Mathias remained silent, neither confirming nor denying this.
“I should get up there,” Jeff said. “You’ll watch for the Greeks?”
Mathias nodded.
Jeff started to leave, then caught himself. “What about Pablo?”
Mathias made a vague gesture, throwing out his hand. “The same,” he said. “Not good.”
With that, Jeff started quickly up the hill, running on the flatter stretches, slowing to a walk whenever it grew steep. He seemed to be losing his breath far more easily than he ought to have. It had only been a day since they’d arrived here, and already he could feel himself growing weaker. He had the sense that this physical decline somehow mirrored a more general deterioration: everything was slipping beyond his control. Stacy and Amy and Eric had spent the afternoon drinking tequila. How stupid could they be? Myopic, impulsive, irresponsible—three fools flirting with their own destruction. Then, of course, they’d turned on one another; they’d fought, shouting insults. And Eric, for some unknown reason, had called Mathias a Nazi. Jeff’s disbelief in this tangle of events slowly surrendered to a building sense of rage. This was its own folly, he knew, and yet he couldn’t resist its pull, couldn’t quell the desire to punish the three of them in some way, to slap them back into a proper sense of gravity. He was still riding this wave of emotion when he finally reached the hilltop, stepped into the little clearing, and glimpsed Amy force-feeding a grape to the barely conscious Pablo.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he said, and they all turned to stare at him, startled by his presence there, the fury in his voice.
Pablo was vomiting, though that seemed the wrong word for it. Vomiting implied something dynamic and forceful; what Pablo was doing was much more passive. His head rolled to the side, his mouth opened, and a stream of black liquid spilled out. Blood, bile—it was hard to tell what it was. There was too much of it, though, more than Jeff would’ve thought possible. Black liquid with thicker skeins running through it, like clots. It formed a shallow pool alongside the backboard, too jellylike, it seemed, for the dirt to absorb. Jeff was four yards away, but even at that distance he could smell it—putridly sweet.
“He was hungry,” Amy said. Jeff could hear in her voice how drunk she was, the threat of a slur haunting each of her words. In her left hand, she was clenching the plastic bag that had once held their supply of grapes; there were three left now. The nearly empty tequila bottle was lying in the dirt beside Stacy. Eric was pressing a bloody T-shirt to his side.
Jeff felt his rage begin to expand inside his body, filling him, pressing outward against his skin, as if searching for an exit. “You’re drunk. Aren’t you?”
Amy looked away. Pablo had stopped vomiting; his eyes were shut now.
“All of you,” Jeff persisted, surprising himself by how quiet he was managing to keep his voice. “Am I right?”
“I’m not,” Eric said.
Jeff turned on him, almost lunging.Stop, he thought.Don’t. But it was too late; he’d already begun to speak, his voice rising with each successive word, coming faster, harder, propelled by his anger. “You’re not drunk?”
Eric shook his head, but it didn’t matter, because Jeff hardly noticed the gesture. He hadn’t paused for a response; no, he just kept talking, knowing he was handling this in the worst possible manner, but no longer able to stop himself, and not wanting to, either, because there was joy in it, too: the relief of speaking, of shouting. The release felt physical, almost sexual in its intensity.
“Because being drunk is really your only defense here, Eric—you understand? You fucking cut yourself again, didn’t you? You cut your fucking chest. You have any idea what you’re doing—how profoundly stupid you’re being? You’re sticking a dirty knife into your body every few hours, and we’re trapped here, with a tiny fucking tube of Neosporin, whose shelf date has already expired. You think that’s smart? You think that makes the slightest fucking sense? Keep it up and you’re gonna die here. You’re not gonna make it—”
“Jeff—” Amy began.
“Shut up, Amy. You’re just as bad.” He turned on her. It didn’t matter whom he was yelling at; any of them would do. “I would’ve expected you, at least, to know better. Alcohol is a diuretic—it dehydrates you. Youknow that. So how the fuck could you—”
You think that’s smart?It was his own voice, coming from somewhere to his left, jarring him into silence.You think that makes the slightest fucking sense? He turned, stared, knowing what it was but still half-expecting to see a person standing there, mimicking him. A wind had come up; it pulled at the vines, making their hand-shaped leaves sway and bob, as if in mockery.
Now it was Amy’s voice:Slut!
And then Stacy’s:Bitch!
“It’s because you’re yelling,” Stacy said, her voice almost a whisper. “It does it when we yell.”
Boy Scout,Eric’s voice called.Nazi!
The clouds had thickened almost to the point of dusk; it was hard to tell what time it was. The storm was upon them, clearly, but night, too, seemed close at hand. And they weren’t ready for it, not nearly, not any of it.
“Look,” Amy said, gesturing skyward. She was trying very hard not to slur, he could tell, yet without much effect. “It doesn’t matter—we’ll get our water.”
“But have you prepared for it?” Jeff asked. “It’ll come and go, and you’ll just be sitting here, watching it, won’t you? Watching it run down into the soil, vanishing, wasted.” Jeff could feel his anger dissipating, not in a satisfying way, either, not in a rush or a jolt, but in a slow, implacable seepage. He didn’t want it to go, felt abandoned by its departure, as if it were a form of strength that was leaving him; his body seemed weaker for its withdrawal. “You’re pathetic,” he said, turning away from them. “All of you—fucking pathetic. You don’t need the vine to kill you. You’re gonna make that happen all on your own.”
