Pilar lightly touched his leg. “We talked about Knonee taking you, but he didn’t come last night like he’d said he would. I don’t know why. He’s Fant’s nephew and she’s mystified. Naheyo—”
He cut her off. “I was there. Knonee was here. We went down the river. I met the fish trader, Toshi. He took my watch as collateral for payment.”
She gave him a tiny smile. “Sounds like a wish dream. You’ve been cooped up here so long, it makes sense that you’d dream about getting out. You’ll get to a phone, Jake, just not today.”
“I can describe them. The fish trader is shorter and older than me, Asian. His hair is white and runs over his collar. Knonee is young, maybe twenty, maybe younger. He’s shorter than I am, but we’re built the same. He gave me this.” Jake pulled at his T-shirt, wanting to show her the words “Brazil: World Cup 2002.” Nothing was written on the plain white shirt covering his chest.
He looked down. His watch lay on the dirt floor.
Eleven
Pilar leaned over and picked up his watch, fastening the device on his wrist—the same way she had all those weeks back, the day he’d first woken in this room. Having it on was small comfort now, not like then, when just the feel of it on his wrist made him think everything would be fine.
“This isn’t real,” he whispered, half-surprised he could still speak, his mind spun so crazily. His head pounded and the blood banged in his ears. He leaned forward, his arms between his knees.
He wasn’t sure what was real—the trip with Knonee or being in the compound. Maybe he was at the fish trader’s, dreaming of being with Pilar. He’d wake soon. Toshi would fly him to Manaus.
“It’s Naheyo, isn’t it?” he asked, looking sideways at Pilar sitting beside him, her hands clasped in her lap. “She’s keeping me here. You have to make her understand. People are going to die. Real people. Not ‘demons.’”
“Naheyo isn’t keeping you,” Pilar said. “She wants you gone. She’s worried your demon will possess you again and you’ll ‘kick over the anthill.’ Her words, ‘kick over the anthill.’ I don’t know what that means. I asked, but if Naheyo doesn’t feel like answering, she doesn’t. She’s furious that Knonee didn’t come. She said that he’d better be hurt or sick—there’s no other excuse for him disobeying her order.”
Pilar cut off abruptly, and he could see she was thinking, her lips pressed tight, considering, but he couldn’t guess at what. Did she know something she didn’t want to say? Watching her, waiting, his muscles clenched—each moment a vise squeezing the molecules of his body tighter, contracted by the weight of confinement. She had to be right—he’d been dreaming. Or was dreaming still. Pilar unlaced her fingers and stood.
“I’ll take you to Catalous. We’ll have to walk and it’ll take a few days. It’s the best I can offer.”
“Now?” He was halfway to his feet before the word left his mouth.
She shook her head. “Soon. I’ll get some supplies together. An hour or so.”
A sudden rain began—a hard rain that beat against the mosquito netting taped over the window, making netting bow at the bottom. Water trickled down the wall behind the cot. He glanced at the window and wall and then at Pilar. Hiking through the forest would be misery in the rain, but he didn’t want her to change her mind and say they’d go tomorrow. Her eyes didn’t say that, though. Her look said they’d be leaving as quickly as possible, the same as her words. A bit of the pressure in his chest let up.
Pilar slipped from the room. He squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. It helped the pounding in his head some.
The rain stopped as quickly as it had started. The wall behind the cot was already drying, the color fading back to a dull dun, by the time Pilar returned. She handed him a pair of worn hiking boots and two thick gray socks.
“Mike—Dr. Samuelson—I came to the Amazon with him the first time, when we stayed in the main Lalunta village. He left the boots behind.”
He listened to her inflection and watched how she stood—still leaning slightly forward, her arms at her sides, not loose, but not clenched either. There was never anything between her and the man who had owned the shoes, no odd feeling about handing them over to him—he heard and saw that. Still, there was something, some hesitancy in her.
