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Adler laughs briefly, studying me as if trying to guess my travel itinerary. “The Caribbean? Spending money on overpriced cocktails? Working on your tan? Not that you need it.” He glances at my rolled-up sleeve. “Perhaps falling in love, too?”
That was a high-ranking way of saying getting laid.
“You know I don’t do love,” I quip.
“Bullshit, Clay.”
“Kenya! I’m going to Kenya.”
“No kidding!”
“I don’t do love.” I wave at him and then give him a salute.
* * *
Oltepesi,Kenya
When I saidI don’t do love, I really meant romance. I have a heart, and I know how to love. Otherwise, I couldn’t call myself a Hartley.
So far, though, knowing how to love and facing reality haven’t quite married up. I used to put my heart out in the open—being accessible, vulnerable, and all that. I pursued women I was attracted to like they were all my soulmates. And I would try to please them, be the man they dreamed of. God witnessed it all.I tried. But when heartbreak was all you got in the end, you learned.
Nowadays, my heart is nowhere near a woman. It’s with those happy faces I see coming to me.
“Clayton!” The students of Elimu Primary School flock toward me, some jumping onto my shoulders when I bend down to hug them. Those watching us laugh, especially when my ebony fringe gets messed up—I must look like a wildebeest having a bad hair day.
“You see our field?” A girl points at the newly completed sports field. I remember her. Her name is Durah. She’d told me it means pearl.
I clear the hair off my face. “I see that,” I respond, watching her friends playing a game of soccer on a proper surface, with a ball that is a perfect sphere and made of quality material that will last multiple matches.
Thatis where my love goes. And these beaming children surrounding me—theyare where my love goes.
The owner, Mrs. Nkasiogi Makena, fondly known as Mrs. Mac, has officially called the sports field Faber Park. Faber—I share that middle name with my grandfather, who was a gifted athlete and an officer in the military intelligence service during World War II. I like to think the park is named after him. At the same time, having part of me trampled by kids’ happy feet playing the sports they love—I’m humbled.
Oltepesi is forty miles southwest of the capital Nairobi. It’s known for being a tourist hot spot for Maasai Mara camps, but the real life of the people remains obscure to most foreigners.
I got to know Mrs. Mac on my first trip to the country. Having had enough of following a tour at the time, I ventured out by myself and got into trouble when my rental Jeep ended up in a ditch. Apparently, the pothole I accidentally drove through was a trap set by local thieves. When I saw a lady in her sixties charging at me with an AK rifle in her hand, I’d been convinced I was about to die. But then she reached a hand out to me.
“Come with me if you want to live!” she said, quotingTerminatorin her thick Kenyan accent. Since then, we’ve become good friends.
“Great to see you again, Clayton,” Mrs. Mac shakes my hand after she’s sent the kids away. Behind her, the kids disperse to all corners of the schoolyard. She flashes her trademark grin, creasing her full cheeks. Her grandmotherly hug soon follows.
“You’ve done it, Mrs. Mac,” I praise.
“Yeah. We still have some funds left, which I’m going to use to build two more classrooms.”
“Excellent.”
Mrs. Mac ushers me to the school’s assembly hall, where a full traditional Mara buffet awaits. Music and dances accompany our lunch—a perfect start to my vacation. I then accept a hoop-off challenge from a couple of teachers, christening our new basketball court. Following my defeat, I say goodbye to the teachers and kids.
“If you need anything, just call me, okay? I mean it,” I tell Mrs. Mac as she walks me to my car. “I haven’t received enough calls from you.”
She grins, a pondering grin. “Clayton, when we first met, you were a silly blue-eyed kid trying to scramble out of trouble,” she reminisces, no doubt referring to the moment she found me covered in mud, climbing out of a ditch that fateful afternoon. “But you turned out good.”
Her last comment somehow exposes a deep crack in me. I turned out good, but why am I still alone?
My lips twitch. I despise that thought. Being single is an absurd barometer to measure one’s goodness. But I had tasted togetherness and, supposedly, love. At the time, I told myselfa man without love is a man made of ice.
Now I am that man.
