“Coo-per! Hey-ay, Cooper!”
The three boys stopped.
Two girls were lounging on a couch near the bar. They waved their hands in a come-on gesture.
“Oh, hey!” Cooper was already doubling back to greet them when he remembered his friends. He called over his shoulder, “Be back in a sec.”
Thus abandoned, Auggie and Ben looked at one another and shrugged.
“So…” said Ben.
“So…” Auggie agreed.
Ben walked over to the railing and Auggie followed. Ben gestured toward an unremarkable patch of flowers outside and turned to Auggie. “Hey, snap a picture of these flowers.”
“Why?”
“So it doesn’t look so obvious that we’re spying on Cooper while he chats up the chicks.”
Auggie considered this for a moment and then nodded decisively. “That makes sense.”
After what seemed like a long time, Cooper trotted back to the spot where Ben and Auggie were still feigning interest in the trees. Even as his footsteps sounded on the wooden floor behind them, they pretended not to notice him.
“All set?” Cooper asked.
“Oh, hey. You ready?”
They continued in silence toward the entrance. Ernesto was still waiting patiently, looking at the jungle as one might admire a great work of art. “You should wear these for the walking around,” he said, motioning with his hand toward a rack of sturdy-looking rubber boots.
Ben grabbed a pair of boots, measured them against his hiking shoes, and sat down on the stairs to make the switch. As the long-haired boy sat beside him, Ben looked at him and said, “Alright, spill it.”
Pulling off a shoe, Cooper gave him a baffled smile. “Spill what?”
“Who were those chicks you were talking to?”
“Oh… you mean Janie and Brooke?” He spoke their names with an air of familiarity, as though they were already old, dear friends. “They’re volunteers from Georgia Tech. They’re here to study parrots. I think they said parrots. Anyways, they’ve been here for over a month.”
Plopping down beside him, Auggie gestured impatiently with his hands. “And you know this because—”
“Oh, I met them earlier.”
“Earlier today?” Ben said slowly. “I thought you said you went to the bathroom to puke or something.”
“Yeah. I did. I mean, I was. I had the worst fucking headache, and I thought I was totally gonna puke. But then I realized I was just really dehydrated, so I went back to the main lodge to find that Juice Lady. That’s when I met the girls.” He smiled vaguely, as if savoring the details of some cherished memory from long ago. “Anyways,” Cooper continued, already sounding bored with the topic, “they gave me some Excedrin, and I feel great now.”
Auggie flashed Ben a conspiratorial grin. “The Cooper Effect,” they said in unison. Ben clapped Cooper on the back and laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Cooper wanted to know.
“You are,” Ben said.
Cooper looked at him questioningly but said nothing.
“Okay, guys,” Ernesto said. “Now we go for jungle walk.”
“How long will we be?” asked Auggie.
Ernesto puckered his bottom lip. “Mmm. About a couple hours.”
“Will we be back before dark?” asked Auggie. He was already drenched in sweat.
“Uh-huh. Maybe. We’ll try, yes?”
Ben nodded as though he’d expected this all along. His blue eyes took on their mysterious shine, and his jaw muscles flexed as he tried to conceal his delight. A night hike through the Amazon? That would really be something. Taking a quick mental inventory of his backpack, he was glad he had remembered to pack the extra batteries and memory card for his video camera.
Try? thought Auggie. Something inside him clenched at the word and all that it implied. Try?
Ernesto looked at each boy in turn and was met with eager eyes and anxious smiles. He was used to this look, the look of the uninitiated and unfamiliar. The look of the turista. Eventually, he knew, they would grow accustomed to their surroundings. They would adapt to the slow pace of jungle life, and the anxiety would dissipate—if he were lucky. If not, they would remain skittish, and that always made his job more difficult, trying to get a bunch of worrisome foreigners to open up to the jungle and all it had to offer. But first, he had to earn their trust, show them there was nothing to fear.
“Hey, Ernesto,” Ben said casually. “What’s that for?”
