by Jeremy Brown
The roads near the academy were crowded with people and lit by random streetlights and hundreds of personal ones, strings of colored lanterns and halogen work lights rigged on roof corners that made intersections seem like the ends of tunnels.
Rings of red candles burned at some of the crossroads. Nobody mentioned them, even when we started passing through intersections with offerings at all four corners.
At night the favelas were easy to spot. Dense lights on steep hillsides, fires as big as cars sending sparks into the sky. Maybe they were cars. Colored strobes whipped across crumbling, spray-painted facades, advertising places to go and get what you needed to forget where you were.
Or celebrate, if it was your kingdom.
I focused on a set of white and orange strobes that had no pattern, flashing sporadically halfway up a slope a hundred yards apart and getting closer with each burst. I realized it was gunfire and looked away. We bent south and dark mountains bit into the sky outside the passenger windows. The black shapes amid the city lights looked alien, as if they’d plopped down instead of risen.
Below the mountains along the road there was a giant billboard for Aviso’s cologne. Or his shirts. Maybe both. It was mostly black and white, his big stubbled face with some female model, her head wedged under his square jaw. They both stared out over Rio, her eyes bright blue. His were golden. They seemed amused and followed the van as we passed.
We curled around the fringe of the range and Jairo pointed to a vein of clustered buildings creeping up the side of one of the smaller mountains. “Axila da Serpente.”
It started at the base and spread up a steep, narrow valley all the way to the peak. The valley twisted between high ridges, almost doubling back on itself in a couple spots. All in all, it looked like a burning, glowing snake climbing up the mountain.
I dipped and torqued to get a better look. “All right. Things start to get hairy, we don’t hang around. We pack up and head for the van. Sound good?”
Jairo shook his head. “If they going to make trouble, they will probably steal it.”
“Or just blow it up,” Marcela said.
“So where do we go?”
They spoke to each other in Portuguese. Marcela said, “We go in the direction that has the fewest men and figure out what to do once we get through them. Maybe run into the jungle.”
“That’s a terrible plan.”
“Hey, this was your idea.”
“No, it was my idea to go alone. I don’t want you anywhere near him.”
“Woody, he knows where I am. He sent four men today, he could send a hundred tomorrow. If he wants to take me, he can. Any time.”
Jairo growled something into the steering wheel.
I said, “Why hasn’t he?”
She shrugged. “Ask him. But now they threaten our students? This, I will not tolerate.”
“Just drop me off. I’ll talk to him, call you when I need a ride.”
“Would you do that for me? Drop me off and let me handle it, even though you would worry to death?”
“No way.”
She put a hand on my cheek. “Then shut up.”
The road along the base of the mountain was tight and dark. The slope loomed on our right, black and overgrown and concealing a million things. On the left, abandoned two-story buildings stared with empty windows, gasped with doorless entries.
Ahead, the entrance to the Axila da Serpente was the only light we could see.
We rolled past the one road leading up the slope. It was narrow with four Dumpsters lined across the entrance. They were piled above the rim with blocks of concrete bristling with rebar.
“I don’t think we’re driving up,” Jairo said.
A small pickup truck shot out of an alley and stopped in front of us. Two men in the bed pointed assault rifles at us. They didn’t bother to aim—at that range, they couldn’t miss.
I looked out the back window. Another truck, lights off with dark lumps in the bed, rolled out to block that path.
A man stepped out of a doorway on our left and strolled to Jairo’s window. He peeked in and scanned up with his one eye.
“Hey, you all came. Now it’s really a party.” He put his hand out. “Keys.”
Jairo paused, shut the van off, and dropped the keys into Eye Patch’s palm.
“Oh, no tip for the valet? Maybe I put a grenade under your seat, huh? I’m just kidding. Come with me.”
I opened the door and asked Marcela, “You okay?”
“No. Let me close his other stupid eye, maybe then.”
We followed Eye Patch single-file between two Dumpsters. The men in the trucks stayed there. If anyone else was around, I couldn’t see them. The dirt road went up the slope a hundred yards at a twenty-degree angle before it cut left in a switchback. As soon as we started climbing, the rickety shacks and cracked concrete buildings teetered in from both sides. An odor of warm shit rolled down the mountain into our faces.
Fifty yards up the street Eye Patch took us left toward a two-story building that might have been painted white once. The windows and doorway were black.
“Hold up,” I said.
He turned.
“What’s in there?”
“Come on, you’ll see.”
“Just so you know, I usually react to surprises by kicking people in the face.”
“Man, you’re fun to be around.” He stepped up to the dark entrance and pushed through the black wooden door. It swung open into the building, which was bright with red candles burning on the floor along every wall. The light from it spilled into the street and made Eye Patch a silhouette.
“Surprise.”
The room was square and empty except for the candles and some white chicken feathers on the concrete floor, which had a random display of dark stains. They were not the same kind of stains that were on the ceiling, streaks and clouds of black soot from the red candles, whose flames sounded like an endless sigh. The windows were covered with plywood and scraps of metal. The air was hot and thick and heavy with incense.
