I was still lost—in countless ways I didn’t know what I was doing—but I was beginning to be found, too.
TWENTY-FOUR
Squinting at a purple orchid several yards away in the mid-story, arms out straight, I tried to steady the pistol with both hands. For God’s Sake stood just behind me, observing my technique. We’d been practicing all morning at the Tortoise Beach and I was yet to hit anything remotely close to a target.
“Can I rest my hands on a tree stump or something so I can aim a little better?”
“Will a tree stump be ready and waiting for you when a jaguar is coming at you, over?”
“Okay, okay.” I took a wider stance, aimed a little higher than the target as instructed, and fired, the gun knocking back hard into my bruised hand. The orchid trembled but remained pristine.
“Are you exhaling before you pull the trigger? Or are you holding your breath? We talked about this, over.”
“I’m exhaling, I’m telling you,” I said, frustrated.
“I don’t know, Lily my friend. I think you are maybe a little afraid to be good at firing a gun. Maybe you don’t really want to hunt down the animals.” He leaned thoughtfully on his cane. “There are three more bullets only, over.”
Fuck afraid. I turned back to the target—determined—and fired. The cluster of flowers exploded into a purple cloud.
For God’s Sake pointed to a clump of white mushrooms at the base of a rotting log—I missed them entirely—then a paprika plant, its fist-sized fruit dotting the tree. I took a bead on a big fat one and pulled the trigger. Its rich red seeds plumed over the lush green leaves.
“All right, Miss Lily. Excellent work, and it is only your first time trying this difficult thing. Now come with me to the longhouse where I must prepare for my trip to San Solidad, over.”
On the way back to the village, we discussed the kind of suit I was to make for him someday: dark purple silk with black velvet collar and cuffs. He’d seen it worn by a man named Prince in an old American magazine.
We settled in the storeroom next to a towering pile of empty burlap sacks.
“One more very important thing. You must show me how you load the bullets. We have to pretend, because we don’t have any more of them, but show me, over.”
I took off my new backpack, one I’d sewn out of old farina bags with woven sisal straps, and took out a short length of bamboo.
“I’ll keep my bullets in this tube, and load the gun like this.” I unlocked the chamber of the gun, pretended to load in the bullets, then snapped it shut.
“Where did you get this, your bamboo, over?”
“The men tore down that bamboo hut Omar and I stayed in when we first got here. Everybody was taking pieces of it.”
“Did you check for tarantulas, over?” He laughed and took the gun from me, storing it in a side holster he wore loosely around his waist, the whole setup invisible under his capacious Hawaiian shirt. “You will be the best hunter of all. The jungle should be very afraid of you, Miss Lily. I wish I could go with you, over.”
“When will you be back?”
Suddenly looking older, more fragile, he rested his cane against one wall and took a seat on the bench between the rubberized sacks of grain and salt, a place I’d found solace for hundreds of hours by now. “The most important question is, will I be back, over?” His hands fell loosely in his lap, fingers like knotted leather. Big smile gone, his face turned ashen, slack and defeated looking.
“What’s wrong?”
“You know, sometimes I feel like I am the devil to wear four faces. A face for the Frannies, a face for civilizado, a face for Ayachero village people, a face for the Tatinga, over.”
He began to cry. I’d seen so few men cry, it terrified and confused me.
“You know, Lily, I am afraid I will die this way, a man who does not honor his own ca’ah. I am feeling the biggest, loneliest weight in my heart and I cannot lift it. The weight of a thousand ceiba trees. I am too many things, so I am nothing, over.”
“But you have to come back to us. We need you, and I’ll make your suit . . .”
For God’s Sake pulled a knife from his belt, reached up to his neck, and sliced off the leather cord that held the cumbersome tin cross. He tossed it out the open window. “I am tired of this dead white man, Jesus Christ. He means nothing to me. He is not the spirits of the plants, of the river, of the trees, of the four corners of the earth. He is someone else’s God. It’s okay to bring the Frannies the cans of beans, of pickled eggs, of coffee, but they want my soul, too. They want the souls of my family, the souls of the Tatinga, to have the souls of all the tribal people would be just fine with them, and why should that be?” He paused, a look of disgust passing over his face. “But For God’s Sake says yes, okay, I will do it, For God’s Sake always says yes. I bring the shiny toys and pretty things, so they give me money for my family to live, over.”