In their nervous excitement, neither Auggie nor Cooper had noticed the knife that was strapped to Ernesto’s belt. Roughly eight inches long from butt to tip, the handle was made of a dark wood; the blade concealed inside a tooled leather sheath.
“This?” Ernesto asked, looking down.
Ben nodded.
“Mmm,” Ernesto replied. “Is for just in case.”
As they continued through the tall grass, Auggie tapped Ben’s arm. “He’s joking, right?”
Shrugging his shoulders, Ben flashed his friend a wild grin.
Ernesto started into the jungle, and the three turistas followed
Four
They heard the little bird before they saw it.
Its cries shattered the stillness, a piercing wolf-whistle that echoed on and on through the treetops.
WOOOT!-wooooh!
Cooper laughed delightedly. “What on earth is that?”
“This is Screaming Piha,” Ernesto explained. “Is very nice bird. One of the loudest birds in the world, uh-huh. Let’s see if we can find.”
With their ears as their guide, they walked for several more minutes before Ernesto stopped and raised his binoculars. The bird let out another blast of sound, and Ernesto pointed to the lower limbs of a thin copse of trees. “You see?”
The boys searched the trees. High above them, the canopy was a roof that blotted out the sun, and the foliage was a curtain that kept its secrets hidden. After a minute or two, they looked at one another and shrugged. Ernesto had anticipated this. Placing two fingers in his mouth, he produced a high, piercing whistle. Though he could not quite match the volume and the intensity of the Screaming Piha, the mimicry was uncanny.
Almost immediately, the amorous bird replied with a series of long blasts: WOOOT!-wooooh! WOOOT!-wooooh! WOOOT!-wooooh!
“That’s amazing,” Auggie uttered in disbelief. “It actually answered you!”
Ernesto removed his binoculars and passed them to Auggie, who was standing beside him, eagerly awaiting a photo opportunity.
Auggie squinted through the eyepiece, adjusting the focus wheel until at last he spotted his quarry. The unassuming bird was small and plump, with a whitish underside and a spiky crest. It sat quietly for several seconds before its head jacked back and its beak opened wide to reveal the bright orange interior of its gullet.
WOOOT!-WOOOOOOOH!
“Hey, Auggie-dog,” Cooper said, “I think it likes you.”
Studying the bird for a few more seconds, Auggie passed the binoculars over to Cooper. Ben was busy filming, and Auggie wanted to capture a few stills, perhaps even record a short video clip of his own. The boys passed around the binoculars until they completed the circuit in Ernesto’s hands.
Ernesto raised them to take one last look at the Screaming Piha. “Is very nice bird,” Ernesto repeated. Lowering the binoculars, he surveyed each of the boys in turn. Their faces glistened in the gloom, and their clothes were wrinkled and stained dark with perspiration
Ben nodded appreciatively.
Auggie stepped up beside him. “A Screaming Piha, you said?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Cool,” Auggie said. “I’ll have to remember that for my journal.”
A short time later, Ernesto stopped on the trail and motioned for the three young men to gather around him.
“This tree,” he said, resting his hand upon a tall, gray sapling, “is for to make the raft. My father, he show me when I was boy.”
Auggie, his small eyes blazi
ng with curiosity, walked over and rubbed his hand along the smooth bark. The solid reality of the tree seemed to ground him. It was the first thing he had dared to touch in the forest, and it somehow helped him to accept, without any sense of fear or apprehension, that the jungle was not his enemy. “What kind of tree is this?”
“Is called Balsa, this tree. Uh-huh.”
“How long would it take you to make the raft?”
“Mmm. If I can find this tree? A few hours, maybe.”
They stood amidst the massive tangle of the undergrowth, grinning at one another in honor of the moment. Ernesto nodded, secretly pleased by their enthusiasm. Without a word, he turned and continued down the path, and they followed him with newfound vigor.
