by Joe Kane
When Rifleman cooled down, Chmielinski started again. From time to time Odendaal appeared to say something. The discussion continued for about an hour or so. Finally, Chmielinski led Machine Gun and Rifleman down to the raft, Odendaal following.
Machine Gun said that they would let us go, but they wanted a donation.
Rifleman asked about Durrant’s sturdy waterproof watch, which had hands but no numerals. Bzdak explained that to use the watch, one had to approximate the time, divide by four, add the quotient to … Rifleman no longer desired the watch.
We undid our bags. Chmielinski extracted our fishing net, with which we had caught not a single trout. Machine Gun nodded in appreciation and accepted it. But when Chmielinski withdrew the film crew’s boom microphone, Machine Gun’s eyes widened and Rifleman raised his gun. Slowly, coolly, Chmielinski mimed its function. Machine Gun and Rifleman relaxed.
“Fish,” Rifleman said. Chmielinski had agreed to give him five cans from our stores. I removed them from the food box.
“Six cans,” Rifleman said.
“Five cans,” Chmielinski said, with surprising vehemence.
“Six.”
“We agreed on five. That is what I will give you.”
“Give him six!” Durrant hissed.
Chmielinski stood firm. I thought I would faint. I could not see the wisdom of getting shot over a can of tuna.
Rifleman accepted the five cans. He smiled. Machine Gun smiled. We smiled. We shook hands all around. Machine Gun gave Odendaal a poster of their presidential candidate. And then we closed up our bags, tied them under the net, jumped in the boat, and paddled like hell for that big rapid, which we then ran without scouting. Once into the flat water below it we stroked for all we were worth. We did not look back.
Below the rapid the river bent sharply left and delivered us into a translucent mist. Twenty minutes later the mist lifted, unveiling, to left and right, mountainsides covered with rain forest. The air, an hour before dry and brittle, now hung thick and moist and pungent with balsam. Parrots and parakeets sounded off overhead, and above them circled two hawks. Brown balls that looked like oversized coconuts revealed themselves to be monkeys as they looped through broad, leafy trees and swirling liana vines. We had emerged from the land of the dead.
In the flat water Odendaal paddled ahead of us, and an hour after sunset we found him, Truran, and Biggs in their kayaks, hidden behind a rock. With the kayakers in the lead, our fleet drifted silently under the light of the rising half-moon until Biggs spotted a creek protected by a rock wall. We pitched camp on a high sandbar near a grotto bursting with tropical ferns. Chmielinski cooked dinner, but when he started to serve it by candlelight we put the candles out immediately. Better to spill our stew than to make ourselves easy targets for a sniper.
As we sat in the darkness and ate, Odendaal gave his version of the Sendero confrontation. After instructing Biggs and Truran to kayak ahead in search of help, he said, he had sacrificed his own safety to race back to the guerrilla camp and offer himself as a hostage if the guerrillas would set the rest of us free. He believed that he had rescued us.
Chmielinski, of course, did not remember it this way. Later, he told me that the guerrillas had referred to Odendaal as “that crazy guy.” Whatever the case, Odendaal’s return to the guerrilla camp had been bold but unneccesary, and he did not fully comprehend the gravity of the situation—though he knew that our captors were something called “Sendero Luminoso,” he believed they were unrelated to “the violence that exists elsewhere in Peru.” The explanation that seemed better to fit the facts of his behavior was Truran’s: The memory of his partner’s tragic death on the Limpopo River drove Odendaal to seek redemption through feats of bravado that he interpreted as heroic.
After dinner we stood watch through the night in one-hour shifts. Each lookout wore Chmielinski’s rescue whistle, which he was supposed to blow loudly at the first hint of strange activity. At the sound of the whistle Biggs and Truran, who slept with their kayaks in a place removed from the main camp and close to the river, would sneak away and paddle through the night until they could find help.
Bzdak and Durrant kept a two-hour watch together and shook me awake at eleven o’clock.
“Kate thinks every shadow is a Sendero,” Bzdak whispered.
Durrant said, “It’s creepy.”
