by Tom Epperson
They reach the hill Diego’s house is built on. Roberto can see the smoke now, wisping through the treetops. As they climb the hill, he hears, very close at hand, “Hello! Hello!” and then “Lucho! Lucho! Hello!” He looks up and sees Lucho, Diego’s blue and yellow parrot, sitting in a tree.
“How come Lucho’s loose?” says Roque.
Daniel takes his pistol out of a pocket. Now Roberto sees Duque, Diego’s shaggy, brown and black dog, at the top of the hill, barking down at them. A moment later, Amparo appears behind him. She smiles when she sees them, and then calls over her shoulder, “They’re here! They’re back!” She hurries down the hill to meet them, but her smile fades as she sees only three.
“Where are the rest?”
“Amparo,” says Roberto. “We have terrible news.”
Her eyes widen. “What?”
“They were killed last night. By the Black Jaguars. In El Encanto.”
“Lina? She’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“No!” Amparo wails. “No!”
Roque puts his arms around Amparo, and she sobs against his shoulder.
“It can’t be! It can’t be!”
“Amparo, I’m sorry,” says Roberto, “but is everything okay here? Why is there smoke?”
“They burned it,” she says. “The house. But they’re gone now.”
And now the four of them go up the hill. Alquimedes, shirtless and bathed in sweat, stands in the little graveyard among the eight white crosses, shoveling dirt into a new grave. He regards them with his single eye as they approach.
“Why’s she crying?” he asks.
“Lina, Ernesto, and Quique,” says Roque. “They’re all dead. They were killed by the paramilitaries.”
Alquimedes seems unsurprised. He leans on his shovel and gazes down into the grave.
“It’s a day for death.”
The grave is half filled in with dirt.
“Who’s in there?” Daniel says. “Diego?”
Alquimedes shakes his head. “Marco.”
Roberto looks off across the hill, sees among the scorched palm trees the charred and still-smoking ruins of the house.
“What happened?” he says.
“We’d just finished breakfast, and then Duque started barking. Then we heard helicopters. We looked out the window and saw two Army helicopters landing right there.” He points toward the open space where Roberto and Lina sat together beneath the stars. “Diego kept an automatic rifle hidden in the wall behind a board, and he ran and got it. He yelled at us to run and hide in the jungle and he’d hold them off. Amparo and I started to run out, but Marco was hanging back. He said, ‘Dad, I can’t leave you here!’ Diego said, ‘Go, my son, please!’ and then he looked at me and he said, ‘Alquimedes!’ I grabbed Marco and pulled him out of the house. We ran down the hill toward the jungle. Marco had tears streaming down his face. We heard guns beginning to fire. Marco said, ‘I have to go back, I have to help Dad!’ Amparo and I tried to stop him, but he was young and strong, and he broke away from us and ran back up the hill. Amparo and I ran into the jungle, we ran for a long time. And then we stopped, and we waited for a long time.”
Alquimedes’ fingers pluck absently at the necklace of bright feathers. A fly lands on his cheek. Roberto thinks it’s about to crawl into his empty eye socket, but then it flies away.
“Maybe it wasn’t my bravest moment, I don’t know. But at least I can tell myself I was protecting Amparo. Finally we came back here. The helicopters had left, and the soldiers were gone. The house was burning. We found Marco lying on his back in front of the house. He’d been shot several times. But not in the face. His beautiful face was like it always was. You could still see the tears on his eyelashes.”
“And what about Diego?” asks Daniel.
“Diego was nowhere to be found. The soldiers must have taken him with them. Why, I don’t know.”
“Did you get a look at the soldiers?” says Roberto.
“Yes. Just a glimpse.”
“What kind of uniforms were they wearing?”
“I just remember they were wearing hats, and their faces were painted black and green like wild Indians.”
They were almost certainly with the 1st Special Operations Battalion, the unit that conducted the massacre at Jilili. Alquimedes resumes filling the grave with dirt.
“Let me help you with that,” says Roque.
“No thanks.”
“What are you going to do, Alquimedes?” asks Roberto. “You can’t stay here.”
“No, no. We can’t stay here.”
“You’re welcome to come with us to Tarapacá,” says Daniel.
