HOUSE OF JAGUAR

by Mike Bond

  Murphy walked down to the river where stars rippled among the black grass stalks and the wide ebony water mirrored the pulse of the universe. It would not come back. Only pieces − a scrap of terror, lash of branches, bare foot torn and bloody, the pounding asphyxiation down inside the cenote, the hunger, snakes, the Mayan scorpion that became a Huey with his own dead copilot still belted in, a black widow nesting in his cratered skull.

  Had there been a feeling? After the first day, something balancing the pain? A waiting? A willingness to suffer? For what?

  Genetic. The ones without fear of death were selected out long ago, he thought. The longer we survive the stronger is the urge for life.

  “This is the body of Christ.” The priest’s voice was like the river. “The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

  After so many years, Murphy realized, it comes right back: the cold stone church floor against your kneecaps, wind sneaking like a cat under the door, stained windows patched with packing tape. Then door to door, the canvas bag of newspapers biting into your shoulder, snow like broken glass crunching underfoot, dawn turning purple over the black plains. But back then you thought God could take away your sins.

  Now you’re trying to bring yourself back inside. Like a reformed druggie teasing himself with the needle. A family man hungry for a hooker. Back inside the reason that has no meaning but the one you give it. But for you there’s no reason at all.

  The people gathered round the priest and he gave them each a chunk of tortilla. “The body of Christ,” he said.

  “El cuerpo de Cristo.” It was Erendria, the old woman, a great-grandmother whose men all were dead. Then Placido, who’d brought corn, who every evening gathered the children on the river bank to write Spanish words in the mud with pointed sticks. Then the children, ones who had sat beside Murphy in his pain and solitude, sung him scraps of song, told stories in Quiché, brought him limes and bits of melon saved out from their food. It seemed right to do it, silly as it was, and he waited in line behind the girl Conchita, thinking that even her name meant Little Immaculate Conception, she whose glossy black hair came up to his splinted arm; she bent and took her scrap of tortilla and moved aside, and the priest held up a tan chunk of tortilla and said el cuerpo de Cristo and he answered Amen, remembering amen means it is true.

  The piece of tortilla came down in the priest’s fingers and as he took it into his mouth he understood, and remembered that he’d understood before, that this is the body of Christ, that a chunk of corn flour in the skinny fingers of a priest becomes the son of God who gives himself to us so we can become a tiny bit more like him. Crossing himself he turned away, anxious to be alone.

  In the north was distant thunder. Rain tonight, Murphy thought. We’ll get wet, going downriver. But the thunder was familiar, wrong. “Choppers!” he screamed. “The Army! Soldiers!”

  They clattered down over the treetops and settled on the new-sown corn, black scorpions with long black M60D machine gun stingers, jet engines wailing, flares sizzling down on little parachutes out of the night. “Get away!” the priest screamed at him. “If they see us they’ll kill everyone!”

  Soldiers running along the bank. In the flarelight Epifanía’s fish rack tumbling. The priest shoved Murphy ahead of him, down to the Río and along its banks, boughs lashing their faces, the clatter of rotors and their huffing breath and the splash of their feet loud in the flare-bright night. They circled the village on the jungle edge. Another chopper roared over, frothing the river and battering down the mangroves. Under the glaring flares the soldiers circled, driving the people before them.

  9

  THREE CHOPPERS had landed; another circled. The soldiers forced everyone to the center by Manolo’s hut. A small slender officer was taking the people aside one by one and asking them something to which they all seemed to answer no. A soldier came out of Manolo’s hut holding up the old shotgun. The small officer took out his pistol; Manolo shook his head, pointed at the jungle. Two soldiers tied him to a tree. The officer stepped back among the huts and spoke with another, much taller, black, who leaned over to hear, cupping his hand over his ear against the choppers’ roar. Rotor wash knocked off his fatigue cap and he ran after it, came back banging it against his knee.

  Ofélia ran to Manolo and he shoved her away. The small officer was yelling questions at Manolo and smacking him with the pistol each time he answered. Ofélia clung to Manolo’s leg; the officer bent and spoke to her, patted her head, motioned her back. “Even if they kill him,” the priest said to Murphy, “do nothing.”

