by Willow Rose
I went out there in the swamps several nights in a row and every time came back more disappointed than the first. It was like the creature didn’t want to be found, like it was deliberately hiding from me. I slept most of the day since I was out all night and soon my host family grew concerned about my behavior. Mrs. Kirk started coming to my room and waking me up before noon by removing the curtains and letting the bright sunlight in so it would hit my face. But as soon as she left I would turn over to the other side and keep sleeping. While Dr. Kirk was never home and therefore never participated in the family’s growing concern, Heather somehow took it upon herself to try and rescue me from my depression as she relentlessly called it. She came to my room one afternoon when she was back from her college classes and sat at the end of my bed.
“I am worried about you,” she said. “It has been almost three weeks now and you don’t seem to be snapping out of this depression. Maybe you should see the doctor again?”
“I am fine,” I answered, still with my head in my pillow.
“You are not out with friends yet you leave the house every night. What is going on? Have you met some other friends that I don’t know of? ‘Cause it is perfectly okay, I just need to make sure that you haven’t fallen into bad company.”
I laughed softly. “I can assure you I haven’t fallen into any bad company,” I said. “I just have my own way of dealing with this. Just give me some time.” I lifted my head and gave her my most charming smile I knew of and that seemed to calm her down a little. Her face seemed to relax. She leaned over and kissed my cheek. It left me numb.
“You know I care about you, right?” she said with her head slightly tilted.
“I know. It is very sweet of you, but I am all right,” I assured her. I wanted her desperately to leave me alone. She made me feel bad about myself. Here she was caring so much for me, and I was just not interested in her. I felt like the worst person in the world. The intimacy we had shared on that night before the attack had been nice and really special, but I was another person now. I had changed a lot during the last couple of weeks.
Then the strangest thing happened. Suddenly it was like she was speaking to me, I heard her voice loud and clear among the other voices constantly speaking in my head. I looked up at her but her lips didn’t move.
You are so spoiled and lazy. You need to get up, take a bath and get some work done. Nothing good ever came from lying in bed all day. Instead of reading all these books about people who have tried to be dead you should start opening a book about medicine. You’ll never become doctor. Probably throw it all away. Lazy boy.
“What was that?” I asked.
She turned her head and looked at me while stroking my cheek gently. “I didn’t say anything,” she said. She got up from the bed. “You really should open a window and get some fresh air in here. Do you want me to do it?”
“Okay,” I said, a little confused.
She went to the window and opened it. On her way she kicked some of my clothes on the floor to the side. Maybe you should clean up this mess, lazy boy. There it was again. What was that? Was it coming from her?
“Excuse me?” I asked.
She turned and looked at me with a smile that all of a sudden seemed incredibly spurious. “Nothing. I was just opening the window. Are you all right? You seem a little off.”
I shook my head. “I am fine, I guess.” Just hearing strange voices that’s all, I thought. Was I going mad or had I just heard her thoughts? Was that how she really felt about me?
She walked towards the doorway. “I have to study,” she said and turned to look at me. “Promise me you are being careful, okay?”
I couldn’t promise her that. Instead I gave her one of her own phony smiles that she liked so much. I hoped it would make her leave me alone.
It worked. As she closed the door behind her I wondered why she was so nice to me if that was how she really felt. Why didn’t she just say so? I knew I was a mess and I knew how it looked from the outside, so it was no surprise to me that her and her mother would think that way. I didn’t get offended. I just didn’t care.
That same night I returned to the swamps armed with the map and my two steaks in my backpack. The hunters were already there and I recognized Jim’s car among them. That meant he was in there, too, searching for the jaguar. It made my heart beat a little faster. He had been able to find it once before. Would he be able to track it down again?
I had decided to explore a whole new area south of the place where we had been the night of the attacks, even further south down the river than where we had found the jaguar the last time. It was an area that was considered to be rough and completely impassable to humans. The perfect spot for an animal to hide, I thought. It took about two hours to get there, and I had to walk in the dark water most of the way since the tracks almost disappeared the farther I got. Walking in the water was frightening since even the sound of it and the feeling of it touching my leg brought back horrible memories of being pulled under and facing death. But at the same time, I think it was the best thing I could do. Somehow searching for this jaguar made me face my fears. Since there was no other way to get to where I wanted, I had to get into the water once again, and little by little I started to trust that I could do this without facing another attack and without being afraid. What had happened that night was something that almost never happened, and if I looked at it statistically there was no chance it was going to happen to me twice. Still, I kept my eyes wide open for anything moving on the surface and I never let my guard down. I was constantly alert, not distracted, as I had been the last time. This time it was only the wild swampy forest and me. As I managed to get myself further down the river than any man seemed to have ever been, I came to a small clearing. I climbed the riverbank and got back on the ground. My legs were shivering a little I noticed but I felt happy that I had done this and survived it. I went into the clearing and found a perfect spot. Then I put down one of the steaks on the ground and backed away from it. I sat a few feet away and began my wait while hoping my new approach would pay off. Chasing it seemed to make it vanish so instead I was going to let the creature come to me. In this secluded spot we would never be found by the hunters. If this animal was as smart as I suspected it to be, it would know that.
