by Brian Hodge
As he looked at fourteen bleeding bodies strewn across the forest floor, with more likely to fall, he could have ripped out his hair in great handfuls. Even greater than the sense of failure was the self-loathing over what he had done: He’d torn apart the very men whose souls he had come to save. If a man like that was not condemned to Hell, who was? His buhii was so cold by now, it was a glacier, scraping his heart raw.
He was about ready to motion to Damowä that they might as well retreat when he heard it. When they all heard it. The entire jungle split with the sound, and it held its breath to listen in awe.
From within the village came as unearthly a shriek as any of them had ever heard. Angus had heard something similar twice before, this dry season, and had prayed to never hear it again. Now it was worse, though. Now he was going to get a chance to witness its source close up.
It wasn’t quite human. It wasn’t quite animal. It wasn’t quite spirit. It was somehow the worst of all three, and then some.
Every warrior still alive on the battlefield froze as it tore the morning air to shreds. The upper canopy exploded with birds that hadn’t even been driven off by the sound of gunfire taking flight. From deeper in the jungle, monkeys screeched in fear.
Fierceness as a way of life be damned. Two of the Mabori flat-out turned tail and made tracks back through the jungle.
While it came running from the main entrance of the shabono.
Angus recognized it only by the clothing. Whatever it was now, it had been their chief. The Iyakei headman had ended up with a change of oversize clothes that he’d worn into filth-encrusted stiffness. Cotton pants, with the crotch cut out because the zipper was too bothersome to work. Ancient workshirt, unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up. Apparently he had felt that clothes do make the man, and he’d learned enough Spanish to call himself capitán. Yes, it was the headman’s clothing.
But the face … his face … his entire head.
“Iwä!” screamed one of the Mabori. “Iwä!”
Alligator.
From his upper chest on up, the headman’s flesh had thickened into knobby hide, brownish green in color. From within chunky folds of skin, a pair of slitted yellow eyes gleamed. His mouth and nose were no more, at least not in human terms. The entire cranial structure had become rearranged into a long snout, flattened across top and bottom. And lined with so very many teeth. Sharp teeth. Snapping.
“Don’t kill him!” Angus cried to the rest of the Mabori. Without need. They’d already learned their lesson once before. The hard way.
The headman came charging past his own awestruck warriors, locking onto Angus’s voice. The yellow eyes alive with hunger.
Instinct said to shoot. Wisdom prevented it. And altruism thought, in the second before the iwä pounced, that perhaps his own death might buy more time for the rest to flee.
He lifted the shotgun in both hands, like a quarterstaff, as the headman bore him down to the ground. He wedged it sideways between the thing’s jaws. Rows of teeth grated on metal, gouged out splinters of wood. He was bathed with the thing’s foul breath, and as it sat atop him, it lunged relentlessly for his throat.
Claws. The man’s hands had thickened into leathery reptilian feet, twisted claws instead of fingers. They flailed past the shotgun and ripped Angus’s shoulder open to the bone. Blood soaked the ground beneath him.
The jaws, snapping, grinding through the shotgun…
The yellow eyes, inhuman, unblinking…
The face, mutated past anything he’d ever dared believe existed this side of Hell…
There was no point in struggling. To give in to its jaws would be the quickest way out. One brief moment of agony, then merciful oblivion.
But he couldn’t. Life instinct was strong. Even as another swipe of the claws tattered his cheek. Even as yet another tore across his chest. Even as a claw worked its way between two ribs and punctured a lung.
He wheezed blood, swallowed it, coughed it.
A blur above him. No, they should run.
One of the burliest of the Mabori, a man named Ariwari, had come hurtling to Angus’s aid, leaping onto the back of the headman and pulling him free. They rolled across the ground, and when they came to a halt, Ariwari was beneath him. One arm was clenched around the headman’s swollen throat, the other around his stomach. The headman, the iwä, thrashed and bellowed another unearthly cry.
