Matt’s over at the school talking to Miss Pruitt about his paper. He does that a lot. And I guess I could drive out to Hope and see what’s up with Mr. Banyon. Or you could go.”
Cole considered this option. Surely Matt hadn’t gone far. He’d be home soon. “I’d better get back to that field,” he said. “Call me when you find him, okay, Billy?”
Resentment flickered in the boy’s eyes. “Mr. Strong, you don’t even know where your phone is.”
As Billy stalked out of the kitchen, letting the screen door slam behind him, Cole sucked down a deep breath. He thought of the field, half-plowed. The ranch hands waiting for his return. The cows ready to calve. The seed that needed planting. The afternoon sun dipping toward the horizon.
Grabbing his Stetson, he headed out the door. “Billy, wait up!” he shouted. The boy braked his pickup.
“I’ll check the library,” Cole said. “You go to the computer store.”
Billy grinned. “I’ll meet you at Miss Pruitt’s classroom in an hour—207 in the main building. She’ll be there—she always works late.”
Cole climbed into the car he kept for town trips. “An hour,” he muttered. “That shoots this day.”
“Please feed me.” The small boy, his dirty face streaked with tears, held up a bowl made from an empty gourd. “Give me food, sir.”
Josiah Karume could not resist laying his hand on the child’s tiny head. How old would this boy be, he wondered. Five…or ten? Malnutrition had so withered and stunted his body it was impossible to tell. His dark skin stretched over the bones of his skull, and his parched lips—ringed with flies—were pulled back from his small white teeth. With a head of sparse orange hair and a swollen abdomen, the boy looked like so many other walking skeletons in the long line of refugees that snaked out behind him.
As Josiah scooped up a dollop of cornmeal mush fortified with protein powder and vitamins, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He poured the mush into the boy’s bowl before turning to see who wanted him now.
“A phone call for you, Dr. Karume,” his aide said.
Josiah handed his ladle to the man and hurried across the dry, sandy ground toward the makeshift Somalian headquarters of the International Federation for Environmental and Economic Development. As chairman-elect of the organization, he was forced to spend most of his time dealing with mountains of red tape in the African bureau of I-FEED in Khartoum, Sudan. But Josiah relished the rare opportunity to visit the camps where his hard work actually paid off.
“Karume here,” he said into the phone that sat on a rickety card table inside the office.
“Josiah, this is Vince Grant.”
“Vince! How good of you to phone. What news do you have for me today?”
“I’m just returning your call from Tuesday. Wanted you to know I’m still working on transportation. We’ve got the cornmeal at our Kansas facility, but the logistics are sticky.”
Josiah’s heartbeat faltered. “The paperwork in Khartoum is complete, Vince. I’m certain I shall have no trouble with the Sudanese authorities.”
“I hear you, Josiah, but I just can’t move the product without having all my ducks in a row.”
“Ducks?” Though he’d obtained his undergraduate degree in London and had completed his doctoral work in Texas, Josiah still found American idioms confusing.
“I can’t do anything until I’ve got the official papers in my hand,” Grant clarified. “You understand the risk I’m taking with my stockholders. If I move this cornmeal, and it gets stuck in Khartoum…”
“Yes, yes. Of course I understand. Let’s see, today is Thursday. I leave tomorrow morning for a conference in Paris, but I shall do all in my power to see that you receive official copies of the documents by the first of next week.”
“Great. That’s terrific. Well, I’ve got a meeting here in about five minutes. So how’s the family?”
“They are doing well, thank you. And yours?” Josiah stared out the window at the blowing sand. As the sun beat down on the refugees, a young woman suddenly let out a wail and staggered out of line. Falling to her knees, she clasped her baby to her breast.
“Well, both girls are off at college, and my son’s polo team won—”
“Excuse me, Vince,” Josiah cut in. “I have an emergency here. I shall be in touch.”
Setting down the receiver, he shook his head. As he left the office, he could hear the other women begin to keen. But they would not leave their places in line to lend comfort to their comrade. They were hungry, after all, and it had become commonplace to mourn the death of yet another child.
“I’m famished.” Jill Pruitt bit into the Big Mac her colleague had carried in from the fast-food strip near the high school. “Mmm. Hey, pass the fries.”
“Fries? Jill, I’m surprised at you!” Marianne laughed. “I thought you were strictly a broccoli-and-turnip-greens girl.”
“I can go for the occasional lard-soaked French fry,” Jill said, giving the math teacher a sly grin. Jill’s fellow instructors at Artesia High School knew all about her dedication to famine relief and her interest in computers and technology. But there was a lot they didn’t know, and she enjoyed throwing them off-kilter once in a while.
She scanned the row of grades in her ledger, enjoying the symmetry of the numbers. “You realize most of what we’re eating in these burgers was grown outside the United States,” she spoke up. “Including the beef.”
“Not again, Jill. Could we just finish figuring these midterm grades and go home? It’s Thursday. My favorite show is on tonight, and I refuse to miss it.”
Jill took another fry. “When you grill a burger, the only part that’s American is the fat that drips onto the coals. The rest comes from who-knows where.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You told me before.” Marianne sipped a soda as she punched grades into her calculator. “You won’t be eating any burgers when you get to Pakistan, you know. Holy cows, and all that.”
“Pakistanis are Muslims, girl. It’s Hindus who don’t eat beef.”
“Whatever. So when do you leave? Aren’t you going to take a break after school lets out?”
“A week, and then I’m outta here.” Jill thought about her battered old suitcase—already packed with cool cotton dresses and a pair of sandals. Unmarried at thirty-six—a long-term relationship had ended the year before—she had set aside her longing for a husband and children to concentrate on other interests. Seven years ago a short mission trip to Honduras had lit a fire inside her. She had seen poverty, hunger, homelessness. She had felt the suffering of the people.
From then on, her life had been different. Everything became centered on obeying Christ—on putting her faith in action. The coming trip to Pakistan particularly excited her. As a volunteer with the International Federation for Environmental and Economic Development, she would go to
