A small warm hand touched his forehead, and a voice whispered: “It’s all right. Go to sleep.”
Jeb’s dreaming mind swept back through dead years to his mother’s voice; he relaxed.
“Go to sleep dear. Everything’ll be all right in the morning.”
His breathing smoothed, deepened.
Monti withdrew her hand from his forehead.
How like Roger he is, she thought. An abrupt feeling of self-revulsion filled her. Stop kidding yourself, Monti! He isn’t Roger! Her mouth shaped into a sneer. What in Christ’s name am I doing here? She put her hands over her eyes. What am I going to do?
Jeb turned in his sleep, leaned against her.
And Monti’s thought went out to him as though to something forbidden that drew her mind against her will.
Well, what the hell! (And she recognized her father’s expression in her thoughts.) So I’m attracted to a man. That’s what men and women are for.
Jeb awoke in the pre-dawn blackness. An acid etching of hunger knotted his stomach. He thought that he could feel the disintegration of the plane around them as he felt the hungry wasting of his own body. Uncounted little working-away noises trembled through the plane as it swung back and forth in the current. The soft thump-kalump of the canoe against the float came like a counterpoint to his own heartbeats. Intertwined odors trailed through the darkness: the biting smell of rust, mildew, perspiration and rotting fruit, oil smoke and carrion.
And over it all hung the fetid musk of the jungle: a compound of mud and plants, perfumes and stenches—with endless harmonics between, underneath and over.
Jeb cleared his throat.
Monti stirred.
“You awake?” whispered Jeb.
“Yes.” She coughed. “I made David go to sleep.”
“All quiet?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll be daylight pretty soon.”
“I know. Everything gets so quiet just before dawn.”
“It’s stopped raining.”
“It hasn’t rained all night.”
Jeb slapped at an insect crawling on his arm. He became conscious that insects were everywhere in the cabin: buzzing, clicking, fluttering, crawling …
“God, the bugs are fierce!” he said.
“I had my door open for awhile,” she said.
Dawn exploded over the river as though a switch had been thrown. They saw that the clouds were breaking in the east: shreds of sky—a washed grey-blue—widened to reveal the sun.
The waking sounds of birds clamored in the forest with whistles, screeches, coughings, jib-jib-jibs—and a distant roar that could have been a long-tailed monkey pretending it was a jaguar.
Gettler mumbled, straightened.
Jeb turned.
“You want me to help you down to the float?”
“Go to hell!” growled Gettler. He glared at Jeb.
David opened his eyes, blinked, said: “This is the ninth day.”
Jeb turned to Monti. “Better change the bandage while I’m casting off.”
She nodded.
He opened his door, swung down to the float, worked the grapnel off the bottom with the aid of a cane pole. Immediately the plane turned sideways, matched its pace to the brown current.
An iridescent opaline beetle arrowed from the left bank, came under the wing, rested momentarily on the strut, and plunged off toward the opposite shore.
Jeb looked into the cabin.
“How’s his hand?”
“It looked awfully red. I put some more of that ointment on it.”
“It doesn’t hurt as much as it did,” said David.
“My hands are falling off,” snarled Gettler. “Not that I suppose you care.”
“Turn around and let me see them,” said Jeb.
Gettler sneered.
“I can turn you around,” said Jeb.
Slowly, Gettler twisted in the seat, exposed his taped wrists.
Jeb tugged at the bindings.
“Your hands look okay.”
Gettler settled back in the seat.
A current pulled the plane toward the right hand shore. Jeb labored with the cane pole until they again floated in the center of the stream.
“Will my door lock?” asked Monti.
Jeb trailed his cane pole in the water, glanced in at her. “That latch there beside the handle. Pull it back. Why?”
“We could turn him loose out there on the right side, and lock my door.”
“Why?”
“He could help you.”
Jeb looked at Gettler, pursed his lips, glanced through the cabin at the other strut. The spear that had pierced the wing tank was still wedged there.
