Four
The trees spread out beneath them as far as the eye could see—an ocean of emerald green broken only by an occasional glimpse of silver ribbon that was the Rio Guaviare. The Cessna 185 Skywagon swooped down into the swell of the jungle like a hungry gull, made a wide circle, and dipped left for another look.
“There!” the pilot shouted over the roar of the engine. “See how those trees are stripped—there on the east bank where the river curves?”
He flew lower, and Daria peered out the window over the left wing from her seat behind him. She saw the section of the forest he was talking about, the trees bare of leaves, their bark ashy and grey. Her heart lurched as she caught a brief glimpse of charred debris through the branches. A peculiar sense of reverence filled her. She was looking at the place where Nathan had died.
As they circled again, Bob Warrington put his binoculars down and turned to her from his seat beside the pilot. His face was pallid and drawn, as her own must have been. “Are you all right, Daria?” he shouted.
She could only nod and put her head against the window.
“There’s nothing we can do here,” Bob told the pilot, his voice grave.
The deafening drone of the plane’s engine drowned out her sobs as it turned westward and gained altitude.
Coming through the doorway into the terminal waiting room of Kansas City International Airport, Daria felt as though she had stepped into another dimension. The bright lights and the throng of bustling, well-dressed travelers unsettled her. The mechanical jangle of computers and telephones and the public address system was strange to her ears, more surreal than the jungle sounds of Colombia had ever seemed, even in the beginning. Each breath she drew in carried a stranger, stronger scent than the last—detergents and soaps, colognes and lotions that all seemed to be garish imitations of the softly fragrant flowers and herbs of her rain forest. For a moment she ached for the familiar noises and smells of Colombia. She now felt more a foreigner here than she had felt at first among the Timoné.
“Daria! Daria!” She heard her mother before she actually saw her face. Margo Haydon’s tremulous voice rose above the din. Then a gasp. “Oh, honey, you’re so thin!”
She fell into her mother’s embrace, grateful for someone to lean on. Her father wrapped his strong arms around the two of them, and for several minutes they stood there, holding one another, too emotional to speak.
Almost against her will, Daria, flanked by her parents, was swept into the crowd and carried along the concourse toward the baggage claim. As they walked, her father took her carry-on bags from her.
“Are you okay, honey?” he asked, putting an arm tightly around her shoulders.
Daria nodded, managing a small smile for her father. “I will be.”
“You poor baby.” Her mother patted her back. “I wish you’d never gone to that horrible place—”
Erroll Haydon shook his head, and Daria’s mother clamped her lips shut. “Well, at least you’re home now.”
“Did…did Nathan’s parents come?” Daria looked around the terminal but saw no familiar faces in the sea of people that flooded the airport.
“No, honey, they wanted to give you some time,” her father told her. “They’re pretty broken up over this whole thing.”
Tears welled up in Daria’s eyes.
“Let’s go get your stuff and get you home,” Margo Haydon said, setting her lips in a hard line.
In spite of her sorrow, it was undeniably good to be back with her family. The river trip to San José del Guaviare had taken its toll on her. And there she had waited for two agonizing days at an airstrip crawling with paramilitary before flight arrangements to Bogotá could be finalized through Gospel Outreach’s headquarters.
And yet the farther her travels had carried her from Timoné, the farther she felt from Nate. As the plane had lifted from the tarmac at the airport in Bogotá, she had been overcome by panic, feeling as though she were betraying her husband by leaving him there. The mission had sent a search party into the region but had warned her that it was likely that, because so many had burned in the fire, they wouldn’t be able to identify Nate’s remains to bring them home. In a strange way it comforted Daria to know that Nate’s body had burned, that she wasn’t leaving flesh and blood and a grave behind. Only precious memories.
It seemed a lifetime ago that she had lost him, but in the presence of her parents, her grief was fresh.
Dead. It still seemed impossible. Nate had always embodied the word life. She pushed away the images of his lanky form, his pale blond hair whipping in the breeze, his crooked, winsome smile. She had to be strong in front of her parents, especially when she remembered how much they had been against her going away.
