The woman from Minnesota turned as they were in flight. Cupping her chin pertly in her hand, she said in her clipped upper Midwest accent, “We’ve been talking about you. We think you’re a scientist. Did you know you look exactly like that girl in Jurassic Park?”
Ginny’s cheeks burned. She’d gotten it ever since she was an undergraduate. “Hey, you look like the girl in Jurassic Park that dug in the dino doo!”
She’d experimented with various come-back lines, but it was Torvald who had come up with the best one. Although in the course of the Jurassic Park films, Dr. Ellie Sattler the paleobotanist had morphed from brave scientist to children’s book writer and mother of two, before this depressing transformation had occurred, she had managed to utter one of film history’s best lines, at least from the female perspective.
“Dinosaurs eat man, women inherit the earth,” she said to the Minnesota woman, who immediately burst out laughing.
“She is her!” the woman cried. “I told you, Bob!” She jabbed her husband in the ribs, causing him to drop his tablet, on which Ginny had clearly seen a scrolling stock ticker. He turned and leaned over the seat.
Seldom had Ginny seen a man’s eyes turn from irritation to lustful appreciation with such speed.
“Well, I’ll be,” he said. “She does look like that girl in the movie.”
Ginny wished she had Ellie Sattler’s long, lean legs, but was slightly proud of the fact that her nose was much smaller than that of the actress.
“So what are you studying? I hope not dinosaur shit,” he said.
“You’re assuming I’m studying something,” Ginny said. “What if I’m a reporter? There’s the conflict with the Moskitia people, you know.”
This was not exactly a conflict, more of a disgruntlement with the vast hordes of scientists, hangers-on and UN functionaries that had descended on the former paradise of the Honduran coast.
“You’re a scientist,” the woman said. “It’s written all over your face. You’re even wearing the outfit.”
Ginny smiled. “You got me. I’m going to study—”
“You’re going to find that gold, aren’t you?” the man—Bob—said. “I hear that lost city is full of it. We were going to visit—” he looked over at his wife.
“Wednesday,” she said with assurance. “And we also go to see the waterfalls that day.”
“Wednesday,” he said. “I don’t guess tourists will find much gold, but you’ll be digging.”
“I’ll be near the excavations of Ciudad Blanca,” Ginny said. Then, very quickly, as she could tell she was about to be interrupted again, she added, “I’m going to study the howler monkeys.”
The disappointment etched on the couple’s faces was comical.
“Oh,” said the woman. “I’m sure that’s fascinating.”
“Actually,” Ginny said.
“Monkeys aren’t very smart,” the woman added. “I remember at the zoo, they were so high in the trees we could barely see them. But they could see us. The guide warned us to stand back or they’d—”she paused and giggled “pee on us or throw their poo.”
“That’s what howler monkeys do,” Ginny said.
“Oh, I don’t know, Terri,” Bob said. “When I was stationed in Japan, the monkeys would steal food right out of kids’ hands. They had their own hot springs. We went out to see them one day and they were better-behaved than most people in a hot tub.”
“Snow monkeys,” Ginny said.
“That’s right,” said Bob, giving her the look of appraisal again. Ginny decided that the wife, Terri, had better keep thinking about her good fortune. Clearly they weren’t taking a winter trip to the Honduran rain forest on whatever Terri earned at her part-time job, if she worked at all.
“The monkeys I’ll be studying are not supposed to be smart,” Ginny said. “But we’re studying them because they’re doing things no one thought they could do.”
“Like what?” Bob asked. “Investing in penny stocks and making pornos?”
Terri, the wife, slapped Bob’s arm and wagged her finger.
Ginny laughed despite herself. “No—more like opening seed pods and cracking nuts.”
“I thought all monkeys did that,” Bob said.
“Not exactly like this,” Ginny said. “They’ve been finding rocks—the right size and shape—and carrying them into the trees. They store the rocks in their nests. Sometimes they fight over the best rocks.”
“Like tools,” Bob said. “I get it.”
