Omar got to his feet, tension vibrating his limbs. He was so much smaller than Franz, but so agile he could have probably leapt over him cold from the ground. “Come on, Franz, give me the fucking monkey.”
Franz shifted his weight; as he did so black blood rained down from the creature’s wounds and sizzled into the sand. The monkey’s head hung heavily down, hands at the ends of furred arms almost touching, as if he were diving toward the center of the earth. Across the short stretch of water, a flicker of movement through dense green; shadows passing quickly.
“I’m going to cross.” Franz turned toward the water and hiked the monkey higher on his wide shoulders. “We’re losing them.”
Omar leapt at Franz. He wrenched the monkey by its tail from Franz’s grip and spun in a circle, launching the poor creature across the water to its very center, the darkest part. Before Franz could acknowledge this offense, the water began to boil, the piranha so thick they leapt out of the water and banged into each other before falling back in, pieces of monkey flesh in their sawlike teeth. Bits of fur popped to the surface, floating with the current; soon the skull rose white, grinning and bobbing.
In minutes, the men had cut down two trees, each only a few inches in diameter, and laid them across the river. Franz crossed first; the dogs skittered along behind him. The rest of the men casually forded the narrow bridge, all the while joking about what would happen if they fell; their balance remarkable. I hazarded a few steps out in my rotting sneakers, froze, swaying, my body heavy in all sorts of new places. The men shook their heads, impatient; not only a woman on the hunt, but a pregnant one, holding up everything. I turned back to the shore.
Omar cut down another tree, laid it between the two, then cut down two more slender ones, sharpening the ends to use as walking sticks. He walked back to me on the sapling bridge, demonstrating their use. For each step, he methodically stabbed one down to the muddy bottom while pulling the other free, till he reached me.
“I can’t do it, Omar. I just can’t.” Sweat dripped down my shoulder and spine, burning into the bites that never seemed to heal. Of course I couldn’t go back into the jungle by myself, but I also couldn’t go forward.
He said, “Lily, you need to get down on your hands and knees. Go as slow as you need to. Don’t listen to the men. They’re being idiots. Listen to me. Listen to your strong self, the one who’s gotten you this far, the one who’s not afraid of this place. I’ll be right here in front of you. I won’t let you fall. Understand?”
I nodded. Quaking, I got down to my hands and knees, centering my body weight in the middle of the bridge. Clutching the slender trees, knees aching, I crawled toward him inches at a time, never taking my eyes off the water that still churned beneath us with snapping silver fish that moved as if shot from a gun, wild with the taste of blood.
TWENTY-SIX
We stepped back into the steaming jungle. The reek of peccary all around us, a skunky musk. The strongest dog of the pack, who had to have some husky in her of all things, sprung into the air, straining her lead, finally snapping it. After a moment of confusion, the dog’s eyes wild—how could freedom be suddenly possible?—she bounded off. The others, still tethered to each other, followed in an ecstasy of liberation. The men, all except Omar, turned and ran after them.
Omar grabbed my arm. “Come on, Lily, run!”
I froze in place, caught in a paralyzing cycle of fear and hesitation. His body was taut with readiness, trembling with the cool heat of the hunt. In microseconds, we exchanged an understanding of promises kept and broken, my good intentions colliding with our physical realities.
“Stay here. I’ll come back for you.”
The ground shook. Squeals, clicking teeth, barrel-chested grunts filled the air. I gathered myself to run, strapping my gun tighter to my side, but Omar gave me no second chances. He turned and flew, he and the other men out of sight before I’d taken my first step. Still, I ran toward the chaos of noise and confusion, chasing after the snorts and barking, the calls of the men to each other, the stink of the animals, until the sounds became distant, muted. With my machete I sliced my way through nests of vines woven into vast mats that tented the forest floor, pulling my feet out of swamp mud that sucked me down to my shins. I’d long stopped paying attention to what I was stepping on or over or around, ignoring the rules Omar had pounded into me: don’t touch anything, don’t lean on anything, fire ants or worse are everywhere, if you look up into the canopy and see nothing don’t believe your eyes, because a thousand things are looking back at you. Bats are hidden in the leaves. Goliath tarantulas are burrowed in nests in the ground. Scorpions that look like bark are watching you.