I took up my position atop the rock wall. The river gurgled at my back, and on the slope facing me fireflies illuminated the shadowy slanting bush. As I stared at those flickering dots I thought, Is that one there a bug? A match? A candle? A flashlight? Why does it continue to flash in the same place?
At midnight I went to Odendaal’s tent.
“François,” I whispered.
He jumped up and shouted, “All right all right! Everything okay! No worries!”
When he was fully awake and had quieted down I said, “Your watch.”
Then I retired. At 4 a.m. Chmielinski said softly, “Joe,” and left a mug of hot coffee at my tent.
About noon the next day we landed at the marine outpost of Lechemayo, across the river from the charred remains of what had been a settlement called Villa Virgen. Two dozen shirtless, crewcut young men in khaki pants stared at us from the bank. When we beached they brought bananas and pineapples and beer. The garrison commander, an older, serious man, was not happy to see us. We were in the Red Zone without permission, and he had trouble swallowing Chmielinski’s description of how we had descended the river. No boats that he had seen could handle the Apurimac above Lechemayo. At first he was suspicious when we said we had not met any guerrillas, but then his face cracked in a lurid grin. “You were lucky,” he said. “Last week they hanged five civilians up there.”
Below Lechemayo new rivers entered the Apurimac every mile or so. The Great Speaker swelled and picked up speed, but she ran smooth and deep. Her voice fell to a whisper. Every few miles on either bank crude log watchtowers loomed over the thick green canopy. Rural irregulars used them in the campaign against the guerrillas, but I was certain they were also useful to protect the dozens of coca-bush plots we now began to see. They were everywhere, not hidden at all, planted in hundred-square-foot patches carved out of the bush, their bright greasy leaves twinkling in the sun like green coins.
We arrived at Luisiana the day after Lechemayo. Although there is a small village there, Luisiana was, or had been, better known as a cacao plantation and resort hotel run by a godfatherlike figure, or patrón, named Pepe Parodi. We found a state of riotous entropy. The guerrillas had bombed the guts out of Luisiana. Its gardens and patios and swimming pool were cratered and charred, the resort compound overrun with jungle vegetation. Pepe Parodi had fled to Lima. All that remained of any consequence was a small distillery run by a shifty-eyed mestizo who offered to sell a bottle of what the label described as “Luisiana Brandy” but tasted like cheap cane alcohol.
The mestizo did grant us permission to camp in a mud patch near the mouth of the stream that carried the village’s refuse into the Apurimac. The night was clear, but the stars, veiled by jungle humidity, lacked the brilliance they had displayed in the high Andes. We built a bonfire and Odendaal called a meeting.
We had planned to pick up four sea kayaks some two hundred and fifty miles farther down the river, in the village of Atalaya. Leon would be bringing them there by jungle plane. Three of these boats were to be manned by Odendaal, Biggs, and Chmielinski. Because we were so far behind schedule (at least two months), Truran had no choice but to leave the expedition to return to England for what would probably be his last shot at a berth on the British national team. Nor did he have any great desire to paddle the flat water. There had been a tacit agreement that I would use the fourth kayak if I wanted to. Chmielinski did not want to be isolated on the river with Biggs and Odendaal and had strongly urged me to paddle the fourth boat, as had Truran, Bzdak, and Durrant.
There in the Luisiana mud, however, Odendaal announced that he was changing the plan. He would n
ot allow me to kayak the first leg of flat water below Atalaya. Instead, Bzdak, Durrant, and I, together with Leon when he rejoined us, would form what Odendaal called a “free-lance” team. We would be on our own. However, if we were able to move ourselves and the extra kayak the four hundred miles from Atalaya to Pucallpa in time to rendezvous with Odendaal, Biggs, and Chmielinski, I would then be permitted to paddle the fourth boat. Odendaal gave as his reasoning that if I kayaked that first leg, I would slow the river team.
“Why don’t you give Joe a chance?” Truran said. “Let him paddle from Atalaya to Pucallpa. If he can keep up, you haven’t broken his journey. If he can’t keep up, take him off the river in Pucallpa.”
“No,” Odendaal said.