The boots fit well enough, a little tight, but the length seemed good. He would have made the walk barefoot, but shod was better. He double-knotted the bow in the laces and stood up, anxious to start. Pilar seemed anxious too, though maybe he was reading her wrong, thinking she held something close when she was just primed to go, or resigned to a long trek she wanted to get over. They had at least a two-day or longer walk ahead of them. If she wanted to tell him something, she would. Two days’ walk, and he’d be at a phone.
She bent down to the pile of goods she’d brought along with the boots and handed him a roll of canvas, a light blanket, and a canteen. She hefted a canvas pack onto her back.
“I’ll take that,” he said, but she smiled as though vaguely insulted, then bent at the knees to pick up the last item she’d brought, a machete. He wondered if it was the one Naheyo had carried that first day.
“Ready?” she asked, turning before he answered and heading down the short hallway out into the courtyard. She gave him a glance and nod when he caught up and matched his pace to hers. He was glad she didn’t talk. His mind rumbled, full of thoughts, and words were distracting. They crossed the cane field where he’d first seen Naheyo and then Pilar, and plunged into the forest.
Beyond the Lalunta camp, everything was leaves and bark, mud and standing water, sharp smells, fly buzz, and monkey chatter. Behind them, the compound was lost in a frenzied maze of trees, shrubs, and undergrowth. He’d grown used to the compound—its walls, floors, ceilings. Now, in the wild world that had come so near to killing him, he gripped the head of the cane like a talisman. They’d get to a phone. Nothing else mattered.
A raucous chirping of birds filled the air. He looked up but couldn’t see them in the dense greenery—bananas and small palms, and toothache trees with leaves that reminded him of ficus. Creepers twisted up tree trunks and dangled back down from branches hung with resting bats. He found himself breathing hard, falling behind Pilar. It irritated him that he wasn’t as strong and fast as she was. Fatigue weighed down his body like a water-soaked coat.
“Am I going too fast?” she asked, looking back over her shoulder.
He shook his head and pushed harder against the cane, using it to get spring and speed. A dung beetle rolled its prize across the ground in front of him. Jake stepped over it and pressed on.
They were only three or four hours out, walking without talking, moving in that mind-whirling silence of people approaching a destination that is not an end. He licked his lips and tasted the salt of his sweat.
Pilar stopped beside a tree with a trunk so wide Jake doubted that together they could get their arms around it. Thick, knobby roots snaked across the ground. The tree looked like Medusa, Jake thought, standing on her head. It was the only tall tree. The others nearby were lower, their branches floating like ballerina skirts over the sandy ground of the clearing.
“Let’s take a rest,” she said, and slipped the pack off her back and let it fall to the ground.
High in the Medusa tree, seventy, maybe eighty feet up, a colony of monkeys swung in the branches and chattered down at them. On a low branch, a black monster of a spider slid down its silken ladder. Jake ran his hands over his hair.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
He shook his head, first feeling like he didn’t want to talk yet—not till he’d reasoned out to his own satisfaction what had happened—and then realizing he had to.
“I don’t think it was a dream last night,” he said.
She pressed her lips together, the way she did when she was considering something. “You fell off your cot,” she said. “Do you remember? I’d say three or four in the morning. The crash woke me. I came
to your room to see if you were okay. You’d already gotten yourself back up and were asleep again.”
He didn’t remember falling or getting himself back onto the cot. Would she lie to him? He didn’t believe she would, any more than he believed the trip downriver with Knonee had been a dream. There was a term for what he was feeling—the holding of two contradictory ideas at the same time, believing equally in both. He couldn’t remember the term, or whether it meant he was losing his mind.
“I stayed with you the rest of the night,” she said. “I was afraid you might fall off again, hurt yourself. I hope you don’t mind.”
Maybe he hadn’t fallen off the cot. Maybe the crash was him landing back from the fish trader’s. Beamed back by a less-than-perfect transporter. He shook his head. That he’d had that thought scared him. Maybe he was coming unhinged.
“No. I don’t mind,” he said.
Pilar pulled off the once-white bandana that covered her hair and soaked the cloth with a bit of water from the canteen. She rubbed the fabric over her face and neck, cleaning away the light layer of dust on her skin.