Kerebawa was close on Ariwari’s heels, while the remaining warriors fired arrows to cover them. And as Angus watched, bleeding profusely and barely able to move, Kerebawa knelt beside the thrashing headman and tenderly rubbed his stomach. Ignoring the slashing jaws, the flailing talons. Rubbing the belly.
Incredible.
The thrashing weakened, and quickly ended altogether. Scrabbling limbs stilled and relaxed. Of all defenses — sleep.
Angus had seen this before, rolling an alligator onto its back and rubbing its belly. Something about the sensation and the backflow of blood into the brain induced sleep. That it should work here, now, was nothing short of a miracle.
Ariwari eased out from under the heavy body and scuttled away through the underbrush beneath a hail of arrows. Kerebawa reached beneath Angus’s arms and locked his fingers to drag him away. Angus clenched his teeth against a feeble cry. The pain was almost beyond belief.
“I have you, Padre,” Kerebawa murmured into his ear, and Angus watched his heels dig furrows on the jungle floor. “I have you.”
Angus’s head felt too heavy, a massive weight atop a fragile stalk. As Kerebawa pulled him backward, the remaining Mabori fell into position to retreat. Gradually falling back in teams to guard one another’s escape.
And as Angus watched Iyakei-teri fade into the background, this savage green world turned gray. Then black. Then…
Nothing.
He came to later, and by the position of the sun, it looked to be midafternoon. Had they been home at Mabori-teri, the heat of midday would have driven most of them to their hammocks to rest.
As it was, they were resting now, ever alert for Iyakei warriors in pursuit. Or worse, the iwä.
Out of a raiding party of twenty-three men, they now numbered only fourteen. The bodies of the dead would remain, to be recovered later by the old women of Mabori-teri. Angus had always found it a strange double standard, that the young women were treated no better than chattel, but if they survived into old age, they were revered. Old women were often used as emissaries between warring tribes. Never harmed. Even when recovering the bodies of warriors who had slain the enemy.
Once home, the bodies would be burned. The remaining bones and ash ground into powder. The powder saved to be mixed with a soup of boiled plantains, and eaten.
Angus wondered if they would do the same with his bones. Burial by other missionaries? No. He didn’t belong with them anymore. He belonged in Mabori-teri, in death as well as in life.
Kerebawa had tended the claw wounds as best he could, but they were gruesomely bad. If one of the shamans were here, he would chant a healing plea. Even so, it was not altogether unpleasant, feeling the numbness overtaking his body as he stared into the canopy overhead. Teeming with life that had no idea men killed one another over powders.
“I am cold inside for you, Padre,” Kerebawa said. He held one hand behind Angus’s head so he could drink some water.
Angus choked on a little, got the rest down. He patted the hand that fed him, felt the stinging trickle of tears. For the friendship to be severed. He’d known Kerebawa nearly all the young man’s life. Angus didn’t know precisely how old he was. There were only three numbers known to the Yanomamö: one, two, and anything greater than two. But he had been a small child when Angus had arrived nineteen years ago.
The way he saw it, Kerebawa had the brains and courage to assume headman status someday. If the tribe remained intact that long. Their survival depended on men like him, who could adapt.
Angus had singled out Kerebawa to introduce to the outside world. He’d told him o
f lands near and far: Mexico-teri America-teri. England-teri. It was easier to put the names into a form and context Kerebawa would find meaningful. The -teri suffix denoted “village of.” Mabori-teri meant, simply, village of the Mabori people. America-teri, then, village of the America people.
Nowhere was it more poignant, though, than when Kerebawa and the others had finally grasped the concept of Heaven: God-teri.
The Yanomamö had no way of conceiving of the enormity of the outside world. In their minds, they were the center of the universe. In their imaginations, the Venezuelan city of Caracas was merely a large shabono, just another succession of huts.
So Angus had shown Kerebawa the reality, in hopes that he might understand. And when the time was right, convey to the rest just how large and diverse the world was out there. Forewarned was forearmed.
