“You’re going to send your child into the everlasting fires of hell.”
“Get out of my way.”
With fierce disgust, FrannyB took a step back, FrannyA tight to her side.
The Tatinga man held out the doll to Anna, who took it, cradled it above her pregnant belly, and fell to her knees in the wet sand as if she had just been handed the torn and bloodied body of her son. Her convulsions over the palm-leaf child put us all in shame, reminding us that this was not our loss, and we quieted so the flowing river, the sun—weak behind a scrim of cloud—the eagle pairs huddled side by side in the trees, all could hear her lament.
The Tatinga man got to his knees and began to rock, chanting over the crumpled woman and straw child, sweeping his hands through the air above them, around them, as if sending her grief away. When she had cried herself out, he gently took the doll from her arms and laid it in the small canoe the other man had placed at the shore. He nodded toward her and Franz, who, with his wife, pushed the little canoe out into the waiting water of the Amazon. The tiny craft turned in an eddy before the main current discovered it, disappearing it around a bend in seconds. By the time I turned back to the men, they were gone.
TWELVE
Night came on as it always did in the jungle, hard and fast like a shutting door at six o’clock, exactly twelve hours from sunrise, the ruthless rotation of equatorial days. Along with the rest of the villagers, we threaded through clusters of six or seven huts arranged loosely in circles as if for safety, many of them sharing a clay oven shaped like an igloo. Trawling nets hung from trees next to rows of javelins, fishing poles, and bows and arrows.
Under a narrow, thirty-foot-long thatched roof stretched a bench of equal length rubbed smooth by countless asses. Above it, the bar: another impressive slab of termite-bitten wood, this one buffed to a well-worn sheen by a thousand elbows. Suspended over a row of fat candles, an anaconda skin as long as the bar, in variegated patterns of yellow, brown, and black triangles—over five feet at its widest—had been nailed to a plaque in short intervals. Its coloring was bright and rich, as if this creature had been alive and crawling not too long ago. Its anvil-shaped head hung down on one end in a posture of utter defeat, insect-eaten eyes leaving pinched black holes, tongue hanging down a foot or so, split, red, and stiff looking. A hand-painted sign scrawled on a thin strip of bark tacked below the fattest section of snake read: Bienvenido a la Barra de la Anaconda. “Welcome to the Anaconda Bar.”
Omar and I settled near the tail.
A small, rotund woman dressed in a tube top and a sparkly short skirt filled glasses, pouring steadily to satisfy the milling crowd.
“You’re Omar’s wife?” she said with flat affect as she set out plates of tiny speckled-brown eggs—each could have fit in a teaspoon—hard-boiled quail eggs.
I nodded.
“I’m Carmelita. I’m from San Solidad,” she said, as if San Solidad were the center of the universe and she was just slumming here in Ayachero. She touched her hair, which had been swept into an updo, something I hadn’t seen on any of the other women, not to mention the sparkly skirt, tube top, or white plastic platform sandals.
Under the bar, three caged quails squawked in a bamboo cage, lifting their dinosaur feet and clawing at the sides, their heads crowned with a Mohawk of rainbow spikes. On the bar, a little green gecko eyed the eggs, motionless in the way only lizards can be. Carmelita brushed it away; it went flying off into the humming trees.
Omar took a few eggs, peeled them and handed some to me after he rolled them in a clay saucer of dirty-looking large-grained salt. They were delicious, still warm and dense with yolk.
“You’re from the boat?” Omar gestured at what looked like a pile of junk docked at the beach. A dredge—half garbage truck, half barge—sulked under flickering torchlight. A tangle of hoses and vicious-looking metal parts hung off one side, torn canvas tented the other. A few rough-looking men in tattered shirts and shorts leaned on the metal railing, perhaps hoping for a breeze off the river.
“We just arrived,” she said to Omar, leaning into him, breasts almost completely liberated from her top. “You know, we are very sorry for your loss.”
Was she flirting with him?
With a smirk, she turned away from us, back to filling glasses and setting out plates laden with strips of meat. Nearby, skewered mouth to anus by a metal pipe, the pig hung over a fire dripping fat from its roasting flesh.
“Who’s she?”
“A hooker. Some men must be coming through.”
