RUNNING

The boy stumbled, his foot slipping on the gravel road, his palm stinging with small rocks. He continued on, unwilling to quit, unwilling to believe he could not make it. It was only two miles to his Uncle Albin’s cabin. He and Jon Jon walked that far almost every day, hunting, fishing, exploring. But running made his lungs burn, it made his legs feel like jelly, it made him want to walk. His legs and arms began to flail as fatigue and resolve grappled with one another.

He couldn’t let his friend leave. He couldn’t let him leave without saying goodbye, without telling him… Telling him what? The boy slowed for a moment, his forehead itching with sweat. What would he say? Don’t get eaten by lions? He wouldn't say what he felt. Not a chance. But he had realized, after his father had driven down the road, that he had to say something. Adunya might never come back.

The boy’s feet slipped trying to gain traction on the gravel road as he began a sprint. He could see Uncle Albin’s roof now and he thought he heard an engine.

He wiped his eyes one more time before turning at the gate. His father and Uncle Albin stood shaking hands beside Uncle Albin’s truck. Adunya and Jon Jon crouched beside a hole under the shed that cats liked to crawl into.

Walking now, the boy’s eyes shifted from Adunya to his father. He stopped when he noticed the old man and Uncle Albin looking his way. The boy expected a scolding look or an “I told you so” stare. Instead, his father tilted his head toward Adunya and Jon Jon—that was it.

When Adunya saw the boy, he stood and smiled, the machete hanging over his shoulder like an extension of his hand. That curved blade had made him nervous when he’d first met the boy from Ethiopia. He came to see it as no different from the pocket knife he carried and even envied it, especially when Adunya took the lead as they explored the brush, swinging it back and forth cutting and slicing a path. He always made it look so easy, but whenever the boy tried, he fumbled with it and had to chop over and over at the thinnest of branches. Adunya’s smooth, precise swipes always slashed right through.

Jon Jon ran to greet the boy. “Steve, look what Adunya made me. Look.” He held the smoothed and sharpened spear in the palms of his hands.

The boy recognized it. The same spear Adunya had thrust into the jack rabbit the boy had chased across the prarie until it made the mistake of darting left to where Adunya hid in the brush. The same spear Adunya had used to carry a line of catfish they had caught at the pond. It was a good spear. The best the boy had ever seen.

Adunya approached the boy. He held out his fist and then opened his hand. “This foot from rabbit. It has great power?”

The boy nodded.

“I become envy of my tribe with this magic foot from American beast.”

The boy wanted to tell him to be the envy of his tribe here, where he had people who cared about him, where he could sleep in a real house, where a neighbor wouldn’t murder Uncle Albin over nothing. To tell him that the thunderstorms would quiet during the winter, that he didn't have to run from them. Instead, he nodded and said, “Do you think you’ll come back?”

Adunya lowered his gaze and rubbed the rabbit’s foot with his thumb.

“Maybe someday, I can come to Africa.”

“Yeah, me too.” Jon Jon almost bounced on his toes before charging toward his father. “Dad, can we go to Africa some day? Can we?”

Adunya lifted his shoulders and raised his head. With all the pride of Ethiopia, he handed the boy his machete.

The boy had secretly yearned for that tool so many times over the last few months. Now he felt unworthy to hold it. But he knew if he refused it would be an insult.

Before Adunya closed the door to Uncle Albin’s truck, before he began his return trip to Ethiopia, the boy said, “Watch out for lions.” He had no idea what else to say.

Adunya smiled. “Step carefully if grass begin to rattle.”

The boy’s father gripped his son’s shoulder as dust from behind Uncle Albin’s truck rose to the east. And though the boy said nothing, his father's heavy hand helped.