Soldier Boy by Keely Hutton

Author:Keely Hutton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

24

RICKY

Six months after Ricky’s and Patrick’s abduction, the Gilva brigade joined Kony’s Control Altar brigade in its march north to the border with Sudan. In the days and weeks following their abduction, Ricky and Patrick had hoped they might catch a glimpse of Andrew or John marching by in another brigade or hear their voices calling out to them on a battlefield, but after months with no sign of either boy, the brothers knew they’d likely met a fate similar to Thomas’s and they stopped looking.

As they marched alongside the Control Altar rebels, Ricky instead turned his attention to finding their commander. He had never seen Joseph Kony, but from the rebels’ stories of the leader, he imagined him towering above all others. Only a powerful giant of a man could possess the Holy Spirit.

Yet as Ricky searched the thousands of faces in the Control Altar group, all he found were scrawny rebels looking like those in Gilva: hunger hollowed their cheeks, and years of malnutrition yellowed the whites of their eyes. Filthy, matted hair, hanging in heavy, knotted dreads and crawling with lice, rested on their shoulders, and bug bites and scabies mottled their cracked, ashen skin. They wore bloodstained Ugandan military uniforms stolen from dead soldiers after fierce battles.

As the two brigades trudged down dirt roads and through tall grass, one after the other, Ricky wondered if he now looked like these other wild creatures. He also wore a stolen uniform, but he’d traded his old uniform for one he’d found in a fallen soldier’s backpack. It didn’t bear the holes of fatal shots or the stains of a dead man’s blood. Ricky hadn’t bathed in months, and he’d scratched himself raw in an attempt to ease the constant itch. His stomach always ached with hunger, and his skin clung to his hip bones and ribs. He doubted anyone from his village would recognize him if he were to return home.

Home. He pushed the thought from his mind before the image could take form. He couldn’t allow his wandering thoughts to betray him, especially with Kony so close. With each step, he focused on trying to determine where the LRA leader hid among the elite group. The Control Altar rebels bore the signs of having been in the bush for years and having fought in many battles. Ricky was grateful his body was not marred like those of the veteran rebels, who were missing chunks of flesh or bore festering sores. Their faith in Kony must have wavered on the battlefield. Ricky’s would not.

In some of Control Altar’s leaders, Ricky recognized the frantic desperation he’d seen in the wild man’s eyes on the day of his abduction. As the rebels trudged along in unison, these men stalked up and down the line with fidgety paranoia, their ferocious gazes burning with the need to kill. The leaders searched for the smallest infractions—a poorly handled weapon, a misstep in cadence, a sideways glance. They sought weakness in the pack on their hunt for the next kill.

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