Insects: Braga's Gold

by John Koloen

  “What is that?” he asked as if for the third or fourth time.

  “What’s what?”

  “Up there,” he pointed with his head.

  Several hundred feet away, the men couldn’t make out the details. They guessed at what they thought they saw. Frightened animals were descending into the mining site, fleeing the approaching flames.

  “That’s what we should be doing,” Harden said, as they watched, all of them standing, mesmerized by the scene, guessing at identifying the species as they tumbled down the slope, scurrying across the riverbed in search of safety.

  “I thought I saw a possum,” Cooper said.

  “I think it was some kind of rat,” Boyd said.

  “I think I saw a snake,” Harden said.

  This sent a chill through the group. Suddenly, they were nervously staring at their feet. It took only seconds for the exodus of the animals to mutate from a curiosity to a threat.

  “I wish we had a flashlight,” Boyd said.

  “I wish we were back home,” Harden said.

  “They’re not interested in us,” Duncan said, reassuringly. “They’re just trying to get away.”

  “What if we get in their way?” Harden said agitatedly. “They’re not that far away. They could be coming down straight at us. We really need to do something. We can’t just sit here like this.”

  Nobody disagreed. Although the flow of fleeing animals was intermittent, and all of the larger creatures would have already taken flight, Duncan realized nothing he could say about snakes would be helpful. He wasn’t a herpetologist. Even in daylight he couldn’t identify one species from another. It was just standard operating procedure for him to do what he could, say what he could, to keep people from submitting to fear. But remaining calm was a hard thing to do when your hands were tied behind your back.

  86

  The miners had noticed animals tumbling down the slope in the daytime. There weren’t many and the combination of the high-pressure hose and banging of hammers and the noise of men working kept them from intruding on the work site. They were focused on the vein that filled their boss’s jars with gold, sluicing with the intensity that only greed could generate. They were counting their profits as they labored, their conversations giddy with the promise of success.

  Grimaldi was of a different mindset. As cook he would be paid no matter the outcome. He wasn’t a miner and wasn’t infected by fantasies of instant wealth. He’d seen some of the animals crossing the riverbed and with a cook’s eye considered whether any of them would make a meal, but they were all small, fast-moving, darting things that even if he could capture or kill them would turn out to be bony and useless. There was no doubt what the animals were doing. Everyone was aware of the fire and they knew that eventually they would be fleeing as well, the miners hoping only that they would have one more day to clean out the vein since that would be pure profit for all of them, assuming escape was simply a matter of climbing aboard the truck and driving away.

  Later in the day, after Braga had shown him the gold-filled jar and they’d had their conversation about the truck and, reassured that there would be a place for him if not all of the others and that the prisoners would not be harmed, and everyone was fed, Grimaldi sipped cachaça, sitting in his folding chair in front of his shack, relaxing as if the cares of the world had been lifted. Given the specious reasoning from Braga, he felt it was wrong to continue to hold the Americans. They were what they said they were and presented no threat. But he knew better than to argue with the boss. Perhaps it was the gold that had softened Braga and that was why he confided in the cook about releasing the captives. Perhaps it was his intention all along. It was hard to tell. As the only person to speak directly with the Americans, Grimaldi couldn’t be as impersonal. They were human. They were sincere. All they wanted was to finish their work and leave. Just like the miners. Perhaps if Braga could speak English the Americans would already be on their way. But they were foreigners and Braga treated them accordingly.

  The cachaça put him in a reflective, generous mood. The fire’s glow gave the shadows definition without detail. It was enough light to walk a familiar path but not enough to reach the ground, reflecting off the tallest trees on the opposite side. It would have been dreamy if not for the smoke. He could see the prisoners standing in the darkness of the blue canopy. What were they doing?

  After returning his bottle to its cubby, he approached the men with a bucket of water and ladle. It was the least he could do, he thought. They watched as he neared.

  “I thought you might want a drink,” he said genially, setting the bucket in the sand and filling the ladle.

