by Tom Epperson
Roberto asks her how she and Yineth managed to escape the fate of the others. She says Yineth has always loved to wander in the jungle and be with the animals and birds, she’s always worrying Yineth will be eaten by a jaguar or bitten by a snake but Yineth insists that all the creatures of the jungle know her and would never hurt her. She says Yineth came running to her and said she had seen this beautiful bird and she wanted to show it to her. She went out in the jungle with Yineth and she saw the bird, it was pure white and had golden eyes and she had never seen another bird like it and then they heard the gunfire and the screaming and they hid in the jungle till the Black Jaguars were gone. Manuela thinks the bird wasn’t a bird at all but an angel sent by God to save Yineth from the bad men.
Roberto asks Fercho to tell him about the arrival of the Black Jaguars. He said they showed up a couple of hours before the sun went down. He said the timing was unlucky because if they’d come sooner the children would have still been in school in Santa Rosa del Opón a few kilometers down the river, but just a few minutes after the children got off the boat that took them back and forth, the boats carrying the Black Jaguars appeared.
“How many men were in the boats?” asks Roberto.
“I don’t know,” says Fercho. “Many. One hundred? Two hundred?”
“Did you know right away who they were?”
“No, but we knew it wasn’t good. Everybody was scared.”
Roberto asks him how they were dressed. Fercho says they wore camouflage uniforms and black berets and patches depicting black jaguars on their right sleeves. He said at first they didn’t hurt anyone, they acted friendly, but when they started yelling at everyone to gather in one place behind the house Fercho feared the worst and ran into the pantry. He hid behind cardboard boxes of canned goods and packages of rice and pasta. After a while he heard guns being fired. At one point the door to the pantry opened and he heard boots walking on the floor and saw through a crack between the boxes the green and brown colors of a uniform, and he thought his smell might give away his hiding place because he dirtied his pants he was so afraid. But the paramilitary went away and it was quiet for a while and then he heard Mr. Mejía out in the kitchen. He was begging for his life and Fercho heard the voices and laughter of other men, and then he heard Mr. Mejía’s inhuman howls. He squeezed his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears and sat there in his own shit until the howling finally stopped.
It became dark in the pantry. He could hear music and loud talking and knew the Black Jaguars hadn’t left. He sat there all night unmoving behind the boxes, a mouse would have made more noise than he did. He didn’t sleep for a second, he was afraid they might hear him snoring, his wife was always complaining about it. At last the daylight came. He could hear people moving around, and then it became quiet again. But still he sat there, hour after hour, until finally he worked up the courage to creep out of the pantry. The Black Jaguars were gone. He found the red, flayed form of Mr. Mejía outside, under a bush. He also found the bodies of all the other people who had lived at El Encanto, including his wife and son and daughter, and now Fercho lowers his head and pinches the bridge of his nose to try to stop the crying.
“They were killed while I was hiding like a coward in the pantry. Maybe I could have saved them.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Fercho,” Lina murmurs. “There was nothing you could have done.”
Fercho says that people from Santa Rosa del Opón arrived that afternoon. The bodies were already beginning to go bad in the tropical heat, so graves were dug and prayers were said. Two days later, the Army came on a humanitarian mission to evacuate the people of Santa Rosa del Opón, who after all they’d seen in El Encanto were more than ready to leave. They were taken by boat to a refugee camp, but Fercho stayed behind with Manuela and Yineth and Jota, the boy who climbed the tree.
And now Jota arrives with Roque. He’s a scrawny kid of eleven or twelve. He’s carrying nine plump pirañas strung on a stick. Despite their ferocious reputation, they’ve very pretty fish, silvery with bright-orange bellies. Jota grins and holds up the pirañas as Daniel takes his picture. Now Lina tells him who Roberto and Daniel are.
“You want to talk to me?” says Jota. “Great, I’ll talk all day. Yineth, get me a Coke!”
Yineth hurries inside the house. Manuela takes the fish from Jota and he sits down in her chair.
“Is it okay if I record you?” asks Roberto.
“Sure,” says Jota, looking delighted. “I’ve never been recorded before.” He picks up the recorder and looks it over. “How much does one of these cost?”
“Well, this one’s a pretty good one. Maybe two hundred thousand pesos?”
He nods, and puts it back down. Yineth comes back with his Coke. She seems very happy to serve him.
“Thanks, honey.” He takes a swig and looks at Roberto. “So what do you want to know?”
This is definitely not the traumatized child he was expecting. Jota’s wearing shorts and an old gray T-shirt with the number 1991 on it in a variety of styles, sizes, and colors.
“What does your shirt mean?” says Roberto. “Did something happen in 1991?”
Jota pulls the shirt away from his body, takes an upside-down look at it. “Shit, I don’t know. This gringo missionary gave it to me. His name was Brother Jim. His church had a band and they let me play the trumpet. Everybody would sing and clap and then Brother Jim would preach a sermon. It was always the same thing, the fucking world was about to end but it didn’t really matter, because we were all going to heaven because we believed in the fucking Lord. I stayed there with a bunch of other homeless kids. Brother Jim and his wife, Sister Donna, they were real nice and we got plenty to eat and all, but after a couple of years I took off. I just got tired of hearing about the Lord all the time.”
