Orinoco

by Dan Pollock

  He felt free. Adrift, like the current. And terribly alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The big trucks rumbled through the Cerro Calvario gate, churning up red dust. There were four giant flatbeds with the Ferrominera emblem, piggybacking some of Caterpillar’s finest—an earth mover, two D8 Cat bulldozers and a motor grader with a ten-foot blade. Bringing up the rear was a dust-clad Proteus Land Cruiser, a hard-hatted Ray Arrillaga at the wheel and a Venezuelan mining engineer riding shotgun. A red-bearded flagman waved it through, scurried to close and padlock the big mesh-wire gate, then sought refuge in the Proteus gatehouse as protesters surged forward through the swirling dust, jeering and chanting.

  Their ragged charge was met by a squad of baton-wielding, flak-jacketed National Guardsmen, who quickly closed ranks in front of the gate. The protesters broke and retreated before this advancing olive-green wall, then reformed at a somewhat safer distance across the road, hurling taunts and waving placards and generally playing out their indignation for the benefit of nearby video cameras.

  Several news crews had turned up for the event. Their microwave vans were prominent among the vehicles glinting in the midday sunshine along both sides of the two-lane access road. Even Marina Estévez was on hand in her form-fitting jungle fatigues, waiting for the dust to settle before doing her standup. But she counted on this being one of her last days out in the boondocks. As a result of her recent topless tabloid splash, Marina’s agent was currently negotiating a news anchor position for her in Caracas—and maybe a guest shot in a telenovela.

  The main protest contingent had flown and caravanned down that morning from Caracas. They were from Simón Bolívar University and the City University, the Natural Sciences Museum and several conservation organizations. Even so, there were less than a hundred, but by constantly milling and recirculating, they appeared far more numerous in tight camera shots. They swarmed now down the road from the gate, where a spindly man in an Oakland A’s baseball cap, liki-liki shirt and khaki shorts stood on the back of a pickup truck, waving a bullhorn. Dr. Arquimedeo Laya López waited for a go-ahead from an assistant, indicating the video cameras were ready, then began his prepared speech:

  “My friends, five centuries ago, on his third voyage, Christopher Columbus landed on our shores and arrogantly claimed our land and all its peoples and wealth for the Spanish crown. This launched the slaughter of the Arawaks and the Caribs, our original inhabitants, a slaughter that continued under the many conquistadors who came after Columbus in search of gold.

  “But ancient history, alas, is not a closed book. For what we have witnessed here today is not a new invasion, but only the latest episode in a continuing invasion by greedy foreigners—in this case a modern corporate Columbus, Proteus Industries.”

  Arquimedeo paused to accommodate an angry chorus of shouts and boos, then resumed:

  “As you see, these latter-day conquistadors come riding bulldozers instead of horses, and in quest of iron instead of gold. But that is a minor difference. And they trample us down with the corrupt connivance of certain segments of our own government”—more denunciations burst forth—“officials who, for the right price, are apparently willing to permit the ongoing rape of our land and its history.

  “My friends, these officials have run me off my own excavation and confiscated my scientific instruments and findings. But I can tell you exactly what is about to happen behind that gate on Cerro Calvario. Those bulldozers will begin cutting huge terraces around the mountain, on which to lay track for an iron-ore railway. When this is done, they will begin dynamiting the mountain to rubble, which the train will carry off to the Orinoco, exactly as has been done on Cerro Bolívar. The crushed rocks will be loaded into large ships bound for foreign ports. And among those crushed rocks, those ships will also carry away crushed artifacts from those same Arawak Indians, and from the ancestors of the Arawaks, and their ancestors, prehistoric treasures that have lain buried for millennia.

  “As some of you know, I uncovered some of these treasures before I was thrown off the mountain. I am absolutely certain that many more remain to be uncovered. But that priceless historical record will now be obliterated, and that process of destruction begins now, today, here!”

