Gettler fumbled in the pocket. “They’d never see it.”
David scrambled out of the way.
“Are you sure it’s a plane?” demanded Monti.
“Sounds like one of the government amphibians from Quito,” said Jeb.
Gettler handed out a thin red tube about a foot long. “This it?”
Jeb grabbed it. “Yes!” He tore at the end wrapping.
“Are they hunting for us?” asked Monti. “Will they come down along the river?”
“No!” Jeb threw away the end wrapping. “Match? For Christ’s sake, somebody give me some fire!”
Monti brought out her cigarette lighter, leaned out, flicked it. Flame mounted on the third spin of the wheel. Jeb held a tiny grey fuse to the fire, saw it sputter, whirled away and scrambled out of the shelter of the wing. He steadied himself against the cowling, pointed the flare toward the clouds.
The motor sound grew louder: a pulsing roar.
“Phu-u-u-ust!”
A round red fireball hissed upward through the clouds. And another … another. Six in all.
“Please, God,” whispered Monti. “Please!”
The pulsating counterpoint of twin engines echoed along the hills. Jeb turned his head to follow the path of the unseen plane. The sound grew fainter upstream, blended with the soft river noises.
“They didn’t see it,” said Gettler.
“Clouds are too thick,” said Jeb.
“Won’t they come down and look for us?” pleaded Monti.
“They’re coming to investigate why the army radio doesn’t answer,” said Jeb. “And they won’t be able to make it until that overcast burns off.”
“Will it?” she asked. “I mean burn off? Will it?”
“Who knows?” Jeb stared up at the clouds. “It could clear upstream, stay cloudy here—or vice versa.”
“Won’t they miss us?” she asked.
“How? They believe at Ramona that you were coming for a week or more. My boys at Milagro know about the gas problem. They could figure I stayed over to bring you out.”
Monti wet her lips with her tongue, brushed a wisp of red hair back from her brows. “If that search plane gets down on the river, and sees the ruin of the army post, won’t they …”
“They may figure we got ours, too,” said Jeb. “Or they may not even think about us at all.”
“But they know about the rancho up there and …”
“I don’t think they’re going to get down through that overcast,” said Jeb.
“Then won’t they send a launch?” she demanded.
“Maybe.”
“They’ll search for us,” she said. “I know they will. They’ll miss me, and they’ll …”
“This is kind of pointless,” said Jeb. “The rainy season’s started. There may be speculation that we crashed somewhere—or that the Jivaro got us—but the weather won’t permit an aerial search.”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t the government care if …”
“This is another country,” said Jeb. He remembered his thought of the preceding night. “And time’s on the jungle’s side.”
Monti straightened, stared upstream at the cloud-capped hills. “Jeb, tell me the truth: What’re our chances?”
“I don’t know. If we don’t lose the plane and get stranded on …”
“I still say we’d be better off in a dugout,” said Gettler.
“How’d you like to’ve been in an open dugout last night when the darts started flying?” asked Jeb. He patted the fuselage. “She may not be much, but she’ll stop darts.”
Monti said: “Jeb, don’t let them capture me. I mean …” She swallowed. “Don’t let them take me alive.”
“Oh, stop being so damn melodramatic!” Jeb cleared his throat.
“Another hundred and fifty miles tells the tale,” said Gettler. “Then we hit Zaparo country.”
“If we get through that ambush downstream,” said Jeb.
“That stupid Indian was lying!”
“Why would he lie? And what the hell difference will it make when we reach Zaparo country? They’re scared witless of the Jivaro! Sure! And don’t forget the curse!”
“Arrrrrgh!” said Gettler. He opened the right hand door, spat over the side, sat back.
“Do they torture?” asked Monti.
“Shut up!” snarled Gettler.
Jeb pointed at the door beside Monti. “Keep yourself busy and you won’t have so much time to worry. You can start by getting down and checking that pontoon to see if our patch is leaking. You saw how David did it.”
“I’ll do it,” said David.
“Let me,” said Monti. “He’s right.”
She opened her door, slid down to the pontoon. Presently she straightened. “It’s dry.”
“Good. Make sure the cap’s put back tight.”
“Can I fish for awhile?” asked David.
“Go ahead,” said Jeb. “Drop the line out that door on your side.” He turned to Gettler. “Were there any more flares in that pocket?”
“No.”
“Sonofabitch!”
“Were there more?” asked Monti.
“Yes. They were probably pilfered to celebrate somebody’s saint’s day.” Jeb turned away, stared downstream.
“I think I hear rapids,” said David.
Jeb cocked his head. “No.” He looked back upstream. “It’s that plane coming back.”
“Maybe they saw the flare!” said Monti.
“No. They’re just going home. And they haven’t had time to land upstream.”
“Have they been all the way to the army post already?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“But we’ve been two days on …”
“Three days,” said Jeb.
“That’s what I meant. It couldn’t …”
“We made it that fast,” said Jeb.
Monti sat back.
The returning plane passed to the east of them. Its sounds disappeared.
Monti began to laugh almost hysterically.
“Stop that!” said Jeb.