It was Cooper who first spotted the unusual insects. Ernesto was showing them the empty shell of a Brazil nut when movement on the path ahead caught Cooper’s eye. At first he thought his mind was playing tricks on him because hundreds of wedge-shaped leaves were floating across the path, as though caught in an invisible current. It took him a moment before he realized a wide corridor of ants was manipulating the leaves.
“Check this out.”
The others gathered around.
Ernesto said, “These are Leafcutter Ants. You see—there?”
Through the trees, about ten yards from the path, was a thick stump. Denuded of its bark, the stump squatted above a wide hole that bristled with movement.
“Is that their nest?” asked Cooper.
“Uh-huh. They brings the leaves to the nest. For the food.” With his hand, Ernesto made the universal motion of bringing food to one’s mouth.
Ben’s eyes followed the corridor of ants. “There must be thousands of them. Do they bite?”
Ernesto shook his head.
“What about Bullet Ants?” This from Auggie, who was readying his camera. “I read that those things can be pretty nasty.”
Ernesto shrugged. “Mmm. Only if you bother the nest.”
“Bullet Ants?” Cooper asked incredulously.
“Largest ants in the world,” Auggie supplied. “Their bite is so painful they say it’s like getting shot by a bullet.”
“That’s fucked up,” Cooper breathed. “How the hell do you know all this shit?”
Auggie took this as a compliment and shrugged modestly.
Ben turned to Ernesto. “Have you ever been bitten by one?”
Ernesto shook his head again. “No, but is very painful.”
“What do you do if one gets on you?”
Ernesto shrugged. “I do like this.” He made a sweeping motion with his fingers, thus demonstrating how one calmly flicks an insect off the back of one’s hand.
Ben chuckled. “That’s it, huh?”
Auggie squatted down with his camera to take a close-up while the others waited patiently. When at last he stood, his face was glistening from the effort. “Does anyone have some extra water?”
Ben shrugged off his backpack and opened one of the compartments. The Nalgene bottle was still cool to the touch and beaded with moisture. Ben handed it to Auggie, who took several long swallows and handed it back to him. “You good?”
Auggie smiled wearily. “Yeah, thanks. Just a little dizzy, that’s all.”
Ben turned to Ernesto. “He gets dehydrated pretty quickly.”
“I just need to rest a minute…”
“Sometimes he faints,” Cooper added helpfully. “Just drops. Boom! Like that.”
Auggie fired him a sharp look. Then he lowered his head. “I haven’t done that in a long time…”
Ernesto nodded thoughtfully. “If want, we can rest here and then go back to the lodge.”
After a few seconds of deliberation, Auggie shook his head. “No. I’ll be fine. Let’s keep going.”
“You sure?” Ben’s brow was knitted with concern.
Auggie didn’t so much mind the heat or humidity, or the cramps that were forming in his hamstrings, or even the cloud of mosquitoes that were happily taking advantage of this forced inertia; no, what bothered him the most was that he, Auggie, was the weakest of the group, and that the others might pity him, perhaps even resent him for it.
You can do this, he told himself. Look how far you’ve come already.
Auggie nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. But I might need some more water in a bit.”
“No problem.” Ben was watching him steadily. “Whatever you need.”
An hour later they arrived at the scaffold tower, which rose high above the jungle floor and disappeared somewhere beyond the canopy.
“It looks like a giant Erector Set,” Auggie murmured, tilting his head back to follow the metal skeleton into the treetops.
Ernesto gripped one of the crossbars in his hand and tried to move it. “See?” he said. “Very strong. Very safe.”
Cooper had already started for the ladder when Ben cut in front of him.
“Race you to the top,” Ben said.
“Okay, let’s go!”
The tower rattled and groaned as the two boys scrambled for the top.
***
This must be what the world looked like before mankind came along and fucked it up, Ben thought.
He was standing with his video camera on the canopy platform, and all around him was an undulating sea of green as far as the eye could see. Unspoiled and beautiful beyond description, the jungle was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. Ben had never considered himself the crunchy type, but it saddened him to think that man had already destroyed countless places like this one, only to replace them with steel and glass and honking horns. Even more depressing was the revelation that, someday, this amazing place would be no more, forsaken by man in the name of progress.