“Lots of animals use some type of tool,” Ginny said. “But this seems to be a new development for the howlers in Honduras.”
“Animals do learn,” Bob said.
“Unless it’s our pug,” Terri said. “He doesn’t learn a thing. He still makes a mess in the bathroom every morning.”
Bob grimaced. “That dumb beast,” he said. “Dumbest dog I’ve ever owned.”
“Maybe he’s not that dumb,” Ginny said. “After all, you use the bathroom too. Maybe he is copying you and just missing the toilet.”
The couple laughed.
“I wish you luck, young lady,” Bob said. “And I hope those nerds watching the monkeys don’t give you too hard a time. I hope you have some protection out there in the jungle.”
“Oh, it will be fine,” Ginny said.
Richard would make certain of that. She hoped.
o0o
To Ginny’s chagrin, the Minnesota couple was indeed going all the way to Brus Laguna and so she waited with them at the La Ceiba airport a soul-killing six hours before the even smaller rain-forest hopping plane took off for the short flight to the small coastal town.
The only relief from their disturbingly monkey-like chatter was when Ginny told them she had to do some research preparation on her tablet: Words With Friends. This was spotty at best as the internet service was poor at the airport, but she did not let them know.
Still nothing from Richard. She fought the urge to send yet another message, and merely texted “Arriving Brus Laguna 45 minutes.”
She was exhausted, angry, and hungry by the time the plane bounced to a halt on the short runway in Brus Laguna, a flat city nestled against the coastal rainforest mountains, spreading out along the green and white sand tropical coast. This was indeed the Mosquito Coast of legend, but it bore some resemblance to Miami, or at least Miami as it must have looked in 1910.
Upon leaving the plane, the humid tropical heat pressed down on Ginny like a heavy, damp hand. A rivulet of sweat trickled from the side of her neck between her breasts. She felt moisture on the back of her neck and under her arms and, disgustingly, on her thighs.
The gray, cracked tarmac undulated in the waves of heat. She blinked the sweat out of her eyes and looked ahead.
A man stood about 20 yards from the plane, looking up with expectation. Ginny guessed it was a tour guide for the Minnesotans, as he wore a neat white embroidered tropical shirt and khaki trousers.
Instead, he stepped forth confidently when Ginny reached the foot of the ladder.
“Hello,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Antonio Alvarez. You must be Virginia Bauman.”
“Yes,” she said, shaking his hand. So Richard had sent her the tour guide?
“So you are with Rich—” she cut herself short. “Dr. Weyland’s group as well?”
“In a way,” he said in barely accented English. “I am assigned to work with the project from Francisco Morazán University. I teach students about the ecology of the coast.”
One of the hundreds of local “scholars,” she thought. Degree inflation had not just occurred in the United States, it had occurred worldwide. Probably Antonio had a doctorate in teaching children about banana fertilization and which insects were edible, and why Dole was a scourge upon the planet.
Paid for by Dole, of course.
He immediately took her bag and walked crisply toward a Jeep that was parked about 50 yards away, right on the tarmac. He placed her bag behind the passenger seat and mot
ioned for her to get in. “You’ve heard the news?” he asked, smiling and showing a beautiful set of white teeth.
Ginny fought the strong desire to say, “Yes.” She shook her head—no.
“The younger scientists saw the first group of howlers making clubs from some branches of the ceibas. The type with very large thorns,” he added.
This was entirely new. “What were they doing with them?” she asked.
“Well,” he said, laughing a bit. “It was hardly like the Monkey God, who was the patron of the arts. They were smashing nuts and insects.”
“How—how frequently?” she asked. Perhaps this is why Richard had been incommunicado. He would not be sleeping at all if this behavior was repeating or increasing.
“You know, it’s unusual for them to eat insects,” Antonio said. “I’ve heard of it but never saw it before.”
“Insects are a good source of protein,” Ginny said. Her companion—or guide—whatever he was supposed to be, was right. Howlers, so far as anyone knew, were herbivorous. Grossly herbivorous: they gobbled vast quantities of leaves and shoots. They were primate pandas. Slow-moving howlers, notoriously sleepy—their deep-throated, haunting cries were a product as much of lethargy as adaptive survival behavior. A few bugs would certainly increase metabolism and activity.
