The Other Hand

offended you by offering money and I respect you for not taking it. But I have my editor telling me what’s best for me fifty-one weeks of the year. I didn’t come here to have anyone edit my holiday.”
    The guard lifted the muzzle of his gun. He fired three shots in the air, just above the white man’s head. The barking of the dogs and the yelling of the men stopped for a moment. Then they started up again, louder. The white couple stood very still. Their mouths were open. They were struck, perhaps, by the bullets that had missed them.
    “Please, mister and missus,” the guard said. “Trouble is come here. You do not know my country.”
    The sisters heard the thwack of machetes clearing a path. Kindness grabbed Little Bee’s hand and pulled her to her feet. The two sisters walked out of the cover of the jungle and onto the sand. Holding hands, they stood there looking up at the white man and the white woman—Andrew, and me—in hope and expectation. I suppose there was nothing else in the developing world they could do.
    They stood on the sand, clutching each other, keeping themselves upright on their failing legs. Kindness straining her head towatch for the approaching dogs, but Little Bee looking steadily at me, ignoring Andrew, ignoring the guard.
    “Please missus,” she said, “take us to the hotel compound with you.”
    The guard looked at her, then he looked back up at the jungle. He shook his head.
    “Hotel compound is for tourist,” he said. “Not for you girls.”
    “Please,” said Little Bee, looking directly at me. “Bad men are hunting us. They will kill us.”
    She spoke to me as a woman, knowing I would understand. But I didn’t understand. Three days earlier, just before we left for Heathrow, I had been standing on a bare concrete slab in our garden, asking Andrew exactly when the hell he planned to build his bloody glasshouse there. That was the biggest issue in my life—that glasshouse, or the lack of it. That absent glasshouse, and all other structures past and future that might helpfully be erected in the larger emotional absence between me and my husband. I was a modern woman and disappointment was something I understood better than fear. The hunters would kill her? My stomach lurched, but my mind still asserted it was just a figure of speech.
    “Oh for goodness’ sake,” I said. “You’re a child. Why would anyone want to kill you?”
    Little Bee looked back at me and she said, “Because we saw them killing everyone else.”
    I opened my mouth but Andrew spoke first. I think he was suffering the same intellectual jet lag. As if our hearts had now arrived on the beach but our minds were still hours behind. Andrew’s eyes were terrified but his voice said, “This is fuckin bullshit. This is a classic Nigeria scam. Come on, we’re going back to the hotel.”
    Andrew started to pull me back along the beach. I went with him, twisting my head to look back at the sisters. The guard followed behind us. He walked backward and aimed his gun at the jungle. Little Bee followed with Kindness, ten yards behind.
    The guard said, “You girls stop following us.”
    He pointed his gun at the sisters. They looked right back at him. The guard was slightly older than the girls, maybe sixteen or seventeen, and he had a thin mustache. I suppose he was proud he could grow one. He had a green beret and there was sweat trickling from under it. I could see the veins in his temples. The whites of his eyes were yellow.
    Little Bee said, “What is your name, soldier?”
    And he said, “My name is ‘I will shoot if you don’t stop following.’”
    Little Bee shrugged and tapped her chest. “My name is Little Bee,” she said. “Here is my heart. Shoot here if you want.”
    And Kindness said, “Bullets is okay. Bullets is quick.”
    They kept on following us along the beach. The guard’s eyes went wide.
    “Who is chasing you girls?”
    “The same men who burned our village. The oil company’s men.”
    The rifle began to shake in the guard’s hand. “Christjesus,” he said.
    There were men’s shouts and dogs’ barking, very loud now. I couldn’t hear the surf anymore.
    Five brown dogs came out of the jungle, running. They were mad from howling. Their sides and their paws were bleeding from the jungle thorns. The sisters screamed and ran past the guard. The guard stopped and he lifted his gun and he fired. The lead dog somersaulted over in the sand. His ear was shot off and a piece