The Child

The Child
Nate the Great
August 16th, 1996 AD

Nate looked over at his friends. He had been playing hide and seek in the limbs of the Baobab tree. He had learned to climb from an early age and enjoyed getting to the top of the tree to see the world below him. In the hot August sun, the earth below was a hot reddish-brown clay, really more dust than clay. He could see and smell so much around him. The soccer pitch laid to the west of the tree and to the north was the village where his parents worked as missionaries. He had lived in this village for almost his entire life, almost all five years, learning to speak English, French, and Wolof. He hated visiting home, back in the States, when his parents went on furlough. He loved being here; he fit in here. Back home, he was a stranger to everyone, including his grandparents who thought he was too wild and weird.
His mom had held him tight after a bad visit to his grandparents where they had demanded he leave the room after he had rushed around the table trying to catch a ladybug. He had stepped on his grandpa's feet accidentally and had knocked over a glass of sweet tea onto the carpet.
After a lot of yelling and screaming between all four adults; he had fled. His mother had found him in a closet, curled up with his favorite book, The Horse and His Boy. Right now, he wanted to run away with a horse. He had read the same page three times now, and his eyes were watering, but he refused to wipe away the tears. He tried to ignore his mom, but she was a mom and after a few minutes, he was in her lap, while she rocked him back and forth. Pushing his bright red hair out of his green eyes, she smiled down at him.
"Do you feel better now, Nate the Great." His mom's nickname for him was so stupid. He wasn't great at all. But the tears had stopped and he was really tired.
Nate woke with a start like he had been bitten by a fly. He had been dreaming and had fallen asleep in the tree. He had done this before and he knew it was risky. Carefully pushing himself up, he looked down at the village.
It was on fire and he now realized that what had woken him up was screaming and gunfire. He watched in horror as fires spread from one compound to the next, lighting each thatched roof on fire. The palm fronds were dry and quickly went up from the sparks around them. Men in camouflage walked slowly from one compound to the next, entering it and spraying bullets at the families in them. He started to get down, but below him was parked a large white SUV with a UN on the roof. Men holding guns were standing on the doorsills. He saw they had captured his parents and they had forced his parents to kneel on the ground to watch the village burn where their friends and church members were being murdered. When the last of the compounds had been cleared, the small group of armed men returned to the tree.
Speaking in Wolof, the heavy set black man struck his father in the back of the head and because his dad's were arms bound behind him, he hit the dirt, hard, face first. Pulling his dad up by his hair, the heavyset man screamed at him for teaching Christianity in the village. The man blamed his father for defiling Islam, declaring his father would pay for his sins against Allah. The other men grabbed his mother and pulled her into the village church where he could hear her muffled screaming and their laughter. The heavyset man pulled out a purple handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his bald head. He seemed to be exhausted and worn down from life and people like Nate's dad. Pulling out a pistol, the man shot his father in his bleeding face, before emptying the clip into his father's body.
Several hours passed before the men left. The heavyset man had food brought out to him from the SUV and sat down at a makeshift table to eat. He finished eating, and then his men began to eat, taking turns going back and forth from his mother to the spread of food. Each man came back with his mother's blood on their hands and their knees. But they did leave eventually. In the darkness, he climbed down the side of the tree, careful to not fall.
Some of the compounds were smoking and the embers glowed. He paused at his father's crumpled body. He tried to untie him and set him free, but he didn't have the strength to break the bonds. Crying so hard his bones felt like they would break, he got up to find his mom. They hadn't shot her, so she was alive, he thought. She could help him with dad.
He had enough light to cross the Cassava field into the village. He entered the small church his father had built with the help of the families who had become believers. He found his mom, naked, blood pooled underneath her. He covered her with the colorful African cloth from the small altar. Her face was smudged with tears and dirt. Her green eyes were lifeless, looking at something beyond death.
He laid down next to her and was he was found near death three days later by a group of traveling Bedouins. They nursed him back to health, but Nate the Great died from his wounds.