After thinking for a long time, Todd raised his clasped hands in a gesture of resignation. “What do you want me to do?”
“What do fathers do on vacation? With their kids.”
“I think what we did all morning. But clearly I’m not the right person to say.”
“Please don’t,” Holly said. “Can’t we start again now? Can’t you start something new at any moment in your life? Isn’t that what makes it all so interesting?”
“Responsibilities conflict, love. We lead complicated lives. We decided to lead complicated lives.”
“Just try,” Holly asked, and over the next few days, she could see that he did. Todd roused them all at first light, when mist still eddied from the river, damp on their skins. Breakfast was quick, and they soon went down on the dock with the binoculars, where he helped the boys get a good long look at the big birds flapping downriver. They saw screeching Christmas-coloured macaws; a circus of toucans with waxy, banana-shaped bills. Once he showed them a tree at the water’s edge with a curious patch of roughened bark. Not bark, Holly saw, but brown hairy moths, a huddled congregation with neatly folded wings. One opened intelligent, black little eyes. Not moths, but bats, tiny bats. Todd clapped sharply and the bats sped away.
Another time, they saw a burnished black bird sitting perfectly still on a leafless branch. Holly pictured Darwin collecting it. Powell shooting it.
“Aren’t we lucky in the weather?” she cried. After their morning walk, they played volleyball, badminton, long games of soccer. Falling, the red clay earth felt hard, and the grass was sharp enough to cut their knees. The boys’ legs were quickly dappled with bruises. They didn’t cry, deciding to be brave, but before too long the heat defeated them, and they would run to the dock for a swim. The black, cold water was a daily shock; lunch, afterwards, a heavy midday dinner of rice and beans and meat. They had to rest after eating, reading and dozing in their hammocks, then they played quieter games, swam again, and walked out on the trails when the animals were stirring at sunset.
Once, at dusk, Todd pointed out some monkeys swinging in, crowding the camp high in the trees. Holly saw a mass of movement in the canopy, indistinguishable, massive. There came a thrumming noise like drums.
“Howler monkeys,” Todd said, above the eerie, escalating boom.
Holly found herself shivering as the boom grew almost deafening, then broke into deep-voiced, furious, cynical growls that sounded like menacing thunder. It sounded insane, and Holly could picture the animals jumping from the trees to surround them, see them closing in. Their bent legs, their swinging arms were coming nearer; coming toward her children.
No. They were far away, and she walked to the river to calm herself down. But the beasts were all around them and the cries seemed endless. Walking restlessly back toward Todd, Holly grew damp with tension. She hated the primitive moans, the uncanny booms and ghastly bellows, finally pressing her hands against her ears to keep them away.
Conor reached for Holly’s arm, looking up with worried eyes. Feeling ashamed of herself, Holly made an effort to smile, trying to turn it into a joke by widening her eyes.
“Can you scream that loud?” she asked.
Grinning, the boys started to scream.
“Louder,” she yelled.
Clovis, standing nearby, rocked with silent laughter.
“Loudest!” she told them.
If Powell grabbed one of the boys, would he know to yell like that? Could she get them to yell like that, without frightening them beforehand? If they were too frightened, they wouldn’t be able to yell. And then Powell would grab them.
“Weren’t you loud!” she cried, as the monkeys swung away again, and her tension slowly receded. Yet it didn’t leave her entirely. Each passing day brought Powell’s return a little closer. Lying in her hammock after lunch, stretched on the dock after their swims, Holly began rehearsing ways to caution the boys against him. It would be best if they mentioned him first, so she could say casually, “He’ll be tired after his trip. We’d better plan on not bothering him.” To which Conor would reply, “Oh, we don’t bother him,” which was so obviously true that Holly would have nothing else to say.
What could she say? She wished Powell would find his damn species and head straight downriver to report it. But of course that wouldn’t happen. He wasn’t going to find any new species, and Holly could picture the exact angle of his bowed head as the outboard hit the riverbank. She could almost see him step slowly out of the boat, looking downcast, embarrassed; angry and trying to hide it. He’d want something as compensation, wouldn’t he?
