Let Them Eat Tea

by Coleman Maskell

Chapter 10 - On L'Isle Barjot

  "That was strange," Zeph says, putting down the phone. "Let's go for a swim one more time before we take off into the jungle to look for those ants."

  "You two just got dried off," Annetka comments, seeming surprised.

  "You haven't even been in yet," he answers. "Let's all go in."

  "Not me," Jack remarks, still sitting stoically at a corner of their spot on the beach, surveying the landscape like a military guard.

  Glancing around, Zeph sees that they are no longer alone. Three other couples have staked out scattered places. The sun is higher.

  "Not me too," Snake adds.

  "I'm not much for swimming," Baldwin agrees. "And I'm kind of anxious to go look for those samples we came for."

  "Always it's samples. Okay, let's get dressed," Zeph agrees. "The morning is almost gone anyway."

  With that they begin pulling on jeans and shirts over their swimsuits. They fold the towels and blankets, pick up their gear and head towards a small road twenty yards further from the water. "Don't know where this road goes," Baldwin says looking up and down the road, "and there wasn't much information on the maps I could get. But it is a road, so it must lead to something. The island isn't very big. Maybe there's a place to rent some sort of vehicle to take us into the jungle."

  "Not likely," Jack advises him flatly. "The road leads in two directions," he adds. "This is your party. Which way do you want to go?"

  "Snake was here before, wasn't he? Didn't ZJ say Snake has actually encountered the ants, on the northern part of the island?" Baldwin says, turning his eyes to meet Snake's, at which Snake nods agreement. "Where? from here?" Baldwin asks.

  Snake points north.

  "Is it far? Should we take the boat up the coast?"

  "Nah, mon. Not far," Snake answers. "This is good. We can walk from here."

  "You take point," Zoe's brother Jack directs Snake. "I'll cover the rear."

  North they go in a column on the narrow road, Snake leading in front, Jack trailing.

  Baldwin carries the basket. The two women carry the beach towels and blankets.

  "I'll spot you turns carrying the basket," Zeph offers. Baldwin nods.

  Feeling uncomfortably useless, Zeph takes the blankets from Jalissa, realizes they aren't heavy, and takes the towels from Annetka as well.

  The road winds along the coast for a few hundred yards, then turns inland, narrowing even more as it veers toward the highlands and begins to rise. The brightness of the beach fades into memory as their eyes adjust to the shadows of the jungle trees. As the road ascends the tree cover becomes denser, blocking more and more of the light. The environment takes on a dim damp feel, like the interior of an elaborate theme park ride; but everything here is real. They brush against the tropical plants as they pass. Some they recognize as overgrown houseplants. Snake unsheathes his machete. He begins swinging it rhythmically left and right in front of him, cutting through the recent overgrowth that partially partially blocks their path. Swaying his body a bit as he swings the long curved knife, he takes on the appearance of a dancer, giving his forward movement the appearance of a subdued dance to unheard music.

  "Is this an old unused path?" Zeph inquires.

  "Nah, mon," Snake answers good naturedly, his voice keeping rhythm with his movements. "These plants grow up overnight. When nobody use the path for a day or two, you be needing the machete to cut your way through."

  So that's the reason so many Carib men carry machetes on their belts, Zeph realizes for the first time. "And I thought you guys just carry machetes around to look tough," he tries to make a joke.

  "Nah, mon, we look tough enough without props. We be practical men. Everything we do be for some practical reason. You tourists don't see the reasons. You think this whole place be a big Disneyland ride."

  Embarrassed, Zeph says nothing. He considers correcting the "tourist" misnomer, but there seems no point. He's happy enough that cutting away the vegetation has slowed Snake down, though not much.

  "Your turn to carry the basket," Baldwin changes the subject. He hands off the basket to his friend, removing a pair of tongs, a few empty sample tubes, and a magnifying glass. "Hey, Snake," he adds, "Can we slow down the pace to half speed? I want time for a closer look at some of these bugs we're going by."

