by GlasOwl
IV
Dawn was still a debatable idea when Kelly finally woke and decided not to bother attempting to go back to sleep again. Jeri was already down the hill at the car, sorting through the contents of the Yugo. She had taken their packs, laid them on the ground, and was looking through the trunk. Kelly felt hungry, but what she really wanted was a cup of thick Mediterranean coffee. Mentally, she shrugged. The trip from India had taught her a lot about travel as endurance; compared to that series of stuffy, dark and jolting vehicles, being outside was genuinely comfortable, and lack of coffee just a minor regret.
Vojna and her mother were still sleeping under a tree not far from Kelly. Sophija Susik -- that was the woman' name, although Kelly would no more call her by her Christian name than she would her own mother. Kelly rose quietly, walked a short distance away so she wouldn't disturb Mrs. Susik and her daughter, and proceeded to go through a series of stretches. She leaned gingerly against a tree trunk and extended, feeling the stretch through her back and along her calves. Her hands were better where they'd been scraped, not completely usable but healing; her wrists and shoulders were still quite sore.
Kelly walked down toward the car and was greeted by a smile as Jeri looked up from her work. Gods, Kelly thought, please don't ever let me get so used to seeing her that I forget how utterly beautiful she is, and how a smile on her face can pale the dawn.
"There won't be much to carry." Jeri gestured toward the things on the ground. "I think we should take the tools, but that's all we'll have to carry that's heavy. We had more in Nepal. I am assuming you're willing to carry that great, heavy book I bought you." This last with a teasing irony and just the hint of an accent from her years in Ireland.
"Oh, yeah," Kelly answered, kneeling down beside Jeri to rest her head a moment against the other woman's shoulder. "And I'll count myself lucky if that's all the heavier the history of this country weighs on me."
"That's a big thought for so early. Here, try this." From somewhere in front of her, with the flourish of a magician, Jeri found a large metal thermos.
"You're kidding! How did you do this?" Kelly's mouth gaped momentarily and then she grabbed the shiny metal container and twisted open the top. She thought she might faint from joy at the heavy aroma that burst out.
Grinning with utter smugness, Jeri shrugged. "I have many talents."
"Yeah? Just don't ever lose this one." Kelly sipped the dark brew, feeling it course along her veins, waking up cells as it went.
When Vojna and Mrs. Susik joined them, Jeri produced bread and cheese and all four women ate sparingly. Jeri explained to Vojna her plans for the day and, although Mrs. Susik took no part in the conversation, Kelly thought that she followed it. The old woman still looked as though she might simply lose air and become no more than a heap of dark clothing.
Jeri drove the Yugo in among some tall brush before they left. Insurance, she thought. She had no idea what might be made of the car if it was found. Likely nothing. There were bound to be abandoned vehicles and homes all through the Krajina, but it cost nothing to hide it.
"Nice hat," Kelly said, looking at the soft-brimmed, cotton khaki hat she had suggested Jeri buy as they prepared to leave Dubrovnik. She had one that was a similar style, but in one of WorldGear's miracle new materials. There were times she thought that she ought to apply to the outfitting company as a promoter. "Where's the gun?" Now that was something WorldGear was short on: places to hide guns, stylish holsters and bullet belts.
"I can get to it if I have to," Jeri answered.
They walked through the morning, watchful, careful to keep out of open areas. Jeri went first, followed by Vojna and then Mrs. Susik. Kelly walked last. The events of the day before receded for Kelly and the beauty of the hill country claimed her. The strong hot sun was balanced by a comfortable breeze and the green land, full of wildflowers and birdsong, admitted to no wars or rumors of war.
The small group of women walked under cover of trees much of the time, keeping a wary watch for other travelers. Kelly and Jeri were still in fine shape from walking through the highlands of Nepal, and Vojna and her mother were country women, used to outdoors and hard work. A formation of jets screamed past, flying low from the east and surprising them, but Kelly thought it far too paranoid to think the warplanes had anything to do with them. After several hours of walking, they came to a spring and filled their water bottles and rested. Jeri took the opportunity to talk with Vojna. The girl seemed in better spirits, too, and her bruises had begun to fade somewhat. Even Mrs. Susik seemed to be improving. When they rose to go on after their rest, she spoke for the first time.
