Ruthless River

by Holly Fitzgerald

  I laughed. “I can’t wait to see it.”

  “It’s so big he’s not sure how to get it to the ballroom. He may have to cut it into pieces.”

  My mother didn’t touch on our time in the swamp, except to say, “It must have been awful.” She may have been eager to hear our story but didn’t want to push me in case I wasn’t ready, perhaps recognizing that I just wanted news of home.

  Dad got on the phone next. “A raft? How did it happen? How did you make it out?” They’d only heard rudiments from Dick, who didn’t know the full story himself. I said something vague to Dad, sensing that he didn’t want to upset me.

  Mom got on again. “I love you, darling. We miss you. Come home as soon as you can. Dick will let us know when to pick you up at the airport.”

  I heard yearning in her voice. It matched my own longing to see her. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken cuddly words to me. My parents were reserved. Mom saying she loved me brought a lump to my throat. It was a gift that encouraged me. “I love you, too, Mom. I love you both. I can’t tell you how much we thought of you on the raft. It helped us to keep going…”

  I broke off as I choked up. The phone cut out.

  —

  In the afternoon of April 2, I put on my short floral skirt, white top, and brown sandal heels. I’d gained back most of my weight from 93 pounds and could fill my clothes. Not so with Fitz. His jeans were pinned in folds around him, but the doctor felt he was ready to travel. He’d been 124 pounds when he’d arrived at the hospital. He was still much too thin at 136 pounds, but his reflexes were back and he could walk without assistance. He was cleanly shaven except for his usual mustache. I could see his chiseled jaw, but his eyes were clear again behind his glasses, a brilliant sky blue.

  Before leaving, we posed for photographs with several nuns and their aides, as well as one of my roommates. Sister Bernice had been called away to the river clinic. I was surprised how much I already missed her. I found myself wishing that the hospital staff wouldn’t be so far away that I would never see them again.

  A car waited for us as we thanked and hugged everyone good-bye. Fitz and I walked back through the gate we’d collapsed onto just sixteen days earlier.

  I felt weak climbing onto the plane. We’d not flown since Sepa. There was so much to absorb from our experiences, but all I could think of was home.

  Fitz and I held hands, a little more tightly than usual, as the plane took off. Once we were in the air, I looked down at the rivers that converged at Riberalta like liquid snakes. The plane dipped as it turned then leveled off, revealing a series of lakes that twinkled below us. It flew so quickly over this world of water that I realized the Pink Palace could not have been easy to spot from the air. I wouldn’t have been able to see her even if we had flown right over Lago Santa Maria because we’d given the pink and blue plastic to Roque and Silverio. There was nothing to distinguish our raft now from any other pile of brown logs on the water.

  Fitz squeezed my hand then looked out the window of the small craft. He turned his eyes to me, leaned close, and whispered, “I hope we prove to be as worthy as somebody up there thinks we are.”

  Within two days we arrived at JFK International Airport, at last safe in the arms of our families, with Zelda licking my knee for attention.

  Epilogue

  There is no hallmark card for Raft Day, but every year on March 16 Fitz and I replicate the meal Gregoria served us. The bits of orange, fish, and rice reflect the understatement of our rescue. No helicopters. No fanfare. No TV cameras. Our lives were saved by the decision of two men to turn their dugout canoe into the flooded jungle to chase a monkey.

  Fitz and I spent that spring and summer recuperating, mostly at my parents’ vacation home in Stowe, Vermont, where Fitz helped my dad and a friend build an addition onto the little house. Come October we were back on the road, off to pick grapes in France. In ensuing months, we explored Britain and Ireland, then flew to Jakarta, crossing Java to Bali for Christmas on the beach. We spent a month each in Malaysia and Thailand, then another trekking in Nepal, reaching India just in time to ride scooters around the burning vehicles, overturned trucks, and screaming mobs of the Patna bread riots. We traveled throughout the subcontinent then flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where Fitz was jumped in the dark twice, once by a guy with a knife. We hitchhiked across Kenya, camping one night in Amboseli Game Reserve, where monkeys stole our supper, and in a rented VW bug we outran a charging mama rhino. In Tanzania we toured game parks. Turned away by the only hotel in one such park, and with no ride, we rather foolishly decided to walk to the highway at dusk. En route, a tribe of baboons encircled us aggressively. Somehow we broke through and ran back to the compound to sleep on a hotel worker’s floor. We slept outdoors through sandstorms in Sudan and rode across the Nubian Desert from Khartoum to Egypt tied to the roof of a steam train. And we kept on traveling, wanting more and more.

  But it is the jungle especially that remains with us. Sometimes, as I am just standing on a street corner waiting to cross, the swamp appears. I shiver until the light turns green and I realize that I am back at home. Our days are painted by our children and their families, our friends and meaningful work, our interests, and, sometimes, travel.

  My life, like the Madre, is a running river: widening, moving forward, always changing. It is sometimes calm, sometimes raging, often joyously rippling. I am ever curious about what lies around the bend.

