Night Must Wait Read Online Free PDF Page B

strangers who hurt people. She asked if you came from the North. We'll lunch at the car and give her time to change her mind. I've a bottle of Milton water to rinse these before we eat."
    The vendor had cut the ends off the purchased fruit so they could drink from them. Milton water stank of antibacterial aromatics, but Gilman made sure to dose her orange. Bananas and canned cheese made lunch with minimal delay.
    "God, my father would have a cow to see me snarfing down canned cheddar," Gilman said. She took another large bite. "He's a snob about cheeses. Always said no American ten miles outside of New York City understood cheese that wasn't orange and square. Now I'm eating cheese out of a can. All round and rubbery, even has the impressed lines of the tin on it."
    "And you like it," Wilton said.
    "Could eat the whole can by myself," Gilman said. "How nice under the trees. Peaceful."
    "Let's hope it can stay so," Wilton said. "But the woman told me refugees came down this road a few nights ago. You wouldn't know it to look around now."
    Gilman finished the last crumbs of her cheese and ate another banana. She sat on the hood of the car, gazing away from the vendor. There was no way she was leaving without trying again, but she could be less aggressive.
    A little naked boy with a herniated umbilicus came down the narrow pathway through the woodland south of the motorway. His eyes had a swollen look. Belly bulging—hookworm? Malnutrition? Gilman took cigarettes and her box of matches from her pocket.
    "You've seen a lot of refugees," Wilton said. "I talked with Doctor Johnson before he decided you could have a holiday, and he spoke of the stress. Lack of resources at the Methodist hospital."
    "The Catholics have better supplies. I'm glad I get to move around. It's strange how quiet it seems here now," Gilman said. She lit her cigarette. "A woman came in yesterday, eight months pregnant and raped two weeks ago by Hausa soldiers in the North. Hung on the roof of a rail car to make it down here to Igboland. The rest of her family killed. Husband and two children, toddlers. So young. It wasn't mercy left her alive. They missed her on their last pass through the compound."
    She stood and stretched. The sun had shifted and the back of the car had a band of sunlight across it. Baking hot, with the light harsh over the road. Gilman looked at a distant puff of dust. People walking or some kind of cart? Maybe rising ripples of heat, a mirage.
    "What's going on up North really is a pogrom. No exaggeration," Gilman said. "I feel like I'm watching a Holocaust start, with Igbo Christian victims instead of Jews."
    "I know. Why do you think I'm saying you should leave?"
    Gilman looked at Wilton—yes, Wilton did know. What had she seen to know so much? Wilton always traveled a lot, visiting different parts of the country in her search for birds. Gilman bit back her question. Wilton had a haunted look. It would be cruel to ask.
    "Okay, Gilman." Wilton swept a hand across her skirt and tossed her orange husk into the bushes. "We try the woman once more. But you can't push."
    "I get it." Gilman dropped her cigarette on the ground, grinding it under heel. "Let me try another way."
    The little boy started off, brown as dust, and turned back on the path, staring over his shoulder at the exotic white people. The woman's face stiffened and she avoided Gilman by turning her shoulder. Universal dismissal. Gilman looked away, embarrassed, pretending she was interested in the road ahead.
    "I'll simply leave the medicine," Gilman said. "Two pills a day, one morning, one night. The ointment's for the eye, wash hands first, then squeeze a quarter inch in each, once in the morning and again before sleep at night. Do you think she'll remember?"
    "This woman runs a tally of business dealings, the intricacies of family relationships and affiliations through the complex of villages hidden in the bush south of this road, and stores everything in her head without