Read Beneath a Southern Sky for Free Online

her know?
    Boldly she cried out to Tados. “ Ceju na . Come here.” It was a command, one the young man was not accustomed to heeding when it came from a woman. He remained where he was.
    “Kopaku,” she pled, making her voice appropriately submissive.
    Tados waded across the shallow stream and walked slowly toward her, stopping at a distance.
    “Tados—” She swallowed hard, trying to think of the words. She wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to the question she was about to ask, and yet an ember of hope ignited in her as she entertained the possibility that Tados and Quimico were mistaken.
    Tados waited patiently.
    “Did…did you see Dr. Nate? Defuerto? Dead? Did you see his…his body?” She stumbled clumsily over the alien words.
    He slid the basket to the ground by his feet but did not reply.
    She repeated the question, enunciating carefully, not sure if she had phrased it properly.
    A shadow of emotion clouded his eyes. He nodded and surprised her by answering in English. He motioned wildly with his arms. “Everybody burn. Everybody die… All the hut,” he said emphatically. “A big fire. Very big.” Again his arms painted a wide arc. “I run to help Dr. Nate. I see only many body. Quimico see also. Nobody come out.”
    She was aware of Paita standing in the doorway behind her, but she needed no interpreter this time. Daria understood his halting words perfectly.
    Now Tados held up a hand. “You wait,” he commanded. Leaving his basket on the ground, he crossed over the stream and strode toward his own hut. A few minutes later he returned, holding something out to her in his upturned palm. “You take.”
    She descended the steps and took the object from his hand. Her breath caught as she recognized Nathan’s watch—the expensive gold watch his parents had given him upon his graduation from medical school. Nathan never removed it except to bathe. She turned it over in her hand. Its face was black with soot, and though she tried to clean the crystal, rubbing it hard with her thumb, the Roman numerals on the face had been obliterated.
    She looked up at the young native, a question in her eyes.
    “You take,” he repeated.
    She thanked him. With a single, silent nod, he turned, retrieved his basket, and crossed back to the other side of the stream.
    She heard Paita go inside. Climbing the steps, she sank down on the stoop again, and sat there staring at Nathan’s watch, numb. She knew she must get word to Nate’s parents and hers. Perhaps Bob Warrington had already taken care of that. She hadn’t thought to ask him. There was a place in San José del Guaviare where they could sometimes get through by telephone or perhaps send e-mail—if the paramilitary groups hadn’t commandeered it.
    She could not see herself remaining here without Nathan, but neither could she imagine going anywhere else. Her life in the States seemed like a story she had read long ago, one she remembered fondly but that had no bearing on reality for her. She pressed her fingers to her temples and tried to stop the flow of thoughts.
    For now she wanted only one thing—to weep. Nate was dead, and she needed to mourn him.

    Daria merely went through the motions the rest of the day. She felt removed from her surroundings, as though she hovered in a different dimension. She folded the few items of clothing Nathan had not taken with him to the far village. They were heavy with his scent, and she held them longingly to her face before placing them in one of their small duffel bags. She packed her own belongings next to his, and she allowed herself to remember Nathan Camfield.
    She thought of his hands. Skilled hands, strong and able and roughened because he wasn’t afraid to work alongside the men in the village when he was needed there. Yet his hands were gentle when he examined a sick child, and sublimely tender when he loved her, when he caressed her face, her body. She saw his lanky figure. Nathan had run cross-country in high