I think the diver will return tonight from work and tell me more stories about the corals and sharks. His favorites are the whale sharks, the biggest and friendliest fish in the sea. They grow to sixty feet long and have three hundred rows of tiny teeth inside their cavernous mouths. They could swallow him whole yet if he forced his way through a whale shark’s mouth, the shark would turn its stomach inside out to expel him. Instead, they feed on the tiniest plankton traveling the sea’s currents. The diver wonders if whale sharks take advantage of their colossal size against the microscopic plankton, but he figures whatever created them must have designed them this way on purpose. He’s dived with thousands of whale sharks and knows some of them personally by marks on their bodies, missing dorsal fins, propeller scars from big ships, and tags from researchers. I think he’s like a whale shark, big and playful and gentle.
Imagine breathing underwater, the diver says. That’s a lovely thing.
I never learned to scuba dive. I enjoy hearing about the world that exists below, but I have no desire to strap a tank on my back and dive deep. Even snorkeling gives me pause. I’m a strong swimmer and amazed by the corals, but it makes me uneasy to see all those fish up close, so many of them, and some are big, swimming right next to me. I can’t explain my resistance to fish, but I’ve had it all my life. My grandfather used to take me fishing, and I was always relieved when no fish bit my line. I didn’t want to reel one in, touch it, and see it squirm on the hook. I don’t even eat fish or seafood—the taste, the texture, the smell—no, not for me. I have a private theory that I’m deathly allergic to some type of fish so my body revolts at the mere thought of consuming any. Even so, it’s an awkward theory when I’m dating a man of the sea who lives in a Central American village along the Caribbean coast. I don’t admit this to the diver, but I prefer to swim oblivious to whatever I’m joining in the sea.
Diving is not something anybody should be forced to do, the diver says. It should be something you want to do. You should do it because you feel the urge.
MYTH. The angry man’s mother was from a border town. His father was a Guatemalan cowboy. His abuela washed clothes against a stone in the lake. When he was a child, he helped her some Sundays when most of the other women attended church and the men played soccer. He wanted Abu to himself. He wanted to grow up and escape.
MYTH. The angry man wears a jaguar tooth necklace so that some of the jaguar’s power will rest on his chest, as if the energy of the animal can be transferred, like heat to cold.
FACT. This is how heat travels. Warm molecules move faster than cool molecules. Put a warm object on a cool object, and the fast-moving molecules collide with the slow-moving ones, giving up some of their heat to warm the cooler thing.
On the morning of the angry man, I sit on a breathtaking beach while the diver leads a group of tourists underwater. I think I’ll wear my black sundress with pink trim tonight. I think I’ll sit at dinner and tell the diver stories about my life in Los Angeles. The diver likes hearing about the house I recently bought and started renovating. I think I’ll tell him how I keep catching the neighborhood kids peeking into my windows while I’m sanding the wood floors. I’ve been winning the kids over by giving them art supplies to use in the driveway and whispering to the two main culprits that I have a very important job for them: They’re in charge of making sure no one ever, do they understand, never, peeks into my house. Can they handle the job? Yes, yes, they agree, they’re in charge! I think the diver will smile his sweet smile. I think we’ll walk together along the beach. I think I’ll ask the diver about the strange seaweed that reaches out from the water and strangles my feet.
He’ll return tonight, but by the time I see him again: X.
X will mean many things.
X will shift with the shifting tides of the angry man and me.
X will take that horrible turn down the dark dirt road in Maya Beach, and the whole of everything after that will change.
The angry man is somewhere nearby gaining strength and speed, taking on the wild nature of a beast. Soon he will hit me with his full force and break me apart, spin me into a different orbit—parts of me will fall, bit by bit, like broken light tumbling through clouds. Salt burns my chapped lips, but I lick it away unbothered. The palm trees weep, but I can’t hear them. The trees know what is going to happen, and they are bending toward me in sorrow and anticipation. Beside me, the palm trees throw shadows on the sand. Their tears, mixed with the sea’s unhurried salt, fall softly on the chain of events that’s already in motion, nothing to stop what’s coming.