I waited for hours before I heard a rattling sound from one of the bushes. I looked in the direction of the sound and out on its belly came a big black snake. I shivered with fear. I had never stood face-to-face with that kind of animal before and I went into some state of shock. Was it going to bite me? Would it attack me? I had no idea what kind of snake it was or if its bite would be dangerous. I started sweating, thinking about how far I was from everything, how I wouldn’t be able to run for help, that I might die trying to. I almost panicked when the snake stopped and stared at me with its head lifted. Then I heard another sound and my heart stopped. At first I saw the eyes. Like glowing yellow beads in the dark. Then a face grew out of the darkness and then its entire tawny body with the black rosettes. With a low, soft growling the jaguar ran towards the snake. The snake tried to get away on its belly but with a quick paw the jaguar hit it like a punching ball and killed it with one stroke. I held my breath as this spectacle of nature was displayed in front of me. The jaguar didn’t even bother to eat it but dusted it aside with the paw like it was nothing but the dirt of the forest. Then it turned and looked at me. Everything inside of me froze. I had no idea what to do next. Was I going to scream? Was I going to try and run from it, which I knew was impossible, since it could catch me in a heartbeat if it wanted to?
Instead of giving into my fear I did what I had done the last time. I humbled myself. I kneeled on the ground and waited for it to make the next move. My hope was that it would see the steak first and eat it so it wouldn’t be hungry to feast on me afterwards.
And I was right to hope so. The royal creature walked slowly and fiercely towards me while the steak was waiting halfway. In my heart I knew it wasn’t go
ing to hurt me, but my brain kept telling me to be afraid, to find a way to run. Maybe if I rolled into the water and started swimming? But I had read that jaguars were great swimmers. They would often dive into water to catch anacondas and fish. I had absolutely no way of defending myself, I realized. No weapon, no escape. All I had left was trust.
I felt a huge relief as the jaguar stopped halfway and smelled the steak. “Come on, it is yours,” I whispered. “I brought it here for you.”
It licked the steak a couple of times while staring at me a little suspiciously, probably wondering what I was doing there. Then it opened its mouth and revealed its huge teeth before it sank them into the raw meat. In a few quick bites it swallowed the big piece of steak. Then it looked at me with eyes that seemed hungry for more. That was when I really showed bravery, I think. I took out the next steak and while shaking and shivering in my whole body, I handed it out in front of me still holding it in my hand. I saw the jaguar consider taking it for quite awhile. It went back and forth, to the sides, then came a little closer, and then it backed up again. It stared at me with disbelief in its eyes before it decided to move a little closer. Then it seemed to regret it again and walked sideways a couple of times.
“Come on. It’s okay,” I said. “I won’t harm you.”
The tawny creature seemed to have a battle going on inside of it, and I let it take its time. Slowly I felt more and more comfortable being in its presence. It seemed to be as afraid of me as I was of it. That was very comforting. Calmly it moved a couple of steps closer waiting for me to throw the meat, but I didn’t. I held on to it, and as the animal slowly realized that I wasn’t going to make this easy it crouched down on its hind legs and crawled carefully towards me using its claws to pull itself across the ground while stretching its neck out as far as possible and snapping after the meat. I turned my head as the jaguar slowly came closer, still growling still crouching like it had to be ready to leap towards me if I turned out to be not trustworthy. The excitement made me close my eyes as if I thought it would hurt less if the animal attacked me when I had my eyes closed. When I felt the meat being ripped from my hand I opened them and looked at the stunning animal, looked it straight into its glowing eyes. You could say that was a defining moment for me in my life. I felt a victory inside of me. I had conquered the beast. I had used no weapons but love and patience. As it swallowed the last steak turning a little away from me, I looked at it with pride. I had made it eat out of my hand. I had tamed the savage.
The next days I kept returning to the same spot every night with my steaks in the bag and every night the jaguar returned, as well, and ate from my hand or from where I had put it on the ground. You could say that we became a sort of friends. I started talking to it, telling it how happy I was that it had saved me and that it had to be careful because there were so many people searching the swamps all over for it and who wanted to harm it. Every night I came a step closer to it, and as time went by and the animal became more comfortable with me I was even allowed to touch it. I reached my hand out as it ate and at first it froze and growled, but I talked calmly to it with my reassuring voice, and then I gently put my hand on it. The fur felt amazing. Like the softest thing I had ever touched. It was a lot deeper than I had expected. My hand sank into it until it was covered. I touched it gently on the top of its head and stroke it across the long lines of its back. It was the most beautiful moment of my life, and I never wanted it to stop. I never wanted to let go of it again.
When I was back in the house I called Jim up and tried to persuade him to stop the hunting. I wanted him to have them stop the chase, but he would hear of no such thing. He wanted to kill the beast himself if he had to devote the rest of his life to find it. It had become personal for him now since their last encounter. It wasn’t only about his father anymore. Or me. It was about his own pride. The jaguar was his to kill.
