Lost in the Jungle

by Bill Nye

Ava leaned out over the side and tried to study the equipment and antennae on the roof. “What kind of sensors does it use?”

  Captain Bobby held up his hands.

  “What kind of algorithms is it running?” Matt added.

  “Beats me,” he replied. “I just drive her.”

  “Only you don’t drive her,” I noted.

  He pointed at me. “Exactly!”

  The geniuses were suddenly quiet, their brains tangled into knots. And I didn’t know how to respond. As we cruised east down the river, Manaus became a memory. The two rivers finally blended into a milky brown. Thick, green jungle replaced the buildings on the shore, and the rain began again, forcing us into the cover of the cabin.

  Every so often I’d spot a caiman swimming low in the brown water. Matt pointed out a few river otters, too. They were as large as me, gray and whiskered and slimy, as if they were covered in some kind of goo. A few smaller ones snaked around one another as we passed, slithering up the bank of the river into a narrow, dark hole below the exposed roots of a huge tree. I shivered as I watched. The otters were definitely going to turn up in my dreams.

  “Fascinating,” Matt said.

  “No,” I replied. “Creepy.”

  Rain began to fall again, and the five of us sat around the table as the boat steered itself east. Our captain stretched out on the long bench behind the pilot’s seat and pulled a cap over his eyes. I figured he was going to take a nap. Instead, he asked, “So where am I taking you kids, exactly?”

  “The rainforest,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know that,” he said. “But where in the rainforest? It’s a big place.”

  “Tomorrow we’ll turn north up the Rio Jatapu,” Alicia said.

  Our captain yawned and said that would be fine.

  That night, we anchored the boat in a deep pool on the banks of the river, and Bobby cooked us a huge pot of rice, beans, and some kind of bitter greens for dinner. The rain stopped once we finished eating. Moonlight shone between the clouds. Red dots glowed near the edge of the river. At first I thought the lights might be one of my siblings playing around with the laser pointers. But then I remembered my reading. The eyes of the caiman, the South American version of the crocodile, glowed an eerie red at night.

  My row-mate on the plane had warned me about the noise. I figured the river would be quiet, though. Instead, the sounds of the jungle carried over the water. Birds were yelling at one another. Insects were buzzing wildly. Occasionally, something would holler or roar. I tried to spot the source of one of these sounds. But behind the caimans, all I could see were tall trees and dark shadows. I’m not a believer in Bigfoot. Hank and my siblings wouldn’t let me latch on to a myth like that. Not even a really awesome one. But down in Brazil, some of the locals believe in a creature called the “Mapinguay,” a sloth the size of an NFL lineman that stalks the jungle. The beast is basically the Amazonian version of Bigfoot. And as I stared into that thick, dark jungle, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d popped his head out and waved.

  8

  HOOKING A MONSTER

  The next morning, I rolled over in my cramped cot and looked for my alarm clock. Then I remembered that we weren’t home in our small apartment. We were on the Amazon River, Hank was missing, and our captain didn’t know the difference between the bow and the stern. I tried to go back to sleep. I failed.

  On deck, my siblings and Alicia were sitting at the table, eating. Pepedro was juggling in the back of the boat, and Bobby was dangling his legs over the bow, staring at the river as the boat cruised east.

  “What’s for breakfast?” I asked.

  Ava leaned her bowl toward me, revealing more rice, beans, and greens. “Leftovers,” she said.

  “And he doesn’t make breakfast sandwiches,” Matt added. “So don’t bother asking.”

  At lunch, Bobby served rice and beans again. I forced down a bowl, but I wasn’t sure I could eat the same meal one more time. Pepedro, Alicia, and the geniuses weren’t happy about our food, either, so we all decided to confront our captain.

  “I thought you were going to bring your own food,” Bobby admitted. “All I’ve got onboard is rice and beans.”

  “We brought food to take on our hike, but we need to save that,” Alicia noted.

  Off the port side of the boat, something splashed. Bobby pointed. “Hey, what if we drop anchor and catch some fish?”

  “Have you ever fished this river before?” Alicia asked. “It’s not easy.”

  “Our parents used to say it’s one of the most difficult places in the world to catch fish,” Pepedro added.