  “Who wants a drink?”

  The cook served the men and offered encouraging words.

  “It won’t be long now,” he told them. “Maybe tomorrow you’ll be free.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re still tying us up.” Harden said.

  “If it was up to me I would untie you. Unfortunately—”

  “Did you see those animals coming over the hill?” Duncan asked.

  “Yes. That’s been going on for a while. We’ll be joining them soon. You too.”

  “You’re not worried about the fire?”

  “A little, but I can’t just walk out of here.”

  “You could come with us,” Cooper said.

  Grimaldi smiled slyly and shook his head.

  “That would be the blind leading the blind, wouldn’t it?” he said as he started to move away.

  “You said tomorrow, right?” Harden asked.

  “Yes, or the next day. No more than that. Have a good night, gentlemen.”

  87

  As the lanterns were doused a spooky darkness settled over the riverbed. The approaching flames danced in the distance propelled by a self-generated wind that filled the night sky with drifting smoke. None of the prisoners slept as they watched the miners’ tents and listened as hushed conversations in Portuguese faded into gape-mouthed snores. Suarez did not wait for instructions as he slipped out of his bindings and grabbed a handful of sticks that he would use to free the others. With no light reaching under their canopy, Suarez could only feel his way, his fingers locating the weak point of Duncan’s cable tie whereupon he maneuvered the sharpest end of his tool into the tiny recessed locking head only to have the tip break off when he applied pressure, frustrating himself, Duncan and everyone else who waited his turn.

  “What’s taking so long?” Harden whispered.

  “Not so loud,” Boyd said.

  “Shut up, both of you,” Duncan said.

  But there was nothing to worry about. The sound of their voices mixed with the gurgling of water slowly refilling the pond and the pitter-patter and squeals of animals fleeing the fire and the snoring, which had grown louder, made everything indistinct, indecipherable at a distance.

  “This won’t work,” Suarez whispered into Duncan’s ear. “I need a screwdriver or a knife.”

  The agile Brazilian was off before Duncan could reply, headed toward the cook shack, carefully feeling each step with his toes before planting his feet to avoid making noise or stepping on something sharp.

  While the sandy ground had a whitish tinge as if dusted with lime it illuminated nothing and was featureless. The shack stood out, caught by yellowish reflections from the smoky overcast, highlighting its external dimensions, the interior little more than an impenetrably dark closet. The tool he needed would be kept in the shack but without a light source he could only feel his way across the makeshift work surface and shelving, careful not to knock something over, which he did almost immediately by brushing a metal measuring cup that bounced off a shelf onto the work surface, landing silently in the sand. Feeling with his hands, he returned the cup to the shelf and paused momentarily to see if anyone had awakened before finally locating a chef’s knife with a wood handle. The blade was too bulky to suit his needs and he set it aside as a last resort, hopeful that he’d find a paring knife or a fork. E
very moment came with its own urgency and he was about to grab the chef’s knife and head back when the screeching started, freezing Suarez and in short order waking the camp.

  A family of spider monkeys living in the trees alongside the riverbed sent out alarms, turning the quiet night into bedlam. Howls and screams broke out in the nearby trees and from the riverbed itself. Sleepy men stumbled out of their tents, partially blinded by the harsh light of headlamps and flashlights, they moved toward the desperate screeching. The prisoners got to their feet, their quest for freedom suddenly replaced by intense curiosity about what was happening.

  “What’s going on?” Duncan asked as Grimaldi passed by, trailing Braga who was in a hurry.

  “I don’t know,” the cook said as he made his way to where the miners grouped not far from the cook shack, naked except for their underwear, their lights aimed at the whitish riverbed, revealing nothing.

  For his part, Suarez immediately exited the shack, crouching behind it, leaving the knife behind, relying on his size and dark skin to avoid detection.

  Curiosity got the better of the prisoners as they filed slowly toward the miners, forming a row several feet behind them.

