It was a short but excruciating walk up a hill from the creek. Shooting pains brought feeling back into Todd’s cold legs, and it was all he could do to keep from hissing in agony. Then Jefferson was suddenly gone, stepping sideways from the path through vines that swayed closed behind him. Holding his breath, Celso followed, then Todd and Ignacio, emerging into a clearing with a large palm leaf dwelling at one side. A longhouse. The itch in Todd’s legs was now indistinguishable from excitement. He’d never seen a tropical longhouse before, although knew what it was, what it had to be. He also knew it was empty. The clearing around them was as deserted as a Yukon ghost town. Yet those had been deserted once gold fever passed, not when it had just begun.
Jefferson turned circles in the middle of the clearing, looking for signs of people who might be hiding, and letting himself be seen. After a few moments, he gave up and walked off into the forest, his eyes on the ground. Todd wondered whether he was looking for a message or for a disturbance that might signal their direction. There did not seem to have been a fight here, although it was possible Jefferson was also looking for graves. Ignacio and Celso with him, but Todd decided he would be better employed searching the longhouse, and headed for the far side of the clearing.
He found a rectangular structure smelling of smoke and game which would have housed all the families of the tribe around their separate hearths. Their fires were unvented; the smoke discouraged insects. Nor was there a door, although Todd knew he had only to part the palm fronds to find himself inside. He was granted a certain power by his diligent reading. Yet going inside the longhouse was like looking up from a book’s bright pages on a sunny day. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, though when they did, he could see how quickly the people had left. Fled? Bits and pieces of daily life lay scattered on the ground. A cassava, some palm fibre. He stooped to pick up a basket lying on its side, forgotten or dropped near an extinguished fire. The basket had a head strap which he slung over his shoulder as he moved, still half stooping, to feel the ashes of the fire.
Celso came in and stood quietly for a moment, letting his eyes adjust.
“The fire’s cold,” Todd told him. “They didn’t leave here today.”
He stood up painfully. His back was stiff from paddling.
“I don’t smell any blood,” he added, then wondered why he’d said that, and whether he could. Maybe he could. He meant he didn’t smell anything worse than blood. Walking around the longhouse, he found an iron pot (uncontacted?) also on its side, a couple more baskets, wood shavings, detritus. They hadn’t left much food. No weapons. Todd prodded the pot and other baskets with his toe, but didn’t otherwise touch them, and was standing quietly in one corner when Ignacio came into the longhouse.
“Nothing,” Ignacio told them.
Both the priest and Celso seemed to be in shock. Nodding at them, Todd went back outside, half forgetting he was carrying the first basket on his shoulder.
He hadn’t forgotten. When his eyes had readjusted to the light, he examined the basket’s fine, regular weaving. He didn’t recognize the plant fibre, but it had dried to a strong brown colour and was painted with simple black designs. There were six vertical rows of circles spaced unevenly around the basket, each circle the size of a joined thumb and forefinger and pecked at the centre with a single dot. One circle was empty; maybe forgotten, maybe not. In between the lines of circles, dots had been dabbed in vertical lines of three, five or seven. At the bottom of the basket, a bigger circle had been drawn on fibres woven flat enough for the basket to sit upright on the ground.
Setting it down, Todd wished he could show Holly the design. Impossible, of course. The basket belonged to someone else, and he wasn’t a thief. He wasn’t even sure he could sketch the design in case he was stealing a pattern of religious significance. He suspected there was no particular significance; part of the basket’s charm lay in its absent-minded execution. But now that native people had begun objecting to white men appropriating their ideas, Todd felt bound to respect their wishes. Not that being white had anything to do with it. He was a man who wanted something to take home to his wife, and the propitiation of wives probably transcended all racial and cultural boundaries.
Celso had joined Todd in looking down at the basket as Jefferson slowly walked over.
“Did you marry here, Jefferson?” Todd asked him.
Jefferson crouched down and touched the basket with one forefinger.