By this time they had reached the river landing. Antonio stopped the Jeep and leapt out, grabbing her pack before Ginny could lift one leg out. “Come on, we have quite a trip. I want to make the camp before nightfall.”
“Camp?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s two days to get to the study site. We will take a collectivo to the camp, and then whatever we can find the next day.”
Ginny was somewhat eager to see the famous “collectivo,” of which there were many types in Central America. The “collectivos” on the Mosquito Coast were canoes with motors. Most could carry three or four people—fewer if people had a lot of junk. Ginny thought she’d packed smart and light.
The collectivo had a gold-toothed pilot who spoke reasonably good English. His nickname was Chavo, he said. He was small, dark, and delicately built. Ginny had enough Spanish to know that his nickname meant “kid” as in “Billy the Kid.”
After six hours sitting in front of the motor, Ginny’s head was about to explode from the fumes and the incessant noise. Her legs were rubbery as she left the canoe and slogged up the muddy riverbank into a stand of sawgrass-like greenery. This was “camp.” Antonio told her that the sawgrass kept some of the worst unwanted nighttime visitors away or at least provided good warning as they came crashing through.
“Have you ever seen a jaguar?” he asked as he laid out a broad blue tarp that he described as “essential.”
Ginny shook her head. The car—yes. The cat—no.
Antonio efficiently cleared the fire circle of damp leaves and piled small branches in it. “If you want to help, get some wood,” he said.
“All the wood is wet,” said Ginny.
He shrugged. “Everything is wet here,” he said. “I can still make a fire.”
When she returned with a handful of semi-dry branches and hollow vines, he wrinkled his nose at the vines and took the branches, snapping them into kindling.
“The jaguar goes between the underworld and our world,” he said. “Or so people thought. Some still think that. Consider yourself fortunate if you see one.”
“I’m more interested in the monkey god,” Ginny said. “If the monkeys are as dumb as they seem, why would the Maya worship them? Especially as the god of art and writing.”
Antonio quickly formed the kindling into a conical tower. “It will smoke,” he said. “It keeps the bugs away.” The sun cast a soft pinkish glow over the clearing, fingering between the tall canopy of ceiba and dozens of other nameless trees. “I am Maya,” he said after a moment.
He looked more Spanish than Maya to Ginny, but she merely nodded. The realization came to her that she was not only half a hundred kilometers from any sort of civilization, she was probably a half dozen kilometers from any other people, alone in the Honduran jungle with a strange, inscrutable man whose politeness seemed to hide a secret nature and hidden knowledge. Antonio would only tell her what he wanted her to know, and not one thing more.
“It’s interesting you should say this,” Antonio said, unwrapping a waxed brown packet that turned out to contain two fat pupusas and some pickled onions and chilies.
“What?” Ginny asked, coughing from the thick fire smoke.
“Most people assume the ancients were primitives. They think they worshipped nature gods with no conception of time or souls or eternity. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”
“I …see,” Ginny said, though she really didn’t.
“The monkeys were not always as you see them now,” Antonio said. “As the Maya fell, so did the monkeys. The Monkey God has not been seen for many generations. His nature is mysterious and unknown today.”
Ginny settled in by the fire and crossed her legs. She already had a long line of red mosquito bites along the side of her right thigh. Her rear itched. She thought with horror that it was probably covered with red bumps, too. The bites burned and stung from salty sweat and the oppressive rainforest humidity.
That Antonio seemed to take the Howler Monkey God’s existence as a statement of fact, Ginny found charming. Pre-Columbian peoples had various animistic beliefs, from the North American spirit animals to Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god who was also, in some people’s estimation, a Viking, a Conquistador, or an ancient alien.
