The Quickening of Tom Turnpike (The Talltrees Trilogy) by W. E. Mann Read Free Book Online Page A

that had
presented too much resistance, were shot or hacked down bloodily with machetes
and left to die.
    The
Colonel and Doctor Boateng spent hours crashing from one burning home to
another, battling with the flames, trying desperately to round up as many
people as possible and guide them to the safety of the schoolhouse. 
    As
Barrington entered one burning hut, he was thumped around the back of the head
with the butt of a rifle.  He was knocked off balance, staggered forward and
lost consciousness inside the blazing shack with smoke billowing all around
him.
    It
is possible that Barrington would, with hindsight, have preferred to have been
left there, in his own crematorium, to pass without notice from unconsciousness
into comfortable death.  But Boateng, having seen this cowardly attack, was on
hand to prevent that from happening.  He waited nearby in the shadows until Barrington’s
assailant was gone, and then, closing his eyes, barged headlong through the
pounding heat into the hut where Barrington lay.  Raising his forearm against
the flames, he opened his eyes for just long enough to locate Barrington amid a
crackling mirage.  He then took Barrington by the feet and dragged him back out
of the hut, just as it finally surrendered to the fire and came crashing down
before him.
    Eventually,
shortly before daybreak, the cinders settled and there was a restless calm,
punctuated by cries of pain and despair.  The raiders might have left hours
ago, nobody knew.  There was so much panicked activity throughout the night
that they may have left within minutes of their arrival. 
    Barrington
regained consciousness as the sun rose. 
    It
took him a second or two to understand where he was, why his head was pounding
and why he felt that his skin was stretched taut over his face.  He opened his
eyes to see that he was looking up at the ceiling of his classroom.
    “Colonel,
you are awake,” said Boateng, holding a glass of water to Barrington’s lips,
the jubilation of his tone thinly veiling his tired distress.
    Barrington
sipped tentatively.  He felt as if his ragged, parched throat was causing the
water to evaporate as he tried to swallow it.  “Where is she?” he strained to
ask.
    “You
are looking well,” said Boateng, avoiding Barrington’s eyes.  “No permanent
damage.  Just a few cuts and bruises.”
    “Dammit,
man, where is she?” croaked Barrington angrily, struggling to raise himself up
onto an elbow.
    Boateng
put down the glass and looked at Barrington, a look of exhaustion, pain and
bewilderment. 
    “She
is gone.”
     
    The
Colonel spent the next weeks, and then months, in a frenzied and desperate
attempt to locate his wife.  He journeyed sleeplessly throughout the Gold Coast,
Togoland and Dahomey, clutching at any futile thread that might lead him to
her, issuing threats and bribes to people who had no relevant information.  But
it was hopeless.  Her captors had left no trace.
    Throughout
this time, Boateng had tried to persuade Barrington of the pointlessness of his
search.  Doctor Boateng knew that, though the hope sustained by the hunt was
all that was preventing the Colonel from drowning in despair, the Colonel would
have to accept that his Angel of Accra was gone forever.  Boateng eventually
managed to convince Barrington to return to the school.  The Doctor’s hope was
that gradually, by applying Barrington’s efforts to his classroom routine, the
Colonel’s agony would soften into pain and then into an ache, and eventually
some of the joys of life might creep back into his heart.
    But
nothing could persuade Barrington that life held any pleasure.  And slowly the
life disappeared from him and his hair faded from jet black to ghostly white. 
His existence became mechanical, zombie-like.  He scarcely spoke, slept or
ate.  He dwindled into shadow, without any remnant of the man he once was.
    Eventually,
in order to try to heave himself from one day to the next, he filled