FORTY-THREE
I held him—purple umbilical cord still joining us—just above the flooded canoe. Rudderless, we drifted from the main current to the shallows, where the canoe beached sideways, gently, onto a narrow strip of hard mud, feet from an edifice of jungle that rose up thickly, shadowing us. Still the rain came down.
I rocked him in my arms as he cried, stuck to each other by our secretions, mud, and filth. After working my quaking hand down to the knife tied into my string bag, I doubled the warm fleshy cord and sliced it through, tying it in a big ugly knot, terrified that he would bleed to death. The placenta gushed out of me like some wanton sea creature, a bruise-colored slab of meat, the final statement of my helpless, terrifying biology. Baby Omar in my arms, I scrabbled away from it, kicking it into the river where it sank down into the harrowing depths, no doubt to be devoured.
I carried him to the shallowest section and dipped him in, pouring handfuls of river water over his head. Though his eyes were squeezed shut, his father was written across his face—Omar in miniature—in the shape of his mouth and eyes, his olive skin, the little whorls of hair at the crown of his head; the slightest wave in the wisps at his neck the only trace of me I could find. I cupped his head to my breast and—after a bit—he settled there.
A whiff of sage woke me from my trance. I stiffened. How do I know that smell? I knew it had to do with wonder, but how? Beya’s camp. She burned sage constantly. I had to be close by, which meant Ayachero was just upriver, or a few minutes’ walk through the jungle.
That’s when I heard the screaming. Thin sounds of terror from the direction of the village, then nothing, until the tinny, familiar, distant sounds of Bolivian pop music started up. I got to my feet, dizzy with pain as blood dripped down the insides of my legs.
Holding baby Omar to me, I gathered with one hand everything of use from the canoe: my string bag, the blowgun, and the quiver of darts. The little bamboo tube of curare had washed away entirely. I stepped into the forest, following the scent of sage as the heat of the day began to build.
I crouched behind a scrim of leaves at the perimeter of Beya’s camp. Signs of a quick departure were everywhere. Her metal tub of water boiled over into the flames of her open pit fire; next to it, a freshly killed paca lay belly up on a flat piece of slate, ready to be disemboweled. Beya’s donkey stood attached by her pole to the grindstone, motionless except for her tail swishing across shuddering flanks.
“Beya,” I whispered. “Beya.”
A distant howl and whoop from the direction of Ayachero. I held little Omar tighter; he squirmed and let out a plaintive whimper.
Gnashing her blocky yellow teeth together, the donkey swung her big head toward me, blinked, then turned back away, pawing at the dusty ground with her front hoof.
I took a few slow breaths, calming myself before conjuring Beya’s bright eyes that missed nothing. In my head, I spoke the words loudly and clearly, “WHERE ARE YOU?”
Seconds later, I heard her as if she were standing next to me, as if I was leaning down to better hear her whisper: “THEY HAVE TAKEN ME. I HAVE HIDDEN MY SPIRIT IN THE LUPUNA TREE.”
I stepped out onto her camp’s circle of hard dirt. Beya’s string bag, the one in which she carried the poison frog and who knew what else, lay abandoned by the fire, unmoving. Still, I gave it a little shove with my toe before picking it up and making sure it was empty. Whatever had been in there had escaped. I slipped the bag over one shoulder. Carefully, I dragged the pot of water off the grate and onto the ground, so it could cool enough to clean myself and the baby.
My tiny boy filled his lungs and let fly, filling the air with piercing cries as I paced the camp. I tried to comfort him in the limited ways I knew, but he didn’t want my milk, and nothing seemed to calm him. From the direction of Ayachero, a scream so chilling even the baby paused his wail. It sounded like Anna, but I couldn’t be sure. I was desperate to run to her, my dearest friend in this place. What were they doing to her? I clutched my screaming baby to my chest; he must have heard my pounding heart and felt my own terror because he wailed even more pitifully, like he knew better than I that this was the end of us. A gunshot ricocheted among the treetops. Baby Omar paused for breath, or to register the sound, before opening his mouth again.
