“He didn’t make it.”
“I was afraid that was the case. Come to my tent and clean up.
Ten minutes later I stepped into another tent to see the greatest man I ever knew lying week and feverish on a cot, in his undershirt and underwear, partially covered by a blanket. When he had left the presidency, Theodore Roosevelt had looked too young to even aspire to the office. Even a month before, when we were sailing across the great Pacific, he had seemed years younger than he should have. Now, suddenly, he was old. He had lost a great deal of weight and that had left him wrinkled and his hair and mustache had gone grey. He tossed his head and opened his eyes.
“Who are you?”
“It’s me, sir. Henry Goode.”
“My God, I would have never recognized you.” He stared for a moment. “You look better than I probably do.”
“You’ll be back to yourself once we get you back to the coast, sir,” I said.
“Yes. Thank you. We were hoping that a rescue party would find us, but I didn’t expect you to be a part of it.”
“Well, sir… there is no rescue party. Nor will there be. It’s just me.”
“I see,” he said slowly. He paused, staring into space and then looked back up at me. “I want you to get Kermit back to civilization.”
“I intend to get you both back,” I assured him.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” He pulled back the blanket, revealing on his leg a gash some fourteen inches long. It was open and festering, clearly infected.
“What happened?”
“We were attacked by the Tokayana as we were coming ashore in our canoes. In the chaos, one of the boats came loose and started to float away. As it had many of our provisions in it, I naturally went after it. I sliced open my leg on a jagged rock. After that, I became increasingly unwell. I believe I’m suffering from malaria in addition to the blood poisoning from the infection in my wound. I’m going to die. I’m afraid there is nothing to be done about it. So you will leave me here and get my son to safety. There is no more important duty given to a man than to protect his offspring. I’m entrusting you with my own sacred duty, unable as I am to fulfill it.”
“No sir. I will not leave you here to die.”
“You won’t be. You see, since my days in Cuba, I have carried with me a small vial of cyanide. As soon as you leave, I’ll swallow the contents of the vial and pass from this world. I’m not afraid to die. I’ve been ready since I was a young man, if truth were told. It is however, the type of thing one prefers to put off.”
At that moment, Kermit Roosevelt stepped into the tent, and stood beside me.
“That’s not what is going to happen, Father,” he said. “If you commit suicide, I will personally carry your body back to Oyster Bay for burial. Which do you think will be the easier task for me, Father… to carry back a man who knows about survival in the wilderness better than anyone alive, who can offer advice if not physical labor, or to carry back so much dead weight? For mark my words, I will be taking you back one way or the other.”
I could only nod in agreement.
“You disappoint me, Henry,” said the former president. “And you Kermit. I have noted for some time a stubbornness creeping into your character. I attribute it to your mother. But I can see there’s no dissuading you from the course you’ve chosen. Let us plan to set out as soon as possible.”
“First light,” I said.
“I’ll get the maps, so we can plan our course,” said Kermit, and retrieved several large rolled papers from a corner. “These may or may not be much help.”
“Let’s look them over,” I said. “We need all the help we can get.
Chapter Fifteen: Return to Civilization
That night I spent in a tent for the first time in over a month, on a cot no less. It had been Kermit Roosevelt’s shelter, but he vacated it for me, choosing to spend the last night at this particular spot sharing his father’s tent. I though he might want to keep an eye on the former president, but I knew that once he had given his word, that he would not take his own life, there was nothing to worry about in that regard.
I passed into sleep as soon as my body was horizontal. I don’t know what it was that caused the dream to return. Perhaps it was the knowledge that I would soon be returning to civilization. Whatever the cause, the dream did return.
I was outside the door of my home in Boston. I turned the key in the lock and entered as I had done a thousand times. In that unpleasantly way so common to dreams, I couldn’t move as fast as I wanted, as if I was pushing through syrup, though everything looked normal. Voices reached me from the other side of the parlor door. I couldn’t tell if they were male or female voices—but no, I knew who they were. I opened my eyes to find my face wet with tears. What had I done that would cause God to make me relive these moments?
* * * * *
I had been later than usual at the office, and my stop at the local pub with Martin had made me later still. Trudy wasn’t expecting me, knowing that we were going through the account histories that week. She had complained to her father about keeping her husband from her, but it was only one week a year.
It was cool, though not as cold as it should have been that time of year. The sun had been down several hours and the front walk was so dark that I had to traverse it by memory. I could feel the chilly breeze blowing though my trouser legs. As I made my way up the steps, I pulled my right hand out of my coat pocket to fish my key from my trouser pocket. I pressed the key into the lock, rotated it to the right, and then opened the door. I peeled off my coat, only then kicking the door closed behind me. I flipped the latch and stuck the coat on the coatrack.
I heard voices coming from the parlor and noted for the first time that the parlor door, which I don’t think I had ever seen shut before, was now closed. I crossed the foyer and put my hand on the knob, but didn’t turn it. I wasn’t really attempting stealth, but I was being quiet. I didn’t call out that I was home, and ultimately, I chose not to open the door, but to listen. Why the discretion? I don’t know. Something just seemed wrong.
