Drink the Sky

by Lesley Krueger

  No, Todd thought. When he’d arrived in town, he’d sought out the priest as the one most likely to know whether Powell was alive or dead. He hadn’t expected to find Ignacio on the dock preparing to head north again, and was surprised to hear him confess that he would like Todd to join him. Far from being planned beforehand, the trip was not even particularly well thought-out. For the second time, Todd just jumped.

  They’d headed upriver for the first time in April, guided by a settler named Jefferson. Back then, Todd wasn’t thinking of anything so elevated as chimeras. He’d suspected they were off on a wild goose chase, and in other circumstances, he probably wouldn’t have gone. Yet he’d been desperate to escape the delegation of concerned academics he’d been trotting around the Amazon. These were people who never stopped nattering. Their punctuated discourse, the niggling back and forth over sources and theories, the aggrieved claims of greater expertise were all a form of territorial pissing which Todd could not abide.

  Ignacio had appeared in his hotel room one day when the academics were writing up their notes before dinner. He was a lean, pretty-faced Spaniard whom Todd often rescued from circles of fawning, disappointed women. Had he hoped to escape them in the priesthood? Escape was his modus vivendi. He slipped away as often as he could to the distant reaches of his huge parish, admitting once to Todd that he could bear the trials of wilderness trips far more happily than he could the small-town politics of his local church. He was a fastidious man, keeping his hair cropped close to the skull, and dressing plainly in well-cut clothes with the foppish asceticism of someone who had been born and raised in Madrid. Ignacio had a weakness for high-toned gossip about the upper reaches of the Catholic church, but he was usually more discreet about local matters, and Todd was often disappointed when trying to get something useful out of their talks.

  Yet that day, Ignacio had some information to exchange for a favour. Taking a chair in Todd’s hotel room, he told Todd the story about fighting between prospectors and the uncontacted tribe. He’d said he’d also told an agent from the government’s Indian affairs bureau, a friend who’d agreed to investigate. This friend was an anthropologist by training, yet according to Ignacio’s tactful formulation, the training had not yet been sullied by much experience, and it would help if Todd came along.

  He didn’t give Todd much time to decide, saying they would have to leave before dawn for a town upriver. The agent had arranged to meet his brother there, a bush pilot who would fly them to a landing strip further east. Jefferson would pick them up at the other end for the final leg of their journey — Jefferson being a loner, a northeasterner who had settled deep in the wilderness, living on God knows what. Living on God. Given the young priest’s gingerly way of speaking, Todd guessed that Jefferson was the original source of the rumour; even that he’d disclosed something at confession: conceivably that he’d led the prospectors into the region on an expedition gone wrong. What else could explain Ignacio’s hesitation, the way he pursed his lips and frowned, his vague answers to most of Todd’s questions?

  The fact he knew nothing concrete, of course. The fact he knew nothing at all.

  “Jefferson has an idea where the people keep a fishing camp,” Ignacio said.

  “These ‘uncontacted’ people?”

  “They seem to prefer to avoid any contact with the outside world. Which implies some degree of acquaintance, however.”

  “And no small degree of wisdom.”

  “Cynicism is not wisdom,” the young priest replied.

  Todd had trouble taking the plan seriously, and despite what Ignacio said, he suspected the agent had his doubts, as well. A government agent would not normally take a priest along when investigating reports of a conflict. Taking a foreigner was unheard of. Of course, the agent could have been as green as Ignacio claimed. But it seemed more likely that he was indulging his friend by mounting the chase, perhaps in the course of some other business. Still, Todd couldn’t resist the opportunity of getting away from his academics, at least temporarily, and after shaking hands with Ignacio, he arranged for his assistant to take over the tour. Feeling gleeful, he slipped out of the hotel very early the next morning, well before the academics could worry themselves awake.

  Ignacio and the agent, Celso, were waiting on the dock, two smudged figures in the pre-dawn dark. Four o’clock was the dankest hour, weedy and thick. They were close enough to the equator that the sun wouldn’t rise for another couple of hours, giving them a long swath of darkness for their trip upriver, followed by half an hour’s foggy grace. It was important for Ignacio’s investigation — or at least, important to maintaining the pretence of an investigation — that they leave without any stray prospectors suspecting what they were up to, and arrive on the other end unannounced.