She recalled a late December day two years ago in this same airport. After all the years of planning and dreaming, she and Nate were finally going to Colombia.
Their parents had thought they were crazy. Both of their mothers cried for days when they realized that nothing they could say would make a difference. They didn’t understand the faith that compelled her and Nate to go, the desire to see a world in love with Jesus.
“But there are so many right here who need help,” they’d argued.
It was true. An hour from the Haydons, in Wichita, and only minutes from the Camfields in Kansas City, homeless people littered park benches and sidewalks with their foul-smelling bodies and battered grocery bags that carried the sum of their existence. Even in the small farming communities where she and Nate had been raised, there were those who had never truly heard the gospel message, had never understood the significance of Christ’s sacrifice for them.
But that was not where God had led them. And to go anywhere else would have been to disobey the One they loved most.
After a bittersweet Christmas with their families, they drove to the airport in a four-vehicle caravan. They stood at the departure gate surrounded by their parents and Daria’s brother, Nate’s sister, and five young nieces and nephews.
She and Nathan boarded the plane on a river of tears. They carried three bags apiece, filled mostly with cooking utensils and medical supplies, along with a few books and writing materials. In their pockets they carried passports and their marriage certificate and photographs of their loved ones.
They had never looked back. But neither had they ever imagined that it would end like this, that Daria would return alone.
“Are you hungry, Daria?” Her mother’s shrill voice jerked her from her reverie. “Should we stop and get something?”
“No, Mom. I ate on the plane.” Never mind that it was half a bag of peanuts and a Diet Coke. It would satisfy her mother to know she had eaten something.
“Did Jason come?” Daria asked, anxious to change the subject. She was eager to see her brother, though she wasn’t sure she could face his sympathy right now.
“No, sweetheart,” her father said gently. “He thought it would be best to wait for you at the house.”
“When…will the Camfields come?”
“They’ll come to Bristol as soon as we let them know we’re home.”
They arrived at the baggage carousel, and Erroll Haydon motioned for his wife and daughter to sit down while he waited for her luggage to come around.
The rest of the day turned into a haze in Daria’s mind. The long drive home, her mother helping her get settled in the room that had been hers as a child. Then a house full of visitors. Her brother and his family, and later the extended family and Nate’s family, all came to see her. The outpouring of sympathy touched her, and yet it overwhelmed her so that when they’d all gone home she could scarcely remember one conversation.
On Saturday, one week after she arrived home, her parents’ church—the old clapboard country church Daria had grown up in—held a memorial service for Nathan. It seemed as if the entire town had turned out. She stood beside her mother and father at the doorway in the vestibule and greeted those who came to pay their respects. After living in a uniform of cotton skirts and tennis shoes for two years, she felt ill at ease wearing stockings and heels and the simple black dress her mother had loaned her. But she smoothed her skirt and tried to smile and be gracious as friends and neighbors—most of whom she hadn’t seen for years—filed by to cry with her and offer their support.
The wide doors to the vestibule opened once more, and a group of her high-school friends came in together. Her heart lightened just seeing them. “Nancy! Melinda!” Daria cried. “Oh, Cathy, it’s been such a long time. Hi, Diane. Oh, thank you for coming, all of you.” The smile she gave them was genuine.
Nancy leaned in close, her glossy red hair a long curtain. The sad smile on her face made Daria feel as if she truly shared her burden. She reached out and hugged her, taking warmth and healing from the embrace.
“How are you holding up, Haymaker?” Nancy asked gently.
“No one’s called me that in almost ten years,” Daria smiled.
Melinda, Cathy, and Diane moved close and formed a circle around her, and the knot of friends moved away from the door.
“Let’s go talk outside,” Daria said. She caught her dad’s eye. “We’re going to step outside for a minute,” she mouthed, motioning toward the door.
Erroll excused himself from the conversation he was involved in and came over to greet Daria’s friends. Then he turned to his daughter, putting a hand on her arm. “You go on,” he reassured her. “We’ll fill in for you here. You need to get reacquainted.”
