“Fucking Omar, my man!” the man said. “Look at you! You’re an old man now, over.”
Omar beamed. “This is my wife, Lily.”
The river driver turned to me. I couldn’t guess his age; a dozen smile lines crowded his mouth and eyes; I instantly liked him just for smiling at me.
“I am called For God’s Sake,” the man said, reaching out to shake my hand. “You have a good husband here,” he added, winking at Omar. “A great hunter. You will always be safe, never be hungry, over.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s good to hear.”
Omar caught my eye. “For God’s Sake is the best river driver around. He worked for years in a Baptist mission in La Paz. He ran the radio operation there.”
“It’s true,” For God’s Sake said, smiling with his three teeth on top, two on the bottom. A thin mustache, carefully tended, tented his upper lip. “This is where I learn Portuguese, this is where I learn English so well. I am the radio guy, over.”
Omar joined the other men who had begun to unload For God Sake’s boat, which was brimming with supplies: canisters of gasoline, cooking oil, sacks of dried corn, lentils, pasta, salt, boxes of cigars and matches. For God’s Sake climbed back on board and reached under his seat, extracting plastic bags of wrapped candy, which he held in the air, smiling. The kids—all who seemed to know the importance of showing up for Santa Claus—swarmed him, laughing and jumping up to grab peppermints and caramels from his hands. He good-naturedly pushed them back, making sure each child got at least one piece before tying the bags and stuffing them back under heavy sacks of rice and onions. The kids ran off and sat on the hardened mud in ecstasy as they ate their treats.
“I heard about Benicio. So sad. So terrible. I am sorry to miss the funeral. I was in La Paz. But when I heard you came back,” For God’s Sake said to Omar, “I rush here. The Frannies need things, too, yes. I have to come for them. But really, for you is my reason. Ten years is a long time, brother. Lots of changes, okay? And now I see I almost miss you, with your hunting, but good thing I catch you, over.” His eyes twinkling, he held up one finger as in, hold on a minute, and clambered back in the longboat, where he wrapped his arms around a barrel keg and lifted it to one shoulder. “I think it’s still cold, over.”
Word spread fast. Several young men—whooping—ran down to the shore. One grabbed the keg from For God’s Sake and sprinted with it—stopping midstride to dance a sort of jig before continuing up the hill to the Anaconda Bar. Someone cranked the tunes to stun, masking the sounds of cups and glasses slamming on the wooden counter. Macaws dipped and soared in the air above us, shrieking and sobbing as they landed on the muddy banks, their turquoise-and-orange wings folding like living fans.
Shrugging, the women abandoned their weaving or food preparation and headed up to the bar, their children running and playing and pulling at their skirts. Grinning like he won the lottery, Panchito moved faster than I’d ever seen him, throwing his arms around the men who, laughing, picked him up and tossed him a few feet up the hill, alcohol making fast friends of everyone.
Omar winked at me, dropping his arm over my shoulder as we followed For God’s Sake up the hill to open the keg and drink every last drop of cold beer, which turned out to be Michelob ULTRA light lager. I was learning fast that the best policy in the jungle was to take whatever bounty comes to you, when it comes to you. There was something sweet about it. Pleasure was here, why wait? It was just nine o’clock in the morning.
* * *
Three hours later, the children rolled the keg down the hill to the shore, where they filled it with river water and poured it over their heads. Several of the men lay passed out snoring in hammocks or slumped over the bar. Hard to believe the beer accomplished this; no doubt some private stash of pisco had been broken out as well. The bullying heat of the day had ramped up, and most of the women had gone off into the shade to peel vegetables or skin game. Several couples had disappeared into their huts, burpy and happy and ready for love.
Meanwhile, I won a seat at the Anaconda Bar between Omar and For God’s Sake.