  They pushed off quietly in Celso’s boat. Todd was surprised to find the agent so nervous, scuffing the heel of his sandal on the deck, punching his fists together, unable to keep still. He insisted Todd and Ignacio hide in the suffocating cabin, even though it was dark, and there were few other vessels on the river. The cabin stank, and the engine thrummed and throbbed around them like a bruise. Todd wanted to ask Ignacio whether there was something else about the trip he ought to be told, but realized he would have to shout, and that in any case Ignacio would not have misled him. Celso was merely proving himself to be as green as the priest had said.

  Todd sometimes despaired of himself. And had to laugh. The great revelations of his life were never unmediated discoveries. Those clarifying moments when he felt a sudden illumination, a leap of understanding, usually came when he finally understood the accuracy of something everyone had been telling him for years. You’re the picture of your grandfather, people told him. It had been wicked finally seeing the truth of that one.

  Todd left the cabin once they’d passed the outskirts of town and dozed on deck for the remainder of the trip, waking as they approached the village where Celso’s brother would be waiting. Leaving the boat at the brother’s pier, they slipped through the streets of the sleeping village in the last moist moments of darkness. Roosters had begun to crow. Todd caught the copper gleam of feathers by starlight, and saw Celso’s bare heel and sandal lifting ahead of him as they turned a corner. Yet Celso’s face remained a blur until they boarded the small two-engine plane. Only then did Todd see the busy eyes in the homely face, the skewed nose, the bad skin. Celso darted quick looks around the plane, at Todd and Ignacio — several times at Todd — and when his brother slammed the plane door closed, he began to talk, clutching his seat as they sped toward take-off, and waving both hands excitedly as they lifted into the air.

  “Chegamos,” he cried. We did it. We’ve done it. Literally, We’ve arrived. “Nobody knows where we are.” He had to yell above the thundering engines, and grabbed his seat as they hit turbulence.

  “I wish I could find that entirely reassuring,” Todd yelled back, while the plane bucked upwards and groaned.

  “Puxa vida,” Celso swore in agreement. When they cleared the last wisps of morning cloud, the plane finally steadied, and they banked northeast into dawn.

  “Though you should,” Celso added, turning shrewd as he met Todd’s eye.

  Ignacio glanced his way and nodded. Loosing his own grip on his seat, Todd felt foolish. Ignacio had been truthful as far as he’d gone, but Todd hadn’t asked why he’d told Celso his suspicions and not someone more senior. There must have been an agent in the local office Ignacio didn’t trust. This was hardly surprising. More than a few Indian agents had been caught taking bribes from big ranchers for relocating tribes off land the ranchers claimed. The possibility of backroom deals, of prospectors being sent to provoke a fight, gave Todd his first queasy sense there might be something to Ignacio’s rumour, after all.

  “I hate flying,” Celso went on. “Ask my brother: Why would someone who hates flying take a job like mine? Ask him how much he likes flying me places.”
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br />   “Cala boca, cara,” his brother replied genially. Shut your mouth, Celso. He did not.

  After a two-hour flight, Jefferson met them at the remote landing strip and loaded their gear into his metal outboard, pushing off upriver without saying much to anyone. He was as guarded as Celso was talkative; a whippet-like, closed-faced man who looked about the same age as the others, which probably made him even younger. The seats were low and Todd felt cramped, especially as the sun rose higher and the heat unfolded like a blanket. It would be a long trip. They had to thread their way so deep in the forest they would pass even Jefferson’s camp, the last house before some evil rapids which hardly anyone had ventured beyond. Ignacio said they would portage the rapids and continue past them for an hour or so, to the point where the land began to rise into a low range of mountains, a serra. Jefferson thought the tribe, the people, sometimes fished by a creek at the foot of the serra. It was here, he said, that the skirmish with prospectors might have taken place.

