The guitarist turned to Monti. “Señorita, quiere usted un …”
“She doesn’t speak Spanish or Portuguese,” said Jeb.
“But …”
He explained about “noise.”
This amused everyone.
“We are flying on over the jungle to the rancho of her husband,” said Jeb. “We must hurry to arrive before dark.”
Slowly they retreated. Work resumed.
David crossed to Monti’s side, frowned. “Mother! Why must you make such a show of yourself?”
“That’s what buys your beans, sonny boy!”
It was ten minutes to four before they got off the river. Jeb aimed the plane across the roiled juncture of rivers, using the wavelets to help break the grip of the water. They lifted sluggishly, heavy with extra gasoline. He pulled up the flaps, played the controls delicately to avoid extra strain on the already overstressed wings. They circled back over the town.
People ran along the steps. Hats were waved.
“How long to the rancho?” asked Monti.
“Maybe two and a half hours,” said Jeb. “I’ll push it. Your exhibition back there wasted time. I’ll have to waste gas now to make it before dark.”
“That’ll teach them who has a boy figure,” she said.
Jeb smiled, shook his head. He checked his instruments, glanced back at David. The boy sat in the corner behind his mother, crowded by the Jeep cans of gasoline. The cans rattled faintly in their lashings.
“How’re those cans riding?” asked Jeb.
“All right, I guess.”
“Let me know right away if they shift around.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jeb turned his attention back to their course.
David peered down out the side window. Far below them, the loops and whorls of the Tapiche were a snail track curving through the omnipresent green. Excitement keyed up the boy’s senses, made him feel desperately alive.
Will dad ever be surprised!
A chuckling happiness bubbled within him. Reflected sunlight exploded in a glare-flash from the river. David squinted. He saw Jeb reach out, adjust the gyro compass, noted the empty socket in the panel where the radio had been.
“What’s that thing you keep fixing?” asked David.
Jeb looked over his shoulder. “Huh?”
David pointed at the compass. “That.”
“Oh.” Jeb turned back. “That’s the gyrocompass. It’s steadier than the magnetic compass. We have to fly a pretty straight course overland to conserve gas.”
“Couldn’t we follow the river?”
Jeb smiled. “It’s eight or nine hundred miles to the rancho by river. That land down there is pretty flat in lots of places. The river wanders all over the map.”
“How fast are we going?”
“About one seventy … maybe a little more.”
“Will we get there before dark?”
“Sure. And some to spare.”
Monti stabbed a glance at David. The boy fell silent, sat back. Jeb looked at her.
“That was some performance you put on back there in Ramona,” he said.
She frowned. “Not one of my best.” Anger showed in the way she clipped off her words.
“What were you trying to prove?”
“I don’t have to prove anything, Mister Logan. Leave the brilliant questions to my psychoanalyst!” She waved a hand toward the instruments. “You just fly the plane. That’s what you’re being paid to do.”
Jeb shrugged, thought: Man! What an acid tongue! No wonder Bannon chose the jungle!
They passed over a clearing, stark galvanized metal roofs standing out against the green.
Monti said, “If we had to cut way down on our luggage, why’d you bring that big heavy valise I saw you cram into the back?”
So that’s what’s eating her!
“That’s our survival kit,” said Jeb.
“Survival kit?” She turned squarely toward him.
“In case we get forced down.” He reached around behind her, tapped the seat back. “There’s a loaded .44 magnum revolver and twenty-five rounds of extra ammo in the seat pocket behind you. There’s a machete under the seat.”
“Are you trying to frighten me again?”
“Nope. You can starve to death down there just as quick as you could out in an open boat on the ocean. So you carry a few necessities … just in case.”
“Such as what?”
“Oh … fishing gear, snares, food concentrates … a twenty-two pistol and a few boxes of ammo for it … atabrine, terriamiacin, a pellet stove, tea, a flashlight and extra batteries. Things like that.”
“Stupid!” she muttered.
“You wouldn’t think so if we ever needed that kit.”
