The Flame Tree (12 page)

The seventh marine was an officer. Sheldon ran up to the marine officer in a half crouch and shouted under the din of the chopper engines, “Boy, am I damn glad to see you. Cutting it pretty close there, I say.”

The officer nodded. “First load up,” he bellowed.

The schoolkids scurried out to the helicopter in two lines, supervised by Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Janice, and Miss Augusta. These three adults also boarded with them. The helmeted crew chief of the chopper got them seated and secured and then turned his attention to their luggage, which Sheldon, Joe, and the marine officer were passing on hand to hand. The officer made an “okay” sign with his fingers to the crew chief. The rear ramp lifted off the ground, like a jaw closing shut. The helicopter’s blades sped up, and the metal body underneath them lifted off the ground in a mind-numbing noise that diminished quickly as the chopper flew off.

The quiet was deafening.

At the gate the faces of the rioters reappeared. A hail of stones came in over the compound wall. So did a Molotov cocktail in a Coca-Cola bottle. It did not break. One of the marines picked it up and made quick eye contact with the marine beside him. The second man grinned and nodded. The first marine tossed the bottle high in the air over the wall. The second marine tracked it with his rifle. As it began its descent he let off a burst that smashed the bottle. Flaming gas spewed onto the rioters below. The howls were even louder.

Graham Williams went over to Reverend Biggs and spoke to him, putting his mouth close to the reverend’s ear. The reverend listened intently. When Graham was done speaking, the reverend said straightforwardly and with increasing volume over the noise of the second helicopter that was approaching, “You’ve made a hard choice. I was hoping you would buck against orders, even if they were my orders.”

“The mission board might see it differently,” Graham said, also increasing his volume.

“I’ll back you the whole way. And when I get back home, I am going on a mission to the people of God about the persecution of Christians here. I am fired up, brother, I am truly fired up.” The reverend was shouting at the end to be heard.

The second helicopter fell on its column of wind. Group two—all the rest of the adults, except for Graham and Mary Williams, Sheldon Summerton, and Joe—boarded. Loaded and with the ramp closed, the helicopter took off as though a giant’s hand had jerked it upward. The third one descended at once, with the fourth circling overhead. Sheldon Summerton was already approaching Graham, yelling at him to get his family on board. A new salvo of Molotov cocktails, these properly made, arced into the compound, two of which landed on the garage roof, the instant flaring of flames biting deep. The marines let off more warning salvos.

Graham squatted and put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder. “I have something to tell you. Your mother and I are not going. We’re staying to be with the people here in the hospital, to try to keep them safe. This is not easy, but this is what God has told us to do. We won’t be separated for long. I’m sure of that. You’ll be just fine and we’ll be just fine. Okay? We love you very much, so be brave and get on the helicopter without any fuss.”

He hugged Isaac. He smelled as he always did, of stale coffee and aftershave. The skin on his cheek was as tough as a boot sole.

Mary escorted Isaac out to the helicopter. Her face was drawn
and tense, her lower lip caught in a cruel bite between her teeth.

At the gangway she knelt and faced Isaac, one hand on her head to keep the wind from whipping her hair around. She took a breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were moist and streaked with pain. She hugged Isaac hard and kissed him and then gave his hand to the crew chief, who pulled him on board with a swift, strong tug. The crew chief strapped him down on a surprisingly soft seat in the middle of the chopper. In front of them a gunner stood by a pair of machine guns that hung from some sort of swivel on the ceiling, and beyond him were the pilot and copilot. The crew chief placed headphones on Isaac’s ears. The throbbing clamor of the engines and the blades quieted to a dull whisper. Isaac stared out the open rear doorway at his parents. Mary had rejoined her husband on the sidelines. Sheldon was gesturing at them. Graham shook his head in that deliberate, reasoned way of his. Isaac could almost read his lips. He was saying something like,
This is how it is, we’re staying
. He smiled at his wife and took her arm in his.

The marine officer held up his palm in a wait sign to the helicopter pilot and then went over to the Williamses. He gestured toward the waiting helicopter. Mary spoke to him. The officer turned and gave the pilot a thumbs-up.

A volley of stones came over the wall. Half the garage roof was on fire. The consulate chauffeur dashed frantically back and forth around the Ford, ready to catch any bomb before it landed on the vehicle. Automatic rifles chattered.

Several men in khaki uniform appeared at the gate—
Lieutenant Nugroho and six of his cops. Graham caught his wife’s eye and jerked his chin toward the policemen. Mary shook her head and pointed out to the helicopter. She wanted to make sure her son got off okay.

The crew chief fiddled with controls by the door. He was trying to shut the ramp, but after lifting only a foot it stuck and would not raise any farther. Isaac could see him talking rapidly into his helmet mouthpiece, communicating with the pilot. The marine officer made hurry-up-and-get-away motions.

