Orinoco

by Dan Pollock

  At Sam’s suggestion, Jacqueline scrambled across to the left-hand window behind him, her long, denimed legs extending into the tiny aisle. Then, at an urgent summons from her, Félix squeezed in beside her to share the view.

  Sam, meanwhile, kept an eye out for possible air traffic in the confined area and continued to monitor the pilot frequency. As an added precaution, he had arrived a half-hour ahead of the usual morning tours from Puerto Ordaz and Ciudad Bolívar.

  He made another pass before climbing back out of the canyon and continuing south. The final glimpse—of the falls subsiding again into the great valley of the Churún—left him as always with a residue of sadness, and wondering if he would ever see them again.

  For sheer solitary magnificence, in Sam’s opinion, this waterfall surpassed all its rivals. Yosemite, the world’s second highest, spilled its thunder only a short stroll from a tour-bus parking lot, while Niagara, Iguassú and even Victoria were all subjected to streams of onlookers arriving steadily by vehicle or boat. For the most part, however, Salto Angel made its endless, breathtaking drop into this isolated canyon unwitnessed, like the philosopher’s tree toppling soundlessly in the forest. Except for a few daily tourist flybys, Devil’s Canyon was empty of humankind. The only surface access was via river, a journey of several days by motorized dugout from Canaima to the north or the Kamarata Valley to the south.

  “Well, what do you think?” Sam inquired of his passengers.

  Jacqueline threw up her hands at the question. “I don’t know what to say! At the moment I feel sort of verbally inadequate.”

  Sam grinned. “But you liked it?”

  She nodded vehemently. “Yeah, I’d say that. I don’t know where you’re taking us next, Captain Sam, but after that, believe me, it’s got to be anticlimactic.”

  “Let’s call it a change of pace then. We’re going to take a peek at the Kamarata Valley, just the other side of Auyán-Tepui, then head back to Canaima. You’ll see a lot more waterfalls there, though nothing like Angel. That’s the mother of ‘em all.”

  As they continued south over the plateau, Sam told Jacqueline about Jimmy Angel, the American bush pilot who, while searching for gold in 1937, crash-landed his monoplane on top of the falls. Angel, his wife and two companions had not only survived the accident, but eventually hiked their way out. The pilot’s name, however, had remained behind, felicitously linked to the falls ever after.

  “But only for non-Indians,” corrected Félix. “The Pemón still call the place simply Churún-merú, the falls of the river Churún.”

  “Excuse me, Félix,” Jacqueline said, “but at the risk of sounding politically incorrect, I prefer ‘Angel Falls.’ Of course, if the guy’s name had been Smith or Jones or Jimmy McGillicuddy, I might agree with you.”

  “I admit it is a pretty name,” Félix relented. “And it sounds even prettier in Spanish with the soft g—Salto Anhel. You can see his original plane, by the way. It’s parked on the grass right in front of the Ciudad Bolívar Airport.”

  A moment later Sam took them past the southern rim of Auyán-Tepui and out over the broad Kamarata Valley, which instantly reminded Jacqueline of the African veldt. Sam agreed; the resemblance was striking. Both were tree-dotted, rolling grasslands with distance-purpled table mountains on the horizon. This was the real look of Venezuela’s Gran Sabana, he explained. And one of these years he intended to drive through it, taking the road from El Dorado all the way south to Santa Elena on the Brazilian frontier.

  “Actually, Sam, you don’t have to drive,” Félix said. “You can roller blade. I had a student who worked as a guide out of Puerto Ordaz, and he told me about it. It is especially popular with young German and Italian tourists now. They get out of their four-wheel-drive vehicles, strap on their ‘blades and take off.”

  “You’re serious?” Jacqueline asked.

  “Absolutely. The road is paved all the way now, and there is little traffic, so they can go extremely fast. Fifty kilometers per hour, I am told, right through the Grand Savanna.”

  “That sounds real interesting, Félix,” Sam said. By his rough estimate now, the young archaeologist had contradicted just about every other damn thing Sam had said, or else tried to top it. Was there some sort of adolescent male rivalry afoot? “I’ll have to try that sometime.”