Stacy’s voice called:Then who’s the villain?
Sing for us, Amy,Eric’s responded.
Bitch!
Slut!
Nazi!
And then his own voice again, sounding hateful in its anger:You’re drunk, aren’t you?
Jeff stepped to the orange tent, unzipped its flap, pushed his way inside. He scanned the supplies piled against the tent’s back wall. The toolbox was waiting there, but nothing else of any relevance to his present needs. He crouched over the box, opened its lid, and found, oddly, not tools inside, but a sewing kit. A little pincushion cactused full of needles. Spools of thread on a double rack, covering the full spectrum of colors, like a box of crayons. Scraps of cloth, a small pair of scissors, even a tape measure. Jeff dumped everything onto the tent’s floor, carried the empty box back out into the clearing.
Nothing had changed. Eric was still lying on his back, the bloody T-shirt pressed to his abdomen. Stacy was sitting at his side, with that same frightened expression on her face. Pablo’s eyes remained shut, the ragged sound of his breathing rising and falling. Amy was beside him; she didn’t look up when Jeff appeared. He set the box in the middle of the clearing, open to catch the rain. Then he started across the hilltop, toward the mouth of the shaft, where the supplies from the blue tent still lay tumbled together in a mound.
The plants continued their mimicry. Sometimes the voices came in a shout, other times very softly. There were long pauses, during which, it seemed, they might’ve stopped altogether, then sudden flurries of speech, the words and voices merging one into another. Jeff tried not to pay attention to them, but some of the things they said surprised him, gave him pause, made him wonder. He assumed that was the point, as hard as this was to believe, suspected that the vines had begun to speak now in an effort to drive the six of them apart, turn them one against another.
Stacy’s voice said,Well, Jeff isn’t here, is he? And then Eric’s came:Was Jeff a Boy Scout? I bet Jeff was a Boy Scout. Laughter followed: Eric and Stacy’s, mixing together, with an edge of mockery to it.
It
was as if the vine had learned their names, knew who was who, and was tailoring its mimicry accordingly, the better to unsettle them. Jeff tried to think back over the past twenty-four hours, to remember the things he’d said, searching for possible difficulties. He was so tired, though, so benumbed, that his mind refused to help him. It didn’t matter anyway, because the vine knew, and as Jeff started to pick through the pile of supplies beside the open shaft, he heard his voice begin to speak.
End it. Cut his throat. Smother him.
The longer we stay here, the better its chances.
It mimics things. It’s not really laughter.
Then the whole hillside seemed to erupt at once—there were giggles and guffaws and chuckles and snickers—it went on and on and on. Interspersed with this was his own voice, shouting, as if trying to silence the noise, repeating the same phrase over and over again:It’s not really laughter…. It’s not really laughter…. It’s not really laughter….
Jeff retrieved the Frisbee from the tangle of supplies, the empty canteen, carried them back across the hilltop toward the orange tent. His idea was that as the Frisbee filled with rain, he could pour it into the canteen, the plastic jug, the bottle they’d been using to collect their urine. It wasn’t the best plan, but it was all he could think of.
Amy and Stacy and Eric hadn’t moved. The vine had sent forth another tendril; it was feasting on Pablo’s vomit now, audibly sucking at it. The three of them were watching, slack-jawed: drunk. When the vine finished with the little puddle, it retreated back across the clearing. No one moved; no one said a thing. Jeff felt his anger stirring at the sight of this—their impassivity, their collective stupor—but he didn’t speak. That was over now, the urge to yell. He set the Frisbee beside the open toolbox, then emptied Mathias’s water bottle of their urine. The others watched him, silent, all of them listening to the vines as they quieted for a moment, only to jump again in volume, still laughing. The sound of strangers, Jeff assumed. Cees Steenkamp, maybe. The girl whom Henrich had met on the beach. All these piles of bones, their flesh stripped clean, their souls long ago unhoused, but their laughter preserved here, remembered by the vine, and called forth now, wielded like a weapon.
It’s not really laughter…. It’s not really laughter…. It’s not really laughter….
There were still some strips of nylon left over from the blue tent, and Jeff fiddled with them now, trying to think of a way to use them to catch the rain, or store the water once they’d collected it. He should’ve thought of this earlier, he knew; he could’ve used the sewing kit he’d found in the orange tent to stitch the lengths of nylon together into a giant pouch. But now he no longer had the time.
Tomorrow,he thought.
And then the rain began to fall.
It came in a rush, as if a trapdoor had swung open in the clouds above them, releasing it. There was no warning, no preparatory drizzle; one moment the sky was merely brooding, dark gray, with that held-breath quality the tropics often have before a storm’s approach, a breeze lightly stirring the vines, and then, seemingly without transition, the air was full of falling water. Daylight faltered, took on a greenish hue one step short of darkness; the hard-packed earth beneath them turned instantly to mud. It felt difficult to breathe.
The plants fell silent.