To save my life, I had to somehow quiet my baby boy.
I climbed the stairs to her hut. Under yellowed mosquito netting, a hammock hung motionless in the still air. Neat piles of plants marched along every wall. Dozens of old plastic and glass soda bottles filled with black or green sticky-looking liquids stood in rows on a colorful woven mat on the floor. Under the one open-air window, a well-used mortar and pestle and a half dozen empty bamboo containers sat on a simple wooden table. Tied to the sill by a jute cord, a small palm-frond box moved ever so slightly. A turquoise frog splotched with brilliant orange peeked from between the fronds. It lifted its head at my approach, throat pulsing, flesh glistening. It pushed itself up on its front legs and seemed to taste the air, blinked.
Another gunshot, far off, absorbed by the jungle.
I stared at the little frog, but what I saw was Omar’s body floating down the river in the bed of the canoe, its living wonder gone forever. I thought how he was no longer himself, just a meal for the fish and birds and river otters; this day—this jungle—was a nightmare I couldn’t stop dreaming, wide awake.
Again I tried to quiet my baby, but he wasn’t having it. I kissed him on his forehead and lay him down in the hammock, praying I could muster the strength to do what had to be done.
The frog’s bulbous four-fingered hands scrabbled between the fronds, its orange blotches glowing in the tannin shadows of the hut. I pulled out a dart from my quiver, slipped the flat, sharp edge between the fronds and scraped it along the length of the frog. It squeaked in terror and leapt at its enclosure, flattening itself against one side of the box.
A drop under the skin makes a baby sleep for hours. Four will kill it.
One drop of clear secretion trembled on the edge of the dart.
I turned to the hammock. In one swift movement—just as he drew in another breath to cry—I slipped the tip of the dart into the tender flesh of his elbow. Immediately he closed his mouth and went limp. With a stifled cry of my own, I snatched him close to my chest and listened for a heartbeat, holding his face against mine to feel for his breath. Both were there, faint, fluttery, hummingbird fast. He lay silent and slack in my arms, his body pale and already cooler to the touch, even though I spoke to him and rubbed his little limbs.
I felt a hundred years old. Exhausted, beat-up. Part of me wanted to give up so badly: What in hell was I supposed to do now? But I knew what Omar would say: Everything you will ever need is right in front of you. Use what you have.
From a basket suspended by sisal rope from the ceiling of the hut, I scouted out a few pieces of genipap fruit, cut them in half, took out the seeds and mashed them with the mortar and pestle, the black dye of the seeds exploding in the pulp. Sprouting Leaf had shown me this trick when I’d asked her how she made the dye for her face. Now I coated my face and neck with it, even my scalp.
Another wail from the direction of the village.
Adrenaline charged through me as, one by one, I scraped each of the five blowdarts alongside the frog, air-drying them before tucking them back into their hard leather quiver. I loosened my string bag, laid it out flat on the floor of the hut. After wrapping Omar in a small woven blanket I took from Beya’s hammock, I tucked him in the bag and slipped it over my shoulders; his tiny body now nestled against my back. In Beya’s bag, which I wore over one shoulder so it hung in front, I stored the blowgun and darts. Got up to leave and took a final look around. Well-worn but clean-looking shirts were folded in a basket—I took two. From Beya’s table I chose a bamboo container, tested the seals on both ends, and made my way down the stairs.
After taking a few minutes to wash myself in the pot of now warm water, I tore up the shirts into strips and wr
apped them around my waist and between my legs, mentally apologizing to Beya for ruining her clothes. My bleeding had slowed, but fatigue ground every sensation to a fine point. I made my way past the sprawling base of the lupuna tree, to where the young rubber sapling burst through the pile of rotted logs. Globs of dark honey still stuck to the abandoned bees nest. Bullet ants swarmed it as they carted off small amber chunks, carrying them aloft in their pincers.