  *

  Twenty minutes later Sam deposited them on the jungle-hedged landing strip of Camp Canaima. Several commercial planes were already on the tarmac—a Metro-Merlin from Cave, an Aereotuy Twin-Otter and the morning jet from Caracas via Ciudad Bolívar, a big Avensa 727.

  Sam taxied over to the edge of the strip and parked alongside another private craft, a twin-engine Beech. As the three climbed out into a forenoon steambath, Sam handed the cooler chest to Félix, motioning toward a palm-thatched shelter at the end of the runway.

  “You can catch a tram over there to the beach. Why don’t you both go ahead while I button up here?”

  Félix started off with the cooler, but Jacqueline held back, looking concerned. “Sam, you’re not angry with Félix, are you? I know he’s been showing off. But he can’t help being jealous of you.”

  “Is that it? I guess I should be flattered. Anyway, why don’t you go ahead with him? I do want to lock up and arrange for some avgas. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

  “You’re sure?”

  He chuckled. “Jacqueline, stop me if I’m out of line here, okay? But we’ve just arrived at one hell of a romantic little spot. Wait till you see the lagoon. Pink sand, palm trees, waterfalls. Probably the most photographed place in Venezuela.”

  “So?”

  “So—I thought maybe you and Félix might like to have a few minutes to enjoy it by yourselves.”

  She looked at him searchingly. “Sam, I’m quite capable of making those decisions for myself. Is that okay with you?”

  “Absolutely. I just thought—”

  “And another thing, while we’re at it.”

  “What might that be?”

  “Call me Jake.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Sam Warrender was definitely goofing off.

  The evidence was pretty conclusive.

  He wasn’t rounding up rambunctious local politicos and herding them back into the company corral. Neither was he silencing pressure groups by all available means, or jump-starting stalled mining operations on Cerro Calvario, then ramrodding them into high gear. He was, in fact, doing none of the masterful things he had promised Hardesty Eason and the other Proteus vice-honchos he would do.

  Instead, he had his butt solidly planted on a pinky-beige sand beach, his back against the bole of a moriche palm, a chilled can of Cerveza Polar in his fist, and scarcely a thought in his head. His mind was at present thoroughly occupied in marveling at the snowy thunder of Hacha Falls across Canaima Lagoon. He was in your basic, post-prandial, sun-dazed limbo, seriously inclining toward a nap.

  The urgency that had flamed up three days ago and sent him skedaddling down here in his Cessna was not forgotten. But he hadn’t yet resolved on a course of action, or even what he would tell D.W. later that afternoon.

  In the meantime, with key decision-makers out of Caracas for another day or two, there seemed no harm in having D.W. doing what he was doing—glad-handing the industrial elite of Puerto Ordaz and inviting them aboard his big motor yacht, which was apparently serving as a dockside hospitality suite. The company might as well get some use out that floating pleasure palace, Sam thought, having contributed handsomely to its upkeep.

  For his part, Sam much preferred kicking back down here and enjoying Canaima, one of his favorite spots on earth—the Almighty’s version of Adventureland. You had to admit the landscaping here was first rate. Against a theatrical backdrop of red-rock mesas, the Río Carrao, tinted the color of fine sherry by minerals and tannin from leaves and tree roots, flowed past a palm-fringed, emerald greensward that bore an uncanny resemblance to a country club fairway. Then, after flashing briefly into rapids, the ri
ver fanned out across seven mighty cataracts, exploding down into a tranquil lagoon, which just now mirrored the noon-blue sky. And the entire panorama was ingeniously arranged for viewing from anywhere along a scalloped crescent of palm-shaded beach.

  D.W.’s daughter suited the setting, from her velvety laughter to the way the equatorial sun sheened the apricot skin of her forearm and kindled fiery highlights in her dark mane. A lavender orchid, for instance, would not be out of place tucked behind that ear. And, as Sam recalled, the delicate Cattleya mossiae, Venezuela’s national flower, grew wild hereabouts for the plucking.

  If Jacqueline Lee guessed at his mute, avuncular admiration, she certainly wasn’t showing it. She was sitting beside him now, hugging her denimed knees and digging her bare toes in the pink sand, with her face turned away from him—and toward the bare-chested Felix Rosales.

