Impossible Odds

these two fed one another’s meanness.
    So with the two camp delinquents as my sole companions, I moved away from the fire with my tea and walked a few steps over by the parked Land Cruisers. I tried to quietly blend into whatever I was standing next to and immediately noticed it hadn’t worked.
    SsssSSSTTT! That sound. Instantly recognizable. The sharp noise of air blasted from a soundless whistle. I recognized Crack Baby’s trademark combination call and taunt, like yelling “Hey!” with a smile while flipping the bird.
    I ignored it, which might have bought me a few more seconds but essentially didn’t work. He had just “summoned” me, after all, and my response was not to his liking. Now he had his excuse. Hassan ricocheted attitudes back and forth with Crack Baby while they approached me over near the cars. This time he flicked his hand at me and did his noise: ssssSSSTTT!
    Man, I hated that noise.
    SsssSSSTTT! Like something whizzing past your ear. I think, when primates in cages run out of feces to fling, they will stab at one another with that noise. SsssSSSTTT! SsssSSSTTT!
    Finally he adds a word: “Move! ”
    I think, What? Move? I’m not obstructing anything. I try to ignore him, but the noise is back: SsssSSSTTT! SsssSSSTTT!
    “Move!” he hollers again, pointing at the ground a few feet from where I’m standing. “There! There! ”
    But there was nothing over there, no reason for me to move those few feet except for Crack Baby, who apparently wanted to show off for Hassan and make me jump through a few hoops.
    I am really not a confrontational person; he just caught me on a very low morning, alone in the camp, no food today, seasonal cold air, chilled and damp with morning dew. Not a set of circumstances to keep one reminded of how easily an annoying kidnap victim can get killed out there.
    I didn’t shout my defiant English retort in his face, but I said it loud enough for him to hear. He either understood the translation or read the tone of voice. It was plain he got the gist of it. His face went dark with fury and he grabbed for the camp’s only butcher knife, the long blade used on goats. He charged the eight or ten feet separating us and put the blade to my neck.
    “Move!” he screamed into my face. Of course I should have moved much earlier. I certainly should have moved just then. I was just so angry, offended, and despairing of all this. I badly needed toreacquire some measure of dignity. Toward that end I had defiance available as a tool, but that was about the extent of it. Defiance it was, then.
    I stood unmoving in that moment, showing more defiance than I could have explained even if they understood, even if they cared. He pushed the blade toward me and radiated enough psychotic energy that I woke up to the fact that I was about to throw my life away for the privilege of defying a child demon.
    I moved.
    It was all of five feet, but this spot was perfectly suited to Crack Baby’s whim of the moment. I could tell he still didn’t feel that he had scared me enough, though, in my “too mad to care” outrage. So when I turned my back to him and commenced walking in those endless little circles around the tree for a morning constitutional, he went off to wake up the Colonel.
    The little creep glared back at me with a leering grin while he instigated one of the Colonel’s famous fits of anger over being awakened. Everybody in camp knew not to disturb the Colonel’s sleep, or to be ready for the explosion if they did. Crack Baby’s evil genius was a mixture of careful lying and timing of delivery. He had the advantage of being able to address the Colonel in front of me without my knowing the translation, but his tone of voice said a lot.
    He was telling him that I had tried to wander off, to sneak away. No doubt it was a story claiming that if not for the quick wit and eternal vigilance of our Crack Baby, I would have slipped into the desert and made good my escape. Fortunately the Colonel was a lot smarter than this kid. He knew I had nowhere to run, and more important, he knew I realized that. I could see he was angry and puffy-eyed over being awakened, but his “punishment” for me showed he wasn’t fooled by Crack Baby’s fake escape story. All he did was order me to quit walking in little circles and insteadsit down under the tree. This way he maintained his dignity as a leader by “dealing” with the complaint about me, but it in a manner that showed he didn’t