“There’s nothing for me in Tarapacá. No, I was thinking about going down the river the other way, to a town called Cenizo. When I was going up and down the river, I was always falling in love with girls in these little towns, and I fell in love with a girl in Cenizo. She married someone else, but I’ve always remembered it as a happy place. But maybe Amparo would like to go with you. Amparo, do you want to go with them to Tarapacá?”
Amparo’s staring at nothing, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her long black braid gleaming in the morning sunlight.
“Amparo?” says Alquimedes. “Did you hear me?”
“I don’t want to do anything,” Amparo says. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Well, you can’t just stand there like a statue the rest of your life. The birds will build a nest in your hair, and then what?”
“Amparo,” says Roberto, “why don’t you come with us? Daniel and I won’t just leave you in Tarapacá.”
“That’s right,” says Daniel. “We’ll do whatever we can to help you.”
But Amparo doesn’t answer. She just walks slowly off toward the pirarucu pond.
“Ah, she’ll be okay,” says Alquimedes as he throws more dirt in the grave. “There’s nothing like being young. What I wouldn’t give to be her age again.”
Roberto looks around the hilltop for the monkey.
“Where’s Chico?”
“I haven’t seen him since the shooting started,” Alquimedes says. “I guess he ran and hid in the jungle like me.”
* * *
Roberto walks toward the river with Roque and Daniel. He’s afraid the soldiers might have destroyed the boats, leaving them stranded, so he’s relieved when he looks down the hill and sees the boats pulled up on the bank, just as they left them. They need gasoline for the return trip, and Roque leads them to a storage shed where Diego keeps a supply. The door has a padlock on it. Roque whacks the lock a few times with the blunt side of his machete and pops it open, and then they carry red metal containers of gas down the hill. Roque and Daniel stay with the boat as Roberto goes back to find Alquimedes and Amparo.
He walks past the guesthouse and peers in at the brightly colored hammocks. Everything he sees is making him think of Lina. How can she not exist anymore? It seems not possible.
He stops at the wooden shed where the anaconda’s kept. Remembering that Lina was standing right there in the grass. Her hair was wet. She smelled of soap. He never got a chance to ask her how she chipped her tooth.
He opens the door of Princesa’s palace. She’s coiled in one dim corner. Grunting with the effort, he picks up her cold, twisting body and carries her out. He lays her down, and immediately she starts gliding through the grass toward the jungle.
“Hello!” he hears. “Lucho!”
Alquimedes is approaching with Lucho perched on his shoulder. The parrot and his empty eye socket and his bare dirty feet and his drooping bedraggled pants make him look like a shipwrecked pirate. He shows what few teeth he has in a delighted grin.
“I called his name like a dog and he came flying out of the jungle! Soaring like an eagle! It was a thrilling sight to see!”
“We’re leaving,” says Roberto. “So what about Amparo?”
He shrugs. “She still won’t talk to me. She’s being difficult, like a typical woman. Maybe you
should give it a try.”
She’s sitting by the pirarucu pond.
“Amparo?” says Roberto.
She doesn’t even glance at him. He sits down beside her.
“We’re about to go now. You need to make a decision about what you want to do.”
“Just leave me alone,” she says in almost a whisper. “Please.”
“I know how heartbroken you are, but you can’t just stay here. Remember after your father was killed and you were lost in the jungle? You were just a little girl, but somehow you found the strength to survive. You have to do that again.”
“I wish I’d died in the jungle. I wish the Indians had never found me.”
“Lina thought very highly of you, Amparo. She cared about you very much. You know that, don’t you?”
Amparo looks at Roberto, and nods.
“You told me how much you wanted to leave here and see the world, and you said Lina was going to help you. She’s gone now, but she can still help you. Just ask yourself what she would want you to do now.”
Amparo’s silent. There’s a splash and a swirling in the green scum on the pond as a pirarucu breaks the surface. Now Amparo stands up, and so does Roberto.
“Are you coming with us?”
She shakes her head. “I’ve loved four people. My father, Lina, Marco, and Alquimedes. I think I should go with Alquimedes.”