  This time Arquimedeo continued over their angry outburst, shouting into the bullhorn:

  “The world must know what is happening here today! The world must heed—”

  As the TV videocameras recorded Arquimedeo’s impassioned speech, across the road a lone figure squinted into the eyepiece of an eight-millimeter Handycam, documenting the entire scene, including the seething circle of supporters and flanking news crews. Jacqueline Lee had positioned herself farther out by instinct. But realizing now that her wider focus revealed the relatively small turnout of protesters, she wondered if she should edit the shot out later. Then she scolded herself. She was, after all, making a documentary, not a propaganda film. The size of the crowd was a significant part of her story, and part of Arquimedeo’s struggle.

  So she widened out farther, shrinking the turbulent gathering into the vast savanna horizon. Then she panned right, down the mirage-rippled ribbon of asphalt vanishing to the north, then left again to the main gate. The mountain was almost totally obscured now behind billowing, rust-colored clouds, through which could be heard the growling and bellowing of the diesel-powered dinosaurs, laboring with their massive burdens.

  Jacqueline had been on site since before sunrise, rolling tape to document the eviction of Dr. Laya and his shell-shocked volunteers by National Guardsmen after a two-day standoff. In the end, the diminutive archaeologist had had to be dragged, flailing and shouting curses, out of his tent and hustled into the back of a Guardia Jeep. Three of his four female volunteers were even more shrill, and far more graphic in their obscenities. Jacqueline had gotten it all, then switched eight-millimeter cassettes an instant before a Guardia corporal spotted her and approached menacingly. She looked suitably horrified as the pockmarked soldier snatched her Handycam, ejected the blank, two-and-a-half-hour cassette and shoved it into his waistband, then handed back her camera.

  “No mas!” he scolded, first shaking his finger at her, then pointing forcefully toward the exit road. “Véte, chica!” Clearly, she was to be permitted no more footage at the camp. Jacqueline had exhibited more convincing outrage at this rude treatment, before finally retreating under his scrutiny—and managing to conceal both her sense of oneupmanship and the cassette nestled in her briefs.

  Félix Rosales had not put in an appearance. He had prudently made himself scarce since the government announcement that he would be replacing Dr. Laya on the Cerro Calvario project and supervising an excavation at an alternate site at the foot of the South Hill. Simón Bolívar University had already stated its unqualified support for Dr. Laya and its repudiation of Félix Rosales and any and all allegations against Laya’s scientific integrity. And in some on-the-fly reactions Jacqueline had videotaped, crew members had expressed even more loathing and contempt for Félix and his treachery than for the high-level corruption that obviously lay behind Dr. Laya’s ouster. Only one volunteer had failed to curse the muscular young archaeologist—the tough little fisherman’s daughter from Cumaná, Marta Mendes, who plainly had a sizable crush on him.

  “Oh, come on, Marta!” Jacqueline had said, switching off the camera. She found the homely girl’s blind adoration to be exasperating—and pathetic. “Félix is, is—God, I don’t know—just a dirtbag with muscles. And, believe me, he’s already got a crush on himself.”

  “I suppose you think you can have anyone you want, don’t you, Jacquie?”

  Having delivered this schoolyard non sequitur, Marta stalked off. It was clear to Jacqueline that, if Félix intended to pursue his sham excavation while the mountain was being devoured nearby, he could count on at least one worshipful volunteer.

  Now, nearing one in the afternoon, with eight hours of this unequal ordeal behind her, Jacqueline’s earlier sense of triumph i
n smuggling out the cassette had given way to thorough exhaustion. Nor had her mood been elevated when, while tracking her camera during the main gate debacle, she had focused on the busty bottle-blonde from Ciudad Bolívar TV, the one Sam had made a drunken fool of himself over on the Kallisto.

  It was, all in all, a considerable relief when Jacqueline realized that Arquimedeo was winding up his speech. She could use a breather. The crowd apparently felt the same way. Even before the final round of applause and cheers had died away, the protesters began dispersing down the road toward a catering van that advertised café and jugos and cervezas, arepas and plátanos, hamburguesas and perros calientes. And, with no more heavy-equipment scheduled to be rumbling through the gates that day, the media crews began quickly packing up. Jacqueline figured most of the protesters would do likewise.