I could plainly hear a man’s voice, a familiar one at that, but couldn’t quite place to whom it belonged. I hadn’t quite caught the first part of his sentence, but my mind pieced together the end. Then I heard Trudy’s reply and it was as if the pieces of a puzzle all suddenly fell into place.
“… does it have to be this way?”
“It just does. I’m married and I’m going to stay married, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still be together. You’ll just have to be happy with that, and knowing that my children are really yours.”
“I want to marry you,” he said. “I want us to be together forever.”
“We will be together as much as possible. I need Henry as my husband. That’s just the way it is. Be happy with what we have.”
I turned and stepped back across the foyer. Unlocking the door, I stepped out into the night. I didn’t stop to get my coat. I didn’t even close the door behind me. I just walked. I don’t know how far I walked, but I didn’t stop until I found a cab, so it must have been several miles. Climbing into the vehicle, I bid the driver take me to the train depot. Three hours later, I was gone from Boston, heading west.
* * * * *
At first light, we packed up what we were taking with us. I was in favor of leaving most everything they had in camp, but both Roosevelts insisted that two trunks filled with journals and samples had to go. So it was that the eleven of us set out in what I believed was an easterly direction. There were ten of us able-bodied: myself, Kermit, and a Professor Enoch Pierce, who had been the other white man I had observed in camp. It took two men to carry each trunk, and that with some difficulty. They were not as large as those I had brought to the continent and they had only one handle at each end. I had planned on four men to carry Colonel Roosevelt on his stretcher, but TR would have none of that. He was up on his feet and ready to go, though he required a man at each shoulder to help him alo
ng.
We made the best time we could, and though it was difficult to judge distance or speed in the depths of that swamp, we could not have been traveling very fast. We stopped every two hours, as judged by Kermit’s watch.
During the third such break, sometime in the early afternoon, we were attacked. The tactics matched those attributed to the Amboyana. We were peppered with blowgun darts, though fortunately none of them found a human target. Throughout, we never caught a glimpse of our enemy. TR fired two shots of his pistol at them, really only guessing at the direction, but it seemed enough to frighten them off, at least for a while, as we experienced no more of their cowardly brand of warfare that day or the next.
Though the area would hardly be described as bountiful, we did not starve. During the course of the day, we managed to catch several fish, two frogs, and a two-foot-long crocodile. In the late afternoon, we butchered everything and cooked it all together in a single skillet. It filled our bellies, though I can’t boast that any of our company had any prowess as a chef.
While we were eating, I happened to look up at Professor Pierce and saw that he had a thick, black leech affixed to the back of his neck. After removing it by pressing a hot ember against it, we all went about examining each other for similar parasites. There was not a single member of the party free of them. One of the natives set the record with fourteen, most nestled in around the loincloth that was his only real clothing.
We made one more short push before stopping, exhausted, and spending the night on a damp hillock covered with tufts of the ever-present swamp grass. The second day was almost an exact duplicate of the first, including leeches, but without the darts of the Amboyana.
Such was not the case on the third day. Barely an hour into the day’s journey, the Amboyana attacked again. This time, Professor Pierce and two of the Elizagaeans were hit, though they showed no immediate signs of distress, I felt sure the darts were somehow poisonous. Colonel Roosevelt was in particularly bad shape that morning. His skin was pale and he had been vomiting. He was in no condition to be fighting against anyone. I took his pistol and carefully fired into the swamp grass, guessing at our enemy’s location. The gunfire failed to inspire them to flee this time, and the darts continued, one hitting Kermit in the hand.
Suddenly a tremendous roar filled the air. I knew immediately what it was. It was the roar of the Elizagaean lion. I felt a thrill of fear run through my body and I can only imagine that the Amboyana did too, for they were encouraged to leave the area, the frightening sound evidently being a greater motivator than gunfire.
A quick discussion resulted in the consensus that we should move on at least a short ways before stopping to see to the injuries. It was a fortuitous choice, because no further than two hundred yards away we came across forty feet of fairly shallow clear water, and beyond that, dry ground. Crossing the stream as quickly as we could, we hurried across another hundred yards of ground that was bare dirt with small patches of grass, and into the edge of the now familiar jungle.
Stopping beneath the great trees, we made a hasty camp and then examined the wounds made by the projectiles of the Amboyana. In every case, the wounds had started to swell and turn a sickly yellow. We made small incisions across the punctures and attempted to drain any poison out. Taking a brief break from this task, I looked around and noticed that the ground here was covered in knee-high plants with spade-shaped leaves, which grew in the sunlit spots allowed by the breaks in the canopy high above. I immediately recognized these plants as of being the same type that Kanana had used to doctor my crocodile bite in our jungle hideaway.
