Sometimes the Darkness Read online

  Approaching the coast, Baltim spread out before him. From altitude, the buildings appeared to be similar, various-sized boxes, some white, some gray, some beige, tattered, some supporting water tanks, electrical wires stretched like threads spun by blind spiders, stretched everywhere, a shimmer of heat above everything. The lives of thousands of people passed beneath him in seconds, a curious feeling as he thought about it. The city stopped at the ocean, a sudden change, the buildings seemingly tied in a bundle by a thin ribbon of beach. He watched as Baltim and its unseen people passed by. Did they hear him and wonder who he was? Would a child look up at the old plane and become fascinated, learn to love flying as he once did?

  Since college, he had flown airplanes, loved flying, the accomplishment, the skill it required. Airplanes made him fairly wealthy, would keep his daughter and granddaughter comfortable all their lives. Growing his businesses had not been a difficult task.

  Hanley decided to continue south–southeast to find a landmark he wanted to see. After another thirty minutes, a green fan appeared ahead to the right of the plane, its presence in the middle of the arid land a thrilling surprise. Somewhere within the fan was a river. No ordinary river, Hanley thought, but a myth. It was water of legend, bringing life to a place where none should exist, a heaven where a hell would be if not for it. Stories passed from generations for thousands of years mentioned the beauty of life carried by its currents and sometimes taken by them too. He knew he would see the Nile soon after making the coast, but was not prepared for the impact it would have once he saw it.

  The green of the fan deepened, indicating the lushness of a delta. Dipping his right wing, he tracked a slow smooth arc in the hot Egyptian sky while he searched for the larger flow of water. The Beech was at five thousand feet. Hanley believed, at his current heading, he would cross the Nile soon. He could see the activity along the streams, the small boats, people living their lives, tied to the water that gave life to everything.

  And then he saw it, the spot where the river divided itself, creating the streams and the delta, flowing to the Mediterranean. Moving south, he watched the river grow, widening, showing its strength, the water occasionally reflecting the sunlight in glowing arcs. Thousands and thousands of years this river flowed, giving its gifts to kings and beggars, prophets and paupers, the lost and the found. It didn’t matter, the river cared for all the same and took life with the same care. Love and indifference, perhaps all the same. Hanley, thrilled with it all, flew on.

  ***

  As he neared Cairo, the air around the city grew brown, with a red tint toward the south. Cairo was a very polluted city, its air stifled and burdened with the exhalations of old buses and taxis and the breath of six million souls. Hanley reached air traffic control in Cairo at seventy-five miles and again at fifty. He was on approach, sandwiched in between two 747s. He would touch down and leave the runway at the first possible ramp, an arrangement agreeable to both he and approach control. Lowering his landing gear, Hanley concentrated on the task of landing the Beech, while a tiny signal continued to sound in the back of his mind; this was Africa and there were no rules.

  Cairo was a pleasant surprise. The customs people were all efficient and courteous, English was spoken and he was finished with his inspection and paperwork in under two hours. Hanley also suspected he arrived at the right time of day to facilitate the process. Seeing he carried virtually nothing in his cargo hold, the inspectors checked in all the obvious areas, examined his paperwork, and questioned him about his destination, registering mild surprise at his answer of southwestern Sudan and the Catholic outpost. The young customs inspector, Riyhad, looked hard at Hanley and asked, “Mr Martin, what brings you to the desert?”

  Hanley looked at the sky, removed his old, black baseball cap with the emblem of the Pittsburgh Steelers on it, swiped his forehead with the back of his hand and said, “A woman.” Riyadh smiled and nodded.

  After completing his inspection of Hanley’s plane and paperwork in Cairo, the young Egyptian said, “May I suggest something to you, Mr Martin? As I know you are going to Sudan, and will enter at Port Sudan, I will offer you some advice. Things will not be what you are used to when dealing with customs. There, they expect you to behave in a certain manner; to know what the customary behavior is when processing through their customs area. In an odd way, because you are an American, they will expect more of you while expecting less.”

