Page 11 of The Secret
He slams his fist on the table, just like Dad. “We’re all getting through this with him the best we can.” He hisses. “He’s beaten me the same as you.”
And God. The images flood into my head. Dad making me stand against the rough wood of the barn as he laid into Jed with the buckled end of a belt. Jed was ten, I was eight. I can still hear the screams, and the shivering quiet that those screams eventually gave way to.
“I don’t know why Dad’s so interested in what I’m doing. It’s not like there aren’t plenty of workers on the farm.”
“The fucking thing’s falling apart. He’s not here that often and does nothing when he is here, you know that. He likes to shout and threaten people when he’s here. I’m not really around enough to keep it all on track.” He blows out a long breath, and now I understand the scowl, see the tightness in his shoulders.
Jed could hardly walk when my Dad had finished with him. I helped him back to the house, iced all his bruises, treated the welts. He couldn’t get upstairs so I made him up a bed in the lounge and slept next to him on the sofa, holding his hand as tears drifted silently down his face.
My hackles lower. We looked out for each other, and he stepped in front of me sometimes too. I have a ton of work to do on my thesis, but being located in the DRC for the next few months will help with that, and this, this is way more important.
“When is he going back to solving financial problems in the city?”
“When you go back to college. He’s decided he needs to keep an eye on you. Said you had too much freedom. Loafing around on a course.” His eyes narrow on me. “You need to play a smarter game, little brother. I worked on him for years persuading him to let us both go to college, how much we could add to the farm with a better education. He’s been rumbling on to me about stopping funding your course. Keep in touch with him, play the game a bit, and suck it up.”
Trouble is sucking it up with my father usually means he dumps a whole load of shit on you, and woe betide you if you don’t deliver—he’ll lay into you sooner than blink. I touch my hand to my cheek and hold up my hands.
“Okay, okay.”
“Here,” Jed says, pulling some ice from the freezer and wrapping a tea towel around it. “Stick that on your face.”
“How often is he dragging your ass back here from agricultural college?”
Jed screws his face up. “He was okay at first, but since that poor harvest in my second year it’s been going downhill ever since. It unsettled him, I think. He calls me all the time. Usually when he’s drunk and has just fucked some woman. He wants me up here several times a week.”
Jesus.And fuck. That’s a six-hour drive. Jed shrugs. “It’s fine. I’ll get through it. Just play the game and don’t be another problem I have to solve.”
I watch his broad back as he disappears through the doorway. Will I ever escape this place? My father? His tentacles stretch right across Africa. What I wouldn’t give for a way out. In some ways I do get Jed’s hellraising lifestyle—what else is there? My PhD is just my way of prolonging the inevitable: I’ll come back here and sweat in a barn for the next God knows how many years of my life. It’s depressing as hell.
5
DAN
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
The grimy window reminds me of the farm, although the view is very different: a mud road through the bush. Hours of being jolted around and my butt and back both ache, my throat is dry and tight. We ran out of provisions ages ago, but I’m still drinking it all in. Four months out here in the middle of nowhere to finish the thesis for my PhD. And I love staying out in the rough of the country, where the asphalt gives way to dirt, away from the heat and mud and flies in sprawling cities and slums. It’s a fantastic escape from family responsibilities. I roll my shoulders.Enjoy this little bit of freedom.God knows, I may never experience it again.
The sun is coloring the sky orange when we reach our destination: a small African town out in the middle of the bush. And I peer out of the window, fascinated. I’m here to study the dynamics of rural communities firsthand, and hopefully explore from here. All I know is I’m staying with a lady named Gloria whose husband is a linchpin in the aid work here.
John, my driver, jumps out and stops a man in the street, asking for directions. My mouth curls up: Google Maps is so limited out here; you find your way by everyone knowing everyone else. Taking my book out of my pack, I make a note to think about communities that work this way. Soon after, we’re pulling up outside several prosperous-looking single-story buildings a few miles out of town. It isn’t anything anyone in the West would describe as affluent, but they’re made of concrete and have roofs and a yard, all of which says money in rural Congo.
A smiling man appears at the door, and John jumps down shouting something at him in Swahili, and I broadly catch the gist of the insult before they both laugh and hug each other. Climbing slowly out of the car, I straighten my compressed body as they chat away. I pick up every third word: something about “Westerners” and “volunteers.”There’s other people here?Some new conversation after this long and boring drive would be amazing. John turns to me with a smile.
“Dan, this is Adebe. He works with the aid agencies in the region.”
“Come, come.” Adebe beckons, having watched my painful exit from the vehicle. “We will have a cold beer, yes?”
His eyes widen as I thank him in halting Swahili. He makes a comment to John, who laughs, and I’m sure he’s said something about Westerners and local languages.
“I am surprised you speak our tongue,” he says, with a delighted grin and in excellent English. And given that French is the official language in the DRC, I’m impressed too.
“Ton anglais est très bon,” I say in my less than expert French, and he cracks up, clapping his hands in delight.
I like him.The directness and the sense of humor are all positive signs. Out of nowhere, the idea that no one is aware of who I am swamps me and I’m lightheaded as tension seeps from my body.
“I’ve lived in Africa a while.”
It’s all I want to say in explanation. Adebe ducks in through the low doorway into a gloomy interior and I follow him in, out of the heat of the evening. Three people are sitting at a makeshift table, and my eyes are drawn to the dark-haired girl at the end. She has the kind of lively face and laughing eyes that you could lose yourself in, and an unrestrained smile splits her face as I shake hands with the other two people, an older guy named Brian and a blonde-haired blue-eyed woman named Emma. But my eyes keep straying to the muscles that run down the woman at the end’s thin arms, and the mass of crazy curly hair that frames her face and highlights her dark-chocolate eyes fringed by thick lashes. She looks like she’s spent forever under a hot African sun.