A concrete stairway with no railing hugged the wall on the left. Red candles drooped from each step. Eye Patch started up, peering back at us with his left eye like he couldn’t wait to get our reactions. I went up first, Marcela behind me, with Jairo last. His eyes were wide and jumpy.
“You all right?”
“I don’t like this place,” he said, crossing himself.
Marcela did the same.
I rolled my neck and flexed my hands.
The second floor was much larger, lined with even more red candles. The side walls were made of particle board and sheet metal. They angled into the space and funneled us toward a wide opening where the wall in front of us had been knocked out so the room could expand into the structure next door. The building we’d first entered had a low, flat ceiling. The one connected with planks and odd pieces of steel had a high, vaulted one, which gave the impression of a small cathedral as we crossed the threshold.
The far wall had two closed doors on either side of a high-backed leather chair. They were both painted with a faded and flaking light blue color.
A withered man in large sunglasses sat in the chair. He wore white linen pants and a long-sleeved white shirt. His hair was thick and black, except for a large swath above his left ear where the hair was missing, exposing a scalp rippled with pearlescent scars and dents that squirmed in the flickering candlelight.
He sat with his hands folded in his lap. A lazy smile pulled the lower half of his face to the right.
Eye Patch flapped his hands at us until we stood in a line facing the chair. He knelt in front of the man’s feet and spoke in Portuguese.
I asked Marcela, “That’s Carrasco?”
She nodded.
I considered ending the whole drama by walking over and blowing on him—the guy was on the brink of collapsing into dust—but we seemed to be in some kind of temple, and I wasn’t sure of the etiquette.
Carrasco nodded at E
ye Patch, who stepped to the left of the chair and faced us.
Carrasco took a deep, ragged breath. “Hello, Pomba Gira.”
Marcela rolled her eyes.
“I have been missing you.” Each word sounded like it had to climb out of a gravel pit. A deep, dark groove was carved beneath his jawline, curling up toward each ear. Whatever they’d try to hang him with had been thin and strong.
Marcela said, “I am not Pomba Gira.”
“Who’s Pomba Gira?” I said.
Carrasco’s smile twitched. His sunglasses shifted toward me. “A better question, I think, is who are you?”
“I’m with her.”
“Ah, yet you don’t know she is Pomba Gira. Is she not insatiable in her lust?”
“Watch it.”
“And her wrath. Enough to make you bow, beg for forgiveness, yes?”
I left that one alone.
Carrasco said, “So you know she is Pomba Gira too, you just don’t know her name. I do.” He shrugged, just sharing facts. “And I know she is mine.”
“I am my own,” Marcela said. “I am with whoever I want to be with, and I am with Woody.”
His mouth twisted. “Who is Woody?”
“Me,” I said. “Seems like a god ought to know this kind of stuff.”
“I do know,” Carrasco said. “I wanted to see if you would come forward, be a man. And you did. So congratulations, you are a man. But you are right, I am Exu. And Exu gets what is his.”
“What’s his, or what he has coming?”
Carrasco frowned. “There is a difference?”
“Some. Because I don’t give a shit what you think is yours. What you have coming is I walk over there and tear Exu into little pieces.”
Eye Patch straightened up and glared.
“Save it,” I said. “You don’t have your bag of toys.”
“Woody,” Marcela said.
I was rolling. “I put you down, we don’t have to worry about grenades coming through the door, or you bothering the Arcoverdes in any way.”
It didn’t feel great threatening a guy in such bad shape, but he wasn’t getting the message.
Eye Patch said, “You speak of harming Exu, you will anger Malhar.”
“Go ahead, light some candles and summon Malhar. I’ll wait.”
Eye Patch yelled, “Malhar.”
The door on the right behind Carrasco opened and a muscle shaped like a man squeezed through.
Malhar was about five-foot-six, didn’t stand much taller than the back of Carrasco’s chair. When the muscles on his shaved head rippled he might have broken six feet. He looked like an angry kid’s forced drawing of a pit bull walking upright and unhappy about it.
He had a rib bone jutting out of the corner of his mouth like a toothpick and shiny grease around his lips. Hanging from his belt was a massive framing hammer, thirty-two ounces of stainless steel and a smooth hickory handle with finger grooves worn into the shaft.
“Malhar doesn’t know English,” Carrasco said. “So he does not know you threatened Exu. Should I tell him?”
Malhar crunched the bone and sucked at the marrow. His eyes flicked from me to Jairo, back and forth. Jairo crossed himself again. Beads of sweat had blossomed on his head. He hadn’t been this nervous—no, scared—when he and I got tossed into the cesspit to kill each other.
Marcela put a hand on my arm. “No. We are here to talk.”
Carrasco said, “I will listen to anything you say, my Pomba Gira.”
She pulled me down and whispered, “Remember where we are.”
Right. The blocked road, gunmen, blacked-out buildings that could have hundreds more waiting inside. I wouldn’t smile at Carrasco, but I quit staring him down.
Marcela said, “Your man threatened our students.”
“Which man?”
“That one.”
Eye Patch grinned.
Carrasco glanced at him. “Ah, he was only trying to help.”
