Arrows, Bones and Stones Read online

  Arrows, Bones and Stones:

  the shadow of a child soldier

  A novel

  by

  donna white

  Also by Donna White

  Bullets, Blood and Stones: the journey of a child soldier

  (Book I in the Stones Trilogy)

  Spirits, Graves and Stones: the dance of a child soldier

  (Book III in the Stones Trilogy)

  Information for this story was obtained through interviews with former child soldiers from Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. In certain cases, incidents, characters, locations, and timelines have been changed for dramatic purposes.

  Certain characters may be composites, or entirely fictitious.

  The story of Sesota and Walukaga are taken in part from

  Rosetta Baskerville’s, The King of the Snakes

  and Other Folk-lore Stories from Uganda,

  London, The Sheldon Press, Northumberland Avenue,

  W.C. 2 New York and Toronto;

  The Macmillan Co. Kampala; The Uganda Bookshop. 1922

  Cover design by H. Leighton Dickson

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  copyright © 2017 Donna C. White

  PRAISE FOR

  ARROWS, BONES AND STONES:

  THE SHADOW OF A CHILD SOLDIER

  “Arrows, Bones and Stones compellingly reveals the struggle faced by those trying to overcome childhood trauma. For youth abducted and forced to fight as child soldiers, escape is not the end of the story, but just the beginning. The shadow of their past haunts them, and the physical scars and psychological wounds cut deep. But even in the darkest hour, there is always the promise of new light. Yes, this is a story of despair, guilt, and shame, but it’s also one of resilience and hope.”

  - Patrick Reed, Director/Producer, Fight Like Soldiers, Die Like Children

  “In this second installment in the trilogy, Charlie, Fire, and Sam, provide us with the necessary human contexts to the plight of girl child soldiers but also the harsh reality of losing a loved one at a young age. The gripping tale reminds us that even in the midst of inhumanity, we all have the ability to be hopeful, and have the will to survive. An incredibly well written book! I can’t wait for the next one.”

  - Michel Chikwanine, former child soldier and author of Child Soldier: When Boys and Girls are Used in War

  To Angela

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  A fallen branch cannot bear fruit on its own.

  ~ African proverb

  It had been seven nights since he had danced in the rain. Seven nights since he had left his gun on the ground and felt the thrill of freedom as each raindrop washed over him. Each step he took, each mile he covered, each night he spent walking under the cover of darkness brought him farther and farther away from the army. It calmed his heart and erased his trepidation. For once he felt alive.

  Until he came to the school.

  It was like any school in Uganda. A long brick building, a stand of brush on one side, and a large field on the other. A field worn from years of football, bolingo, and kakopi kakopi—childish games forgotten until now.

  But the school was empty and the field was bare except for a solitary pump set on a cement base.

  Charlie smiled. He saw the faded images of years past: wrestling with his friends on the red clay ground, tumbling over each other, pitting himself against them—a playful game that left them glowing with sweat and panting for breath.

  He stared at the yellowed walls of the school, and then the vision came. Fast, fierce, overpowering. Stronger than reality.

  He pushed his fists to his ears and tried to silence the gunfire blasts that echoed in his head. It was no use; the noise deafened him. He shut his eyes tight, but the images of the dead bodies, shredded with bullet holes, burned into his eyelids. He smelled the bitter metallic breath of spent guns and the acrid stench of singed flesh.

  He fell to the ground and moaned as he rocked back and forth. The noise invaded the jungle, quieting the birds, stilling the leaves. He saw the shadowed images of the women and children who stood before him and heard a voice that commanded his attention.

  “Now applaud the work of the Lord Resistance Army.”

  He opened his eyes and drew his hand across his face, wiping the tears away. A bee flew past: a soft buzzing drone that pushed the deafening sounds of the gun blasts away. It landed on a golden sunflower, and the images of the bodies faded. A cricket called across the field and waited for a reply. The air filled with the afternoon heat and a gentle, cool breeze blew across Charlie’s bare back.

  He sat up and drew in a long, deep breath, then took off his shoe, adjusting the leaves and grass he had stuffed inside to hold his feet in the oversized Nike runners, blue with stains of dark red. He slipped his foot back in, and pursing his lips in deep concentration, retied the lace: crisscross, under and pull, crisscross, under and pull. He stood and arched his back, then walked across the field toward the school that lay at the end of the clearing. He chided himself for taking such a risk in exposing himself but quickly dismissed the thought. Something here demanded his presence.

  He walked into a classroom and stopped and stared. It was as if he had stepped into a strange dream—once lived and almost forgotten. It had been two years since he’d gone to school. Two years since he had been forced to leave his village. He was twelve years old now. Too old to be a little ka-boy. Too young to be haunted by such memories.

  He scanned the room. The desks were upturned and the benches lay on their sides, but the beginnings of a lesson were still visible on the blackboard. He took a piece of chalk from the ledge and drew a picture of a mud hut, adding a grass roof and an open door. Next, he drew a stick figure of a small ka-boy with his foot aimed at a soccer ball. After he returned the chalk to the ledge, he stood back and stared at his work. He tilted his head to one side, then the other, but the long thin line of his lips remained the same.