“Give me that spear on this side,” said Jeb.
Monti leaned out, recovered the spear, handed it to him. Jeb wedged it against the strut on his side.
“How about it, Gettler?” he asked.
“How about what?”
“If we parole you on the other side will you help?”
“Why should I?”
“Let me,” said David. “My finger’s all right.”
Gettler shook his head, spoke in a suddenly odd tone of sanity: “You can’t make the boy do a man’s work! It’ll kill him!”
“Maybe I should help,” said Monti.
Jeb shook his head.
“The boy didn’t do anything to deserve being tortured!” said Gettler. “I saw his hand. There’s no reason to torture him.” Glittering wildness returned to Gettler’s eyes.
“We’re not torturing him,” said Jeb.
“I’ll help,” muttered Gettler. “I give you my promise.”
Jeb took a pocketknife in his right hand, the revolver in his left, said: “Okay. Turn around.”
Gettler obeyed.
Jeb cut the tape between his wrists.
“Out the other side!” snapped Jeb.
Gettler rubbed his wrists.
“Now!” said Jeb.
Gettler clambered across David, dropped down to the float.
Monti slammed her door, locked it.
Gettler took up a cane pole, dipped it in the current.
Jeb turned, looked downstream.
Maybe that was a mistake, he thought. Gettler might watch his chance to jump ashore and run away. Jeb shrugged. Well, what if he did? It’d sure make things easier.
Clouds piled against the face of the hills in the west. The day grew brighter, and the heat mounted.
Solitude closed in upon them. There came over the river a feeling of timeless immensity: something endless and moving like a place of eternity caught between forest walls.
The jungle cast a spell over the plane.
The four humans surrendered themselves to the smooth gliding of sun and river. They drifted and drowsed along a breadth of warm light between two darknesses.
A roaring sound of rapids pressed in upon Jeb’s awareness. He suddenly straightened to attention. Downstream, the river narrowed like the converging lines of a railroad track, and seemed to end in a feathery green lifting of hills. Jeb read the current, recognized that the river must curve left.
The roaring sound grew louder.
Jeb climbed into the cabin, pumped the primer.
“What about him?” asked Monti. She nodded toward Gettler standing on the float.
“There’s time,” said Jeb.
He pulled the starter button. The motor kicked over twice without response. Again he tried the starter. It emitted a lifeless, grinding noise.
“Isn’t it going to start?” asked Monti.
“Doesn’t sound like it’s getting any spark,” muttered Jeb.
Now, they could feel the cooler airborne dampness that told of violent white water. The sound plunged up the river to them, filling the space between the jungle walls.
Again Jeb pumped the primer, pulled the starter without result.
Gettler shouted, pointed to the right.
“What’s he pointing at?” asked Monti.
<
br /> Jeb studied the shore, hesitated.
“It’s a spear,” said David. “Hanging from that tree.”
“I see it,” said Monti. “What is it?”
“Ghost spear!” yelled Gettler.
Monti whirled toward Jeb. “What’s he saying?”
“It’s nothing,” said Jeb.
And again he tried the starter.
“David,” said Jeb.
“Yes, sir.” The boy leaned forward.
“Give Gettler your pocket knife. Tell him to cut the canoe loose, and have it ready.”
David, slid across the seat, opened the door.
Jeb tried the starter.
“I had a jalopy in college that sounded like that when it wouldn’t start,” said Monti.
The roar of water now dominated the air over the river. Jeb felt the damp coolness of the wind-blown spray.
“Come on, baby—start!” he pleaded.
And again he tried the starter.
“Could it be flooded?” asked Monti.
Jeb fought down a desire to shout: “Shut up!”
He worked the starter, and it ground more slowly with the weakening of the battery.
Gettler leaned in the open door. “You’re not going to start it.” He held the canoe beneath the fuselage with his foot. “We’d better get in the canoe.”
