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Africa is a cruel country; it takes your heart
and grinds it into powdered stone-and no one minds.
-Elspeth Huxley
D-61, Bajuni, Federation of Sharia Courts
Buckwheat thought the city was almost amazingly green compared to the bulk of the area.
"We get an annual monsoon here," Wahab had explained, while driving their Hummer through . "Mind you, that's always followed by an annual drought so the green doesn't last. Then again," the native African sighed, "nothing very good on this continent lasts very long. Still, we used to grow a lot of grain in this valley and could again.
"At least for a while, we could."
"Until the next round of civil war?" Buckwheat asked.
"Until the next round of civil war," Wahab agreed, swinging the steering wheel over to pull through a gate in a wall fronting the street. That turned out to be a mere shortcut. He kept on going through a courtyard then popped out on another street, on which he took a right. As if to punctuate Wahab's admission, a volley of gunfire burst out from what had to be a stadium, ahead and on the right. The gunfire was followed by screams and then a small mob of people exiting one of the stadium gates.
"Stop," Fulton said, holding his left hand up, palm forward. Once the vehicle had halted, he stepped down from the Hummer and walked to the stadium gate, now clear. A young man, perhaps eighteen years old, sat beside the gate, with his back against the stadium wall. His head rested on arms folded across his bent knees and his body shook with sobbing.
Buckwheat looked inside, through the gate, carefully.
In the middle of an athletic field, barely visible for the fifty-odd young men surrounding her, was a girl in a red dress, buried to her waist and with blood pouring from her head and face. All of the young men were armed, rifles slung across backs and fist sized rocks in hand. Perhaps a thousand people filled the nearest seats in the stands, watching the punishment.
The girl wasn't screaming, though she rocked back and forth as silent tears rolled down her cheeks. The tears left clear furrows in the blood. She could have been anywhere between twenty and thirteen years of age, though Buckwheat guessed it was most likely closer to the latter. As he watched, one of the surrounding young men threw a small rock, striking the girl on the front of her neck and forcing her back. She began to gasp, as if trying to suck air in through a windpipe that had suddenly swollen. The men taunted her, imitating her strained gasping.
Wahab walked up, bearing a rifle in one hand. "What is happening? Who is that girl?" he asked the weeping young man sitting by the gate.
"My sister," the boy forced out. "She was raped and they found her guilty of adultery. My . . . sister." He broke down in sobbing once again.
"What was that?" Fulton asked. When Wahab explained, he shook his head and said, as he often did, "Thank God my multi-great grandpappy got dragged onto that boat."
"Give me your rifle," he demanded of Wahab, holding his hand out.
Wahab shook his head, tightened his grip on the weapon, and said, "No. There is nothing you can do for that girl. It is the law. It is a rotten law, but it is still the law. And those men slowly killing her will still kill her, and also you, if you interfere. I would be . . . sorry to lose you, Buckwheat."
Tightened grip or not, Fulton reached out with snakelike speed, snatching the rifle from Wahab's hands. As he settled into a kneeling supported firing position, his left side resting on the left edge of the gate, Buckwheat said, "They're too intent on pulverizing that girl to even notice me until I open fire. You've got two minutes. I suggest you go get some more ammunition for this and the other rifle. I intend to see just how far your chief's protection will extend to those who intend to rescue his son."
A sort of low moan, punctuated by occasional rifle shots, permeated the air above the stadium floor. The moaning came from the survivors of what had been fifty-three young men, formerly engaged in stoning a girl. The bulk of the men had been shot in the back, some when firing first began and others as they fled that fire. With each shot the volume of moaning grew less.