FACT. Adult jaguars are at the top of their food chain. Nothing preys on them in the wild. They’re most active at dusk and dawn. Cubs are born blind. Young cats stay with their mothers up to two years. Afterward, they travel alone.
MYTH. The jaguar got its markings by making paw prints on its skin with the sludge of the earth.
MYTH. Jaguars hold up the sky.
MYTH. The rosettes on a jaguar’s pelt mirror the heavens—rosettes like blooms or broken rings of clouds around stars’ dark eyes. The skin of el jaguar is a blooming sky. The skin is blooming. The skin is the sky, el jaguar, el jaguar.
TWO
MYTH. The angry man kicks a grave in the jaguar sanctuary floor, big enough. It’s an early hour when jaguars could be out—there’s only a one-in-seventeen thousand chance he’ll see one—but he keeps a sharp eye for Balam. The man is slow fury as he pushes his things into the handmade pit. First the red woven pouch he stole from the wrinkled Guatemalan lady whose name he can’t remember, memories like money rush out of his life, water at low tide, the pouch empty too long.
He hears frogs from a creek in the sanctuary forest. The frogs make a tremendous noise. He brought his son once to hear these frogs. His son imitated the noise, and the angry man and his son laughed—papa’s big boy—a laugh he hasn’t heard since his boy was taken from home, the government on the angry man’s back. He adds his bandana and T-shirt, drops them in the shallow grave. He is furious with despair in the summer heat. It’s rainy season, more than 60 inches of rain from June to November, sometimes 160. It’s sure to rain today, his body can feel the steam, the rain before it falls. He lays out everything else he brought: a knife, a lighter, the joint he’s about to smoke, a six-pack of Belikin beer, and a rope.
Balam. Jaguar. The ancient Maya worshipped the animal. Their kings were reincarnated as jaguars, and their shamans could transform into the animal, six feet tail to nose, 200 pounds, muscles that run. The angry man is part Maya, part Spanish, part animal, part man, part of his mind, part beyond reason. If he could be anything he’d be Balam—beautiful, rare, worthy of reverence and fear. Desperate, the angry man puts his foot on the rope.
FACT. The jaguar is the third largest cat in the world. The tiger and lion are bigger, but they don’t live in this tropical forest, only the jaguar, along with puma, margay, jaguarundi, and ocelot. Jaguars sometimes use the trails to cross the sanctuary, leaving tracks and scat.
The angry man knows how to spot their tracks, he knows the forest, he’s seen jaguars before, his eyes adjust to them, like elders who see spirits, going beyond sight to see animal mists in the dense green sea.
Balam will appear. The angry man can sense the animal in the basin.
I’m preparing for you, he says. He lets the wind carry the message to Balam.
The angry man sits beneath the tree with his feet in the grave, holds the knife in his right hand, and uncoils the rope with his left. He touches the knife to the rope, like the priest blessing his shoulder when he was a boy, then slides it against the rope lengthwise, as if to sharpen the blade.
He leans back on the thick root of the tree, sticks the tip of his knife in a crack in the root, opens a Belikin, and drinks the lager in several swallows without quenching his thirst. He knows if he harms the forest bad things will happen to him in life and after death; it’s natural law.
Howler monkeys toss nuts from above. The frogs thunder. He
finishes the second beer more slowly, tastes it in his throat. The third one is like water, easy, it goes directly to the edge of his rage and dulls it. He squints at the light trying to break through the canopy’s massive ferns and palms. There are powerful things in the forest only wise elders and gods understand. The fourth beer builds his rage back up. He lights the fat joint, inhales deeply, holds the smoke in his mouth. He smokes and drinks until his plan makes sense again.
No more beer, the joint down to a blunt, his mind and heart in sync with disappointment and blame. His ex-wife, the government on his back. They took away his son. If there were a way to capture his boy and cross the Guatemala border he’d do it. His son is his life. They took away his life. The $10,000 fine he was slapped with for holding a joint might as well be $10 million. He won’t go to jail, can’t. He won’t live without his son. He pulls the knife out of the root then plunges the knife in and out of the curve, the foot of the tree, its hard bones.