Holly shivered.
“Pleasant breeze, isn’t it?” Todd asked. It was Thursday, mid-afternoon, and they were dozing on the dock. “I needed this,” he admitted.
After that, how could Holly raise Powell’s name again? Todd was doing everything she’d asked, even avoiding Doutor Eduardo. She couldn’t tell him she looked at the river sometimes and seemed to see Conor swirling downstream, lost in the current. Nor could she mention the nightmares: a huge python coiling languorously around her sleeping children. Oh! The glistening muscles of its belly. The boys’ flushed pink skin. Sometimes she’d even do it consciously, picturing a brilliant viper coiled in the brush. Powell was be approaching. Stumbling through the undergrowth, raising his binoculars, he would plant his leg and be struck. The leg would swell and mottle as if he were already dead. His body would swell, his throat swell closed. She could see his mottled, choking face falling on the ground.
But macumba said evil thoughts rebounded on the thinker. Didn’t they say that once you knew a superstition it haunted you forever? And down the hill from their house in Rio was an important crossroads where macumba offerings piled up for Exu, the African trickster. Holly had seen clay bowls overflowing with rice, dead chickens sometimes, and always hot red burning candles. This bright and breezy afternoon, Holly wanted to light a candle against the threat of darkness. Instead, she slipped into the kitchen, asking Olga if they kept a snake bite kit at the camp. Olga didn’t know what she was talking about at first, then picked up a cleaver and mimed the way she would cut the wound and suck out the poison.
“Okay?” She kept her bright eyes fixed on the silly, expensive foreigner.
“Obrigada,” Holly said, although she left the kitchen convinced that Olga had never seen a snake bite, and rejoined Todd unhappily on the dock. She felt increasingly foolish; entirely unable to trust her own judgment or to make the necessary assessment of risk. Todd was right. She had no real evidence Powell was a pedophile. She’d been tired that night. She’d probably made a mistake.
Except she knew that she hadn’t. Holly closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips against them so hard she saw stars. When she next opened them, Olga was walking onto the dock.
“Everything all right?” Olga asked.
“Lovely,” Holly replied.
The boatman’s daughter nodded and headed past them, holding a cooler in one hand and a length of fishing line in the other. Glad to be distracted, Holly watched her stoop to put the cooler down beside the railing. Without straightening, she flipped it open and used something inside to bait the brutal-looking hook tied to the end of the line. Afterwards, she leaned over the railing and unwound the line with a series of jerks, letting it drop straight into the river. Almost as soon as the hook hit the water, the line went taut. Olga gave it a quick yank, then began hauling in the line hand over hand until a silvery, humpbacked, foot-long fish appeared above the railing. As it arched and flailed, Olga caught it with her free hand at the back of its head and held it up for the boys to see.
Holly saw two thick jaws straining open, each lined with terrifying needle teeth.
“Piranha,” Olga said. Seeing the look on Holly’s face, she added, “These ones won’t hurt you.”
“It’s the black ones that swarm,” said Todd, who was suddenly awake.
“Go on,” he told the boys. “Go look. Just don’t touch it.”
He turned to Holly, and said almost beseechingly, “There aren’t any black piranha in this river.”
“I see,” Holly said, trying not to scare the children. They were squealing at the sight of the piranha’s teeth without seeming to understand that they had been swimming between them.
“It’s all right,” Todd said. “Although you probably shouldn’t go in when you’ve got a period.”
“I do.” After one unsatisfactory try at the hammock, Todd hadn’t come near her. Life hadn’t turned perfect overnight.
“Well, you’re okay,” he said. “Obviously.”
Olga threw the piranha in the cooler just as Holly heard the buzz of an outboard motor upriver. She laughed, surprised to hear a note of hysteria in her voice.
“Look who’s back,” she said.
