Little Tiny Teeth

by Aaron Elkins

  “Of course,” Scofield was saying jocularly, “this means that you three will be excused from the quiz on chapters one through five tomorrow morning, but I’ll be glad to arrange—”

  “What the hell,” Mel Pulaski said under his breath.

  “Is something wrong, Mel?” Scofield asked.

  Mel was leafing — roughly pawing was more like it — through the opening pages of the book. Paper crumpled under his heavy hand. “I thought…”

  “You thought what?”

  “Nothing,” Mel said grimly.

  Scofield looked perplexed and a little unsure of himself. “If you’ll notice, I did acknowledge your help. On page two of the acknowledgments, about midway down, you’ll find—”

  “I said ‘nothing,’ all right?” Mel slammed the book shut without bothering to check page two of the acknowledgments. Whatever was eating him, he was done kowtowing for the day.

  The two were still staring at each other — Mel sullen, Arden with a concerned frown — when Captain Vargas appeared from the forward passageway, closely trailed by a man Gideon hadn’t seen before.

  “I am sorry about the interruption earlier,” Vargas said. “A few trees in the water from the timber plantations. No damage was done. As I said, there is nothing to worry about. And now I have the pleasure to present to you the gentleman who will be your guide on this excursion. He has guided expeditions in this region for more than ten years, including many scientific expeditions like this one, and I am sure he will meet every expectation. I assure you, there is no one who knows the Loreto jungle and its inhabitants better. He is a true professional in every respect. And a man who knows so much about the ancient teachings of the jungle shamans that he himself is known by many as” — a dramatic pause — “the White Shaman — el Curandero Blanco.”

  He stepped aside to give the stage to his companion, whose appearance didn’t live up to the introduction.

  Gaunt, gray-bearded, and hollow-cheeked, he was bizarrely dressed in baggy, bulgy camouflage pants, new faux combat boots with peppermint-striped shoelaces, and a grimy Chicago White Sox baseball cap worn backward. A loose red tank top with Maui Rules on it bared stringy, leathery arms with a multitude of pale scars. Down the back of his neck ran a dingy gray ponytail tied with a knotted blue rubber band. All he needed was three coats and a supermarket cart stuffed with plastic garbage bags and he would have fit right in mumbling at the tourists from a park bench in Seattle’s Pioneer Square.

  Several crew members were standing off to the side watching, and Gideon heard one of them speak to another. “El Curandero Blanco,” he repeated with a derisive laugh. It was Chato, the one who had taken them to their rooms. “El Lechero Blanco.” The White Milkman. The other one laughed as well.

  Swaying slightly, the White Whatever-he-was looked vaguely at his charges. His head was held slightly to one side at a rigid, upright, unnatural angle that immediately engaged Gideon’s interest. (Fused cervical vertebrae? he wondered.)

  “Okay, I’m Cisco.” He spoke in a mushy, moderately accented English that wasn’t easy to follow. His teeth, as many of them as could be seen, were gray-brown, in terrible shape, which didn’t help in understanding him. Visibly thinking hard about what else to say, he came up with: “So, like, does anybody want to ask anything?” He spoke in a thin, strained voice, as if he’d been shouting for the last two hours. His Ahab-style beard had been trimmed a week or so ago, but it looked as if he hadn’t shaved around the edges since. Silvery stubble glinted down his throat, across his upper lip, and on his dark, starved cheeks.

  “Yes, tell us about your plans,” Scofield said.

  “My plans. Well, we’ll take a few treks, you know? I know some cool places, great botanicals, weird pharmaceuticals. It’ll be fun, you’ll be able to collect some stuff you never saw before, never heard of before.” He dug at his bristly cheek with a ragged fingernail and yawned. “You know?” His mind was very obviously elsewhere, or possibly nowhere. Not there with them on the Adelita, at any rate.

  Understandably, his audience was less than overwhelmed. “And when exactly is our first trek planned?” Maggie Gray demanded, sounding like a schoolteacher wanting to know what had happened to some miscreant’s homework, but with no expectation of a satisfactory answer.

  “Tomorrow, probably. I mean, yeah, tomorrow, sure.” Gideon sensed a ripple of unease go through the group. It was clear to everyone that Cisco was making this up as he went along.

