Insects: Braga's Gold

by John Koloen

  47

  The sun was setting by the time the Americans had decided on a strategy. They agreed that Josias would act as their spokesman but that they would accompany him when he met with the miners. None of the Americans wanted to do his own intel, relying instead on what Josias had told them. He hadn’t seen everything, of course. And he didn’t expect to. No one sees everything.

  They pitched their tent in the clearing, next to a patch of twenty-foot palms. The ground was spongy and perfect for bedding down. Boyd felt bad that he couldn’t invite Josias into the tent, it being a tight fit for the three Americans. But the native Brazilian found a place to stretch a flyweight nylon hammock between two palmitos. The four shared a meal of freeze-dried stew.

  The night was preternaturally quiet, with only distant clicks and chirrups penetrating the tent walls. Even so, the Americans slept fitfully. Breakfast consisted of bitter coffee and snack bars. Boyd thought it best to get an early start, to meet with the miners before they started work. But as they approached the stream they could hear the swishing of water, which grew louder as they neared the miners’ camp. It was at this point that Cooper balked.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” he said, stopping in his tracks.

  Boyd glanced at Harden, as if expecting him to agree.

  “It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” Boyd said. “Besides, how are we gonna do our job if we don’t talk to them?”

  “I don’t speak Portuguese. What good will I be? For that matter, neither does Brett.”

  Boyd sighed. The only reason he could think of at the moment was a show of force, though it contained its own contradictions.

  “I think it will be better if there’s four of us.”

  Harden gave Boyd a skeptical look, his lips curling downward.

  “Why?”

  “Exactly,” Cooper said, before Boyd could respond. “I don’t see that four unarmed guys are any better than two unarmed guys. Or, for that matter, one guy. The rest of us could hang back, you know, not announce ourselves until we know the situation.”

  “What do you expect to happen?”

  “See, this has been the problem since we got here,” Harden complained. “I was told that I’d be armed, but after we got to Manaus they changed their minds. I wouldn’t have a problem if I had a gun, but I don’t, so I’m not even sure why I’m here.”

  “I’m glad you got that off your chest,” Boyd said. “But I didn’t have anything to do with it and we’re here, so there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “There’s no fallback,” Harden said. “If something goes wrong, just sayin’, then what do we do?”

  “It sounds like you guys think we’re walking into a trap. They don’t even know we’re here.”

  “How do we know that?” Harden said, sharply.

  Boyd puffed up his cheeks and exhaled, his head lowered, his mind racing.

  “You’re the one who told us about being kidnapped in the jungle,” Cooper said.

  “So, that’s it? You think we’re gonna be kidnapped?”

  “That’s not what he’s saying,” Harden said.

  “What I’m saying is that it would be prudent not to expose ourselves completely, not knowing how things will work out,” Cooper said.

  “Why didn’t you bring this up yesterday?”

  “I hadn’t thought it through. Now I have and I vote we—”

  Harden raised his hand.

  “I second it. And by the way, now that I'm thinking about it, why didn’t the company just send their own guys instead of us? I mean, I like the pay, the hotel and all that.”

  “Deniability,” Boyd said.

  “They’ll throw us under the bus if we screw up,” Cooper said.

  While they argued, Josias, who had been leading the way, was nowhere to be seen. He had agreed to Boyd’s plan to talk to the miners and though he was not sympathetic to men whom he viewed as the enemies of nature, he took his responsibility seriously. To him, nature was inseparable from the self, like an ancestor, and by knowing nature he knew himself within it. He did not try to impose his own thoughts on others, which is why he could tell them what he saw, what he knew, but he could not tell them what to do. In his own mind, everything had been settled the previous day and he was simply following the plan, assuming that everyone else would do the same.

  The argument, which had lasted only a moment, ended abruptly when Harden asked where the guide had gone.

  “I don’t like this one bit,” Cooper said anxiously.

  “Where’d he go?” Harden said.

  Boyd knew and felt he had little choice but to join him. It was his idea that all four of them meet with the miners.

  “You guys do whatever you want, OK,” Boyd said, his voice filled with frustration verging on anger. “I told him we’d do this together and that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  Cooper nodded, barely able to conceal a smile.

  “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll hang back, you know, in case something happens.”

  48

  Fernando Braga wasn’t sure what to make of the five-foot, two-inch indiano.

  “Are you looking for a job?” he asked in Portuguese.

  Josias shook his head. He didn’t like what he was seeing. True, men in his tribe mined gold, but not like the wildcatter Braga whose contempt for nature was evident wherever the tribesman looked.

  “Why are you here?” he demanded.

  Josias nodded in the direction from which he came. Boyd and Harden emerged from around the bend in the riverbed, which caused Braga to put his right hand on the grip of his holstered pistol.

  “Who are they?”

  “Americanos. They are here to collect insetos,” Josias said in Portuguese.

  Braga eyed the Americans suspiciously. Nearby crew had taken notice and had stopped working, watching with varying degrees of apprehension. Uninvited visitors were not welcome. They feared the men were from the government and that the operation would be shut down and they would have to go home with little to show for their efforts. None of them was prepared to go to jail.