  She turned and hiked down the road to her own truck, conjuring its ice cooler full of Diet Pepsis. Actually, in a deal hammered out during a father-daughter shouting match over her insistence on coming down here, it was an unmarked Proteus pickup, with young Bernardo along as driver and pint-sized bodyguard. Even when Jacqueline was being her most mutinous, it seemed, D.W. managed to exert his control. Jacqueline could see Bernardo’s spiky head silhouetted in the cab, complete with radio headphones that were probably feeding him soccer play-by-play.

  But before she reached the pickup, a husky female voice accosted her from behind: “Miss Lee, may I speak to you a moment?”

  Jacqueline turned to see Señorita Marina Estévez teetering toward her in high-heeled sandals. She waited for the showy newswoman to draw near, noticing with surprise how cool and collected the theatrically shadowed and lashed eyes seemed under the brim of the silly bush hat.

  “Yes?”

  “Miss Lee, I understand that you’re here today...”—the newswoman was slightly out of breath—“protesting the actions of your father’s company... and I wondered if I could induce you to do a brief interview... in English.” Señorita Estévez’s own English was quite fluent, and she gestured across the road toward the parked Noticolor TV panel truck.

  “I’m sorry,” Jacqueline replied curtly. “I don’t do interviews. I’m here making a film actually.”

  “Just a few words? Really, whatever you’d like to say.”

  “Believe me, señorita, you wouldn’t like what I’d like to say to you.”

  The blonde newswoman went wide-eyed, but with just a hint of smile. “Oh? And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ll give you one hint. After what happened on my father’s boat, you actually expect me, or anyone else, to take you seriously as a journalist? What a joke!”

  “Bueno! Look, honey, you may think you know what happened at that party, but you don’t. So spare me the smug sarcasm. All you or anyone else saw was the end of a nasty accident—an accident that wasn’t my fault. But, for your information, I apologized to your father anyway.”

  “So, what did happen?”

  “What did happen is none of your damn business.”

  The blonde pivoted away behind the rakish hat, but Jacqueline sidestepped quickly to confront her anew.

  “Okay, so it’s none of my damn business. And if I’m out of line, I apologize for the attitude. But I really want to know, okay? What happened between you and Sam?”

  Señorita Estévez narrowed the Egyptic eyes. “And why is it so important to you?”

  “It just is.”

  “Will you agree to an interview if I tell you?”

  “Yes. I mean, if it’s reasonable.”

  “Not to worry, honey. Okay. As you may or may not know, Samuel was muy borracho—very, very drunk—that night, and he wanted to leave the ship.”

  “What were you doing together?”

  Señorita Estévez smiled. “Let me tell it, okay?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was up on the deck where you keep the twin speedboats, having a drink and being propositioned by your little Boy Scout in there.” The newswoman pointed a lacquered, beringed index finger at the back of the spiky head in the cab.

  “Bernardo? You’re joking?”

  “Well, of course, I thought it was awfully amusing, but I suspect Bernardo was deadly serious. He had the look of a big-game hunter, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Samuel Warrender rescued me from the little sex fiend by lurching along and asking Bernardo to get his keys from his cabin and drive him to the Intercontinental in Puerto Ordaz. Well, I made the mistake of trying to help Samuel down to the dock. He was staggering around pretty bad, and I tried to stop him, but he insisted he could make it. So, we got as far as the stairs to the main deck, when he got dizzy and started falling. I tried to grab him, but he grabbed me first”—Señorita Estévez clutched the front of her jumpsuit, miming a panicky expression—“and hung on as he fell. You know the rest of it, honey. Every fucking photographer in Ciudad Guayana was waiting for us at the bottom. We were, what’s the word—celebs?”

  “And that’s all that happened between you?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you. What’d you think, we were having a party?”

  “Frankly, yes.”