  Then he saw the blood, sprayed across the blackboard, dried and dark. The classroom faded and came back into focus. This time he saw a teacher standing in the doorway, blocking the way. He heard a voice deep inside his head.

  “Take your gun and your evil out of here!” the teacher demanded.

  Charlie peered past his brigade leader, a teenager who stood just a head taller than he did, through the doorway into the classroom full of students.

  “Our evil? And what evil could that be?” the teenage soldier replied. He walked into the classroom and aimed his gun at the teacher. “You are the one who is evil. We come to free our country. And you,” he said, shoving the gun into the man’s chest, “you dare to seek the protection of the Uganda People Defence Force? You dare to take the side of our government? Our enemy? Only a coward would do that!”

  The soldier pulled the trigger, and the teacher dropped to the ground. The children screamed.

  “Shut up!” the teenager yelled. “Shut up!” He marched into the room, knocking the desks and benches onto the floor “Out! Now!”

  The children ran out the door.

  Charlie blinked and the images faded. He took a book from the floor and opened its cover. He ran his fingers over its burnt edges and the words and symbols spread across the smudged pages. He read one word, then another. “If a boy has th . . .” He stopped and tried again. “Th-i-rr . . .” He tried the next word and the next, but the words were foreign to h
im; he couldn’t read them. The book slipped from his hands.

  He crossed the room and picked up a striped flag that lay ripped and discarded in the corner. Shaking the dust off, he stood on his tiptoes, took two tacks from the bulletin board, and pinned the flag to the wall. He ran his fingers over the silk, touching each of the colors while he remembered: black for the people, yellow for the sun, red for the blood of brotherhood that makes us one. He stepped back and stared. His face was hard, offering no emotion.

  “Bring them here!” a voice shouted across the schoolyard.

  Charlie looked at the window on the opposite side of the classroom. Large trees and bush surrounded this side of the school, offering cover, protection. He walked to the window and looked right, then left.

  A young soldier stepped out from the bush. “You got everyone in that room?”

  “Yes. They are gone,” Charlie said.

  “Good. I will patrol here. You bring up all the straggler.”

  Charlie turned and walked out the door.

  A big crowd of men, women, and children had massed in the schoolyard. Faint sobs and anguished cries were heard as fathers and mothers searched for their children.

  A general, three stars sewn on the epaulets of his uniform, stood on top of a jeep and lifted a megaphone to his mouth. He bellowed, “We have heard you think our gun are rusty. We have come to show you this is not true.” The man grinned. “But now you will learn to applaud the work of the Lord Resistance Army!”

  The air was filled with screams as the soldiers walked through the crowd, singling out the men, pulling their wives and children from their grasp, and forcing them to lie facedown in a row on the ground. Soon the older boys from the crowd were herded together and made to do the same. Sons searched for fathers; fathers lay still, not daring to move.

  The general yelled again. “That is not enough. Gather more!”

  The screams grew louder and louder as the soldiers pulled several women from the crowd and forced them to lie on the ground with the men and boys. A soldier dragged a woman, very young and very pregnant, across the field.

  “This is not the season for killing pregnant women,” the general said calmly into the megaphone. “Let her go.”

  The soldier released the woman. She collapsed to the ground and held her belly. Her eyes were wide. Her breaths came to her in short, quick gasps as tears streamed down her face.

  Charlie forced himself to walk toward the row of men and women and boys. His gun strap lay balanced over his shoulder, weighing him down. He spaced himself between two of his fellow soldiers and aimed his gun. He looked up at the general and waited for the signal.

  “Now look, you mother and sister. Do not cry, do not be coward, or you will join your husband and father, mother and daughter, son and brother.” The general stared down at the line of soldiers and nodded.

  A riot of bullets tore through the air.

  “Again!” the general shouted. “Again!”

  And then it was quiet. The blasts echoed across the field and fell silent on the dead bodies lying in a long, long row.

  Charlie hoisted his rifle over his shoulder and followed the troop into the bush. He closed his eyes and allowed the trees to surround him. But it was no use. The images of the corpses were engraved in his mind.

  The same voice bellowed over the megaphone: “Now, mother and sister, applaud the work of the LRA.”

  Faint clapping followed them into the bush.

  Charlie blinked and the classroom came into focus. He walked out the door and into the schoolyard. “No!” he moaned. The images, the sounds, and the smells could not be his. They belonged to someone else. Someone deranged. Someone evil.

  He stared at the scars on his wrists left by the ropes that had held him captive, that had dug deep and bit into his skin. He began to shake, and then he realized the truth. No, this boy who held the gun was me. This boy who obeyed the commander was me. This boy who killed those men and women was me. Oicho Charlie, son of Oicho Moses and Olarobo Margaret of the Acholi tribe. The same tribe of the vicious warlord Joseph Kony, who stole children from their parent and forced them to kill or be killed.