  “Well, then it’s a good thing I’m one of the world’s greatest fishermen,” Bobby answered. He held up his index finger, then skirted around us and climbed belowdecks. A few minutes later, he popped up, carrying a fishing rod and a tackle box. Then he stared at the rushing water. “The river’s too fast here,” Bobby said. “At this time of the day, I think we’ll have more luck closer to the banks, where the fish are resting in the shade.”

  Alicia eyed the shore. “It would be too dangerous to steer the boat that close. We could get stuck in the shallows.”

  Crouching down, Bobby hovered in front of the plastic case holding the emergency life raft. “This is kind of an emergency, right?” he asked. But he didn’t wait for us to answer. Bobby pulled the case onto the deck, unsnapped a pair of metal clasps, and staggered back as it popped open like a clamshell. The rest of us moved away. The lid flipped back. A small engine folded out of the back, and a rough gray material inside began to expand, slowly taking the shape of a surprisingly large boat. The craft was long enough for Matt to lie down and stretch out. Two hard plastic benches unfolded and extended across the width of the raft. Within seconds, we had a fishing boat.

  “Amazing,” Pepedro said.

  Bobby himself was staring in wonder.

  Alicia poked at the hull. “Riverboats should be metal,” she said. “The bottom of the Amazon is cluttered with trees and roots and sunken boats that reach right to the surface. They will tear a hole in this.”

  “Nah, this stuff is tough,” Bobby insisted. “Nothing’s going to rip through it.” He crouched down and bit into the side of the boat. “See? Go ahead, take a bite.”

  Instead, I scratched at the sides. It felt like an air mattress. Ava checked the engine. “Electric?”

  “It’s the way of the world,” Bobby said.

  “Reminds me of the Snowgoer,” Matt said quietly.

  The Snowgoer, one of Hank’s lesser-known inventions, is a four-passenger vehicle that’s part snow blower, part bouncy house, mostly impractical, and completely fun. He’d brought it down to Antarctica the previous year, and we’d used it to cruise over the ice. One bit of advice: if you’re ever in a Snowgoer, don’t take any jumps.

  My brother leaned over the railing. His eyes were aimed at the river, but his thoughts were far away. I put my hand on his shoulder. “We’ll find him,” I whispered.

  He nodded without looking up. “I know.”

  Bobby clapped his hands. “Who’s coming with me to catch some dinner?”

  Alicia wagged her finger. “I don’t fish.”

  “I barely swim,” Pepedro added.

  Matt patted me on the back. “Jack will go with you.”

  Of course I would. My siblings cooked up the genius ideas. They mastered new languages and built satellites and robots. But someone had to jump through windows and climb into miniature boats on dangerous rivers.

  Bobby clamped down on my shoulder. “What do you say, Jack-o?” he asked. “Are you ready to hook a monster? Maybe a pirarucu?”

  “I’m ready to catch dinner,” I said. “I don’t care what it’s called. Let’s go.”

  Matt and Alicia lowered the boat into the water. I climbed in first. Bobby followed and shooed me to the bench at the bow. He flicked on the battery-powered motor, and we cut across the huge, wide river. The Amazon didn’t flow in one steady direction. Some of the water
rushed east, toward the sea. Some swirled in place. Boils and bubbles popped near the surface. Along the banks, huge branches and tree trunks rose up out of the muck. Here, the river flowed in the opposite direction, back toward the source of the waters, high in the Andes Mountains. The speed changed, too. The current was slow in some places and rapid in others.

  The Von Humboldt was shrinking behind us. The boat swerved as Bobby steered around a tree limb drifting down the center of the river. I gripped the sides. The branch was racing past us like it had hidden propellers. I thought about what Alicia had said earlier—how entire boats were lying all over the river bottom, too. An entirely different world was hiding in that murky water.

  “That’s our pool right there,” Bobby said, pointing to a swirling section of water beneath an overhanging tree. “See, Jack, you’ve got to think like a fish. And if I were a big old pirarucu, that’s where I’d want to hang out.”

