Pinatubo II Read online

  Chapter 2

  The dull grey tinge of the city slipped into view, displacing the patchy reddish terrain as the airliner descended to his final destination. The City of Niamey Vince scoffed—not the official name, but as he stared down, this one appeared as his City of Calgary sliced through by a river flowing from the northwest. Not a narrow brilliant mountain-blue, this river ran wide and dirty mudsand-brown, flowing not down from westerly foothills, but in from somewhere beyond that god-forsaken emptiness. All ran flat and even here to a hazy horizon, missing his home city’s reach-for-the-sky rocky peaks framing a distant western sky.

  He pulled his gaze from the window and collapsed back into his seat, letting his eyelids fall closed for a moment. Peace—if only—he struggled for any fragment of tranquility. Travelling for what, almost forty hours now? And, he scowled, he had lived for almost forty years as well. What seemed an endless struggle to keep it together, to endure a trip like this, in a life like this; now this place. One clear difference between back home and down there was the searing African heat.

  God.

  His mind restarted its subtle persistent churn, thoughts sneaking insidious in the back door. He pulled the reins in hard. Focus! Concentrate. On something, on anything, on what’s right here in front of you. Local geography, that had worked earlier. This Niamey had no trees to speak of, unlike that last city. Abuja. He pictured the words for that airport: Nnamdi Azikiwe International. More humidity around Abuja. Two lakes lay in the rough terrain just to the north and clouds floated in those tropical skies over patches of green trees. One lake was a reservoir, not natural at all. The telltale straight edge cutting through the hills gave it a manmade signature. A smaller reservoir graced the city’s core, perhaps an urban park where some local resident might feed birds from a bench.

  He relaxed, almost.

  In Abuja he had de-boarded Lufthansa and transferred to this aged Ethiopian Airlines jet. Abuja had a polished clean look, while this City of Niamey had the scratches of desolation etched across its arid barren landscape.

  He felt the plane bank and leaned to snap a photo with his Jeenyus. As the airliner straightened for final approach he looked to his mini visiscreen. He sent the photo, texting his daughter. Hey baby, daddy’s coming in for landing—you spell this city N I A M E Y in Google maps. He had sent her the same from Abuja. Hesitating, but only for a second, he decided not to cc his wife. She could wait for her official email once he got settled.

  As the plane touched down he watched the sun burnt grass rushing past. Two traffic control towers loomed against a bright cloud free sky, one tall and one short, but both built of baked brown brick. The Jeenyus buzzed and he read: I am eating brekfust daddy. Whit mush. He felt his face relax, naturally almost, a moment of internal relief. Seven hours difference, he’d have to keep that in mind.

  He clicked his seat belt and grasped his travel bag from beneath the seat. The crowd shuffled down boarding stairs to the parched afternoon tarmac. He forced his way through the sweaty sun’s heat to escape into a waiting bus. A weak fan blew, and he turned his shoulders towards the cooler air for the ride to the airport entrance. Beehive roofing cells gaped at him with open mouths from beside the airport signature—Aeroport International Diori Hamani. He reread the sign...that would be French. His lip twitched, the language sparking recall of a youthful summer in Montreal. Something new to keep his mind absorbed, to help defocus his plague of invasive mind mutter.

  Past customs, a taxi carried him along through light traffic. He read a street sign—Boulevard du 15 Avril. A pattern of stark social contrast stood out in the streets. The few newer SUV’s passed amidst throngs of ragged pedestrians in sandals or many even barefoot in the dust. Some rode creaky bicycles. He habitually translated peoples’ lifestyles into a data set he could never help noticing.

  His driver pointed out the hippodrome as they motored past. Horses race, the driver voiced in his English. Course de chevaux Vincent parodied back in French. Oui the driver smiled. A series of N roads, N25, then N6 and around Rond Point Kennedy. As they navigated the roundabout, he caught more words on signs Aide et Action: Programme Niger and they veered onto the Boulevard de la Republique. A long curving wall of windows loomed down from the Office National des Ressources Minieres, across the way when they pulled in at the Hotel Gaweye.

  Paying the driver, he stepped out into the sizzling sunshine and hurried up cobbled brown steps. Passing through the tinted glass door entrance, he again escaped la chaleur. Yes, this thinking in a different language helped keep his troubles subdued.

  At the desk he asked for his room key in French, and that having worked, he spoke the more complicated request for the meeting room pass card. He took the elevator up, walked along the hallway to his numbered door, opened and stepped in to toss his bags on the bed. His new abode for the next, god, who knew how many weeks? He scrambled to locate and test the air controls. The fan blew out extra cool and he flopped into a chair breathing shallow.

  His Jeenyus began a soft scheduling reminder and he rose robotically. Out the door and at the corridor end he took the elevator to the bottom floor. The lower hallway heat hit hard and he sprinted to the meeting room, entering and slamming the door behind. He banged his finger hard into this air controller, holding back from punching a hole in the wall.

  Fuck! Everything!

  He took a deep breath, then another and his eyes focused in on the coffee machine. Nothing was okay. Trapped in a lifestyle he hated every day, one he wanted so bad to drop out of but could not. Not if he was to live up to his father’s wish, and his wife’s demands. And keep his daughter in his life. To get through, he needed toe the line. He just had to do what was right, for that fractal math angel if no one else.

  He absorbed himself in the routine of pouring a cup. He checked the time—the meeting was scheduled in twenty minutes. Leaning back against the wall, staring at the floor he sipped the hot liquid over the rim and counted. Un, deux, trois…but the numbers transformed into that extensive list of remissions he had with life. One was the warehouse mentality he supported back home, two, the endless crunching of meaningless numbers to support that warehouse. Now, three, God knows how many weeks in this hellhole contract. Then especially quatre the fucking heat. He sank into his accustomed level of rageful despair, his familiar modus operandi bordering on depression. He fumbled the pill bottle from his pocket, fingered out two relaxants and threw them to the back of his throat followed by hot coffee.