  The blonde shrugged. “I wouldn’t have minded. I happen to think he’s a sexy man. No insult to Bernardo, but Samuel’s more my type. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m his. Anyway, I got a lot of free publicity, and in my business almost any kind of publicity is good. So, I’m going national, maybe next week. But I heard what happened to Samuel, and I’m truly sorry. I hope you will tell him that, honey. For the record, though, I disagree with Samuel, and you, on this mining operation down here. Venezuela needs the jobs, and the foreign capital.” The newswoman smiled. “Now, your turn. Can I call my guy over?”

  “Sure. Thanks for telling me what happened, señorita.”

  “Call me Marina.”

  “Okay, Marina. And I apologize for—well, for being a little bitch.”

  “Honey, if there is one thing you are not, it is little.”

  When the stringy-haired, Goofy-shirted cameraguy was ready, Jacqueline identified herself and stated her well-rehearsed opinions on Cerro Calvario and the irreparable damage being done to the reputation of a fine and distinguished archaeologist. When she’d finished, the technician swung his camera and tripod reflector around to get Señorita Estévez’s reaction shots. The blonde newswoman licked her lips, unzippered her jumpsuit top several strategic inches, and, as tape began to roll, tilted her head slowly this way and that while nodding thoughtfully—and it was a wrap.

  Despite all the high-gloss flimflam, Jacqueline found herself grudgingly revising her opinion of Señorita Estévez. The woman had done nothing terribly wrong—except, perhaps, to wear a gown insufficiently attached to her torso. Jacqueline was also having to revise her editorial opinions of the shipboard party, especially its scandalous denouement. She had said some nasty things to poor Sam before he was led away. Probably—she hoped—he had been in no condition to remember any of them. Then, when she had gotten word from her father yesterday about Sam being put out to pasture by the Proteus board, she hadn’t even had the decency to call or cable him her sorrow at the news. And she was sorry, dammit! And doubly furious at her father.

  And even that wasn’t all of it. Hadn’t she been more than a bit responsible for Sam’s humiliating fall in the first place? Spurting all those delicious mouthfuls of Veuve Clicquot down his throat? But, God, it had been exciting! She’d done it once, years before at a fraternity party, but with an archetypical bozo. How much naughtier and more knee-wobbling the ritual had been with Sam, with his virile, savory smell and Rodin-sculpted jaw and devilish eyebrows and hooded, gray-eagle eyes!

  Not that she was entirely prepared to forgive him yet. But she was seriously thinking about it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jacqueline waited in the truck beside Bernardo, sipping her Pepsi and watching the media vans drive away and the crowd around Dr. Laya dwindle and disperse. Eventually, the archaeologist made his way wearily across th
e road toward her. She stepped out, offering him a cold soda.

  He declined. “Thanks, I just had a beer. It’s been a long morning, hasn’t it?”

  “Uh-huh. I just want to tell you, you were quite wonderful, Dr. Laya.” She had tried for a hopeful tone, but his bitter smile made it difficult.

  “How kind. And, unfortunately, how irrelevant.” He sighed. “And did you capture it all for posterity?”

  “Everything I could.”

  “I’m sure you will make an excellent film, Jacqueline, one that will, how do you say, raise consciousness? But it will be too late to save Cerro Calvario. To have any hope of that, we desperately needed CNN here today. And, well, you saw what we got. Our Minister of Mines and your father should both get down on their knees and give thanks to Señorita Jessica.”

  Dr. Laya was referring to Hurricane Jessica, which had laid waste the coast of Belize the day before, then swerved northwest across the Yucatán Peninsula, uprooting palms and leveling villages, leaving scores dead and thousands homeless. Jessica was now spinning capriciously over the Gulf. But, by nightfall, she was expected to plow ashore again, somewhere along a five-hundred-mile arc from Tampico to Galveston. CNN bureaus and other news facilities around the Caribbean basin were all on twenty-four-hour storm watch, as wind-driven waves lashed shores and seawalls. On a slow or average news day, this political confrontation at Cerro Calvario might have elicited a couple of international camera crews. But on this day, with the eyes of the world riveted just to the north, only three Venezuelan video crews had shown up, not counting Jacqueline and her Sony Handycam.