Red Rain

by Toby Neal

  “People have lived here for thousands of years. We just don’t know how to,” I said.

  MacDonald stomped back and forth, muttering furiously, swinging the rifle as he tried to assimilate what had just happened. Falconer and I sat numbly. I felt bad for the big black man. He’d saved us half a dozen times already, and the one time he tosses a snake, it nails one of us.

  “It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.”

  “Doesn’t matter how it happened. He’s still dead.” Falconer retched. I watched the man closely to see if he was going to succumb to the poison as well. Finally he stopped dry-heaving, sat back on his heels, and covered his face with his hands.

  MacDonald had a lot more energy than I did right now, and he could put it to use. “We need to bury the body as best we can. Use the stick to dig. I’ll take anything useful off the body,” I told him.

  Falconer stood and picked up his walking stick. The two men found an open area and began digging, gouging the pointed ends of the sticks into the soil to soften it, then scraping it away. It was going to take a while and burn a lot of time and energy, but just leaving our companion to rot was out of the question.

  I removed Kerry’s dog tags and a cross on a silver chain from around his neck. If we made it to safety, his family would treasure these. I rolled his body over and unbuttoned his shirt. Crude as it was, we needed everything we could use, beginning with the shirt. I took it off, and then tore strips from his undershirt. I was able to shed the banana-leaf dressing and tie the rags around my wound, which was still oozing and angry-looking.

  I took off Kerry’s belt. “Do we need his boots? Pants?” I asked the other men.

  Both shook their heads and went on with their grim chore.

  “We might as well make our fire and cook.” The thought of eating made me queasy, but we needed to be practical. “We’ve been here a while, and we’ll be here a while longer.”

  “You know how to start a fire?” Falconer tipped his head, assessing.

  “I know the bow method. I just need the knife and some dry wood.”

  “That’ll do. I’ll help if you run into problems.”

  I stood and shuffled through the damp leaves, picking up a pile of sticks and finding a small log. It seemed the driest of the lot, but I needed it bone-dry.

  Perhaps some fiber would help. I could make the string for the bow out of fiber, too.

  I picked a green branch and peeled it, bent it into a two-foot bow and tied a narrow strip of fabric off Kerry’s pants to it as the string. Whittling a bowl-like hollow into the log, I set aside the dry shavings and mixed them with cut-up cotton fibers from Kerry’s clothing. Finally, I found a sturdy stick, carved a sharp point, peeled the damp bark off it, and then, using the bow, began spinning the stick in the bowl of the log. The tinder piled around the point of the spinning stick would provide fuel for the spark and heat as it developed.

  Falconer and MacDonald moved loosened soil out of the area they’d dug with their hands. Falconer got up and came over to inspect my rig. “Not bad,” he said, as I began the spinning.

  He returned to the hole and I kept going.

  The tiniest breeze moved down on us through a hole in the thick canopy far above. I was sweating freely as I worked the bow. It was tricky to hold the log, work the bow, and not lose balance of some part of the rig. After five or so minutes I could feel heat being generated by the friction of the stick’s spinning point in the bottom of the bowl.

  Falconer sniffed. “I smell smoke.” He came to check my progress again. We both watched the spinning point of the stick. My shoulders had begun to cramp, and he must have noticed because he reached out and took the bow. “You go help dig. Just don’t open up your side.”

  I surrendered the bow and he continued the spinning without missing a stroke. It was essential that, once started, the motion and friction be maintained. Falconer had come in at just the right time, with fresh energy.

  MacDonald was loosening soil out at the edge of the pit as I joined him. “If you can keep digging the soil, I’ll scoop it out,” I said, and he nodded.

  Looking at MacDonald was like watching a human figure melt, as the man’s pudginess disappeared, leaving bags and folds behind. MacDonald’s plump, rosy cheeks had imploded into pale flaps of skin that hung off craggy cheekbones. He didn’t look better thin.

  He stabbed the soil with the stick, and I scooped.

  “Do you think Falconer meant to throw the snake on Kerry?” MacDonald whispered.

  I frowned. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Maybe he’s not leading us in the right direction,” MacDonald said. “Maybe he wants something.”

