Naheyo chittered. The Helpers sang, loud as a thousand frogs on the riverbank. Mawgis straight-armed Jake in the chest. He fell, his back and head thudding against the hard ground.
“Ee-ee-ee,” the women called. “Gorum!”
Jake lay on his back, panting, unable to get up or turn over, though nothing held him. Nothing, but he felt something on his chest, a weight making it hard to breathe.
“Ee-ee-ee,” the Helpers cried.
He raised his head and looked down, along his chest and legs. His heart crashed against his ribs. A phosphorescent green mist streamed from his body, rising like smoke. The smoke thickened, became a fog, and in the fog tiny bright dots, like diamond chips, gleamed.
Mawgis’s face loomed above him. Jake wanted to grab him, pull him down, or knock him in the jaw, but his arms wouldn’t move. The Helpers were singing again—a jittery song, discordant and hostile. Mawgis grinned.
The fog swirled, spinning into an armed disk, a phosphorescent-green Milky Way sparking with burning stars, growing, growing, until it spread over the cane field, hiding the women and Mawgis, spreading until Jake was blind and terrified and the world was nothing but fog and embers and the strangled cry of his scream.
Ten
The sun cut through the room’s single window, a harsh yellow shaft that made the small room hot and bright. Red ants flowed down the mud wall like drops of blood over the scars Jake had carved to mark his erratic growth. He tugged off the now-filthy muslin pants that no longer reached his ankles, and pulled on a faded pair of cutoff jeans brought by Knonee, the Lalunta man who would take him to Catalous in his canoe. Knonee had arrived that morning with Fant, bringing a sack containing the shorts and an old T-shirt emblazoned with a faded black-and-white soccer ball and the legend “Brazil: World Cup 2002.” Jake pulled on the shirt. The clothes were tight, but a better fit than what he’d been wearing. He stepped into a pair of gray rubber flip-flops that had come in the same sack as the shorts and shirt. It felt odd but good to wear something on his feet again—safe somehow.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Pilar in the doorway, shifting her weight on the balls of her feet. Her eyes looked tired. His chest felt tight.
“A little small for you,” she said, about the new wardrobe. “Clean, at least. Cleaner. Nothing’s ever really clean out here.”
“Hi,” he said.
A clumsy silence set in. He wondered what to say to her. What they had to say to each other. He didn’t know how long she’d been standing there.
“It’s good-bye today, isn’t it?” she said. “I don’t suppose we’ll run into each other again.”
He crossed the few steps to the doorway and took her hands in his. Hands that felt both rough and delicate—small—nestled in his own. “I’m in the San Francisco phone book. Call me when you get back to the States.”
She hitched up one shoulder in a slight shrug. “I’ll be in Boston.”
“Planes go everywhere.”
She pressed her lips together before speaking. “You’re not the man you were, Jake. You know what I mean. Your life, when you get home, it won’t be the one you had before.”
Outside, Knonee called Jake’s name. It was strange to hear a man’s voice in this place of women. He looked around the tiny mud-walled space that had been his home for the last two months. Does the prisoner miss his cell after he’s released? He didn’t know what to say back to Pilar.
She picked up the cane the shaman had brought and held it out to him. “Naheyo wants you to have this. To remember us by.”
“I wouldn’t forget,” he said, taking the stick. “Not Naheyo. Not you.”
“I have something for you, too.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a camera’s optical recorder tucked in a tiny clear plastic case.
“It’s still pictures, mostly,” she said. “Movies are too real, too confining. Stills are like paintings—they open the memory to more than just the moment.”
Jake reached for the case. “Thank you.”
She held on to it. “There’s narration, my voice. Listen to it after you get back to the States.” She set the little box in his open palm.
“Pilar,” he began, but stopped. Words were his business, his ability to use them his most valuable asset, and he was bankrupt.
He put his arms around her and held her close. Her scent—lemon and new leaves— and the warmth of her body anchored him. Knonee called his name again, with impatience this time.