  “And you’ll be able to get us audiences with working curanderos, is that correct?” Maggie’s doubt increased with every word.

  “Oh, yeah, I think so. I don’t know about tomorrow, though. Weather. Conditions. Maybe. Prob’ly.” He’s spent time in the States, Gideon thought. The accent was Spanish, but the speech rhythms and intonations when he spoke English were American.

  Maggie wasn’t about to let him off the hook yet. “From which groups?” she wanted to know.

  “Which groups?” Cisco took a few seconds to reconnect. “I don’t know yet. I mean, how can I know? We have to see how it goes. Depends on which side of the river we go along.”

  “Captain Vargas has already said we’ll be on the south bank through tomorrow.”

  “He did? Okay, then the Huitoto, or maybe the Mochila, or even the Chayacuro if you want to see some really—”

  “Oh, I rather doubt that Arden’s going to want to meet with any Chayacuro,” Maggie said archly. Mel and Tim grinned, although Tim quickly covered his mouth with a hand.

  “You’re right enough about that,” Scofield said with an affable roll of his eyes. “Let’s leave the Chayacuro out of this, if you please.”

  Now what’s that about, I wonder? Gideon thought, intrigued. The Chayacuro were a famously fierce Amazonian Indian group, notorious as headhunters and headshrinkers. They and the equally feared Jivaro, to whom they were related, were the only South American Indians whom the Spaniards had never been able to subdue. Neither had anyone else. Even now, they were as free and dangerous as ever, occasionally linked to the murder of a missionary or a traveler. A couple of years earlier they had hacked a doctor and his assistant to death when the two had unknowingly violated their rules of proper behavior in their examination of a Chayacuro girl. As far as Gideon knew they had never been prosecuted for these things. An isolated and seminomadic people, they were hard to find when they didn’t want to be found. Besides, the authorities, perhaps wisely, preferred to stay out of Chayacuro territory.

  So what was Scofield’s connection to them? Had he had a run-in with them? When he got to know them all a little better, he’d ask.

  Cisco shrugged. “Okey-dokey, no Chayacuro. Anybody got anything else?”

  “Do you have a schedule for us?” Mel asked. “I could use a copy.”

  “A what?”

  “A schedule.”

  Cisco looked at him as if he was having trouble understanding the word. “Schedule,” he repeated with a whinnying laugh. “Hey, I don’ got to show you no steenkin’ schedule.”

  Scofield managed a polite chuckle. “That’s funny, Cisco — that was your name, Cisco? — but I think all of us would appreciate having some idea—”

  “I don’t use schedules, man. Schedules don’t work in the jungle.”

  “You could be right about that, but they do work aboard a ship. It would help me — help all of us — to plan our other activities — pressing, drying, and so on — if we knew, for example, that on Monday at two there was a plant-collecting expedition, and on Tuesday at nine we were to meet with—”

  Cisco interrupted. “What’s your name, buddy?”

  “Arden Scofield.”

  “Well, Arden” — Gideon saw Scofield’s jaw muscles stiffen — “let me let you in on something. Last time I knew what day it was, or even gave a shit, was probably about 1992. And I don’t wear a watch, so don’t talk to me about Tuesday at nine o’clock, man. And I got news for you. The curanderos don’t wear wristwatches either, so Tuesday at nine don�
�t mean anything to them either. When it’s time to go, I’ll come get you. Let me worry about it, okay? I mean, it’s not exactly like you’re going to be hard to find, is it?”

  Scofield’s face had revealed a momentary flare of anger, but he decided to let it go and held up his hands, palms out. “It’s your show,” he said coldly. “Man.”

  “Okay.” Cisco suddenly shuddered, put a hand to his face, and massaged his temples. “Hey, look, Arden, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to start off on the wrong foot. I’m not feeling that great today, that’s all. I get these frigging headaches, and this new stuff I’m taking for them, it didn’t agree with me — look, I didn’t mean no offense, okay?”

  “None taken, my friend,” said the wonderfully changeable Scofield, now all ruddy cordiality.

  “I have a question, Cisco,” Duayne said. “Or rather a request. I’m primarily interested in insect life, especially unusual or rare insect life. So if there are opportunities to see some on some of our treks, I’d appreciate it—”

  “You want to see bugs?”