  I rocked back on my heels, forgetting my injury for a moment. I clutched my side with a groan. “You’re paranoid.”

  “His kind always has another agenda.”

  “His kind?” I hissed. “You mean—what, exactly?”

  “He’s black.” MacDonald had the grace to flush a little.

  “Yeah, and you’re an asshole,” I snarled. “Shut the hell up, man.”

  “Something wrong?” Sweat gleamed on Falconer’s forehead and muscular arms as he looked up at us, but the man was a machine. He didn’t slow for a minute.

  “Nothing. This guy’s just not thinking straight after what happened.” I narrowed my eyes at MacDonald. “Feel free to leave. Good luck making it fifty feet without us.”

  “Sorry.” MacDonald spat after he said it, and it came a little close to me. If I hadn’t been in danger of opening up my wound, I’d have taken him down right there.

  “I’m gonna remember what you said,” I hissed quietly. “If you give Falconer any shit, you aren’t coming out of this alive. Get me? We’ll just leave you behind.” I didn’t like what I was seeing come out of the camp manager.

  “Now who’s paranoid?” MacDonald hissed, but he shut up after that. We worked faster. Anger was fuel.

  “Got it!” Falconer exclaimed. A tiny blossom of flame bloomed in the bowl of the log. “Help me feed it!”

  I’d made a pile of tinder and sticks beside the fire rig, and I came to help Falconer strengthen the flame. Gradually we got the fire to accept damp sticks, though it smoked sluggishly.

  “We need a bigger log,” Falconer said. “This fire is never going to get big enough to cook anything without more fuel. You stay here and keep it going. MacDonald, let’s get some more wood.”

  I narrowed my eyes at MacDonald. He tightened his mouth, dropping the digging stick. The two of them moved off as I nursed the tender flame, keeping it alive but trying not to blow so hard it went out.

  I glanced over at Kerry’s face for the first time since the young man had been bitten. I hadn’t been able to do anything but focus on one area of his body at a time before.

  His neck, checking his pulse.

  His mangled wrist, as Falconer made a vain effort to keep the poison from making it to Kerry’s heart.

  The sad mechanics of rifling Kerry’s pockets and removing his clothing had helped keep me from really seeing him.

  Now, in this moment alone, I could really look at the man’s face. Lying on his back, his eyes closed, Kerry looked young and peaceful, sprawled as if he’d fallen asleep—but his bloody wrist, resting against the forest floor, was already crawling with ants.

  I restrained the impulse to brush them away. They couldn’t hurt him now.

  I swallowed the grief and regret locked in my throat.

  I found more sticks, scooped the leaves away, and dug around the small glow of flame, preparing for a bigger fire. It wasn’t long before I heard the sounds of the other men’s approach. MacDonald and Falconer returned, hauling a good-sized fallen log, bristly with protruding branches.

  “This was under another windfall,” Falconer panted. “So it’s mostly dry.”

  I handed over the knife, and Falconer hacked off the dry branches, feeding them into the flame. With the addition of the extra fuel, the fire stabilized and we were able to ev
entually work in the larger log.

  “I’ll make a rack for us to roast the pig. If you could finish…” Falconer gestured to the hole and the body.

  I stood, and MacDonald and I got back to work, chiseling out another three inches from the bottom of the pit. I uncovered a rock in the soil—but when I went to throw it out, I noticed a shape to it. Dimples with regularity, two points on one side. I sat back on my heels and brushed the dirt off.

  I was holding a small stone carving, no bigger than the palm of Kiet’s hand. By the pointed ears, I thought it must be a jaguar’s head, though it was so stylized as to not look like any cat my Western mind had seen. I dimly remembered reading an article about the recent discovery of a lost city in the Honduran jungle. I held it up. “Look. I think it’s a jaguar head.”

  “What is it?” MacDonald frowned, reaching for the artifact. He frowned. “It’s the devil. See the horns?” He pointed to the jaguar’s ears. As if it had been conjured by the carving, we heard a yowling cry, not that far off, which I was pretty sure came from a real jaguar.

  We smelled the stink of burning hair as Falconer got the pig up on a rack he’d built over the fire.