  "Sure, mon. You call out when you want a stop." Snake slows their forward motion by halting for three beats after each forward step he takes, adding a little side to side dance movement of the shoulders to fill the time, then pausing again, freezing for an instant like a mime after each swing of the machete. He moves with the lithe agility of years of both dance and mixed martial arts training, and the natural rhythm of a dancer. His eyes and ears scan the environment with an alertness born from both the martial arts training and his previous experience on the island. He dislikes coming back to this place, but those feelings don't matter to him. His friend Jack wants his help to keep his sister Jalissa safe. That matters. He listens carefully to all the myriad jungle sounds, parsing the cacophony into recognizable components. He sees the details of their close environment, the lizards zipping away as they approach, the stick bugs stopped still on branches, the fireflies oblivious to their presence. So far no sign of anything bigger than a hummingbird, but he knows the bigger animals will appear further ahead.

  "I'm looking especially for any signs of ants, even if they aren't infected," Baldwin informs Snake. "Also any other insects or anything that might be infected. It would be great if we could find infected feces or an infected mammal. An infected cat would be fantastic." When the other makes no response, he adds, "Snake?"

  "Yah, mon, I'm hearing you. You might be getting your wish soon," Snake answers without looking backward, without breaking the rhythm of his forward motion. "I'm smelling one of those Margay cats nearby. Probably it run away from us though. Also I hear some little rats running away under the bush. How we going to tell if they be infected?"

  "Well, in the advanced stages, the rodents should show little or no fear. That's how the microorganism propagates itself. It makes its host lose all fear of cats. That makes it easy for the cats to catch them and eat them. If this is the hybrid of T. Gondii that I think it is, then it can only complete its life cycle in the intestines of cats. That's the breeding ground. The spores come out in the feces, which lands on plants. Rats and other small animals eat the plants, and the fungus develops inside them. As the parasite reaches maturity, the small animal loses all fear of cats, and delivers itself up for dinner. The cat eats the rat and the cycle repeats."

  "So we be looking for rats that don't be afraid of cats, and the cats that be eating them," Snakes sums up the take-away. "And if we can find some poop that be good too. What about anteaters? Cats be eating the anteaters sometimes too."

  "There are aardvarks here? Anteaters?" Baldwin asks. That could be a link. "Put anteaters at the top of that list," he quickly amends the search menu. "An infected anteater would tell us a lot."

  "Yah, sure there be little anteaters here. They eat the ants," Snake answers, in a "what you think" tone. These tourists don't seem to know much about how life works. "You want anteaters that be eating the antler-head ants?" he asks. "I can find you that."

  "YES," Baldwin answers enthusiastically, not hiding his excitement. "That would be the prize. That, and, of course, to find this shaman who can cure the infection, and get samples of the plant or plants he uses to do it."

  They come to a fork in the path and stop. "The shaman be that way," Snake waves his right arm at the right-hand fork of the Y-shaped intersection. "The anteaters be the other way," he adds, gesturing to the other path forward with his left arm. "Carib people have the sense not to be making their houses right next to the ants," he adds by way of explanation. "Guess they don't be fearless with infection yet, hey?" Then he adds a joking jab: "If you want to find the people who live with cats, I have to ta
ke you to where the Americans and Europeans live for that". It isn't native Caribs who keep cats for house pets, after all. The custom has always seemed odd to him. Now it seems dangerous.

  "Ha ha," Baldwin says flatly. "Sorry, Snake, I already know that's a problem. Guess you hit a little too close to home for that to be funny."

  Since the scientist has been open with him on this, Snake decides to chance being open in return. He turns to look the other man in the eye and poses a simple question: "All those tourists that keep the cats for pets. You think maybe they be losing their fear of cats, the same way the rats be losing fear? You think maybe that infection be why they like the cats so much?" He pauses and waits for an answer.

  Baldwin breaks eye contact, sighs audibly and heavily, hands in pockets, looking down. After twenty seconds of contemplation he looks up and exchanges a glance with Zeph, whose gaze is also fixed on Dr. Baldwin, waiting for a researched scientific opinion to be offered up.

  He looks back at Snake and gives the disappointing answer: "Honestly I don't know. In general they aren't infected with THIS strain of fungus, we're pretty sure of that much because they don't manifest blatant insanity followed by suicide. But if you ask: Could it be some related non-lethal strain? Yes. It could be."

  The others are still looking at him expectantly so he continues, "We have no evidence that it IS, but it would do a lot to explain why some cat owners go to such great lengths to take care of their cats, sometimes making the cats the primary focus of their lives, sometimes owning several cats."