"I'm ready," the Croatian woman said.
Kelly glanced at Vojna and caught a look of relief and affection on the girl's face, a look that showed clearly the child's need for her mother. The look disappeared quickly as Vojna set hope aside when Mrs. Susik turned away without looking at her.
"I can't believe Mrs. Susik really holds what happened against Vojna. Is there anything we can do?" Kelly asked Jeri when they stopped for a longer rest around mid-afternoon.
"Not yet. Maybe never. It's up to them to get through this. We'll just have to settle for getting them to safety."
They ate most of the bread and cheese. There hadn't really been enough to make up for the energy spent in walking all day and it would likely to be quite a while before they found anywhere to get more food.
The night was another calm clear night. If the ground was no softer, at least the sky was full of familiar stars and, as far as Kelly was concerned, there was nowhere else she preferred to be as long as Jeri was with her. In the morning, they finished the last of the coffee and the food. They walked more slowly now, aware of hunger.
Late in the afternoon, the travelers crossed a tree-covered ridge only to be greeted by the heavy smell of burning wood. They proceeded cautiously into a valley, Jeri leading the way. As they reached the edge of the trees, they found a wide meadow. On the far side, a group of buildings still smoldered. Jeri motioned for the others to wait while she went ahead to investigate.
The buildings indicated what had recently been a prosperous farm: a house, a barn, several smaller outbuildings grouped around an open space. Jeri thought that Kelly might find the scene reminiscent of her Ohio home, but she was glad that Kelly had stayed behind. As Jeri came closer to the buildings, she could discern other odors mixed with the smell of wood-smoke. Please the powers that be, it was only that a number of animals had been left in the barn when it was set on fire. In the open ground between the barn and the house, Jeri saw a burned out car and the bodies of two dogs that had been shot. One of them was a spotted Dalmatian. Jeri thought she was about to laugh but the noise that came out was far too strangled to hold humor. By the time she reached the house, she had steeled herself for what she expected to find.
She peered through the door of what was probably the oldest part of the house. Perhaps in another century these stone walls had been the original cottage and the rest of the house had been built out from it. The newer part of the structure had been wood, and the fire had taken that portion of the building entirely. Smoke still rose here and there from fallen beams that smoldered. Jeri stepped cautiously through the open door into what had been a kitchen. Things were strewn all over and what wasn't broken was severely bent. Lines along the plaster on the upper walls looked as if they were from automatic weapons, but the air was dim and everything loomed through a twilight gray.
There seemed little reason to linger, but Jeri took some steps into the room. At the far end, she saw a doorway.
She didn't want to go down. The smell was unmistakable. She recognized it from the crematoria around the Nepalese city of Kathmandu. There was no chance anyone could still be alive down there. Jeri reminded herself that whatever she found, they could only be people, and surely they deserved one witness to their fate. She set her jaw and walked down the sooty stairs.
A noise from the the kitchen above drew her back from the underworld. A part of her mind was reading it like that: the underworld where dire and desperate matters were found. There was no one left living and so she turned and did not look back. As she stepped into the kitchen -- which now seemed full of light compared to where she had just been -- she saw a figure. It took her a few seconds to recognize Mrs. Susik. The older woman saw her and her look was a question.
Jeri shook her head. "The others?" she asked. Mrs. Susik gestured outside.
"Don't go down," Jeri said. "There's no reason." The older woman nodded.
Jeri found Kelly and Vojna outside in the yard. They were standing near the outside entrance to the cellar where Jeri had just been, where it looked as if a large plank had fallen across the door. Or had been placed there in order to bar an exit.
"What happened?" Kelly asked.
"The people who lived here were burned out." Jeri looked up toward the tree-covered hills above the farm. They needed to leave soon if they were to put distance between this place and wherever they would spend the night.