  The bow bounced as we sped across the river. Bobby threw a small anchor into the water, cut the engine, and netted a few dozen fat minnows. Then he readied his rod. He threaded his hook through the eyes of a still-wriggling fish about the size of two of my fingers and tossed it into the swirl. His cast was perfect. I watched the line for a minute, waiting for a monster to strike.

  The first fish Bobby reeled in was small.

  The second was smaller.

  The third fish was only the size of my hand, and after Bobby flipped it into the bottom of the boat, he asked me to remove the hook. A year ago I would’ve refused, but I’d done a little fishing in Hawaii, so I was okay with handling the scaly swimmer. I grabbed a rag and held it still with one hand. But as I reached for the lure, the creature snapped at my fingers with a set of gnarly triangular teeth. I jumped back. “That’s a piranha!”

  My knowledge of these terrifying fish was limited to a few mentions in books and a movie about a mad scientist who develops mutant piranhas with legs that swim to New York City and crawl around the streets at night, attacking people as they came out of theaters and overturning hot-dog carts to feast on boiled frankfurters. Sure, the little guy in the boat didn’t have legs, but there was no way my fingers were going anywhere near those flesh-ripping, razor-sharp choppers.

  “There are no piranhas in this part of the river,” Bobby said, annoyed. “Just get the hook out.”

  I sat on my hands. “Nope. No way.”

  “Fine!” he shouted. “I’ll do it myself!” He almost leaped out of the boat when the fish opened its mouth. “That’s a piranha! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Since Bobby wasn’t going to touch the fish, either, he cut the line and tossed the miniature monster back into the river with the hook still embedded in its jaw. I wondered what happened when a creature was tossed back like that. Would he go tell his friends how he scared two humans? They’d probably think it was cool. Maybe they’d even consider attacking New York. For the hot dogs, at least.

  The two fish Bobby had caught would barely feed one of us. So we motored up and down the river, anchoring in one supposedly perfect spot after another. We were out there for what felt like a couple of hours. Another meal of rice and beans no longer seemed all that bad. “Should we give up?” I asked.

  “One last cast, Jack,” Bobby said. “One last cast. Let’s try another spot.”

  He steered the boat upriver and cruised around a giant tree sticking up out of the water like an enormous, bent finger, then signaled me to toss the small anchor. “We should probably stay away from that,” I suggested.

  Bobby ignored me. We swung downstream of the huge tree, and the hull bumped into something under the surface. A small tear opened in the bottom. Water flooded in quickly. I tried covering the hole with my foot, but that only opened it more. “Bobby, we have a problem,” I said. “There’s a rip in the boat.”

  The Von Humboldt was nowhere in sight. We’d motored too far. My partner cheered. His rod was bending so much it looked ready to snap. “I’ve got a big one, Jack-O!” he shouted. “She’s a beast!”

  “The water’s really coming in,” I said.

  “We’re fine,” he said. But he didn’t even glance down. He held the rod with one hand and moved me aside. “Switch places. I need to move to the bow.”

  “Can I drive?”

  “We’re not going anywhere until I pull in this fish.”

  His reel wasn’t turning. Whatever he’d hooked into didn’t want to budge. Scientists discover new species in the Amazon all the time. One every three days, according to my brother. Mostly, they’re tiny little guys. Frogs, insects—that sort of thing. But what if Bobby was about to pull up something entirely new? Ideally, our host would fall into the river at the last second. Then I’d grab his rod, reel in the creature, and get the credit. Would I get to name the new discovery? If so, I’d call it “the jackfish.” There probably is a jackfish already, though. Maybe something more Amazonian would be better, like “the jackaru.” Only if it was beautiful and majestic, though. If it was an ugly beast, I’d have to name it “the mattarando” or something.

  Whatever creature was down there still wasn’t giving up. And neither was Bobby. The water was up to our ankles but he didn’t care. Sweat was pouring down his head. His eyes were turning red. Veins in his neck and arms were bulging. “Wipe my forehead!” he ordered.

  Was he serious?

  He asked me again. “No way,” I answered.

  “Please!” he shouted. “I can barely see.”

  And I couldn’t see using my shirt to wipe some sweaty dude’s face. So I grabbed the rag we’d used to hold the piranha. Bobby was sitting up in the bow, with his back to me. I worked fast, and he was grateful. Soon the fish scales would drip into his eyes, though. “We really should think about getting back,” I reminded him.