She turned away, sniffed.
David said: “What’s this thing on the floor under my feet?”
“That’s the grapnel for anchoring us to the beach when we land,” said Jeb. “Sorry we had to put it under your feet. No other place for it with this load.”
“Oh, that’s okay.” David sat back. “We flew over some buildings beside the river back a ways. What were they?”
“Agricultural experiment stations,” said Jeb. “Abandoned now. The help had a falling out with the Indians.”
He turned, looked across the Jeep cans out the windows. “That’s sure a big mountain over on our left.”
“That’s Tusachilla,” said Jeb. “Active volcano. See that ring of black near the summit? She put on a show a couple of months ago. I flew some scientists in near there. Vulcanologists.”
“There’s not much around here, is there?” asked David. He sounded frightened.
“Not much civilization,” said Jeb. “Your dad’s rancho is at the head of navigation on the Tapiche. There’s an army post—one sergeant and a radio—about a hundred miles downstream from the rancho. Then—nothing but the river and a few Indian villages for almost a thousand miles.”
“Beastly country!” snapped Monti.
“One of the last frontiers,” said Jeb. “That’s one of its attractions, Mrs. Bannon.”
“Oh, call me Monti,” she said. “Roger’s mother is Mrs. Bannon.”
Jeb glanced around at the height of the sun, adjusted the throttle for a few more revolutions. “Is that your real name: Monti? Or is that one of those names they pick for an actress?”
She sighed. “It’s really Montana.”
“After the state?”
“My father was a gold camp lawyer there. Later, he was a judge. I was born at a place called Meadow Creek after we became respectable.”
“Montana’s a good name,” said Jeb. “It means mountain in Spanish.”
“What’s in a name?” she asked. “As the Bard so appropriately put it.” She squirmed into a more comfortable position, took a deep breath. “May I call you Jeb?”
“As you said, ‘What’s in a name?’”
“How well do you know my husband, Jeb?”
“So-so. About as well as you get to know anybody after flying with ’em a couple of times.”
“What makes him come to a Godforsaken place like this?”
“Quien sabe? Maybe he’s looking for something.”
“But there’s nothing here!”
“Nothing except what you make for yourself. Maybe that’s what he wants.”
Anger flooded her. “You can’t talk simple sense with a man! All of you go wandering off into … into philosophy!”
Jeb smiled. “So what’s unusual about a man wanting to make something for himself?”
“He’s running away from himself!”
“Quien sabe?”
She was silent for almost five minutes, then: “Do you know Roger’s partner, this Gettler?”
“Franz Gettler? Yeah. He’s been around these parts a bit longer than your husband. I’ve ferried him a few places.”
“Where’s he from?”
“I think he was prospecting in the Serra do Craval before he h
ooked up with your husband.”
“No, I mean where’s he from originally?”
“Some place in Westphalia, I think. He spent some time in the States, too. I heard he was a professor of some kind at one time.”
“Hardly likely!”
“You never can tell.”
“What’s he like?”
“Big guy. Blond. Accent.”
“Do you like him?”
“Oh, now look here—”
“I mean it: Do you like him?”
“What’s that have to do with—”
“I want to know what he’s like.”
“Your childlike faith in my judgment is very touching,” said Jeb.
“Well, you must know if you like him or not.”
“I don’t know. Never thought about it. He’s a kind of a cold fish. Always feeling things, making funny cracks about texture.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh … my amphibian’s got plastic upholstery. He ran his hand along it, said it felt dead. Things like that.”
“He sounds crazy!”
“Well, maybe he doesn’t have all his marbles. Some people get eccentric from being alone too much in the jungle.”
“Why’d Roger choose him for a partner?”
“How the hell do I know?”
“Would you choose someone like that for a partner?”
“Gettler knows the jungle.”
“Huh! I don’t see why anyone would want to know it.”
Jeb shrugged, scanned the sky.
