An Open Heart (2 page)

Jace awoke with a start, his face stinging. He touched his cheek and looked into the face of his attacker, a large Kenyan with his hand raised above his head.

Jace covered his face with his arms and felt himself being lifted to his feet. There was something wet on his lip. Jace touched his nose. Blood. He tried to focus. More blood dripping on the floor at his feet.

A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling behind his foe—a dark, menacing silhouette with breath worse than burnt rubber. “Take off the coat.”

Jace slipped his hand into his pockets. The shillings were gone, no doubt stolen while he slept. He hesitated. Too long. The shadowy figure hit him again, knocking him back against the wall.

He heard laughter. No one would come to the rescue of the rich mzungu. “Here,” Jace said, pulling his arms from the coatsleeves. “Take it.”

Jace slid down the wall, his face throbbing. He pinched his nose, feeling the grit of bone against bone. The ache was horrible, but he needed to stop the faucet that painted the floor between his feet.

A few minutes later, with the flow reduced to a few drops, Jace looked up to see the man modeling his new jacket, grinning through crooked teeth like he’d won the lottery.

Don’t they even give a man a phone call in this place? You can’t be jailed for an accident, can you?

There had been no arrest. No judge or magistrate. Simply an angry officer bent on leveraging some jail time for a bribe.

Jace thought about his luggage in the back of his friend’s Land Rover. At the last minute before leaving the airport, he’d covered the three large trunks with an old carpet fragment so they wouldn’t attract attention. In Kenya, anything of value visible in a vehicle was fair invitation for thievery.

He closed his eyes but couldn’t sleep. The pain that enveloped his face had robbed him of that. He eyed the bucket in the corner. Soon, he would have to take his turn. Jace didn’t want to think of that. How could he relieve himself in front of these men?

A few minutes later, he had a new problem. Cold. Without his jacket, he’d begun to chill. He looked at the lone window. The sky was just beginning to lighten. Hopefully, the day would warm up once the sun cleared the horizon.

He hugged himself as footsteps echoed from the hallway beyond the holding cell. An officer appeared, this one younger and slimmer than the one who’d brought Jace the night before. He read from a clipboard. “Mr. Rawlings.”

Jace struggled to his feet. He stared for a moment at the man wearing his coat, a vain attempt to call attention, hoping the officer might notice. He knew the rules of this place. Treat the police like they were the bosses. Don’t resist. “Yes, sir,” he answered.

The officer slammed a club against the bars at the front of the cell, hitting the fingers of an old man clutching the bars. “Back away. All of you,” he said. The old man stumbled away, wailing and holding his hand. “You,” he said, pointing his club at Jace. “Come here.”

Jace nodded and stepped forward. The officer unlocked and opened the door.

“You’re free to go.”

“I can go? What about—”

“The matter has been settled.”

Jace wouldn’t argue, though he didn’t understand.

The officer handed Jace his keys. “Your vehicle is parked behind the station.”

Outside, cool air greeted Jace. The sky to the east was brilliant with orange and purple hues.

Jace found the Land Rover, and his luggage was undisturbed. Amazing. He was just starting to drive across the nearly deserted lot when he saw a Kenyan boy running across the parking lot toward him. He braked to a stop. The boy carried a goat, which he set down just before arriving beside Jace’s vehicle. The goat scampered off a few feet until the rope the boy held drew tight. Jace stared at the goat. White with gray and brown splotches. A gray patch in the center of a brown circle. Like a target.

Jace’s mouth fell open. “What the—”

Now Jace recognized the boy. The one who had tried to charge him ten thousand shillings for a dead goat.

The boy’s eyes were wide with awe, a clear white section completely visible surrounding the dark iris. “You touched my goat.”

Jace shook his head, trying to remember. Yes, he had knelt over the goat at the scene. The goat had been bleeding from the nose and mouth and had taken one last gasp before jerking into the stillness of death.

