If we had known how close they were to an explosion, we would have said something—anything—to prevent it, but how could we have known? In the months after learning of the verdict from America, our hearts were still heavy, but Thula’s visits to the village put little smiles on our faces, even if she was nearly devoid of hope. Most of us had decided to take each day as it came and leave everything to the Spirit. Who knew, Pexton might decide the next day that it had taken all the oil it needed and that the time for it to leave had come. But the Five—they entertained no such fantasies. While we were beginning our long, slow march toward resignation, the Five were making plans.
* * *
THULA WAS IN THE VILLAGE the day the Five exploded.
Nothing about that morning was extraordinary. We sent our children to school. We went to work. Some of us entertained relatives visiting from other villages. A wedding was coming up in a few days—one of our young men was marrying a girl in one of the sibling-villages—and the women of Kosawa busied themselves talking about the newest girl who would be moving to Kosawa. Maybe it wouldn’t be long before all the huts filled up again, they said; may the Spirit be thanked for love that causes blindness.
Thula was excited about the wedding too. It was the first time she looked happy in the months since the verdict—seeing her eyes aglow again was like stepping out of a smoky kitchen. She and Sonni and two of the Five attended a meeting at the district office in Lokunja in the afternoon, the details of which Sonni was going to tell us at the next village meeting. Thula had dinner with the wife and children of the one of the Five in whose hut she always stayed. After dinner she helped the children with their homework. She laughed hard when one of them read to her an essay about why every country ought to be like America—it sounded like a place where everyone had everything. Thula went to bed smiling. The truth about what happened after that, we’ll never know.
* * *
—
We believe the Five woke Thula up and told her that they had Mr. Fish and his wife.
We don’t know when the Five left Kosawa to go to Gardens and kidnap Mr. Fish and his wife. The Five were in the village in the morning: we saw a couple of them leaving to go hunting. We saw them in the evening, sitting on their verandas or visiting relatives. They must have left for Gardens after most of the village was asleep.
How great was Thula’s disappointment and shock when she found out?
What did she say? What could she have said?
Did she attempt to stay out of it, wanting nothing to do with a crime? Did the Five command her to join them, or else? They wouldn’t have. They revered her. But Thula would never have wanted to leave Mr. Fish and his wife at the mercy of angry gunmen. Mr. Fish was an oilman, but we did not hate him; he had never been unkind to us. Thula respected and appreciated him for what he’d tried to do. It seemed to sadden him that he derived his livelihood from our suffering—and Thula, though her meetings with him were heated, believed he truly wanted Pexton and Kosawa to reconcile. We all wished he could do more than say that the decision about the cleanup of our land and waters rested with headquarters in New York, but Thula would never have wanted him dead.
* * *
—
Mr. Fish and his wife were in Thula’s family’s hut for three days, and we did not know it. Sahel had given the hut’s key to Thula, and Thula kept it in the care of one of the Five, so she could open the hut whenever she wanted to be in it. She couldn’t have imagined that the Five would open it one night and put Mr. Fish and his wife there. What did Thula say to the Americans when, likely still wearing her sleeping clothes, she entered her family’s hut that night and saw them? Did she offer the couple her mother and father’s room, in which she had installed a bed and table and chair? Did she take the Five aside and plead with them to take the Americans back to Gardens? Did she truly write those ransom letters, or did the Five write them and sign them with her name? Thula’s handwriting was made up of tightly packed, slender letters; the handwriting in the letter the government released was chunky and spacious.
The morning after the Five kidnapped the Americans, the wife in whose hut Thula was staying woke up and prepared breakfast. When she went into Thula’s room and found the bed empty, her husband told her not to be alarmed, Thula had been stirred to wake up before dawn and do some writing. Thula needed to be alone for some time in her family’s hut, he added. The husband took all of Thula’s belongings from their hut to the Nangis’ hut, along with extra kerosene, supposedly for Thula’s lamp. His wife understood—it wasn’t surprising for Thula, during her visits to Kosawa, to open her family’s hut and spend time alone in there, writing in her notebooks.