“If you brought your wife an iron pot, she had to leave it. It was too heavy for her to carry, especially if she had to carry a child. Do you have children here, my friend?”
Jefferson traced the circles on the basket with his forefinger. Then he stood up, and as Todd reached for his shoulder, Jefferson howled.
14
Todd finally heard the story on the way back. Everything had started when the prospectors arrived above the rapids one afternoon as Jefferson was visiting his family. Yes, there was a wife; yes, a baby daughter. As news travelled upriver that there were intruders, Jefferson joined the men of the forest tribe in hiding down at the mouth of the creek. As the intruders drew closer, he recognized the voices of two of his neighbours. They must have been guides, since the rest of the voices he heard belonged to strangers.
On signal, the forest people rose and fired warning arrows across the bows of the intruders’ boats. From the river came shouts, cries of confusion. Jefferson trained his gun on the boats, ready to shoot back-up, but the outsiders fired only a few panicky answering shots before turning their boats and racing downstream. Word came back that they fled down the portage trail like a company of frightened forest rats. The men acted out the story of their successful hunt to their wives. But then one of Jefferson’s friends wandered back to the longhouse with his scalp bleeding from the graze of a stray bullet. The pajé had to work quickly, gathering herbs and crushing them for a poultice to stop the bleeding. Jefferson didn’t know which herbs the old man used; he would have used cobwebs himself. In any case, the people were impressed by the damage the intruders could do, and grew afraid of what would happen if they came back. It had been Jefferson’s idea to seek protection from the Indian bureau. Maybe the people hadn’t really wanted this and decided to leave. On the other hand, maybe not.
By the time Jefferson finished his story, they were back at his homestead, hanging their hammocks for the night. The next morning, Jefferson insisted on leaving for the landing strip as soon as it was light, dropping Todd and Ignacio there so he could start to search for his family. Celso’s brother flew in that afternoon and took them back to town, Todd to meet the academics he had abandoned two days earlier. Sweating in the local bar, feeling hemmed in, chafed by the academics’ vocal unhappiness at his disappearance, Todd doubted he would ever see Jefferson again, and fell into an odd mood of irritated mourning.
It was then that Doutor Eduardo had arrived in the bar, causing a stir, a ripple of respectful nods. There must have been a couple of hundred drinkers there that night, and they all recognized Doutor Eduardo. Todd knew him too, from the files. He controlled the state, ran the governor, probably owned the bar. It was the biggest place in town, even bigger than the nearby Bank of Brazil, and more central to the town’s business. An immense field of banged-together tables took up most of its concrete floor. The academics had pushed three tables together, and Doutor Eduardo sat down behind them. He didn’t have to order his beer. The bartender brought a sweating draft as the old man looked the academics over. Most were tall, drunk, well-fed men whose rumps overflowed the seats of their chairs. Todd grew conscious that a nearby curtain stirred from their windy gestures as they argued out their points with angry, circular illogic; one of them taking up where the other had not, in fact, left off.
They had not been welcome even before the doutor had arrived. This Amazon gold-rush town welcomed foreigners with useful skills, geologists and engineers. But these were environmental
sympathizers — big, soft men and plaintive women with a sentimental attachment to grass and frogs. Keeping an eye on Doutor Eduardo, Todd decided to steer the discussion away from local concerns. It was growing far too clear that despite his differences with the academics, he’d provided them with large amounts of suggestive data.
“Our guide,” one academic said. “Your attention, please. Our erstwhile guide has something to say.”
“About where he’s been. Where the fuck he’s been.”
“About Denby’s paper on global warming,” Todd said. “Can someone tell me how the hell he got that published?”
He had a biologist ready to bite. An avid mouth opening. But the economist, who was very drunk, leaned on Todd’s shoulder.
“I still say we had a right to know why our alleged guide abandoned us.”
“To my very qualified assistant. As I said before, it was personal business.” Todd cursed his miscalculation. Until he spoke, they’d forgotten all about him. “But Denby’s reputation — “
“This is what I don’t understand,” the economist said. “Personal business up here?”