They found a shady spot away from the front door, and soon Daria was caught up in conversation, accepting their tender empathy, catching up on news of other friends who had moved away, even laughing as they remembered old times together. It felt wonderful to be with these childhood friends who knew her so well. Slowly Daria began to feel more like her old self.
As the conversation turned to high-school memories, Nancy reminded them, “Remember when you mixed up that little potion in sophomore chemistry, Daria?”
“Me? Well, okay,” she laughingly conceded. “I might have done the actual ‘cooking,’ but you were the one who was supposed to be reading the ‘recipe,’ Nan!”
“Oh, man, I remember that!” Diane interjected, her blue eyes flashing. “There were those green fumes boiling out of the beaker and Zindler was waving his arms like a madman, trying to evacuate the room.”
“That stunt just about got us expelled,” Daria said, still smiling.
“Poor Mr. Zindler,” Melinda chimed in. “I’m surprised he didn’t retire that year.”
“What do you mean?” Cathy chided. “He did retire that year.”
“No!”
“That’s right,” Diane confirmed. “Remember, when we were juniors Dr. Unruh was the chemistry teacher.”
“Oh, my goodness! You’re right. I hadn’t even thought about that,” Daria said.
They dissolved into girlish giggles, all talking at once. She looked up with a wide smile on her face to see Nate’s parents and his sister, Betsy, and her family coming up the walk to the church. She sobered immediately. What must they think of her that she would smile at her husband’s funeral, let alone cut up with her friends, as they’d no doubt just seen her doing? She felt weighed down with guilt. And yet she was ashamed to realize that she resented the Camfields’ interruption, for she lusted for more of the laughter, more sharing of happy memories.
Breaking away from her friends, she went to Nate’s family. “Hello, Jack, Vera.”
In spite of her flawless makeup and her impeccable designer suit, Vera Camfield had aged ten years seemingly overnight. She responded stiffly when Daria embraced her. Daria quickly turned to Nate’s father. His hug was warmer, but he, too, seemed almost ill with grief. When Jack and Vera Camfield had come to the Haydons’ house the day Daria arrived home, they had seemed so strong, speaking of Nate as though he were still alive, even managing to smile at memories of their son.
But the news had come yesterday that a search party had found the rubble of the burned hut on the river. It was a gruesome discovery: There were over two dozen bodies, many of them children, and those who hadn’t been burned beyond recognition had been left to decay. Apparently the villagers refused to come near the place where the ill had died. The search team had buried the dead in a mass grave under the suspicious watch of a small party of Chicoro.
Though dreadful, the news had not surprised Daria, and in many ways it had put closure on Nate’s death for her. But she reminded herself that Nate’s parents had not had as much time to grieve as she had. The news of the search party’s findings must have been devastating to them. Not only had the Camfields lost their only son, but they would not even have the comfort of a grave nearby to visit.
Daria turned to Nate’s sister, Betsy, and her husband, Jim Franklin. Nate and his sister had always been close, and the heartsick expression etched on Betsy’s face now broke Daria’s heart all over again.
“Hi, honey,” Betsy said, reaching for her. Daria returned her embrace, and they both broke down. Putting his arms awkwardly around them both, Jim muttered his condolences. On the sidewalk behind them, the Franklins’ two preteenagers hung back, clearly uncomfortable to be there.
“Hi, Wendy. Hey, Zach.” Daria forced a smile, wanting to put the children at ease.
Zachary gave her a self-conscious wave, and Wendy dipped her head and stared at her shoes.
“Thanks for coming, you guys,” Daria told them.
Strains of organ music began to waft from the church, and through the open doors they could see people beginning to make their way toward the sanctuary. Daria directed Nate’s family into the church where her mother and father were standing to receive mourners. They exchanged hushed greetings, and then they entered the dim sanctuary in silence.
Nate’s family sat in the row in front of Daria and her parents, and Daria, overcome with emotion, watched them. As the memorial service finalized his son’s life, Jack Camfield wept like a child, and his wife’s face seemed to hold a shadow of bitterness. Daria knew it was irrational, yet she felt responsible for their grief, as though she should have prevented Nate’s death. Witnessing their sorrow, waves of anguish and guilt rolled over her anew, and she wept until she finally felt drained of all emotion.
