The Effort

by Claire Holroyde

  He put his hands on his hips and took a few breaths.

  “Do you two have any weapons?” he asked, suddenly looking Zhen in the eyes. “Those Effort bastards took my rifle before they spit me out on the road.”

  Zhen shook her head.

  “Well, I still have my hunting knife,” the man said. “And a compass. Maybe we could help one another. Because if we stay out in the open, we’re going to die. And if we hide in the forest, we’re going to need him to stay alive.”

  He pointed to his friend, who had finally stopped far ahead to look back at them, agitated.

  “My name’s Ned, by the way.”

  “What is he saying?” Dewei whispered in Mandarin.

  Zhen’s eyes flitted to the pile of bodies lying next to the stilts of what was their home. Those bodies had names once, too.

  “What do you need from us, Ned?” Zhen asked in English.

  He sighed but nodded and got to the point: Ned and his friend were almost out of food.

  “So we give you food,” Zhen said, “and your friend will guide us through the forest…to where? To do what?”

  “He’ll find us fresh water,” Ned said, perking up. “He’s looking for a certain river that will lead him to a big village. There’ll be food there. They clear land for gardens, and they fish and hunt. And there are lots of villagers. We’d be safe.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then we don’t die,” Ned said, lifting up his hands. “At least not today and not tomorrow. What more can you ask for?”

  Zhen nodded; she had no better plan and was living on borrowed time anyway. She put out her hand, like they did in Western movies, which made Ned snort a laugh. They shook in agreement and started off toward the smaller man.

  “Okay then, Gustavo!” Ned called out to his friend. “We’re all coming with you. These guys are going to share their rations, and I’m the guy that got you here. Your turn.”

  The man named Gustavo looked back at Zhen and Dewei and shook his head. Ned pulled him off to the side for an argument in hissing whispers. Ned finally shouted, “Well, do you want to get there alive?”

  Gustavo cursed to himself. The words started in English but morphed into a strange language Zhen had never heard.

  “South,” he commanded. “And don’t slow me down!”

  He turned and refused to look them in the eyes for days.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Into the Forest

  French Guiana

  June 9

  T-minus 15 days to nuclear detonation

  GUSTAVO WALKED AHEAD of the others, turning to slip between tree trunks, high-stepping through the brush, and keeping an eye out for danger. Wayãpi were sure-footed in the undergrowth with their dexterous feet and strong big toes. Their soles were flat and hard with calluses but still graceful while balancing on a tree trunk or bridging a wide stream. The soles of Gustavo’s feet had grown too soft, but they would harden again.

  He set a brisk pace the others couldn’t keep. The more they slowed him down, the more he thought bad things, like how two people could survive longer on the rations they split in four every night. Gustavo yearned to reach the Oyapock and find his people, but as himself and not as someone who would murder his own friends in their sleep. He had to keep reminding himself who he really was, like a prayer or shamanistic chant.

  I remember Father St. John. I remember our church in Pedra Branca. I remember writing poetry about our losing battle…

  Before meeting the priest, Gustavo thought, before I took the Portuguese name Gustavo, I was Wanato of the Wayãpi by the Amapari. I remember knowing what the Grandfather People knew: how to start a fire, how to beat a vine whose pulp can stun fish in the rivers. I remember all the trees, plants, and animals. I remember all the stars that hang in the sky…

  Wanato smelled burning. He swiveled his head to look back at the bare soles of his moving feet. They were darkened with ash. It wasn’t long before the group reached a large clearing where the underbrush was scorched down to sharp, broken roots for as far as the eye could see. Where there was once every shade of green and the full music of creatures, there were now blackened tree stumps and silence. The lingering smell of char hung thick in the air.

  Wanato stepped more carefully across the wasteland and told Ned to check the compass. They needed to stay as close to due south as the terrain allowed. When Ned didn’t answer, Wanato turned back to see the three of them struck dumb and motionless at the scale of destruction.

  “This is nothing,” Wanato yelled at them. “Keep moving.”

  Other than boats, the first motorized vehicles that Wanato had seen as a child were construction vehicles—and he had screamed in terror.