“Denby’s reputation for — “
“We have ten precious, ten precious fucking days up here. And you wasted two.”
“Of my own. My assistant tells me your program went off very well.”
“Fucking hell.”
The academics started bobbing and crowing at him like roosters. Over their heads, Todd caught Doutor Eduardo’s eye. The doutor stared straight back, and the square man sitting across from him turned around in his chair. Seu José, Todd figured, remembering the files. As the academics renewed their grievances, Todd realized a group of sleeker men had spaced themselves around the room’s perimeter. Until then, he’d believed the forest people had been harassed by simple prospectors. Now he understood that the threat was far more sophisticated and dangerous. The doutor’s presence was a warning, although he couldn’t decode it in all the racket.
“We’ve got ten fucking days and we fucking want to make the most of them.”
“Excuse me.”
Todd got up and went to the bar, hoping Doutor Eduardo would join him. But when he looked in the bar mirror, the doutor was gone, Seu José was gone, and the last of the sleek assistants was disappearing out the door.
“Shit!” Todd turned around to stare at the last retreating back, leaning his elbows behind him on the bar as a miner came up to order a whiskey.
“The mistress will help you,” the miner murmured.
“Help me what?”
But even the miner was gone.
Almost three months passed before Todd found Ignacio on the dock, preparing for the second trip upriver. Holly and the boys were on their way back to Rio. And Powell was alive, Ignacio assured him.
“Winged,” the priest said dryly, packing supplies into his outboard.
“Thanks, my friend. I’ll have to phone home and leave a message.” Todd sat back on his haunches, feeling relieved. Then he saw a thin whippet of a man slip onto the dock. “My God, Ignacio, that’s not Jefferson?”
“Tudo bem?” asked the settler, passing nearby. Todd surprised him with a hearty embrace, making Jefferson laugh soundlessly.
Without stopping work, Ignacio told Todd that the settler had reappeared at his church about three weeks earlier. He’d staggered in, ill with fever, but the nuns had nursed him, getting him back on his feet surprisingly quickly. Ignacio suspected an incentive. Jefferson hadn’t found the tribe, but he’d heard rumours which made him keen to resume his search. He intended to go alone, although he was still weak enough that Ignacio had insisted on accompanying him as far as the longhouse.
“But I’d be glad of company,” Ignacio told Todd. “Especially on the way back to town.”
Celso couldn’t go with him, having recently left on other business.
“You can’t wait till Celso gets back?” Todd asked.
Ignacio murmured something dismissive. It was a vague morning, hazy and unsettled, the kind that would eventually cool their labours with rain. Todd was about to let Ignacio’s nebulous answer drift off into the clouds when he remembered how often he’d done that on the first trip.
“You don’t want to?” he insisted.
Ignacio sat back on his heels, looking troubled.
“This has been hard on Celso,” he replied. “First he made the great discovery of an uncontacted tribe, then he realized that with all the unfortunate corruption in the local office, he didn’t know who to trust with his information. Soon he even began to doubt what he’d found. Perhaps these were merely the people he read about in the files, the tribe living on the reserve north of the mountains. They’re a nomadic group. It seemed possible they had simply wandered further south.”
Todd glanced at Jefferson.
“He says not,” Ignacio went on. “He says they’re two quite separate tribes, although they might have met.”
“They might have, might they?”
Ignacio tossed a coiled rope into Jefferson’s outboard. They were taking two boats as far as Jefferson’s camp. It was a poor man’s convoy, loaded with dried food and gasoline. Todd saw an axe, a package of cloth. The humble stock of an itinerant trader. Of a guilty husband, coming home late.
“What are we getting towards, Ignacio?” Todd asked. “I can’t play Sherlock Holmes any more, I’m too tired. Can’t you just try and tell me the story?”