  Baldwin becomes aware that this is starting to turn into an academic lecture, but the others still seem interested, so he continues supplying information. "Keeping a cat box near the kitchen, microscopic parasite spores could become airborne and get into food. Changing cat boxes without washing hands thoroughly, they could pick it up on their hands, yes. Plausibly once the parasite has grown to maturity inside of the host, they could then pass the mature parasite back to the cat when they touch the cat food. It could definitely happen, and in fact it is known to happen with the pure strain of T. Gondii. That particular strain isn't noted for turning people into cat lovers, but yes there could be a related strain that does exactly that."

  He decides it's time to sum up. "But if so," he says, "then it would be a very different strain than the one we're looking for here. The one we're looking for causes people to go insane and commit flamboyant suicides. That's an aberration that doesn't seem to benefit the cats or the parasites in any obvious way, but it is happening, and somehow it's spreading throughout every land mass that touches the Caribbean Sea."

  Baldwin falls silent. No one speaks for a few seconds. The quiet is punctuated only by jungle sounds

  Finally Zoe speaks. "Maybe it only makes SOME people commit flamboyant suicides," she suggests. "If this is related to warts, I mean, like plantar warts in the brain," she adds and pauses, looking around for confirmation.

  She gets nods of qualified agreement and continues. "I know it's a simplification. But listen. Warts don't develop to the same extent in everybody. Some people get small warts that are easy to get rid of. Other people with the same exposure get big painful warts that feel like walking on broken glass and are hard to get rid of. From the same exposure. Why couldn't this be like that? Different response with different people?"

  Baldwin shrugs and turns, points to the left-hand path. "Let's go for the anteaters," he says, and they start to walk, Snake leading with his machete as before. After a few steps Baldwin gives Jack's question the only answer possible: "I'd need to have blood and tissue samples from dead cat lovers to try to answer that one."

  "Not impossible," Annetka chimes in. "People die every day. Some of them are cat lovers. Didn't you say that the authorities in Florida take samples from every unexplained insanity and suicide? Couldn't they take samples from known cat lovers too?"

  "I doubt they still collect those samples. If you know someone who knows someone who works in that department, yes it's theoretically possible."

  "We can ask around," Zeph offers.

  "Yeah, we'll ask around," Baldwin agrees, and the group falls silent again, moving slowly along the jungle path, pausing for a few seconds intermittently to look more closely at something or capture a sample insect.

  They come to a clearing near a fresh water pond or lagoon, and bear left along the path a few yards from the water bank. Snake and Jack are examining the ground like Indian scouts. Baldwin examines seemingly random leaves and insects through a magnifying lens. Looking up, he sees red glowing eyes about five feet away in the shadows of the tree branches. At almost the same time he feels the presence of Snake close behind him. None of them move. More sets of red eyes appear. Jack is behind them, holding out both arms to keep the women back. Zeph takes a butterfly net from the picnic basket, and a sample container. He telescopes the handle of the butterfly net out to full length and hands the sample container to Baldwin.

  With their attention focused on the sets of reflective eyes in the trees, they hear Jalissa shriek behind them. Turning instantly they see the three foot wingspan of a Spectral bat in full flight, circling the clearing at a height that varies from three to ten feet. Jalissa is ducked on the ground.

  "It's eyes," Jalissa said. "It had glowing eyes. It came straight for me."

  The bat completes its circle and swoops back by them, swooping close enough that they reflexively duck. All see the bloodshot red eyes clearly.

  "Is that normal?" Baldwin asks.

  "What, the red eyes? No," Jack answers.

  From behind them several small rats run out from the trees into the open, towards the water.

  Zeph reaches out the butterfly net and deftly bags one of the rats as it passes. With the rat caught in the net, Zeph tries to keep it there by shaking and rebalancing the net. Baldwin assists quickly with the sample container. The rat's eyes are bloodshot and glazed over. It throws itself frantically but uselessly against the glass sides of its prison.

  Another rat darts halfway up Annetka's blue jeans when Baldwin sees it and knocks it away. As it hits the ground less than a foot in front of them, the big Spectral bat dives on it like a hawk. Annetka lets out an involuntary shriek.

  "I saw it too," Baldwin says, holding her. "Its eyes."