  I remember that my name is Wanato and I am Wayãpi, he chanted in his head. I remember why my people don’t kill butterflies…

  Wanato’s father once asked his son a long time ago, Why don’t Wayãpi kill butterflies? This was an easy answer for the boy. Because butterflies look after the vines that tie the sky to the ground and keep it up. Wanato’s father had nodded in the dying firelight and asked what happened when the Old People killed all the butterflies. This was back in an age when the world was new and Wayãpi were like children. The sky fell to darkness, Wanato whispered. The Old People couldn’t hunt…The words came so quickly that Wanato had to gasp for breath toward the end of the story as Yaneyar the hero brewed caxiri beer and enticed his Wayãpi people to drink, sing, and dance until the sun rose again.

  * * *

  June 23

  T-minus 1 day to nuclear detonation

  THEY WEREN’T COVERING enough ground by the time the sun set. Wanato let his imagination sprint ahead as he tried to will his future into existence. His brother’s beautiful wife would be the first to lay eyes on him, Wanato decided. She would go into shock as he emerged from the forest after the most challenging quest of his life. He might need to whisper his name to assure her that he wasn’t his twin brother and that the world hadn’t completely turned inside out. The dead hadn’t risen, but the lost had returned. Wanato would reach for her as tears slid down their cheeks. Senses regained, she would grab hold of him and wail with joy.

  With that, the rest of his family would come running. His old aunt would place her shaking palms on his shoulders. She would need to feel him to believe in the miracle of his return to the Earth’s hot and fat middle from the ocean of ice at its northern pole. And his brother’s sons—who could have been his own sons, by the looks of them—would sit beside Wanato by the fire and listen to stories of snow and ice, a metal ship that was as big as a village, a picture taker named Jack, and a flying helicopter that lifted him into the air and brought him home. Over the days and nights, he could fill the hole his brother left and gain the family he never had…

  Wanato spotted a familiar vine and darted to examine its choking hold around a dead trunk. By the time the others caught up to him, Wanato was smiling.

  “Japu bird’s snot,” he said in English, and pointed.

  He told them it was the vine’s Wayãpi name. During the days of the Old People, the japu bird started sobbing and didn’t stop until the whole forest was covered in his snot.

  “Gross,” Ned said.

  But Wanato’s face was melting from something hard into something soft as each familiar thing caught his eye.

  “How many days have we been at this, Gustavo?” Ned asked, and clenched his jaw.

  Wanato never understood the white man’s obsession with counting things. What did it matter how many days they had been in the forest? Did it change anything to know?

  “Twenty-one days,” Zhen said immediately.

  She didn’t say it with an accusing tone, even though they were starving and miserable. Their skin was slick with dripping sweat, and welts from blood-sucking insects had made their joints swollen. One of Zhen’s eyelids was so puffy it wouldn’t open. The men were shirtless, exposing pronounced rib cages, knobby spines, and sharp shoulder blades.

&nb
sp; The others had followed Wanato for days and days (twenty-one, according to Zhen), silently grateful for his drive and knowledge of the forest. Wanato saw the movements of a poisonous snake where the others saw only leaf litter. He saw the broad, waxy leaves that could carry the embers of a fire or be bent to funnel rainwater straight into their canteens. At night, Zhen and Dewei selflessly divided their food into small, equal rations until it was all gone. Now their stomachs were long empty and their strength and spirits were failing.

  Ned limped up to Wanato. He stumbled so often that Zhen and Dewei stayed close and grabbed hold of his arms when he tilted. They went down hard with the big American every time.

  “I know you’re happy to be home,” Ned said carefully, “but we’re gonna die if we don’t eat.”

  Wanato had been angry as they left the highway and headed into the forest. He didn’t want the worry of trying to keep three other people alive. But he owed his life to Zhen and Dewei for the food that had sustained them this long. And to Ned, he owed his return home. Wanato’s gratitude was boundless, and truth be told, he found the young man endearing on the days he had patience. Wanato didn’t want to leave these three unless there was no other choice. He owed them that. And he owed himself the peace of mind that he had done all he could for them.