“It was kind of Naheyo to let you guide me,” Jake said.
She nodded once, slowly—the way people do when the nod doesn’t mean agreement, but something completely different.
“What?” he said, and it came to him as the word left his mouth. Naheyo hadn’t let her come. That was why she’d seemed hesitant just before they’d left.
Pilar sat on a fallen tree trunk, using her feet to brace herself on the round log. “Naheyo wanted you out of the compound, but she didn’t want anyone to go with you. She wanted to drive you out, alone. You made it through the forest once, but I couldn’t let—” She glanced at the ground.
“Thanks,” he said. It was such a small word to say all that he meant.
Pilar laughed under her breath. “Two people have defied her in as many days—first Knonee, then me. She’s likely furious.” She held out the canteen.
He took it and tilted it back, drinking as little as he could and still slake his thirst, thinking anything could happen out here—he hadn’t forgotten being lost in the forest. Best to be as ready as possible. He wondered if Naheyo really would have forced him out of the compound alone, or would have just flapped her arms and chattered on incessantly, but let him stay. Naheyo didn’t strike him as the sort of person to easily forgive defiance.
“What will happen when you go back?”
She half shrugged. “I’ll tell her I was beguiled by the pale foreigner and couldn’t help myself. She’ll storm a few days, but the truth is, she likes having me around. She likes the attention I pay her. Everything will be fine.”
“And if it’s not?”
“Most likely she’d turn a cold shoulder and my research would come to a quick end. I’d go home with incomplete data.”
“To an incomplete career?” He handed the canteen back to her.
“Naheyo won’t send me off,” she said, as if her words could make it true. “I’m the best audience she’s ever had. She’ll cry when my time here is done.”
He hoped she was right. Kevin had led his film crew into the Amazon, hoping the Tabna would make him famous. Jake didn’t know what Pilar hoped her work with Naheyo would bring her, but he didn’t want to be the cause of a rift between them.
“Are you beguiled?” he asked, and his heart went up into his throat.
She screwed the cap back on the canteen and smiled.
A cloud of termites whirled through the clearing, tiny white wings glinting like splinters of mirror in the sunlight. They ducked their heads, batting the insects away from their faces, and Pilar laughed—a single chuckle that broke something in him, and then they were both laughing, silly as school kids. Tears welled in his eyes and he wiped them away with the back of his arm. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed liked that—deep, from the gut, over nothing—probably not so long ago, but it seemed forever. He wanted it to go on and on.
The termites whirled across the clearing and into the forest. Their laughter dropped away, the last chuckles floating on the same breeze the insects rode, drifting among the trees.
“Well,” Pilar said, and walked over to where she’d dropped her pack. “Are you hungry?”
He was famished and hadn’t realized it. She handed him the pack. Inside were small loaves of fresh-baked bread, a cake of dried fish, shucked Brazil nuts in a large plastic jam jar, and a small Swiss Army knife. A second jam jar was packed with some sort of fresh leaves. Jake took out the bread and fish, cut off hunks of each, and offered them to her. They ate and drank, then moved on, Jake thinking as they walked that for a moment, when they were laughing, he’d almost forgotten where they were—and why.
The forest thickened, the brush and trees growing close together—so lush and green it hurt his eyes. Walking in a straight line was impossible. They detoured right and left, Pilar wielding the machete like a warrior, hacking away any limbs in their way. He trusted that she knew how to get where they were going.
“This will open up soon,” she promised.
A butterfly, neon orange and blue, flittered across his view, suddenly rose, and disappeared into the canopy overhead. Jake watched its flight upward and saw the one-eyed parrot looking down on him from a low branch.
He nudged Pilar and kept his eyes on the bird.
“One-eyed and alone,” she said, following his gaze into the branches. “Unusual. Parrots are flocking birds. If one flies off, the mate, at least, goes too. Usually the whole flock goes. The bird seems to be doing fine, though. Feathers aren’t ragged and he’s plump enough.”