Ignacio smiled faintly, and looked apologetic. “The narrative impulse is not mine, I’m afraid. But it’s true he came into the hospital when Jefferson was ill. ‘Tell me what they call themselves, give me some of their language.’ He wanted to ease his doubts, you see. But these are very precious things, very carefully guarded. When Jefferson didn’t answer, Celso shook my poor friend. The sister saw this. She was even forced to stop it.”
Ignacio coloured in embarrassment, and got up to place another gas can gently on board his boat.
“You’re leaving now because he’s away.”
When Ignacio didn’t answer, Todd added, “You’re hanging him out to dry, Ignacio.”
“We’ll deal with Celso later.”
“And one of the few things I know for sure is that it’s better to deal with a problem right at the start. Do it properly; it’s hell to correct it later. Though maybe we’re already too late on this one.”
“By several centuries, I believe.”
15
When Todd heard the rapids for the second time, they were louder, fiercer. In June, the rainy season was just ending, and the river ran high. He wondered if they’d have to put in to shore further below Jefferson’s camp, and glanced toward the settler in the boat ahead.
As he did, Todd saw Jefferson tense, straining to see something upriver. Then the settler threw open his throttle and raced away. Ignacio had to sit back and let the wake overtake them. They rode up and down, maddeningly up once more and down before Ignacio could gun his motor to follow. Even then, they were well into the eddies below the rapids before Todd finally made out what Jefferson had seen, and closed his eyes in horror.
Someone had widened the tiny beach below Jefferson’s house into an ugly, muddy cut in the forest. Someone had used it; was using it. As Jefferson rode hard into shore, Todd began to see pockmarks in the mud. Footprints? Worse: the tracks of earth-moving equipment leading up the low bank. What he didn’t see was Jefferson’s house. The small house had stood just inside the sheltering forest, but it was no longer there. Instead, Todd glimpsed bright industrial yellow through the gently-moving leaves. Landing, scrambling, following the tracks, they found a bulldozer parked where the path widened on the site of Jefferson’s vanished house. It was small enough to have been brought on a barge upriver.
Big enough to have levelled the landing strip Todd saw through the trees.
Jefferson sat down on his haunches b
eside the machine and pulled his cap down over his face. While Ignacio lingered beside him, Todd walked up to the rude, bulldozed strip. With the rapids so close, it sounded like a busy airport, although there was only one plane parked at the far end of the clearing. Tents were pitched near it. Todd could hear scattered high notes from a tinny tape deck playing there.
“Can I help you?”
The small figure at the far end of the landing strip called to Todd in American-accented English. He sounded brisk, businesslike. New here.
“I doubt you could, actually,” Todd called back.
They met at the centre of the runway. The latest intruder was a tall, muscular, prematurely-balding fellow in his thirties who kept his meaty arms crossed suspiciously. Todd wondered why no one his own age ever seemed to make it to the Amazon.
“Todd Austen,” he said. “Rainforest Coalition.” The man stepped back and his expression turned ironic, but he shook Todd’s hand.
“I didn’t know we had any of you guys up here. Rob Mankiewicz. Rio Anna Mines.”
“So we’re neither of us traffickers,” Todd said, and Mankiewicz laughed, caught out. “Geologist?” Todd asked.
“That’ll be about right.” He looked over Todd’s shoulder. Ignacio and Jefferson must have walked onto the airstrip, but Todd was keeping an eye on the Brazilians behind Mankiewicz, who did not look friendly.
“Father Ignacio Esquilache Cruz,” Todd said, as the priest arrived. “And this is our guide, Jefferson.”
“Father,” the geologist said respectfully. So he was a good Catholic boy, happy to shake hands with Ignacio. Jefferson hung back, looking shell-shocked, but the geologist wasn’t paying any attention to Jefferson.
“Haven’t happened to stumble on the remains of a house around here?” Todd asked, and Mankiewicz smiled uncertainly. “Our guide had a house up here. Right about where that impressive piece of earth-moving equipment is squatting at the moment.”
Drink the Sky Page 16