The pilot made his decision. The ground outside the rear door suddenly pulled away, as though it were the solid earth that was dropping out from under the helicopter rather than the helicopter rising from it. The ramp remained as it was, a tongue sticking out into the sky. Graham put his arm around Mary. Through the open ramp way, Isaac saw them waving. Mary shouted something. Isaac continued staring at the dwindling image of his parents.

The helicopter did not ascend as rapidly as the others had. The pilot and crew chief were still trying to get the ramp unstuck. For a moment the craft lowered slightly as the pilot made some quick touches to the instrument panel. Through the large round window beside him, Isaac saw the fourth helicopter on the ground, with Joe rigging up the hoist lines for the Ford. The marines had retreated backward from the walls toward the helicopter. Isaac craned his head and peered out the open ramp way. The rioters had placed debris over the lake of rat glue. The hospital guards were now reinforced by a platoon of the lieutenant’s loyal policemen. Several of the community leaders had joined the
guards as well, Pak Harianto among them. Tanto stood between that final rank of defenders and the rioters. He had his back to the hospital, his arms spread, and he was shouting at the rioters. Was he further enticing them or now trying to calm them down?

A movement at the alley gate caught Isaac’s attention. Lieutenant Nugroho, his gun drawn and ready, escorted Mary and Graham Williams into the hospital building.

T
HE HELICOPTER FLEW SANDWICHED
in the lifeless space between a dying sky and a burning city. Hayam Wuruk Avenue was in flames. Through the window Isaac saw a car burning beside a pump at the Pertamina gasoline station. The helicopter flew over the car. The pilot must not have realized what was below, for it seemed to Isaac to be a stupid thing to do, considering there were underground bunkers of gasoline that could blow up at any second. He’d no sooner framed the thought when a tremendous explosion whooshed up from the ground, shaking the helicopter with bone-jarring jolts. The first jolt threw the unstrapped crew chief out the open ramp way. One moment he was there, the next he was not. Isaac yelled in stunned alarm, but nobody heard him. The helicopter leveled out, but not for long. A car door fell onto the ramp way. Then something else whacked into the whirling helicopter blades. The helicopter cavorted in wild circles and roller-coaster arcs. The ground below spun in and out of Isaac’s view as gravity tugged this way and that.

His hands, with a calm intelligence of their own, removed his headphones and opened the buckle of his strap. As he stood the helicopter rose sharply, and he tumbled toward the rear. The chopper stabilized in a horizontal position for a second, and Isaac found
himself at the edge of the ramp way. The chopper was still falling, though. The Buddhist temple on top of Wonobo’s only riverside cliff flashed past. The helicopter was a second from crashing into the Brantas River when it started one last crazy swoop upward. For half a second it remained still, moving neither up nor down, teetering on the cusp of gravity.

Without making any conscious decision to do so, Isaac jumped. He didn’t know how high off the ground he was. His stomach shot up into his throat. He fell into a back eddy of the Brantas, soft and muddy, which gently broke his fall. Isaac scrambled to his feet in time to see the helicopter falling onto the sandstone boulders of the riverbank. The stuck ramp sheared off, flattening a clutch of abandoned outhouses made of rusty iron sheeting. Isaac instinctively covered his ears, but instead of a deafening explosion, there was only a momentary crunching and grinding. A black rubber bag fell out of the helicopter’s torn side, a self-sealable fuel bladder that worked as it was designed to. The busted tail pylon stuck vertically into the air over the crushed outhouses.

Screams and shouts swirled down the cliff. Isaac glanced up. Rioters brandishing spears and knives streamed down steps worn over the centuries into the sandstone face. Leading the pack was a teenager with coarse hair sprouting from a pimply chin. Udin.

Isaac waded toward the middle of the river. He struggled in the waist-deep brown water, the mucky bottom sucking at his shoes. He sobbed, beyond wit or reason, fleeing only on instinct. At last he made it to the far bank and scrabbled on feet and hands up the steep bank to the wall of sugarcane. He plunged into the
field, the sharp leaves cutting the skin of his exposed arms. He ran until he could run no farther. He collapsed facedown between the thick cane stems. Each breath was an agony.

The sound of a helicopter beat into his consciousness. He flung himself over on his back. The cane was a good ten feet high, the stems swollen and purple, the last crop on the last of the river’s juices, but there were gaps in the green-and-yellow ceiling. Isaac saw a dark blue Ford falling through the air, its four wheels parallel to the ground. Over the unseen helicopter’s noise, he heard the car hit river mud with a thwacking splat.

The fourth helicopter had jettisoned its cargo in order to make a fast landing.

