Night of the Jaguar jp-3

by Michael Gruber

  “That’s sad,” she said.

  “Is it? Everything passes, you know. First the gods fail and then the people lose heart and the dark closes in. As now. I’ll think you’ll agree that the gods we worship are, if anything, less powerful than great Pan.”

  “You mean like Jesus?”

  “Would that we actually worshipped Jesus…good Lord, is that a Palmira?” With that, Cooksey brought up his butterfly net and stalked a small white butterfly marked with yellow and brown for several minutes, finally scooping it up in the gauzy folds and holding it up to his face, upon which shone a delighted grin. Jenny thought he looked now about twelve. He transferred the insect, still wrapped in the netting, into a wide-mouthed jar; when its fluttering ceased, he examined it through a hand lens.

  “Did you kill it?” asked Jenny.

  “Well, yes,” said Cooksey, peering. “By God, it is a Palmira. It’s an Antillean butterfly, almost unknown in these parts. It feeds on beggar-tick. My word, there’s another one!” He leaped and snagged this one, too; into the jar it went.

  “I wonder if it’s breeding here now,” he mused.

  “Not anymore, since you got here, if those were the only ones.”

  He looked at her closely. “You don’t think I should’ve killed them, do you? I quite sympathize, but after all I’m a scientist and therefore a soldier in the legions of death. We kill to understand, and we think it’s justified therefore. Pan would not have approved. Do you know, our friend Moie thinks we’re all dead people, although he believes you are still a little alive.”

  She was looking at the bright still shapes in the killing jar. “I don’t know…I mean, no offense, Cooksey, but I don’t think I could, like, do that for a living, kill things. It kind of creeps me out. Why is it important if they’re breeding here?”

  “Well, because it might be yet another tiny sign that the tropics are moving northward in response to global warming. This is a Cuban butterfly, after all. In any case, we will dedicate the rest of the day to Pan and kill no more and merely observe the life around us. This, too, is science, and a quite venerable sort of science at that.”

  So they did and spent hours observing the insect, marine, and bird life of the small island through hand lens and binoculars until the sun sank to touch the tops of the tallest trees and Cooksey said it was time they started back, because they would have to paddle into the teeth of the wind. But when they cleared the pass and entered Whitewater Bay again, they found that the wind had died away entirely and that the whole sheet of water was as calm as a millpond. Jenny had that very thought, although she had never seen a millpond. Another alien image, this one from the story she had received from Cooksey’s old book, but it was not the only one. Indeed, her head now seemed to contain many more rooms than it had, all decorated with pictures and furniture she could not remember, and connecting hallways that beckoned mysteriously. This was what regular people were like, she thought, all this stuff, because when you knew stuff, like the Roman Empire and fig wasps and global warming and the great god Pan, well, the stuff wanted to connect up with itself and out of that came new thoughts you’d never thought before, thoughts maybe no one had ever thought before. It was disturbing, like being dumped in a new foster home and not knowing what was going to happen; you wanted to sit on the bed they showed you and not move until someone told you what was what.

  She didn’t want to think about all that just now and found she could still shut it down pretty much and just be, and sink into the easy paddling and the passing scene, the silver water like a tarnished mirror perfectly reflecting the peach-colored wisps of clouds and the orange disk of the setting sun, each stroke of her paddle meeting its twin coming up from below before vanishing in the swirl of the stroke. And above floated the birds, white egrets, gulls, once a flight of brown pelicans, in their peculiar prehistoric-seeming lumbering flight, each of these, too, with its twin below for the instant of passage. And looking back she saw their wake, two long lines extending into the unrecover able past, and there was something nagging at her she wanted to ask Cooksey, what was it?

  “What dowe worship, Cooksey?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said something about dying gods and all. And that we didn’t worship Jesus. It was just before you found that butterfly.”

  “Oh, yes. Well, my mother used to say that when people stopped worshipping God they didn’t stop worshipping entirely. She thought the urge to worship was hardwired into humankind, like the urge for procreation. So they worshipped lesser gods, mainly themselves, as being most convenient, but also things like money, fame, and sex. Or youth. And these gods all fail, just like Pan did, being tied to corruptible and earthly things. Of course she was quite a devout Catholic. She was a Howard, you see, a very ancient Catholic family where I come from. Very unusual for an anthropologist to be a believer, they spend so much time picking apart the beliefs of the natives, but when people asked her about it she would laugh and say yes, yes, it’s perfectly absurd, but I happen to believe it’s all true. She had a deep sense of the weird, and I picked up some of it, which is why I suppose I get along with our Moie. He doesn’t think Pan is dead at all. It would shock him most awfully to suggest it.”

  “How does he know about Pan? I thought that was the Romans a long time ago.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t call him Pan. He calls him Jaguar, but it’s the same fellow, you know, although with somewhat sharper teeth. Yes, I suspect Pan is loose again in the kingdom of the dead people, and I’d bet he’s more than a little cranky after his long sleep. I imagine we’re in for some interesting experiences.”

  “What will happen?”