And keeping track of me, Jake wanted to say. It couldn’t be true—he hadn’t seen the bird at all while he’d been with the Lalunta. Likely they were now once again in the bird’s territory, and the bird so distinctive that he noticed it from time to time—but his stomach tensed anyway.
The bird hopped off the branch, disappearing into the shadows. Jake thought that maybe it had flown away, but heard it squawk loudly and saw the leaves shake. The bird appeared again, turning its good eye to them.
They were almost under the tree when the bird rose up from the branch, lifting into the air, and swooped down, winging directly toward Pilar. She ducked her head and threw up her arms for protection. Jake saw the bird coming too, saw how the parrot changed its flight when Pilar ducked, its wings tilted, tail spread, coming right at her, dropping through the air like a stone. He grabbed her arm and jerked her to the ground just as the parrot’s beak grazed the scarf covering her hair. Jake turned his head to see if it would come at her again, but it had flown past, slanted upward, and was disappearing through the trees.
“You all right?” He knelt beside her and gently brushed away a few leaves that had stuck to her hair.
She nodded, took in a deep breath, held it, and let it out. “I’ve never seen a parrot do that. It flew right at us.”
You, he thought. It flew at you.
She braced her hand on the forest floor and pushed herself to her feet, the backpack she wore making the move awkward. He stood faster and grabbed her arm, to steady her.
“We should keep moving,” she said.
He bent down, picked up the machete she’d dropped, and handed it to her. He leaned over again and closed his hand around the walking stick. She took the lead. He followed close, thinking the machete was a weapon, and the stick, and he wasn’t going to let the one-eyed parrot get that close again.
The fire cast a pale light against the moonless night. They sat in the open air, a small breeze cooling skin still moist from the thin waterfall that had provided a shower of sorts, though not big enough for both of them to bathe in at the same time. He’d been shy, and had shifted away when she undressed, twisting his back to her when his turn came.
The canvas backpack, emptied of food, lay near Pilar’s feet. They’d spread out the bread and fish picnic-style, adding some turtle eggs he’d spotted. He’d told her as they dug them from the nest
about the eggs he’d found when he was lost, how they’d helped keep him alive. As they walked, he’d told her about his failure at trying to spear fish in the river, and how afraid he’d been during the nights. About the sloth he’d killed in his lowest moments. She’d told him about growing up Latina-looking and Catholic in small-town Utah, and how her parents had given her younger siblings Anglo names in hopes that they’d fit in better—and that it hadn’t helped much.
Crickets, frogs, and night birds chirped, croaked, and sang beyond their view. He leaned forward and fed more wood into the fire. She unscrewed a jam jar lid and threw a handful of the fresh leaves into the flames.
“Drives away the mosquitoes,” she said.
The leaves burned slowly, smoldering, the smoke drifting like a cinnamon-scented fog. He thought how unsuited he was for the forest—how ignorant of the basics of life here. It was a miracle that he’d survived those days and nights alone.
Pilar seemed born to it. He watched her throw on a second helping of leaves—the curve of her back, the shape of her hand, the pink orchid in her hair. He’d spotted the flower growing low on a tree and picked it for her—something he maybe should have done for some girl in high school, not now, for the first time, an adult. He’d felt foolish as he handed it to her, but she’d tucked it behind her ear and smiled. He’d never seen her look shyly pleased before. He’d liked that look, and how it made him feel to have caused it. His life seemed full of miracles lately. And nightmares. Very little in between.
He rubbed his temples with his fingertips.
“You’re worried.” She sat beside him, the sides of their legs and shoulders touching. “About benesha and getting to a phone, but something else, too.”
“Just thinking,” he said. “About the parrot.” He fell quiet a moment. “When I saw that parrot in the forest the second time, when I was lost and afraid, it was almost like seeing a friend. It cheered me. Helped me keep going.” He fell quiet again, thinking how to say what he felt without sounding—what? Paranoid? Deranged? “Now I feel like the parrot is keeping watch on me, seeing where I go, what I do.” His voice dropped low. “Making sure I do what it wants.”
Shadowline Drift: A Metaphysical Thriller Page 11