She shook her head. “I flew over this jungle without understanding it. And there’s the story of my life: I flew over everything without understanding anything.”
A rock escarpment loomed downstream at a bend in the river. The black outline of it stood out sharply in the rain-cleared air.
“Lava rock,” said Jeb.
“I’m not getting any bites on this fish line,” said David.
“Maybe the bait’s gone,” said Jeb. “Take a look.”
David coiled in the line, held up an empty hook.
“Knock it off for awhile,” said Jeb. “The river’s too muddy.”
“I thought I’d at least catch a piranha,” said David. He wound the line on its stick.
“If you fell in they’d have you in a minute,” said Gettler. “But they’re never around when you want them.”
The plane drifted closer to the lava escarpment. Jeb stared at it. Clouds almost touched the rock. They lowered across the ebony face as he watched.
“You see something up there?” asked Gettler.
“I dunno. Did you?”
“Something moved, but the clouds covered it.”
“Could this be the place?” asked Monti. “I mean where that Indian said the ambush was?”
“I don’t think so,” said Jeb.
“Well, what moved?” she asked.
“Probably a tree,” said Jeb.
“Or Jivaro keeping track of us,” said Gettler.
“The river’s too wide along here for an ambush,” said Jeb.
The yelping cry of a toucan sounded from the jungle on their left.
“What was that?” demanded Monti.
Jeb told her.
“I noticed that all the birds went away when it began to rain,” said David.
“But the bugs didn’t,” said Monti. She scratched at a row of welts on her arms. “Don’t they ever leave?”
>
Jeb glanced around, experienced a feeling of surprise when he saw that he had been ignoring a cloud of mosquitoes that drifted with the plane.
“You’ll get used to them,” he said. “I hadn’t even noticed them until you mentioned it.”
Monti shuddered. “How can you get used to bugs?”
Gettler smiled to himself. He had been watching the mosquitoes. Their droning accompanied every movement of the plane—and they increased as the day wore on. Gettler studied the sound. The incessant humming seemed to come sometimes from inside his skull—echoing and throbbing.
One mosquito for every memory out of my past, he thought. The swarming presence of the dead. Noisy ghosts.
The cloud-filtered sun settled toward the hills. Darkness built up its hold on the river. Still a gauze curtain or mosquitoes hid the banks.
Then the clouds parted briefly in the west, and they saw the sky like a sheet of burnished turquoise that drifted swiftly into yellow, then a deep wine color as red as a bishop’s cloak. And the river surface became black and oily looking.
There came the soft muttering of wings as a flock of small birds fled over them in the gathering night.
Boiling clouds surged back across the red hem of sunset. They were dirty grey clouds, shading to black. A jagged fire plume of lightning etched itself against the black sky.
And the rain took up its endless stammering on the cabin top.
The group sat in the airplane cabin, secretively separate with their common fear.
Jeb groped on the floor, found the flashlight, probed the rain-crystal darkness.
“What’re you doing?” demanded Gettler.
“Looking for a place to tie up tonight.”
“Won’t the Indians see the light?” asked Monti.
“They’re huddled in their huts tonight,” said Jeb. “What’s that?”
“Looks like an island,” said Gettler. “The damn rain reflects the light so it’s hard to see.”
A misty, grey-green mounding appeared to drift toward them while they remained motionless.
“It’s an island,” said Jeb. “See? There’s current on the other side.”
A tangle of logs, darkly wet and dripping, came into the flashlight’s beam. Jeb loosed the grapnel, tossed it into the logs. There came the “chunk” of metal striking wood. He felt the grapnel bite into something, snapped off the light. The plane swung around into an eddy, hissed through reed grass, stopped.
A din of frogs arose around them: creaking, chirruping, croaking. The rain seemed to quicken its pace—subduing all other sounds.
Not even the faintest glow of moonlight penetrated the clouds. The four humans existed in a world of beating rain suspended between the frog sounds and the faint wash of the river beneath them.
“Don’t anybody talk about food,” said Jeb. He tightened his belt.
“God, no,” said Monti.
“We’ll have to make a real effort at hunting tomorrow,” said Jeb.
“While we’re being hunted,” said Gettler.
Monti began to shiver. “I’m … afraid …” she quavered.
Gettler cleared his throat. “Sorry I frightened you.” And again his voice was the voice of a stranger with the soft and strangely frightening tone of sanity. “You started to tell us about the movie world the other night. Maybe it’d help if you talked.”
“What’s there to tell about a job?” She sounded petulant.
“Tell us about the easy life: smooth things to feel all around you—never any rotten smells or sweaty, sticky clothes against your skin …”
“Where’d you ever hear that fairy story?” she asked.
“The movies I’ve seen all seem so clean and …”
“The audience just sees the polished surface on the product,” she said. “They should get a look at the strain and sweat.” She sighed. “Sometimes the lights are so hot you think you’re actually melting. I’ve worked one whole solid day just smoothing out one phrase in a new song … or getting one scene right.” Her voice became almost harsh: “Huh! No sweaty clothes!”
Gettler said, “But aren’t there times when …”
“Oh, dry up!” she snapped. Then: “I’m sorry. It’s just that everything seems so hopeless tonight.”