“I am Tatinga,” he said, taking a long, slow drink of his beer after I asked him about himself. “But because of this”—he glanced down at his deformed leg—“they didn’t want me there. So when I was sixteen years old, I came to Ayachero. Your husband Omar here helped me, he was my good friend. He was just twelve. Can you imagine that? But he made sure I had food, he made sure I had a place to sleep. He had to fight his mother for that, right, Omar?” Both men laughed and shook their heads at the memory. “I learned Spanish, fast. I taught him Tatinga. But I can’t hunt, so there was nothing for me here. I went to La Paz and found the mission. I learned English. I speak Tatinga, Spanish, English, Quechua, some Portuguese. Very helpful for communications. But the mission lost funding. I was very sad. I had a wife and two kids, one coming. I thought, what can I do? What do I like to do? And I think: boats, always boats. I am the best river driver, everybody knows about that. I know every branch, every creek, every lake, all the habits of the river. In my head there is a wet season map and a dry season one, and I can steer a full boat through any weather. They are my neighborhood streets. I am your river driver man.” He tipped his glass at me. “So why do you come to be here, over?”
I looked at Omar and smiled.
“Yes, yes,” he said with a touch of impatience, “but what is your, I don’t know how to say, but in Tatinga, it means, purpose in life? Your—we call it ca’ah—over?” He smiled and searched my face, as if he really wanted to know. Curiosity made him handsome. “You know, Lily, there is everything that we do, and see, and talk about, but then there is ca’ah—why we do these things, the reason, what is pushing us, pulling us, what are we looking for, what makes us go, do you understand this, over?”
I gazed into my warm glass of flat beer. My gut understood it, my brain did not. “Why do they call you For God’s Sake?”
“That’s what they called me at the mission. Why? The answer is easy. For God’s Sake, they said, why do you have to talk so much? Please, be quiet. For God’s Sake, we are trying to work here, or go to sleep maybe, or get mission writing done, you know, so, For God’s Sake, shut up, will you? So since then I am For God’s Sake. I don’t mind. But tell me, you know, about your ca’ah, over.”
He looked at me with such respect and interest, as if my answer would be worth listening to, if he was only patient enough to wait for it. I reddened. The reasons for what I do—how could I know that? I seemed not to act, but only react to events, to lunge toward decisions—people, places, things—pulled or pushed by reasons I was barely conscious or in control of.
“I don’t know. I just survive, I guess.”
For God’s Sake waved my silly answer away. “There has to be some ca’ah in you. Mostly I am confused by white man’s ca’ah. Sometimes they are so nice they give you food, behave with fairness, speak nicely, and use respect. Sometimes—” Here he puffed out his cheeks, made a bang-bang motion with his hands, like guns going off, shaking his head. “It’s like that. Mean and sad and killing. Like devils. First one thing, then the other thing, back and forth, back and forth. I don’t understand civilizado ca’ah. What is their big purpose, their big idea? Where does their spirit live? So I keep asking everyone I meet, until I know. What do they want, can you tell me? What do you want, Lily, over?”
“Guess I’m still not sure.” Those days, I’d lose myself in lofty yet vague fantasies of saving elephants and rhinos from poachers in Africa, chimps from extinction, whales from tangled fishing ropes. Was this what he meant by ca’ah? “I love animals, and I like to sew.”
“Ah, sewing! You can make clothes, any kind of clothes, over?”
“Any kind of clothes. I can sew linings, I can make my own patterns. I can just look at you and know what size you are.”
“So someday you will make me a fine suit, a beautiful suit, that I will wear proudly to my daughter’s wedding, when she has grown and found
a good man, over?” For God’s Sake combed his mustache with one finger thoughtfully as he spoke.
I laughed. “Of course.”
Now, up close, I could put him in his midthirties, but a hard-won midthirties, leathery and sad around the eyes, even through his continual smile.
Omar pushed himself to his feet, glancing around at the men sleeping in hammocks or huddled in groups nursing the last of the beer. “The beer party’s over. We need to get these men in the boat.”
“Of course, of course,” For God’s Sake said, pushing himself to his feet that spilled out of his loafers.
“And listen, man,” Omar said, taking him aside. “After you’ve been up to the Frannies, don’t hang around. Go right back to La Paz. It’s not safe for you here these days.”
