LITTLE WARRIOR

She would find him; he didn’t stop believing it for so much as a heartbeat, even when the fervent scratching of some unknown creature in the dark had set his heart to racing. In the midst of a situation that would cow most adults, his six year old mind was resolute; his mother would find him.
It had always been that way, for as long as he could remember.
‘Maxime,’ she would say. ‘If we ever become separated, if for whatever reason you cannot find me, just stay where you are and I will find you; will you do that for me?’
‘Yes mamma,’ he’d replied, more than happy to acquiesce, safe in the knowledge she would always protect him.
It had been that way that time in the market, when without warning the crowd had surged forward, intent on snapping up some rare commodity suddenly available. Ripping his hand from his mother’s the careless mass of people had driven a wedge between them. Even as a wall of bodies had closed around him, even as his view of the sky above him had narrowed as if he were trapped in a deep, dark hole, he’d remembered her words:
‘Stay where you are and I will find you.’
And find him she had, the tears of their shared relief coursing down their cheeks. Now, trapped for real, the memory of that day brought fresh tears to his gritty, light starved eyes, carving damp trails through the layer of dust that covered his face. How he wished for even the small glimpse of sky the crowd back then had afforded him.
‘Hey there little warrior, you’re safe now,’ she’d said. He knew, with every ounce of his innocent being, he would soon be hearing those words again.
“Little warrior,” that was her special name for him, ever since she had first told him about his great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather (“that’s seven greats, Maxime, she’d said, “You just count them.”). Kidnapped in Africa and sold into slavery, he too had been called Maxime, not by his parents, but by the plantation owner who had bought him.
So it was the present day Maxime, alone in the dark, torn in an instant from the life he had previously known, drew on those stories to sustain him. In his mind he was no longer a six year old boy trapped beneath the rubble of the only place he had called home; instead, he was a young warrior chained to a rack in the stinking bowels of the slave ship that had transported his ancestor to the Americas. The darkness of his prison became the blackness below decks; the empty silence surrounding him became the endless moaning of his fellow captives packed in the hold; the occasional protestation of settling masonry and timber above and around him became the constant creaking of a wooden vessel under full sail.
Just as the original Maxime had lived through his enslavement, eventually to win his freedom and a second new life in Haiti, the younger Maxime, the child named in his memory, was grimly determined to wait for the moment when he too would be free. His forefather never forgot for a moment that he was a warrior, all these years later his young relation was steadfast in his intent to live up to his legacy; his mamma would expect nothing less.
Somewhere above Maxime’s head something shifted, disturbed perhaps by the same animal he had heard earlier. Fresh dust drifted down onto his face, obscuring the freshly made tracks on his cheeks. For a moment panic caught at his young chest, but then he heard again those reassuring words:
‘Stay where you are and I will find you.’
In his young imagination the detritus falling on his cheek became the feather light kisses of his mamma as she put him to bed. Reaching out he took hold of a pipe sticking out of the debris beside him, a pipe no longer, rather the reassuring firmness of his mother’s comforting hand. Beneath his shoulder, the dirt smeared pillow of his crushed bed became the soft curve of her breast, while the snapped ceiling timber that lay across his chest mirrored instead the comforting tightness of her embrace. Thus cocooned and protected Maxime fell asleep, as only a child can.

‘Stay where you are and I will find you.’ Maxime woke with a start, momentary disorientation kick-starting his earlier sense of panic. He tried to sit up but the pressure of the timber pinning him down and the sudden sharp pain in his bruised ribs brought home to him the truth of his situation.
‘Stay where you are and I will find you.’ Had he dreamt he’d heard his mamma saying those words? No wait, there they were again, he was certain he was hearing her for real.
‘I’m here, mamma!’ he called. ‘I did what you told me, I stayed right where I was.’
In truth that had been through no choice on his part, but that distinction was, to him at least, completely irrelevant.
Six feet from where he lay he caught a sudden glimpse of daylight, wonderfully bright after the unending darkness. A voice, feint but reassuring, came immediately behind it.
‘Stay where you are, my little warrior, I’m right here, I’m going to find you!’
For his mother the six hours it took the rescue team to finally free him passed agonisingly slow, slower it seemed than the six days since the devastation wrought by the earthquake had first come between them. For his part Maxime bore this final delay in remarkably good spirits; just as he’d always known she would, his mother had found him.
‘Hey there little warrior, you’re safe now.’

COPYRIGHT D M PAMMENT 20th JANUARY 2010