  “What’s going on?” Duncan again asked Grimaldi, who stood behind the miners.

  The cook shrugged while lighting a lantern that hung from a nail on the shack’s frame. “Should you be here?”

  “Why not?”

  Realizing that none of their flashlights had enough reach to reveal what was happening, Braga directed one of the men to advance closer. The man moved into the stream bed with the most powerful flashlight, with each step moving farther away from the campsite until he was beyond the reach of his buddies’ headlamps. They could make him out as a silhouette in the distance. Only when he aimed his beam could they see something thrashing in the sand. Something large.

  “Éum javali,” one of the men shouted.

  “What is it?” Harden asked, squinting.

  “A boar,” Paulo said.

  “What’s it doing?”

  “It’s hard to tell from here. Something’s attacking it but I can’t make it out,” Cooper said.

  As he watched, Duncan noticed that the whitish glow of the nearby sand ended near where the boar struggled. The riverbed beyond was dark, as if covered with a black sheet.

  “Where’s Antonio?” Boyd whispered to Duncan.

  “He’s gotta be here somewhere.”

  “Antonio,” Duncan said in a low, but steady voice. “Show yourself.”

  “What are you doing? You’ll give him away.”

  “Look at ’em,” Duncan said, pointing his head toward the miners. “They don’t even know we’re here.”

  The diminutive Brazilian stepped away from his hiding place, surprising Duncan.

  “There you are,” Duncan said. “Put your bindings on.”

  Braga couldn’t tell what was attacking the boar but after ten minutes he tired of watching and shouted for his workers to return from the riverbed so they could get back to sleep. He expected his men to be ready at sunrise to scrape out every remaining flake of gold from the new vein and he didn’t want them sleeping on the job. But it was hard to get their attention, perhaps because they didn’t want to turn their backs on their co-worker in the middle of the night. But the excitement was over as far as the boss was concerned, as he headed toward his tent, passing the prisoners, pointing in the direction of their canopy but not waiting for them.

  “We should go back,” Duncan said quietly, as he turned away from the evening’s entertainment, confident that after the miners retired Suarez would find something to release them from their bindings and they would be free to find their way to the landing spot where the plane would pick them up, though in the back of his mind he knew that they couldn’t all be accommodated. Some of them would have to wait for the pilot to make a second trip. Piece of cake compared with what we’ve had to put up with so far, he thought just as a second scream shocked the night.

  88

  Luis Fuentes happened to be standing near Braga when the boss forced his boxy, heavy duty floodlight in his hand and urged him to move onto the riverbed. The men were sleepy but excited and encouraged their co-worker as he slowly made his way across the sand and gravel toward the increasingly frantic and piteous squealing. Once out of the range of their flashlights and headlamps, they followed the wide beam as it inched its way into the darkness, the skinny Fuentes visible only as a silhouette, darkness closing in behind him.

  The five-million candle power was dispersed across a wide area and lacked the intensity of a spotlight, making it difficult for the men to understand what they were seeing. Like fans at a soccer match, they exhorted him, urging him to move closer to the action to give them a clearer view. But he was hesitant and slow to react. Perhaps he felt he was close enough, the shrieking so loud in his ears that he shivered. Looking back, blinded by his companions’ flashlights, he may have not realized what was happening underfoot. It didn’t help that the monkeys linked their howls to the shrieking, seemingly filling in the gaps with squeals punctuated by howls in an ear-splitting roundelay.

  He would not have realized immediately that the ground beneath his feet was moving. He wouldn’t have felt anything at first and as focused as he was on satisfying his co-worker’s bloodlust as quickly as possible, he took several bold steps toward the boar, revealing the awful situation, which Fuentes could clearly see but the men could not. The boar was black. The things attacking it were black. The background was dark as night. The men pointed and speculated and determined the victim was a boar but they could not make out the nature of the attackers. They certainly had no idea that Fuentes’s bare feet were being overrun, as if he’d stepped into a shallow but swiftly flowing river.