Kerebawa had seen Caracas. Later, Mexico City. Eventually they had ventured all the way to Miami. The culture shock didn’t seem to be particularly painful, no doubt in part due to the young man’s schooling. As a child, he’d been educated with other Indian children in a mission school in Esmerelda, taught to read and write. He had learned to be marginally conversant in Spanish. Over the last four years, Angus had taught him a good deal of English as well.
A trilingual Yanomamö. Angus could have wept in bitter sorrow that such a rarity was needed. But better trilingual than extinct.
“Padre,” said the headman Damowä, “today you became a true waiteri.” A fierce one. “We will tell our children of this day. We will not forget.”
Angus closed his eyes and smiled. The numbness had left his arms and legs nearly paralyzed. But he could smile. For now he knew that his bones would end up in their bellies. Living with them, in a strange way, forever.
Kerebawa gazed down at his teacher, his mentor, tears in his eyes. He wiped away the flecks of blood that Angus coughed up.
“The hekura-teri,” Angus whispered. “They still got away with it. Do you know what that means?”
Kerebawa didn’t twitch a muscle, didn’t even bat an eye. But he knew. Angus could feel it. The young warrior understood it all.
“You wish to avenge my death … don’t you?” There, appeal to centuries of inbred honor. Angus felt horribly manipulative. “Then you’ll have to follow the path of the hekura-teri. And stop it.”
“The world is too big,” Kerebawa said. “It will eat me.”
“Maybe not.” A spasm shook his body; he didn’t have long now. “The Colombians will take it back home, to Medellín-teri. To Vasquez. From there?” He shook his head in surrender.
Kerebawa simply closed his eyes in resignation.
“In my hut … papers, maps. The names of the men who took us to see the outer world. Barrows and Matteson? Use them all.”
The paralysis crept up his chest to seize his throat. But no matter. He had said all he needed. After death, he knew his name would never be spoken again among their tribe. Their way of showing respect. But they would remember. Always.
And in the midst of this massive green cathedral, Angus let go his spirit, and let it soar.
While around his body rose the sudden sound of mourning.
Chapter 2
NEW HORIZONS
TWA flight 435 from St. Louis to Tampa, nonstop, took just over two hours. They had made good time, caught a tailwind, while Justin had caught a good buzz on airline vodka. He wondered if the stewardesses had posted an alert on him. Watch out for the guy in 19A, could be trouble. A human sponge. And he hardly says a word. It’s always the quiet types that flake out.
Couldn’t much fault their concern. Not since the April 1989 flight into St. Louis from Tennessee. Some anthropoid drinks six bottles of airline hootch, disembarks, steals an electric cart for a joyride past the gates, ducks into a mysteriously unlocked maintenance room, and tries to hide in a trash chute. End of story. Said anthropoid winds up crushed to death in the trash compactor.
From obscurity to legend in less than an hour. All in all, there were worse ways to go out.
With his A-seat, he managed to spend a lot of time staring out the window. Flight was a strange mix of illusions. While gazing out over nearby cirrocumulus clouds, it felt as if they were skimming low over vast polar regions and snow-drenched mountains.
The sight kept him isolated from his seatmate. Late thirties, gray suit and yellow power tie, receding hairline. Hunched over the drop-down tabletop, scribbling into arcane reports while his fingers danced on a calculator’s keypad. What a horrible life it looked like from the outside. Justin would have preferred the trash compactor to ending up like that in ten years. He had come to learn its price. The hard way.
Sometimes life felt like a bad movie, moments of reality that seemed like anything but. Wondering if other people looked on him with the same benign loathing he felt toward his seatmate. Wondering if his life were indeed a movie being lensed for the enjoyment of some cosmic film buff with a penchant for tragicomedy. Wondering how the script read…
Fade in, interior, a TWA DC-10, economy class. In seat 19A sits Justin Gray, swilling his fifth screwdriver of this Monday morning. He stares out the window for answers and finds none, as he leaves behind the wreckage of his life in a desperate attempt to rebuild anew. Will he succeed? Only the Smirnoff distillery knows for sure.