This is a battlefield.
His voice in my head: Think, concentrate, wait, look.
Open your third eye to see what is really there.
Be where you are.
I slowed to a fast walk, still determined to catch up with them. Their shouts and calls barely audible now; the funky smell dissipated. I stumbled into a small clearing where thin arrows of light striped across the remains of palm nuts ground up by peccaries in their search for tubers and roots.
Second by second, my breath roaring in my ears, I began to accept that I could not catch up with the men. I was a foolish, arrogant, pregnant teenager wandering through the rain forest alone. I bent over, rested my hands on my knees, panting. Breasts aching, belly bulging, energy gone. I found myself wishing for a compass, then recalled Omar telling me that the iron and other properties in Amazonian trees rendered them worthless. As if the jungle had reached into modernity and had a good laugh. It made a strange kind of sense.
I straightened up, turning in a tight circle in the sweltering green bowl; all around me things slithered, crawled, flew, all in agreement that I was the food. No need to manufacture my own chaos like I did back home; it was all around me. I was up against something I couldn’t lie to or manipulate, something I couldn’t run away from; the way I had survived my entire life.
Nothing like that worked here.
I had to pay attention; I had to adapt; I had to stay.
I began walking again, with every step guiltily recalling Omar’s admonishment to stay where I was. Though staying put freaked me out even more, I made myself stop next to a lupuna tree, its voluminous roots soaring skyward. I thought of that Ayacheran rule of the jungle: when you’re lost, they only look for you for two days.
I screamed Omar’s name once, twice.
The looming green tunnel submerged my voice. From what seemed a great distance, as in a dream, I heard my name. Faintly, in all the wildness and from so far away. Lily . . . It was eerie; was I imagining it? Was it Omar? A muted gunshot, and another, dull pops, the muffled clattering of hooves.
Under my sodden sneakers, the earth seemed to buzz. Omar called my name; clearly now. I called out to him as the men’s shouts and the yips of the dogs grew louder and louder. Now the ground shook with the drumming of hooves; the peccaries were coming toward me. Screams from the men, shouts from Omar. Unintelligible.
Again, a paralysis stilled my limbs, but there were only moments to think. I had to move, now. I scrambled around the base of the enormous tree, listening. The hoofbeats rumbled louder and louder—how many were there, dozens? From what direction? Where were the dogs? The men? I had to hide—where?—in seconds the peccaries would crush me to death. I ducked down in the hollow of a curved root, covered my head, spoke to my baby, said, I will protect you, sweet thing, little thing, helpless thing.
Screaming bloody murder, dozens of black pigs roared by on either side of the tree, flattening everything, fury or fear or both sending them plummeting into the jungle beyond. In seconds, three dogs bulleted by, mouths frothing with rage. A brief lull, then Omar and Franz and the other men hurtled by, all of them yelling so loudly at each other and the dogs that they didn’t hear my shouts.
I ran toward the sounds of their voices, the yelps of the dogs. In minutes I realized where we were headed: ba
ck to the river we’d just crossed on the sapling bridge. The dogs—out of control—were instinctively rounding the game and trying to herd them back to where they knew we had left the boats.
At the bank of the river, two dogs cornered half a dozen eighty-pound pigs, nipping at them and jumping back, nipping and jumping back. The pigs squealed, edging toward the water but never touching it, as if they knew what awaited them there. Franz and Omar and the other men scrambled a dozen feet up into some strangler fig branches that overhung the bank, firing. I called out Omar’s name and he turned to me with a look I’ll never forget: surprise, fury, terror.
“Get up in that tree, Lily!” He gestured at the one closest to me.
I climbed as high as I could, only six or seven feet, since the branches higher than that were too slim to hold me. The husky—still with her three-foot lead thrashing about—leapt at the throat of one of the pigs, killing it just as the other pigs turned on her and piled on, tearing her to bits. The other dog ran yelping into the forest. The only sound was of the pigs grunting, devouring what was left of the husky.