“How’d you end up here?”
“Well, the cops were chasing me in this town called El Banco one night—”
“Why were they chasing you?”
Jota smiles slyly. “I don’t know. They must’ve got me mixed up with some other kid. Anyway, I ran down to the river and I hid on a boat under a tarp. It seemed like a pretty good place to spend the night, so I went to sleep. The next morning I crawled out, and the boat was headed down the river. The guys on the boat said they were going to tie me to a rope and throw me in the water and use me as crocodile bait, but they were just kidding, they were nice guys. I asked them where they were going, and they said they were taking supplies to this place called El Encanto. When we got here, I figured I should make myself useful because I thought I could stay with them for a while, so I helped them unload the boat. I saw this little bald guy watching me; after a while, he came up and said I seemed awful small to be carrying such big boxes. I usually lie in situations like that, but I decided to tell the truth for a change and I told him about the cops and everything. He said I could live here if I wanted to, but I’d have to not do anything that would make the cops chase me and I’d have to go to school every day. I told him he had a deal.”
“That was Mr. Mejía?”
“Yeah. He said I could live with the foreman and his wife. He said they already had so many kids he bet he could slip in one more and they’d never know the difference,” and Jota laughed. “Mr. Mejía was a funny dude, he always had everybody laughing.”
“How long have you been here, Jota?”
“About a year.”
“Have you been happy?”
“Sure. I’m always happy. When the cops were chasing me, I was happy, I thought it was fun.”
“Tell me about the day the Black Jaguars came.”
“Well, I went to school, and then I came back, and then I heard somebody yelling that guys with guns were coming from the river. I ran and took a look. I’d seen guys like that before and I knew what they were up to and I turned back around and ran again. I was going to hide in the jungle, but then I saw some more of these dudes, they were coming up from behind the house, they were all over the fucki
ng place, so I climbed up in a tree. I’ve always liked climbing trees, I like to hide and watch people, I’m good at hiding, people can look right at me and not see me. There were a lot of monkeys up in the tree with me, the monkeys and me were pals. Sometimes people would come to visit, and Mr. Mejía would give them bananas to feed the monkeys, so the monkeys were watching these guys and hoping they’d get some bananas. A lot of people had tried to hide or run off, and it took them awhile to get everybody rounded up. They brought Mr. Mejía out of the house, and then they started killing everybody.”
“How did they kill them?”
“They shot most of them, but then they got a chainsaw and started cutting people up. By this time the monkeys had figured out they weren’t going to get any bananas and they took off. They were jumping from tree to tree and pretty soon there wasn’t a monkey in sight. It felt kind of lonely without the monkeys. I was wishing I could jump through the trees like that and get away.”
“So how did you feel? Seeing what was happening?”
“I felt bad,” Jota says matter-of-factly. “But I was glad I was up in the tree and not down there.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I felt bad about the Arredondos. That was the family I was staying with. They were real nice to me. But they were all shot, so that was good. I mean it was a lot better than being cut up in pieces by a chainsaw.”
“What happened to Mr. Mejía?”
“After everybody was dead, they took him back inside. Then I heard somebody screaming, that went on for quite a while. Then somebody came out of the house, he was all red and bloody, he’d had his skin cut off. It didn’t look like Mr. Mejía, but I knew it was him.”
“What did he do?”
“Just walked around, real slow. He was holding his arms out real stiff,” and Jota demonstrates. “He seemed to be looking at things. Then he walked under the tree I was in, and he looked up and saw me.”
Roberto’s surprised. “He saw you?”
“Yeah, he looked right at me. I don’t know how he knew I was up there. I was afraid somebody would see him looking at me, but nobody was paying any attention. And then he kept on walking, and pretty soon he laid down on the ground. He didn’t move after that. I guess he was dead. The sun went down and it got dark. I was hoping they’d leave but they didn’t. It was like they were having a big party, everybody got real drunk. This fat dude walked over and started pissing on the tree. He was standing right under me, I could’ve pissed on him if I’d wanted to—in fact I did want to, I needed to piss bad, that would’ve been funny if I’d pissed on him. Finally it got quiet, they all went to sleep. I climbed down out of the tree. Most of them were in the house, but some of them were sitting in chairs or laying on the ground, snoring their ugly fucking heads off. I walked right past them. I can be real quiet when I want to be. And then I didn’t see any of them anymore, and I started to run. I’ve never run that fast before, not even when the cops were chasing me. I ran in the jungle and hid. Usually I’m afraid of jaguars but that night I didn’t give a fuck about them. The jungle seemed like the safest place in the world.”
* * *
“How do you like them?” asks Roque.
“A little bony,” says Roberto. “But not bad.”
“I love pirañas,” says Quique. “They make my pecker hard.”
“I would rather eat pirañas,” Daniel says, “than have pirañas eating me.”
Everyone’s sitting in the shade eating Jota’s pirañas and drinking warm beer provided by Fercho. Manuela fried the fish whole; they still have their eyeballs and their gaping mouths show rows of sharp teeth. Roberto’s looks like it’s ready to jump up off his plate and chomp down on his nose.