  “Sorry about the smell,” he said. “If I skin it, we’ll lose a lot of the nutrition in the cooking process.”

  “I’ve never cooked a whole pig before. I grew up in LA. I was twelve before I realized that meat didn’t come wrapped in plastic from a meat factory,” I said. “MacDonald, give me back that carving.”

  “It will bring bad luck. Might even attract the jaguar.” MacDonald tightened his mouth. He still looked pale and sweaty, and his blue eyes skittered away from mine, but he thrust the carving into my hand.

  “I heard that jaguars were endangered and very shy.” I slid the stone into my pocket. “I don’t believe that shit about luck and the devil. But I do think we’ve got this hole as deep as we’re going to be able to. Let’s do this.”

  One on each side, MacDonald and I moved Kerry’s body into the hole. We’d been able to get down only eighteen inches or so into the root-bound soil, but that would have to do. We laid Kerry on his back and twisted his body at the hips. We folded his knees so that he fit into the five-foot hole. He was already stiffening slightly at the joints with the beginning of rigor.

  The pig cooked merrily, with a delicious odor that was sure to attract every predator for miles around. Falconer joined us, and using our hands, we moved the soil back over Kerry. All three of us patted it down, smoothing it. MacDonald suddenly gave a harsh sob.

  “This isn’t right,” he muttered. Tears slid down his pallid cheeks. “This isn’t right.”

  “It isn’t,” I agreed. “And it could be any of us. This jungle is home to some of the most venomous snakes in the world.”

  I watched MacDonald fight down the angry words he wanted to say condemning Falconer. I knew that helpless feeling of waste and rage, the desire for revenge, the need to blame. I’d been through all that too many times. I simply weathered those feelings now, waiting for them to pass. But MacDonald wasn’t experienced in death. This was probably his first real emergency situation, and he didn’t know how to handle it.

  Blaming Falconer wasn’t the way to handle it.

  We tamped the soil down. Falconer found a puddle of trapped rainwater in a bird’s-nest fern. In the cuplike center of the plant, we washed the dirt off our hands as best we could.

  Falconer turned the pig. The fat dripped off of it, sizzling on the wood beneath. I wished that we didn’t have to lose one drop, but perhaps we could gnaw on the wood later. I almost smiled at the thought, but that didn’t feel right with Kerry’s body cooling in a grave mere feet away.

  “Damn it,” I muttered, taking off my boots and socks. No, nothing about this situation was right.

  My ruined feet had not liked the hike in the boots. The blisters and contusions from the other day were oozing, red and raw. I extended my feet to the fire to dry, hanging the filthy socks off the end of the stick piercing the pig. “Sorry about that. I have to get them as dry as I can.”

  Falconer made a dismissive gesture. “No worries.”

  We might as well learn a little more about each other while we waited for the meat to cook—talking might ease the tensions since Kerry had died so abruptly.

  “What brought you to this godforsaken jungle?” I asked MacDonald. “Got a family at home?”

  MacDonald shook his head. His loose cheeks wobbled. “Nah. I have a girlfriend, but we were saving for a house and a big wedding. I thought this would speed that up.” He made a gesture that took in the dense, heavy jungle, soporifically hot now that the sun was out. A cloud of gnats broke up and reformed as his arm cut through them. “So you know something about the snakes here, Falconer? Is that why you threw a deadly one on Kerry?”

  Falconer looked up from where he squatted, turning the pig on its wooden spit. “It was a reflex. An accident.”

  “We talked about this already.” I narrowed my eyes warningly at MacDonald. “We’re damn lucky to have someone with Falconer’s skills leading the way.”

  “I don’t know about that.” MacDonald’s cheeks flushed a dull red. “Seems like things are getting worse out here rather than better. You’re injured, and he’s got the knife. And the pig.”

  Falconer stood to his feet, a slow, menacing uncoiling. “Is this what you meant by MacDonald’s thinking being messed up by what happened, Stevens?”

