Free Everfair by Nisi Shawl Page A

missionaries, all safe. She turned again to demand that the intruder depart. Chester held the rifle uncontested—his height and build had served him well, as usual. The white man stood combatively in front of him, stubborn though alone. His bearer had disappeared—but where was little George? Flat on the ground—he had been hurt!
    The boy levered his shoulders out of the clinging mud, sat up, and made a face. One sleeve, the right, and that whole section of his shirt were streaked with blood. A bullet wound. How serious? He coughed, spat. Gazed up with hate-filled eyes at the intruder. “How many times has the lady got to ask you to go?”
    The rifle shifted in Chester’s grip. Not even aiming it, keeping the muzzle pointed downward, he managed to threaten the rubber collector—without glancing in his direction. Without speaking to him. Instead, he said to the boy, “I’m willing to bet he knows by now he’s not welcome.” Her godson’s soft tone and gentle words belied his strength.
    Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, the white man edged away. “We—we’ll be back!” he proclaimed, his voice cracking.
    Martha watched him trudge off down the track and vanish into the jungle. She didn’t laugh at his promise of vengeance. She had learned from experience that scared men were dangerous. This one would be no exception.
    Nurses and helpers carried a feebly protesting George to a mat on the infirmary’s dry floor. Martha returned to her “office”: a corner furnished with a stool and a makeshift table piled with paper and barkcloth. A precious lantern lighted it, the gift of a refugee. She seated herself and arranged her skirts as tidily as she could, then set to work: writing a brief report on the incident for Mr. Owen and another, longer, for Everfair’s Workers Council; reviewing three conflicting accounts of the church building’s progress—optimistic, pessimistic, and incomprehensible; and approving a plan for planting an experimental field with the hidden stock of seeds they’d found. It certainly looked like millet, which was what the Zan-Dee woman claimed it to be. Wheat from the settlers’ stores had gone in earlier, and seemed to be thriving well enough, but perhaps local produce would have an additional advantage.
    Food stores were running low at an alarming rate, no doubt due to the influx of natives fleeing that papist tyrant. Dozens, hundreds—she and the reverend had not foreseen how many would seek sanctuary with them, nor how quickly. Of course they couldn’t turn them away.
    Done with office work for the moment, she made her rounds, visiting the infirmary’s male and female wards. Martha had no medical training, but knew how to compel people to do what needed to be done. Firsthand supervision was required, though she issued her commands through the mulatto, Miss Toutournier.
    Fwendi had slipped into the men’s side yet again. The girl kept refusing to be separated from her old relative—perhaps the lone member of her family to survive? Martha hadn’t the heart to send her back to the women’s ward quite yet. “Let her stay till supper,” she instructed Miss Toutournier, who followed a pace behind. “Mr. Mkoi will help persuade her to take nourishment.” The nurse nodded, outwardly agreeable to whatever Martha wished. Inwardly, Martha felt sure, she rebelled.
    Further down the row of mats George Albin slept like the little man he was, frowning, serious. He lay on his left side, right shoulder hunched high, arm folded away from the site of his wound. Miss Toutournier assured her that the injury was minor, a mere graze. Below the bandage the poor boy’s pale skin was grooved with shadows that followed the curve of his ribs. “Has he been skimping himself of rations?” Martha whispered, hoping not to wake the patient. In vain.
    Blue eyes opened, focusing on