The boy reached out to place his palm against the window next to Jace’s face. “You are a magic man.”

2

Heather Rawlings awoke with a start and reached across the bed. It had been a month since she’d asked Jace to leave, but she still thought of it the same way.
Jace’s side.
As many days as they’d been separated, and she couldn’t bring herself to sprawl into his space. She pulled a pillow,
his
,
to her face. A moment later, she rose and took the pillow to the hall closet and stuffed it above a stack of blankets on the top shelf.

She plodded to the kitchen and flipped on the drip coffeemaker. She’d hoped that time away from Jace would bring clarity to her thinking. Instead, her loneliness only accentuated her confusion.

Coffee in hand, she flipped on her MacBook and clicked the Get Mail icon. Nothing from Jace. Not that she’d expected him to give her updates.

The last months had been a whirl. She’d fallen into media attention as the wife of the man who’d saved the governor. She’d watched Jace enjoy the limelight, struggled to trust him when the papers brought accusations, stood by him through rehabilitation from a head injury, and then asked him to leave when he seemed intent on running away to Africa to escape his troubles.

She stood and paused at the window, looking at the sun reflecting off the daffodils. Jace had swept into her life on a spring morning just like this. They were freshmen at a small Christian college in western Virginia. She’d landed a work-study job in the office of the dean of men, part of a program to help financially needy students pay for tuition. Heather had been raised in Mozambique as part of a missionary family. She’d made a few friends in college but was having a hard time relating to the other freshmen girls. All they seemed to talk about was boys, clothes, and celebrities, and she had no experience with any of those things. After seeing poverty, the results of civil war, and the devastation of HIV, she didn’t understand American television or the preoccupation with all things material. Her suitemates’ only concern seemed to be that the shopping available around the school was paltry compared to the malls in northern Virginia, where their fathers worked in lucrative law practices or the government.

That’s why her interest was piqued when Dean Welty walked out of his office escorting a young man. “Heather,” the dean said, “Mr. Rawlings needs a copy of the school brochure entitled
Stewards of a Green Earth
. You’ll find it in the information-packet materials.”

“Sure,” she responded. Heather retrieved the pamphlet and handed it to the student, who offered a smile above an untidy goatee. He wore a pair of jeans, a ripped T-shirt, and a pair of blue flip-flops. His hair was a tangle of beautiful curls.

“Time for penance,” he said, clutching the pamphlet.

“Penance?”

He rolled his eyes. Blue as the Indian Ocean on the Mozambique coast. “Ask him,” he said, nodding his head toward the dean.

She watched the young man disappear, measuring his proud stance and muscular shoulders as he walked. When she looked at the dean, he was studying her. “Stay away from that one, Heather. He’s trouble.”

“What did he do?”

“Seems the MK thinks he’s still in Africa. A raccoon was making noise outside his dorm room, upset a garbage can. So he took his bow and arrow and shot him.” The dean shook his head and chuckled. “Right in the middle of campus, like it was hunting season or something.”

Heather put her hand to her mouth to hide a smile before stepping to the window to look out over the campus from their third-floor office. Daffodils were in bloom. She watched until she saw Mr. Rawlings bound down the concrete steps and onto the lawn.
MK?
She uncovered her smile.
He’s a missionary kid?

She looked back at the dean. “He killed a raccoon?”

“Skinned it in the dorm lounge. Said he wanted to cure the hide to hang on his wall.”

What was the dean expecting her to say? Didn’t he understand that she was an MK too? She selected a word she imagined coming out of one of her suitemates. “Barbaric.”

“Exactly. I’ve assigned him a five-page paper. A response to reading our policy.” He turned to go back into his office. “Could you be sure he hands it in by Friday?”

“I can follow up,” she said. “What’s his name?”

“Jace. Jace Rawlings.”

She sat back at her desk, with the memory of Jace’s blue eyes still fresh.
You killed a raccoon with an arrow?

She smiled.
I’ll bet I’m a better shot than you.