  As Ignacio described the terrain, Todd began to think that if there was indeed an uncontacted tribe living above the rapids, a fight was not merely possible, but inevitable. A gold rush was sweeping the Amazon, and every serra held the promise of gold. Jefferson said there were already settlers in the lower reaches of the river. They’d gone there to farm, but some had ended up sluicing the waters, as well. No one had found anything so far, but that wouldn’t keep a young adventurer from someday trying his luck upriver. What did you expect? The settlers fished and hunted, tapped rubber, sold moonshine, but the soil was so poor they could cultivate only manioc, and feuds.

  Todd noticed that Jefferson kept to the far side of the river when passing some of their houses and turned up creeks to avoid others entirely.

  “I hate these boats,” Celso said. “So fucking loud. Everyone knows we’re coming. Presuming anyone’s out here, which is supposed to be the point.”

  Yet even Celso went quiet as they reached the lower eddies of the rapids, and Jefferson steered them through the turbulent water to make a clear patch of shore. He’d built his homestead here, just back in the bush behind the cleared beach. They could hear the rapids now above the growl of the boat, and when Jefferson cut the engine, the river seemed to roar. Todd wondered how Jefferson could stand the noise. He felt oppressed by the clamour, and stooped as he jumped from the boat. No one spoke. They merely followed Jefferson’s lead in unloading, tying up, and shouldering their packs. He’d hidden a canoe near the house which they would use on the other side of the rapids.

  It seemed a small matter at first to help carry the canoe upriver. Jefferson had cut a path along the shoreline and the footing was secure. But the soggy heat quickly turned draining, killing, and the bellow of water bore down on them. Before too long, the portage became a hellish, slippery scramble along a meagre green track, stifling and endless. The canoe, their packs, their chafing clothes, all felt useless. Their effort was useless. An uncontacted tribe? Attacking prospectors? If people here, hidden here, were likely to attack, Todd didn’t think Jefferson would trot along so calmly. The whole enterprise began to seem bizarre. He felt as if he was trapped inside a nightmare, walking a huge industrial treadmill with hot green walls closing in on either side. He felt dizzy, and tottered as they finally reached the head of the rapids. Yet Jefferson simply trotted on, leading them to another small cut, a beach he’d cut into the river. Finally they could put the canoe down. But as they let go, Todd found himself stumbling again. The ground spun, and he fell to his knees in the river.

  Jefferson knew the forest people. Todd finally understood as he continued his fall to duck his head in the cool water. Open-eyed, he blew out bubbles, then bucked back to shake the water from his hair, irrigating his chest with double-handed splashes of water. Jefferson knew these people, and had cut a trail to visit his friends. Shivering in the cool water, steaming under the hot sun, Todd was besieged by odd, splintered visions: of the forest people running barefoot down the path, light feet barely touching the leaf mould, taut bodies scarcely parting the air; of Jefferson running, Jefferson kneeling as Todd was kneeling, confessing not that he’d led some prospectors in, not that they’d stumbled on the people from the forest, that guns were drawn, bows strung, weapons fired — no, Jefferson had not confessed to fighting on the side of the prospectors, had he?

  And had woven past the other settlers’ encampments for reasons Todd had not begun to suspect before.

  Was this, finally, the truth of the matter? Todd glanced at Ignacio, who was standing at the side of the river, carefully rolling his pant legs to the knee. He wished Ignacio had told him more of the story. He was subtle. He could have hinted at what he’d learned in the confessional. Celso, at least, could have given him more background.

  But as he watched the priest dip his handkerchief in the river, Todd knew Ignacio was no more capable of bending the rules than he was of breaking them. And as for Celso, ever since take-off he’d peppered Todd with questions, trying to understand the nature of this foreigner, this one-time anthropologist uncited in all known literature who’d had the arrogance to intrude on his turf. Who did Todd think he was, coming here to impose his own vision of a new world on a country, a culture, that could live more happily without him? Another tall, white male. He wasn’t about to confide in him.

  What probably made it worse for Celso was that he’d felt insecure enough to welcome Todd’s intrusion in the first place. And what made it worse for Todd was agreeing with Celso. He’d become suspicious of his own motives; as Ignacio had said, reflexively cynical.