The canopy shines and shimmers dark to light to dark, plays with his moods. The angry man stumbles to his feet, circles the rope, kicks the empty beer bottles to the grave, and tosses in the lighter. He pulls the knife from the root and stabs the trunk of the tree once, a swift stab to the heart. He leaves the knife there, blade in the meat. He pisses on the side of the tree.
On other visits here, the angry man watched shy heron on the bank of the creek. He drank from the creek and never got sick, his stomach like a riverbed. Snakes, birds, butterflies, and lizards are in the trees and on the ground. The tropical forest is alive, but today he only looks for Balam.
FACT. There are hundreds of species of birds in the basin. Scarlet macaw, king vulture, bat falcon. When the sun blazes the birds rest in the canopy’s shade, tucked among thick layers of leaves.
Carrying the rope, the angry man climbs, branch by branch, up the tree until he is high enough. He stabilizes himself and the rough bark bites his bare skin. He ties one end of the rope around a branch, and tugs at it several times to make sure it holds secure. He wants a beer or another joint or a woman to calm him down, anything to distract himself from how the vibration of the frogs’ call carries the thought, again and again, of his son.
The angry man looks for Balam, but his perception is blurred like his thoughts, and he can’t focus past the trees. To see Balam, he has to penetrate behind and between the trees, above and below, through the past and into the future.
The angry man loops the free end of the rope around his neck and ties a noose. He positions himself, feet on the branch, knees by his ears, crouches like a two-legged creature about to take flight, wet with sweat and fear. He looks at the green around him, so much green, rolling walls of green and a hard green ceiling and floor.
Come out, he says to Balam, I’m ready to die.
He isn’t a man of hope. The regret of his life is constant. His knees ache in this contorted position. He runs his hand over his long hair, wipes it out of his face, and wishes he wore his bandana. He needs to see Balam before he jumps, hangs himself on the tree. Balam will give him final courage.
FACT. Jaguars are masters of stealth. They observe but are seldom observed.
The angry man senses Balam is watching him and peers down at the grave. Beside it, fresh jaguar prints, the size of a man’s palm. He is locked in his five senses, can’t get past them to find Balam, but he knows once he jumps Balam will eat his meat and leave his bones for the grave.
He spits at the belongings he left in the dirt. Spits at life. Spits at his ex-wife. At the government on his back. At his son. Spits like rain. Spits and curses Balam until he chokes and has to slide a finger between his neck and the noose.
The angry man crouches on the branch until his legs numb. He shivers with exhaustion. He is dizzy from holding his pose, and for a moment his mind blanks. He closes his eyes and sees jaguars. He opens his eyes and sees jaguars. Jaguars and jaguar spirits, two thousand jaguars suddenly populate the forest. He sees them between the trees, past and future, six feet tail to nose, some running, some still, jaguars with cubs, females in heat, outlined in mist, killing prey, drinking at the creek. Jaguars dot the basin like the rosettes of their fur. Their power makes him powerful. Their intense animal scent becomes his own. He feels strength in his legs.
He moves with animal grace and without thought. By instinct he unties the rope from around the branch and climbs down the tree. Balam stands next to the grave. Locking his stare on Balam, the angry man pulls his knife from the trunk of the tree, slices the loop of the noose, and lets the rope drop from his neck and the knife drop in the grave.
I’m ready, Balam, he says.
Balam will give him a death more honorable than the tree, and he is grateful for this new plan. He steps toward Balam, can hear the mighty cat’s breath. He closes his eyes and contracts his muscles, tightens his body for the attack. He is waiting and adrenaline, he is fear and sorrow, he is silence and fury, he wants to live and he wants to die.
Howler monkeys and frogs bellow. Balam, the jaguar king, stands at one side of the grave, the angry man stands at the other. His son had imitated a frog, his son had smiled; he loved his wife once; he wanted a life he could live. He opens his eyes, and Balam and every jaguar are gone.
FACT. Male jaguars are solitary, living and hunting in territories they aggressively defend.