  As another great bat swoops down on a rat a few feet away, Zeph swoops out the net above it and bags the bat, pinning it onto the ground.

  "Hopefully its eyes will be red too," he says, totally engrossed in restraining his catch, putting one foot down firmly on the handle to keep the bat pinned against the ground. The bat struggles fiercely, but despite its impressive three foot wing span it weighs less than a pound. It has no chance.

  At the same time as Zeph is netting the bat on his right, Jack nudges Baldwin's left shoulder and points to a branch overhead.

  "Margay cat," Snake states quietly, in case Baldwin can't see what Jack is pointing at. The cat is motionless, as attentive as a pointing dog, eyes fixed on the ground close below it.

  "I see it," Baldwin says quietly without moving. "We won't catch that with a net."

  "You got a sample container for that one?" Snake asks. "That little cat weigh 10, maybe 20 pounds."

  Baldwin nods slightly, confidently, otherwise frozen in place, full attention on the arboreal prize he can't reach. In fact he has no idea how he can contain this cat. But he knows he wants it.

  At the edge of vision he sees Jack slowly unsheathing a knife. By the time he turns to look, he sees a gun in Snake's hand. He wonders vaguely how long the gun has been there and how he didn't see it being drawn.

  On the left, one of the women shrieks involuntarily again when yet another Spectral bat pounces from the sky.

  Before Baldwin can turn his eyes fully to look, the margay has dropped from the tree onto the back of the bat, biting open its head. Jack is on top of the margay almost as quickly, his knife through its back i
n the direction of its heart. It squirms and flips wildly, then falls still to the ground as Snake's gun erupts in sound.

  "Sorry about the noise," Snake says, smiling.

  "Never mind the noise," Jack answers. "You better not have damaged my knife."

  "Nah, you missed the heart, mon. Your knife be in the left lung of that cat. My bullet go in the right side, straight through to the heart. You look. You see."

  Baldwin turns the cat over with one foot. When Jack starts to move in he warns him to be careful. "Don't touch it without gloves. We don't really know how contagious this is."

  "It's a beautiful cat," Jalissa observes.

  Jack holds down the body with one boot, grabs the handle of his knife and removes it.

  "Yeah. Beautiful," Baldwin agrees sincerely. Then he goes to the equipment basket and pulls out a large plastic bag that looks adequate to hold the remains. He puts on plastic gloves. Picking up tongs in one hand and shaking open the bag with the other, he scoops the limp beautiful carcass into the bag. He ties a knot in the bag to close it.

  "Hand me a bag too when you're ready," Zeph asks him, still standing on the handle to keep the bat trapped.

  "You want that bat dead?" Jack asks matter of factly.

  "Not with that knife," Baldwin answers with equal lack of ceremony. "I don't want to contaminate the sample. We'll just bag it as it is. It won't last long." He hears the coldness in his voice, but this is a cold business. People are dying of this epidemic. The faster he finds a solution, the fewer people will have to die.

  The remaining rats have scurried back into the brush. The men bag the bat, which flaps a bit for a while and then falls still.

  "Annetka, can you get some of those disposable disinfectant towels out of the basket?" Baldwin asks. "Gloves all around too," he adds as an afterthought.

  He hopes she hasn't been put off too much by the spectacle. In retrospect he imagines he should have found some way to make this trip without her. She doesn't seem to be put off, though, just shaken up. She gets the gloves, dons a pair, and gets out the towels. Silently she hands them around to the others to clean off any contamination.

  "Clean off the leg of your pants, there, too, Annie, please. Just in case," he pleads.

  She smiles and cleans off the path the rat had taken to run up her leg.

  "You touched the rat," she says to him.

  "Yeah. I know. I'll wash my hands after I take the gloves off. There's nothing else for it at this point. Probably it isn't that contagious. It's just that we don't know."

  "How about we go for the medicine man now?" Snake asks. "Or you still want that anteater?"

  Baldwin grimaces and confesses he still wants the anteater. "How about anteater first, then shaman?" he asks.

  "Okay, mon, you got it," Snake answers, and finds the continuation of the trail. The machete comes out again, and he is back to his previous rhythm, as if nothing had happened in the clearing.