  Godforsaken, surely a word defined by this place.

  Okay, repeat that in French, how does one say godforsaken?

  He swung a chair to the table and pulled his jPad, glancing over the almost interesting numbers one more time. Boring in a way, but they came as a long familiar mental exercise. Another welcoming distraction. Where had he left off in that airport Starbucks hour in Frankfurt? Before he caught the ICE train. A spreadsheet, no matter what the numbers had their soothing effect. Had the words or the numbers caught his attention there in Frankfurt? He had just started a review. His Jeenyus buzzed lightly: me and mummy ar going shoping now daddy. Of course, what else would his wife do? Back to the review—he would read the scope and purpose. But, he frowned, how could these figures be so low? And the impact so high? Like a catalyst ...

  The door banged opened behind him, interrupting his number crunching reverie. Unable to ignore whoever was the invader, he swung over to face them, struggling to downsize his grimace.

  A fellow maybe his age bounced over, beaming out a white toothed grin. “How the hell are you, man? I’m Brad.” He stepped up to Vince with hand extended, his grin piercing through Vince’s being like a sprinkle of sharp children’s glitter. Jesus Vince thought, you do not want to know. “Hi.” His voice cracked. “Vince.”

  He fumbled the coffee cup to his other hand, and took the handshake, struggling to clear his throat.

  “Cool. Where you from?”

  “Calgary.” Vince coughed. He raised his hand to his mouth
, but choked out more. “The City of...you know—the Stampede.”

  “Hey, my wife’s from Canada.” Brad bubbled on. Would this guy not shut up? “That’s not too far from Spokane. I flew the Bow River valley just out of your city, off Lady MacDonald. You know that peak? Magic air’s excellent; spectacular sunset.”

  Vince glanced hard at the wall, then back. Focus. “Magic air?” Please don’t make my head hurt.

  “That magic air gives you extra loft in the evenings. I do high mountain flights with a paraglider. Aeronautics, that’s my engineering background.” His face shone and he shrugged. “Quite an interesting flight getting here. Thirteen hours in Monaco after New York. Across the Mediterranean on Royal Air Monaco and then over the Sahara. Man, those dunes look awesome from forty thousand feet. Started off from Spokane, via Seattle. What route did you take?”

  Vince stared at the grinning teeth. He picked out the slight wrinkles around the guy’s eyes and his mouth, the type that spoke of one of those permanent smiley faces. Happiness forever in his daughter’s talk.

  “Lufthansa from Calgary, twenty three hours in Frankfurt, then Lufthansa to Abuja in Nigeria, just two hours there, then Ethiopian Airlines here.”

  “Holy shit.” The face beamed a look of delight. “Long time in Germany.”

  “Yeah, I got in five hours sleep there, anyway.”

  “You the chemical guy?”

  “Yeah.” Vince scowled.

  “Well, you know, when I take a look around this place, there’s one thing that makes me happy.”

  No really, Vince thought.

  “Sure glad my family’s still back home. This seems one rough looking piece of the world.” The smile dimmed slightly, but flashed back in full. “But hey, instead of my wife I brought my wing. You always gotta have a backup option.”

  “Yeah.” Vince stared at the grin. He couldn’t help feel a tinge of infection and he sighed, “I’m glad to work away from home too. Wouldn’t want my little girl here, that’s for sure. Nor my wife, well, that’s another story.”

  “You have a daughter? Cool! We have two boys, Josh and Jimmy.” Brad poured a coffee. “They would be eight and ten. How old’s your girl.”

  “Seven.” He couldn’t keep the mist from his eyes, and he felt a strange hurt at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, she just turned seven. One of the bright spots in my life, for sure…we text all the time.” Vince looked closer at the listening eyes of this new acquaintance. He didn’t know why, but he went on, “My marriage hasn’t been all that great for a while.”

  “Yeah, I hear you, married life can be a tough gig.” The smile didn’t dim one bit. “Always some compromise or other.”

  “Compromise?” Vince curled his lip. “Yeah, right.”

  They sat at the table. Brad, not stopping had them swapping stories on their engineering backgrounds. Stories told, they turned to figuring out how their positions integrated into this project. Their roles as defined in the contract said Brad would calculate lift for the load while Vince took on supplying the tonnage at the load end. Sulphur dioxide, just another chemical to Vince.

  “You like your job a lot?” Brad asked.

  Vince grimaced, staring. His lips parted but he clenched his teeth.

  “My dad always said you make your choices.” Brad casually folded up a piece of paper into what looked like an airplane or some version of a flying device. “You know, there’re some doings I find appealing, but a lot don’t work for me at all.” Brad looked at him, shrugging. Vince watched as Brad stood, stepped up on his chair, then right up onto the table. He scanned the room as he lifted the paper craft above his head, thumb and finger stretched high. Giving the little craft a flick, he set it free to navigate the room’s air currents.

  “You gotta maximize your elevation for an unpowered craft.”

  The paper aircraft glided downward gaining speed, and then rose along a slowing arc. But before stalling, it tipped to the side and spiraled around near two complete circles before touching down on the floor. Vince glanced back and forth between the plane and this other engineer. Easing back down from his perch, Brad looked as if he were reviewing the general trajectory in-flight equations in his head. He stared at the airplane where it had landed on the floor, his face content.

  “If there’s a to-do list item I like, that’s anything to do with flight.” He grinned. “In fact, I love to fly.” He bent and picked up the paper plane, handing it to Vince. “But you know, I didn’t always know that. And...I never thought I’d be flying the kind of payload this project calls for.”