Insects: Braga's Gold

by John Koloen

  But it wasn’t as if they were driving down a road. Weaving between trees, the guide drove as if following the meandering tributary of a river that only he could see. Zig-zagging, cutting across heavily vegetated terrain, through sand, the driver seemingly working his way from memory, Cooper mentioned that they would never be able to find their way back to Jacareacanga on their own.

  Harden stared at his useless GPS, having given up on finding a signal through the dense canopy.

  “Do you think he knows where we’re going?” he said.

  “I assume so,” Boyd said.

  “You know what they say about assume. I mean, he doesn’t have a map or anything.”

  Josias had a map in his head and wasn’t thinking about where they were going as much as he was about the beating the ATV was taking, sometimes staring at the left wheel as he negotiated his way around obstructions. He wasn’t concerned for himself but for the ATV, which he imbued with a spirituality and identity as if it were a pet bird. He did not think of it as a possession any more than he could think of himself possessing a tree. Like a tree, which provided medicines, the ATV provided currency so that his family could purchase cell phones and other items.

  The conversation ended abruptly when the steering wheel was twisted violently out of the guide’s hands, the left front dipping suddenly, as if the wheel had come off. Had they been going faster, his passengers might have been thrown out of the vehicle, though Harden reacted as if the driver had done it on purpose.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he shouted from the back seat. But the tribesman had already left his seat to inspect the wheel. The three followed.

  “What the fuck?” Harden said to his companions.

  Boyd put his hand on Harden’s shoulder while Cooper looked on anxiously.

  “Take it easy,” Boyd said. “No need to shout.”

  While the Americans huddled behind him, Josias got on his hands and knees to inspect the left front wheel. The shock had broken off and the wheel had taken a beating. The Munduruku tribesman rose and shrugged as Boyd approached.

  “Something wrong?”

  Josias gave him an uncertain look.

  “Something wrong?” he repeated.

  Josias shrugged and then patted the front cowling.

  Boyd saw the problem instantly.

  “Can you fix it?” he asked.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You can fix it?”

  The driver shook his head. He did not seem to be disappointed or upset, the opposite of the reaction from Cooper and Harden when Boyd pointed out the broken shock. From the ensuing conversation, the trio learned that he had no tools nor parts to make a repair, admitting freely that he had left them at the airport to make room for their gear.

  “What the fuck,” Harden exclaimed. Josias knew what the word meant and shook his head and watched as the tall American, his left hand pinching his lower lip, glared at the offending wheel as if expecting the shock absorber to repair itself. When that didn’t work, he kicked the wheel.

  “What are you doing?” Boyd asked. “That’s not gonna help.”

  The tribesman patted the cowling again, as if offering comfort.

  “So, are we stuck or what?” Cooper asked.

  “Maybe we can drive real slow,” Harden suggested.

  The answer came from the driver, who reached under the front seat to pull out a small backpack.

  “What’s he doing?” Cooper asked.

  Boyd watched the short, dark-skinned man as he removed his T-shirt, revealing a geometric pattern in black paint covering most of his torso.

  “I think we’re gonna walk the rest of the way.”

  44

  It didn’t take long for their backpacks to become heavy. They’d prepared for a ride, not a hike, and it showed in the number of times they’d stopped to reconfigure their packs to accommodate the tent, specimen containers and the plastic water bottles which they’d expected to grab when they needed a drink but hadn’t planned on carrying on their backs. It wasn’t that they weren’t physically up to the challenge. All three were in excellent physical condition and could manage the fifty-plus pounds, but their shared vision for the mission wasn’t working out. None of them expected to hike for miles. None of them was prepared for the heat and humidity, the smell of smoke somewhere in the distance, not even Boyd, who was familiar with the rainforest.