  Sam had caught snatches of their intensely simpatico conversation before tuning out. It had to do with the latter-day revisionist gospel of how Columbus had laid waste to the New World. Sam had heard and read enough of that historical slaughter of innocents all around the Caribbean basin not to argue the point. Still, predictable orthodoxy of any sort bored him. So, as digestion proceeded and the sun poured down its stupefying balm, he let his thoughts stray elsewhere, appropriately enough to images highly erotic.

  These were not fantasies, but vivid recollections of another young woman, María Elisa Cárdenas. Not the formidable matron she was today, to be sure, but the combustible creature she had been twenty-five years earlier, when first she came into Sam’s ranchhouse as a domestic. María Elisa then would have been about the same age as Jacqueline Lee now, though in most respects it would be difficult to imagine two young women more unlike. And yet, Sam suspected, it was proximity to D.W.’s self-assured and sophisticated daughter over the course of the morning that had summoned up these memories of the earthy young Latina who had once bewitched him.

  It had not occurred at first glance, he remembered. No, it was the second glance that had inflicted the real damage.

  She had been standing at his sink, scrubbing a large cast-iron pot, when he cut through the kitchen en route to the garages and a meeting in town. The thick black braid and mahogany skin tones were those of his regular housekeeper, Adela, but these ample curves, unlike Adela’s butterball bulge, cinched snugly at the waist. Sam halted.

  His initial inquiry was drowned out by salvos of spray drilling the metal pot, and his shouted follow-up caused the girl to whirl with the fearful eyes of a doe transfixed by headlights. Then, as Sam apologized in Spanish and introduced himself, she melted into her smile—and her common prettiness was transformed into radiant sensuality. It was a trick weapon, this high-voltage smile of hers, against which Sam was to discover no effective defense.

  María Elisa had come that morning to fill in for her older sister, she explained, because poor Adela was having her terrible allergies again. María Elisa hoped Señor Warrender would not object; it would be only for a few days. Sam was far from objecting to the substitution, but the girl offered further reassurances. Adela had instructed her as to where everything was kept, she told him, and exactly what needed to be done and in what order, on all of which María Elisa had taken careful notes. Wiping her hands on her apron, she produced a sheet of notebook paper. Sam came closer and saw that it was covered in plump purple handwriting.

  When their eyes encountered over that childish scrawl, Sam felt his face lapse into an idiot grin. Something had passed between them. Whatever it was—basic lust, recognition of a strong mutual attraction, dangerous susceptibility—María’s eyes blazed back with it, and Sam damn well felt it, too. He had escaped then, and quickly.

  Accelerating away down the ranch road, he had resolved to avoid the house as much as possible until this incendiary creature was safely out of it and the fat sister returned. There was, after all, no local shortage of beddable, weddable females. Several such had advertised their availability in the four years since his divorce from Caroline. There could be no slightest justification for Sam’s allowing any foolishness between himself and this apparently willing spitfire from the local barrio. Whatever pleasures afforded them en route, he couldn’t envision any affair ending happily or fairly for her. The solution was to steer entirely clear.

  During the next three days he saw her only twice in passing. On both occasions, however, that primal awareness had been present. On the third evening Sam had sat in a Tulsa restaurant across a candlelit table from a woman of considerable charm and cultivation—and found himself repeatedly conjuring María Elisa. When he returned to the ranch late that night, long after María had left, he discovered some of her little touches. There seemed to be more every day. Now his dressertop clutter of keys, comb and pocket change had been aratfully arranged, his bedside books stairstepped in an impressive pyramid, and a pair of rarely used silk pajamas exhumed from a bottom drawer and laid out on the coverlet.

  On the fourth day Sam had flown early to Amarillo and back, reserving the afternoon to inspect a few head of longhorns he’d recently acquired from a Texas A&M breeding program. Instead, on his return he found himself wandering, with no apparent purpose, from room to room.

  He found María in the serving pantry off the dining room. She was poised on a stool, at full stretch, putting away china on a high cupboard shelf. The starched cotton of her uniform was also at full stretch over hips and bosom. At the squeal of the door’s spring hinge, she turned, targeting Sam with her point-blank smile. He absorbed the impact and backed out of the room.