“So, you’re talking about Fat Carlos and Dutchie and his men? I saw them on my way here from San Solidad. I heard their motor and had plenty of time to hide myself, over.”
“They’re not satisfied with jaguar skins anymore, understand?”
“Yes, I do, over.”
“You see their boat here, you just keep on going. I’m telling you, For God’s Sake, my brother.”
He smiled but his eyes stayed tight. “Of course. Those are some wise words from you.” He turned. “Let me help you now, get these lazy men back to work. But the beer was cold, you know? The beer is the boss when it’s cold, over!” Laughing, he started off down the hill with a boisterous energy, yelling out to the men and banging on the stilts of the huts with his cane, until the still-drunk hunters stumbled out into the blistering heat, zipping their flies or combing their hands through their hair as they assembled at the shore.
I followed Omar through the crowd of men, the sharp tang of their sweat surrounding me. Some carried rifles or had longbows slung over their shoulders; others carried V-shaped contraptions wrapped with long rubber cords: slingshots that, used effectively, could kill an animal of almost any size. The hunters studiously did not look at me. I felt among men who did not want me there, who had no interest in or comfort with women except for the usual reasons. I could feel part of Omar already gone, already disappeared into the wilderness.
But no one cared about our drama, my drama. There were very few demonstrations of affection between men and women, I’d been noticing; even a hug and a kiss between mother and child seemed rare. Only later did it sink in about the villagers’ profoundly different sense of privacy: want to be alone to talk? To make love? Don’t get your hopes up, or perhaps get whatever it is done fast. Closed door, open door, didn’t matter, people came and went at will, mi casa es tu casa.
All my life I’d craved privacy; here it was lacking not out of malice, but out of a shared sense of community of which I was not yet a part. These people were linked in ways I didn’t yet understand. I had learned something about meals, however: everyone ate at once, or not at all. Just like when I was a kid, the food—whatever there was—was ready when it was ready and everybody showed up for it. There were no leftovers.
I stood by Omar on the bank, twirling my tin wedding ring, already loose on my finger, a fact that registered somewhere in the recesses of my mind. “Why don’t you stay back this time?” I said, unable to stop the words from tumbling out.
He shifted the sack of supplies he carried to his other shoulder, examined me. “The village needs food. I want to build you a real house—”
“I don’t have anyone here but you. You’re my whole family now.”
“Everyone in Ayachero is your family.”
I scowled. He looked around, his face hardening, kindness leaking away. I estimated the total time I’d known him—it was June now—so barely three months? He scanned the shore, a bustling scene of men sorting supplies and loading the boats, their backs slick with midday sweat.
Half a dozen women packed one end of the boat with pots, knives, and a few small sacks of manioc, as the dogs circled. Some had already jumped in the canoes to claim their places; they panted, sniffed around for scraps, pausing to lick their mangy coats. The little runt Mariposa skittered along by my side.
Omar dropped his bag, pulled out a machete, and handed it to me. “Keep this with you.” He was already in the jungle. I could see it.
I took it from him; the twenty-inch steel blade hung down heavily and too close to my leg. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Keep it in the hut. And promise me you’ll stay out of the jungle. Especially dawn and dusk. Those are the worst times to be on the paths. The night animals are coming out to hunt, and the daytime animals are trying to hide. You don’t want to get in their way. Are you listening? Stay in the village.”
“When are you coming back?”
“We come back with food, otherwise . . .” He shrugged.
“Otherwise what?”
“Otherwise no one eats. Not you, not me, not anyone.” The dog had given up on licking my hands and sat her warm ass down on my foot, staring up at me with the bottomless hope of dogs, the ridge of her bony back resting against my shin.
“But . . . the fish, can’t you always catch—”
He laughed, waving me away. “This is the jungle. There is no ‘always.’ ”
“Where’s Anna? Why isn’t she here to say goodbye to Franz?”
“She never does that. She thinks it’s unlucky.”
“Really. What will I do while I wait?” I reddened, thinking of Doña Antonia’s comment about having nothing to do but stare in the mirror while he was gone.