  Cody Boyd reached out to shake hands with Braga, who ignored the gesture.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” he demanded in Portuguese.

  Boyd and Harden saw that Braga was armed, which made them uneasy, Harden nudging Boyd.

  “Maybe we should get outta here,” he whispered.

  Boyd ignored it, took out his phone and showed Braga a photo of Reptilus blaberus.

  “We are looking for this inseto,” he said.

  Braga took the phone and spat out “baratas” after viewing the photo.

  By now, several of the crew members had joined him, including Octavio Grimaldi the cook, who had learned English while working as a mariner. Braga handed the phone to the cook who held it up so that the crewmen could see it. One man stepped forward for a closer view.

  “I saw them,” he said in Portuguese, pointing in the direction of the sand pit where they’d buried their coworker.

  “He said he saw them,” Boyd whispered encouragingly to Harden, whose eyes darted about fearfully.

  “We should get out of here,” Harden whispered.

  “This is what we’re looking for,” Boyd said, haltingly in Portuguese.

  “Porque?” Braga asked.

  Stumped for the correct words, Boyd held out his hand to retrieve the phone, but the cook handed it to his boss.

  “O que você quer com isso?”

  Boyd tried to parse the sentence but Braga had spoken too quickly to recognize individual words.

  “He says, what do you want to do with your phone?” the cook said.

  Boyd smiled, relieved.

  “There’s an app that translates.”

  Grimaldi translated and Braga returned the phone but Boyd had turned his attention to the cook, to explain why they were there. The cook then briefed Braga about what the American had said, answered several questions from his boss who reacted b
y pulling on his untamed beard several times.

  “You’re not from the governo?”

  “No, we’re cientistas.”

  “Cientistas?” Braga said.

  “Yes,” Boyd nodded.

  “Como você encontrou este lugar?” Braga asked.

  “How did you find this place?” the cook translated.

  “The company I work for found it. We are here to collect specimens.”

  “That’s all that you want?”

  “Yes.”

  After ordering his men to return to work, Braga and Grimaldi stepped aside to talk. Meanwhile Boyd and Harden huddled, out of earshot of the cook.

  “We need to get outta here,” Harden whispered emphatically. “You see the guy has a gun.”

  “I know, but I think we’ll be okay. Having somebody who speaks English is a big plus.”

  “But who knows what they’re thinking?”

  Boyd sighed. He wondered whether Harden was the right guy for the job. He was big and strong but twitchy. He seemed to let his imagination run wild at the wrong times, such as now when they were trying to negotiate with the miners. Stepping forward, Boyd was about to speak when Braga nodded toward Harden before whispering something to the cook.

  “Where did you get the hat?” Grimaldi asked.

  Harden tensed. He’d worn the hat as a lark and was surprised to be singled out, self-consciously removing it, holding it behind his back like a child caught in the act of stealing cookies.

  “We found it,” Boyd said, matter-of-factly.

  “Where?”

  “Back over there,” Boyd said, pointing in the direction from which they’d come.

  “It looks like a hat that belonged to someone we know,” the cook said.

  The Americans exchanged knowing glances.

  “We found a body,” Boyd said guardedly.

  Braga and Grimaldi huddled, speaking in low tones but animatedly. Harden looked at Boyd as if he knew what the Brazilians were saying. He didn’t, but Josias was listening intently, ignored by the Brazilians as if he weren’t there. Harden’s anxiety peaked as the conversation dragged on and he handed the hat to Boyd as if ridding himself of something contagious.

  “Here, you take it,” he said.

  “It’s a little late for that,” Boyd said irritably, hoping that Braga would cooperate.

  49

  Between Boyd, Josias, Braga and the cook, they’d worked out an arrangement whereby the victim’s cousin would lead Boyd and his group to the site where Victor Machado’s body was found. Boyd paid Braga two hundred reals as compensation. Cooper had watched the day’s events from a distance, prepared to flee or go for help if things went badly. He’d become infected with Harden’s pessimism that morning, but seeing how Boyd was smiling he was apologetic as he emerged from his concealment to meet them as they returned to the tent.

  “So, how did it go?”

  “Fine,” Boyd said. “Piece of cake.”

  “One of them spoke English,” Harden said. “If it weren’t for that, I don’t know what would have happened. Our boss man don’t speak like a native.”

  Boyd stopped in his tracks.

  “I suppose you could do better.”

  Harden smiled and shook his head.

  “Just jivin’, man. You did good,” he said, patting Boyd on the shoulder, who put the hat on Harden’s head good-naturedly, drawing laughter from Harden and a puzzled look from Cooper.

  “You had to be there,” Boyd said.

  The trio’s mood had changed dramatically from earlier in the day as they shared a lunch of protein bars washed down with bottled water mixed with electrolyte powder. They were finally making progress toward their goal of obtaining specimens and Harden was already thinking about what they could do to avoid an arduous hike back to Jacareacanga.

  “I imagine the miners have a truck or something, don’t you think?” Harden asked.

  “Yeah? So what?” Cooper responded.

  “Maybe we could pay the guy to drive us to the airport. I mean, they didn’t carry all their equipment on their backs, right?”