“I would do the same thing.”
“Well, you are just a young girl who thinks childish thoughts, but I am a grown man who will one day go to my own gods, and what will I say to them, over?” He wiped his eyes and continued. “A while ago, before you came, there was a young Tatinga boy at the Frances camp. He was twelve, or maybe thirteen, and he was trying make a fire to smoke some fish for the Frannies. He was doing it the way of the Tatinga and all the tribes: two sticks with a rock under a pile of kapok fibers, and he was rubbing and rubbing. For a lot of minutes. There was a little smoke, even, the fire was going to come, but I became my impatient self, and took out a match and struck it and lit up the little pile of seed pod fluff. And then do you wonder what happened after that, over?”
“Yes . . .”
“The boy became full of shame. He took the matches from me and kicked away his little pile of sticks and rocks, and swore he would never light a fire in that way again. He said he would rather starve, for the shame of doing things the old way when the new is so much better. So much faster! And he took that seed of shame back with him to the Tatinga, among all the other seeds of shame. Here is a poison that spreads, and soon no one remembers anything. No one remembers the plant that cures a stomachache, or fever, or joint pains, or the vine that cures grief. He will not teach his son how to light a fire the old way, or his son’s son, and it all dies. No one can do anything without a match. The jungle becomes useless, over.”
“But For God’s Sake, everybody here loves you. Omar loves you like a brother.”
“One day you will understand, over.”
I sat next to him on the platform. His face was creased with anguish. “What’s your real name? Your Tatinga name?”
“I’m sorry, Lily, to say that I cannot answer you. It is the only thing that is mine, over.”
I nodded, wondering what was truly mine. I knew it was nothing I could touch.
Suddenly all business, he pushed himself to his feet, grabbed the empty sacks, and threw them over his shoulder. I followed him all the way down to the bank of the river, a hollowness banging in my gut. It felt like a father was leaving me, and there was nothing I could do to stop him.
He tossed the empty bags into the belly of the boat and climbed in. One hand on the tiller, he yanked at the motor’s rusty chain before settling himself on his well-worn seat. It rumbled to life on the first pull; water churned and smoked under the turning blades. Jamming his ancient golf cap down over red-rimmed eyes, he cast a lingering look over the village that steamed in the early-morning mist.
“Lily, are you happy here? Because I have enough room here, in the boat today, with empty bags and no supplies, to take you to San Solidad, over.”
I burst out, “How can you even ask me that? I can’t leave Omar.”
Part of me wanted to fall to my knees, moaning with desire for refrigeration, electricity, movies, sherbet, Snickers bars, roads, malls; the heartbreaking miracle of the familiar. I stroked my belly through my gunnysack dress, the memory of the gun still shaping my hand, the taste of Omar’s kiss on my mo
uth, his dear voice reading his assignments playing in my head. Howler monkeys called in the distance, a sound that always presaged a soaking rain.
For God’s Sake waited patiently. I thought, I’m going to stay. I’m going to survive this place.
“You don’t have to say yes to my idea, young Lily. I remember how it was with my wife in the earliest days. In fact, I would be so surprised if you said yes and climbed into this boat right now. No one would be more surprised. But you are not too young to think about your own ca’ah. Maybe it’s good to actually choose this place, to choose any place, over.”