  Once out in the corridor and fighting a dizzying rush of desire, he gave himself the best advice he could think of: Keep going, you damn fool!

  Then he heard María Elisa call his name inside, making of it three plaintive syllables—”Sam-u-el?”

  As if in sleepwalk, he had gone back in to her. She said not a word, but her child eyes implored him. He was still a step away when she launched herself at him. Suddenly Sam had all her humid abundance clinging fiercely to his neck, mouthing Spanish endearments that he hastened to smother with their first kiss. In a daze, with her in his arms, he had headed off toward the master bedroom, knocking into a hall table and caring not a damn.

  A door slams in memory, the massive, carved Spanish oak door of his old bedroom in the years before the south wing was built. His conqueror’s strides lead across a cushioned oatmeal carpet. On the other side of the big room, casement windows admit a warm afternoon breeze, which stirs gauzy, sky-blued curtains. Sam looks down into eyes signaling simultaneous surrender and victory.

  He deposits the exquisite burden onto his big bed, atop the copper quilted coverlet that she herself has spread this morning and tucked tight. Now, when it is all too wonderfully late, she begins giggling and twisting, as if to evade her erotic fate. But when he plays her game and hesitates at arm’s length above her, pretending last-minute reservations, she explodes off the mattress, grapples him downward, crushes herself beneath him.

  They had succeeded somehow in undressing each other without letting each other go. They had behaved, in fact, like rabid teenagers, although María had been twenty-three then, and Sam nearing thirty-five, if feeling suddenly seventeen. But why not? Never had he beheld such a cornucopia of delights in his bed. He could still see María’s pillowy breasts with their blindly staring areolas; the amphorical hips enfolding the dark, nested triangle; the dark, brimming eyes and rose-petal lips, inviting endless intimacy.

  And on that long-ago, golden afternoon, Sam had set about plundering all those proffered treasures of hers, not once but again and again, like a bovine blundering into overrich pasture, eager to graze itself to death...

  Cold water splashed his face, shocking him out of reverie. Shrill laughter opened his eyes. Jacqueline Lee stood above him, tall and dark against a magenta flare of sun. He squinted up and saw her leaning over him and twisting a rope of her long hair, releasing another shower down on his face.

  Chapter Thirteen

&
nbsp; Coughing and laughing, Sam levered himself to his elbows, focussing on this very palpable, very contemporary young thing demanding his attention. She wore a look of little-girl mischief and a black cutaway tank suit that displayed a sleek, big-girl body. Where María of wanton memory had been compact and curvaceous, Jacqueline Lee was long-waisted and willowy. But in native coquettishness, Sam decided, the two were equally endowed. Jacqueline’s mud-splattered Reeboks, jeans and work shirt lay discarded on her bright beach towel; Félix’s shorts, shoes and tank-top were strewn beside them.

  “Come on, Sam!” she insisted. “The lagoon’s fantastic. It’s like swimming in champagne.”

  “Thanks, Jake, but I’ll sit this one out.”

  “Oh, merde! Don’t give me any of that ‘You kids run along and play’ stuff.’”

  “Down here they say mierda—but it’s not ladylike.”

  “Hmm, I’ve got an answer to that, but I better not say it.” She flashed an impish smile. “But I’m warning you, Big Sam, if you’re just sitting up here thinking, ‘Ah, youth,’ and being a darned martyr, I’ll—I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?”

  She swung a shapely leg and sent sand flying in his face.

  Sam exploded off the towel.

  Jacqueline shrieked and dodged away, sprinting down the beach ahead of him—long legs scissoring, wet hair whipping across her bared back. Close inshore, Félix Rosales stood hugging his muscled torso and watching.

  Jacqueline was still squealing as she high-stepped into the water and arced forward in a graceful dive. Sam, several strides behind, stopped just short. It took him half a minute to return to the towel, strip down to his trunks and join them, belly-slapping the surface and pinwheeling into his old trudgen crawl. The embracing lagoon was every bit as fantastic as Jacqueline had said, and as Sam remembered it. He came up blinking, the sun-glossed water rippling before him all the way across to the foaming splendor of Hacha Falls.