  “Well… yes.”

  Another whinny from Cisco. “Well, you sure as hell picked the right place to come, Chief. We got bugs up the wazoo.”

  EIGHT

  A surprisingly good buffet lunch, its service genially overseen and described course by course by the captain, was set out for them in the dining room: Amazon River codfish in tomato sauce (a Peruvian national delicacy, according to Vargas), fried plantains, rice, beans, and cucumber-and-onion salad. There was a bowl of watermelon slices for dessert. Only the coffee service — open jars of Nescafé instant and powdered creamer, each with a crusted teaspoon stuck in it — left something to be desired. Still, considering where they were, thought Gideon, there was nothing to complain about.

  Cisco had shakily disappeared down the corridor from which he’d come, but the rest ate at three trestle tables that had been pulled together. The tensions that had shown themselves earlier were no longer apparent, except in the case of Mel Pulaski, who sat as far as possible from Scofield, wolfed down his food without conversation, and left early. Everyone else, in good spirits, made an hour-long meal of it, most, including Gideon, even going back for more of the coffee.

  Toward the end, when the general talk had broken down to conversations between two or three people, Maggie Gray and Scofield found themselves quibbling over the biochemical properties of Tynanthus panurensis, a rainforest vine used to treat fevers and rheumatism.

  “I have a copy of Duke and Vasquez in my duffel bag,” Scofield said, rising. “If that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will. It’s in that first storage room.”

  Tim Loeffler, sitting nearby, leaped to his feet before Scofield was all the way up. “I’ll get it, Professor.”

  “Thank you, Tim,” Scofield said, sinking to his seat again. “It’s a blue bag with something about Peru on it. ‘Perú: un destino privilegiado,’ or something. It’s stuck way in a corner by the back wall.”

  Tim returned shortly with the bag and set it on the table in front of Scofield, who unzipped it, reached in, and jumped back with something between a yelp and squeak, a colossal, hairy, brown spider clamped around his hand and halfway up his forearm. When he reacted with a shudder, the thing flopped down to the table with an audible thwack, unharmed, its body held a good three inches off the surface by its jointed, yellow-banded legs. It glared at Scofield with two highly visible red eyes (and probably with the other six as well, Gideon supposed) and reared malevolently up onto its four back legs like a crab ready to do battle.

  By now they were all on their own legs, well away from the table. Three of the chairs lay on their backs.

  “Jesus!” a pallid Tim said. “What is that?”

  “Whoa,” Phil marveled, “look at that thing. It’s the size of a medium pizza. That’s got to weigh three pounds.”

  Duayne, staring at it with something like ecstasy on his face, responded in an awed whisper. “It’s Theraphosa blondi, the Goliath spider. A male, if I’m not mistaken.” He turned to the others. “It’s the biggest spider in the world. It eats birds.” Tears of happiness had formed at the corners of his eyes.

  “Did you hear that? The damn thing just hissed at me!” Scofield cried. As, inarguably, it had.

  “No, no,” Duayne said, “not really. It’s not a hiss. He does that by rubbing the bristles on his legs together.” He pointed. “See? He’s doing it now. He does that when he feels threatened.”

  “He feels threatened! How do you think I feel?” Like everyone else, Scofield had his eyes fastened on the creature, which was still in its reared-up position, its upper body swaying slightly. “Tim, go get a broom and mash the damn thing.”

  “Yuck,” said John.

  “Me?” Tim asked woefully.

  He was saved by Duayne, “No, you don’t want to frighten him any more than he already is.”

  “The hell I don’t,” Scofield growled.

  “Believe me, you don’t,” Duayne said, asserting himself. “He’s not particularly poisonous, but he defends himself by using his legs to flick off the hairs on his abdomen. He can send them five or six feet through the air” — everyone other than Duayne moved back another step — “and they’re barbed, you see, more like thorns than hairs, so they’re very irritating, like a nettle rash. And if they happen to get in your nose or mouth, they can swell the mucous membranes enough to choke you. Look, you can see the way his hair is standing on end right now.”

  “He’s not the only one,” John muttered.

  Osterhout, clearly enchanted, moved gingerly forward for a better look. The spider dropped down on all eight legs and ran with amazing rapidity to the far end of the table, its feet making an unsettling skittering sound. There it turned to face them again.