What kind of people did such things to their own neighbors? Wrong question. She remembered her own mother taking her and the younger kids out to shout at the cops and the black kids the cops had been protecting in Boston's busing wars. Didn't Protestants still shout at Catholic kids in Belfast? Her mother and her mother's friends, they never killed anyone, but she'd be the last to say they weren't capable of it, weren't capable of throwing stones as easily as words. People did such things. Better to ask how you became immune to such hate. Better to ask what ways there might be to make it stop. Jeri remembered the irony in how she'd argued against prejudice against black people in her Northern Ireland prison while she was training to join the Provos. But that was different, said a portion of her mind. Isn't it always, answered another portion.
"Jeri."
Kelly was looking at her, eyes full of concern. Jeri knew she should snap out of it, but she was still struggling to leave behind the horror of the cellar.
"Jeri, what's wrong?"
"Nothing." She got the word out, felt it becoming possibly true. "I'm -- I'll be okay."
"Let's get out of here. This is no place to be."
Jeri saw Kelly staring toward the still body of the spotted dog. She decided this wasn't the time to tell Kelly that 'vampire' was a Serbian word. Mrs. Susik emerged from the soot-blackened doorway, a burlap sack in her hands. Jeri took one last look around the farm -- the farm that once had been the home of a prosperous and, presumably, happy family -- and then turned and walked toward the hills.
Kelly walked beside her in silence for a while, but after a kilometer or two, she asked, "Jeri, what did you see back there?"
Jeri stopped walking. She must have set quite a pace because Vojna and Mrs. Susik were far behind.
"The family. I'm not sure how many. They must have gone down to the basement for refuge when the fire started. When the attackers started the fire."
"And they were caught down there?"
"Some were shot. By whoever threw torches in and then blocked the cellar door. Kelly, please, don't ask me anymore."
They walked on, but Jeri set a slower pace. Oddly enough it was Mrs. Susik who called a halt for the day.
"We should cook now, before it gets dark and our fire can be seen," the Croatian woman said to Jeri.
It was the sight of the mother and daughter working together that helped Jeri get through the evening. Mrs. Susik had salvaged some food in her bag as well as a pan to cook in. Jeri and Kelly collected firewood while Vojna and Mrs. Susik prepared the food. At first, Jeri was sure she could eat nothing that had come from that house, but as she watched the older woman, whose face looked as if it had been carved from stone into an attitude of eternal endurance, Jeri wrestled with her own disposition.
This was surely not the first time that atrocity had stalked this countryside, not in a land with thousands of years of history as a crossroads between empires and civilizations. Slavs and Illyrians, Rome and Constantinople, Turk and Christian, to remember only a few of the groups that had struggled to rule this area, and none of these had bloodless hands. History, so vital to an understanding of the region, was in the end irrelevant when it came to understanding how to live. In the end, one struggled to stay alive and to keep those close to one alive. It was a lesson one learned from women. Mrs. Susik had wakened to the needs of life and she had known what to look for in the burned out house - food. The older woman and her daughter worked together with the habits accrued from a life together. If each one now and then let her gaze linger as the other turned away, it was with a gaze composed of equal parts of tenderness and sorrow, pity and forgiveness.
Jeri ate what she was given. She had a task and that was to use whatever skill she could muster to get them all back to the coast.
"Mrs. Susik is a quite a cook," Jeri said to Kelly, and she forced herself to mean her smile. She repeated her compliment to the Croatian woman.
Mrs. Susik nodded. "We did this when I was a girl," she said. "We had to run from the Chetniks then, too."
Nature seemed determined to make up for the human horror of the day. The night sky was full of summer stars. Kelly pointed out the constellations she knew. She and Jeri were laying side by side on their sleeping bags.
"George taught me some of the constellations," Kelly said. "We'd take our blankets and go to a hill near the creek behind the barn. The folks let us sleep out there sometimes in summer. As long as we got back in the morning in time for chores. Did you have a place where you could go like that?"