“He has an opportunity to be the first North American to travel the entire Amazon under his own steam,” Truran said. “That would be a real feather in the cap for this expedition.”
“I am acting in the best interests of this expedition,” Odendaal said.
“Speed has nothing to do with it, François,” Durrant said. “You are the slowest person here at everything you do. You are acting out of personal animosity. You don’t want anybody on the river now but you and Tim.”
“This is what the expedition needs,” Odendaal said, his voice rising. “It has nothing to do with my personal feelings.”
“We help you through the bad water,” Bzdak said. “Now you are going to push us out.”
Odendaal denied this.
“Your plan is for the benefit of François Odendaal,” Truran said, “not for the benefit of this expedition.”
Odendaal exploded. “This is my expedition!” he yelled.
“This expedition belongs to all of us!” Chmielinski shouted back. “We are all working. You, me, all of us.”
The atmosphere was so tense that we ignored the headlights that had suddenly sliced through the night. Jeep doors opened and shut and we were surrounded by Peruvian marines who trained their weapons on us. A young captain demanded our passports. He studied them for several minutes while his men searched our tents. Satisfied, he smiled. “There is a curfew at six o’clock,” he said. “If you leave your camp, you will be shot on sight.” Then he wished us a safe journey and left with his men.
When the marines were gone Durrant asked Odendaal, “Are you saying that you can remove an expedition member at your whim? For no reason other than that you are in a bad mood?”
“Yes!” Odendaal said. He glared at her. “If I so choose I can remove two people!”
“So Joe goes now,” Truran said, “and then Kate and Zbyszek, and then Piotr. And then it’s just you and Tim.”
When Odendaal did not respond, Truran continued. “I don’t think the question here is how fast someone can or cannot paddle the river,” he said. “The real question is whether François Odendaal is fit to lead this expedition.”
“Are you saying you have no confidence in me?” Odendaal asked angrily.
“Yes,” Truran said.
Odendaal leapt to his feet. “Then that is the question!” He turned to the rest of us. The fire glinted off the underside of his face, throwing it into reverse shadow. “Do the rest of you agree with Jerome?” he demanded. “Do you? Do you?”
“What do you want, François?” Durrant said.
“I demand a vote! I demand to know exactly what each of you thinks of me!”
“Then you are asking us to commit ourselves either for or against you,” she said.
“I will not leave here tomorrow without a vote!”
“And if we vote against you,” Bzdak said, “then you will try to throw us out any way you can.”
“I give my solemn vow that if the vote goes against me, I will turn the leadership of this expedition, and all its remaining resources, over to whomever you select to replace me.”
Tim Biggs quietly tended the fire and kept his peace.
“François,” Chmielinski said, “do you know what you are doing?”
“Jerome!” Odendaal shouted.
“Frans,” Biggs said, “maybe this isn’t the time.”
“I will be damned,” Odendaal shouted, “if I will go down this river with an expedition that does not want me as its leader!”
“Then let it be,” Biggs said. He sounded tired, resigned to the inevitable.
“Jerome!” Odendaal shouted again, pointing a finger at Truran.
“No confidence!” Truran shouted back.
“Joe!”
“No confidence!”
“Tim!”
“Yes. Confidence.”
“Zbyszek!”
“I vote no.”
“Kate!”
“Really, François,” she said. “This is childish. Be reasonable.”
“How do you vote!”
“Don’t make me do this. We’re in this together. We don’t want to remove anybody.”
“Confidence or no confidence?”
“All right, then. If you intend to remove Joe, no confidence.”
“Piotr!”
“Frans!” Biggs yelled.
“Piotr!”
“François,” Chmielinski said, “you do not understand what you have done.”
It appeared to be true. Odendaal looked from one to another of us with a blank stare. Either he did not comprehend what had just happened (“He hadn’t done his sums,” Truran would say later), or he was startled to find his bluff called. Even without Chmielinski, the vote was four to one. He was out.
Biggs jumped up and stood between his friend and the fire, shielding him from the rest of us.
“Look, why don’t we leave this until the morning?” he said. He smiled nervously. “Everyone needs a good night’s sleep. What do you say, mates? Let’s do this in the morning, eh?”