He looked toward the aisle as a woman threaded back to the bathrooms. She had apparently boarded after, of all things, a trip to donate blood. Her blouse’s collar still bore the little Red Cross sticker: Be nice to me. I gave blood today. Justin wondered what might be appropriate for his own sticker. Be nice to me. I fucked up my life this year.
They touched down in Tampa shortly after noon, taxied to the gate. Halt. Everyone clogged the aisles to retrieve overhead carry-ons. Justin wavered a bit as he left the plane for the gangway and imagined a collective sigh of relief from the stewardesses.
Freedom, then. Transplantation complete. Hopefully, salvation.
He scanned unfamiliar faces inside the terminal until the sole familiar one broke into a big smile. Hugs were next, big back-slapping bear hugs just so no one got the mistaken impression that these two rather artistic-looking fellows were reunited lovers. Public image is everything in a land of sun and water and misspent passions.
“Welcome to my con-tree,” said Erik, counterfeit south-of-the-border accent flashing briefly. Then back to white-bread American: “How was the flight?”
“Crash free,” Justin said. “That’s all that counts, isn’t it?” The similarities between them were almost brotherly. Both tall, with similarly high cheekbones, the same purposeful stride. But Erik smiled more. He looked healthier; maybe the tan. And the eyes … Erik’s wide baby blues tagged him as one of life’s innocents, whereas Justin’s chocolate browns seemed warier, too many laps around the fasttrack. Maybe Erik’s ambitions had not been quite as high, but he was happy. Without betraying the aesthetics and values truly important to him. Justin had traditionally been the better groomed, Erik the true artiste, just a touch scruffy, boyishly and endearingly so. But the gap was narrowing. Six weeks since Justin’s last haircut, while shaving was now an every-other-day inconvenience; once upon a time, unthinkable.
Justin let Erik take the lead. Following airport hieroglyphics to locate baggage was now beyond him. They boarded a stand-only elevated tram that whisked them to another building, and out its windows Justin drank in the change of scenery. Palm trees, bluer sky than he’d left behind, flat tarmac. It was May in Florida, and it didn’t look any different than it did in October. He would adjust, gladly.
“My guess is that in-flight service was very very good to you.” Erik tipped an imaginary bottle and made a gluk-gluk noise.
“Mother Russia’s finest.”
“That’s a good start. I talked myself into some premature vacation time this week. So what we do is, you and I bag over our legal limit of fun and we slay brain cells left and right until we get you down to one cell. And then you start over from scratch. Sound good?”
Justin said that it did. Erik, bless him — planning strategies for overhauling the pieces of a life when he knew only the barest facts as to what had caused its kamikaze dive to begin with. Such was his way. You couldn’t ask for a better partner in crime when you wanted to lop off a few brain cells and revert to prehistoric languages. But he would still be there the next morning to make the hangover more bearable. And he was equally handy at the heart-to-hearts, as well. Erik Webber, last of the emotional Renaissance men.
“What’s this new job you’ve gotten?” Justin asked as they waited for the luggage from Flight 435 to find its way onto the carousels Praying that the gods of airborne transportation hadn’t sent it elsewhere. “I thought you’d be snapping pictures for the Tribune forever.”
Erik grinned, pushing errant hair hack from his forehead. It was sun-bleached a few degrees lighter than the shade of brown it had been when Justin had last seen him. Had it really been a year and a half? They’d both been too lax about contact lately.
“You won’t believe me if I just tell you. I better show you.”
The feed hole in the carousel wall began to spit fresh luggage. Dozens of conversations halted in midstride as eyes flicked to inspect what was emerging next. It was like watching numbers come up in the lottery. Ah, a winner.
Justin plucked up his bags and they turned away, hoofing it toward the garage for Erik’s car. Both of them sharing the burdens.
Justin couldn’t wipe the perplexed grin off his face as he flipped through the rack. Nothing but lingerie. Sheer nighties, peekaboo teddies, lacy little inconsequentialities that exposed a lot and left the best to the imagination.
This didn’t make sense. The place was a photo studio, sign outside saying NORTH LIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY. He’d seen customers elsewhere in the building awaiting portrait sittings, engagement shots.