Crouching in the humid green cave, I dug out some honey with a stick and poked gobs of it into the tube. Picturing Beya in my mind’s eye, I laid it on a patch of moss near a line of ants. Immediately, dozens branched from the throng and filled the tube to overflowing. With the stick I nudged it away from the nest; it fell to my feet. As she had done, I stepped on the tube, rolling it back and forth under my sandaled foot to kill all the ants on the outside. Snapping on the rubber cap, I slipped the bamboo tube into my shoulder bag along with the blowgun and darts.
I fed Beya’s donkey a couple of armfuls of hay that had been just out of her reach, walking past the dead paca before it occurred to me that I might be able to use it. I wrapped the already stiffening, twenty-pound rodent in palm leaves and fit it into my shoulder bag.
* * *
At dusk, in the jungle, there is this moment of stillness, of heightened awareness by all creatures, during this palpable shift to night. You know that this is the moment you need to get home, or make sure your shelter is built. This was the time of day that I left for Ayachero.
Sleeping newborn on my back, dead paca and supplies in front, I took a few moments to find my equilibrium with all this strange cargo before turning toward the darkening path.
I shined to Beya, “I’M COMING.”
There was no answer.
FORTY-FOUR
Never leaving the cover of the jungle, I crept along the boundary of the village, past the now-empty barn and the manioc fields, the plants shirring against one another in a light evening breeze from the river. I concentrated on silence in every step, searching out any variation in the darkness to light my way: glowing mosses, lichens dotted with bioluminescence, giant buzzing insects with blinking tails; beyond these, the flicker of the torches from the longhouse and Anaconda Bar guided me forward. Occasionally I stopped—unwilling to take one more step until I felt him breathe against me.
Sparks shot up into the night. Over the blare of the radio, more whoops, a shriek. Barking male laughter up the hill, full of cruelty. A sulfur smell.
The thumping sound of two people running full speed across the hard earth of the settlement.
“Get her get her get her!” Another round of laughter, gunshots.
Marietta tore across an arc of land toward the longhouse, pursued by a poacher in ragged shorts; he caught her easily and dragged her to the ground. She screamed as he pawed at her, twisted in his grip, got up and ran again; he let her get away like a cat might play with a mouse before finally ending the game at its leisure. He got up, dusted himself off, and followed her.
I peered out from under the longhouse. Torches blazed from all four corners of the Anaconda Bar. Poachers—I stopped counting at twenty—danced with reluctant Ayacheran women, throwing them around or grappling them tight into an unwanted embrace. Fat Carlos, in a sweat-stained undershirt and filthy khaki pants, a purple kerchief tied across his missing eye under his frayed sisal hat, sat at the bar holding court, clutching a woman I was too far away to recognize. A small figure lay trussed and gagged on the ground, motionless.
I had mere seconds to do what I had to do. Breathing hard against cramps that would have felled me at any other time, I pulled the dead paca by its back legs from my shoulder bag, laid the rigid body on the ground in front of me. In the darkness my fingers found his little sternum and rib cage. I slipped my knife into his fur and flesh and drew it to his pelvic bone, gutting him. I parted the skin and scooped out the still-warm entrails with my hand, cutting around with the other to free them. Making sure no one was watching, I darted out to the bald earth of the village between the bar and the longhouse, lay the hot pile on the ground, and disappeared back into the forest.
Second by second, I drew closer to the Anaconda Bar behind my shroud of jungle. The trussed, gagged body was Beya; she lay motionless on her side in a circle of jumping torchlight. Carlos held Anna on his lap, his hands traveling where they wished, tossing her back and forth like a doll. I spotted Doña Antonia, Paco, the other women and children, a few elderly men including Anna’s father, and all the hunters except for Franz. Huddled half in, half out of the light, most of Ayachero was patrolled by a couple dozen poachers who corralled them into a tight circle, barking at them nonstop like they were hopped-up on something, occasionally shooting near their feet or into the black clouds above.
I huddled in the shadows just feet from the rope ladder to the jaguar platform.
“You’re a gorgeous little thing,” Fat Carlos said, holding Anna tight. “Maybe I’ll take you with me, would you like that? Wouldn’t you like to be rich and fat, traipsing down the streets of gay Pareee, farting through silk?”
