He slipped out the left side, stood with one foot on the strut. It grated loosely. The door flopped farther open, leaned forward. He pushed it, and it tipped on the lower hinge, splashed into the river. It was like a piece of death to Jeb. He watched the glinting metal of the door sunfish back and forth into the depths until muddy water hid the reflection.
Water touched his ankle, and he saw that the left side had slipped farther down. He glanced back toward the roar of the rapids: no sign of the Jivaro. His attention went to the plane’s tail assembly: it had been torn loose, and now dangled in the water. He looked downstream. A barren point of land jutted into the river about a quarter of a mile away at the lower end of the pool. It reached out from a high wall of jungle on the left.
“Gettler,” said Jeb. “I’m going to climb on top. Pass me the survival kit, the machete, and anything else lying around. Everybody come up there after me. She’s sinking slowly, and we may be able to make it to that point on the left down there.” He pointed.
“Get moving,” said Gettler.
Jeb clawed his way onto what remained of the cowling, braced himself there, accepted the articles passed to him, helped the others onto the cabin top, and joined them. They all looked downstream at the point: rain-flattened reeds steaming in the sun above a thin mud bank. Their attention went to the tangled green forest wall about a hundred yards back from the tip of the point.
Gettler found the machete, lay across the fuselage, began paddling with the broad blade. He could see the point past the torn stump of the right wing.
“Behind us!” hissed David.
They turned.
A line of Indians emerged onto a rocky shingle below the rapids, three canoes on their shoulders. They squatted in unison, slipped the canoes into the river.
“Give David the twenty-two,” said Jeb.
Gettler turned on his side, slipped the gun from his pocket, handed it to David.
“One shot to make them keep their distance,” said Jeb.
David sighted, squeezed the trigger. The bullet spattered water beside the lead canoe. The Indians back-paddled.
Another six inches of the left strut sank beneath the river. The cabin now was half filled with water.
Jeb took another look at the point. The plane was angling across into the back eddy that swept toward the jungle along the upper end of the barren tongue of land.
There’s where we die! he thought.
Death and a river.
A quick sensation of near panic tightened his throat muscles. His body fell into a terror reaction, shivering with primitive and abysmal emotion: a rapture of fear that locked onto his mind, and released it with only one clear thought: Living is a luxury.
The pulse of life had never tasted so sweet.
Something caught the right float, stopped it some fifteen feet from shore a third of the way down the point.
“We’re on the mud,” said Jeb.
Gettler stopped paddling.
Slowly, the left float, which was higher in the water, drifted around. The tip of the left wing slipped into the muddy shore, stopped the motion.
Jeb grabbed up the black bag of the survival kit, ran along the wing, jumped into the low reeds. He drew the magnum revolver from his belt, eyed the forest wall.
David and Monti followed.
Gettler came last, the machete dangling from his right hand.
“This is the place,” he said.
“Out to the tip of the point,” said Jeb. “A spear or dart could reach us here.” He motioned the others ahead, brought up the rear.
The canoes upstream inched closer.
“Give them another warning,” said Jeb.
“I could hit them easy,” said David.
Jeb hesitated, and an instinct warned him.
“No.” He shook his head. “Just tell them we’re ready.”
David squeezed off a shot that smacked the paddle from the hand of one of the Indians. An angry shout lifted from the canoes, but they paddled back to the edge of the shingle.
“You do that on purpose?” asked Jeb.
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Save the rest of your shots for real. Fill that clip again and get the spare ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Look out!” screamed Monti.
They whirled.
A spear arced from the jungle, splatted into reeds and mud opposite the plane. The handle of the spear jutted upward, a tassel of monkey fur and kapok dangling from its tip.
“There’s your answer,” said Gettler. “The spear of vengeance.” He smiled, a skull grimace of teeth in the matting of his beard.
A smoking arrow followed the spear, hissed into the river beside the half-sunken plane.
“Fire arrow!” snapped Jeb.
They crouched.
Another arrow followed the first. It hit metal, skidded into the river. A third arrow arced into the gaping front where the motor had been. Instantly, a sheet of flame leaped upward, enveloped the entire front of the plane. An acrid smoke of gasoline and oil drifted across the point.
“Duck!” shouted Jeb. “It’ll blow what’s left in the wing tank!”
A sharply booming roar erupted from the plane, and a section of wing sailed across the point spewing a trail of fire. Gobs of flaming gasoline spattered into the reeds.
“Why’d they do that?” whispered Monti.
“To destroy our magic,” said Gettler.
“What’ll they do now?” asked David.
“I don’t know,” said Gettler. He sat back in the mud, the machete held across his knees, looked from the jungle at the base of the point to the downstream reaches of the river. A bend cut off the view about a mile downstream. Terraces of massive trees stepped away from the bank there, blended into a mossy curving of hills. The water was a glaring reflector that magnified the hammering of sunlight. The point felt smaller and smaller, as though it were drawing back from the forest skyline.
Jeb glanced at Gettler. The man’s personality had undergone a transformation: the shedding of a false cloak that opened up deep strength. His eyes when he looked back at Jeb revealed anguish that had gone beyond all turmoil to a pervading calmness.