  Acknowledgments

  I have so many people to thank along the journey of writing this book. Beginning with my daughter, Megan, who picked up a brochure for a memoir class and told me, “You should do it!” The class was two hours once a week for four weeks. A small commitment it seemed. So although I was working and had just laid my mother to rest and couldn’t really put my heart into a new project, I decided to try it.

  Four weeks turned into years. Thank you to Kerry Egan, twice-published book author, who taught the course and continued with me far after the official class ended. She never stopped believing in me. Thank you, Trina Bigham, original classmate with unflagging interest and help, and Nicola Burnell, who carried on after Kerry moved away. Her assistance was tremendous. Thank you to all of you for the pleasure of your company.

  My heart fills with gratitude for my perceptive readers and supporters. Thank you, Mary Leeson, Cheryl Stern, Marsha McCabe, Kathleen Peck, Frank Phillips, and Jackie O’Hara. Also, Kris Phelps, the late Richard Leeson, Sally Myers, Amanda Cook, Jane DeBarbieri, Jonathan Pogash, and Charlie Barmonde. Aiden, my daughter, an excellent writer and editor, pushed me to apply to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. We were both admitted as, I’m told, the first mother-daughter duo to attend. Huge thanks to the whole Bread Loaf team: to the instructors, the staff, and to my writers group.

  Special thanks to author Damon DiMarco. I will never forget your generous advice, your delight in my manuscript, and for bringing it to the attention of Martha Kaplan.

  Thank you, Martha Kaplan, my agent grande and enthusiastic promoter who believed Ruthless River would find the right home. To my astute, quick-witted editor, Vicky Wilson, who provided the right home; to her most helpful assistant, Ryan Smernoff, and to all the other dedicated staff at Vintage, my heartfelt thanks.

  And most of all, to Jerry Julep, a star to me from the first time we met, I owe my deepest appreciation. He has been my number one champion and editor, as well as devoted husband. He fought by my side for our lives in the jungle. We’ve had a life filled with challenge and joy. I salute him for all that he does and all that he is, ever proud that he’s my husband.

  On top of the world in Peru on our second wedding anniversary. By this time we’d been traveling for two and a half months on our trip around the world, having already been down the East Coast of the United States, then on to Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. (Photograph taken by our friend Yves Girault)

  The plane crash-landed at a penal colony in the jungle far from Puerto Maldonado, where we needed
to be to catch a boat to Riberalta. We were dazed and bewildered but without broken bones.

  At the bank of Rio Tambopata near its confluence with Rio Madre de Dios. Six slender sticks held the shelter intact despite gunfire, storms, and tropical heat. To the left, tied near to us, was someone’s dugout canoe, chiseled from a tree.

  Our young friends climbed onto the raft to be closer to the action as I announced, “I christen thee Pink Palace!” The raft—named for the American ambassador’s mansion in Lima—is made of just four logs with gaps of open water between them.

  Onlookers gathered to wave good-bye to the two crazy gringos launching their uncooperative raft. Behind the onlookers is the roof of the open-air slaughterhouse.

  Fitz living out his boyhood dream from his favorite novel, Huckleberry Finn: “Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.” The river looked deceptively calm and manageable.

  The Pink Palace near Puerto Heath, Bolivia. Without the inexpensive plastic sheeting, and mosquitero netting within, death by exposure would have come quickly in the wet, hot, tropical jungle.

  This water-damaged photo of little Liza and our dog, Zelda, remained with us always: a reminder of what awaited us if we could only survive.

  Me with residents of Barraca Santo Domingo, an oasis on the banks of Rio Madre de Dios. With the depletion of the rubber market, the site has since been swallowed by the jungle.

  At Santo Domingo with Roque and Silverio, the two heroes who came upon us just in time. Fitz is able to stand only by clutching Roque’s trousers with his left hand. I am standing but barely.

  Gregoria (left) holding a plate of the chicken given to us by Roque and his wife. Her nephew (right) who would take us downriver is with his family. His youngest daughter holds a string attached to her pet baby monkey at her side.

  Barraca Santo Domingo, quite possibly what heaven looks like. I took this photo as we were leaving. I didn’t want to leave it and the people; I didn’t want to leave the land. I hated to go back on the river, but we had to look forward, take one more step toward home.

  Our boat to Riberalta. We weren’t strong enough to sit on the benches, so Fitz and I were told we could lie down on the enormous pile of Brazil nuts. We ate some as we went downriver, amusing fellow passengers, since the nuts were meant to be eaten by pigs, not people.

  The wonderful nurses’ aides at Hospital Riberalta, where we recuperated, who loved to braid my hair. They were fascinated by my blue-green eyes.

  Fitz “fattened up” after seventeen days of three meals and two snacks daily. It was never enough food.

  At the Plaza de Armas in Lima, Peru. We were a plane ride away from home, so grateful to be alive and together, and so anxious to be reunited with our loved ones.

  Home! Left to right: me with my niece Liza; my mom; my sister, Mimi; and our dogs. My good friend Bejou made a necklace with a bell (not visible here) for me so that I could never again be lost. I’m wearing that turquoise necklace in this photograph.

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