  “We need a new plan,” Ned told Wanato.

  “No, same plan. We find the Oyapock,” Wanato said. “We are close. If you want to give me the compass to hold—”

  “Not a chance. You’re not done with me until I say so.”

  “Then keep us headed south,” Wanato said, and led the way forward.

  * * *

  THE NEXT DAY, just before dusk, Ned fell and wouldn’t get up. Zhen and Dewei tried to pull him to his feet, but he wouldn’t budge. Wanato doubled back and crouched beside him.

  “Just go,” Ned said softly.

  He gave the compass to Wanato without looking him in the eyes. It might have been shame, or maybe he always expected to be left to die. Zhen couldn’t get him to say much while the four of them sat in the underbrush, too exhausted to slap away mosquitoes. The sun crawled across the canopy.

  “The daylight’s almost gone,” Ned finally said to Zhen.

  It must have been easier to talk to her. There was a kindness about Zhen that drew you in.

  “You should go while you can,” Ned almost pleaded.

  Zhen spoke Chinese to Dewei, who nodded in agreement.

  “We will wait with Ned until morning,” she said to Wanato. “You can go.”

  They were all releasing him from blame. Wanato held the compass, looked down at his feet, and gave them a silent command. If he waited any longer, if he tried to say goodbye, he wouldn’t be able to do what he must. Wanato stood and trudged ahead with all his remaining strength. He didn’t turn around, but he felt their eyes watching his back.

  I couldn’t save them. How many times had he thought this, and would he ever believe it?

  Wanato kept moving and focused solely on the hunger that tried to claw its way out of his belly. Starvation didn’t recognize friends, family, or lovers, only its own pain. Wanato focused so hard that he nearly tripped and twisted an ankle on something round and partially hidden by underbrush. It was another familiar part of the forest: a large seedpod. Wanato picked it up and turned in circles, scanning the forest. Then he saw a grove of the largest trees in the whole Amazon.

  Wanato hurled himself back the way he came, clutching the seedpod to his chest. As soon as he could take in enough breath, he screamed Ned’s name. Zhen hollered back in the distance, leading Wanato back with her voice. When he found them, Ned bowed low to hide his tears. Wanato had to crouch.

  “I can save you,” he whispered to Ned.

  The American grabbed him in a shaky embrace.

  “Just a little farther,” Wanato said quickly. “I swear it.”

  He pried off Ned’s hand and placed the hard pod onto his palm.

  “What the hell is this?”

  Ned looked up into Wanato’s eyes and saw a new excitement and urgency that brought him to stand on failing legs and wipe his tears. Wanato led the way, with Zhen and Dewei in the middle and Ned at the back, stumbling and holding on to tree trunks when he fell. They reached the grove of trees whose trunks rose above the canopy. The dullish seedpods littered the ground by their roots. Wanato used Ned’s hunting knife to saw off the top of one and pull out a large, rough seed with a seam along the pinched edge of its shell.

  Ned crumpled to the ground. “Brazil nuts!” he gasped.

  Ned looked like he didn’t know whether to smile or cry with relief. He did both as Wanato cut into the seed’s seam with his knife, shelled it, and tossed it to Ned. Wanato stood just out of reach as he continued to toss the Brazil nuts one by one. He had to avoid getting locked in Ned’s grateful grip before he could dispense the foods his friend so desperately needed. Dewei bowed in gratitude when Wanato threw him a shelled seed and then returned the favor with a seed he had just shelled with his small utility knife. The young man was good with tools.

  “Brazil nuts aren’t nuts at all,” Ned blubbered, sniffing a runny nose. “They’re seeds. Go figure.”

  Wanato had come to learn many things about Ned: his stubbornness, humor, and indigestion, but the things that he most admired were Ned’s capacity for empathy and wonder in all situations.

  “You should read poetry,” Wanato told him, although he had no idea how that could be possible now.

  The Brazil nuts (which were really seeds) were oily to the touch and delicious. Zhen said she lost count of how many Wanato and Dewei both doled out, they were that good. Wanato furrowed his brows as his hands kept moving.