Isaac once more plunged through the cane to get back to the river. Heavy gunfire rattled, the sound seeming to come from everywhere. He became disoriented, and when he finally shot out into the open on the riverbank, he saw the helicopter lifting off the far side, already having rescued the living and the dead from the downed chopper. The gunner kept firing rounds to keep at bay hundreds of agitated men swarming down the cliff.

The helicopter moved backward at an elevation of twenty feet, its nose angled downward toward the crippled ship, as though it were giving a last salute to its fallen comrade. But all the pilot was doing was giving himself some firing room. The left armament pod erupted with a tremendous whoosh, and a pin-straight trail of white smoke zoomed toward the downed helicopter, the rocket moving too fast to see. The wreckage exploded in a tremendous roaring fireball.

The helicopter rose from its hover into fast-forward motion. Isaac belatedly began to jump, screaming and waving his hands. Nobody on the helicopter noticed him. It was soon a speck in the distance.

But several of the men on the cliff spotted Isaac, pointing and shouting. Isaac fled back into the sugarcane.

The earlier life-and-death panic that had fueled his frantic fleeing subsided to a more controllable fright. What he needed to do was to get back to the hospital. He moved more carefully between the cane stalks to avoid a telltale waggling of their tops. When he came to an open cart path, he looked in each direction before crossing. He saw no one. He moved on without stopping. The longer he walked, the slower time passed, until he seemed to be locked forever into the present moment called “now.” His damp underwear chafed. After a while he stopped making his way through the cane but used instead the easier cart paths, walking out in the open. The concern of being spotted had drifted off his mental horizon. The entire world of his senses collapsed to that of his muddy, torn Hush Puppies appearing and disappearing in his downcast view.

Nausea struck. He doubled over and heaved, bringing up slimy bile. His teeth chattered against a sudden chill. A powerful headache gnawed the inside of his head and chewed on the back of his eyeballs. He recognized his symptoms. His red blood cells were beginning to rupture, releasing millions of malaria protozoa to wreak havoc on his body.

He came to an elevated, potholed tarmac road and a weedy
railroad track. The ditch fed a large iron pipe running underneath the road and track. Across the road was a traditional farmer’s stilt house, surrounded on three sides by palms and a bamboo fence. On the far side of that house was a grander one of brick and glass.

The malarial attack gathered force. Isaac crawled into the iron pipe, like a wounded animal, not caring what creepy-crawlies were in there. He shook and shivered. The cloying air in the pipe became cold and thin. He crept to the opening at the far end, attracted to the light there and its promise of warmth. He collapsed, his teeth and bones rattling. The light at first had no heat to it. Then, as though a boiler switch had been turned on, it became hot and steamy. The light, even though hazy and indirect, squeezed his eyeballs in a vise.

Dear Lord, please help me
.

But the ramparts of heaven were shut, and Jesus did not come to His child. Isaac realized that Reverend Biggs’s prophecy of returning safely home was not meant for him.

His fever at last undermined his consciousness, collapsing it into a black hole, rimmed at the top with the faintest glimmer of light. At some point that light began to flicker, and Isaac thought,
I’m going to die
. But the flickering was not an internal arrhythmia of vision. Actual objects were moving around him. On him, too. Something dug into his chest with sharp claws. He jerked. A sharp, tearing pain flared in his left cheek. It hurt enough to bring him to a shallow level of consciousness again. He found himself staring into the bright eyes of a crow inches away from his face. The crow had taken a stab at his left eye and had
missed because of his movement. More crows crowded around the lip of the culvert opening.

He shrieked and batted the crow away from him. It tumbled over the others. He kicked and flailed at them. They took wing with strident caws.

A voice from outside exclaimed, “I told you something is in there.”

Two heads popped into sight at the end of the tunnel, silhouetted against the fading sunlight. Young Javanese teenagers. One let out a whoop. “Here he is! Right here! The bulé kid!”

Isaac did not have the strength to move.

More heads appeared, including Udin’s. A cigarette dangled from his lips. He cleared the boys from the end of the pipe and stuck his head and shoulders inside. He got his hands around Isaac’s feet and pulled. Isaac didn’t have the strength to resist. More rough hands got hold of him and yanked him out of the pipe. They bundled him onto the road. Two boys had to hold his arms to keep him upright. He sagged in place, with his eyes closed.

“Is he alive?” somebody said.

“We’ll see,” Udin said. A fist landed in Isaac’s stomach. He doubled over, groaning. “He’s alive.”

Isaac burrowed back into his fever, retreating from these teenagers. They stripped off his clothes and complained about his empty pockets. “Where’s your money, bulé? Where did you hide it? Up your ass? Let’s have a look.” They ripped off his underwear and howled with laughter when they saw his penis.

Udin said, “A true infidel. Look at that thing. An uncircumcised worm in its blanket.”