TWENTY-FIVE
– SEPTEMBER –
We cut the motor, the air hot as breath. Under high, dark passages, past trees wreathed with strangler figs, a swift current swept us along a slender vein of water. Omar crouched at the bow of the boat, his body bent in a C of concentration as he read the secrets in the channels of brown and black water beneath us, of the strange whirlpools and eddies, the spinning logs that looked like animals that sank and mysteriously rose some distance away. Nuts and rotting fruits floated swiftly by. A three-foot ashen tube—an abandoned wasps’ nest—bobbed past. Every now and then, Omar stood, gazing out into the maelstrom of thickened fleshy leaves at the shoreline; just the subtle shift of his weight steering the canoe into a slightly different slipstream before he squatted again, pulling the soft water behind him with a leaf-shaped palm-wood paddle.
We had veered from the main river long ago, choosing a mind-numbing series of tributaries, each more narrow than the last. All of them looked the same to me: just brown water creeks walled in by chattering green jungle. Ferns unfurled toward us; flesh-eating flowers oozed their oils in the sun, luring insects to sticky deaths. Orchids steamed like giant dozing ears in the boughs of trees. Every now and then we’d all sprawl facedown or flat on our backs in the boats to pass under fallen trees that hovered just feet from the surface, or skid over logs, propeller yanked from the water. We plunged deeper and deeper into the green.
“You smell them?” Omar said under his breath to Franz and the three other hunters in our boat. “Maybe thirty, forty.”
We had been tracking a herd of white-lipped peccary since early that morning. Franz squinted up into hulking branches above us, on constant lookout for snakes lounging there. We drifted in the narrowest channel yet—just five feet across—its water black with sediment but glowing an eerie gold where the sun filtered through.
I sat behind Omar, revolver tucked into a holster looped over my belt. Franz and the other men sat behind me. It was a position I’d fought bitterly for, to sit in the hunting canoe with the rest of the men. At five months pregnant, I felt strong. I wore a dress I had pieced and sewn together from two rice sacks, complete with sleeves to help protect myself from the bugs.
A boat carrying three women and five dogs kept nose to stern behind us. The women watched me with blank, hard faces: all three were older, maybe in their forties, with grown children. Unlike the younger women, these three had never warmed to me anyway, so I didn’t take to heart what I read as resentment for traveling and hunting with the men.
We swung around a hairpin curve; the creek joined another, widening into a pond. Six eight-foot black caiman basked on the far bank, sunning themselves. One of them lay with its head in the water, mouth open wide as if to eat anything that might float by; along the row of ceramic-green bumps on its snout a handful of bright orange butterflies balanced, fluttering delicately. At our approach, the biggest one rose on its short legs. Carrying its belly just clear of the ground, it hurtled headlong and with a thrash of its armored tail it disappeared, leaving a soft swirl of bubbles on the water. Every log was a caiman unless it proved itself otherwise.
Omar stood as he gondola-ed us to the opposite beach; the other canoe followed swiftly behind. Dozens of Morpho butterflies—each as big as a child’s hand—danced along the bank, turquoise-and-black wings glowing like stained glass. Our boats nosing onto shore spun them into brilliant blue vortexes before they settled on the sand just yards away. The dogs leapt from the boat, eager to be free from its confines, but wary of the snapping jungle, sniffing at the ground and keening at our sides. The men mumbled excitedly to one another; there was an electricity among them. The water smelled putrescent, steaming with its myriad biological transactions; beyond us, the forest shimmered with midday heat.
Omar said to me, “Lots of peccaries were here. Recently. The butterflies are eating the salt in the urine, see?”
The men gathered at the mouth of the jungle; dogs circling. This would be our camp, where the rest of the women would stay until we returned. A few of us ventured several yards in, hacking at branches and vines with our machetes to gather wood for the night’s fire; others cut lengths of palm frond to build a shelter.
Our movements freed up a couple of Brazil nuts—as big as small melons—that rolled by my feet, nestling against each other with soft knocks. With a rock, I broke open the hard, woody seed pods; brown segments the shape of orange sections scattered; I hammered at those to reach the sweet white meat of the nut. Everyone gathered and took several pieces; I even got a few muttered thank-yous from the women. They each wished us luck on the hunt, and we turned to leave.