  "I don't know much about guns," Zeph speaks after a time, "but wasn't that a remarkable shot, when Snake brought down that cat?"

  Jack laughs and Snake says nothing.

  After a pause Jack's sister answers. "Yes. Snake is known for remarkable shooting. He also has skill with other weapons, and all kinds of fighting."

  With that the subject is dropped. They continue silently along the dimly lit path to the swishing rhythm of the machete switching back and forth through the overgrowth in front of them. The sounds and smells of the forest encircle them and absorb their full attention as they climb with the path toward the wilder highlands. Unfamiliar bird calls fill the air from the indefinite distance. The air is moist, still and cool, with the smell and feel of a greenhouse or tropical arboretum. Among the recognizable houseplants are scattered thick hanging vines and occasional beautiful orchids.

  At length they come to another clearing. A small stream splashes along in front of them, gurgling over rocks the size of basketballs. In the near distance they see the immediate source of the water, a high but sparse waterfall spilling over a stony cliff. The path seems to ascend in front of them in the form of stairstep-like boulders beside the waterfall.

  "I suppose the anteaters are up there?" someone asks.

  "No, they be around here," Snake answers. "Not a lot of them. You might see one in a day. We find the ant mounds and then wait." Since his friend was bitten by an ant here on his last trip he isn't looking forward to the prospect, but he accepts the situation for what it is.

  "I'm surprised this island is big enough to support an anteater population," Baldwin observes.

  "They be small anteaters. Tamandua. Everybody wearing some boots or something to cover the legs good? Tie something around your ankles maybe," He suggests to Zoe. "These ants be fierce."

  Baldwin removes something resembling a set of shoelaces from the basket and hands them to Zoe. She secures the ankles of her jeans firmly around her socks, leaving no easy access for ants. After a pause he takes out more sets and passes them around. Everyone ties up their trousers at the ankles. Considering further, he hands out pairs of plastic gloves all around, which the others also accept. The equipment falls seriously short of hazmat quality. Baldwin finds himself wishing he had planned the expedition a little better. Or at all, really.

  They need to find a spot where they can observe the anthills without being exposed to the ants. On rocks in the water maybe, Baldwin thinks to himself. Aloud he says, "So where were the anthills last time?"

  "Okay," Snake answers, and continues into the clearing. "There," he says, pointing to a large anthill a few feet from the riverbank. He gestures broadly along the bank, pausing the gesture in staccato to point out an assortment of scattered large anthills strung along the forest floor.

  Very large ants come and go, carrying bits of edible debris large enough to be seen from where the people stand. Struck by the size of the ants, they find themselves looking around for boulders in the small river, picking out places to sit.

  Saying nothing they move together into the shallow stream as if the movement had been choreographed, finding places to settle themselves on the rocks above the rippling brook. Annetka dangles her feet in the water and leans on Baldwin, who puts an arm around her and pulls her a little closer. Nearby Zoe stretches out full length on a large flat rock, and rests her head on Zeph's lap.

  "The water is good," Snake expresses approval. "The anteaters can't smell us quite as well this way."

  Jack and Snake sit on the far right and left of the group, facing outward. Snake faces the anthills, still holding his machete, pistol close to his hand. Jack relieves Zeph of the butterfly net and holds it in his left hand, knife in the right. They seem calm, but they're obviously watching the jungle around them alertly.

  "These ants don't seem to be infected," Jack points out.

  "No. They don't," Baldwin agrees, just as glad they aren't, "but an anteater has a fairly large territory. They cover a lot of anthills, taking samples from each. If there are any infected ants within half a mile of here, any anteater we see here should have sampled them. Clearly these are the giant carpenter ants we heard about. This is good. We should stay here and wait. Say, Snake, is this where your friend was bitten by an ant?"

  "Near here," he answers. "I don't think it was infected. The infected ants be farther up, just above the waterfall."

  "That's fine then. Any anteater we find here will have dined there as well."

  Time passes. More time passes.

  "This must be what a stakeout feels like," Jack says eventually.

  "Speak for yourself," Zeph answers, caressing Zoe's hair.

  Around them the jungle continues its existence, punctuated by hummingbirds and dragonflies darting by, occasional bright butterflies and parrots, and unrecognizable bright birds with long tails. The waterfall sends up a background mist that enfolds them. Strange bird calls sound out intermittently in the distance.