  The officer pointed at Placido and the soldiers tied him beside Manolo. Consuela knelt before the officer, her hands clasped, speaking up to him. “They'll shoot these two,” Father Miguel said. “You must do nothing, or they'll kill them all.”

  There were forty soldiers, maybe, plus the chopper still circling, and no way to crawl closer without being seen. Guns snapped; Manolo and Placido jerked back against the tree and slumped, Manolo’s heels digging the dirt as if still trying to escape death. Flames climbed the side of Manolo’s hut.

  Sonora shoved Jesús through the circle of soldiers; they ran after her and knocked her down, two holding her wrists and two her ankles apart as another unclasped his belt and fell on top of her, keeping his face above her snapping teeth till another thumped her with his rifle and she lay still. Jesús ran back at them; they knocked him to the ground and tossed him over the bank, his body slapping down into the shallows. Two soldiers cut Manolo and Placido from the tree and threw them into the burning hut; laughing, one wiped bloody hands on the other’s back. The man on top of Sonora stood buckling his trousers and another replaced him.

  “Stay here!” the priest whispered. He darted along the bank past Epifanía’s fish racks, snatched up Jesús and ran back. “Take him downriver to the first rocks and hide him in the mangroves!” Whimpering, the boy tried to squirm free. “God keeps you!” the priest said. “Go!”

  Murphy carried Jesús along the river in the shadow of the bank, then waist-deep around the mangrove roots, searchlights skipping over the water. A rifle chattered and he thrust the boy under; nothing hit near them. Where Conchita had been washing clothes he shoved the boy into a crevice in the rocks. “Stay here!” He ran back upriver to the edge of the village.

  He could not see the priest. Soldiers were pulling toward a hut but she broke free and sprinted across the dead corn toward the trees, her hair sailing out behind her, the stubble spurting with bullets as the flying chopper closed in. She sprawled but leaped up again, scrambled back toward the village, the chopper tilting to fire straight down but she zigzagged again for the jungle, a chain of bullets racing after her. As she reached the first trees they hammered her down, her limbs tumbling, her red cape windblown in the chopper’s wake. Guns thundered, the people screaming; Murphy ran across the cornfield, smashed into a soldier and grabbed his gun but the gun wouldn’t fire and he bayoneted the man in the groin then the belly, lunged at another, tripping him with the bayonet then jabbing it into his throat, but it stuck in his vertebrae and he couldn’t pull it out; an M60 brayed, its roar smashing his ears; he grabbed the second soldier’s rifle and fired at the M60; bullets hit beside him, shuddering the earth and spinning the bayoneted soldier. Soldiers were beating someone with rifles, forcing him into a chopper; Murphy saw it was the priest and ran after them. A white light tore into his skull and the ground came up and smacked his face but he rolled up and sprinted for the chopper, soldiers yelling and tackling him; the chopper took off, its lights caught him as he dashed through bright humming whistling bullets toward the village where Consuela crawled sideways dragging pink intestines, Ofélia’s bludgeoned body lay in the flames, her hair sizzling, Erendría sat with her broken head clasped in both hands, Epifanía stumbled in circles, wailing. With the empty rifle he clubbed down a soldier, grabbed Epifanía and ran for the jungle, bullets riddling branches, splintering holes through black-white trees; he tr
ipped light-blinded over vines, bodies, stones, dove into the river and swam out beyond the lights, holding Epifanía in the crook of his broken arm.

  He reached the rocks. “Jesús!” he whispered; there was no answer. Epifanía clung to him. “Make them stop!” she screamed. “Make them stop!”

  Rifle staccato erupted in the village, faded into the snapping crackling flames. Another chopper took off, the hum of its rotors deepening as the pilot changed their pitch. “Jesús!” Murphy whispered.

  The fireglow above the trees made the river darker. He hid the girl in the rocks, swam downriver, called, went further, called again. He went ashore and ran back to the rocks, trying not to slosh. As he reached the rocks soldiers came wading downriver, their lights flashing. He ran up the bank; someone leaped, knocking him down, pummeling fists, “Jesús!” Murphy hissed. “It’s me!”