  The brown water was up to my shins. I started splashing it out of the boat. “Bobby, we seriously need to move,” I said. “The river’s coming in too fast. You have to release the fish.”

  “We’re fine,” he repeated.

  I reached around him and started pulling up the anchor.

  “I’m not giving up, kid,” Bobby growled, his teeth clenched. “Leave that anchor alone.” He grunted, unable to move the reel. “She’s a fighter, but she’ll tire soon, and we’ll eat well.”

  Something about Bobby’s voice was different. But I didn’t have time to figure it out. The water was almost up to my knees. Bobby was standing now, pulling at the hidden creature with all his weight.

  “I’m not sure you should be—”

  “Quiet! I’m trying to concentrate!” he barked at me.

  The piranha with the hook in his mouth was definitely circling in the water below. He’d probably called his buddies, too. They were all down there, waiting for us to sink. I looked back for the Von Humboldt, but the river curved, and a stand of trees leaning out over the water blocked our view of our friends.

  “Almost got it!” Bobby yelled. “I can feel her getting weak.”

  And I was feeling the water rising faster and faster. The tackle box full of fishing lures was floating at my knees. Popping open the lid, I grabbed a knife, reached around Bobby, and slashed at the thin line. The rod snapped up toward the sky.

  Bobby fell back and almost tumbled out of the boat.

  Then he turned and grabbed me by the shirt. He started shouting and showering my face and shirt with angry spit. I crawled back toward the stern but he wouldn’t let go. Honestly, he could’ve yelled me right off the boat into the river. And in the middle of all the screaming, I realized what was different about his voice.

  His accent was gone. There was nothing Scottish or Irish about his voice. He sounded like any other American.

  Suddenly he stopped yelling and looked all around him, as if he’d just woken from a dream to find himself in our half-sunken vessel. His legs were deep in the brown water. I was already soaked to the waist. We had minutes at most, and those piranhas were waiting. Maybe a furious jackaru, too.

  Frantic, he moved
to the back again, practically throwing me toward the bow. He started our engine, but the whirr of the motor faded quickly. “Dead,” he said. “I hate batteries!” He pushed his hands back through his hair and squinted in the direction of the shore. “Can you swim?”

  “Yes?”

  “Is that a question or an answer?”

  “I can swim. I just don’t want to.”

  Bobby splashed at the water inside our boat. “This little vessel is going to go under in less than five minutes. Sorry, Jack, but we don’t have a choice. We have to swim for shore.”

  I pointed to the submerged tree. “What about that? Can’t we climb up onto that?”

  “No way we’re going to make that. We’d have to swim against the current.”

  The shore was just a few lengths of a pool away. Thin, tall trees leaned out over the riverbank. The soil was the color of sand, and a few steps inland, green reeds and bushes and vines rose up like round and curving walls. The sunlight didn’t penetrate that world of green. Shadows lurked everywhere. I thought I saw something move.

  The bench at the bow was almost entirely underwater, but I sat anyway. I crossed my arms on my chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Bobby sneered. “You’ll make it. The current fades in strength once you get closer to shore, into the shallows.”

  “I’m waiting,” I said. “They’ll come looking for us.”

  “What’s the matter? You afraid of a few fish?”

  Yes. And I wasn’t too thrilled about what might be waiting for us in those shadows, either. Not to mention that I trusted our captain about as much as a kid with his fingers crossed. If he’d been faking his accent this whole time, what else was he lying about?

  “Go for it,” I said. “I’m staying.”

  “Do what you like, Jack-o,” Bobby said.

  He lifted an arm over his head and pulled at the elbow. Then he did the same with the other arm. Bobby sucked in a few deep breaths, rolled his shoulders, and plunged headfirst into the water. The river swirled and rushed around our sinking boat. A river filled with sharp-toothed piranhas, deadly caimans, and menacing miniature fish. Even the otters had sharp claws. And if none of those monsters managed to suck me under, the Amazon might do the job herself. If I didn’t make it to the shore, the current would carry me out toward the Atlantic Ocean.