  “Wayãpi can count up to four,” he told her. “After that, we say there is ‘a lot.’”

  Zhen laughed and hid her smile behind one hand.

  “Then there is much we can teach one another,” she said.

  Wanato looked over at her and went still. There had always been so much to teach and learn, but too few would listen. Wanato spent his adult life hitting up against the wall of ignorance on all sides and almost gave up.

  “Lesson one from us Wayãpi,” he said, and pointed to the grove. “Save these trees!”

  In the days before the comet, it was illegal to destroy Brazil nut trees because they created such a valuable export. But laws alone weren’t enough to protect them and their delicate ecosystem. Brazil nut trees only bore fruit in virgin forests where the right pollinating bees could thrive. The trees only bore children where the agouti could eat its seeds with its sharp rodent teeth and bury the others for later.

  Saving the Brazil nut tree was a lesson his dead friends Zé and Maria knew well. There was one of these trees on the federal land that the couple harvested. Zé named it the Majesty for its immense splendor and once fended off illegal loggers with a shotgun when they tried to invade. It was a war with the Great Hungry Machine on one side and the Majesty, the tree of life, a giver instead of a taker, on the other.

  Wanato could remember Zé—everything wide: his face, his eyes, his nose, his smile, those hats he always wore with tufts of gray hair spilling out—as he handed Gustavo a pencil drawing of the Majesty for the cover of his poetry collection. Wanato could picture him at the end of his TEDx Talk, before he thanked the live audience and exited the stage. He said, “It’s in our hands, and we have the future before us—and we have to decide.”

  “Meus amigos,” Wanato muttered sadly, and brought another Brazil nut to his lips. My friends…

  * * *

  THEIR BELLIES SWELLED and got to work digesting rich proteins, fats, and fiber. Ned ripped farts and groaned about his stretching stomach. They couldn’t have set off hiking even if they wanted to. Moving a safe distance from the grove and its falling pods, they lay down and huddled in pairs under two nets that kept the mosquitoes and cockroaches off their faces.

  “We got lucky,” Zhen whispered. “So many will starve. Millions. Billions.”

&nbs
p; “All the people left in the cities,” Wanato agreed.

  He could remember the first time he walked through a city as a young man. There were more people in Macapá than he imagined even existed. He asked Father St. John, What is feeding all these people? He had only known the forests, rural farms, and even frontier towns with gardens and chickens running underfoot, but the city had no way of producing food, not that he could see.

  “Both you Debbie Downers better shut up and go to sleep,” Ned growled.

  * * *

  WANATO DIDN’T KNOW how much time had passed before he woke and pulled back the mosquito netting. Zhen was already standing alert and looking up. Windows in the canopy revealed a clear sky.

  “I’ve counted the days and hours,” Zhen stated, still looking up, “down to T-minus zero to detonation of our spacecraft’s nuclear payload.”

  “Is this it?” Ned whispered, desperately trying to read Zhen’s shadowed expression. “Is the comet coming to hit us? Is this the end?”

  The forest was eerily silent. The insects and frogs all watched and waited. There was a flash of light that burned an afterimage they tried to blink away. Dewei sat up and opened his mouth, but Zhen shushed him.

  “Do you feel that?” she whispered.

  Wanato felt vibrations in his chest and ears. Fiery streaks suddenly zipped across pockets of sky in the canopy. Leaves, branches, and insects rained down from high above.

  “Meteors!” Zhen gasped. “Those are shattered pieces of the comet. We hit it!”

  More meteors burned trails toward the horizon. Ned tilted his head all the way back.

  “Hope it hurt, fucker!” he shouted up, laughing and crying.

  Wanato watched the sky blur through his tears. How could he not be grateful to the comet, now that it was deflected? UD3 had succeeded where he had failed; it brought the destruction that could save Indigenous peoples and their forests from extinction, if only they could remember their traditional ways. It had also brought a civilization that was poisoning itself to a halt; it saved humans from themselves. Nothing by any stretch of his imagination could have been so effective.