  He led Epifanía and Jesús back through the mangroves, his shins and ankles banging on their roots, the mud underfoot cold, mushy, and tangled with rootlets. Epifanía bumped into Murphy and pushed ahead, moving faster than he through the darkness, waiting for him and Jesús where the mangroves thinned and they scrambled through saplings where he could see nothing, not even the branches before his face, tried to stand but other branches held him down, their leaves rasping as he forced them aside.

  A flashlight glinted off the trees, neared then died. Murphy forced the children under a fallen trunk. A stick snapped against his leg; he reached for it and felt a snake’s tail, rattles, the snake’s head pinned under his knee.

  “What’s that?” a voice said.

  “It’s you, pissing your pants,” another snickered, hoarser.

  Murphy pushed his knee down harder on the snake’s head. “Ain’t nothing here,” the first voice said.

  “That’s why we're here.” A match rasped and flared.

  “Disgusting,” said the first voice.

  “More decorations for the capitán.”

  Murphy felt left-handed down the snake’s writhing body to its tail and snapped the rattles. “Sickens me,” the first repeated. There was the smell of marijuana smoke, a sigh, the spatter of urine. Murphy slid his hand up the snake to its neck. Beyond the downed trunk a cigarette glimmered in a cupped hand, disclosing a sloped, big-nosed face.

  Murphy gripped the snake’s neck behind the wing-shaped bones of its skull and twisted. “What is that?” the hoarse one said. The flashlight clicked on, its beam darting under the downed tree, boots crunching nearer. Epifanía tensed. Murphy tossed the snake over the trunk. “Aiee, serpiente!” yelled the hoarse one. Murphy pushed the children further along the trunk.

  “Who’s that?” someone said, in front of them.

  “Snake,” repeated the hoarse one. “I've got him.”

  Murphy led the children from the downed tree, behind them the soldiers’ laughter and the thump of boots stomping the snake. Tendrils and vines dragged at the children’s clothes; twigs and dead leaves rattled as small animals fled through the scrub. “That you, Mico?” a new voice said.

  “I'm here,” a gravelly one answered.

  “Then what the hell’s that?”

  Murphy eased forward one foot, rustling a twig. A leaf snapped. He raised the foot, bumped a liana and sidestepped it. A tree was there; he leaned back and moved further right. Epifanía’s hair caught on a thorn bush; the leaves scratched as she tried to free it. Murphy reached behind her and, holding the thorns, pulled her hair away. “You're going the wrong way, Mico,” the gravelly voice continued.

  “I’m over here, asshole! That’s snakes you're hearing. Shine your light on them!”

  Light shimmered through walls of vines, stems, trunks, and leaves, did not touch them. The gravelly voice and the one called Mico moved past. Murphy and Jesús followed the girl in a wide circle behind the village and upriver. Another chopper rose from the village and fluttered away, its throb fading. From time to time rifles fired like lone firecrackers long after a celebration has ended. The blind girl moved steadily, as if she could see through the jungle night, Jesús behind her, then Murphy with one hand held before his eyes to ward off branches.

  10

  EACH TIME THE HUEY banked the priest’s blood ran in streaks across the rattling deck; Lyman tried not to step in it. The scent up out of the jungle was like orchids, sharper than the jet kero vapor from the leaking fuel line or the charred cordite of the M60D.

  The priest lay with his cheekbone crushed, his nose ripped open and bent to one side. His collarbone looked broken, too, one arm dislocated at the elbow and shoulder. The wrist was bent, too, clearly broken. Lucky for him, Lyman thought, that I was there to save him.

  With his boot Vodega poked the priest’s broken mouth. The priest pulled back his head; Vodega kicked him.

  “Let it be,” Lyman said.

  In the weird downcast shadows of the crew light Vodega’s muddy, bloody smile seemed painted on, a mask. His boot squelched into the priest’s face.

  “Come on, Angelo, let him be.”