9
Who could have predicted it would happen this way? The boys crouched intently by Olga’s cooler, watching the piranha slowly die. Another time, Holly might have tried to distract them, but now she wanted them to remain unaware of the approaching boat for as long as possible while she tried to think what to do.
What could she do? She felt horrified, frightened, and the droning insect buzz of the outboard was growing louder. Finally, she saw the boys go still, like alerted little animals, then run to the railing and begin waving cheerfully when they recognized Powell.
It hadn’t occurred to Holly that the boys would be pleased to see Powell, excited by the change, the news, the promise of even more adult attention. But who wanted to believe their children would be excited by someone like the bird man? Holly winced as she pictured the way they’d tumbled all over him in the water like puppies. The sickening fact was, they responded to him physically. In such innocence! But that was probably not how he saw it.
“Todd?” she asked, unable to control the panic in her voice.
“I’m here,” he said. “I’ll be watching.”
“Now we can go out in the canoe,” Evan told them happily.
Holly gave the canoe a distracted glance. It was the camp’s one untested diversion, a wide red scow of a thing she knew she couldn’t handle. A couple of days before, Todd had proposed that Clovis tow them upriver with the smaller outboard, then cut them loose to drift downstream. They would hear the birdcalls, surprise turtles, maybe even stumble on some river otters. Todd would easily be able to steer a course, as long as Holly could provide a little power up front when the time came to turn ashore and land.
But Holly could only picture the red canoe spinning sideways downriver like a lost carnival ride, throwing her children into the current to bob away forever. She’d shaken her head vigorously, and Todd gave her a quick look before clapping his hands and proposing a game of soccer. He must have had his own reservations about her capabilities, and Conor seemed to glimpse something that made him quickly drop the idea. Why hadn’t she paid any attention to Evan? He’d kept bringing up the canoe, the turtles, and especially the otters to the point where she’d stopped listening, or at least, stopped hearing him. As Seu José beached the outboard, Evan ran toward the path at the top of the riverbank, leaving Holly to follow like a sleepwalker in his wake.
Who could have predicted this? As first Evan, then Conor, called out enthusiastically from the top of the path, Powell waved half-heartedly and turned aside. Stooped, gawky, looking exhausted, he stumbled out of the boat and onto the greasy red mud of the bank. He couldn’t seem to get his footing, and finally slipped so violently he had to grab for the side of the boat, twisting around to keep from going down.
“What happened to his face?” Evan asked.
Powell’s left cheek was red and inflamed. The disfigurement ran from his neck to his eye, making the skin look shiny and pushing one eye partway closed. Holly could only shake her head.
“Mr. Powell!” Evan called. “Did you get hurt?”
Powell turned unwillingly toward them. “It’s just a spider,” he called. “Wasn’t watching where I was going and she bit me.”
He tested his footing and came reluctantly up the path.
“Was it poison?” Evan asked, when Powell finally joined them.
“It’s what you call an allergic reaction,” Powell said. “I like some bugs about as much as they like me.”
“Does it hurt?” Conor asked. The children were crowding around him like puppies again, and he smiled grotesquely.
“Naw, snickers, it’s not that bad. Just looks awful.”
“So you can still take us out in the canoe with Daddy,” Evan said.
Todd, coming up behind Evan, put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re going to let Mr. Powell have a rest.”
Powell looked grateful. “All I want in the world is a shower,” he said.
He sounded so genuine that Holly realized she couldn’t have been more wrong about Powell. Hot with shame, damp with guilt, she glanced up at Todd, who wouldn’t look back at her.
“Any luck?” he asked Powell.
“Zip point squat,” the birdman replied.
“You’ll get one next time,” Conor told him.
“Thanks, snickers,” he said, patting Conor’s hair distractedly.
They were heading for the men’s bunkhouse. Holly trailed behind them, trying to make herself so small that nobody could see her.
“Don’t you want to go out in the canoe?” Evan asked.
“Not now, buddy,” Powell replied.
“But it’s a big canoe. We take it up the river then we all float down. It would be fun.”