He held me by the shoulders and looked me in the eye, as if trying to stare some strength or resolve into me. “Wait for what, me? Just be Lily, then everything will come to you.”
He turned away and climbed into the boat with Franz and the rest of the men. The dogs sat up and wagged their tails, turning in tight circles before resettling in their strict confines. They could taste the hunt in their mouths. The current began to take interest in the boat, nudging the bow downriver.
Omar stood on the lip of the canoe, a jungle gondolier, one paddle wedged deep in the thick mud of the shore. With a powerful shove, he pushed the boat away from the bank. Perfectly spaced alongside each other, both boats—one with six men, the other with two women and several dogs—receded quickly from the bank, the river only too happy to sweep them into its narrative of currents and eddies. Villagers who had come to see the hunters off began to drift away up the hill. The bend in the river erased the canoes, as if they had never existed.
Omar never once looked back.
FIFTEEN
A breathless panic overcame me. I began to pace up and down the bank like a madwoman, from one wall of jungle to the other, all the way to the far east end of the village where the manioc fields stretched back to the barn and the leper family’s hut, then the other way, past the Anaconda Bar, finding myself practically to the Tortoise Beach before stopping and gazing off into the wall of green beyond. Mosquitos followed me, circling my head, their shrill drone grinding into my brain.
The river, the color of dark mustard, flowed with its own unknowable intentions, turning and folding into itself. Ancient trees towered, trunks like columns, their intertwined crowns disappearing in vaporous clouds. Beneath the canopy seethed a boiling mess of understory vegetation. Vines hung down in coils, motionless in the still, hot air. The jungle held the village in a stranglehold on three sides; the river sealed it in. I wasn’t going anywhere.
I slipped off my backpack—suddenly sick of its sweaty weight—and threw it down on the sand in a huff, stamping my feet like a frustrated child. Disturbed from their hidey-holes, hundreds of tiny, nearly transparent spiders bloomed out from the grains of sand, darted along the shore, and stepped out onto the river, skimming along the surface of the water.
I’d barely recovered from the sight when the air shattered with the screams of howler monkeys. Half a dozen big tawny ones leapt from branch to branch a hundred feet above me, freeing nuts and branches that drubbed down on my head and shoulders. I turned to run, bu
t one of them dropped down to the earth with a thump, landing between me and the village.
Man-sized—part lion, part great ape—it came running at me, its mouth a dish-sized pink oval open in a never-ending roar. In terror, I fell back on my ass and scuttled away like a crab. So this was how I was going to die, not by the hand of some group-home skank cutting my throat, not in a plane crash, not by a jaguar lurking under our hut. A monkey’s face would be the last I saw.
The creature stopped next to my pack, just a yard from me, still blaring through the echo chamber of its cavernous head; its wet fur stinking like rotted wool. Bellowing constantly, he fixed me to my spot with hooded black eyes, nostrils empty holes on his long, hairless face ringed by a thick ruff of fur. He stood up on his hind legs, his white balls pendulous between his bowlegged gait, his prehensile tail curling up and twisting crazily, as if it had a mind of its own.
The creature slipped one long arm under a strap of my backpack and lifted it up, dangling it in front of his face for long, strange seconds. Was that what it wanted, my bag? I scuttled back a few more feet; he paid no attention. Encouraged by the roars of his gang that swung and looped in the green chaos above us, he bugled even louder, jumping up and down, spinning the bag in the air by one strap like a lasso he was about to let fly, before bashing it over and over onto the dirt as if to kill it.
Grunting, sniffing, finally satisfied it was dead, he gripped it by the sides and stretched its main compartment over his head and face, screaming into the canvas, before slipping it by a strap over one powerful shoulder—almost like it was meant to be carried!—and launching himself into the arms of a wide-bottomed tree. His posse dangled from the branches above or squatted in the notches of trees, huffing and growling encouragingly, emitting a constant low throttle as if noise was the norm, silence an aberration, their way of saying, I’m a howler monkey, you fuckers, and I’m here, shitting and shaking the branches and hurling baseball-sized nuts down at me.
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