  Hanley thought, perhaps, his expression caused the young man to pause and smile. The inspector looked to Hanley to be about thirty years old, was slim and fastidious in his dress and grooming. The young customs agent continued, “I don’t mean to confuse you. They know, as an American, you will be unfamiliar with how their system works, but, as an American, they will expect you to be capable of paying more respect to them and their position; more than others. And, I am ashamed to say, because you are American, they may want to punish you in some manner. I am not that way. As one man to another, I will allow you the benefit of already knowing what type of respect you should give these men. My wife’s cousin, an older cousin, works for the customs inspection unit in Port Sudan.”

  Hanley explained that he was unaccustomed to such matters and asked the young man just how much respect a Sudanese customs inspector deserves. The young customs inspector said he was not certain, but once had been told one hundred thousand dinars was customary. Hanley was stunned. Riyadh reminded Hanley these would be Sudanese dinars. The young man appeared to be uncomfortable discussing money.

  The American turned and went to the general aviation terminal where he exchanged all his dollars and euros for Sudanese dinars. Afterward, he completed filing a flight plan for Port Sudan and returned to his plane.

  He looked at the young Egyptian customs inspector and said, “I will carry one hundred thousand dinars with me to Port Sudan.”

  “Good,” the young man said. “Everyone needs companions when they travel.”

  2

  The stench of the open sewer sat in his nose all morning. Hanley thought it smelled like cabbage and carrion, stewed together in the sewer by the brutal Sudanese sun. He now faced the smell and the heat. It was a bad cycle, the smell seemingly making the day hotter, the heat making the smell worse. The sewer, with its brackish water, looked oil-slicked, trickling some thirty feet behind the low building that served as the general aviation terminal in Port Sudan. A cloud of flies hovered over the stream, their buzz like heavy traffic in the distance.

  The terminal, an aging pen of cement blocks, was painted desert tan, sloppily trimmed in red along the top and over the doorframes and the doors themselves. One story high, it was sixty feet long, maybe thirty deep. The terminal could have been one hundred feet high and a mile wide and still not kept the horrid odor of the sewer from reaching his nostrils. With no breeze and that smell making every minute torturous, Hanley wished he had chosen Khartoum as his point of entry and not Port Sudan.

  The Beech was parked to the right and slightly behind the terminal, with the American sitting against the frame of its open door, its aluminum skin reflecting the burnt brown of the earth and the brilliant blue of the Sudanese sky.

  After his arrival and check-in, Hanley sat for ten minutes in the terminal lounge, then returned to the plane. The odor of sweat, onions and dirty feet, mixed with the stares of the others, drove him back to the heat and the sewer. He found the sounds of the lounge maddening, the voices like that of a tightly packed, foul-smelling sports bar, people talking to each other, to themselves, often over their companions, always, it seemed, while staring at him. So, he left. He realized the comments of the others were probably about the weather, jobs, children and all the same inane subjects he would hear in a terminal lounge back in America. Hanley could not get out of his head the idea they weren’t. He was tired. The weeks of flying wore him down. He waited in the plane, the heat and the smell preferable to his imagination in the terminal.

  Hanley left behind a daughter and granddaughter, Elizabeth an
d Carrie, left good friends, and Rocky. Rocky was keeping Weed. Hanley Martin left his life, left everything behind, sold his businesses, boarded his old plane and set off for Africa. It wasn’t as simple as that, but not far from it.

  When he thought about his past good fortune, the only word that explained it was luck. The word hung suspended inside his head like a seed glued to a string. It was in there for years. He thought it haunted him, but that sounded too dramatic. Thirty years went by, he was very successful and he was damned if he really knew why. Certainly he worked hard, but so did others. The want of an explanation nagged him for years. Luck and fate were too simple. Life was too complex. Why the millions upon millions of daily occurrences surrounding each of us come together to push one life toward success and one to ruin. This was the question. Why Hanley Martin and not someone sleeping on the street? Hanley needed to find an answer, but thought the only real answer was to find a way to give back what he owed for his luck. How exactly to make the payment had been the real question. That was driving him crazy, had been driving him crazy for many years. Then, when attending the Paris Air Show, a chance meeting with a French priest who mentioned the need for pilots to aid mission work in Sudan, it felt right. He had no idea why, but it did.