Then I tried to call the people in charge of the swamps, but they wanted the jaguar dead, too, they said. People used to come there to watch nature in peace and quiet, no wild animal was going to ruin that. I pleaded with Jim and everyone I was in contact with to call off the hunt. But I had no luck.
Then something truly amazing happened to me. One day the phone rang and Maria called for me. It was the St. Augustine Record’s editor.
“I have a proposition for you,” he said, and I could hear him smoking a cigarette in the other end of the line.
“What is that?” I asked a little startled. What could they possibly want with me?
“I want you to write a series of articles about your experience. I want you to write about how it felt to be attacked and how it felt to be saved by a wild animal that almost killed you.”
“But I thought you already covered that part in my interview.”
The editor coughed in the other end. “Yeah, well. Julie Goldman never did finish that story, you see. She found out she was pregnant later on the same day she had done the interview and since then she has been home with morning sickness that apparently lasts all day. Last time I spoke with her she said she wanted to keep the kid because she apparently thinks it will be her last chance to have one or something.”
My heart stopped. “She is pregnant?” I asked. I thought about my inappropriate outburst during our meeting in the garden. Had I been right after all? Was it true? How could I have known that she was pregnant before she did herself? It was those voices! They had told me somehow! It was both thrilling and scary at the same time. Thrilling to know that the voices maybe meant something, after all, that I wasn't going mad, but scary because it felt like I had lost control over myself completely. Like something or someone had taken over my thought-life. I was hearing things and saying things I had no control over.
The editor laughed loudly. “Yeah. Who would have believed it, huh? Couldn’t tell by looking at her figure, that’s for sure. As slim as a tree she has always been. And now she is going to be a single mother, too. That girl has guts if you ask me. So, what do you say kid? Wanna do it? Wanna write for the paper?”
“I certainly do.”
I had a bunch of different thoughts lined up inside of my head as I put the phone down. This could be my chance to tell the world that the jaguar was actually a savior and not something to be afraid of. I would begin by writing about my experience that night and then about what I was experiencing right now. About my newfound friendship with the creature that they all thought was so dangerous it had to be hunted down and killed. Now I could provide a new perspective for the community. I was going to get them to like it, to care for this majestic creature like I did.
This was perfect.
Chapter 13
I wrote all day. Mrs. Kirk went out and bought me a brand new typewriter and put it in my room. It didn’t take me many seconds to get started and soon the words flew out of me. I wrote and revised then wrote some more and revised again. Mrs. Kirk was almost as excited as I was for this new project, mainly because it got me out of bed, I think. She seemed pleased to see me this enthusiastic about something for the first time in weeks, so she did all she could to help me out and make sure I was comfortable. She had Maria bring me iced tea and biscuits and when it was time for dinner and I was still going at it, she had Maria bring me my food to my room. The editor had told me I had two days to write the first piece so I wasn’t in a big hurry. But I felt so inspired that I wanted to write it right away and be sure not to forget anything. I wanted this to be the best I could do. I wanted this to be so good that people would read it and want to read the rest of my articles as well. I wanted to make them enjoy it so much they just had to read everything I wrote. I wanted people to spring for the paper with great anticipation. I wanted them to tell their friends, neighbors and co-workers about the articles that they just had to read. I needed for it to be the talk of the town.
The newspaper wanted one article a week, the editor had said. And they would, of course, pay me for every one of them. I was looking forward to have some money of my own s
ince I was now living off the Kirk’s sense of charity towards me and the little I had managed to save when I was still in Denmark.
As it came along I thought my article became quite good. I wanted it to be better though, so I revised it and wrote some more even though the sun was now about to set and I had to get ready for going to the swamps. Mrs. Kirk had begun talking about me starting school soon, and I wanted to enjoy being able to still visit it. As soon as I started school I wouldn't be able to go anymore. Well maybe on weekends.
Giving the wild animal food was a slippery slope, I knew that. I had read about it in my books. Eventually it would stop hunting on its own and only rely on the food I was providing. In the end, it would have a hard time getting by in the wild. On the other hand, it didn’t need to hunt all over the swamps for food any longer, this way it could stay in the area where the hunters never went because they thought it was impassable. This way I was keeping it safe until I could persuade them to stop hunting for it.
That night, I was a little late when I finally arrived at the swamps. I saw Jim’s car as I walked through the parking area. I parked my car far away from theirs and walked the rest of the way so Jim wouldn’t recognize my Corvette if he got out of there before I did. Jim was on the hunting team every third day. Those were the days when I was extra careful not to be seen. I was late because of the article and entered the swamps with an anxious feeling inside of me. I started running towards the spot where I usually met with my jaguar. I walked in the water, grabbing onto branches in order not to fall and climbing the bank to get back on the ground. I was almost all the way there when I heard noises. It was coming from the small clearing. It wasn’t the noises that I would usually hear on my trip out there. It wasn’t noises like the ones my jaguar or other animals would make. They weren’t natural.