“Helluva place to die, eh, Logan?”
Monti began sobbing.
What’s the difference? thought Jeb. But he reached out, patted her shoulder.
“The uncertainty’s what’s bad,” murmured Gettler. “Enough uncertainty, and you welcome anything.”
Jeb looked at where the plane had been. A torn strip of fuselage lay stretched along the mud: nothing more.
My little piece of civilization didn’t make it, he thought. I won’t outlast it for long.
His attention went to the green wall, glistening leaves, silence.
An arrow lifted out of the green, slanted into the mud ten yards in front of them.
“Can they reach us?” whispered Monti.
Gettler nodded. “Probably.”
“What’s keeping them?” she screamed.
Gettler grunted, shifted his weight forward, got to his feet.
“They’ve seen David,” he said. “Listen.”
A low chanting sound drifted from the jungle. “They’re making counter magic.”
“What about David?” asked Jeb.
Gettler laughed with a chopping abruptness, a wild sound. He bent forward, jerked the revolver from Jeb’s hand before Jeb could react.
Jeb started to rise.
“Stay put,” said Gettler. He stepped toward the jungle, lifted his voice in Quechua, roared: “Hear me, people!”
The chanting in the jungle stopped.
“What’s he saying?” whispered Monti.
“He’s asking them to listen,” said Jeb.
“I am the one you want!” shouted Gettler. “I am the only one. The others are blameless!”
Jeb translated in a low voice.
Again Gettler shouted.
Jeb spoke to Monti and David out of the side of his
mouth.
“He says that David is the son of their brother, their brother Bannon … that you are their brother’s woman … that I was a mere … hired canoeist. That’s the only comparison in their tongue.”
Gettler fell silent, waited.
No sound came from the green wall.
Gettler spoke to the three behind him without turning.
“I’ve done what I can. See if you can make them parley.” He shrugged. “Well, thanks for everything.”
“Wait!” hissed Jeb.
But Gettler already was striding toward the jungle with a stiff-legged, rocking gait. He held the revolver close to his side.
“They’ll kill him!” shouted David. He started to rise, dash after Gettler.
Jeb pulled the boy down.
Gettler broke into a staggering run toward the ominous green silence. Everything was held suspended in soundless waiting. Then Gettler raised the gun, began firing as he advanced: a shot … a step … a shot … a step—into the jungle—a shot … a shot.
Sudden babbling of Indian voices.
Silence.
A shadow passed across the point, and it began to rain with the on-switch tropic abruptness: driving bursts of water that drenched across the three people at the tip of the land.
Monti stared at the mossy green wilderness of scrambled vines, leaves and limbs periodically blurred behind the waves of rain.
“Don’t let them take me,” she whispered.
Jeb reached down to David’s hand, removed the twenty-two from the boy’s limp fingers, handed him the machete that Gettler had dropped.
“The extra clip,” said Jeb.
David passed it to him without looking from the jungle.
Monti put a hand to her throat, rubbed it.
“Why do they do that … to the head?” she asked.
“Religion,” said Jeb.
He had a momentary mental image of a Jivaro witch doctor working over the small fire: the hot sand, the careful needlework across dead lips. Five heads dangling from the ridgepole of a jambai house. Big jambai. Big medicine.
Unconsciously, his left hand repeated Monti’s gesture, rubbing his throat. Horror remained distant, held back by a great curiosity. He felt suddenly utterly sensitive to himself—a state of relaxed alertness where everything around him happened only with his express permission. And he thought that he could turn off his world by the simplest decision. But still the power of curiosity overwhelmed him like the flow of a river, like the flow of time. And he was lost in a swimming duality unable to make the decision that would stop existence.
The rain stopped. Sunlight returned. Steam spiraled and fumed above the point, thickened to a vapor, dispersed in a light breeze.
A black centipede crawled across a length of reed in front of Jeb. He stared at it, experienced an abrupt rapport with the tide of jungle life, a quickening of soul: the busy silence of it filled him. He lifted his attention to the forest wall, attracted by a flicker of motion.
An Indian appeared in front of the jungle, flung there by a sorcery that produced his image out of a natural camouflage in one movement. Ebony eyes glinted from beneath a straight line of bangs. Red whorls of achiote streaked his face. Scarlet macaw feathers protruded from a red string that bound the upper muscle of his left arm. He carried a spear held vertically in his right hand. A monkey skin bag dangled heavily from his left hand.
“What’s he doing?” whispered David.
“Showing us that he has the tzantza,” gritted Jeb.
David stepped in front of his mother, hefted the machete.
“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” said Monti. She spoke in an almost conversational tone.
A whole line of Indians appeared in front of the jungle by the same magic that had revealed the first. Every face carried the red achiote streaks that spelled out their mission: a war of vengeance. They carried spears, clubs, bows, blow guns … and here and there an ancient muzzle-loader. Two of the Indians stepped ahead, converged, advanced together a cautious ten paces. The entire line moved up behind them. More Jivaro appeared from the jungle.
They pressed forward.
“No sudden movements,” whispered Jeb.