Franz and Anna approached us and accepted their glasses of sugarcane brandy. Bolivian pop tunes jangled from a boom box behind the bar, tuned to a low volume perhaps out of respect.
“We heard about the spiders in your hut,” Anna said. “We need to burn that one down. Please, stay in ours until we can build you another one.”
“Thank you,” I said, but Omar cut me off.
“We’re fine in the longhouse for now, but that’s very kind of you.”
In the end I was relieved we’d passed on this; their hut may have been tarantula-free, but it was tiny: just one room for them and Claudia. We would have been on top of one another. There was no privacy in the main room of the longhouse, but at least there was space.
The crowd parted as two white men blundered through. They wore ragtag camouflage gear from head to toe; heavy knives hung from leather straps at their sides, guns gleamed under belts.
A huge man, bald under his sisal hat, led the way. He was heavy in the jowls, with thick eyebrows and a mustache as bushy as a squirrel’s tail. He wore the skin of a jaguar like a cape over his back, its massive head hung down over one shoulder. Flies walked stickily over its still-open eyes. The other man, gangly and gristly, wore his oily blond hair in a ponytail, exposing a badly drawn tattoo on the back of his neck of a naked woman riding a motorcycle. Whistling, he dragged a wooden cart stacked with three yellow-footed tortoises the size of garbage can lids, all bound by balsa-bark restraints. Still alive, they moved with dispirited swipes of their powerful arms. In a shadowy box jerry-rigged on top, a live infant macaw hopped and squealed, red and blue fluff flying off its body as it bounced itself off the walls of woven sugarcane. Lashed to this was a tightly wound roll of brilliant blue, red, and yellow feathers.
It unnerved me that the only other white people around—besides the Frannies—seemed to be thugs. Until that moment, I could envision a growing—perhaps painfully slow—camaraderie with the villagers. All that suddenly became a bit hazy. I shrank into myself, drank my brandy too fast, kept my head down.
The fat man waved his ham-hock hands as he knuckled his way through the crowd. Testily, the village men let him pass. “Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, thirsty men here, coming through, coming through.” The women gathered at the far reaches of the torchlight as he swung a big thigh over a stool at the end of the bar.
Bristling, Franz pulled Anna behind him as he drew closer to the big man. “When did you kill this jaguar?”
The poacher held out his hand and smiled. “Wait, wait, wait! A man hasn’t even met these new people or had his first drink and that’s your first question? Introduce us, Franz!”
Franz’s face turned dark, taut with contained fury. “Omar, Lily, this is Fat Carlos—”
“Omar!” he said, accepting with a wink a glass of aguardiente rocketed down the bar by Carmelita. He knocked back the contents, sucking the sugar off his lips. “I remember you. The long-lost brother, the one who got away. Who went to the big city and—what—it didn’t go so well? Tell me everything.”
Omar got up and stood at his brother’s side. “I’m here for my nephew’s funeral.”
“Funeral?” He glanced around. The crowd had afforded the men a wide berth; many were helping themselves to pig or roasted yucca. A few seemed to be actually enjoying themselves, voices rising, even laughing occasionally. The mood much different than down at the beach. “Well, I wouldn’t have guessed it,” he said, glanci
ng around. “But we’re surely sorry to hear that. Aren’t we, Dutchie?”
The scrawny-necked man grinned and sputtered as if he’d been told a joke, his blond mustache greased with pig fat. “It’s a shame when someone dies, it sure is. Who died, then, Carlos, do we know?”
Fat Carlos picked his teeth with a short knife as he eyed Franz.
“A jaguar took Benicio a week ago. Down by the Tortoise Beach,” Franz said.
“Well, that is a tragedy. Truly. You have my condolences. I did wonder what the big spread was all about. Lovely pig. My compliments to the—”
Franz pushed in closer to the big poacher, his eyes ablaze. “When did you take this jaguar?”
“Oh, it’s been a week now, hasn’t it, since we’ve been out, Dutchie?”
“ ’Bout that.”
“We were way out. West of the Tatinga. Nowhere near here. By the Black River, near that oxbow lake.”