  “Even if we find what we’re looking for today,” Harden griped, “we still have to hike back to the ATV and then what? We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

  “I’d just as soon take it one day at a time,” Boyd said, as the Americans walked in a tight group, struggling to keep up with their guide, though he did not seem to be in a hurry. By early afternoon, it was obvious that they were marching toward a forest fire; the smell of burning wood was pervasive. Smoke billowed in the distance but they couldn’t see it through the canopy.

  “It’s a long way off,” Boyd said encouragingly.

  “But it’s headed our way, right?” Harden asked.

  “You’ve read about the deforestation that goes on down here?” Boyd asked.

  “Yeah, sorta.”

  “Well, this is what they do. We’ll be okay. With any luck, we’ll find the specimens tomorrow and we’ll be on our way.”

  Acquiescing to the heat and humidity, their shirts soaked with sweat, the weight of their backpacks seemingly increasing with every step requiring a constant shifting of straps to alleviate sore shoulders and necks, the Americans continued the trek in silence, attention narrowly focused on watching their feet so they did not trip over the vines and roots that covered the forest floor like cobwebs.

  For his part, Josias never allowed himself to be out of sight of his clients. He’d lived his entire life in or near Jacareacanga, had spent countless days exploring the vast spaces of the Tapajós Basin, and walked through the bush as if it were home. Steeped in Mundukuru mythology as a youth, his sense of time focused on the present, the past and the future connected seamlessly but with no role to play, unlike the Americans whose lives seemed aimed at an anticipated future. All that Cooper wanted to talk about was where they would be at the end of the day, while Boyd had his eyes set on filling the specimen containers and Harden warily eyed his surroundings as if expecting at any moment to be attacked by headhunters.

  “I wish we had a gun,” Harden said as they reached an area where the forest had been cleared. For the first time they could glimpse the smoke, which stretched for miles like a giant grey and yellow curtain. All that remained around them were stumps and the remnants of huge, cone-shaped ash piles. Leaving the canopy behind, Harden’s GPS started laying down a record of their travels as they followed Josias into the eerily quiet, barren landscape. They marched several miles through alternating deforested and forested strips before coming upon a band of Babussu, palmitos and stunted possumwood, also known as the dynamite tree, and thick undergrowth, beyond which lay a wide, dry riverbed fronting a rocky, sheer hillside that extended for as far as they could see. Harden studied his GPS.

  “We’re just about there, according to this,” he said, handing his device to Boyd.

  They were near the coordinates where Biodynamism’s researchers believed they would find a colony of Reptilus blaberus, Boyd’s quarter-million-dollar bug. More of a treasure hunter now than a scientist, he smiled and nodded.

  “We’re almost there,” he said approvingly, returning the GPS to Harden.

  It had taken most of the day to get to this point and the three were worn out, dropping their packs as soon as they caught up with their guide, whose attention was directed downstream.

  “What’s he looking at?” Harden asked, as he stretched and massaged his shoulders.

  Cooper stepped in front of Josias to get a better look. The guide immediately extended his arm in front of the taller American’s waist.

  “Hey.”

  Josias put a finger to his lips.

  “What’s going on?�
� Cooper asked, looking at Boyd.

  “What do you see?” Boyd said, sounding out the words uncertainly in Portuguese.

  The guide pointed to his ears.

  “What does that mean?” Harden asked.

  “He hears something.”

  “I can’t hear a thing except the damn birds and monkeys,” Cooper fretted. “Can you?”

  Boyd hushed him and shook his head, watching the guide closely, who tilted his head behind him and stepped back several yards. The Americans gathered around him.

  “I hear men,” the guide said, nodding in the direction of the riverbed.

  The four stood in silence for a moment, listening. The guide looked at the Americans expectantly. Whatever he heard, they could not.

  “This is ridiculous,” Harden said, stepping away from the others. “I don’t hear a thing.”

  As if to contradict him, an explosion erupted from one of the possumwood trees, startling the Americans. Quickly, Josias ushered them away from the nearest tree, and several additional explosions occurred in quick succession, with small pieces of the tree’s seed pods flying about at high speeds.

