by Louis Bayard
All of this to explain why Kermit, though earlier hoping for a hero’s send-off, was neither surprised nor offended by the lack of ceremony that greeted them when they returned. Their teenage escorts had run ahead with tidings, but the only figure that greeted them as they staggered out of the jungle was the chief himself. He sat on his tree-trunk throne with an air of dolorous expectancy, his eyes hooded, his head listing. If he was surprised to see Kermit bleeding from every quadrant and the Colonel limping after, his sole response was to let his head sink another inch.
Even when Kermit dropped the howler monkey at his feet, the chief’s face didn’t alter. He studied the carcass as if through a lorgnette. He muttered a few inquiries at Luz. Every angle and line of his body pronounced itself unpersuaded.
Of course, thought Kermit. He’s having the same reaction I had: The thing is too small!
On impulse, Kermit tipped the creature onto its back. A puff of breath escaped the chief’s throat as he beheld the belly soaked in blood and entrails … the wrenched-open jaw with its harvest of bloodstained teeth … the fierce and unnatural twist to the neck, as if the howler were already craning toward its next prey.
But what caught the chief’s attention—what drew him off his stump and made him bend down for a better view—were the eyes. No longer awash in pity but violently popped open, fluorescent with rage. Even in death, they seemed to live, to hunger.
The chief rose with a shudder. For another minute he held his peace. Then he made a queer circling motion with his fingers. From his mouth came a series of rapid clicks, which were taken up across the village, staccato clusters that returned as a succession of shouts, the shouts thickening into bodies. Within a minute, every last Cinta Larga was sprinting toward the matted, blood-soaked creature that lay sprawled and broken in their plaza.
Man, woman, boy, and girl, they crowded round, not in any clear formation but with a clear intent. Having taken their fill of the spectacle, they began to move in a kind of maypole dance, linking hands and whirling in an undulating circle around the dead animal. The bolder ones sallied forth and bathed the carcass in volleys of spit.
One of the Cinta Larga braves lifted Thiago above the crowd, and from there the boy was passed from shoulder to shoulder, his limbs dancing, his face a trance of joy. Around and around he went, until one of the company abruptly pulled him down. It was the same man who had kept Thiago from crawling toward the strangers that morning, and he was no happier about their presence now. With a grunt of suppressed outrage, he threw the lad over his shoulder and strode back to his hut.
“Oh, no,” said the Colonel. “That won’t do. See here, my good fellow! I suggest you—”
He had taken a single belligerent step in the man’s direction when Luz came flying toward them.
“No. No. Seu pai. Seu pai.”
The Colonel scowled. “What’s she saying?”
“It’s the boy’s father,” said Kermit.
“Oh! Reasserting the old paternal privileges when it suits him. Never mind that he sent his son into the jaws of death. I wouldn’t mind having a word or two with—dear Lord…”
An aged woman with stained skin and freely swinging dugs had tottered toward them. Her face was folded over her toothless mouth, and a bowl was squeezed against her cantilevered hip.
“Please,” said Luz. “She would like to treat Senhor Kermit’s wounds.”
Reaching into the bowl with her stubby fingers, the woman scooped out a mound of ocher paste and applied it in thick dollops to Kermit’s face and neck and arms—wherever the bats had taken hold. The effect was instant. The heat in his skin changed to a caress.
“Please,” he said, fighting the urge to embrace the woman. “Tell her she is very kind.”
“She wishes to do this, Senhor. She believes you are a miracle.”
He very nearly laughed.
“No, it is true,” said Luz. “You have helped to kill the Beast. More than that, you have descended to the depths and come back. No men have done this before.”
“Well, who can deny it?” said the old man when it was explained to him. “You’re a veritable miracle worker, Kermit! Even if you do look a trifle geisha in that makeup. Now, will you kindly ask our interpreter when we might expect to return to our comrades?”
The query produced the faintest shadow in Luz’s eyes.
“Is there something wrong?” Kermit asked.
“No, Senhor. The chief has said … he is very sorry to say to you that it is too late to take you back.”
“Too late?” Kermit gazed at the yolk of the sun sinking behind the trees. “We were abducted in less light than this.”
“But by the time they reached your friends, it would be dark, very dark.”
“I don’t give a damn if it’s midnight. I mean to hold them to their word.”
“No, Senhor, you must see this is a sign of their respect. Truly. If by chance you were to be lost on the way, this would be a very bad thing. For you and the honor of our tribe.”
“Honor.” The word trickled like wormwood down his throat. “You can tell them, Luz, that this is not honor. It is the opposite of honor to keep us here after we have fulfilled our agreement.”
“I cannot blame you for being angry, but I swear to you the Cinta Larga will do what they say. They have great respect for you both, Senhor. That is why they wish you and your father to be their convidados. For our festa.”
“Party?” interrupted the old man. “Guests? What can she be talking about?”
Two translations assembled themselves in Kermit’s brain. The first was simply: We are at their mercy. He took the more diplomatic tack.
“The chief wishes us to postpone our departure until tomorrow morning so that we may join him tonight for a celebration.”
