The Lord of Opium

But as the day dragged on, some of Matt’s optimism seeped away. Nothing said that Glass Eye couldn’t torture him until he gave in. How much pain could he endure? He thought of various things Glass Eye could do and listed them on a scale of one to ten. You think too much, complained El Patrón.

Matt and Listen were sitting on the floor with the evening food trays on their laps. Beef stew and polenta again. Listen had developed a dislike for polenta almost equal to her hatred of mushrooms. She flicked bits of it on the wall to see if it would stick.

“Stop that. If you don’t like it, give it to Boris.”

“I want to see if he’ll eat it off the wall,” the little girl said. Matt got up, took the tray away, and dumped the remaining polenta on Boris’s tray.

“There! Finish the stew,” he said, replacing it on her lap.

“I miss Mbongeni,” she said. “And I miss Fidelito and Sor Artemesia and Cienfuegos, too.” Her mouth turned down, and she looked dangerously close to crying. “There sure are a lot of people missing.”

“They aren’t missing. They know exactly where they are,” Matt said. He watched her eat and then tucked her into bed. “Try to sleep,” he said. He shone the flashlight Tam Lin had given him on the wall and made shadow animals with his hands. Celia had done that for him when he was small. He did a rabbit, a goose, a coyote, and an eagle.

Boris came over and hunkered down. He’d learned a few English words and used one of them now. “Lullaby?” he offered.

“Nyet,” said Matt.

Boris continued looking at the little girl. “Glass Eye bad,” he announced.

“You can say that again,” said Matt. The Russian twisted his hands as though he were snapping something in two. Then he shook his head.

“What does that mean?” said Listen after the Russian had gone back to his post.

“It means he’d like to kill Dabengwa but can’t. He’s controlled by a microchip.”

“It was nice of him to think of it,” said the little girl, snuggling into the covers.

“Being here isn’t nearly as bad as when I was thrown into the chicken litter,” Matt said. “I was alone except for Rosa, my caretaker. She hated me. All I had to play with were cockroaches. But a dove used to come through the window and visit me.”

“Was it the same dove Noah sent out to look for land?” Listen said suspiciously.

“Her great-great-ever-so-great-granddaughter,” said Matt. “María rescued me, even though she was only six years old. She brought Celia to the window, and Celia went to El Patrón.” He told her how Tom—a certified bad guy—had come to the window and shot him with a peashooter until he was covered with bruises. “But then I threw a rotten orange at him, and it fell apart on his face and covered him with wiggly worms.”

Listen crowed with delight. “Did they get into his ears and mouth?” she asked.

“Yes! And two of them went up his nose.” But Matt saw she was getting too wild, and so he made her lie down again and told her about the oasis instead. “It was a secret world. No one except me and Tam Lin knew about it. We had picnics and campfires. We went swimming in the lake. It’s not like being in a swimming pool. The water makes you feel alive, and it’s full of little fish.”

“I wish I had a secret world,” Listen said wistfully.

“I’ll take you there when we get out,” Matt promised.

Later, when he attempted to snatch a few minutes of sleep, he felt Tam Lin’s flashlight under the pillow and wished they were in the oasis now. There sure were a lot of missing people, and tomorrow there might be two more.

*  *  *

Dr. Rivas arrived about noon, accompanied by two African soldiers armed with machine guns. “This place stinks. We’ll go to the nursery,” he said. He was in a grim mood and shoved Listen away when she tried to hug him.

She didn’t stay depressed long. It was too wonderful getting outside, and she danced for joy. She was dressed in a yellow pinafore and bright pink sandals that had been delivered the evening before. Eejits went about their work in the gardens, clipping grass with scissors, refilling hummingbird feeders, and taking litter out of ponds one leaf at a time.

“Look!” cried Listen. Over one part of the hospital was a column of smoke. “That’s the lab where all the freezers are!”

Five soldiers were scooping buckets of water out of the fountain where El Patrón’s brothers and sisters stood. If only five had been spared to fight the blaze, Matt thought, Glass Eye couldn’t have that many men. Perhaps hundreds of eejits were around, but they hadn’t been trained to throw buckets of water on a fire. The whole hospital could burn down around their ears and they wouldn’t notice.