"Yeah, the fire escape," Jeri said. She heard her own bitterness and relented. "The roof sometimes. Mom let us go up to the roof on really hot nights. You had to take a ladder to get up there. It was never really dark. There was always a haze over the city. I don't think I saw real stars until I went to England, but they came as such a surprise that I kept remembering them when I was in prison."
"I forget about that sometimes," Kelly said quietly, "that you were in prison."
Jeri smiled wryly in the darkness. "So do I. I hated it of course. I'm a hothead by nature and taking orders went against everything I understood as a kid. But as a place to learn discipline, you can't beat prison. It was easy to join the Provos there. Nobody else was serious."
"Serious? I'd have thought that prison was one of the most serious places you could be."
"Not really. Most everyone was slightly ridiculous, fighting for lovers, or for status, or for no good reason at all. Nobody but the political women had a sense of themselves or a purpose. Well, maybe one or two, but they were surviving on their own."
"You're thinking of someone in particular."
"You're good, you know that? You're really good. You got my mind to switch gears. But I'm not going to tell you about her tonight. It's not a time I want to think about."
Kelly snuggled close and closed her eyes. Not tonight, she thought as she drifted off to sleep, but you will later. Later, I'm going to know everything you know, including the name of this mysterious woman who brings such a look of peace and pain when you think of her.
The next morning, Kelly had resigned herself to no coffee or perhaps a possible sniff of the interior of the thermos when the smell of fresh coffee drifted past her closed eyes. Mrs. Susik was up and cooking. Kelly thought of her mother and decided that the Susiks and Corcorans probably had a lot in common as farm families. Suddenly Kelly was reminded of stories by Willa Cather, of her shorter tales of the European immigrants who came to populate Cather's America. It was as if Kelly was seeing behind the stories to the lands from which the immigrants had come.
The likeness seemed even stronger when Mrs. Susik handed her a greasy biscuit kind of thing -- people who worked outside for their livelihood never worried much about cholesterol. Kelly ate it gladly, sure that although it sat in her stomach like some foreign object threatening indigestibility, a day of walking would have some effect on it. After breakfast, she helped Vojna tidy up and pack utensils. The child seemed lighter, easier. Kelly pointed out a few wildflowers growing among the raised roots of a tree and was rewarded with a shy smile.
Walking was easier with food to travel on. They kept to the higher land, and now and then found paths to follow. Once, they saw a line of what was probably a squad of soldiers following a path lower down and across a valley. The women stayed still, hidden by distance, until the soldiers crossed over a ridge, but they proceeded even more cautiously after that. Jeri was particularly watchful, walking point, scanning the land about constantly. Now and then, Kelly would take a moment to simply look at Jeri as she strode ahead, to look and let the sight of the tall woman fill her with a wordless affection.
Late the next morning, the travelers encountered other refugees. As the four women trudged around the crown of a low hill, they found several people resting in the dusty shade of an apple orchard. The group appeared to be an extended family of about a dozen or so women and children. They gave no particular welcome, only a glance or a nod here and there. It was as if they had all gathered to wait for a bus, Kelly thought, strangers forced together with no particular wish to know one another. Even she and Jeri attracted little curiosity, although their clothing was odd enough from among the country folk to set them apart.
Jeri took the map from her pocket and studied it. To Kelly's eye, the land said they were nearly out of the highlands, but Jeri was unsure of her map, one that had been designed for drivers, not hikers or refugees.
Shyly, Vojna plucked Kelly's sleeve and gestured for her to follow. Kelly shrugged to Jeri and went after the girl. Vojna ran ahead, and then stopped beneath a smallish tree.
"Alica," she said, pointing upward.
When Kelly reached her she saw that Vojna had brought her to a cherry tree. To Kelly's eye the bright red fruit didn't look ripe, but gingerly, at Vojna's urging, Kelly sampled a cherry. She grinned back at the girl: a little dry, but the taste was quite sweet and flavorful. Vojna gestured for Kelly to take off her hat and they both picked until it was full of cherries.
Kelly held out her hat to Jeri and Mrs. Susik. "Try some of my purple berries," Kelly quoted from the old Jefferson Airplane song. The color was close enough.
