“After the way you’ve been acting all morning, the answer would be ‘hell yeah, cowboy, I’m prickly,’” she answered as she flipped the round of bread over so it could brown on the other side.
* * *
Cody deserved that from her. No doubt about it, but it still stung.
“We’ll be eating out of our coffee mugs,” she said. “Those plates won’t work.”
“Hot soup and bread to dip in it.” He managed a smile. “Doesn’t get any better than that.”
“Oh, yeah it does,” she argued, “but it’s the best we can do today, and I’m just grateful to figure out that we could make bread. It won’t be as light as Mama’s biscuits, but it will soak up the soup pretty good. You ready to tell me what put you in a funk this morning?”
He removed his coat and hung it on a nail beside the door. “That dream took me back to a place where I don’t want to go or be.”
“I got that much from what you were mumbling about when you were still asleep,” Stevie said. “Have you ever talked to anyone about Dineo? Who was he?”
“How did you know that name?” Cody asked.
“You called out his name and then said, ‘Hang on, son.’ He must’ve been someone young and also a close friend,” Stevie answered.
“I lost a little boy that day, and he was like a son to me. His father had become my best friend.” Cody’s eyes went all misty, but he blinked back the tears.
“I guess the sound of the tree limbs breaking sounded like gunfire and triggered the nightmare. What can I do to help with lunch?” he asked.
“Don’t change the subject,” Stevie said. “Tell me about this little boy. Evidently he meant a lot to you.”
“He did,” Cody said, and nodded, “but I…”
Stevie shook her head. “Soup and bread are done. All you have to do is dip up a mug full of soup and break off a chunk of bread. I’m a good listener, so tell me more about the child.”
Cody filled one mug and used his knife to cut a piece of bread, handed it to Stevie, and said, “You cooked. I can serve.”
“Thank you,” she said, and nodded as she took her dinner to the sofa and sat down.
Cody fixed his food and sat down beside her.
“So tell me about that little boy,” Stevie said gently.
Cody felt like he owed her an explanation, even if it was a short one. “He adopted me when I was in a little village outside of Botswana. He had a perpetual smile and was always around the hospital tent wanting to help me. He said that when he grew up, he was going to be a doctor.”
“How old was he?” Stevie asked.
“About nine or ten. His mama was dead, and his daddy thought he had been born ten summers before. Dineo was always underfoot”—Cody smiled at the memory—“kind of like those kittens over there.”
“Did you hate to tell him goodbye?” Stevie asked.
“Two weeks before I left the village of Bere, the guerrillas came in their trucks and…” Cody closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them slowly and went on. “They destroyed our hospital tent and fired their weapons into the air. They were gathering up all the children they could find and taking them away to train them to…”
“That’s for real?” Stevie asked. “I thought it was just stuff you see on television.”
“It’s very real,” Cody could still feel the ache he had felt in his heart that day. “Dineo’s daddy, Bodi, fought with them when they tried to take his son from him, and one of them shot him. The bullet went through Bodi and into Dineo, so he wasn’t any good to them anymore. They only wanted healthy kids. They would have kidnapped me if they realized I was a doctor. I grabbed the boy up and took him to a hiding place. I’d only been there a little less than six months, but Bodi and Dineo had become more than just friends. They were family. Then the noise, the gunfire, the yelling, the sound of the trucks moving away with crying children all stopped. I felt so helpless and heartsick when I realized they were both dead.”
He stopped and swallowed several times. “Silence as thick as a dense fog filled the village for a few minutes, and a new haunting sound filled the air as people began to weep over their stolen children. I tried to save Dineo, but he probably died instantly, and the doctors and nurses were taken out of the country the next day to be reassigned. Bodi was the only one who had resisted, but there were two deaths that day. He and Dineo both died, and I didn’t even get to attend their funerals.”
“I’m so sorry. You were still reeling from that death when you got the news of your father. Man, that had to be tough,” Stevie said.
“It was rough, and I didn’t want to tell you because you’ve got enough on your plate, dealing with your own grief.”
“Ever think that maybe, by sharing in each other’s sorrow, it’s helping us deal with the pain?” she asked. “Did you talk to counselors or therapists about Dineo?”
Cody shook his head. “I was sent to London and Dad needed me. I’m a doctor, for God’s sake.” He stood up and took his empty mug to the bathroom to wash it. “I lost patients before Dineo and probably will again. I shouldn’t need therapy every time I lose someone.”
“No, but this was a special little boy to you,” Stevie said. “Sometimes, like with that little guy and with my mama, we don’t bounce back like we want to.”
“When did you get so smart?” Cody asked.
“Always been smart,” Stevie said. “You just didn’t recognize it.”
“I deserved that smart-ass remark,” Cody said.
“Yes, you did,” Stevie said. “Would you have ever believed that the two of us would be stranded together like this?”
“Nope,” Cody answered.
“Me either.” Her grin got even bigger. “Yet, here we are, and with just a little help, we might even learn to be friends.”
“Now wouldn’t that be a miracle,” Cody said.
Cody hadn’t had time for friends in college, and he’d been moved so often that he hadn’t bonded with many folks—not like he did with Bodi and Dineo. He wasn’t sorry for his decision to put his own personal wants aside to give back to others. Pearl and Sonny had been amazing parents, but there had always been the idea in the back of his mind that he owed a debt to society for all that he’d been given. He had to do something to help others, and from the time he had seen a documentary on television about Doctors Without Borders, he had set his mind to devote his life to that.
Chapter Six
The next morning Stevie took stock of the food they had left. She had a can of tuna fish in one hand, and a can of chicken in the other, trying to figure out what to do with either of them for breakfast.
Mama, you got any recipes that only use what I can rustle up from almost nothing?
A reflection of light bounced off the can of tuna.
“I get the message. Start with that, right?” Then she realized sun rays were coming through the single window. Sun meant she and Cody might get rescued before too many more days. “Cody! Open your eyes!” she yelled across the room.