  “What the fuck?” Harden exclaimed, looking at Boyd, who asked Josias, who smiled knowingly.

  “The tree spits seeds,” the guide said to Boyd.

  “Really?” Cooper said.

  “Christ. I thought someone was shooting at us,” Harden said. “Maybe we shouldn’t be standing around here.”

  “I vote we get a move on,” Cooper agreed, raising his hand. “We sure as hell can’t pitch a tent here, not with these exploding seeds or whatever they are.”

  More concerned about exploding seed pods than men they couldn’t hear or see, they emerged from the tree line in single file and followed the riverbed for several hundred yards, during which it became obvious what the tribesman had heard. The sound of metal on stone and a noise like a waterfall filled the air from beyond a bend. They stopped in their tracks, Cooper and Harden looking at Boyd for instructions.

  “We should think about this,” Cooper said cautiously.

  45

  Standing in the open wasn’t a good idea, and they all realized it at the same time. They were exposed and vulnerable. They needed a strategy and that meant they had to talk, which led them to retreat behind the band of palms and onto the edge of a wide strip of wasteland that had once been rainforest. They hadn’t expected company. The plan had been to collect specimens once they reached the site and then hightail it back to Manaus.

  “I knew we should have choppered in,” Harden groused.

  “We couldn’t, remember?” Cooper said. “We didn’t know exactly where we’re gonna find the bugs. So we needed ground transportation.”

  “Yeah, a lot of good it’s doing us.”

  Cooper looked at Boyd, who rolled his eyes slightly.

  “I saw that,” Harden said, sharply.

  “Take it easy,” Boyd said.

  “I don’t like it one bit,” Harden said. “I’ve read stuff about miners.”

  “You know for a fact they are?” Cooper asked, challengingly.

  “That’s probably what they are,” Boyd said. “Let me put it this way, it sounds like it.”

  “Maybe we could get our guide to talk to them, you know, he probably speaks their language,” Cooper said.

  “That’s a great idea,” Harden said quickly. “What do you think, Cody?”

  Boyd hesitated. It was something that Carolyn had said about how easy it was to take advantage of people and how she hoped he didn’t do it in his work as an associate producer. Of course, his job was to exploit people. And because of her, he had come to feel guilty about his career path and to some extent ended up chasing Reptilus.

  “We can ask him.”

  While the Americans talked, Josias explored, watched, listened and sniffed the air, detecting decay amid the pervasive smell of smoke. Something nearby had died recently, a not uncommon odor in the rainforest. The source was somewhere among the trees.

  Boyd noticed the odor as he approached the guide. He wasn’t thinking about the insect he was hunting, but out of curiosity followed his nose, with Josias in the lead. Hesitant to get within firing range of the trees, Boyd waited for assurance from his guide, who stood alongside one of the trees, its bark festooned with pointed spikes resembling oversized candy kisses.

  The trees formed a barrier between the lower-lying, sandy riverbed and a broad, formerly forested terrace that had largely been denuded. Somehow a few of the possumwood were spared, though Boyd wasn’t thinking about trees at the time. The stench jogged his memory and brought him back to Amazonas State where he and his mentor Howard Duncan discovered the remains of a trapper who had been devoured by the reptilian insects.

  As soon as Josias realized what Boyd was looking for, he pointed out other carcasses, mostly rodents, a monkey and squirrels hidden among the vines and ferns. Without going very far or looking very hard, they’d found a dozen carcasses. It was something of a game for Josias, who kept pointing out remains that Boyd had overlooked. It was a killing field similar to what Boyd had seen in the past. And then it stopped being a game. Alongside the rotting remnants of a fallen palm, the tribesman found a mostly disarticulated human skeleton, which caused him to back away nervously, shaking his head as Boyd approached. The guide watched as Boyd kneeled alongside the putrefying corpse, lifting a bony hand with a stick for a closer look. Tiny scratches on the periosteum of several phalanges told him that Reptilus blaberus had been there though, based on bite marks on exposed bones, he was certain that scavengers in search of a meal had consumed most of the remains.