“Evan,” Todd warned.
“I want to go out in the canoe,” Evan whined.
“Not right now,” Powell said. “But if you wanna have a shower, you can come have one with me. Wanna have a shower? That’s fun, too. Soap and stuff.”
“No,” Holly said, stepping forward. Putting an arm around each of the boys, she told him fiercely, “The children are clean.”
Powell blinked. He’d thought she’d dropped behind them. She saw that too, and his sly, repressed anger.
“Go have your shower,” Todd told him. His tone suggested a jocular punch on the shoulder. “We were just going to play soccer. We’re going to play soccer, aren’t we guys?”
“Soccer!” Conor cried.
“Go get the ball,” Evan said, running toward the equipment shed.
“Later,” Powell said, going into the men’s bunkhouse. He let the door slam.
“So you see,” Holly told Todd, feeling half strangled.
“See what? What did I see? A man not surprisingly wanting a shower and an absurd response. Not in front of the children, Holly.”
“What do you mean?” Holly asked. “You consider it normal for a stranger to invite your children into his shower?”
“I saw a man being badgered and trying to accommodate.”
“You saw black and insist it’s white.”
“You’re insisting white is black. He’s just an ordinary shit, Holly. Completely normal.”
“Soccer!” Evan cried, running happily onto the lawn.
“I’ll sit this one out,” Holly said.
“Mr Darwin,” his visitor greets him, entering the study at Down House in Surrey. The great theorist looks up mildly, a middle-aged man now, balding, studious and frequently ill. It is clear he does not recognize the Consul’s wife from Rio de Janeiro, nor does she expect him to. She feels much older; also younger: wavering, uncertain, as if the nap of her velvet cloak were brushed back and forth — first matte, then lustre — bringing her briefly into focus and out.
“I am sorry, but Mrs. Darwin is out,” the scientist tells her. “You will find her at church.”
“I have come to see you, sir, about your Origin of Species.”
“Ah yes,” Darwin says, as Mrs. Austen, unbidden,
takes a seat. He has become something of a recluse, and cannot look happy at the intrusion, but few men are more polite. Or, it is said, more happily married, despite the divergence of views between husband and wife on the Genesis of man.
“I have become a painter, Mr. Darwin,” she tells him, laying aside her cloak. “A creative artist, working by intuition rather than deduction. I don’t follow the scientific method, I’m afraid. But I came to ask whether a scientist, a naturalist like yourself, shouldn’t value inspiration. Surely there must have been a flare, a flame, a moment of inspiration when you first glimpsed your great theory.”
“The scientist is methodical by nature,” Darwin answers kindly. “One formulates a theory, looks about oneself for evidence, and tries to place that evidence within the structure that the theory provides. It will either support the theory or it will not. One then proposes the theory or discards it. There is no foregone conclusion.”
“Yet I cannot help but believe that for years before publishing your theory you must have known you were right.”
“I could assert, but I could not prove. Proof is crucial.”
“It is unthinkable,” Mrs. Darwin cries. Suddenly, she is home from church and shaking the green velvet cloak so its rich nap wavers. It is mottled like grass darkened by shadows, running shadows, an emerald green that flares bright when lit by the play of the sun. With a shudder, Mrs. Austen understands. One may be right, but it is unthinkable to be proved right, beyond all power of contradiction.
“What should I do?” she cries. The green nap smothers her. It darkens and grows light — darkens what grows light — the play of sun and children left unsheltered.
From a muffled distance, Darwin answers, “Persevere.”
An hour later, Holly sat as upright as the Consul’s wife in the wide-hipped, lubberly canoe. Clovis had run them upriver before cutting them loose, and now they were ploughing downstream, heading back to camp. Todd, in the stern, kept them flush in the middle of the river. Powell crouched in the bow, his paddle trapped under one foot as he scanned the forest with his binoculars. Holly had put Evan beside her and Conor on the seat behind. Fear held her rigid, and fury at Todd for taking Powell up on his offer.
Drink the Sky Page 10