The Croatian woman took some, murmuring words that probably meant thank you.
Jeri answered Kelly in kind with another line from 'Wooden Ships'. "Can you tell me, please, who won the war?"
"Is 'alica' the word for cherry?" Kelly asked.
Before Jeri could answer, Mrs. Susik broke into what was for her a long discussion. Hearing her talk at all was so unusual that both Americans waited until they were sure she was finished before Jeri translated for Kelly.
"She says that the frost was heavy this year and ruined most of the cherry crop. She says at home they have many cherry trees and make rakija, a kind of brandy, but this year they have only this kind, the alica cherry, which is okay but not to her mind the best."
Kelly nodded and read the meaning of Mrs. Susik's small discourse on cherry varieties. So it had begun for her: the process of memory healing grief, a process that was like someone entering a destroyed home and retrieving items of value, items to be kept and cherished.
"Excuse me." The words were passable English. The speaker looked like most of the other refugee women, wearing a black dress and head scarf. She removed the scarf and her short, pale blond hair with streaks of gray was so short that it went against the rest of her traditional look. She had a long face with light blue eyes, but her features were marred by purple bruising.
"I'm Dr. Djindjivik," she said, and repeated slowly: "Jin-ji-vik." She attempted a smile, but her lips were swollen and split, and so she settled for a nod. "Are you Americans?"
Jeri nodded.
Dr. Djindivik held her hand out. "I went to medical school in Massachusetts. I used to be a good non-aligned citizen, you know, and alert to any hint of neo-colonialism, but I would like nothing more than to see an American tank coming over that hill. Intervention begins to seem like a sweet word -- you didn't by any chance just come from Iraq, bringing with you some of George Bush's tanks?"
"Sorry," Jeri smiled wryly, "what you see is what we've got. I'm starting to be tempted to change my own attitude about intervention."
"I look forward to a long talk with you this evening." Dr. Djindjivik nodded to Jeri and Kelly and said something formal to Mrs. Susik. The doctor hesitated as she went past Vojna but she only spoke a few words before rejoining her group.
When the other refugees rose to leave, Jeri and Kelly and Vojna and Mrs. Susik followed. Kelly amended her previous image; the orchard wasn't like a bus stop -- it was more as if the land had squeezed free two drops of misery that had joined to become a trickle flowing toward the sea.
The refugees found a shelter on a rocky hillside for the evening. A number of small cook-fires marked the area, but as the light slipped out of the day, the fires were extinguished. This was a group grown wise to the needs of survival. True to her word, Dr. Djindjivik came to visit as the twilight lengthened. She spoke a long time with Vojna before joining Jeri and Kelly.
"Rape seems to be as much a Chetnik weapon as a rifle." The Croatian doctor sighed as she sat down by the two Americans. "You probably wonder why an educated woman is dressed like this." She indicated her heavy black dress. "My nurse gave it to me when we realized the Chetniks were shooting the educated people in our town. They came to my clinic and I would be dead if my nurse hadn't thought to hand me an old dress that someone had left behind when she'd been taken to hospital some months ago. She should have taken it herself. They cut her throat after they beat my husband to death. Did you know that there's a Serbian word for beating with a rifle butt? Kundaciti. This from a people who never tire of telling you how they had the first forks in Europe. Who would know such a word would be necessary? Me, I was only raped."
The doctor's tone, so deliberately ironic and objective, was belied by the compulsive length at which she spoke. Kelly judged that perhaps she and Jeri were the first people in a while who appeared to the doctor as witnesses more than as fellow sufferers.
As if in answer to Kelly's thought, Dr. Djindjivik apologized. "Please, forgive me. I talk too much. What are you doing here?
"We just got caught behind the lines so to speak," Kelly answered. "Please go on talking. It's hard to understand what's happening here, and listening is about the only way we have to help."
Dr. Djindjivik nodded. The waning light made it unnecessary for her to try and smile, but she acknowledged Kelly's lifeline even as she took hold of it.