  Suddenly, the broad beam tilted downward, concentrating on Fuentes’ bare feet. Men shouted selfishly, letting him know they were upset that they could no longer see what was going on. They wanted the show to go on.

  “Hey, we can’t see,” someone shouted in Portuguese.

  But Luis wasn’t hearing anything as he felt them scurrying up his bare legs, bugs as long as a .30-06 cartridge but blunt at the head instead of pointed and much lighter, less detectable, their limbs propelling them with a speed that made them difficult to grasp until their forelimbs found their way into his flesh and the realization came over him that he was in big trouble. Dropping the spotlight, he turned to run, screaming, managing several steps before stumbling on something hard, bringing him to his knees, his face planted in the riverbed, his mouth full of sand.

  The floodlight landed upright, its beam dimly illuminating the smoky sky. Something was wrong. Fuentes wasn’t fooling around. Several miners aimed their flashlights where they thought Fuentes was, but the beams wouldn’t reach. Panic started to work its way through them, not for their own safety but as an expression of helplessness.

  “Somebody help him,” one of them shouted in Portuguese.

  Others picked up the chorus, which brought Braga back, who started yelling at the men as if they were children. They tried to explain that something bad had happened but when they couldn’t answer his questions he grabbed one of their flashlights, pushed them aside and stepped into the riverbed, moving forward incautiously, fearing that the men had gone crazy, jeopardizing tomorrow’s payday. He got close enough for the beam to illuminate the lump that was Fuentes, whose shrieks had become indistinguishable from those of the boar.

  Almost from the first glance, Braga started to back away from his employee, whose body, still kneeling, its head down and covered with a writhing mass of three-inch long torturers, his screams muffled as the bugs piled into his mouth with every breath, gagging him as they squeezed into his esophagus, his sounds becoming less human as they tore at his larynx and hacked into his eyes.

  Braga could not hide his terror when he dashed back to the campsite, confronting Duncan who, along with the other prisoners, returned at the sound of Fuentes’ initial screams. The Bra
zilian got into Duncan’s face and issued a torrent of Portuguese that stunned the American.

  “What is he saying?” Duncan asked Grimaldi, who was standing nearby.

  “He says you are to blame,” the cook said, reflecting some of his boss’s fire. “He is very angry.”

  “How am I to blame? I’m a prisoner.”

  Grimaldi spoke with Braga, trying to calm him. The conversation went on for several minutes with both Boyd and Duncan able to make out a few words here and there but nothing more. Harden and Cooper had worried looks. One of the miners grabbed a rope and tried to throw it to Fuentes as if to a drowning man, but he gave up after several tries. The rope was too short. The miners looked defeated. Fuentes was no longer screaming but producing deep, painful guttural sounds as if his mouth had moved to his stomach. And it went on and on. The boar had been reduced to snorts and occasional convulsions and the monkeys had lost interest.

  Several men, frantic from listening to Fuentes, asked Braga to shoot him and put him out of his miséria. Afraid that the men would flee if the torment continued, he aimed his flashlight and stared into the void. But he wasn’t going to do it alone. Grabbing Duncan roughly by the shoulder, he pushed him onto the riverbed, bringing him to one knee. Braga yanked him to a standing position and motioned for the American to take the lead, using him as a shield. The pair got within reach of the flashlight beam, the moans piteous and louder as they stopped. Fuentes was shrouded entirely by Reptilus, his knees folded under him, his legs splayed at odd angles as if they’d been detached though as far as they could tell they hadn’t. Duncan worked to control his fear, not knowing what Braga was going to do. Was he going to push him into the swarm? He had no doubt that Braga was capable of doing it, but he tried to convince himself that it would serve no purpose, wouldn’t be rational and wouldn’t do any good. But he had no idea what the Brazilian was thinking until he pulled out his pistol and aiming at the writhing mass fired twice before the moans abruptly stopped, one of the bullets finding a fatal home.