  “Nothing very nice, I suspect. The earth is becoming a little bored with us dead people. Moie, whatever he is, represents a symptom, a bit like that butterfly from the south. I mean, suppose you had a great mansion and invited some guests because you were a generous and kind lady. And suppose these guests started to behave in a rude and destructive manner…”

  “Like the weasels in Toad Hall.”

  “Just so. Smearing the draperies with filth, breaking the crockery, insulting the servants…well, however generous you might be, you’d probably decide that it had gone beyond a joke and take steps to make the house somewhat less hospitable. You might turn up the heat, for example, so they swelter. You might stop serving nice meals. You might let the hounds loose in the bedrooms to raven and destroy. And so we have global warming, and sea-level rise, and new diseases, and deserts spreading, and failing water tables, and a kind of desperate madness, because perhaps nature includes the invisible as well as all this.” He gestured with his paddle at the surrounding scene.

  “My mother certainly believed it and she was no one’s fool. As I’ve said, she would’ve been delighted to know Moie.”

  “Do you think he’ll, like, kill any more people?” asked Jenny. It was still hard for her to associate the gentle Indian she knew with people being torn apart.

  “That would depend. He wants the people who are planning to destroy his forest to stop doing it, and I suppose he’ll continue to kill those he thinks responsible until they actually stop. At least he seems to have decided to murder the guilty for a change. He can always depend upon us to slaughter the innocent ourselves, assuming any of us are innocent.” After an interval of silence Cooksey broke into song, a rhythmic ditty about rolling down to old Maui that seemed to make the paddling easier. They both dug in more vigorously until the canoe seemed to fly of its own will across the water’s smooth and flawless skin.

  At the boat livery in Flamingo, Jenny felt the first effects of sunburn. Even through the fabric of her shirt the sun had struck fiercely at her redhead’s tender skin. And she had a headache, the sun making its contribution but also perhaps the result of deep and unaccustomed thought.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Cooksey asked when he returned to the car.

  “I’m sort of wiped out,” she replied. “You can drive if you want.”

 
His face clouded. “I don’t want,” he said. “I really can’t.”

  “You never learned to drive?”

  “I did. But I can’t. I was in an accident. My nerves won’t let me. I’m sorry.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  He stared at her, and she saw the age creep back into his face, and she thought it was like the guy in a mummy movie when the spell is broken and he turns into a skeleton on the screen.

  “A fatal accident,” he said huskily, and turned and entered the car on the passenger side.

  They drove away with Cooksey looking pointedly out the window and sending out powerful vibrations of rejection. Jenny had wide experience of sulky men, men who wouldn’t talk about it, men who took whatever was bugging them out on the nearest female, so she withdrew herself and thought about the interesting and exciting things that had filled the day, and here discovered an unsuspected value of knowing stuff: you became a more interesting interior conversationalist and didn’t have to fill your mind exclusively with moping about other people being mean to you and the worthlessness of your own sad life.

  So she thought and drove, which she had always liked doing, especially in this powerful, fancy car, and she started to drive more aggressively, downshifting and passing trucks on the narrow two-lane with canals on either side. Cooksey had rolled up a towel and seemed to be asleep on it, leaning against his window.

  And then she pulled out to pass a tractor-trailer, and when she was almost past it she saw that it had been following another big semi, its twin, both loaded with crushed limestone and she saw the lights of an oncoming truck. She floored the pedal and leaned on the horn. The old car leaped forward as if back on its native autobahn. Time slowed to a crawl as they seemed to inch along the gray flank of the leading semi. The oncoming truck blared its horn, and then, with scant yards to spare, she whipped the car back into lane.

  Cooksey was wide awake, looking at her in amazement.

  “Toad of Toad Hall,” she said, and gave a toot on the horn.

  His face softened, creased into a small grin. “Your first literary reference, I believe. What you get for reading books. And…” Here he drew in a deep breath and let it out. “I’m sorry. I tend to shut out the world when pressed. It’s both an occupational and a national fault. And I’m not used to talking about painful subjects.”

  “You told me about your wife and the snake. The fer-de-lance.”

  “So I did. I wonder why?”

  “People tell me stuff. I thought it was because I was a retard, it didn’t matter what they told me, you know? Like talking to a doll. I’m used to it.”

  “Well, then, suppose I talk to you like a fellow human being instead?”

  “That’s cool,” she said, and he told her about how he’d come back to England with his wife’s body and buried her and started to drink a lot afterward, living at his parents’ summer place in Norfolk, and he had a little girl, four, Jemima, and how one day he’d taken her to a pub for lunch and had drank more pints than he ought, and driving back home a tractor had pulled suddenly into the road and he’d swerved and struck a tree. He hadn’t been going that fast, but it was enough. The child had been unrestrained in the backseat, one moment chattering away, singing her little songs, and the next over the backseat, smack against the windscreen. She hung on for two days and then he’d buried her next to her mother and left England.

  “What did you do?”

  “Oh, nothing, really. A wandering scholar. There are lots of us, filling in for sabbaticals, staffing a grant. And various other things.”

  “God. Your wife and then your kid. What a bad year!”