He searched his father’s face, waiting for some sign.
“I … regard … this … as…” The Colonel hammered his fist into his hand. “Downright neighborly, Kermit!”
“You’re quite sure?”
“If the price of our freedom is some bowing and scraping and speechifying—well, I’ve had to endure much worse, believe me. You may tell His Majesty that we accept his gracious invitation but that we insist on being up with the dawn tomorrow. Oh, and see if they can fetch us some snacks in the meantime. I’m hungrier than a flock of birds.”
* * *
HERE WAS THE SUREST sign that they had risen in the village’s estimation: Instead of getting manioc, Kermit and the Colonel were proffered a roasted armadillo, still simmering in its clay pot. The only thing that kept them from swallowing it outright was the mechanical difficulty of tearing off chunks small enough.
“Bit like turtle,” said the Colonel, squeaking his finger along his teeth.
“Or chicken.”
“Food. That’s what it tastes like.”
They were still eating when the rain came.
All these months in Brazil, and Kermit never failed to be stunned by the speed of the storms. You saw a cloud lazily snarling over your head and then, before you knew it, the trees were writhing, and the sky was roaring, and you were done for.
They were barely in their huts when the rain massed into a cataract. No more than twenty minutes in duration, but it left behind a heaving fog that took with it most of the remaining light. Kermit could feel the drowse on his eyelids, the sag in his bones.…
“Time for a swim!” shouted the Colonel, stripping off his Army flannel shirt and his khakis.
“Father?”
But he was already gone. Striding through the village, clad only in his underdrawers, white as a summer cloud. He stumbled down the playa and marched right into the black stream—giggling at the first shock of cool water. Farther and farther he waded until, slipping on the stream bottom, he sank altogether, only to pop his head through the surface a second later.
“Up he comes!” shouted the Colonel. “Like a fat cork!”
By now a cluster of children had gathered to follow his progress.
And the combination of his porcine squeal and his hairless porpoise torso, shining from the water, released something in them. They began to point and shriek, and when the old man, using his forearm as a blade, sent a spume crashing on their heads, the shrieks redoubled.
The effect on the rest of the village was not galvanic but incremental. Which is to say that three of the Cinta Larga women paused in the midst of chopping wood, and the glaze of abstraction on their faces lifted a little as they watched the children dart forward and fling gallons of water at the stranger. And though he splashed back twice as hard, the children came back even harder. The battle raged on. The laughter mounted to the sky.
“Kermit!” cried the old man. “Come in!”
The younger man hesitated. He thought of what might be lurking beneath that surface. The piranha with its bellicose jaw. The sharp-spined, blood-sipping candiru. The pirara, the piraiba. Oh, Cherrie had cataloged all the risks—stingrays, electric eels, caimans—but the events of the day had chipped away at enough of Kermit’s reticence that, before he could talk himself out of it, he was kicking off his boots and tearing off his shirt. With a stifled cry, he flung himself headlong into the water.
The stream bottom caught him sooner than he expected, but he propelled himself back to the surface and was rewarded with a wall of water that caught him full in the face. Gasping, he saw the grinning spectacle of Thiago.
“You little devil,” murmured Kermit.
He shoveled up two handfuls of water, but the boy was already spinning away.
“Don’t let him escape!” the Colonel shouted. “He has no respect for his elders!”
Moving with exaggerated slowness, Kermit and his father began to circle the diving, darting boy, closing the noose tighter and tighter. But every time they sought to capture him, Thiago wriggled out of their grip or found a new hole to squirm through, and the hunt would be taken up again, half in jest, half in deadly earnest—such an entrancing spectacle that the other children fell utterly quiet before it. At last, after a succession of ducks and feints, the Colonel succeeded in collaring Thiago from behind and, with a bellow of triumph, tossed the boy straight up in the air. For a second or two, Thiago seemed to hang there, his arms and legs limp with delight, before crashing back into the water. And now the watching children broke their silence, clucked and howled and slapped the water and banged their wrists together.
Spent, Kermit found himself floating a little farther downstream. The water felt feathery against his skin. The sky was a lilac gray. He was glad—glad, yes—that they weren’t leaving tonight.
He wondered how he would ever begin to describe this day to Belle. Phrases flitted across his mind. The experience of … of repaying evil with good … of delivering a grateful people from their oppressor … is quite the most singularly rewarding …
No. Maybe it was better to start with the Cinta Larga mothers, who had never quite left off their work—whose faces had never quite cracked open into smiles—but surely some ray of light had been breathed into their darkness. Surely they grasped at some unutterable level that two strangers had risked life and limb on their behalf.
It’s true what they say, Belle. The feeling one gets at such times really can’t be put into words.…
Belle.
His hand scrambled toward his chest. The oilskin envelope containing her letters was still there.
“Senhor!”
Luz was standing on the near shore. No more than ten feet away but looking very far off indeed.
“You must be very clean,” she said.
He saw then that she was smiling. More freely than he had ever seen.
“Come in!” he called.