  “Yeah. MacDonald seems to be having a mental breakdown.” I lowered my hand to rest on the pistol, tucked in my waistband. But MacDonald was holding the machine gun. One burst from the M16 and he’d have the whole pig, and everything else, to himself. “But I’m sure all he needs is something to eat.” As if to increase our longing, a drip of fat burst into flame with a smell so powerful I felt it, hot and delicious, on the insides of my nostrils. “Perhaps there’s something ready enough that you could hack a piece off for him, Falconer.”

  Falconer’s eyes rested on the rifle in the other man’s hands and then he turned to the pig. “That can be arranged.” He used the knife to carve into the haunch. Drippings of fat and juice splattered on the wood, making it flare and smoke. The smell reminded me of every campfire I’d sat around as a Boy Scout with a pork dog bursting on a stick—but better.

  A plant with large, paddle-shaped leaves grew nearby, and I picked several leaves, layering them into a crude plate. Falconer set a large section of meat, moist and still pink, but by far the most delicious-looking thing I’d ever seen, on the leaves. Using both hands, he carried it to MacDonald.

  I held my breath as MacDonald watched Falconer approach, the weapon ready. When Falconer stood before him, tall and calm, meeting his eyes, MacDonald realized that to take the meat, he had to set the gun down.

  He did, leaning it against a nearby tree and taking the meat from Falconer. He didn’t thank the other man. While MacDonald’s hands were full, I leaned over and snatched the rifle.

  “I’ll just carry this for a while.”

  Falconer walked back to the fire and flipped the pig again. Both of us tried to ignore the sights and sounds of MacDonald’s frenzied attack on the piece of meat. It didn’t sound pretty, and I wasn’t surprised when he suddenly stopped eating, breathing heavily.

  “I’ll have to kill you if you puke that up.” Falconer didn’t look at the man as he said this, just added more wood to the fire.

  MacDonald managed not to puke. I gazed out at the jungle, scanning for danger and waiting for the meat to cook the rest of the way.

  There wasn’t any movement, but shifting shades of green and brown as far as I could see. A few buzzing flies, fat and hovering, had found us along with the gnats and mosquitoes. Far off in the treetops, I could hear a troop of monkeys screaming and whooping. A tiny wind shushed in the leaves above us. The smell of roasting pork was heavy perfume in my nostrils.

  Falconer eventually served us and tamped the fire, and finally I sank my teeth into the crispy hind leg he’d given me. No
thing had ever tasted as good as the sweet, tender, juicy, perfectly done piece of meat I ate down to the bone. I gnawed slowly, pausing every few bites to savor and make sure my stomach was able to handle the rich food.

  MacDonald lay down on his back, belching ominously now and again, but he seemed to have fallen into a stupor—an improvement over his aggressive, paranoid state of mind.

  After we ate, Falconer rewrapped the remaining meat in the shirt. “I’ll carry this with you, MacDonald.”

  The other man grunted.

  “We should get on our way. See how far we can make it while there’s still daylight,” Falconer said.

  “Sounds good.” I had finished eating, thrown the bones far out into the bushes. As Falconer packed the meat into its crude carrying sling, I fashioned a cross of two sticks and a piece of vine. I anchored it in the middle of the grave. “Does anyone want to say a few words over Kerry before we go?”

  “I do.” Falconer walked over to stand next to me. He bent his head and prayed aloud, his big square hands folded. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” The familiar words of the Lord’s Prayer in his deep mellow voice were calming to me. I closed my eyes to listen.

  MacDonald clawed his way out of the food coma enough to sit up and bow his head. “You were a good man, Kerry. I swear I’ll get you justice.”

  I didn’t like his words. It was my turn, and I worked the cross a little deeper into the soil and spoke casually, as if Kerry were right with us.

  “You were brave and kind, Tim.” He’d told me his first name, but this was the first time I’d used it. “I wish you’d had longer on this earth, because I can tell you were the kind of man who had the makings of a hero. You never spoke a harsh word, even at the end. You worked hard, carried your load, and helped others. The world needs more like you, Tim Kerry.”

  I patted the soil gently, as if covering the young man for the night with a blanket. It comforted me to imagine that was what I was doing. I stood slowly, keeping my arm tight against my injured side.

  “Can you take some sort of heading for this spot, Falconer? So we can send a team to come find Kerry and bring him home when we get out of here.”