Free Three Weeks in December (9781609459024) by Audrey Schulman Page A

point nearly thirty feet before she managed to catch hold of a trunk and stop herself. Now, she came around a corner to find Mutara leaning against a tree, eyes closed, maybe napping. His clothing didn’t have a fleck of dirt on it. When he heard her wheezing, he pulled his head up.
    After a long moment, he said, “Feel for the tree roots with your toes. Use them like steps. Always hold onto a branch.”
    She followed the directions exactly, as she tended to do. They helped.
    Throughout her life, she’d studied how neurotypicals reacted when faced with adversity. Some struggled valiantly, but the majority gave up once the situation got unpleasant. When it came to long swathes of her life, unpleasant wasn’t a state she could discern. She’d been climbing for three hours. Her feet stumbled now from plain exhaustion. Each time she fell, she pushed herself back up and continued, working to step on the tree roots and hold onto branches.
    Mutara began to climb again, but several times he paused to glance back.
    At the next turn he waited until she reached him. It took her a long time. As she moved past him, her right foot slid out from under her.
    He grabbed her elbow, caught her. That sharp electric flicker. Even now—on her meds, avoiding processed foods, no longer a confused child—that flicker cut at her. As soon as she got her balance, she pulled back from his touch.
    â€œPlease,” he said, “let me help.” No distance anymore in his voice.
    She examined his feet. His toes were spread wide, the feet braced in a V. His balance certain. This was what her feet would have to master.
    â€œHigher up where the gorillas live, it is sloped and muddy like this?” she asked.
    â€œYes,” he said.
    â€œThen don’t help me. I need to learn how to do this.”

SEVEN
Tsavo River, British East Africa
December 22, 1899
    T he railway reached the eastern bank of the river Tsavo
.
The tips of the steel tracks poked out over the edge of the riverbank, pointing to the other side a hundred feet away. From up the river, floated the distant bangs and shouts of the men assembling the camp in the wide shady clearing at the next bend. Jeremy figured they would reside here for at least three weeks, until the bridge was complete, then they could build the railroad across the river to continue on the other side. He had told the men they should take the time to set the camp up well because of the duration of their stay.
    He stood now beside the tracks, examining the work site. In the shade of the lush trees along the bank, it felt ten degrees cooler than under the miserly thorn trees. Bending down to the river, he scooped water into his hat and clapped it purposefully onto his head. The water splashed down his neck and under his spine protector, shockingly cold. No more brackish drinking water imported from a hundred miles away. Also, for at least a month, the men would not have to hack through the razor-sharp nyika, clearing a path through the forest for the railway tracks. Instead, they could just build the bridge in this cooler shade, take dips in the river. Life would be easier on all of them.
    Those first few days he had worked on the railroad, he had looked forward to the monsoons finally coming, believing they would cool things down, make the work easier on the men. In his mind he’d been imagining a temperate drizzle. Instead the sheets of solid rain made it hard to see and hear. Each shovelful of soggy mud was three times heavier than when it was dry. Even breathing in the downpour took some skill. Yesterday, he’d been called over to see, after an exceptional twelve-hour deluge, a brand-new embankment—previously as hard as baked clay—quivering with the consistency of pudding. Under the weight of a fully loaded train, it sprayed out ten-foot-long jets of mud, the train itself gently rocking from side to side like a boat on the sea. In the end, the engineer had been