  Yet if cynicism was not wisdom, what was? As he stood up wearily, Todd wondered if it might start with the understanding that someone could be unfashionable and still be right. Surely he deserved some credit for trying to put things right.

  Then he remembered a woman saying, “They don’t just want to rule the world, they want you to feel sorry for them, too.”

  “We’ll go find your friends now, shall we?” he asked Jefferson.

  Jefferson shrugged. “Vamos ver.” We’ll see. Or did he mean, We’re going to see? Despite his exhaustion, Todd felt a prickle of excitement as they guided the canoe into the river, and began to paddle north.

  Their clothes dried quickly. It was late afternoon, but the sun still burned. They took shifts paddling, sharing the load. Yet the rhythm of the paddles gave Todd a peace he would not have predicted. He was going to meet the people of the forest, even though he didn’t know what outsiders like himself could possibly offer them. What could Celso offer? This was an unauthorized expedition. It made more sense to simply ask what the people wanted, although there was a skewed irony involved in asking for something rather than being prepared to give.

  The river curved and widened around them. In April, the rainy season was just past its peak, and throughout their trip the water had run deep. Yet here the river spread to twice, three times its normal width and for once it was running shallow. Boulders pocked the surface, blazing white where the sun struck them and dark, almost black, underwater. Water lilies grew near shore, flowering pink against the boulders and foaming, bronze-coloured water. It was a pretty spot, and it looked to Todd like a good place to fish. He turned to Jefferson, who nodded and headed for shore. The settler steered them easily between the boulders, making for a small white beach where he nosed the canoe onto the sand. As they stepped ashore, Todd saw no sign of human activity, although the recent rains would have washed away any mild disturbance. Jefferson walked toward a narrow creek at the far side of the beach.

  “Up here could be a longhouse.”

  One of the communal palm-leaf dwellings built by forest tribes. Todd shivered with excitement as he shouldered his pack and followed Jefferson toward the creek. Igarapé, they called them. Jefferson waded into this one as if it were a path, walking up the knee-high water still wearing his sandals, and prodding the creekbed ahead of him with a stick. Poisonous snakes lived in these woo
ds. Here there be dragons. Todd could see no obvious signs of human passage, although the creek was suspiciously cleared of vines to head height. Celso’s height; he was the smallest, and waded along behind Jefferson, with Todd coming next and Ignacio bringing up the rear.

  Walking against the current quickly tired the muscles of Todd’s calves, but the cool water numbed them soon after, leaving him with the strange yet happy sensation of walking on stilts. It felt like being a kid again. He stooped to drink some water from his cupped palms, and it tasted of cool, budding leaves. The creek must run straight down from the serra. He pictured the unseen beauty of the green hills ahead of them, the unclassified plants, the orchids and vines twined through the forest. Somewhere near here legend had placed El Dorado, the Golden One of Spanish myth, a king who painted himself daily with a new coat of gold. Todd’s El Dorado was more prosaic, a man of the forest who rubbed himself with salves made from local plants to cure diseases that defeated all the finest modern doctors. But he had no more idea how to mine knowledge without damaging the people here than the Spaniards did of safely mining gold.

  Ahead of Todd, Jefferson raised his hands and gave a monkey’s yakking cry. If it was a signal, there was no answer. Jefferson cupped his hands and tried again. A screaming piha shrieked back, but that wasn’t what Jefferson wanted. He dropped his hands and led them forward more reluctantly, finally turning to part the greenery on a path kept invisible from the water. Were they unwelcome? Todd heaved himself out of the creek and onto dry land, tottering noisily into the bushes as he found he didn’t have full control of his numbed legs. Jefferson swivelled to give him an angry look, holding Todd’s eyes and starting to chatter like an animated monkey. Todd shrank back, not understanding at first that this was another signal, but seeing only that Jefferson’s eyes were oddly disconnected from the chattering. They were too worried, too alert, too human for the animal sound. When there was still no reply, Jefferson’s face closed up again, and he turned to go on.