"Understand what's happening here? I wish I did. I was so proud to be a Yugoslavian. I felt like Tito at least made us a country. And he made us free of the West or the Russians. Yes, he was harsh, a dictator, but I'm a doctor and I can appreciate harsh measures in the service of health. Even after he died it seemed everything would work. Until Slobodan Milosevic went to Kosovo."
The doctor's voice drifted off. "I don't know. Many causes make an event possible, but if one man bears most responsibility it is Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia. It is Milosovic who keeps telling the Serbs that they are in danger, even as he keeps giving them a bigger and bigger stick with which to beat everyone else. That's what he said to the Serbs in Kosovo at a rally that day -- "no one should dare to beat you" -- and that was the end of Yugoslavia. After that there were Serbs and Croats again, Kosovars and Slovenes and Bosnians. Milosevic was just a party hack until that day, but he rode all the way to the top by making the Serbs think he was the only one who would speak for them. We could have been Yugoslavians, but instead he would make us Serboslavians and we had to separate."
"But who murdered people in your town?" Jeri asked.
"Chetniks. The killers were mostly these long-haired hoodlums. They were like a gang -- young, cold, vicious."
"Arkan's Tigers."
"So." Dr. Djindjivik's voice came out in a hiss. "You know this man, this Arkan."
"Yes. He has a reputation."
"These men started it, but the Yugoslav army was there and didn't stop them. They stood by and watched. And the Serb people of the town, they hid. Some of the Chetniks were Serbs from the next town. I know because I was the doctor to their wives and children. It wasn't hoodlums from Belgrade who raped me. I had to remember that I was lucky they were too drunk to recognize me in my new clothes."
The women were silent. They could hear the murmur of other voices in the darkness. Someone not far away was weeping and trying to do it quietly. Kelly was surprised at how unsurprising the sound was.
"Let me tell you a story," Dr. Djindjik said. The doctor sighed. "It is a story I keep telling myself. My father was Croatian, but he was no Ustasha, no ally of the Nazis. He fought with the Partisans."
Didn't they all, Jeri thought sourly. But she said nothing.
"When he came home to our village which is by the Bosnian border, the people assumed he had been a German ally and they beat him up and arrested him. My mother was Muslim and she got word to my father's commander, a friend of Tito himself, and the commander came in person to our town and made them release my father."
Jeri amended her thought. Probably the doctor's father had fought with Tito. She shouldn't be so quick to judge the people of this country.
The Croatian woman continued. "So that was our town, a mix of Serbs and Croatians and Muslims. During the war someone destroyed the mosque. They just blew it up. After the war, the government had no favorites, they suppressed all the religions. But we wanted our mosque, and so, stone by stone, the people started building it again. And everyone helped. Croatians carried stones, Serbs left money in a little box at the entrance. And on the weekends, everyone came and helped with the building. When it was done, all the village had a celebration, and everyone got drunk, although the Muslims didn't drink in public but went off to the edge of the village with their friends. This is where I come from. This was the country I had."
From below and far off came the sound of thuds. Guns, Kelly thought, large guns. She was aware that she was hearing war.
Later as she lay against Jeri's side, all Kelly could think to ask was, "What did Dr. Djindjivik mean about the forks?"
"Oh, there's this story the Serbians like to tell about how some king came, from Italy I think, and was given golden forks and didn't know how to use them."
The next morning, Kelly woke to find Mrs. Susik talking to another refugee woman. The two seemed to be discussing something about cooking, but what Kelly liked was seeing that the older woman seemed to have rejoined the world around her. Vojna, too, appeared to have found some companionship among the other refugees. As the group made its way along the valley, the girl and another about her age walked side by side, giggling and chatting.
In the afternoon, the group reached a dirt road, and found that a straggle of other refugees were on it, heading west. There were some men in this group that moved at a walker's pace. A creaking, two-wheeled cart, pulled by a weary donkey and driven by a grim-faced teen-aged boy, held an old woman and a child. Behind it came a modern tractor. It was as if a century or two had been pulled indiscriminately out of the countryside and tossed onto the road to the sea. Jeri left to talk to the new people and came back to tell Kelly what she'd learned.