“Hey, I know, we can circumcise him ourselves,” someone said, and tugged hard on his foreskin. This threat was enough for Isaac to finally open his eyes. The eager, shining, laughing faces surrounding him swayed and spun and melted into one another. He begged, “Please don’t, I’m sick.”

A few heads jerked back. “Hieee, he speaks Javanese!”

“Of course he does, but let’s see if he can scream in Javanese,” Udin said. He took a deep drag on his cigarette, drawing the glowing ember down to the butt. Holding the butt between his forefinger and thumb, he brought it down toward Isaac’s groin.

“What are you boys doing? Here now, get away from him.” A thin man with a farmer’s splayed feet pushed away the outer ring of teenagers. The boys holding Isaac’s arms let go, and Isaac crumpled to the road’s gritty surface. Udin flicked away his cigarette butt and winked down at him.

The man said, “Why is he naked? You boys would tease a monkey to death.”

A second farmer appeared in front of Isaac. The first bent over Isaac, touching his forehead and neck with calloused hands. “He’s burning up,” the man said.

One of the kids said, “He’s the bulé boy from the hospital who ran away from the helicopter crash.”

The second farmer said, “It’s going to be trouble if anybody finds him here. Just put some clothes on him and toss him out on the highway somewhere. Let someone else deal with him.”

“No, we’ll let the Tuan Guru’s people decide what to do with him.”

The men helped Isaac to his feet and into his clothes. They tugged at him to get him walking, but his steps were so wobbly that they picked him up by his arms and legs. Udin carried Isaac’s right arm and purposefully twisted it until Isaac yelped in pain. They carried him across the road and into the brick-and-glass house. The lowering sun’s rays reflected blindly off the windowpanes. He was taken into a storage closet of some kind just inside the back door. The air smelled of dust, turpentine, and rust. The only light came from the cracks in the shuttered window. One of the men kicked aside empty tin cans to make room for a straw mat that one of them brought in. They dumped Isaac on this mat and dropped his dirty shoes at his feet.

Isaac was left in the dark to the ministrations of his malaria. The cycle peaked, and his fever broke in another flood of sweat.

He felt around the door. It had no handle, and he could not shove it open.

Without warning, his bowels spasmed. He barely had enough time to place an empty, oily burlap bag as far back into a corner as he could to squat over to do his business. He had eaten so little over the last few days that what came out were little round pellets, small but concentrated in odor, which enveloped him and numbed his nose with the stench.

A tinkle of chimes sounded from the front door. Feet trudged up the corridor outside Isaac’s little cell to answer and then came thudding back in a run. A boy shouted in a strangled
stage whisper: “Father, it’s the police. They are at the front door.”

Isaac began shouting. “Hey, hey, I’m—”

The door to the cell flung open. Udin clasped his hand around Isaac’s mouth and hooked his elbow around his neck. He half lifted Isaac off the ground, nearly breaking his neck. “Shut up if you want to stay alive,” he whispered into Isaac’s ear. He suddenly sniffed. “Allah, it stinks in here.”

The
bapak
of the house opened the front door. “Yes?” he said guardedly.

“I’m looking for a twelve-year-old white boy. A report came into the station that he was seen near here.” Lieutenant Nugroho’s gruff voice galvanized Isaac, who squirmed and jerked in Udin’s arms. He got the fleshy bit of Udin’s finger between his front teeth and bit hard. Udin inhaled with pain and, with his free hand, whacked Isaac on the side of the head hard enough that Isaac saw red spots.

“Ah, the boy who ran away from the helicopter crash. I’m sorry for that. We want all the Americans gone without any complications.”

“We want you flushed away like turds,” Udin whispered. “By Allah, you stink, little boy. You’re a turd that wouldn’t go down the hole. This whole room stinks.”

“He isn’t here.”

Isaac could hear the lieutenant’s sigh. “I know this boy. He’s only an innocent kid.”

“Is he a Christian?”

“Naturally.”

“Then he is not so innocent. The way and the truth of
Islam have been plainly there for him to see.”

“You speak like a
kiai
, in fact like the Tuan Guru, whose portrait I see there. The boy is harmless, then. Is that better? A boy is a boy, no matter what race or religion. How would you feel if your son were lost in a strange land of Christians?”

“Officer, I have nothing against this boy. I wish him no harm. I only wish him and all Americans gone from here. It truly is unfortunate that the helicopter crashed.”

“This is going to turn into a major diplomatic row, and the sooner the boy is turned over to the Americans, the better for all of us, including the Tuan Guru Haji Abdullah Abubakar.”

The
bapak
said, his words stiff with frost, “The Tuan Guru is not afraid of Americans. If they are so mighty and powerful, why did their tall towers come crashing down? Why did one of their helicopters fall out of the sky? Allah is mightier than any power on earth, and Allah is on our side.”