Marcela said, “Those people come to us to be healthy and safe. You can’t take that away. They already see your men standing around, watching, and it makes them nervous.”
“If they came to Exu, they would not be nervous anymore. Just like you would not be scared anymore.”
Marcela closed her eyes, took a breath. “I’m asking you to leave our students alone. Leave the academy alone.”
“Is that where you will be?”
She paused. “Yes.”
“Then I will be there too. Until you are with me. It is the way it should be, Pomba Gira.”
Marcela looked at the floor, worked her hands out of the fists she’d made. I put my hand on her back, felt her shaking.
Carrasco crossed his legs, two shriveled sticks inside his white pants. “But you don’t need to be afraid. Exu will never do you harm. And Exu will never bring you here, lock you up. Exu will wait for you to know, to realize, this is where you should be. Then you will come willingly, sure.”
Jairo finally spoke up. “Why do you think she is Pomba Gira?”
It sounded more curious than challenging.
Carrasco turned to him. “You share her blood. You are welcome here too, my warrior friend. How does Exu know? Because it is the truth. Some of these students you protect, they need more to be safe. Sometimes they come here.”
“For drugs?” Marcela said.
“For truth, in whatever form they seek it. And when they stand before Exu, they share things with him. They make offerings, say they know a family with much money. The Arcoverdes.”
Marcela let out a sharp grunt, like she’d been gut punched.
Carrasco said, “I go to see the place they talk about, your academy. And I see a goddess inside. She is full of life and fire, desire, beauty. She is my Pomba Gira, sure. It is why the students came to Exu. So Exu could find their teacher, Pomba Gira.”
“I am not that,” Marcela said.
“You are. And Exu wanted to see this man who enjoys you, yet does not know what you truly are. Does not understand.” Carrasco turned to me. “Do you understand now?”
“I’ve always known what she is.”
He uncrossed his spindly legs and leaned forward. “Yes?”
“The best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Pomba Gira is this to everyone.”
“And much, much too good for me.”
“Yes, sure.”
“But she is not your Pomba Gira. She is my Marcela.”
His mouth twitched as he sat back. His dark sunglasses hid what he was looking at, but I felt his eyes on me. “Is too bad. I thought you might get it, but no. On your way here, you saw the candles along the road. The blades, the offerings.”
I nodded.
“You know those are for Exu, for me. I am the crossroads, the choice between this and that. You had a choice to come here, or not come here. You came, and for that Exu was happy.”
Was happy.
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Now you get another choice,” Carrasco said. “This or that, sure. But now Exu is not so happy. I don’t think you’re going to want either one.”
Malhar walked toward me, stopped with his chest pressing against my right arm. He crunched the rib bone again. Something dripped off the end of it onto my shoulder. It might have been his breath.
I eyeballed him. “Step back.”
He didn’t.
Carrasco said, “He’s there to make sure you listen good. Make sure you hear the choices.”
“I heard you fine when he wasn’t chomping in my ear.”
Carrasco said something in Portuguese. Malhar spit the bone onto the floor between my feet. When he smiled he had gristle between his sharp, crooked teeth.
“I could straighten those for you.”
“Woody,” Marcela said.
“They’d be on the floor, but they’d be straight.”
Carrasco said, “You know what Malhar means? Hammer.”
“Hey, I was gonna guess that.”
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Carrasco ignored me. “Look, he even has the shiny head. But I haven’t swung him at you, not yet. I do that, man, you’ll know it, sure. Now you have to choose.”
“No I don’t. I don’t believe in Exu or Pomba Gira. Your stupid candles.”
Jairo said, “Woody, stop.”
I told Carrasco, “Far as I’m concerned, this is a really shitty play I can’t wait to walk out of. So save your choices—here’s the only one: Leave Marcela and her family alone. That’s it.”
“Oh, okay.”
The candles flickered. A breeze pushed against my back, impossible in the enclosed space. Jairo started praying in Portuguese. I turned toward Malhar just in time to see the particle board and sheet metal walls in the room behind us swing shut and close us in. Damn things were doors. Somebody threw a bolt on the other side.
Malhar kept on grinning.
“Now you ready to listen?” Carrasco said. He held his left hand out toward the door behind him, brought it back to his lap. Did the same with his right and the door on that side. “Two choices. You going to pick one, man. From there the spirits will decide what happens.”
“What spirits?”
“All of them.” He tilted his head to the door on the right. The one Malhar had come through. “First choice. You say goodbye to Brazil, to the Arcoverdes, to my Pomba Gira. You never come back. You never talk to her again. You choose this, Exu forgets about you. Like you never happened.”
“Keep this shit up, I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to forget me.”
“Oh, you think you want the second choice?”
I just waited for him to get to it. Even without the Aviso fight on Saturday, the first one wasn’t an option.
Carrasco said, “The second choice is the Coluna da Cobra.”
“No,” Marcela said. “He chooses number one.”
“You can’t choose for him, Pomba Gira.”
She turned to me. “Take number one.”
“No.”
“Woody, you don’t even know what he’s saying.”
“I don’t care.”
Marcela yelled at Carrasco, “This is bullshit.”
He shrugged. “It is what Exu wants.”