When the service ended and the mourners began filing from the church, Daria saw Betsy slip out the back door with her distraught mother leaning heavily against her. Daria started to go after them, but just then Nate’s father came over to where she was standing with her parents.
Jack Camfield took Erroll Haydon’s hand. “It was a beautiful service, Erroll,” he said, a quaver in his deep voice that Daria had never heard before. “Thank you for all you did to arrange it.” He cleared his throat and dipped his head slightly. “Well, I think we’re going to head back home now.”
Daria’s father wrinkled his forehead and drew his thick brows together. “The women’s circle fixed a dinner for the family, Jack. They’ve planned for all your family. Won’t you stay and eat with us?”
The older man shook his head, then motioned in the direction of the parking lot. “Vera’s pretty broken up. I think it’s best if we go on home now. We have a long trip back to the city.”
Daria stood by silently during this exchange, but at Jack’s words she took a step toward the door that led to the back parking lot. “I’ll go say goodbye—”
“No!” The word came out too forcefully, and several people turned to look their way. Softening his voice, Jack Camfield took Daria’s hand. “No, dear, it’s…best to leave her alone when she gets like this, but thank you. I’ll tell her you were concerned for her.”
Daria nodded numbly and thanked him for coming, then felt foolish for thanking a man for attending his own son’s memorial service. As if he’d had a choice.
After an uncomfortable moment, Jack Camfield broke away. Muttering a stilted farewell, he disappeared through the door.
Daria’s parents exchanged troubled glances, but her father took her gently by the arm and led her to the fellowship hall where the family was being seated.
When the dinner was over, her parents stayed behind to help clean up while Daria caught a ride back to the farm with her brother. Jason and his wife, Brenda, farmed with Erroll Haydon and lived just a few miles down the road.
“Do you want us to come in with you, Dar?” Jason asked as the car idled in the driveway in front of the Haydons’ farmhouse.
“No, thanks anyway, Jas, but I-I’d kind of like to be alone for a while.”
He nodded and swallowed hard, his eyes brimming with tears. Daria had rarely seen her older brother cry, and it touched her deeply.
Brenda leaned over the backseat and touched Daria’s shoulder. “You call if you need anything, Daria. I mean that.”
“I know you do, Brenda. Thanks. Thanks for everything, you guys. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” She climbed out of the car, waved them off, and hurried toward the house.
She went upstairs, changed into the one pair of jeans she owned, and pulled on a ratty T-shirt that had been Nate’s. As she passed the mirror on the antique dresser in her room, the college insignia on the front of the shirt caught her eye. Unbidden, the memories came crashing back.
She flopped down on the quilt that covered the high, canopied bed, and a film began to play in her mind. There was a young Nate, smiling and carefree, standing in the hall outside the door to her dorm room at KU, ready to take her to a ball game. He walked toward her on a campus sidewalk, that trademark grin melting her heart. She could almost feel his arms around her, smell the briny, outdoorsy scent of his hair—pale, straight hair that was as fine and silky as a baby’s. She had always teased him about that, secretly wishing she could trade him her own coarse, wavy hair.
Her throat filled with longing, and she gave in to the tears, railing at her loss, letting the sobs rack her body until there was nothing left to cry, crying out Nate’s name over and over, though she understood fully that he would never answer her again.
She must have fallen asleep, for when she opened her eyes the sun was low in the sky and she heard her parents moving around in the kitchen downstairs. She climbed off the bed and went to the bathroom where she stepped into the shower and let the almost-scalding water run over her face, the sting of the hot water comforting.
She turned off the spray and dried herself methodically. In the full-length mirror, under the bright fluorescent light of the bathroom, she noticed for the first time how thin she had become. In spite of the slightly rounded stomach the growing baby had begun to give her, her ribs were starkly outlined under her flesh. She told herself she must keep herself healthy. This baby was all she had left of Nathan.