"We're on the road to Split," she said. "It seems that we're likely out of the fighting area now. The Krajina Serbs aren't interested in trying to take this area, or at least that's what the guy I was talking to thinks. He could be wrong."
Kelly looked around, hearing first the whine and then the rising rumble of an approaching plane. Images of World War II planes strafing running lines of people leapt out of her memory from a half dozen old movies, but she ignored them as too absurd. Then it wasn't absurd as the rumble became the scream of a dive.
Maybe the planes didn't fire, but terror was loosed throughout the column of refugees as the jets thundered by, passing overhead so closely that one might have reached up and touched them if one wasn't already lying flat and trying to melt into the dust of the road. One after another, again and again, the jets dived, whipped low over the column, creating a roar and a concussive 'whump' of air before rising to circle and dive again. Nor was it clear that the planes were simply diving and not firing. Kelly lay flat on the dirt, her hands over her ears doing nothing to keep out a noise that surrounded her like the air itself, barely aware of Jeri's protective arm thrown over her shoulder. And through the noise and the fear came another sound: an occasional, deeper thud.
"Vojna! No!" Jeri's cry disappeared into the roar of the planes.
Kelly heard it and raised her head. The noise of the passing jets seemed to shake the very air but still Kelly saw Vojna running away from the road and into the field with several other refugees. She saw it, but it simply made no sense, as if some connection between her eyes and her brain had broken. It made even less sense as Kelly saw Vojna float up into the air just before she heard another of the odd thumps.
Suddenly, it was so quiet that all one could here was one's own heart shuddering. The fading whine of the jets was Kelly's only indication she had not gone deaf. Vojna lay out in the field, and so did two others who had run from the road.
At first, the crying child sounded so normal that it seemed to signal that the whole episode was over, until it became evident that the child was near one of the silent figures lying in the field.
"Land mines," Kelly heard Jeri say. "Stay here. Keep Mrs. Susik here."
Jeri took several quick steps off the road and then paused to assess her next moves. She could see where some of the runners had stepped, marks that promised more or less safety if she just walked the same route. Not entirely. They might have simply stepped over a firing mechanism that was now waiting patiently for something else to trip it -- and would wait patiently for minutes or years.
Jeri forced herself to focus down, to ignore the need to run to the crying child. There. She saw the green tripping mechanism of a mine as it protruded an inch or so above the ground. She looked around and selected a stone, and then ripped the sleeve from her shirt. Again she ripped until she had a strip of pale cloth to tie onto the stone. She knelt down and placed the stone with its flag. Not much of a marker, but maybe enough to warn off the next person. As she crept along on hands and knees, Jeri passed an old branch, dry and brittle, and she took it with her to use as a marker.
She swore aloud as she passed the first person killed by an exploding mine. Christ almighty, the kid had been hit by the kind that flew up and radiated shrapnel, a mine meant to kill, not just maim. Or, to judge from the last trip mechanism she'd marked, the field was planted with a variety of mines, from anti-personnel to anti-tank. Maybe some bloody-minded officer had said, "Get me mines," and the ordnance sergeant had answered, "Try these, sir, and see whch you prefer." Maybe --
As she passed Vojna, Jeri wanted to just sit back and cry.
What had it all been for? She and Kelly might as well have just kept driving that day for all the good they'd done. She hadn't protected Vojna at all. What had been the point? So she could see again what it looked like when a person died due to proximity with an explosion? Christ, they'd called in the warning, they'd never meant for the bomb to go off while there were still people working. No one was supposed to have been killed by the bomb. The papers had all gone on about cold-blooded terrorists, but they'd never meant for anyone to be hurt. Is that what the soldier thought who planted the land mine? It's not meant to hurt anyone, just to keep people and vehicles concentrated on the road and out of the fields.
Maybe if she just got up and started walking, this whole cycle of agony
would quit. It would be fitting to go in an explosion. Just stand
up and walk. It would be all over, and it would be finished for her.
She'd get what she deserved. Kelly could go home and have a normal life.