He feels good about the interviews. Maybe the big story is Jilili but this is going to be a hell of a story too. Roberto remembers Lieutenant Matallana smiling at him in the parking lot downtown as he called out, “I think we’re going to get those bastards!” He was talking about the Committee to Protect the Nation, and exposing the atrocities committed by their paramilitary arm at El Encanto will provide payback against them for what they did to Uriel the juggler and Manuel and his mother and Nydia and finally Lieutenant Matallana himself. Maybe Roberto and Matallana actually will get them after all.
“What do you know about the Black Jaguars?” he asks Lina, Quique, and Ernesto. “Have you ever come up against them?”
“All I’ve ever seen of them is their fat asses,” says Quique. “Because they turn around and run when they see us coming.”
Ernesto’s gold tooth flashes as he laughs. “But they have nice uniforms, you’ve got to admit that. I think I’d look great in one of those black berets.”
“I’ve got bad news for you, Ernesto,” says Quique. “Nothing could ever make you look great. You’re stuck with the face God gave you.”
Ernesto laughs again, fishing a piraña bone out of his mouth.
“They’re not a real fighting force,” says Lina. “They’re a collection of criminals, perverts, psychopaths, and drunks. Their job is to terrorize helpless civilians, and they’re very good at that.”
“What about their leader, Hernán 40?” says Roberto. “What do you know about him?”
“Nothing really,” says Lina. “He’s created a mythology around himself. Who knows what’s true or not?”
“So what’s the mythology?”
“Well, supposedly he executes his own men if they’re not cruel enough. And he likes killing people with a champeta. That’s a knife used by fishermen on the coast for gutting and descaling fish.”
“I heard he always wears mirror sunglasses,” says Quique. “That way when he’s cutting somebody up, they can see it in his sunglasses, they can see themselves dying.”
Jota’s been listening and now he pipes up. “Hey, I saw a guy that had sunglasses like that. He seemed to be giving the orders too.”
“What did he look like?” says Roberto.
“Kind of tall and skinny. He had a beard. I didn’t see him killing anybody with a knife though.”
“They say he was born without a soul,” Ernesto says. “They say his mother mated with a demon in the form of a dog.”
“And you believe that bullshit?” says Quique.
“I didn’t say I believe it. I just said I heard it.”
“Well, if I ever get my hands on him,” says Quique, “I’ll put his sunglasses on and he can watch me rip his head off and shove it up his faggot ass,” and Quique laughs.
* * *
Fercho and Manuela lead them to the graves. They’re in a clearing a few minutes’ walk from the houses. Roberto counts them, there are twenty-three, although many of them contain more than one body. The grave-diggers from Santa Rosa del Opón tried to put families together as much as possible. Lina attempts to compile a list of the names of all the dead but doesn’t get very far; neither Fercho nor Manuela can handle talking about it. Fercho falls apart completely, collapsing on the dark dirt where his family’s buried. “My wife and children are angels now,” he sobs. “Nobody evil can ever hurt them again!” Even Quique’s eyes get wet as he watches this. Daniel kneels and takes a picture.
Roberto walks up to Lina, who’s looking over her notes.
“How many do you think?” he says.
“I’d guess somewhere between sixty and seventy.”
He starts making some notes of his own. Daniel’s showing Jota how his camera works; now he lets him take a few pictures. Daniel asks Yineth if she’d like to give it a try. She shakes her head, but Daniel persists, and in short order, Yineth is taking pictures too. Jota clowns for the camera, then they all take a look at the results in the LCD screen. Jota and Yineth laugh.
Lina’s watching with a half smile.
“Daniel’s good with kids,” she says.
“Yeah, he loves kids,” says Roberto. “And animals. He doesn’t like adult human beings very much.”
“Is he married? Does he have kids of his own?”
“No. He’s good with kids but bad
with women. He insists he’ll never get married and I believe him.” He closes his notebook and puts his pen away. “So do you still think he’s an Army spy?”
She shrugs. “I wasn’t accusing him of anything. All I was saying was, you have to keep your eyes open.”
“I think I do that.”
“Have you gotten everything you need here?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then we should leave soon. If we want to get you back to Tarapacá tomorrow.”
Roberto looks at the sky. The sun’s not far from setting.
“So we’ll be going through the jungle at night,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Somewhat. But it would be more dangerous to spend the night here. You never know what might come in off the river.”
Lina tells the four survivors she’d be glad to take them all to Tarapacá, but none are ready to leave. They make their good-byes to Fercho and Manuela and Yineth, but Jota decides to tag along to the house with them.
They walk back down the path that runs near the river. Roberto can see a shine of water through the trees. Suddenly Daniel groans and scuttles toward the trees holding his stomach.
“What’s the matter?” says Roberto.
“I got the shits, what the hell do you think’s the matter?”
He disappears behind some bushes. They all stand around and wait. Roberto hears the buzz of a boat out on the river, but he can’t see anything. It gets louder, and then it fades away. It seems like Daniel is taking a long time.