Dutchie’s swimming pool–blue eyes grew wide. “She was sleeping in a tree. All sloppy-like.” He did a pretend collapse in his seat, his arms falling forward, neck loose. “Like that. Got her in one shot, didn’t we, Carlos?”
Franz took another step toward the big man, but Omar hissed something under his breath, seizing Franz’s forearm and fastening him in place. “What was in her belly?”
Fat Carlos grinned at Franz. “You think maybe . . . oh no, oh no. Im-possible. Right, Dutch?”
Franz fumed. “What was in her belly?”
“Listen, I’m very sorry for your loss, but if you’re asking what I’m thinking you’re asking, well—”
“What was in her belly?” Franz wrenched his arm free from Omar’s grip and grabbed at the tattered collar of Fat Carlos’s open shirt. Dutchie freed a gleaming knife from his belt, hopping from foot to foot as if ready to pounce at his boss’s command; grinning like using the blade would provide entertainment, nothing more.
“Dutchie. Enough. You’re overreacting.” Sheepishly, Dutchie did another dance step with the knife, dialing down the fun before cooling off completely. “We’ve talked about this.” Carlos shrugged himself free of Franz’s grip and straightened his threadbare collar with a prissy sort of care. “No need for any of this, my friends. The jaguar’s belly contained—nothing like that. No boy parts. Jaguar stuff. Fish. Paca. Ocelot.”
Franz gathered himself as Omar visibly relaxed. “Let me see the paws.”
“Of course.” Carlos got up and turned slightly toward Franz. The jaguar’s long arm swayed slightly, the claws of its heavy paw scraping against the bar. With Anna just behind him, Franz picked it up and studied the three-inch claws, turned it over, examined the great soft pads ringed in black. He turned it back over, flattened it against the bar. Anna traced her forefinger around the paw, slowly, almost dreamily, then snatched it away with a yelp and covered her mouth, tears coursing down her cheeks. She turned away.
“No,” Franz said, pulling her back. “No, Anna. Look, come back and look. This is a different jaguar. The prints on the beach were twice this size.”
She snatched up a knife that Omar had been using to peel an aguaje. With a stifled scream, she stabbed the paw, attaching it to the wooden table, and stumbled off toward the longhouse. Fat Carlos pursed his lips and shook his head.
“Sorry,” Franz said as he pulled out the knife and returned it to Omar. “She’s not herself. She wanted this to be the one. So did I.”
“It’s all right.” Carlos reinstalled himself in his seat next to Dutchie. “It’s understandable.”
Doña Antonia strode bruskly down the bar, wiping it clean, gathering plates. The place was starting to clear out, families drifting off to their huts, children held tight to their mothers’ skirts. “So you’re almost finished here, you two?”
Fat Carlos gave her a look. “Well, that’s not very friendly of you, Doña Antonia. We were all just catching up, getting to know one another. You know, I’m remembering more about Omar, here. Didn’t you tell me he hunted with the Tatinga? Omar, is that true? That’s impressive. That’s remarkable. You must speak Tatinga, then?”
Omar nodded, his own knife glinting from its hook on his belt.
“You must have gotten to know them pretty well. All their jungle secrets and so forth.”
Omar said nothing.
“That Beya. That batshit-crazy shaman. How well do you know her?”
“As well as anyone.”
“Now she,” he said, warming to his third glass of brandy. “She scares me. Got that look in her eye, like she’d kill you and it’d be nothing. Just a day’s work. Cast a spell on you, and you’d wake up with no teeth, your nose cut off and up your ass, some freaky shit like that.”
Dutchie guffawed, smacking his hands together with glee. “Nose up your ass, you’re so fucking funny, man. I love this guy.”
Carlos ignored him.
“She’s helped a lot of people here,” Omar said.
“Maybe. Maybe she’s changed. I’m sure not gonna visit her and find out.”
“Men,” Doña Antonia said, grabbing their glasses from them. “Leave us.”
“Whoa!” Fat Carlos’s hands flew up. “Okay, then. Overstayed our welcome. Clearly.” Grabbing the bottle of brandy, he pushed himself to his feet, wiping greasy fingers on his many-pocketed pants. The jaguar pelt rippled in the gloom. “Dutchie, shall we?”