Franz trained his gun and shot one of the pigs dead; it looked like a juvenile. Except for the biggest one, who must have weighed over a hundred pounds, they all scattered to the forest, leaving the dog’s corpse. But the big one stayed. It circled my tree, eyeing me like I was the one who’d shot her kid. She snuffled around the base of the tree where I crouched, her gray tail whipping back and forth at her wire-haired rump.
“Shoot it, Lily, shoot it!” the men yelled, firing off shots, but the creature had migrated to the other side of the tree, all the wrong angles for them to hit it. She peered up at me, her long snout reaching, huge freckled nostrils opening to taste the air around me. Her powerful shoulders rippled, the skunk stink fouling the air.
Omar called out, “It can’t climb, but you have to shoot it!”
I stiffened as I reached for my gun, my weight firmly back in the crotch of the tree, both hands on the pistol, an extension of my hands, finger on the trigger. But the pig wouldn’t stop moving, circling my little tree. Omar shot again and missed. Snarling, it ran around to the other side—far from the men and out of their range. It started to dig frantically into the thick mud at the trunk of the tree with its powerful hooves. I leaned down, training the gun on the top of its head—just shoot the thing; why can’t I pull the trigger?—but I missed the moment. The creature shifted a bit to the left and began burrowing again. I hadn’t understood what its plan was until it dropped its block of a head and rammed it again and again against the base of the tree, shaking my whole body with each strike. It snarled up into the barrel of my gun with a loathing that felt personal. Weakening at its base, the tree juddered and swayed. I adjusted my weight against the new equilibrium, bark scraping at my arms, the gun slick with sweat in my hand.
“Lily, shoot!”
The pig, on a mission, ran back around to dig some more, ripping at the roots and spitting them aside. It dropped its square, iron-gray head and rammed.
I swayed, found my balance. One more hit and I’d be on the ground. Feet jammed in the notches of the tree, I rested my forearms on my pregnant belly and pulled the trigger three times. Her head opened and she fell flat, arms and legs splayed onto the mud and ripped-up roots. The taste of gunmetal flooded my mouth as the tree finally gave way, and I jumped to the earth.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Nobody talked much on the way back. Though the men seemed grateful to go home with any game at all rather than an empty boat, they were sobered by the loss of four of five hunting dogs—the husky especially; clearly she was Franz’s favorite, though he would have never admitted it. Omar assured me that sometimes trips went bad like this, that losing dogs was terrible, but everyone was alive, not even injured. The husky dog breaking free from the others caused the whole plan to go out of control. The men had only been able to cut another dog free; the rest were corralled together and attacked, helpless. All I felt was lucky to have survived.
The evening sky over the river was streaked purple as we rounded the bend to Ayachero, lulled by the rhythmic splash of the paddles in the chocolate-brown water. The canoes nudged into the soft mud, and we gathered ourselves to empty the boats. I couldn’t understand why no one had come down to greet us, until we saw the torches burning in the clinic.
Doña Antonia came running down the hill, her face in the throes of the closest thing to joy I’d ever seen. “Franz, my son! Come and see. You’re a father again.” Franz tossed aside the paddles he was unloading and raced up the hill.
* * *
After Franz and Omar had their turn, Anna let me hold her. There was nothing like it for me before, a baby just hours old in my arms, purplish and not totally cleaned up, but perfect in every detail, her head resting in my palm, all trust, the tiny fingernails, perfect lips in a sweet pucker, eyelashes like insect wings. Women crammed the small space, cleaning up, talking, laughing, their warmth to me now doing wonderful things for my heart.
I knelt down next to Anna and gave her back her little girl. “How was it?” I said, not sure how to phrase the question.
She sat up a little. “It started at dinner last night. FrannyB said it was a breeze. I don’t know if it was that,” she said with a laugh. “But it’s my third, so maybe easier, a little. She says I’m a natural mother.”