A passage of turbulent air shook the plane. The cans of gasoline banged and scraped. Time passed in the droning somnolence of motor sounds, the flowing of the green sea beneath them. The air became more turbulent. Jeb became conscious of a stronger smell of gasoline in the cabin. He spoke over his shoulder to David.
“How’re those cans riding?”
“There’s a little bit of gasoline spilled down the side of one of them,” said David.
Jeb frowned, studied the winding river track ahead.
Monti began humming faintly to herself.
The tune filled Jeb with disquiet. He tried to place the reason, and recognized the melody: The lament of his morning nightmare.
Immediately, the sodden sense of premonition came back, started the perspiration in his palms. This is stupid! he told himself. I’ve got to stop this!
“Is that another one of the noises you sing?” he asked.
She seemed to return from far away. “Huh?”
“That tune you were humming.”
She hummed another stanza. “Oh, that. I heard it in Puerto Bolivar. It was on a jukebox. Sad kind of song.”
He translated the words for her.
She shuddered. “What a morbid thing!”
David leaned forward between them. “How much farther?”
“About an hour,” said Jeb. “The rancho’s in those foothills straight ahead.” He glanced up at the wing tank gas gauges. “We’ll be letting down pretty soon to top off our tanks.”
“Couldn’t we make it without that?” asked Monti.
“Yes. But I want to get rid of those cans. They make me uneasy.”
“Where’re you going to land?” asked Monti.
“A wide stretch of river up ahead. There’s a beach.”
“Will there be Indians?” asked David.
“Probably not,” said Jeb. “No villages along this stretch.”
“I saw a village back a ways,” said David. “Are they good Indians or bad Indians?”
“I guess they’re pretty tame,” said Jeb. “Except when they get all hopped up on cachasa.”
“What’s cachasa?”
“Mostly fermented saliva. The women chew some stuff, spit it into a gourd.”
“Do they really dr—”
“David!” Monti whirled on her son. “Stop asking so damn many questions!”
He sat back. “Yes, Mother.”
She drew a nervous breath, extracted a package of cigarettes from her blouse pocket.
Jeb glanced at her. “No smoking.”
She jerked her head toward him, glaring.
Jeb nodded toward the rear. “The gas.”
She frowned, returned the cigarettes to her pocket. “Sorry. I forgot.”
He tipped the left wing down, began a slow, banking turn. “There’s where we’ll refuel.”
The river ahead widened, stretched out in almost a straight line—a thick finger pointing at the hills.
Jeb pulled back the throttle. The jungle moved up toward them at a deceptively rapid rate. There came a moment of gliding suspense. Then the floats touched the river with a cushioned bounce. They slowed, turned toward a low sandy beach on the right.
Damp heat poured in the vents. It was sticky, and with a feeling of actual weight.
Sand gritted under the floats. The plane’s nose lifted, stopped.
Beyond the beach the jungle arose in steady waves of color: harsh lines standing out in the bold flat light of the low sun. There was a deep blue-green at the bottom, a sun-bleached sage at the top. Above the green towered a candelo tree with bat-falcon nests cluttering the forks of its branches. The front line of the forest was a wall of mata-polo trees hung with a twisted screen of lianas.
Jeb shut down the motor. Silence flooded in upon them.
A flock of violet swallows dipped across the sand, lifted and turned over the trees. Behind them came a squall of black flies that enveloped the plane, faded away in a diminishing drone.
Heat devils shimmered above the beach, twisting the lower level of the jungle into dancing lines.
“It’s beautiful,” murmured Monti. “I never realized it could be so beautiful.”
“And it’s deadly,” said Jeb. “You’re not allowed even one mistake out there. Never forget that.”
“But it looks so peaceful.”
“Are there wild animals in there right now?” asked David.
“Lots of them,” said Jeb. He opened his door, released his safety belt. “You can stretch your legs on the sand, but stay away from the jungle’s edge.” He lifted the revolver from the seat pocket, tucked it into his waistband.
Monti noted the motion, grimaced.
A swarm of gnats hummed in the open door, settled on every stretch of bare skin. Jeb slapped at his neck. “The bugs can be fierce. We’ll make this quick.”