“Safe journey, Jake,” she whispered, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
She turned and walked out of the room. He wanted to call her back, to ask her to come with him, but he didn’t. She had her work to do and he had his.
Knonee wasn’t much of a talker. His English was better than Jake’s Portuguese, but not by much. Jake managed to thank him for the ride to Catalous. Knonee managed to express that Naheyo hadn’t given him any choice about it.
He sat in the front of the wood canoe and craned his neck to watch Knonee paddle, two hands on one oar, side to side, pushing them eastward on the river. A second paddle lay on the floorboards. River water lapped over partially submerged trees, their branches reaching upward—arms and fingers trying to touch the sun. Jake turned forward. Frogs croaked on the banks. Schools of fish in all sizes and colors swam and leaped beside the canoe. Caimans opened their sleepy, wet eyes and flexed their great jaws as they passed by. The minutes seemed to drag. Jake thought about what he’d say to Ashne once he phoned the head of World United. How to get the truth about benesha across quickly. What to say to make Ashne believe him. He waved Naheyo’s cane, swiping at the wasps and mosquitoes that dove at their heads.
“Big stick against little bug,” Knonee said from behind him. “And you missed.”
Jake looked at him over his shoulder and shrugged.
Knonee grinned then, a smile full of straight, white teeth, and Jake saw that he was playing.
“How much longer to Catalous?” he asked, laying the stick across his knees. The trading village was ten miles in a straight line from the compound. He had no idea how long that distance would take to cover on the meandering river.
Knonee frowned, as though trying to puzzle out the meaning of the question.
Unconsciously, Jake tapped the top of his watch in that first world sign of time. He tried his limited Portuguese. “Quanto mais longo?”
Knonee’s face brightened. “Depois de escurecer.”
After dark.
Jake slapped a mosquito taking her lunch on his arm. A tiny red stain spread on his skin. He flicked the crushed body into the river. The sooner they reached Catalous and a phone, the better. If there was no phone at Catalous, then Manaus—but Manaus was a long way, days and days of traveling on the river. Days and days for benesha-fed meat to be distributed. He saw in his mind’s eye the village Mawgis had taken him to—the bodies bloated in the heat, their dead eyes pecked out by carrion birds. Dead babies clutched in their dead mothers’ arms. He wiped his damp palms on his shorts.
“Can I help?” he asked, and mimed paddling.
Knonee smiled and shook his head.
“I know how,” Jake assured him. Not so well as Knonee did, and he hadn’t paddled a canoe in years, but he thought he could handle it well enough to help speed them along. Sitting was making him antsy. His mind wandered to places he didn’t want to go. Bodies had floated in the water at the village of the dead. He’d seen a young boy’s corpse caught by the leg in a caiman’s mouth and dragged under the brown-green water, like being killed twice.
“We’ll get there faster—mais rápido,” Jake said, picking up the paddle that lay unused in the middle of the boat. “Mais fácil. Less work for you.”
Knonee shook his head again, more firmly this time and without the smile. “Naheyo,” he said, as though that were the beginning and end of it.
Jake set the paddle back down, angry at the shaman. Why would she order Knonee not to let him help? Superstition? Did she think he wasn’
t good enough—not being fully human? Or did she have some reason to keep them from reaching Catalous as quickly as possible?
The canoe sliced through the black water. He tried to be patient. His mind slid again to the death village, the benesha mixed into the chicken feed. Had Mawgis given the benesha to the villagers, or had they found it themselves? Where did benesha come from? He shifted around again to face his guide.
“Knonee, have you ever seen green stones in the forest?”
“Que?”
“Green stones. Rocks. In the forest.” Jake struggled for the Portuguese words. “Pedras verdes. Na floresta.”
The paddler grinned. “You hunt the emeralds?”
Jake shook his head. “Not emeralds. Other green rocks.”
“Many rocks,” Knonee said. “Rocks everywhere. No green ones.”
“Any magic rocks? Pedras mágicas?”
“Plants with magic, sure. Plenty. But not rocks.”