  “It’s between him and me,” Vodega said in English. “He wants it − reliving the passion of our Lord...”

  Lyman spat out the cargo door, the wind snatching it. The guy who’d run across the field, back there, what if he wasn’t a guerrillero like these goons think? What if he’s the American, the one who killed Gallagher? And we let him get away?

  The priest will know. Once we get him in the confessional the priest will want to tell us. And these goons were going to kill him.

  He leaned along the safety strap to the M60D and slipped his hands into its grips. They felt good and tight against his palms, his fingers strong around them. He pointed down and squeezed a burst at the river, the muzzle leaping, red tracers diving fast into the jungle. He lowered the muzzle more and fired again, digging a row of black geysers up the moonlit water. “Don’t,” the door gunner said. “Bullets are for people.”

  EPIFANIA LED THEM back to the Río then upriver in the shallows. A low moon bled across the water then fell behind the hills. Birds twittered, began to chant. The river brightened from mercury to silver as the stars died.

  Over the din of monkeys, birds, and insects there came no sound of choppers. Jesús led now, Murphy last. An alligator slapped its tail on the bank and dived past him, clawing his thigh. The far shore took form out of the darkness, till every leaning bough and tall crown stood clear above its jade reflection.

  Over their splashing footfalls he listened for choppers. If the soldiers had come for you then you caused it, he told himself. Or if they saw you. But they didn’t see you till after they started shooting. What if you’d just gone forward, surrendered? Would they have killed them then? But maybe they came for the priest, and it wasn’t your fault. Except the priest came to take you downriver.

  If you’d gone out to them right away, maybe they wouldn’t have killed everyone. Except the priest told you not to. You figured he knew more than you so you did what he said. Maybe he was just covering for you. But you took him at his word.

  Mist was rising off the river like smoke from flowing lava. The treetops of the far shore floated on a band of white, then were gone.

  No matter what, they were looking for you. That’s why they trashed everyone. So it’s you.

  An eagle whistled, far and faint behind them. The children stopped, spun round, Epifanía holding up her hand.

  It came again, up the dark channel of mist. Jesús tilted back his head and screeched, the high bitter cry of an eagle, and the other answered.

  “He’s coming,” Epifanía said. “He hears you.”

  It was a dugout with an old man in the stern who jabbed his pole into the mud to stop. He spoke in Kekchi to the children and they answered simply, without emotion.

  “He’ll take us upriver,” Jesús said. Murphy held the gunnel for the children to climb in. “Tell him I’m going back.”

  Jesús told the old man and he shook his head, clamped a hand round Murphy’
s wrist. “He’s been to the village,” Jesús said to Murphy. “Everyone’s dead.”

  “Except the priest,” Murphy said. “Tell him they took the priest.”

  Jesús told the old man, who did not answer, steadying the dugout with his pole while Murphy climbed in and sat in the bow. The old man backed the dugout from shore and turned upriver, poling along the shallows.

  Mist rose around them. The mangroves along the near shore faded. The air was thick and white. Water rippled past the hull, up and down the old man’s pole. The canoe’s prow grew hazy, vanished, the thwart and Murphy’s hand atop it indistinct.

  “Epifanía?” he said.

  “Sí?”

  “What did the little soldier ask everyone, at the start?”

  “He was asking if they had seen you. They all said no.”

  DONA ELENA VILLALOBOS snuggled down into her warm blanket, the hammock swaying gently. She raised her feet to swing the bottom of her tarp back under the blanket. The Galil lay beside her, its clip facing away, its barrel warm from her body.

  Red sun streaked through the high, vaulting boughs. A drop of dew spiraled down layered beams of sunlight and hit her nose, spattering on her lip. She licked it, rubbed her nose against the blanket. How lovely to lie for a moment warm and peaceful, in the first magnificence of day.

  11

  BEYOND THE PROW a dark line cut the mist. The water turned pewter, molten; the dark line was the shore, tangled mangroves with sun bronzing their leaves. The sky turned blue; sun beat on the water. The old man poled the dugout up a narrow creek, leaves lashing their faces. When they could go no further he tied up to a root, spoke to the children.