“You know what that spear meant!” snapped Jeb.
Gettler looked downstream.
The plane drifted toward hills that climbed steeply on both sides. Their green faded away to softness like a covering of sage-colored moss.
“What about that spear?” asked Monti.
“What was that white stuff on it?” demanded David.
“Kapok,” said Jeb.
“What’s it mean?” shouted Monti.
“They’ve made an offering to their river god, asking him to take us,” said Gettler.
Jeb’s hands moved with desperate jerkiness as he again tried the starter.
The motor ground with a hopeless slowness.
Gettler crouched on the pontoon, holding the canoe.
Something spanged into the fuselage beside the door.
“Dart!” screamed Gettler.
There came a splashing, scraping sound from beneath the plane.
In that moment, they swept around the bend. The current quickened. Directly ahead—less than one hundred yards away—the water curled over between glistening black lava walls. Deeper and deeper creases furrowed the current as it swept over into the gorge.
A deafening, hammering roar broke over the plane.
The lava flow was split cleanly by the river as though a giant axe had hewed it.
“Gettler!” screamed Monti. “He’s gone in the canoe!”
“Hang on!” shouted Jeb.
He scrambled out the door, grabbed up his cane pole. Out of the corners of his eyes he glimpsed the canoe behind them, Gettler crouched in the center, paddling with a pole.
But there was no time to worry about Gettler.
A surging coil of demented water lifted the plane, seemed to hold it poised, then hurled it forward into a terrifying savagery.
Jeb grabbed for the strut, hugged against it.
The left hand pontoon submerged, swept his feet out from under him. Jeb fought his way back onto the pontoon. The plane whirled completely around. Something jerked it forward. Jeb saw that the grapnel sea anchor had fallen overboard. He dared not let go of the strut to recover it, and could only stare at the taut line disappearing into the river ahead.
The canyon walls soared upward into amber spray mist seemingly just beyond the wingtips. Currents slithered along the smooth walls, and whirled back into the central torrent. A mountainous boiling of water loomed ahead as the maelstrom surged over a hidden rock.
Jeb freed one hand from the strut, pointed his cane pole ahead, felt it grate on rock. The pole, bent, snapped. He hurled away the useless stump, clutched the strut.
There was no time for fear. He experienced only a sinking sensation of awe as the pontoon beneath him lifted on the current and cleared the rock. The plane plunged down the other side, and a wave washed completely over them.
Screeching metal could be heard even above the chasm’s roar.
The plane tipped backward, bobbed forward, straightened.
And they were out of it! Drifting to the right across a wide dark pool that still boiled with the concealed violence of the rapids.
Jeb took a deep, shaking breath.
“I never thought we’d make it,” he whispered. “My God!”
“Look!” screamed Monti.
Jeb straightened.
Monti was leaning out the door, pointing upstream.
Jeb turned.
A dark matchstick hurtled toward them down the gorge with an ant figure moving violently in it.
Gettler!
The matchstick grew larger, resolved into a canoe. And now they could see the cane pole in his hands. Troughs and flumes of insane water tore at the canoe: rushing currents that blundered everywhere.
The canoe shot between two rocks as though squirted. It reared like a horse above the final boiling surge of current, and slapped down in the lower pool.
“He made it!” shouted David.
Gettler poled toward the drifting plane.
The roar of white water grew dimmer. Jeb became aware of straining and groaning sounds in the metal of the plane. Both pontoons gurgled with water inside them. They floated low. The strut shackles had been strained where they joined the float beneath Jeb. There was at least three inches of play at the juncture.
“Hallooooo!” called Gettler.
David looked at Jeb. “The water went right over us!”
Jeb glanced back at the rapids. He could still see one wall of the lava escarpment and the tailrace of white water. He saw no logical answer to how they had survived that violence yet the fact that they had survived it gave him no reassurance. He felt that they were being saved only for a more terrible trial.