Tipsily, they headed off down the bank to the shore, Dutchie dragging the squeaky cart laden with the slowly struggling tortoises, Fat Carlos arm in arm with Carmelita, who tottered, loose ankled, on her platform sandals. A clot of chickens scattered in front of them; the men howled in mock surprise, pausing to take potshots. The birds exploded in little fireworks of yellow, red, and white feathers, their heads and feet flying every which way. Dutchie squealed and blasted off a few more shots up into the starlit sky for good measure.
Under the cloak of darkness, the rusted hulk of a boat strung with Christmas lights looked almost pretty reflected in the oily black river.
* * *
Doña Antonia poked at Panchito, dead asleep on folded arms at the bar. He swatted her away and turned his head, resettling like a cat. She swore a fantastic string of curses as she wiped the bar one last time, then headed up the hill, the silver in her gray braids glinting in the moonlight as she walked. Only Omar, his brothers, and I remained at the bar.
“Him and Dutchie stole that dredge,” Franz said. “They were working the rig for the owner, but figured there was more in it for them with him dead. Not that he was some kind of angel. I mean, for years these guys poisoned a whole branch of the Beni, looking for gold. Everything’s dead there now, for many, many kilometers up that river. They got the tribes killing each other for territory; hell, these two were the ones who pushed the Tatinga so close to us. Now we’re competing for game like we never have before.”
“What about the law?” I said. “Isn’t someone going to come after these guys?”
Franz looked at me with something like pity. “Do Americans think there are laws in the jungle? Huh. Interesting.” He took a contemplative swallow of his brandy. “Nobody steals canoes. That’s the only law I know of.”
“What about the gold? Why are they bothering with game?” Omar said.
“They hit some veins early on, but ever since they killed their boss, nothing. Not one gram. It’s like they cursed themselves. So they’re back here, hunting whatever they can, steering clear of the Tatinga, who’d kill them on sight.”
A gust of relatively cool, wet air swept up from the river. The moon slipped behind the clouds, and in minutes a savage onslaught of tropical rain sealed us in the wall-less bar.
“It’s different now, Omar,” Franz continued. “Remember when we were fifteen, sixteen? Hunting trips were a day, maybe two, then we were home. And the fish! We could scoop them out of the water with our hands. Not anymore. Now, to find tapir, peccary, boar, spider monkey, anything, we have to go deep in. We’re gone a week, sometimes two.”
Omar peered at th
e shoreline; the lights of the dredge were smeared looking through the downpour. “How many men are with them?”
“I counted five this time. Sometimes he’s got a dozen, more. They’re animals, every one of them.”
Franz woke Panchito; they took off in a trot in the rain toward the longhouse. Finally we were alone, nursing an odd quiet between us. I couldn’t get the words, we’re gone a week, sometimes two, out of my head. I took a big swallow of brandy, it burned a sweet, hot path down my throat.
“What if we took a trip together? You could take me to the mahogany grove.”
He gave me a quizzical look. “You think knowing everything is good, Lily. Is that an American thing?”
“What’s wrong with wanting to know everything?”
A huge beetle, maybe two inches long, landed on the bar near my glass. It lifted half its carapace and fluttered it as if to dry the shiny brown wing from its flight through the rain, rotated its antennae as if sensing us there, then lifted and shook its other wing.
“I’m protecting you,” he said more softly.
I took a few more sips as a balm on the distance between us, which I didn’t anticipate, then held out my empty glass. He poured me just a finger more, holding my gaze.
Above us, around us, the rain ceased as abruptly as it had begun; the jungle night steaming and hissing. I’d come to find that, even in the middle of the dry season as we were, it rained torrentially at least once a day, if only for a quarter of an hour. We listened to the sounds of water running off the thatch, chortling into thin braiding streams on muddy paths. The leaves above us dripped endlessly, creating their own rain.
“Come on, Lily,” he said, taking my hand. “Let’s get settled at the longhouse.”
As we walked together through the hot night mist toward the glowing ovens on the hill, I tried to think of ways to lighten things between us. “Do you want to know your next assignment?”
He smiled and squeezed my hand. “Sure.”
“This time, write about the Tatinga. Anything you can think of.”
Into the Jungle Page 9