  The trip went smoothly, for the most part. There were some annoyances and a great deal of satisfaction. He was flying. Flying the Beech around the world was a trip he dreamt of for years. He was halfway there. Four more hours, if he was lucky, and he would be in Mapuordit. Desperate for something to take his mind off his miserable surroundings, he shaded his eyes to watch a small lizard moving slowly along the bottom of the terminal wall nearest the plane. The red and brown of the lizard’s skin made it difficult to see as it moved onto the dirt. I wonder if it’s poisonous, he asked himself. It probably is, he thought, everything here is probably poisonous. “At least it smells poisonous,” he said aloud.

  The wait was now into its fourth hour. Port Sudan was the nightmare Hanley had been waiting for. When flight-planning, he decided to skip Khartoum and chose Port Sudan as his next stop after Cairo. The choice was made for two reasons; he assumed a port city would offer a more experienced general aviation and customs service. Port Sudan was also a bit closer to Mapuordit. Since this would be his last stop before reaching the mission station, he chose the closer of the two, allowing him a bit more fuel upon arriving at the Catholic outpost. He was wrong about the customs part.

  The heat of a Sudanese noon was more than oppressive; it was intruding, insistent. It made the tires on the plane dull and soft. Hanley could smell them. He could not recall ever having smelled the tires on his plane without handling them. He thought the heat crazy. It was only the beginning of March.

  The noonday sun was on the other side of the Beech and that afforded Hanley some shade. The inside of the plane was a cooker, even with every window and door that would open, open. He was soaked with his own sweat, and dreaming of a shower, when a short, stocky man came around the corner of the building, a clipboard in his hand. He was dark, almost native African dark, but he had the features of an Arab. His hair was short, his face displaying a large crooked nose riding on a thick, seldom-trimmed mustache. He limped. Two more men followed, walked around the corner and stopped, squinting at Hanley and his plane. Both were wearing holsters with semiautomatic pistols in them. Hanley climbed down from the plane and stood, waiting for the man with the clipboard. He saw the lizard stop its crawl along the building’s edge, watching the two men near the corner, its tongue flicking in the air.

  “Mr Martin, I have some bad news to report,” the man said in barely understandable English. “The chief customs inspector cannot review your documents at this time and I am powerless to provide such a review myself. As I am only an assistant, I cannot provide you with the necessary approvals that will allow you to leave this impounding area and continue on your journey to Mapuordit. Therefore, you must leave your plane here until the chief inspector can examine your papers. He is a busy man, you must see, huh? These men will guard your plane for you for a small fee. I think it wise to use them. People here are desperate for gasoline and tires and wood such as on the floor of your plane, a beautiful plane, I would like to say. Sudan has become a dangerous place; not the place of my grandfathers. Please, I can help you find a place to sleep tonight and maybe the inspector will see your papers tomorrow or the next day.”

  Well, shit, Hanley thought; there it is. The custom inspector in Cairo had been right. This is probably the cousin of his wife.

  Now Hanley looked hard at the Sudan customs agent and said, “I know the chief customs inspector is a very busy man and I am certain tomorrow will be an even busier day than today. If there was a way I might alleviate the burden he faces of having to deal with a small man such as myself and my plane, I would certainly like to do so.” Hanley kept his voice low and his expression blank. The two men near the corner of the building looked bored and began to bicker while squinting into the sun, trying to follow the conversation. Hanley had the impression they did not speak English and were following on tone alone. The custom agent turned and said something to the men and they fell silent. He turned back to Hanley and blinked, staring hard at the face of the American. Decision time, Hanley thought. The man cleared his throat and said, “Please wait here while I speak to my superior. These men will wait with you to insure you and your magnificent plane come to no harm.”

  He turned and walked away, stopping for an instant to say something to the two men and then disappeared around the corner of the building. Hanley saw that the lizard had not moved.