Silence enclosed them.
Monti began to hum, and the throaty voice lifted softly in minor key:
“Sometimes ah feel like a motherless chile … Sometimes ah feel like a motherless chile …”
The beat of the rain carried the rhythm: an endless falling of tears.
“… a lo-o-o-ong wa-a-ay from home.”
She broke off with the curious unfinished lilting that was her trademark.
Gettler took a deep breath like the beginning of a sob.
“You are truly an artist,” he whispered.
“No.” She shook her head. “I’ve just got a good setting and the right mood music.”
“Unhappiness,” said Gettler. “It can be beautiful, too. Curious. I never thought of that before.”
“That’s what we like about the soul!” quipped Monti.
“Stop that!” said Gettler. “You’re trying to hide how you feel.”
“That’s what my psychoanalyst always said,” she agreed.
“I don’t care who knows how I feel,” he said. “You know what your song says to me? It says I was born alone … that I had to do it for myself. And I’ll die alone … for myself. Nothing can subtract from loneliness.”
“It’s just association,” said Monti. “Negro music equals Negro spirituals equals God equals the hereafter equals … What does it equal?”
“I’m not very religious,” said Jeb. “So I don’t know.”
“There’s God-consciousness in every song the Negroes ever created,” said Gettler. “Even the jazz.”
“Well, I’d rather sing a spiritual than go to church, all right,” said Monti. She sniffed.
“God probably appreciates your singing more than your church attendance anyway,” said Jeb. “I know I do.”
“Next thing we’ll be holding a prayer meeting,” said Monti. “Come to Jesus!”
“Nothing like having someone after your head to make you feel religious,” said Jeb. “That I agree.”
Gettler snorted. “Thou hast being, God!” And his voice had recovered all of its insane wildness. “The universe is God’s mistake!”
David stared into the darkness that spouted this wild voice. He felt suddenly alone, lost and numbed by terror.
“There wouldn’t be any God without Man!” snarled Gettler. “God wouldn’t know he existed if it weren’t for Man!”
“I wish the rain would stop,” said Monti.
Jeb sighed.
David tried to work saliva into his dry mouth. He found his voice: “Mr. Gettler, one of my teachers said that every human being has to look for his own religion.” He swallowed. “Isn’t that right?”
“If the rain would just stop long enough to let through a rescue plane,” said Monti.
“You’re not asking much,” said Jeb. “Only a miracle.”
“It’s a problem in courage, son,” murmured Gettler. “It doesn’t take any courage to look for something. But sometimes it takes the courage of the greatest hero to find what you’re looking for.”
“I don’t understand you,” said David.
Gettler patted his arm. “You will, son. You will.”
“But …”
“Take your mother’s song,” said Gettler. “A person cries out against life because it’s lonely, and because it’s separated from whatever created it. But no matter how much you hate life, you love it too. And you know that if you find … whatever It is … you may lose the thing you love. You’ll go back into the caldron for pieces to make something new.”
“We’ve been on this river a century,” said Monti.
“Will it hurt?” whispered David.
“Probably not,” said Gettler.
Jeb wondered at the quietness in Gett
ler’s voice.
Whenever he talks to David, thought Jeb.
A burst of rain hammered against the wings and cabin top, faded into the familiar muttering.
“Mother?” said David.
“Yes?”
“You haven’t sung my song for a long time.”
A deep warmth suddenly filled Monti’s voice. “So I haven’t.” She hummed softly, almost to herself, then:
“Come on along and listen to … the lullaby of Broadway …”
David sighed, settled back into the seat, let the music go all through him. “She used to sing me to sleep with that song,” he whispered. “When I was just a little kid.”
She sang softer and softer.
David’s breathing deepened.
The song trembled away into silence.
I almost scared the poor kid, thought Gettler. He reviled himself: And for no better reason than that I’m scared myself!
Monti leaned against Jeb’s shoulder. Her hair gave off a musk odor that filled his senses.
“Do you have a girlfriend back in Milagro, Jeb?” she asked.
He cleared his throat. A memory picture of Constancia Refugio became very vivid in his mind: lush figure in a tight bodice, doe-like brown eyes hiding a distant look of mysterious cunning, dark hair framing understated features—everything speaking of descent from a Moorish harem beauty.
“Well, do you?” asked Monti.
“I guess so.”
“What’s that mean?”
“There’s a girl.”
“What’s she like?”
He shrugged.
“Is she beautiful?” persisted Monti.
“Yes.”
“One of those dark, full-breasted types?”
“I guess you’d call her that.”
“Have you had her to bed yet?”
Gettler snorted.
And Jeb thought: Well, I guess the Bohemian types don’t think anything of that kind of talk, but …
“A gentleman,” said Monti. “He refuses to answer.”
“She’s the mayor’s daughter,” said Jeb. “A very old family in Ecuador.”
“Do you want to marry her?”
Again, he shrugged.
Monti straightened. “Have you ever been married, Jeb?”
“When I was a punk just out of college. It … it didn’t turn out very well.”
“Divorce?”
“Yes.”
Four Unpublished Novels Page 30