The line of Indians stopped some twenty feet away, the two leaders only about ten feet from the waiting trio.
Jeb passed his gaze along the glowering line, realized that none of the Indians were looking at him. All of the dark eyes focused on David.
The image of the father, thought Jeb.
And he suddenly understood Gettler’s words: “They’ve seen David.”
One of the Indians stepped closer to David, spoke in jungle Quechua: “Boy child, how do you have the face and hair of my brother?”
“The child does not speak with your voice,” said Jeb.
Eyes turned toward Jeb.
“This is the son of your brother,” said Jeb.
“And woman is this child’s mother?”
Jeb swallowed in a dry throat, nodded.
Dark eyes probed at Jeb.
“The demons of the rapids did not slay you, even when we made our strongest medicine,” said the Indian.
“What are they saying?” hissed Monti.
“Quiet!” snapped Jeb. Then: “The demons do not slay those of pure heart.”
“Ari … yes.” The Indian nodded. “But how came you to shelter the maná-wakani, the demon creature with an animal soul in a human body?”
“He told us that you slew his partner, Roger Bannon,” said Jeb. “You were many. We were afraid. We fled.”
“Ari.”
Indian heads nodded all along the line.
“Yes. You ran. You were afraid.”
“Gett … ler was pitalala, the poison snake,” said the Indian. “His tongue spoke in two directions. He slew our brother, then fled our vengeance. That is the truth of it. You will tell the soldiers?”
“Soldiers?”
“They come in many canoes,” said the Indian. He held up his left hand, two fingers. “Two days.” Three fingers. “Three days. No more.”
“He says soldiers are coming in canoes,” said Jeb.
“Three days at the most.”
Monti buried her face in her hands.
“Tell the boy that his father’s soul will rest quietly,” said the Indian. “We have seen to this. He was our brother.”
“What’s he saying?” demanded David.
“He says that their quarrel was with Gettler. That it’s settled.”
“Gettler killed my dad, didn’t he?” asked David.
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t I hate him?”
Tears began streaming down David’s face. He shivered.
The Indian turned to his followers, barked an order, returned his attention to Jeb. “A storm comes. We will build you a shelter here where you cannot miss the soldiers.”
Indians began filing back across the point into the jungle.
David turned his back on them, walked around his mother to the river’s edge.
“Are we really safe?” asked Monti.
“Yes.”
“One moment they were deadly, threatening … Now …”
“It’s their religion … their code,” said Jeb. “They see the evidence in David’s face.”
“He’s the image of Roger.”
“Yes.”
A lean-to shelter of brush and bark was erected on the point facing the jungle, a fire built in front of it. Indians appeared with a pig, spitted it above the flames. The air above the point vibrated with heat devils. The last of the day’s sunlight stabbed out along the silver furrow of the river like a thrown lance.
Darkness clapped down upon the scene.
Little fires appeared at the Indian’s shelters along the forest wall. Stars glittered overhead like holes punctured in a velvet bowl. An orange moon lifted over the trees, flung its track along the river.
Jeb squatted inside the lean-to, facing the fire. The meat weighed hea
vily in his stomach. He could see the faint outline of David seated beside him, and Monti beyond in a dark corner.
Insects fogged the air of the shelter, keening thinly, pushing, crawling, biting. Bats laced the air overhead. There came a splashing, whiffling sound from downstream on the far bank. The chime call of river frogs lifted from the muddy shoreline, and distantly, he could hear the rapids.
Wind shook the lean-to, stirring the rain-rinsed air. Clouds blotted out the stars and moon. A dull splattering rhythm began to beat on the bark roof above them. The air took on a swift feeling of freshness. A crashing roar of almost simultaneous lightning and thunder shook the ground: a thermal flare that left them blinking in the after-darkness. The sharp bite of ozone came to their nostrils.
“That was close,” whispered Monti.
“Off in the jungle downstream,” said Jeb.
Another snake-tongue of light forked the sky downstream. Thunder rumbled behind it. In the brief glare they saw Indians standing beside their fires at the jungle’s edge: caught in frozen motion between darkness and darkness. More lightning flickered across the forest: three swift strokes, one after another, spearing the darkness. In each brief flash the river stood out like a dark sheet of rippled blue steel.
Now the rain sheeted down in savage spasms torn by bursts of wind. The tongue of land seemed to rock and twist in the gusts with the remembered motions of the plane. A steady hissing of rain on water could be heard behind the louder beat of it against the bark above their heads.
And Jeb thought about the future.
I’ve been running away, he told himself. I don’t fit down here. I’m not the expatriate type. I belong on a nice safe milk run with regular hours and regular pay. A wife at home … and kids.
He didn’t picture Monti in this role.
There came over him a great need to sink into the flowing movement of his own kind of people, into their security and protective coloration.
I’m not really a rebel, he thought.
Monti, too, thought about the future. She suddenly saw herself as a kind of latter day religious courtesan in her own temple of love, and the idea amused her.
The studio’ll make a great thing out of this, she thought. Probably do a picture about love in the jungle. Silent laughter shook her. And she considered Jeb as briefly as he had considered her.
Another passing affair.
Four Unpublished Novels Page 44