She turned her face away from him, but kept her body limp. A shout came from up the hill. The man who had been groping Marietta thundered down the slope to the bar.
“The Tatinga are here!” he said, his face tight with dread.
Carlos shifted Anna to his other knee, knocking back a glass of brandy as he did so. “What the fuck are you saying?”
“There’s a pile of guts on the ground!” the man said, breathless.
“So we cleaned a few jungle turkeys, so what?”
“We threw those guts in the river. These are fresh! These weren’t here a few minutes ago, boss, I swear to God.”
Fat Carlos pushed Anna off his lap. She stumbled away, a sharp cry escaping her throat. I wondered where her infant was, where Claudia was, then pushed the thought away. “This better be worth my time.”
“I swear—”
“Show me.”
Cursing, Carlos began to stroll across the shadowy hill, led by the clearly rattled poacher as well as a couple of his men; the rest of his gang kept watch over the terrified villagers.
I crept onto the first rung of the rope ladder, which creaked as it swayed, the sound muffled by the jangling radio. Pain bit through the flesh of my shoulders and back, my illness still alive in me apparently, but shooting cramps in my pelvis made each step a little journey through hell. My breath ragged in my lungs, I pictured myself on the top of the platform, telling myself I would not stop. I pushed myself up a few more rungs, praying for the strength to climb the twenty-five feet that remained.
Fat Carlos stopped dead just where I had dropped the pile of paca innards.
“It’s the Tatinga,” the poacher said, hand on his gun, bronze face shining with sweat. “It’s a warning, boss. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Tatinga, my ass,” Carlos said, turning in a slow circle as he addressed the gaping jungle. “Dutchie! You stupid little traitorous bastard!” He fired a shot into the treetops. “I’ll fuck you up, do you hear me?”
The jungle answered with the sonorous buzz of night insects.
“I know you’re out there, you little prick, so just come on out and show yourself. Nobody buys your asinine tricks.”
The high-pitched scream of a night bird rent the air. Afterward, silence.
Carlos shook his head and looked down, jowls shuddering, then raised his head in resolve. “You,” he said, jabbing his finger toward the three men who stood over the pile of guts. “Check the longhouse, tear apart this whole shithole town. Find him.”
One man took off for the longhouse while the other two—though they seemed to be following orders—were clearly spooked by the poacher’s fear, and scattered helter-skelter in the village, a whiff of mutiny in the air. I was two-thirds up the ladder when Carlos turned back toward the Anaconda Bar. I simply couldn’t climb any faster, I was so depleted.
As if enduring a change of heart, Carlos suddenly
turned and yelled back. “I skim off a little ear. What’s the big deal? Just trying to scare some balls in you.” He blinked his one good eye into the velvet blackness. “Twenty years I’ve been keeping your skinny ass fed, keeping you in pussy, cutting snakebites outta you, dragging you down this godforsaken river—and you betray me like this?”
The jungle snapped and whined, a round of locusts joined the symphony.
“I’m giving you a chance here.” He huffed as if the one-way conversation was exhausting him, placed his hands on his knees, and squinted at the shadows under the longhouse where I’d hidden just minutes ago. “Not a lot of men would do that. It’s time to stop playing games, wouldn’t you say? Just show your face and all is forgiven, okay, man? Just show your fucking loser face.”
He yanked his hat tighter on his head, adjusting the purple eye patch as he peered with his one good eye at the yawning dark, at a million different things that could kill him. Arms folded over his belly, he stood a full minute, mumbling elaborate curses, listing all the many favors he’d granted Dutchie over the years, finally declaring in conclusion that as of this moment he wasn’t worth the shit on his heel. I scrambled higher and higher. The fat man turned back toward the bar, shoulders drooping in defeat.
“Well fuck you then, you little pissant,” he said, his voice empty of bravado.
With a stifled gasp, I reached the platform. I dragged myself up on it, bellying forward on my elbows, inch by inch, to the edge that overlooked the bar.
Carlos paused at the dancing light and shadow thrown by the torch next to Beya’s still form. He crouched down next to her, said something inaudible, then got to his feet again.
Into the Jungle Page 28