He led Odendaal away from the fire, into the darkness.
Biggs was on breakfast duty the next morning. Before we ate he asked for a prayer.
“It’s Sunday,” he said. “The day we speak with our God. If we ever needed his help, we do now.”
“Tim,” Truran said, “it’s Saturday.”
Biggs said his prayer nonetheless, and we ate in silence, scratching at mosquito bites, until Odendaal spoke.
“There will be no vote,” he said. “Last night I failed to consult with my co-leaders. By putting myself in a position to be removed as leader, I abrogated my agreement with them. Anyone who has a problem with my leadership may speak to me about it in Atalaya. I will permit Joe to kayak from there. When we reach Pucallpa, we will decide if he shall continue.”
“Who will decide?” Truran asked.
“I will,” Odendaal said. Then he excused himself, saying that the mestizo had promised him a bottle of brandy. He walked up the mud beach to the ruined estate.
When Odendaal was gone, Biggs said, “That was really a courageous thing Frans did last night. He really put himself on the line.”
“Courageous?” Durrant said. “You call that courage? He flushed us out, and when he lost, he went back on his word. It was the height of cowardice.”
“We voted, Zulu,” Bzdak said. “He lost. He is out.”
“That’s it, Tim,” Truran said.
Biggs was solemn. “If you throw Frans over, a stink will settle on this whole expedition. I don’t want any part of it.”
“It stinks now,” Durrant said. “It has to change.”
Biggs saw Odendaal returning, ran along the beach, and stopped him before he reached camp. Truran joined them. He told Odendaal that we were prepared to stick by our vote.
When Odendaal sat down with the rest of us his eyes were vacant and his face ashen. He spoke slowly and would not look at anyone.
“It is apparent,” he said, “that this expedition no longer trusts me. I understand that you intend to remove me as leader, and that my word is no longer enough to maintain my position. I don’t want to end this expedition, and I don’t see a way to divide it cleanly. I apologize to Joe and to each of you who feels I have plotted against
you.” He said that if we would allow him to remain as leader he would agree “not to put my personal goals ahead of the expedition’s.”
No one spoke. After a few moments I realized that the others were watching me as if to say, right now you have the most to lose, so what do you want to do? But the looks on their faces were undeniable. Nobody had the energy for any more fighting, not then, not in that suppurating mud patch, not with the marines peering over our shoulders, not with all we’d been through over the last few days.
“It’s fine with me if you call yourself the leader,” I told Odendaal, “if you’ll agree to open your decisions to veto by simple majority vote.”
“I’ll do whatever you want.”
“That sounds fair to me,” Biggs said, and the others agreed. At Odendaal’s request we put the agreement into writing and signed it.
When we had finished Odendaal walked over to me and shook my hand. I was amazed. For such a proud man, his was an enormous effort.
“One day,” he said, “we will laugh about how stupid we have been.”
I said that I hoped we would do just that.
An hour later we all stood in the mud and jungle heat and said good-byes. Odendaal and Biggs, who had yet to secure Brazilian visas, would kayak the two hundred and fifty miles to Atalaya ahead of us and try to establish communication with the consular offices in Lima. We would meet them in Atalaya in a week to ten days. We wished them luck. Then they mounted their boats and paddled into the heart of the current, Biggs tense and alert, Odendaal listless and glassy-eyed.
Two hours later, the raft packed, the kayak tied to the stern, Bzdak, Durrant, Chmielinski, Truran, and I set off.
Returning to the river was like coming home from a bad vacation. The tropical heat was blistering and the humidity a dead weight, but after the turmoil of Luisiana we found it immensely relaxing to drift back into the bosom of wild country. That evening we camped on a long, clean beach, its glistening white sand warm late into the night. Across the river, throwing down a gentle chorus of birdsong and cicada buzz, the forest rose in a green wall of broad leaves and snaky vines so dense it looked like a single plant. Behind our camp, bushy hills climbed through a skirt of clouds to a high ridge. White puffballs hung above the ridgetop, and when the sun dropped between cloud and mountain, the sky lit up crimson, violet, and gold. It was the first real sunset we had seen in six weeks.