“Or rocks called benesha?”
“Nada.”
Jake turned back and watched the water part at the bow of the canoe. He tapped his right hand against his leg, in rhythm with Knonee’s paddling. How could he make Ashne believe him? What should he say? His hand tapped faster.
Long after dark, when by necessity they’d slowed their pace, Knonee pointed toward a light glowing on the banks of the river. Soon the dim outline of a building showed in the darkness. The wood building had a peaked roof with wide eaves, probably thatched, and sat perched on stilts to raise it above the high water level of the rainy season. A short floating dock lay like a finger over the river.
Pilar had said that Catalous wasn’t much more than a couple of houses and a trading post for locals bringing in exotic fish for the American aquarium market, but the trader had a satellite phone. Jake leaned forward in the canoe. He calculated the time in California and where he could most likely reach Ashne at this hour. The exact words he would use were still to be chosen, but he trusted himself. When Ashne came to the phone, Jake would know what to say. If he didn’t get it exactly right the first time, he’d keep talking until he did.
Knonee guided the canoe up to the dock and called out. Moments later, a man appeared—short, Asian-looking, and in his sixties, Jake guessed, with a well-lined face and knobby knees below his tan shorts. The man bent down and threw a line to Knonee. The Indian caught it easily, holding the line with one hand and the dock with the other to steady the canoe. Jake climbed out, using Naheyo’s stick like a third leg, for balance. He turned, expecting Knonee to tie up and come ashore, but the man had already pushed off, disappearing into the wild darkness before Jake could thank him.
He turned back to the trader, held out his hand, and introduced himself.
“Toshi Nakagawa,” the trader replied, his accent American. He was a good three or four inches shorter than Jake. Jake liked the feeling.
“I need to call the States,” he said. “Can I use your phone?”
The fish trader looked Jake over and nodded. “Credit or collect?”
“Collect. To California.”
He nodded again, slowly, as though thinking through a weighty decision. “Inside,” he said, motioning with his chin toward the trading post, then turning to lead the way to the stairs. In the dark, he was as quick as a spider on its web. Jake followed at a slower pace, watching his footing.
The building wasn’t much different from Mawgis’s hut—the ceiling only a wood frame covered in thatched palm—though bigger by maybe five times, and with a wood-plank floor instead of dirt. A large, rectangular, scarred-wood counter filled the center of the room like a square doughnut. The walls were lined with thick wood shelving packed with variously sized aquariums in which exotic fish swam. The air smelled of salt and chlorine. The trader didn’t turn on the overhead bulbs. Aquarium lights cast shifting, watery shadows on the floor. The soft hum of small electric pumps filled the room.
Toshi Nakagawa lifted a hinged panel in the counter and stepped through. He stooped over, momentarily disappearing, then reappeared with a satellite phone in his hand. He punched a number into the ungainly handset.
“Access code,” he explained, and handed Jake the phone. “Point it that way.” He indicated with his finger which direction the antenna should face for the satellite he used. “Dial your number and hit OK.”
Jake pressed the buttons. The almost-immediate sound of ringing followed. Anticipation rose in him like mercury. An operator came on. Jake charged the call to his home phone and tapped his foot, waiting for Ashne to answer, silently counting the distant-sounding rings: one, two, three.
Static crackled over the line, then stopped, followed by the hollow nothingness of dead air.
“Got cut off,” he said, and held out the phone to Toshi. The fish trader again punched in the access code and handed the phone back. A busy signal bleated in Jake’s ear. He ran his hand roughly through his hair.
Toshi rolled his eyes, and the two men went through the routine a third time. Nothing.
“The call’s not going through,” Jake said, his voice as calm as he could make it.
The trader turned toward Jake, his hand poised over a tank, a carton of fish food clutched tight. He set down the box, took the phone, and punched in some numbers. He held the phone to his ear, then frowned.
“Gone,” he said. “It happens. The weather. Sunspots, or some shit. Knocks out the satellite access.”
“For how long?”
