Night Must Wait Read Online Free PDF Page A

or too dirty. Take your pick. Gilman felt the sun on her arm, and despite the grit and wind, sank deep into a pleasant catlike daze. The Citroën jarred along the partially paved road. The borders had been broken and crumbled away, so Wilton aimed for the midline, and both kept an eye out for approaching dust clouds hinting at vehicles to duck.
    "You always seem to know where you can get petrol," Gilman said at the fifth crossroads. Ten o'clock in the morning, the day vibrating with heat so that the palms and brush seemed to dance. Wilton headed down a side track searching for fuel.
    "I have a sixth sense." Wilton gestured to the barely visible men collected in the shade under a cashew, two petrol drums standing by.
    Gilman always cringed to see the petrol men put their lips to the end of the plastic tubing, sucking up the fluid to start the flow into the gas tank. She didn't care how much they spat afterwards to clear their mouths, the stuff was damned toxic and as a doctor she could have ranted about carelessness. But as Wilton said, what else were they to do? No pumps here in the bush, only a space cleared and a group of men with tubing and funnels with a couple of petrol drums under the brutal sun. Machetes as a discouragement to robbers.
    Wilton paid them, adding a string of the big copper pennies for dash. A mutter of thanks, brilliant white smiles, then the men moved back to the shelter of the cashew, leaving the blue oil drums standing in the stained ochre of the rutted roadside.
    "You paying any attention to politics and news?" Wilton said.
    "Can't avoid it."
    "Get out, Gilman."
    Gilman stared.
    "Nigeria's coming apart. Not even Americans will be safe." Wilton's gaze fixed upon something far down the road.
    Gilman hadn't been here long enough to talk about leaving. The way she lived proved it—couldn't Wilton see? She'd been too busy to settle in yet, hadn't learned all the ropes. Without Wilton's persuasion she'd never have come to Africa. Get out? Now? Had she done something wrong?
    "Go to hell," Gilman said and her stomach twisted. "I'm needed. Don't you think I've done a good job? You aren't leaving, are you?"
    The world couldn't go crazy enough to make Wilton desert Nigeria, and if Wilton stayed, Gilman could, too. Working in this fantastic place to change the strange and terrible daily lives of the Nigerians intoxicated Gilman. Medicine woman, magic woman. She'd never get anything like this in New York. She mattered here and she hadn't had enough. How could she imagine returning to the Maidenform and Hostess cupcakes America?
    "I don't care if I never go back," she said.
    Did Wilton know John had written her? Said his marriage was on the rocks and hinted, oh so couthly that there might be possibilities for romance remaining between them?
    She shuddered back from the trap. "This political mess can't last. I thought the Federal Government was mobilizing."
    "I can't take responsibility…" Wilton looked like a missionary wife, young and tense. Her faded dress with capped sleeves, giving its message of conservative order contrasted with Gilman's cotton shirt and pants. Every so often Gilman wondered how they had ever become friends. Would Wilton have burned John's letter because he was a divorced man? How conservative was she? Never had sex, that was for sure . Wilton turned her head, the ends of her brown hair brushing her shoulders.
    "I'm not your responsibility, never was," Gilman said. Talk fast, talk Wilton out of this negativism. The hot air full of scents and the taste of earth blew in her face, trying to take her words. "Don't presume, my friend. You brought me for cowboy medicine in Africa, but I took it from there. Don't care if it comes to war."
    Gilman raised her voice over the noise from the open windows. "Hell, Wilton, you sound like my mother."
    God, what would Gilman's mother make of her room at the clinic with no fans, unreliable electricity, the desk and chair made of old packing crates.