The world could get on with its perverse and bloody absurdities, and she
could quit having to
know about it.
"Don't be ridiculous," said a voice in her head. "This isn't about you, it's about that child out there." The voice was familiar. Kelly had evoked the woman with the grim mouth and and the sad eyes that day at the burned out farm. In truth, she was never far from Jeri's conscious mind, but she seemed particularly present these days. "Don't be ridiculous," she'd said more than once to Jeri, and Jeri had realized that more than anything else at the time, she never wanted that woman to think she was ridiculous.
Jeri sighted along the ground. She saw another tripping mechanism and she marked it quickly, moving past.
"It's a terrible error of the age," Arkadia O'Malley had once said, "a terrible error to think that we're each separate and single. Individualism denies the links we have to one another, the connections of our souls and the needs of our hearts. We belong to one another, so don't ever be ridiculous and think that what you do is nobody else's business."
Jeri heard the words in thickly accented Irish English. Part chaplain, part therapist, and a prisoner who had learned how to be truly free, the pale-haired woman with the piercing gaze of a hawk had awakened Jeri to the fact that she had a soul.
A bird chirped, a sound of nature returning to the broken landscape. Jeri's hand, moving lightly at ground level, encountered a tripping mechanism that was almost completely covered by dirt. Jesus, she could have missed that one so easily.
She marked it and moved on. She owed Rafi. She had made promises to Kelly. She knew that now, more than ever, Alenka would need her. It wouldn't be a choice if she died here due to carelessness, it would be an act of despair, a surrender, and she didn't need to surrender yet.
Jeri reached the child, a girl of three or four. The child seemed to be in shock, her sobs monotonous and repetitive, but there was no sign of any wounds. Carefully, Jeri sat back and drew the youngster into her lap, soothing her with nonsense sounds and gentle petting. The sobs didn't cease, but they grew a little quieter. Most likely, the explosion had terrified the child, maybe even -- temporarily it was to be hoped-- deafened her. Jeri sighted her route back and then stood. She'd marked safe steps with shallow indentations as she crawled out. Now she walked back, carrying the child, following her own marked path.
It was if everyone on the road released a collective sigh when Jeri reached safety. Without thinking about it, Jeri handed the child to Mrs. Susik. Then she turned to Kelly and received an embrace so strong she thought she might have bruised ribs before it was over.
"Oh, Jeri. Oh, baby. I was so scared. Oh, thank you for coming back. I couldn't bear losing you. Not now. Not ever.".
"She seems to be well enough. Are either of the people out there still alive?" It was Dr. Djindjvik. She had looked at the child.
Jeri shook her head. "No. I'm quite sure."
"You are a very brave woman."
Jeri looked at the doctor. She saw a face marked by fatigue, concern -- and the bruises which were fading to yellow. "I think that bravery has become as necessary as bread these days." She took the woman's outstretched hand and held it for a long moment.
Most of the refugees moved on, but a small group stayed behind to recover the bodies and bury them. There was a priest among those who remained, so this time Mrs. Susik had the comfort of religion when her child was placed in the ground. This time the woman wept, long and loud, and although Kelly stayed beside her, she could not help wishing that the Mrs. Susik had been able to show some of this feeling to Vojna while her daughter was alive. But undoubtedly that was part of the woman's grief, undoubtedly she understood that with her two children dead she could no longer show any of the love that she would never stop feeling.
After the three young Croatians were buried and those who had stayed behind prepared to move on, Kelly saw Mrs. Susik begin to move back to her own people. The woman still looked to her and to Jeri but there was a motion, as sure as gravity, back to the folk who knew her needs, her rhythms. The doctor had also left the child in Mrs. Susik's care while others searched for relatives of the youngster.
A tractor pulling a flatbed rolled by. Its pace was scarcely faster than a walk, but when the driver indicated that they should ride, Kelly helped Jeri get Mrs. Susik aboard and then climbed on gratefully as the people already riding made room. Straw bales were situated for comfort, and even if part of her mind registered the grotesque similarity to a hay ride, Kelly felt far too damaged to bother with irony.