The angry man revs, his blood like oil slicking an engine, revs so high his muscles collapse. He falls into Balam’s tracks, his hands where Balam’s paws had been, his feet in the grave. His cheek presses the soil floor.
He can’t start over. He can’t reclimb the tree or retie the rope. He can’t call Balam. Balam betrayed him—like everyone he’s known. Ants crawl over his arms, bite him with their scissor jaws, scorching pain. He wants a joint. He wants a woman. He wants to tear Balam’s head from the wild cat’s neck. He pushes himself up to get away from the ants. Standing in the grave, he has to choose his next move. He stands for a long time, until the wind shifts and the sky goes gray, then he pulls on his T-shirt, ties the bandana over his long hair, and tucks the empty red woven pouch into the waistband of his jeans. How is he going to get money? He can’t go on like this. He uses his knife to shovel dirt over the bottles in the pit.
When he’s finished the angry man slumps against the tree. He stares at the rope coiled like a snake that’s too tired and sick of itself to move. He wants his energy back. He wants someone to kiss this fear and anger away.
The canopy and clouds work together to block all light. Rainy season, the sky crashes and clangs, rain falls violently and soaks him with his own failure. He is cold and moves through extremes. He needs relief. Beer gives him backbone and spit, but he needs fire. He needs the heat of a woman, the only thing that ever warms him up.
He wants a sweet lick on his neck, a private moment to entice these demons, these million-pound ghosts off his back. Tomorrow he’ll deal with tomorrow. Tonight he needs hands, hair, thighs, and flesh.
THREE
After the heat of the day, after the sky clears and the afternoon sun is no longer scorching, I close my book, the one about the boy stranded in a lifeboat with a tiger. I read most of the afternoon, longer than I intended. I felt compelled to continue reading, even though I kept telling myself to put the book down. I only brought one novel and wanted to savor it, little bits each day, but I read as if I were hungry for what it could feed me, until finally the boy in the lifeboat had a change of heart about the tiger. Then I breathed deeply and felt I could stop.
My body is stiff from sitting, I think a walk will feel good, so I tuck the book into the suitcase in my cabana, put a T-shirt and shorts over my bikini, and position my straw cowboy hat over my hair in a barrette, cooler that way in the heat. I toss some things in a backpack, I like to be prepared: camera, sunscreen, a twenty-dollar bill, twelve Belizean dollars, and a fifty-dollar traveler’s cheque, just in case. I set off down the beach. When the beach gets swept up in waves, I move to the road. A few cars pass but not many. This is a
sleepy village, people don’t go places just to go, why expend unnecessary energy?
MYTH. The angry man gets high on the beach under a coconut palm. He draws circles inside circles inside circles with a stick.
I walk and walk. It’s farther than I remember. I’m going to the dive shop where the diver works even though he told me not to walk that far. I did it before, on my first trip to Belize, and he brought me back to town in a boat through the lagoon, naming vegetation and birds along the way. Red mangrove, black mangrove, buttonwood, heron, hummingbird, pelican, swallow, osprey.
As I walk I think about the marathon I recently ran, 26.2 miles, and how distance feels good to my body. But I’m in flip-flops, the wrong shoes for this road, and need more cushion against the small stones. The sandal thong rubs between my right toes and hurts. When I arrive at the dive shop, I plan to ask for a Band-Aid.
Along the road are brightly painted beach cabanas amid tropical overgrowth, and I think about the house I’m renovating. I call it a small bungalow because it sounds charming, but really it’s a dump in need of total repair. It’s toward the top of an uphill dead-end alley, which is misleadingly named a terrace.
The renovations have been harder than I imagined they’d be, and less fun. I watched my dad renovate an enormous house by himself. My brother renovated his home. My sister renovated hers; she even helped build a restaurant. The difference is they have skills and power tools and like this sort of thing. I don’t. I hired people to take care of the big jobs: new foundation, plumbing, electrical, and roof. But on my teacher’s salary I don’t have a budget to hire professionals for all the cosmetic needs inside the house, so these are my projects, and I have to do them on the cheap.
The Jaguar Man Page 2