She pulled on the same jeans and T-shirt, swept her hair up into a careless ponytail, and went downstairs. The house was quiet again, and she found a note from her parents saying they had gone to her brother’s for a few minutes. She scribbled a message for them on the bottom of their note and headed for the pasture behind the barn. The man-made terraces unfurled in waves across the prairie in front of her. This had been her favorite thinking place as a teenager, and she was drawn once again to the peace the spot offered.
The cattle in the neighbor’s field started a plaintive bawling when they saw her, no doubt thinking it was time for their evening feed. She smiled at this everyday sound from her childhood and felt suddenly comforted, glad that something so far from Colombia finally felt familiar to her again, had the power to console her.
The Kansas sun was just beginning its slow descent, and the colors were spectacular. Watching the vibrant shades of purple and orange and pink against the deepening blue-grey sky, Daria felt a tentative hope swell within her, and a sense of home filled her anew. As she trudged through the prairie grasses, following the natural path of the pasture’s rolling terrain, she prayed.
“Lord, I don’t know what you want me to do now, but I know…you love me. I know you’ve been with me”—she tried to swallow the huge lump that rose in her throat—“oh, God, what will I ever do without him? I don’t understand why you took him. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why you sent us to Colombia only to have it end this way. I know I shouldn’t have to understand, God, but I want to.”
In everything give thanks.
She heard the phrase exactly as Nate would have spoken it—when the mosquitoes threatened to eat them alive, when half his medical supplies were lost when the boat overturned, when the rainy season imprisoned them in the hut for days on end. There’s something to be thankful for in every situation, Nate had always told her, even when she knew he wasn’t sure he believed it himself. She took in a sharp breath. How many times had she and Nate admonished each other with those very words?
“Oh, thank you, God. Thank you for the years we had together.” She stopped at the top of a rise and looked around her. “And thank you that I have this place to come home to, Father. Just tell me what I’m supposed to do next, God, because I truly don’t know.”
Immediately she was filled with thoughts of the child growing within her, and she knew it was her first answer. This child whom God had created of their love—hers and Nate’s—would be her most precious and immediate assignment for the next few months.
She had not yet told anyone about the baby. She knew that she should see a doctor, make certain everything was coming along as it should. But something made her want to hang on to her secret. Her pregnancy was a blessing—a sweet remembrance of Nate and a tangible way for him to live on.
“Thank you, Lord,” she whispered, laying one hand lightly over her abdomen. She stood on the hill, cradling Nate’s unborn child that way until the sun disappeared behind a distant hedgerow. Almost instinctively she turned to the south and looked up at the evening’s first stars. She remembered the night she and Nate had stood under a starry Timoné sky and said their goodbyes. They’d had no inkling that night that they were saying goodbye forever. The thought tore her heart in two. What might she have said to him had she known it would be their last night together?
She didn’t know the constellations as Nathan had. She wasn’t sure whether the star he had pointed out that night was visible in the Northern Hemisphere. What had he called it? Spica. She picked out a bright star that seemed to blink at her from the southernmost sky. For a moment, she pretended it was their star, and her heart was wrenched between two continents. She was happy to be home, yet engulfed by an intense longing to be back in Colombia. She was homesick to be in their little hut, caressed by the gentle tropical breezes, lulled by the myriad songs of the rain forest.
But even if she could go back, Nathan would not be there.
She wished he had known of her pregnancy before he’d gone off that day. What a comfort it would have been to have the memory of Nate’s joy at learning the news. She knew he would have been ecstatic. It struck her that where he was now, he probably did know about his child, and the knowledge gave her peace.
Tearfully she spoke aloud, “Oh, Nate! I don’t understand any of this. I miss you so much, babe. Oh, how I miss you. But I know you’re happy. I know you’re in God’s hands now. And I…I’ll take good care of our baby. I promise. He’ll know how much you would have loved him.”
The tears of grief that flowed were mingled with honest gratitude that God would give her this one last part of Nate. She turned toward the farmhouse and knew by the lights flickering in the windows that her parents were home again. They would be worried about her.
With the warm evening breeze in her hair, the heat of a Kansas August still lingering, she started back toward the house, toward a new life that was strange and unknown. A life that God had not abandoned.