A commotion beneath the platform drew his attention, and he turned the camera just in time to film Auggie’s safari hat as it appeared at the top of the ladder, followed by a forehead that glistened with sweat. Next came the familiar, deep-set eyes, now comically round with apprehension. Finally, the small mouth, lips pressed firmly together to form a straight line.
“What took you so long, Auggie-dog?” teased Cooper.
Auggie’s upper lip curled upward in consternation as he pulled himself up onto the platform and rolled onto his back with a dramatic grunt. For a moment, he lay on his back, grimacing at the sky. “Just give me a minute,” he said between breaths. After a few seconds, he rolled over onto his knees and forced himself to stand on trembling legs.
“It’s perfectly safe.” Cooper rocked back and forth on his feet and the platform rattled noisily. “See?”
Auggie spoke through his teeth. “Please—don’t—do that—again.”
Ben appeared by Cooper’s shoulder. “He looks like Bambi on ice.”
Cooper threw his head back and laughed at the sky. All round the tower, small birds exploded from the foliage, alarmed by the sound of these perceived predators.
Auggie gripped the railing with both hands. “You guys aren’t helping,” he said through gritted teeth. The familiar blush began to creep up from his neck and into his cheeks, a blotchy red the color of hives. “Do you see how far up we are?”
“Is okay,” Ernesto said, climbing up onto the platform with ease. “Have been many time and is very safe.”
Auggie nodded. He took a deep breath as he slowly released his death-grip on the railing. At last the majesty of the view stole over him. “This is—wow. I feel like I could just walk across the treetops,” he said dreamily.
Cooper raced to the other side of the platform. “Look at those trees,” he said, marveling at the towering height of the nearby trees. “They look like giant pieces of broccoli.”
“What are the tall ones over there?” Ben asked.
Ernesto nodded. “Those are Brazil nut trees I show you before. Very tall for to gather the sun.”
“That is so cool,” gushed Cooper.
Auggie carefully made his way sideways to the railing. The jungle was so vast; it was overwhelming. From this bird’s-ey
e point of view, he found it both enchanting and strangely ominous.
All around them, the jungle buzzed and clicked and screeched. Surrounded by the alien landscape, the three boys stood on the precipice of the tower platform, and now all the childhood fantasies came rushing back to them. They were explorers on the verge of discovering a brand-new world, scientists in search of new medicines to cure mankind’s greatest illnesses, heroes ready to plumb the ruins of lost civilizations for hidden treasures and forgotten knowledge. Each boy found it easy to imagine himself in the role of the hero, the clever explorer, the very fabric from which legends were born. Even Ben, who was normally so grounded, found himself being willingly swept away by these delusions of grandeur.
“We should get a picture of us,” he suggested. He wanted to remember this moment, this euphoric childlike feeling that anything was possible.
Making a quick adjustment to the setting dial, Auggie lifted the camera strap up and over his head. “Ernesto?” he said, holding up the camera, “would you mind taking a picture of the three of us with those trees in the background?”
Ernesto backed up a few feet and looked at the three boys on the screen. They stood shoulder to shoulder by the railing with Auggie in the middle, his safari hat slightly askew. Ben had his arms folded across his muscular chest, and Cooper was posing in an at-home way with both arms on the railing. With the sweat pouring down their faces and not a care in the world, they were the best of friends at that moment.
“Say ‘cha-eese.’”
The three boys readily obliged, and Ernesto took the shot.
After, they gathered round to look at the photo. Auggie had changed the camera’s setting, and the photograph had the weathered, grainy look of a bygone era.
“Cool,” breathed Cooper. “How did you get it to look like that?”
Ben rested an elbow on Auggie’s shoulder as he leaned in to see the viewing screen. “It looks like it’s a hundred years old.”
Pray for Darkness: Terror in the Green Inferno Page 4