  “We can ask,” Boyd said. “We need to find the bugs first.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt to ask, though, would it?”

  “Hey, now that I think about it, you can call in a chopper, can’t you? That’s why they gave you a sat phone, right?” Harden asked.

  “If we find the bugs,” Boyd cautioned. “It can’t hurt to have more than one way out of here.”

  The trio was sitting in a semicircle in front of their tent while Josias had wandered away, returning with several roundish seeds of the Piquiá tree. Offering one to Boyd, he motioned with his hands and mouth that it was edible.

  “Eat,” he said.

  Since the seed was covered with a hard rind, Boyd gave the guide a puzzled look, whereupon Josias took it back, split it open with his machete and held out the two pieces, revealing the yellow, fragrant fruit inside. Boyd scooped the pulp using his folding knife and passed it to Harden who passed it to Cooper who followed Boyd’s lead.

  “I think it’s an acquired taste,” Cooper said.

  Boyd finished the fruit after which Josias sat facing the three and finished the remaining fruit while they assembled the gear they would take into the forest, chief among which were several bulky, ventilated specimen containers designed to keep insects alive for several days. Boyd carried them in a daypack, along with gloves, trowel and sweep net with a telescoping handle. He hoped they would find a small nest or colony, but since the sighting had occurred several days in the past, he feared that the bugs had moved on.

  Cooper had studied Reptilus briefly as part of his former job at Biodynamism, but had no experience with them outside of the lab. This prompted many questions as they headed toward the miners’ camp, principal of which was how Reptilus managed to survive in a drought.

  Boyd knew from the year he’d spent at Biodynamism that Reptilus couldn’t go much longer than several days without food or water. He wished he’d seen the victim’s body. From the description he was given, it was not entirely consumed. He couldn’t imagine that anything would have interrupted their feast, so he hypothesized that he had been attacked by a scouting party and that the body had been reclaimed by his friends before the main colony could get to it. Though they were voracious when hungry, he’d seen in the lab that they often ignored food, such as live mice, following a meal, which told him that they didn’t kill for the sake of killing as some people believed.

  “So what do they do when there’s no water?” Cooper asked.

  “In the wild, I think they get most of their hydration from what they eat.”

  50

  Ramon Gaspar had mixed feelings about returning to the site of his cousin’s gruesome death. Like his cousin, he had little exposure to the rainforest, having grown up in Recife, and now feared it like a nightmare. This was not supposed to happen. They were supposed to be on the aventura of a lifetime, backpacking across their own country, accumulating experiences that they would never forget. It was Ramon who wanted to see actual indios and it was because of him that they ended up in Jacareacanga. But it was the bolder Victor who met with Fernando Braga and convinced Ramon that working as miners for a few weeks would restore their nearly empty wallets and maybe give themselves something to brag about to their friends back home.

  It didn’t take long for the cousins to become disillusioned by the conditions, the long work days and the costs. Braga hadn’t told them that he would deduct the cost of food from their pay. Other miners told them that it wasn’t a bad deal since the cook kept them well fed. The cousins misunderstood how shares of the profit were divvied up. They’d assumed that they’d receive their profits in two weeks, when it was explained to them that profits weren’t determined until the end of the mining season, which usually coincided with the first heavy rain. The rainy season was already underway with little to show for it and the miners were now worried that the approaching fire would drive them out be
fore they’d cleaned out the claim.

  By the end of the first month, the cousins had adjusted to the work. They worked hard and during off hours Victor tagged along with several miners on hunting trips in the nearby rainforest. After several hunts, Victor thought he had things figured out and tried to talk Ramon into accompanying him on his first solo hunt. Victor had seen how a miner returning with meat got special treatment from other miners and saw it as a way of boosting his status among the crew, who occasionally mocked him because of his age and naiveté. Ramon saw only the risks, not the potential rewards, and remained in camp until two days later he couldn’t help himself and, animated by his guilt, overcame his timidity only to find the realization of his worst fears.

  Although Braga agreed to let him lead the Americans into the rainforest for payment, they still had to convince Ramon, which involved a hundred reals and a promise to take him with them when they returned to Jacareacanga, though there probably wouldn’t be enough room for him if they left via helicopter.

  Having made the trek twice, Ramon led the Americans and Josias across the alternating strips of barren and forested landscape and into the unharvested rainforest, where the pace slowed. Once under the shade of the canopy, with limited visibility and with no clear landmarks, and no trail as such, he became less talkative and less certain. Doubts surfaced. Previously, the stench of the decomposing corpse and a shaft of light led him to his cousin’s body, but the enveloping smell was a combination of moisture, decay and smoke. Everything blended. The odors, the vegetation, the trees. It all looked and smelled the same to him.

  After backtracking twice, Boyd was losing confidence in their guide. It seemed to him they were going in circles. Their clothing was saturated with sweat and they were waving off swarms of insects with their hands.

  “Are we lost?” Cooper asked.

  “Ramon, estamos perdidos?” Boyd asked.

  The Brazilian was slow in responding as his brown eyes darted about, as if looking for a sign that would point them in the right direction.