Gathering as many as I could, I handed them out to the others and directed them to chew them into a paste and place them over their injuries. With those that I had left, I sat down next to the Colonel. He looked near death, and when I pulled back the bandage on his leg, the sight and smell of the infection almost made me retch. Nevertheless, I began chewing mouthfuls of the leaves, and once they had become a paste, to layer it over the wound. By the time I had bandaged him once again my mouth was completely numb.
“I’m not familiar with this plant,” said Kermit. “How confident are you that it will help my father?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I replied, “but it certainly can’t make his injury any worse than it is already.”
He nodded ruefully.
We moved a little further into the forest, hoping that it would give us some protection from the hostile natives. This probably wasn’t as good an idea as it seemed at the time. They were proficient in hiding in the swamp, so they were probably just as good at hiding in the jungle. Suffice it to say that none of us were thinking at our best. We at least thought to stay close enough to the medicine plants that we would be able to get more if they proved helpful. We camped around a small fire, which provided only warmth and protection, as we had no food to cook on it.
In the morning, the poison dart wounds all looked remarkably better, and the men who had been stricken with them felt much less pain. I carefully examined Colonel Roosevelt’s leg, and though it didn’t look significantly different, he seemed much more aware and comfortable. I applied a new coating of leaves and made sure to gather enough that I would be able to reapply them several more times.
We continued on our journey. We were a beat-up, sorry excuse for the remnants of a great expedition, but we felt so much better, no longer having to slog through the fetid swamp. We traveled three days, trying to stay on course as best we could. It might have been that we were traveling in a circle, or that we were taking ourselves off into even more terrifying wilderness, but something convinced me that we were on the right track.
At the end of the third day, we collapsed in a spot we had chosen for our camp. I leaned up against the trunk of a tree and had slipped into sleep when I heard one of the men shout. Looking up, I saw what had surprised him. Hanging from a branch not ten feet away were two small Elizagaean deer, gutted and butchered. I climbed to my feet and looked around the area, but could see no sign of how they could have gotten there. Of course I knew. I lifted my head up and scanned the trees.
“Looking for an angel?” asked Professor Pierce.
“Yes. Something like that.”
That food is vital to our bodies we know, and yet we seldom appreciate it. After we had eaten that night, and with a subsequent night’s rest, we felt like new men. Even Colonel Roosevelt seemed his usual boisterous self, though there would be no erasing the strain that the exploration of this new continent had written upon him.
We continued on, and in the evening when we stopped, there was a small tapir hanging from a branch, right where we had decided to lay our camp. Like the two deer the previous night, it was butchered and dressed and ready to be spit roasted over an open flame. When the feasting was over and everyone else had drifted into slumber, I crept out of camp a distance of about fifty feet, and called out in a loud whisper, “Kanana!” Though I repeated the call several times, there was no answer. I returned dejectedly to lie down in my spot between the Roosevelts and one of their trunks.
“You did it,” whispered Colonel Roosevelt. “You did it. Didn’t you?”
“What, sir?”
“You found the jungle goddess.”
I looked and saw myself reflected in his glasses. I couldn’t lie to him.
“Yes, I did.”
“And what is she?”
“She is just what everyone said she was,” I replied. “She is the keeper of the forest and the earth, and the bringer of evil and darkness and death.”
“Well today, and yesterday too, she was the bringer of life in the form of food.”
“I suppose she was.”
The following morning something remarkable happened. We came upon a trail. It didn’t look all that different from any of the thousands of game trails in the jungle, but it was going in the direction that I thought led back to the coast. It seemed familiar too. I didn’t know if my mind was playing tricks on me, fooling me into feeling a
recognition that wasn’t really there, but it lightened my spirits. The whole company, in fact, seemed to have higher spirits, and it was easier to travel the trail than to push through the uncut jungle.
This is not to say that we were all in good spirits and good health. Among the party, only Colonel Roosevelt looked better than he had back in the swamp. Everyone else looked considerably worse—gaunt, dirty, exhausted. I certainly felt the same way that the others looked.
That afternoon, not long after taking a rest stop, we pushed down the trail. I was in the lead, so it was I who first stepped out into a small clearing coming face to face with a fine example of the saber tooth tiger. I had seen one only twice before in my life—once on the plains of Elizagaea and once as a skeleton in a museum. This tiger had, from the looks of it, just killed a large tapir. His fangs were bloody, but he had yet to dig into the still warm carcass.
I stopped suddenly, and then tried to move back slowly. The others who were right behind me made this difficult as I bumped into them and they bumped into the men behind them carrying Roosevelt’s trunks. I managed to get three or four steps when the great cat leaped toward me. From out of nowhere a spear fell from the sky, piercing the tiger’s skull and pinning its head to the ground. It immediately dropped dead not three inches from my feet.
Looking quickly to the treetops, I saw her for a split second before she disappeared into the canopy. She was just like I had first seen her, naked but for a loincloth and a covering of mud. Though it was too far to make out any features, I swear I could feel her green eyes on me. Then she was gone and I felt like my insides had fallen out of my body.
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