  Curious about where Boyd and Josias had gone, Hunter and Cooper followed, arriving as their leader backed away from the body.

  “It stinks around here,” Harden said, wrinkling his nose.

  Cooper pointed at the body. Harden stared for a moment as if he didn’t immediately recognize what he was seeing.

  “Jesus.”

  Josias looked up at the Americans, shook his head and moved farther away from the remains. A scientist himself, Cooper squatted to get a closer look at a femur.

  “So, what do you think?” he asked.

  “Definitely Reptilus,” Boyd said, who was standing behind Cooper.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Look closely. You see those scratch marks on the fingers? That’s Reptilus.”

  “So they’re here?”

  “Definitely. At least they were. A scouting party, I think.”

  As the Americans emerged into the open, discussing what they’d seen and what it meant, Josias followed, handing to Boyd a faded and well-worn yellow cap with the emblem of the Brazilian National Soccer Team on the front.

  “I guess he was a soccer fan,” Harden quipped.

  46

  Josias ventured far enough to be out of sight of the Americans and, fed by his own curiosity, found a place about a quarter-mile downstream where he could observe the miners. Concealed on a modestly elevated, wooded terrace that had been cut by a flash flood in the distant past, he watched the miners wash the opposite bank with a hose, which rose in a near vertical wall upwards of sixty feet where it plateaued. The miners had dammed a small stream that otherwise would have emptied into the riverbed to form a shallow pond where an ancient diesel generator drove an electric pump that fed the hose.

  The miners had set up camp downstream of the pond on a sandbar between the two banks. Josias recognized several of them as being from Jacareacanga, though not from his tribe, as well as Fernando Braga. He was troubled by what he saw, the wanton destruction of nature, which was shared by everyone and, according to his tribal beliefs, belonged to no one. But this was a tiny operation. The men worked primitive sluices to separate the gold from the washed-out sand and mud, unlike the major excavations on the Tapajós where the Brazilian government was building a string of hydroelectric dams.

  “Here he comes,” Cooper said.

  “Ah, good,” Harden said. “I thou
ght for a moment there he abandoned us.”

  “Do you ever have anything good to say about anybody?” Cooper asked.

  “What can I say? I have a suspicious nature,” Harden said, smiling. “It comes in handy once in a while.”

  Boyd looked at Harden crossly.

  “Enough of that,” he said. “He understands English, you know. Besides, we need him more than he needs us.”

  “He doesn’t look happy,” Cooper said as Josias rejoined the group.

  “What did you see?” Boyd asked.

  Josias squatted and drew a diagram in the sandy earth showing the pond and the camp, stones representing the structures.

  “What is that?” Harden asked, pointing at the stones, after Josias had finished.

  “The camp.”

  “Tents, right?” Boyd said.

  The guide nodded and rose.

  “They are washing away the land,” he said.

  “Do you know them?”

  The tribesman shook his head.

  “Are they armed?” Harden asked.

  Josias looked at Boyd, perplexed. Boyd chuckled.

  “He’s a little too literal for that,” Boyd said. “Do they have guns?”

  The guide shrugged.

  “What does that mean?” Harden asked.

  “I guess he doesn’t know,” Boyd said.

  “Well, that would be important, don’t you think?”

  “Can you just turn it off for a minute?” Cooper said. “Sheesh, everything is a crisis to you.”

  Harden glared at Cooper but said nothing. Then he nudged Boyd.

  “Are you going to ask him? You know, about what we talked about.”

  Boyd felt awkward and hesitated. Harden jumped in.

  “Can you ask them if we can, you know, talk to them?”

  Josias looked at Boyd and shrugged.

  “I don’t think he understands what you’re asking.”

  “Can you talk to them?” Boyd asked.

  “Sim,” the guide said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Yes. He said yes.”