The Frisbee filled in seconds. Jeff poured the water into the canteen, let the Frisbee fill once more, with equal rapidity, and poured again. Then he held the canteen out to Stacy. He had to shout to be heard over the rain, which sounded almost like a roar now. “Drink!” he yelled. His hat, his clothes, his shoes were all soaked completely through, clinging to him, growing heavy.
He poured the water from the Frisbee into the plastic jug, let it fill, poured again, let it fill, poured again. When he was finished with the jug, he started in on Mathias’s empty bottle.
Stacy drank from the canteen, then passed it to Eric, who was still lying on his back, shirtless, the rain spattering mud across his body. He sat up awkwardly, clutching at his side, took the canteen.
“As much as you can!” Jeff shouted at him.
Soap,he was thinking. He should’ve checked the backpacks for a bar of soap. They would’ve at least had time to wash their faces and hands before the storm passed—a small thing, he knew, but he was certain it would’ve lifted everyone’s spirits.Tomorrow, he thought.It came today, so why shouldn’t it come again tomorrow?
He finished with Mathias’s bottle, held out his hand for the canteen, refilled it, then passed it to Amy.
The rain kept pouring down on them. It was surprisingly cold. Jeff began to shiver; the others did, too. It was the lack of food, he assumed. Already, they didn’t have the resources to fight the chill.
The Frisbee filled again, and he lifted it to his lips, drank directly from it. The rain had a sweetness that surprised him.Sugar water, he thought, his head seeming to clear as he drank, his body to take on an added solidity, a heft and gravity he hadn’t realized he’d been lacking. He filled the Frisbee, drank, filled the Frisbee, drank, his stomach swelling, growing pleasantly, almost painfully taut. It was the best water he’d ever tasted.
Amy had stopped drinking. She and Stacy were standing there, hunched, hugging themselves, shivering. Eric had lain back down again. His eyes were shut, his mouth open to the rain. His legs and torso were growing muddier and muddier; it was in his hair, too, and on his face.
“Get him into the tent!” Jeff shouted.
He took the canteen from Amy, started to fill it once more as he watched her and Stacy pull Eric to his feet, guide him toward the tent.
The rain began to slacken. It was still falling steadily, but the downpour was over. Another five or ten minutes, Jeff knew, and it would stop altogether. He stepped across the clearing to check on Pablo. The lean- to hadn’t done much to shelter him; he was just as wet as the rest of them. And, like Eric, he’d been back-spattered with mud—his shirt, his face, his arms, his stumps. His eyes remained shut; his breathing continued its irregular rasping course. Oddly, he wasn’t shivering, and Jeff wondered if this were a bad sign, if a body could become so ravaged that even trembling might be beyond its strength. He crouched, rested his hand on Pablo’s forehead, nearly flinched at the heat coming off him. Everything was a bad sign, of course; there were nothing but bad signs here. He thought of the vine, how it had echoed his own voice:End it. Cut his throat. Smother him. And he held the words in his mind, teetering on the edge of action. It would be easy enough, after all; he was alone here in the clearing. No one would ever know. He could simply lean forward, pinch shut Pablo’s nostrils, cover his mouth, and count to—what? A hundred?Mercy: this was what he was thinking as he lifted his hand from Pablo’s forehead, moved it down his face. He held it there, an inch or so above the Greek’s nose, not touching him yet, just playing with the idea—ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine—and then Amy was pushing her way out of the tent, carrying her drunkenness with her, stumbling slightly as she stepped into the clearing. Her hair was limp from the rain; there was a smear of mud on her left cheek.
“Is he okay?” she asked.
Jeff stood up quickly, hating the slur in her voice, feeling that urge to shout again, to sober her with his anger. He fought the temptation, though, not answering—how could he answer?—and moved back across the clearing toward the open toolbox.
Which, inexplicably, was nearly empty.
Jeff stared down at it, struggling to make sense of this development.
“There’s a hole,” Amy said.
And it was true. When Jeff lifted the box, he revealed a thin stream of water pouring steadily from its bottom, which had a two-inch crack in it. He’d missed it somehow earlier, when he’d emptied the box of its sewing supplies. He’d been rushing; he hadn’t taken the time to examine it. If he had, he might’ve been able to fix it before the rain came—the duct tape,he thought—but now it was too late. The rain had come; the rain was leaving. Even as he thought these words, it was falling more an
d more gently; in another minute or so, it would stop altogether. Disgusted with himself, he threw the toolbox, sent it tumbling away from him toward the tent.
Amy looked appalled. “What the fuck?” she said, almost shouting. “There was still water in it!”
She ran to the toolbox, set it upright again. It was a pointless gesture, Jeff knew. The storm had passed; the sky was beginning to lighten. There wasn’t going to be any more rain—not today at least. “You’re one to talk,” he said.
Amy turned toward him, wiping at her face. “What?”
“About wasting water.”
She shook her head. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Not now.”
“Don’twhat, Amy?”
“Lecture me.”
“But you’re fucking up. You know that, don’t you?”
She didn’t respond, just stared at him with a sad, put-upon expression, as if he were the one at fault here. He felt his fury rising in response to it.
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