Alquimedes calls for Duque and he comes running, and then Roberto walks with the old man, the teenage girl, the dog, and the parrot down the hill and along the path that leads to the river. He sees below him Roque and Daniel, waiting by the boats. Daniel’s smoking a cigarette. No doubt he’ll be as glad as Roberto to get back on the boat that will take them to Tarapacá.
Alquimedes climbs into Diego’s long blue boat, then moves beneath the tin roof toward the motor in the back. Roque is helping Amparo into the boat when Roberto hears a series of shrill piercing cries, and Duque begins to bark. They all look around and see the chorongo monkey, hysterical at the prospect of being left behind, running at breakneck speed down the hill.
“Chico!” says Amparo. She holds out her arms, and Chico launches himself into the air.
* * *
The yellow boat and the blue boat motor at a steady pace down the Maniqui River. Roberto sees all the birds that Roque’s given names to and turtles and monkeys and a cute family of capybaras, a kind of giant rodent, at play along the riverbank. He sees a swarm of black and red dragonflies, and the head and back of a pink dolphin emerging from the murky water and glistening briefly in the sunlight, and then a beautiful mermaid comes swimming up to the boat. Her long black hair streams around her shoulders and swirls over her breasts, and the lower half of her is covered with sparkling emerald scales. She looks like the sculpture of the mermaid at the lake at El Encanto. She smiles up at Roberto and says some words in a language he can’t understand or maybe it’s not even a language but is like the cry of a bird or the rain falling on leaves, and then he sees the black caimans. Half a dozen of them are lying on the bank, and now they slide into the water. They’re swimming toward the mermaid, and Roberto looks around and sees that caimans are on every side of the boat, the river is filled with them. He knows he’s going to have to pull the mermaid into the boat to save her. He makes a lunge and grabs her but she’s slippery and frightened and she fights him, and then he loses his grip and starts to fall into the water and his head lifts up and he opens his eyes. He hears the drone of the monotonous motor. He sees Daniel lying asleep in the bottom of the boat. Did he look the dolphin in the eye, is that why he had the nightmare? Or did he dream the dolphin too?
As the sun reaches its zenith, the two boats come to the end of the Maniqui and enter the Gualala. Alquimedes raises a bony arm in farewell as he points the blue boat down the river toward Cenizo where fifty years ago he met a girl. Amparo waves good-bye forlornly. This morning they had a place in life and they woke up in their own beds and now those beds have been turned to ash and they possess nothing except the clothes they’re wearing and a parrot that says hello and a dog and a monkey that hate each other. But Roberto guesses that’s better than being buried in grave number nine or carried away in a helicopter by sadistic soldiers. The yellow boat heads up the Gualala toward Tarapacá. After a while Roberto looks back over his shoulder for the blue boat, but it’s already lost in the shine and glitter of the river.
Daniel’s lying in the bottom of the boat like a man that’s been hit in the head by a board. Roberto hopes he’s okay. All last night as they walked through the jungle Daniel would periodically groan and drop his pants and squat and leave behind smelly dumps like a howler monkey. He needs some Lomotil. Roberto’s sleepy too but he knows Jilili isn’t far, and he wants to see it as they pass. He’s still a reporter, after all.
He glances back at Roque. His face under his baseball cap is blank, impassive. He must be in a state of shock. He’s such a gentle soul to have been plunged into such horror. Perhaps Roberto ought to go back and talk to him, but what is he supposed to say? Sorry your friends were killed. Thanks for saving our lives. Can’t you make this boat go a little faster because Daniel and I really want to get the fuck out of here.
* * *
Roberto cleans his glasses with his blue bandana and puts them back on and looks at Jilili. It seems deserted, except for some vultures on the white beach. He sees a dark area on the sand where the young woman and her unborn child were killed, but he doesn’t see any bodies anywhere. All the fishing boats are gone too.
Roque slows the boat and takes it closer to the village. Roberto looks through Roque’s binoculars at the burned-down houses in the shade of the trees. Again, no bodies, and no living people either. What’s happened to Conchita and her son Pedro and the other survivors? Did they leave in the boats? Are they hiding in the jungle? Or did the Army come on a humanitarian mission as they did in Santa Rosa del Opón and take them away?
