Once to Every Man

We tried to sleep, but the river raged through our dreams. It was a tight space, so it was inevitable that we would touch in the night. I grieved that I had never made a friend like this or even wanted to know a white woman in any kind of significant way. But sitting next to Reena did something strange to my heart, and I wished that I could tell her.

In the morning I rose and went down to the river and washed my face in the swirling water. It was still rising. I turned away from it, discouraged and unrefreshed, and knelt down with my back to the monster for what seemed a long, long time. When I heard Reena’s voice and opened my eyes, I was startled to see that she was ready to go.

"Dak? Are you all right?"

"I was praying," I lied.

"Turn around then," she said.

I did and could not believe what I saw. The water was a good ten feet from where I had stooped to wash my face! And it was not moving as swiftly or as threateningly.

"Let’s go!" I shouted, racing up the hill to our camp. She had everything in the jeep, lashed down and covered.

"Can we make it now?"

"Maybe . . . barely," I said.

I swung into the jeep, shifted into compound second as the engine engaged and moved toward the torrent. I almost stopped before we hit the river, but I looked at the sky. It stared back senseless and defiant, and it filled me with that same wild emotion.

It has to be now! I cried to myself.

The wheels spun in the first, soft earth. I let up on the accelerator and they took hold again, uncertainly. But we were off the bank and there was no turning back. I had not counted on the damage to the roadbed beneath us, the heavily traveled ruts I believed were still there, although I could see nothing through the ocherous mass. And the river was deeper, much deeper than it had ever been, for though the water had receded from the shore, it had done so only because now there existed deeper channels in the middle through which it could run! And the river was stronger than it had appeared from the bank. We began to rock and turn, and I struggled to keep the front end of the jeep headed upriver. I glanced quickly at Reena. Her face was paling.

"We can’t go back!" I yelled.

But either she didn’t hear me or she was too stunned to answer, for she clung to the side of the jeep and stared straight ahead. We were less than half way across. The jeep was filling with water and we were barely moving forward. We had been flung about so that we were bruised and shaken, and finally we began to drift downstream, picking up speed with the rushing current which was completely controlling us now, our course, our lives.

"Get out, Reena! Swim back! We still have a chance! Get out!"

Then she gave me a desperate look and dove over the open side, the side parallel to the shore we had left. But she let the jeep pass her, as it floated powerlessly, and struck out behind it for the opposite bank! I jumped out on that side, but she was already by me and I could not reach her.

"Reena!" I screamed. "No!"

She fought on, away from me, slowly, relentlessly, and I could hardly keep my head above the roiling water. My feet plunged in mud and tangled vines close to a piece of the shore that jutted out into the river from the side that led to Dar es Salaam. All at once I was free, free to go back and live, but I did not hesitate. I followed her.

It was easier in the current. I didn’t have to fight it. I could let it carry me a few feet, then swim, then relax, then swim. That’s what she was doing a few yards away. But I noticed she kept glancing up-stream, changing her direction as if dodging something, but I dared not let her out of my sight.

When the log hit me, I was totally unprepared. I went down for a moment, legs thrown upward by the force of the blow, but I reached the surface in what seemed like hours, gasping for air and stroking again, but I could no longer swim! I was welded somehow to the big, forked branch and was hurtling with it downstream. I could not see what held me there, but I was part of it and it would not let go. For an agonizing moment I saw Reena even further downstream. She must have reached the center where the flow was faster. But the log and I would soon be even with her, then beyond her, then lost to her sight.

"Reena!" I cried.

She turned. The current whipped against her, propelling her deeper into its grasp. She disappeared again and again, but I realized one thing. She was coming back! Or maybe letting herself be carried to a point where she would crash into me! She could have made it without me. She actually threw herself into the heart of the river, past a place where she could have pulled herself to safety. But here she was, beside me at last, nearly exhausted, grabbing my knife which was still clipped to my belt, slashing at my pant leg, at the vines wound around it, at the limb caught in blood-stained khaki. And then I was rolling without the log, back into the charging waves, through them, under them, into calmer eddies by the mud-caked shore, onto firmer ground with heaving sides and pounding head, collapsing with Reena on the storm-eroded bank of the Rufiji.

We could not speak . . . but suddenly, she sat straight up and let out a cry, staring down at the cruel river from whence we had come, "Dak! The serum! My God, the serum!"

I closed my eyes. I, too, had forgotten it in our frantic battle with the river. And then I was choking and gagging on the green-brown water I had swallowed. But Reena quickly slung her arm around my chest and held me until the worst had passed. I swear, in that moment, I loved her with my whole being. I had never needed an anchor, and here she was wrapping me in her own cut and bleeding arms.

I did not wish for her to ever let go. She caressed my back and whispered the Lord’s Prayer into my ear. In her voice it sounded true, and I let it fill me with peace. The prayer was still on her lips when I stopped her.

"Reena . . . Reena. It hurts me to hear those words. I can’t trust them anymore. I can’t trust anything."

"We are together and we are alive, she said. Trust that."

"But we have nothing, no drugs for Jim, no weapons or food, no dry clothes."

"We have each other . . . and God, our Father."

"No . . . it is all mixed up in my mind with the death-grip of the river and the foolishness of leaving my comfortable, sane life. The God from my city church, the God from my Bible study, the God from my Lenten fasting. That God is not here!"

"Maybe you are just seeing a different face of God."

"I see your face," I said turning over, but she let go of me, and the communion was lost.