  Trying to show little or no emotion, Hanley returned to the doorway of the Beech and sat down, leaving the men to squint in the sunlight. The day grew hotter. Hanley Martin hoped his guardians would grow tired of waiting in the heat and seek shade around the corner of the building. He’d drank four bottles of water since landing that morning. Last night in Cairo, he ate in a small dining area in the airport and had nothing since. Eating on a regular basis in Sudan would be a rarity, he expected. He needed to leave Port Sudan today. To his surprise, the two men sat down against the wall and continued to watch the plane while continuing to bicker.

  Hanley knew that once he was free to depart, the flight to Mapuordit would be around three-and-a-half to four hours. There was a landing strip about ten miles northwest of the mission with a telephone there. Hanley had the number for the mission station. A ride could be at the airfield within thirty minutes of the call if all went well. Big if, he thought.

  Hanley now believed he would be spending the night in Port Sudan. He would not abandon the plane and resigned himself to paying the chief customs inspector and these men to insure that he could leave first thing in the morning. He toyed with the idea of just taxiing out and departing, but then every son-of-a-bitch in the area probably had a handheld missile in his tent or truck and he would be down before he climbed to five hundred feet.

  Hanley watched as the larger of the two men took the pistol from its holster and began pointing it at the plane, first at the tires and then other parts; the nose, the engine, the tip of the wing. As he worked his way toward the rear of the plane, he stopped for a millisecond at the doorway and Hanley and then moved to the tail. At each stop, the muzzle of the gun rose almost imperceptibly. Hanley knew little about guns, but recognized this gun to be an old 45-caliber Colt 911, once the sidearm of the American military. It looked barely functional to Hanley and, should the Sudanese guard pull the trigger, there was a greater chance it would fail than work, he thought. The second man sat and grinned at his partner’s antics. Hanley suspected the smaller man hoped his companion would shoot this American fool.

  Hanley did not wait for the thug to accidentally shoot him as he worked the gun back to the plane’s nose. Getting his right foot under him, he pushed himself up, pulled the hatch shut, turned and walked to the cockpit. He began the startup procedure for the left engine; the side where the two Sudanese watchdogs were sitting. When Hanley hit
the engine boost, the left engine kicked over and started immediately. Grit and dust filled the space between the plane and the building, swirling clockwise, enveloping the two men in a choking and blinding grit-fog. Hanley watched as the man with the gun tried covering his nose and mouth with his right hand, then dropped the gun while pushing the other toward the corner of the building and away from the swirl. Standing on the brakes, Hanley revved the left engine enough to insure dust would surround that side of the plane. Dropping the engine to an idle, Hanley set the brakes and got out of the seat. From a metal chest located at the bottom of the bulkhead, he took goggles and put them on as he exited the rear cargo door. He walked straight to the wall of the terminal and began searching. He saw the lizard just to his right, about a foot from the wall. Resting under the left front paw of the lizard was the old 45. He took the gun and walked back to the plane. I hope this thing is ready to fire, he thought.

  Back in the pilot’s seat, he shut the engine down and was surprised at how quickly the dust settled and how quickly the two men returned. Hanley watched as they began searching for the gun then, failing to find it, begin shouting at each other, with fingers pointing and soon each shoving the other. The larger of the two was the one who dropped the gun and was now the angriest and most animated. Soon, he was kicking dust at his companion, shouting so violently that spit flew everywhere, creating little round welts on the ground that he then blew to oblivion as he kicked the dirt. The second man, smaller and a little older, began retreating when the assistant customs inspector rounded the corner and received a face full of dust. The shouting stopped so suddenly, Hanley thought he heard its remnants carried off by the wind. The customs inspector was stunned for a second and then marched over and hit the dust kicker across the face with his clipboard. Then the assistant customs inspector unleashed his fury, letting it stream over the man like a bucket of scalding water. The second man disappeared around the corner. After a minute, the thug was ordered away and the assistant customs inspector approached the plane, knocking at the rear hatch as if he were a meter-reader back in Kokomo. Hanley walked to the back of the plane, opened the hatch, knelt and peered out at the customs inspector.