A small brown dog comes out on the beach and barks at the boat. Perhaps the last inhabitant of Jilili. Roberto hands Roque back his binoculars.
“Thanks, Roque.”
“You’re welcome.”
Roque speeds the boat back up.
“How are you?” says Roberto.
“Okay. Sad.”
“Me too.”
“Don’t worry, Roberto. You and Daniel will be home soon.”
Roberto goes back to his seat. Above him, a loose piece of the green plastic roof is flapping in the wind. He knows the way home remains fraught with danger, they might encounter a boatload of paramilitaries around the next bend or a helicopter could come along and shoot them to pieces, but still he feels they’re going to make it. Not like in the sugarcane field, not like in the swamp. He looks down at Daniel in the bottom of the boat and wonders if Daniel really would have shot him.
Roberto lies down in the bottom of the boat too. He curls up on his side, with one arm as a pillow under his head. He wiggles around, trying to get comfortable, expecting to fall asleep quickly, and yet the state he enters is less sleep than delirium. The boat seems to be moving, not on a river, but on a sea of suffering, an ocean of agony. The earth churns with life but to what end? So that its beautiful creatures might die and pass into oblivion. He sees the snake Quique cut into two equal pieces twisting on the forest floor, and the green light fading from its flesh as it becomes food for ants. The guesthouse turned into a slaughterhouse by Quique and Ernesto, and the body on the bed, the red stare of death. The danse macabre of the old people burning up in Jilili, and Willie Hernandez on Mount Cabanacande admiring Memo Soto’s watch. Not long before Willie took it off Soto’s bullet-riddled body, Soto had heard the thunder of the approaching helicopters and called his daughter Lucero on his cellphone to tell her he loved her and to say good-bye. If even a monster like Memo Soto is capable of tenderness and love, how much more love and tenderness is there in the good people? But it’s all for nothing, it dissipates like smoke, it’s like grains of sand dragged back into the ocean by a
receding wave. Teresa will lie in bed waiting for Roberto but he will never come. Lina will never be a college girl again and take her dog for a walk in the park. His father will drop dead of a heart attack on the tennis court, and Clara’s beauty will wither, she’ll become old and dry, and no one will come to her dinner parties anymore. And nothing Roberto writes will matter, none of it will change things, all the beautiful creatures of the earth will continue to perish, to gasp out their last breaths, to be thrown away like trash—
Roberto moans and sits up, clutching his belly. He seems to have what Daniel has. He tells Roque to hurry to the bank, or else he’ll have to hang his butt over the side of the boat and befoul the river. The boat grounds on a sandbar, and Roberto hops out and runs across it and then splashes through some shallow water and clambers up the bank and then he’s back in the jungle. It’s like moving into a different element, earth to air or air to water, the green humid light, the ancient silence. He fumbles at his pants and jerks them down and squats and the shit flows out of him like warm mud. There are three separate spasms of it, and then he grabs a handful of leaves. He wipes himself, hoping the leaves aren’t coated with some virulent poison, and then he sees the jaguar. Just a few meters away.
He’s lying on one side, calm, at ease, watching Roberto. As if to prove he’s not some trick of light and shade, he lifts one paw and licks it a few times, then lowers it and looks back at Roberto. Roberto basks in the golden light of the jaguar’s eyes. He can’t see his balls, but he knows somehow he’s a real jaguar and not a shaman. Roberto’s not afraid. Even if the jaguar were to leap at him and devour him, he doesn’t think he’d be afraid. After all, isn’t this why he came to the jungle? To rendezvous with him? The jaguar knows him better than he knows himself, loves him with the profoundest love.
The jaguar’s eyes rise as Roberto rises. His eyes never stop looking into Roberto’s. And then Roberto zips up and buckles his belt and walks out of the jungle. He walks through the water and then onto the sandbar. He sees an orange butterfly, and then a yellow one, and then suddenly he’s in the middle of a fantastical swirl of orange and yellow butterflies. He lifts up his arms and begins to slowly turn around as if he wants to become a part of their swirl. Orange and yellow, yellow and orange, orange and orange, yellow and yellow. They seem to be flying faster—