Invasive Species by Joseph Wallace Read Free Book Online

was gone. Gone forever.
    The village children were waiting to fill her in. When Gilliard had arrived, he’d been met by a group of soldiers who had flown down from Dakar. Soldiers and a woman, a skinny American woman who’d shown up burning with anger.
    Standing where everyone could see them, she’d yelled at Gilliard. Her voice was as high-pitched as a fish eagle’s (she also resembled one, the children said), and she talked so fast that even those who understood some English couldn’t follow her.
    When she’d taken a breath, Trey had turned and walked away from her. He’d gone into his hut. Five minutes later, he’d emerged, carrying his pack and some other things, and climbed into the car with some soldiers and the angry woman.
    â€œDo you think he’ll come back?” the children asked. They liked Gilliard. He was strange and generous, two things they appreciated in outsiders.
    â€œNo, I’m afraid not,” Mariama said. “I think he’s gone for good.”
    As she spoke the words, she felt a black space open in her chest, just around her heart.
    *   *   *
    â€œHAVE THEY PUT him in jail?” she asked her father that night. They were in the empty clinic. It was clean, scrubbed down, disinfected. You could only detect the thieves’ odor if you sat still and breathed deeply.
    Seydou Honso shook his head. There might even have been a glint of amusement in his eyes.
    â€œNo,” he said. “The government has no interest in keeping him. They just want him out. The soldiers were the lady’s idea.”
    â€œThat was Kendall? The one who was always calling?”
    He nodded. “I think she believed the only way to get him to listen was to bring men with guns.”
    Mariama said, “That was probably true.”
    They sat in silence for a while. Now there was no expression on Seydou Honso’s face except for a kind of grim certainty.
    â€œI fear we have missed our chance,” he said.
    Mariama had known he would feel this way. She said, “No.”
    â€œBut who else will listen? Who else will understand what is taking place?”
    â€œThere are others,” she said. “But Gilliard is the one to tell them.”
    She thought about his expression when she found him in the forest. Yes, he would understand.
    â€œBut how?” Her father turned his palms up. “He’s gone, and he won’t be welcomed back. Ever.”
    â€œI know,” Mariama said.
    â€œAnd calling him on the telephone won’t work, no more than it did for that Kendall lady.”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen what?”
    â€œI will go see him,” she said.
    Seydou’s eyes widened. “But how? You have no passport.”
    This was a fact. Mariama’s outspokenness had led to her losing her right to travel anywhere outside Senegal. She even required permission to leave the Casamance region.
    Legally, that was.
    â€œYou know how,” she told her father.
    He stared at her. Then he said, “You cannot.”
    â€œI can. I must.” She reached out and put a hand on his strong arm. “Papa, I have no choice.”
    He argued with her. Finally, almost breathless, he said, “You’ll die.”
    She smiled. “Perhaps I won’t,” she said. Then, “Or perhaps I will. You know I have never feared death.”
    Nor had he, not for himself. She knew that. Every day he risked malaria, dengue, river blindness, and a hundred diseases that had no name, in order to treat the clinic’s patients.
    He had no fear for his own life. For hers, though, yes. Of course.
    Mariama said again, “I have no choice.”
    In the end, he knew it was so. “But not right away,” he said. “There are people I can talk to, people who will help you.”
    She nodded. Though she didn’t speak, she knew he understood her gratitude.
    â€œIf I’m lucky,” she said, “how long