He stepped onto the float, took the grapnel and line from the rear, anchored the plane, and began refueling.
Monti got out her side. David followed. They wandered up the beach, voices lowered in a murmured conversation.
An odd pair, thought Jeb.
The memory picture of Bannon came back to him: the skinny frame, the sandy hair, the deep-set eyes with their mystical light. There was a kind of overpowering calm about Monti’s husband. It reminded Jeb of the relentless Latin-American courtesy.
How’n hell did two like that ever get together? he wondered. The boy sure looks like his father. Especially the eyes.
The thick smell of gasoline began to make Jeb dizzy. He wiped perspiration from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. Flies and gnats crawled over his skin, buzzed and hopped, their bites like fire. He hoisted the last can from the rear seat, topped off the wing tanks. The can remained half full. Jeb re-tied it in the rear, carried the empties across the beach, and hid them inside the screening lianas.
Monti watched Jeb working. David kicked at the sand behind her. She ignored the splash of sand, puffed thoughtfully on her cigarette.
This Jeb is like Roger, she thought. What makes people like them come to the end of nowhere? The cigarette burned her finger. She dropped it, stubbed it out with her toe. Why’m I here? What do I want from Roger? Dammit! I should never have married him! We should’ve had an affair … and that’s all!
She stared at her toe marks in the sand.
God! But I need him!
“Won’t Dad be surprised?” said David.
A feeling of love for her son pas
sed over Monti. “He most certainly will, dear.”
David came around to stand half-facing her. He looked away at the plane. “Do you really love Dad, Mother?”
Her mouth twitched. She glared at the boy. “Don’t ask stupid questions!”
Jeb leaned out of the plane, called to them: “Come along. We don’t have much more daylight. Have to hurry.” He stepped down to the float, helped them aboard, brought in the grapnel and cast off. The current caught the plane as he climbed into his seat.
Abruptly, David pointed upstream. “Hey! Look!”
Around the upper reach of the river nosed a caoba dugout with five Indians: a sinewy rippling of bodies, painted paddles flashing in the late sunlight. A stolid figure sat in the bow holding a pindu cane pole across his lap. His hair was cut squarely across his forehead in low bangs, his face marked by red streaks of achiote.
Jeb started the motor, swung out into the river, faced downstream away from the canoe.
The Indians backpaddled, waited.
Jeb pushed the throttle ahead: the motor roared. They gathered speed—faster, faster. He rocked one float off. Then they were airborne, reaching out over the jungle in a wide turn, and back above the upturned Indian faces.
“Those are Zaparos,” said Jeb. “Fairly tame.”
The plane climbed faster now, freed from part of its load. Again the jungle took on its appearance of a soft green carpet.
“It looks so calm down there,” said Monti.
“Just on the surface,” said Jeb.
“Will I be able to swim in the river?” asked David.
Jeb shook his head. “That river’s one of the deadliest parts of the jungle, full of piranha.”
Monti whirled toward him. “Those terrible fish that eat you alive?”
“That’s right.”
“My God! I almost went wading back there!”
“It probably would’ve been safe enough if you’d stayed close to shore,” said Jeb. “The river’s clear. You could’ve seen them coming.”
“Can you fish for them?” asked David. “Are they good to eat?”
“Yes, to both,” said Jeb. “Just don’t fall in.”
“You just stay away from the river, David!” snapped Monti. She shuddered.
“The jungle’s not really peaceful,” said Jeb. “It’s just a matter of difference in time sense.”
“Time sense?” asked Monti.
“I saw a movie once,” said Jeb. “Taken by some naturalist. He exposed one frame every hour—pictures of a jungle vine. That vine just boiled up—writhing and slithering like a snake to choke off the tree it was attacking. All that plant life just looks slow and silent … and tame. He took pictures of some pods: they jerked open, hurled out their seeds. The seeds leaped upward toward the sunlight. That’s the jungle as it really is.”
Four Unpublished Novels Page 21