I followed Omar and the rest of the men into the forest. His sure feet glided with assurance along the rich, sweetish loam of the jungle floor. Torso bent forward, progress smooth and economical, he moved with an awareness and anticipation of what was three, five, ten steps ahead of him, whereas my stiff, clunky body strained forward, at odds with everything, stalling at this pile of logs, that protruding root, battling curtains of lianas. I stopped, started, and hesitated while his rapid trot never slowed.
The men followed me in silence. Roped together, the dogs huffed at our sides, whining and yipping with their sensory overload. My skin shone with sweat, my hair dripped from the mist that drifted among us, an earthbound cloud. Occasionally the men paused, consulted in Quechua or Spanish spoken too quickly for me to understand; possibly on purpose. All I could think about was Omar asking me back in the village if I could run. As I walked I felt my belly, a hard, swollen ball, push against the rough fabric of my dress. Somehow I hadn’t been afraid in the canoe as we traveled to this hunting ground, but now I silently apologized to my baby for my foolhardiness, my youth and stupidity.
Omar held up one hand; we all stopped short, our breath ragged in the heavy air. We’d all heard it: a strangled cry of pain, almost human. The dogs lunged forward, slavering and yelping; the men restrained them, but they leapt again, wild for the hunt. We crept toward the pitiful sound.
A big black howler monkey lay on its back on the forest floor between two intertwined roots, its head and neck held flush to the ground by a metallic snare loop. Another, smaller snare lay empty nearby. Listlessly, it reached over and snatched up its dismembered foot, the toes long and furred and strangely graceful; it sniffed and rubbed the foot against its face, then threw it at us as we approached. Eyes bulging from their sockets, it struggled against the cruel wire, making a good show before howling weakly. Its head fell back among the lush moss in momentary defeat, black nostrils flared wide; flies already landing, beetles, too, all the carrion eaters whispering to one another and gathering from every corner of land and sky.
Franz nudged Omar; they consulted briefly. “They want you to shoot it, Lily,” Omar said.
“Me? Why?”
“Because you say you’re a hunter. Do it, Lily. It’s suffering.”
The monkey lunged again, the ring of metal cutting deeper into its neck; black blood coursing onto waxy green leaves. Up on one elbow like a man in bed, it looked at me, its big, noble head and thick black ruff shuddering as it opened its mouth again, letting loose a weak, guttural moan. Okay, I said silently to the creature, I’m coming. My limbs moved as if underwater. I took a step toward it, shifting the stock down and the muzzle forward, its coldness, heaviness still foreign to me as I lifted it toward the ridge of flesh between the cr
eature’s eyes.
I can’t do this, I thought. There is just no way . . .
Omar fell to one knee, pulling me down next to him and encircling my hands with his, wedging the barrel under the monkey’s chin and forcing his head back.
“Now, Lily.”
I looked for the pain in the monkey’s eyes, pictured it gone, and pulled the trigger.
The shot traveled up through the monkey’s jaw and out the top of his cranium in a fountain of pink. With badly shaking hands, I slid the gun back into the leather holster at my waist. Forgive yourself, I thought, he was going to die anyway. You are only following the rules in this wild place.
“Good,” Omar said, briefly kissing my forehead. “You freed him.”
The rest of the men dropped down over the creature, cutting it free from the poacher’s trap. Franz flung it over his back, holding it by its yard-long tail.
In less than an hour, light poked through the jungle and we burst through to another tributary, this one twenty or so feet across. The tightly coiled river had doubled back on itself. The men groaned, annoyed to be slowed down by this impasse. The water was murky toward the shore, but black at the middle, much slower moving than the water we had just left, its depth impossible to gauge. The dogs paced at the bank, noses twitching toward the other side; I caught a whiff of something skunky: the herd was close.
“Let’s cross,” Franz said, standing ankle-deep in the tannin water. The other men mumbled in agreement. Omar squatted just where the water touched the sand, dipped in his finger, tasted it, peered into its opaque depths. He looked up at Franz and said, “Give me the monkey.”
Franz snorted and shook his head. “Why?”
Into the Jungle Page 19