  A harsh barking laugh from Cooksey. “Indeed. A bad year. Now we know each other’s sad stories. What a pair! We shall have to be friends, like Rat and Mole.”

  “You’re Rat,” she said confidently, and smiled. He grinned back at her, showing his long yellow teeth.

  When they arrived back at the property it was deserted, and Cooksey recalled that they had all been scheduled to attend some kind of environmental rally at Miami-Dade College downtown, at which he himself had been expected. Entering his office they found Moie staring at the computer.

  “Catching up on your e-mail, are you?” said Cooksey.

  Ignoring this, Moie pointed to the keyboard and said, “Each seed of this tray of seeds has a mark, and when I press one, the same mark comes on this shining little wall, except this stick, which makes a ghost mark, and if I do this many times it looks like the marks on the bundle of leaves that Father Tim used when he talked to his god. They are like the marks insects make under the skin of a tree, but smaller. Father Tim could turn them into his voice, and he said many of the dead people could do this. Is this how you talk to your god, Cooksey?”

  “In a way. To some of the smaller gods, perhaps, not the same one that Father Tim spoke to with his bundle of leaves. How are you, Moie? It’s been many days since we saw you.”

  “I have fed well,” said Moie. “Have you fed well?”

  “I have fed well.”

  “And the Firehair Woman, has she fed well?” Here he glanced at Jenny, who grinned at him and did a silly wave from waist level.

  “We have both fed well. Look here, Moie, this can’t go on. You can’t go about killing people and eating them.”

  “I have killed no one. It’s Jaguar who kills and eats.”

  “But the wai’ichuranan don’t believe in Jaguar, Moie. They’ll think it was you alone who did these killings.”

  Moie look startled for an instant and then laughed, a peculiar hissing sound he made with his lips pressed together and his whole upper body shaking. When he recovered he said, “That’s a good joke, Cooksey. I will tell you another joke now. The Runiya don’t believe in water!”

  Cooksey waited until Moie had stopped laughing at this one, and said, “Then you must talk to Jaguar and ask him not to. It is very siwix to do so in the land of the dead people. Soon the police will learn what you and Jaguar have done, and then they will arrest you. Do you understand what that means?”

  Moie thought of what the man had told him at Fernandino on the island of Trinidad, and he said, “Yes, I know. But they don’t see me in my tree and also, when I go among them, I wear the priest’s clothing.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” said Cooksey. “The clothing is a small thing and killing is a large thing. They will lock you in a house with many bad men for your whole life, or they may even kill you.”

  Moie didn’t seem impressed by these warnings, so Cooksey added, “Father Tim would be angry if he knew you were doing it.”

  “I am not doing it. I have told you this, but you don’t listen. I will say it once again: first we went to see them and the Monkey Boy said they should not cut in the Puxto, but this dead person Fuentes called for men and they threw us out of that house, like women throw peelings and entrails into the river. I didn’t understand what was said, but that I understood. And this showed me that the Consuela would not listen and would still kill the Puxto. This is why Jaguar killed him, and later this other one. You say that it is bad to kill them, but Father Tim has said that sometimes a small bad thing must be done so that a greater bad thing does not happen. This is moral philosophy, and this is the way of the jampiri among the dead people. These men of the Consuela Holdings wish to kill the Puxto and all my people, as they killed Father Tim, so it is better if Jaguar slays them first.”

  “Yes, but, Moie, there is another way, as I’ve already told you. Many, many of the wai’ichuranan don’t want the Puxto to be cut. They have some of the spirit ofaryu’t in them. Although they are dead they wish for life and so wish to stop these men, just as you do.”

  “You say it, but it is hard to believe. Will they kill the Consuela men?”

  “No. This is not the way of the wai’ichuranan in such matters. They will make noises, and make many marks on leaves and the wai’ichuranan will see them and know what the Consuela is doing and that it is siwix, and also, as I said
to you once before, they will send their spirits into the spirit boxes in the houses of the dead people and there is a kind of witch we have called journalists who will go up to the Consuela men and speak rudely to them and drag them into the spirit box, and so the Consuela men will be ashamed and not do evil things on the Puxto. This is our way. But if they find you have been killing these men it will be different. They will not think about the Puxto, but only about the killings. They will call you a terrorist, which is another kind of witch we have who delights in killing and fear, and they will arrest you and drag you into the spirit box for a long time and you will not be able to stop it. Then the Puxto will be destroyed, because we believe that if a terrorist wishes something to be done or not done, we think it is ryuxit to do the opposite.”

  Moie thought in silence for the better part of a minute, then said, “I will think about this in my belly and ask Jaguar what to do. Now, I have to ask you one thing and tell you one thing, for I didn’t come here just to play with seeds in a tray. I ask this. Jaguar wants a child to be hninxa. Jaguar says that if this child is given, he will have power in the land of the dead people, not just the power of the flesh but also ghost power. It is hard to say this part because it can be said only in the holy language, which you cannot speak. With such power he can make the wai’ichuranan alive again, or some of them, so that they will no longer wish to turn the whole world into pisco and machetes and money things. So I ask, is such a thing ryuxit among the wai’ichuranan?”