I passed my hand over my bulging belly and thought, Am I a natural mother? Not very likely. The hut we called a clinic—meaning the usual one-room dwelling, this one featuring a lone shelf with bandages, splints, iodine, aspirin—was hot and smelled like blood and vaguely of shit. Doña Antonia gathered a pile of bloody cloths and assigned the washing to Marietta and some of the younger girls, who dutifully left with armfuls of it.
“Where’s FrannyB?”
“Napping in the longhouse. She’ll go back to her camp in the morning.”
The other women took turns holding the baby, each of them seemingly overjoyed about the new addition to Ayachero. All I could do was wonder, Would it be like this for me? Would people here greet our child like this? And what if something happened during childbirth that FrannyB or Beya couldn’t handle?
I promised myself I would not give birth in this place.
* * *
By the light of a bonfire, a few of the men helped me unhook the pig’s hooves that had been lashed to its carrying pole. We laid it on its back; its four legs fell open, exposing an ash-colored abdomen. Determined to gut and skin it myself, I forced myself to concentrate on the steps I’d learned by watching the others: come down hard and swift with my machete so the head is removed from the body in one stroke. Hold the point of my switchblade just so between skin, fat, and muscle. Get help to gather the viscera, cut it free, picturing the dogs eating their well-earned meals. I remember the moment my perception went from gore and sadness for a life taken to food; in a way it was like holding the newborn—it was a revelation, a new understanding of life and death that stayed with me forever.
I brought a few cuts of meat to Doña Antonia, who nodded approvingly; big love from her. She’d been right about everything.
* * *
Two weeks later, in late September, it was time for Omar to leave again. That morning, I sat down on a bench near our oven to recover from my sense of dread at his departure. Catching a glimpse of my reflection in the big tin pot we used to boil cassava, I didn’t recognize myself. Except for my huge belly, the rest of me was thin, my face gaunt, hair lank. I’d been losing weight, not gaining it; dismissing the whispered comments of the women: she’s sick, something’s wrong with her. I ignored them—as well as the persistent painful itch near my shoulder blade—and listened only to Anna, who prepared special herbs for my appetite that seemed to work pretty well. She and Claudia and the new baby seemed healthy, so I took everything she gave me. I made my way back upstairs.
“Come on, Lily,” Omar said softly, setting a piece of tapir skin on the floor in front of me. We were both sluggish that morning, reluctant t
o move, sick of saying goodbye. “Stand on this. You can’t go around barefoot.” My sneakers were being held together with rubber strips cut from the supply bags.
I took a wide stance. He nicked into the leather with his short-handled knife the outlines of the soles of my feet, placing a gentle hand around my calves one at a time.
“I’ll punch the holes, and you’ll sew these sandals, so I can see my wife wearing something new when I get home.”
I peered over my big belly at the muscles in his shoulders working as he measured. “What about your assignment?” I asked, unable to resist running my hands through his shining black hair.
“About my love for you? I thought you’d forget,” he said with a grin, peering up at me. Crossing our hut, he shyly pulled a piece of paper wedged between Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.
“I know your next assignment,” I said. “A letter to our unborn child. What do you think?”
“I like it very much,” he said in English. Cross-legged on the floor, next to our window, which rang with early-morning bird and monkey song, he read this to me:
Why I Love Lily Bushwold, by Omar Mathias Alvarez
I love that you are different from me. Your red hair, your pale skin warm me. Who can help but love the sun shining down?
You do not judge me, and I thank you. In my culture I am only the things I have done in my past, and I am behind that black curtain. You see me, Omar. You throw away the curtains and see my heart. And it is a good heart, it is not a perfect heart, but it is trying. You see that I am trying. I see that you are trying. I see the little flame in you. The little flame that makes you take a peccary life when he wants to take yours. I even like the little flame in you that makes you say: “Fuck this, and fuck that. I will do it my Lily way.” It doesn’t bother me. But when I say listen, or when I say slow down, or, be quiet to hear the jungle animals, you honor me. I love that flame.
Into the Jungle Page 20