  He fell to the ground and sobbed.

  Chapter 2

  When the music changes, so does the dance.

  ~ African proverb

  Charlie raised his head from the ground and looked up across the field. The day was nearing its end; the sky surrounded the setting sun with a multitude of pinks, purples, and reds. A lone bird cawed, flew over the field, and nestled in a tree nearby.

  Charlie tried to push himself up from the ground. It was futile. His body would not listen. Every muscle and every nerve had locked into place, refusing to take orders from a mind filled with disbelief, disgust, and despair.

  Charlie took a deep breath, then let it escape in a heavy sigh. It was much too risky to stay out in the open—he would have to get back into the bush. He had been in the field too long. He pushed himself onto his knees and then to his feet. Stumbling, he took a few steps into the dense growth of the surrounding trees.

  Instantly, all knowledge he had learned in the bush with the LRA became second nature. Charlie crouched below the level of the scrub and peered into the forest ahead of him. The faint outline of a path, perhaps no longer in use, lay ahead. He became wishful; maybe it led to an abandoned hut, left by a family who had fled to a refugee camp long ago—a hut that offered some shelter and a place to rest.

  Charlie followed the path, paying careful attention to any signs that hinted at recent use: a broken branch, an upturned stone standing beside its empty hollow, or grasses bent in one direction, trodden under the feet of a passerby. He looked quickly from branch to ground and ground to branch, and expertly moved in a way that could not be heard by nearby ears, or detected by a soldier or hunter skilled in tracking prey.

  He walked a short distance down the path until he was a few feet from a clearing, then crouched on his hands and knees and stared into the open space. A charred hut, its roof bare, stood in the center, with an upturned grain house near its side. A couple of broken wooden chairs lay discarded on the ground.

  He stood and walked toward the hut and looked inside. A thin mattress, thrown across the room, leaned against the wall. A blanket lay at the other end of the hut, covered with a thin layer of dirt.

  Charlie drew in a quick breath, cocked his head, and listened. A faint rustle of branches and leaves sounded just outside the hut. He tensed. Any unusual noise, any stray movement, was a threat. Cautiously, he crept inside and leaned against the inner wall.

  He held his breath until he stood in absolute silence and waited. The rustling sound drew closer until it stopped just outside of the wall. He heard scratching on the clay ground and a soft kuuUU- kuuUU- KUUUK. He exhaled and smiled. A flurry of feathers and wings appeared as a chicken flew up into the hut and nestled into a large bowl placed on the top of the wall.

  Charlie laughed.

  “You are a beautiful girl, yes.” He gently stroked the bird’s warm feathers and listened to its soft clucks as it drew its head under its breast.

  “What have you got here just?” He reached into the bowl and pulled out an egg and smiled again. He broke the shell and gulped it down; its warm, soft liquid slid down his throat and settled into his stomach.

  He picked up the blanket, shook the dust from it, and wrapped it around his shoulders. Then he laid the mattress on the ground and looked out into the yard. He relaxed, feeling his body give up all its fears and trepidations.

  “Charlie! Come! The day has been filled with work and other busyness. It is time to stop. Come sit here beside your grandfather.”

  Charlie looked out the hut door as his kwaro patted the ground beside him.

  “Can you tell the Sesota story, Grandfather? Ojone? Please?”

  “But I told it to you last night,” the old man replied.

  “And the night before, and the night before that . . .” Charlie’s father chimed in as he sat acr
oss from Charlie. Charlie sat beside his grandfather and tucked his knees underneath his chin.

  “But it is a good story. And it is my birthday. I am now eight year, and I can do as I please. I will start.”

  “No, no. It is mine to tell. It is my honor as your kwaro. And no matter how old you are, I will always be older.” He cleared his throat. “Now listen. Once there was a beautiful village called Kalungu that sat beside the Great Lake.” Charlie’s grandfather smiled, revealing a somewhat toothless grin. “Now you close your eyes, and I will create the picture in your mind.”

  Charlie squeezed his eyes shut.

  “It was a peaceful place and the children were happy there. All the house were surrounded by many grove of banana tree, and the fruit tree were so laden with pawpaw and lemon and guava that all of their branch would bend down to the children upstretched arm, begging to be picked.

  “But it was not always like this for—”

  “A big snake called Sesota . . .” Charlie said, opening his eyes and looking up at his grandfather.

  “Lived on the hillside and came down every day to the village . . .” his grandfather continued.

  “And caught people and ate them up!” Charlie twisted his body like a snake and snapped his teeth shut with a mischievous grin.

  “And every day this happened . . .”

  “Until all the people of Kalungu ran away, leaving the village alone and empty.”

  Charlie jumped and scurried behind the hut, then peeked around the wall.

  His grandfather continued. “The king was not happy with this, so he asked all the chief if they knew anyone who would be brave enough to kill the great snake. The chief thought and thought and searched and searched for someone, but no one was brave enough to go to Kalungu and kill the great snake, Sesota—”