“We may not, Senhor. Women are not permitted to bathe with men.”
“Oh, but I’m a monster, not a man.”
She smiled again, shook her head.
“Well, in that case,” he declared, “I shall come to shore.”
Her head was bowed as he strode out of the water. They exchanged no words, but as he carried himself back to his hut, he noticed that she was following him.
“The children,” she said. “They love your father.”
“Oh, yes,” he answered with a snort. “It’s always been that way, you know. He was always the most popular of all the fathers. He was the only one who ever played with us. And our friends.”
“Very nice.”
“No matter how much muck and mire we got into, he’d wade right in, come back every bit as filthy. When we lived in the White House, he used to break off cabinet meetings—”
“Ministério?”
“The point is, he would interrupt his business—his very important business—and go scrambling with us along Rock Creek, up and down rocks. Little cliffs, really. He wasn’t afraid of anything. Or, if the weather was bad, we’d make obstacle courses in the White House hallways. We always had the grandest time with him.”
“He is still half a child.”
“It’s true.”
More child, in fact, than Kermit had ever been. Once again he pondered the destiny that had linked him, through mere biology, to such a man.
He and Luz sat quietly in the hut, listening as the cries of the village youth gave way to the noises of the jungle. Toads. Crickets and cicadas. A parrot or two. And some strange lamentations that Kermit had still not learned to identify. What was it Cherrie had said? “Always talking, this jungle. About nothing at all.”
“Your rifle,” said Luz. “Can you…”
“Yes?”
“Can you tell me how you fire it?”
“You mean you’ve never shot a rifle before? Not even as a girl?”
“My father could not abide guns, so I am as stupid about them as any savage. I noticed … there was smoke that came out.”
Kermit picked up his Winchester, felt its rind of moisture. “That’s just the powder burning,” he said. “Of course, you don’t want too much smoke or you won’t be able to see your target, in case you need to shoot again. There’s also a bit of resíduo that comes out. A kind of soot.”
“And the sound,” she said. “Why is it so loud?”
“Why, because you’re making a … a great explosion. A little bomba.”
He thought of that day in the Sudan when they had surprised a rhino lolling on its side, its hide black in the sun. As soon as the Colonel stepped out of the bush, the rhino jumped to its feet. Too late. The first bullet went through its lungs. It wheeled, blood spuming from its nostrils, and galloped straight for them. The Colonel fired off his Holland, and Captain Slatter fired, too, with his one good hand, and the chord made by their blasts was the single loudest sound Kermit had ever heard in his life.
“Luz,” he said. “Would you care to hold the rifle?”
“Oh, no.”
“I don’t mean fire it. I mean hold it. Here.”
He pressed the Winchester into her hands.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “It’s not the devil’s plaything; it’s a means, that’s all. To an end. Now, just…” He reached over her shoulder. “Point the barrel.”
“I am still afraid, I think.”
“This hand goes…”
Hooping his fingers around her right wrist, he guided her toward the crook between the stock and the trigger guard.
“And the other hand goes around the cano, yes. Now you”—slowly, he drew the rifle toward her—“bring your cheek to the stock…”
He was standing directly behind her. Unable at first to distinguish the smell of gunmetal from the smell of her hair.
“And now,” he said, “you’re ready to aim.”
“How?”
“Look through the sights.”
“Yes…”
“And bring your target into alignment. Do you see that cicada on the wall?”
It was the size of a small rat, with a lantern for a head.
“I see it, yes.”
“Frame it in your sights. But don’t focus on the bug; let it become a blur. Focus o
n the sights instead.”
“Very well.”
“Is your target in view?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then…”
Her finger curled around the trigger and quivered there. Kermit leaned in to her ear.
“Ready,” he whispered.
The veins startled up from her hand. The trigger drew back. She jerked her finger free and flung down the rifle.
“Pardon me, Senhor.”
“For heaven’s sakes,” he said. “I only meant to show you the thing.”
“I know, Senhor. I pray you will forgive me.”
He snatched up the gun, tossed it on the hammock.
“Perhaps you should go,” he said. “I am sure you have better things to do.”
She only lowered herself to the hut floor and watched him.
“All this humidity,” he grumbled, wiping the stock on his trousers. “Hell on a rifle.”
“Yes.”
“One doesn’t want the thing to rust.”
“No.”
He cocked one eye, peered down the barrel. Dabbed away some fouling.
“Tell me about Thiago’s father,” he said.
She was silent awhile.
“What do you wish to know?”
“His name, for example.”
“Anhanga.”
“And you are—I don’t know what to call it—the esposa of Anhanga?”
“One of them.”
“Ah.”
A sly smile spread across her face. “I did not mean to shock you, Senhor. Here a man may have as many wives as he likes. If he can make them marry him.”
“And how did he make you?”
“I was not his choice,” she answered simply. “I believe he regrets it. He speaks often of trading me.”
“Trading?”
“This is permitted, too. If a man sees a girl he likes, he may trade her for the wife he has. Or something else of use. A new belt. Some bows.”
“And the old wife has no say in this?”