&nbs
p; A small anteater finally makes a quiet appearance, dangling upside down from a woody vine by a prehensile tail, looking like an imaginative cross between a small albino monkey and a three pound miniature polar bear, looking as though someone had dressed it in a black motorcycle vest or an old-timey one-piece black bathing suit, with a very elongated tapering Pinocchio snout. Hanging by its tail, it reaches down toward an anthill with knifelike claws reminiscent of the fictional Marvel superhero Wolverine.

 

  "Is that a real animal?" Annetka asks in astonishment. The anteater darts out its long tongue toward the anthill, frog-style, but the tongue is much longer and thinner. The tongue reminds her of a cartoon impression of a New Year's party favor. "That's the weirdest animal I've ever seen in my life," she announces. It's cute, she also thinks, but does not say.

  "The butterfly net won't hold that," Jack observes, contemplating the superhero claws.

  It drops from the vine onto the forest floor and applies both claws to digging at the anthills.

  Snake aims his pistol at the animal's heart. "You want me to take this shot?" he asks Baldwin, eyes focused unwaveringly on the small mammal gobbling up the oversized ants.

  Baldwin takes a deep breath, exhales, and says, "Don't damage the head if you can avoid it."

  "I be an ace shot, mon," Snake defends his ability from the imagined slight. "I thought you already see that today with the bat."

  "I know, I did notice, and I thank you for that. We're extremely glad you came along today. If you could avoid damaging the lower abdomen too, that would be really great. Thanks very much," Baldwin apologizes for the unintended implication and raises the bar.

  In that instant a big Spectral bat swoops down and sinks its claws into the little anteater's head. Snake's pistol erupts in sound and the bat falls still, shot through the heart. The black and white anteater twitches in its claws, brain dead but not yet still. Baldwin leaps forward, detaches the dead anteater very gently from the claws, and examines the bat's entry wound. Straight through the heart. No damage to brain or digestive system.

  "Fantastic shooting," Baldwin praises Snake, who nods in acknowledgement.

  Snake knows he's good, but he still likes to hear it said. Ego is both his strength and his weakness. It drives him to perfect his skills, but the perpetual need for reassurance and praise eats at him like an insatiable hunger.

  They bag the dead bat and anteater in plastic bags and add them to the collection. Baldwin places all four specimen bags into another large plastic bag and ties it off. It's too big to fit into the picnic basket now. "Which one do you want to carry?" he asks Zeph. "Specimen bag or equipment basket?"

  "Basket," Zeph chooses.

  "Snake, how about if we leave the others here with Jack. They can go back to sitting on the boulders in the river. That looks pretty safe. You and I can just go up to the top of the falls and bag a few infected ants? Or you could stay with the others and Jack could come with me to collect ants."

  "I'll come," Snake says. He fixes his weapons to his belt.

  Baldwin removes a specimen jar and some tweezers from the basket. Zeph takes the specimen bag and the basket and sets them on one of the large flat stones in the shallow river. All but Buddy and Snake return to their previous seats on the rocks.

  Snake leads the ascent up the rocky side of the cascading water. A few feet from the top of the falls, he points to a large dead ant on a fallen wet leaf lying on a low-hanging branch. Its head has exploded with the wart like growths that resemble antlers. Baldwin lifts it carefully with the tweezers and places it in the specimen jar. Then he takes the leaf as well.

  "Spores," Baldwin explains. "There should be spores on the leaf."

  Snake nods and points out other ants one by one. "If the infected ant bite somebody," Snake asks at length, "they be getting infected?"

  "Probably not," Baldwin reassures him. "It's passed on by eating the spores. If the spores land on a fruit and you eat the fruit, that would put you at risk. If you touch something with spores, then you touch food, that creates risk. I'd never heard of this infecting anything but ants before, so I like to be cautious. But you shouldn't be at risk from an ant bite."

  Snake seemed relieved.

  "Did you see the healer when you were here before?" Baldwin wonders. "If you were uncertain, I'd think you might have wanted to consult with him."

  "Might be I want to now," Snake replies. "Last time I just wanted to get off this island," he adds in an uncharacteristic outbreak of verbosity. "I wanted to get out of here. Now I'm back. Let's find that man who cooks up the tea."