With a final tug of the genitals, he turned and clanked off in a military manner. The Colonel and I were alone again.

“Well, time to go,” he announced redundantly, tapping the musette bag that held his treasure. “All our explorations are before us, freighted with promise, and perhaps a surprise or two.”

“You might even surprise God.”

“Nothing surprises God,” he said. “To suppose that such was the case would be to impugn God’s omniscience. No, the world begins again, not for Him but for us. I’ll miss you, my boy.”

I supposed he would, in his fashion, if I ever happened to cross his mind. And I would miss him; rather I would miss what he might have been, what I wanted him to be. But the reality of what we were, each to the other—that I wouldn’t miss. As fathers and sons went, we shared at best a fragile and unharmonious alliance; we were not made for each other.

He mounted the aluminum ladder, paused at the top rung, waved, and disappeared into the cabin. The plane quaked and fled down the runway. It rose, became a dot on the horizon, and was gone.

I stood there in a sudden grip of loneliness, wondering, Would I ever see him again? Probably not.

Valerie was immortalized a couple of days later. Her statue in the square stood next to Abdul’s, just as she, during the unveiling ceremony, stood at his side in a kind of makeshift winner’s circle.

The statue of course was forged from the ingredients Grady had come so far to identify. He stood to one side watching the fanfare, bitter with the realization that he still had no clue as to what they were and steaming with fury as Abdul thanked Valerie for serving the province so well. He called her a walking welcome wagon for Assama’s distinguished visitor from Israel. He was sure that Ish-Chayl was only the first of a grand confluence of VIPs in the near future. In appreciation of her service he presented her with a necklace of semiprecious beads pried from the saddle of a horse, and a bamboo cage of butterflies. The band struck up “You Are My Sunshine” and the crowd dispersed.

“I thought it was a generous gesture, the jeweled necklace,” Val said later that evening in our rat-infested snuggery.

“If he’s generous,” I said, “I’m Mother Teresa. Or,” I added, “if you’re making a joke, it’s nothing to laugh at.”

“Who’s making a joke?”

For a long moment she leveled an unblinking gaze on me. Finally I said, “You don’t dig it, do you?”

“Dig what?”

“The gifts. And that pukey music.”

“I thought it was all kind of touching.”

“Touching, my ass. He’s zeroed in on you.” I felt a sudden surge of fear, as though my words forged a threat beyond what existed before I said them.