Gettler poled the canoe under the wing beside Jeb, grabbed the pontoon.
“Is she going to float?” he asked.
Jeb stared at him.
“You didn’t have to come back here,” he said. “You abandoned us. Why didn’t you …”
“I couldn’t help that up there,” said Gettler. “The plane got away from me when I ducked into the canoe to escape the darts.”
“Then why’d you come back?”
“You have the guns,” said Gettler.
Jeb sighed, then: “Find us some cane poles.” He slipped the machete from the floor of the cabin, tossed it into the canoe, put a hand on the revolver at his waist.
Gettler smiled. “Sure, captain.” He looked around. “Where?”
Jeb looked around. Thorn bushes, a flooded reach of saw grass, assorted islands of sedge with their vaporous clouds of insects, here and there alligator snouts parting the current in wait for anything the rapids disgorged. Beyond the thorn bushes and saw grass, forests of hardwood climbed upward.
“Now you see why you’re not supposed to be able to navigate this river in the wet season,” said Gettler.
“We survived those rapids,” protested Jeb.
“The river god wasn’t ready for us yet.”
“And where were the Jivaro?” asked Jeb. “That was a perfect place for an ambush!”
“You saw the spear,” said Gettler. “They prayed to the demon of the rapids, then sat back to let the demon take us.”
A widening curve of river hid the rapids. The river downstream spread across lowlands like a stagnant lake.
“Animals starve here in this season,” said Gettler. “Only the bugs stay active.”
“You want us to give up?” asked Jeb.
“We take the canoe,” said Gettler. “It’s our only hope.”
Jeb glanced along the narrow length of the dugout, saw the wash of dirty water in its bottom, the brown bubbles along the cracks in the wood.
The plane creak
ed and gurgled.
“That thing’s sinking,” said Gettler.
“Give me your cane pole,” said Jeb.
Gettler hesitated, passed the pole to Jeb.
“Swing the canoe around to the other side and tie it up,” said Jeb.
Gettler shrugged, obeyed.
“David, get up on top and look for a place to beach,” said Jeb.
The boy clambered out, and Jeb boosted him onto the cabin top.
David shielded his eyes with his hand, stared downstream.
“Don’t let a sedge island fool you,” said Jeb. “Look for current going around both sides of an island.”
“Over there to the right,” said David. “That one.” He pointed at a dark mound.
Jeb recovered the sea anchor, hung it in the strut, began working the plane toward the island. The dark spot grew larger as they approached.
“It is an island!” said Monti.
Current whorls billowed away on both sides in a thin lacery of foam.
Less than an inch remained between the top of Jeb’s pontoon and the river surface. He dug the pole into the river bottom, sent the plane crabwise into a patch of drowned grass at the upper tip of the island.
“Now what?” demanded Gettler.
“Now you bail out the pontoons,” said Jeb.
“With what?”
“With a dipper made from fish line and an end joint of this cane pole. Get busy.”
Jeb passed him the pole beneath the fuselage.
“The patch’s leaking,” said Gettler.
“Shut up and get busy.” Jeb lowered himself into the warm water, waded across to the muddy ground ahead of the plane. “I’ll find something to wedge the patch tighter.”
He glanced up at Monti, nodded toward Gettler.
She raised the muzzle of the rifle to where Jeb could see it.
Monti watched Jeb explore the island for bits of driftwood. She heard David moving on the cabin top, Gettler working at the floats.
The still, steamy air above the river felt unbreathable, and made her lungs gasp in deep unsatisfactory gulps of vapor. The day grew hotter as the men worked.
It can’t possibly get any hotter, she thought.
But it grew hotter.
Jeb came around the left side, lifted the cowling, began working on the motor. Presently, he appeared at the cabin door, leaned in toward Monti.
“Anything in your suitcase I can use to wipe away moisture in the motor?”
“I’ll see.”
Four Unpublished Novels Page 40