As she ate the pupusa, which was surprisingly still soft and delicious after the long ride in the motorized canoe, she thought about the way people lived in Honduras. She’d seen few people lacking $250 American athletic shoes—the styles seemed more current than what she was accustomed to seeing in Iowa. T-shirts bore the names of heavy metal bands and urban rappers. Playboy, a defunct brand in the U.S., appeared alive and well on the Mosquito Coast.
But even a sophisticated, educated man like Antonio, who had off-handedly mentioned he spoke Spanish, Portuguese, the K’iche’ form of Mayan, French, and English, of course, seemed to believe in some sort of ancient Howler Monkey divinity.
Then, feeling the need to cut the unctuous oiliness of the pupusa, Ginny made her first big mistake of the brief journey. She reached for one of the pickled onions, and on a whim, also took a chili from the wax paper envelope. At first, the vinegary taste was pleasant.
“I love escabeche,” Antonio said, taking a handful for himself. His forehead wrinkled.
“What is it?” he asked. “Is there some type of—”
“Oh my God!” Ginny spluttered. She fumbled for her water bottle. She already had a headache from the outboard motor fumes and six straight hours of deafening engine racket. Now her mouth was full of unspent nuclear fuel rods.
This wasn’t just a hot chili. It was magma, not food.
“No, don’t drink water!” Antonio said. He retrieved a tiny, wizened lime from his pack and quickly cut a segment. “This,” he said, offering her the slice of citrus. “Chew on it, then spit it out and take a bite of the pupusa.”
Ginny did as he instructed. The lime immediately cut some of the fire, but the burning returned as soon as she spit it out. Antonio continued to cut slices of the fruit and this continued for some time until she was able to speak again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have warned you.”
At last able to speak, she choked out a small “thank-you” and added, “I’m a dumb American. I should have thought twice.”
“Oh no,” Antonio said. “You are not dumb. Far from it.” Tiny reflected flames glittered in his dark eyes.
Ginny slept on the other side of the fire. First, she dreamed of a black jaguar, and then of a wise-eyed howler monkey. Just as the monkey opened his mouth as if he was about to speak, she woke—and it was morning.
o0o
When they reached the camp, they were greeted by a smo
ldering cookfire and overturned coffee pot. The hanging shower dripped quietly in its enclosure. The tents were empty.
“Let me help you get settled,” Antonio said. He waved her over to a stained khaki military surplus tent that looked as if it had already been invaded by the local vermin, then abandoned.
She fought the panic tightening like a vice around her sternum. She’d broken up with Torvald for this? What if Richard didn’t care—or worse—he had someone else?
Silently, she put her things away and unrolled her bedroll on the damp, moldy cot. Then she heard the foliage crashing and the sound of excited voices. Lifting the tent door aside, she saw four people, most her age or younger, coming out of the jungle into the camp.
They were all the typical graduate student types; she spotted a tall, thin young man wearing a Boston Red Sox cap, his hooked nose slathered with zinc oxide. Slightly behind him was a bottom-heavy young brunette in a Grateful Dead t-shirt whom Ginny instinctively realized was some type of competition, and a slender blonde with a crew-cut.
Behind her came Richard. He had grown a beard. His skin was impossibly bronzed. He had lost some weight.
She felt her fingers clutch at the damp tent canvas. Her knees weakened. God, what if she pulled the rickety tent down with her?
His teeth flashed white in the thicket of his wild dark beard. He propelled himself across the muddy camp in a few long steps, saying nothing. He was upon her then, grabbing her waist and pressing his lips against her neck.
He smelled like sweat and leaves and monkey.
“Richard,” she whispered.
He was laughing. “I am so glad you’re not dead,” he said.
“Me too,” she said, feeling slow and foolish and guilty for doubting him.
“You’ve gotten here just in time! Spears!” He pulled a grubby smartphone out of his pocket and called up a video. He held the phone up in front of her face. Ginny squinted at a tangle of dark branches and fluttering leaves. Then, a howler appeared at the right side of the screen. Its small dark hand held something long and straight, quite green. It was clearly a different color and texture than the foliage in which the howler was moving.
Mad Science Cafe Page 21