  “Jesus, it’s fast,” marveled Phil.

  “It certainly is,” affirmed Duayne. “It eats birds, you know. Did I tell you that? And it doesn’t need a web to catch them. It sneaks up on them, and then… bam! It’s got them.”

  “That’s all very fascinating, doctor,” Scofield said. He was beginning to take command again, having largely collected himself by this time. “Now, perhaps you’d like to tell us how we get rid of the thing?”

  “Oh, I’ll take care of it. I have to get some equipment. It’ll take just a minute.” He trotted to the door. “Don’t let it get away,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Right,” John said to Gideon. “And how are we supposed to stop it again?”

  “I didn’t hear that part,” Gideon said.

  But the creature cooperated, remaining at the very edge of the table, immobile except for its moving mouth parts. (Were they slavering, or was that just Gideon’s imagination?) Duayne returned with a large, open, plastic jar — it looked like the sort of thing you’d get five gallons of peanut butter in at Costco — which he slowly set down a foot behind the spider.

  “If someone would come very slowly back here and hold the jar steady… ?”

  Gideon volunteered, holding it with both hands and leaning as far as possible away from the spider, while Duayne, who had slipped on a long-sleeved shirt, had put on thick work gloves, and had gotten a dust mop somewhere, went around the table to the spider’s other side. The spider turned with him, presumably to keep its two rows of eyes on him, and began to hiss again.

  “He can’t really see me, you know,” Duayne said softly. “Even with all those eyes it only sees differences in light levels. It relies on those hairs to feel the slightest vibration… .”

  While he spoke he very slowly slid the working end of the mop toward the spider, then, tongue between his teeth, very gently nudged it. The spider obliged by immediately leaping backward directly into the jar. It seemed to Gideon he saw a few of its eyes widen in surprise, but he put that down to his imagination as well. In the meantime, with more speed than he would have judged possible, Duayne rammed a large rubber stopper into the neck of the jar, sealing it. Everybody, Gideon included, heaved a
sigh.

  “Now what?” Maggie said. “Don’t tell me you’re going to keep it.”

  “Of course, I’m going to keep it. It’s a Theraphosa blondi, for God’s sake!”

  “Alive?” John asked.

  “Ah, no, unfortunately. They can live for twenty-five years in the wild, but they don’t do well in captivity, and, sad to say, they tend to be a little aggressive. They don’t make very good pets.”

  “Oh dear,” Maggie said. “That must be sad for you.”

  But Duayne was impervious to sarcasm at this point. He was holding the jar proudly aloft for all to see, at the same time slowly rotating it in front of his face. The spider turned in reverse as the jar turned, looking steadily back at him from six inches away. “I brought along some alcohol, of course,” Duayne said dreamily, “and this will do for a killing jar.”

  “Duayne, are you sure the Peruvians will let you take something like that out of the country?” Phil asked.

  “I would have thought the Peruvians would be more than glad to have it taken out of the country,” Maggie said. “I’d think your problem would be with the United States letting it in.”

  “Not to worry, they don’t much care about dead specimens. Anyway, I’ll have filled-out copies of FWS 3-177 all ready for them, just in case. Will you just look at those pedipalpae go!”

  He lowered the jar and looked at his fellow passengers, smiling. “I have an insect and arachnid collection that covers one whole wall of my living room. It’s excellent, really, but what a showpiece this little fellow is going to make.” He wrapped both arms around the jar to hold it to himself and left smiling.

  Gideon turned to John and Phil. “You know, I think I just might have a clue,” he said, “as to why his wife left him.”

  ONCE the excitement of the spider episode had died down, the regular passengers, all of whom except Scofield had spent the night in the Lima Airport, trudged off to their cabins to recuperate. Phil, who had had a good night’s sleep in Iquitos, but who rarely passed up the chance for a snooze when he was traveling, did the same. Gideon and John went back to their cabins to unpack to the extent that the closetless, drawerless accommodations allowed, then came back downstairs to the open-air salon at middeck, pulled a couple of chairs up to the boat’s starboard railing, and, in the shade of the upper deck and the soft breeze from the ship’s motion, settled back to watch the jungle go by.