Zombie-like from two nights on a plane and a third in a Kenyan jail, all Jace wanted was a bed. Well, maybe a shower and a bed. It took him thirty minutes to travel from the jail to Kijabe, the home of Kijabe Hospital and Jace’s alma matter, Rift Valley Academy. He’d made arrangements to rent a small house, and after picking up a set of keys from the station hostess, he parked the Land Rover in a carport and made quick business of unlocking first the barred external metal door and then the regular wooden front door of his new dwelling.

He walked from room to room, taking it all in. Sparsely furnished. Small kitchen, sitting area, two bedrooms, and a bathroom. He’d turn one of the bedrooms into a study. He nodded. Far from his spacious home in Virginia, but adequate. Out of habit, he opened the refrigerator. The welcoming committee had stocked a few basics. Milk, butter, cheese, and some hamburger meat. A carton of eggs sat atop the kitchen counter, and a gift basket adorned a small kitchen table. Sugar, tea, coffee, and a small jar of a dark-red jam.

He stopped in front of the bathroom mirror. Deep purple had settled below his left eye. He held a tube of Crest toothpaste at arm’s length and shut first one eye, then the other.
Vision okay.
He gently touched his nose, forcing himself to palpate deeply enough to ascertain the bones were straight beneath the swelling. There was a subtle offset pointing toward the left. His eyes watered with the pain. Leaning over the sink, he took a deep breath and steadied one hand over the other, gripping the bridge of his nose. He paused, testing his resolve. He’d once taken a karate class in college. There he had learned to shout the
kiai
, the scream to harmonize or focus your energy during a physical fight. He looked away from his own image and began an energy-focusing scream, starting guttural and low and rapidly rising in pitch and volume. He pulled down hard. Bone grated against bone. In an instant, an involuntary scream replaced the
kiai
. Tears rolled from his eyes and mixed with fresh blood dripping onto the white porcelain sink.

Electricity jolted through his face. Beyond the scream, silence. For a moment, the room darkened. Jace dropped to his knees, aware only of pain, throbbing and rhythmic, threatening to take over all other sensory input. His next conscious thought burst from somewhere behind his eyes.
Breathe!

He’d been holding his breath.
Open your mouth. Take a breath!

Involuntarily, he obeyed.

Gently, with trembling fingers, he explored the length of his too-soft nose.
Better.

He found ibuprofen, took four, and then added two extra-strength Tylenol from his toiletry bag.

In spite of the pain, he found himself chuckling.
Just like the old rugby days at RVA. Welcome back to Kijabe.

Kijabe carried a weight of memories for him, both wonderful and horrifying. He would face them in time. For now, his head felt slow, his thoughts fighting their way forward through a fog of sleep deprivation. After a shower, he surrendered to the coma of sleep, not caring that it was morning in Kenya. Readjusting his clock and remembering Africa would have to wait.

But deep, renewing sleep remained elusive. A strange bed, threadbare draperies that let in too much light, and troubling images kept Jace tossing. He remembered feeling so bone-tired after a full day of rugby at the Blackrock tournament that his body refused to relax and sleep. When he did drift off, pain in his face prompted him to imagine he’d just been tackled and forced into a faceplant on the dry ground in midfield.

He rolled over and covered his face with a sheet to block out the light. But he could not stop thinking. Images of the Kenyan boy’s palm against the window and echoes of his voice quickened Jace’s pulse and moistened his sheets with perspiration.
You are a magic man.

Could I have misinterpreted the goat’s condition? Maybe he wasn’t dead, only suffering a brief concussion. Maybe the goat I saw this morning wasn’t the same one I ran over.

His mind inevitably churned out images of his father, mother, and sister in Kijabe. A mind beginning to process a boatload of pain, buried by years away from Africa. His father wearing bloody scrubs home and smelling of antiseptic. His mother chasing the baboons from her watermelon patch. His sister laughing.