Toshi shrugged. “A few minutes. A couple of hours. Once it went for three days.” He thought a moment. “Could be the battery. The recharger went belly-up. Been meaning to get to Manaus and pick up another one.”
The trader looked him up and down. Jake was used to being stared at, though not this overtly. When he had been small, people usually had felt sorry for him and mostly tried to hide their stares. He felt suddenly self-conscious in his new body, taller than the other man, but dressed like a beggar in Knonee’s cast-off jeans and faded T-shirt, his wild hair and scraggly beard in need of a cut.
“So,” Toshi said, picking up the fish food again and sprinkling some into a tank. “You’re what—an eco-tourist? How’d you get separated from your group?”
Jake shook his head. “I work for World United. I’ve been negotiating with one of the local tribes.”
“Yeah? The government know about you being here?” The trader’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t just slide on in to take advantage? Maybe a land grab for some cattle ranchers? Gonna fuck up the forest and ruin my business while you’re at it?”
“Nothing like that. A fair negotiation with one of the smaller groups here. Joaquin Machado with FUNAI brought me in.”
Toshi’s jaw set like he’d caught Jake in a lie. “I know Joaquin. He wouldn’t let you loose in the park with just a native paddler.”
Jake shrugged. “I’m on a deadline with these negotiations. You know how it goes—people back home think working in the Amazon is the same as doing business in Kansas.”
The fish trader pursed his lips and muttered, “Idiots.” Jake figured that Toshi had worked with his share of unreasonable wholesalers in the States and elsewhere.
“I need to go to Manaus as quickly as possible,” he said. “Can you get me there?”
The trader thought it over, another weighty decision. “One thousand dollars American and I’ll have you there before lunch tomorrow.”
Jake smiled thinly. “Must be a pretty fast boat.”
“Plane. We can leave first thing in the morning. I gotta room you can have tonight.”
Even for a plane, a thousand dollars was too much. Jake would have talked him down, but the price hardly mattered. He had no money. He didn’t even have a passport.
“Fifteen hundred,” Jake said, “but you’re going to have to trust me for it.”
Toshi leaned against the counter and regarded him. “Trust is expensive. Two thousand.”
“Fifteen.”
“Not gonna happen,” Toshi said. “No cash, no
plane—not for less than two grand.”
Jake fiddled with the stem of his watch, then nodded.
“And good-faith collateral,” the trader said.
Jake turned his empty palms up.
Toshi looked at Jake’s wrist and smiled. “That’ll do.”
The light went out in one of the aquariums and the background hum of motors dimmed. Toshi swore, strode over to a corner of the room, and fiddled with a nest of cables on the floor. The light came back on and the hum grew louder.
The trader walked back to Jake. “You wanna go or not?”
Jake stared at the man a moment, then undid the band and handed over his watch.
The trader took it, pulled open a drawer, and dropped it inside. He slammed the drawer shut.
Jake slept in the spare room at the back of the trading post, on a hard slat bed with a thin, dirty pillow he covered with a towel he’d found in the washroom. Dreaming, he found Pilar next to him, and gathered her into his arms. Her hair smelled of lemon. The heat of her body, the slight pressure of her against him, made him sigh.
He woke to the screams of howler monkeys. Pilar leaned on one elbow, smiling down at him. Jake closed his eyes, content to stay in the dream.
“It would be lovely to sleep,” she said, and he heard her voice as though it were something tiny and far away, “but it’s time to get up.”
Pilar’s voice. At the fish trader’s. That was wrong. Jake snapped his eyes open. Sunlight poured through the little window into the familiar room at the compound. He was awake—clearly awake—and not dreaming. He lurched up, bumping against Pilar.
“What happened?” he said.
She shrugged and sighed. “Knonee.”
“Left me off.” His gaze darted around the room. “How’d I get back here?”
“Get back?”
Confusion knotted his tongue. He had to think hard to get the words out. “Knonee took me to the trading post. The trader, Toshi—we’re supposed to fly to Manaus today.” He grabbed his left wrist. His watch was gone.
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