I hobble to the side to avoid the toppling cord, which thumps to the ground beside me. The woman lands beside me and sets to work on the vine, cutting it into two-foot sections. When she’s done, she hands one to me.
I don’t need to be told what to do next. Water pours from the severed end when I tip it over my mouth. It’s just a trickle, but it continues for a full minute. When I’m done, I pick up another length and repeat the process. We stand still for several minutes, drinking the vine dry.
When we’re done, we share a smile. This is how people live in the Amazon. The jungle takes life, but also grants it.
The woman puts a hand on her breast. “Ashanika.”
Having seen enough movies and TV series with this moment acted out, I’m pretty sure she is telling me her name.
“Ashanika,” I say, and she smiles. Then I put a hand on my chest and say, “Greg Zekser.”
“Greg…Zeksah… Zek-ser. Zekser.” She smiles at me.
“How about just Greg?” I pat my chest. “Greg.”
“Ahh.” She smiles again, tapping herself. “Ashan.”
Her shortened name, like mine, is easier to say. “Ashan.”
“Greg,” she says, and motions for me to follow her. We strike out again, and this time cover many miles, stopping only to drink and eat along the way. We never have a proper meal, but I’m never too hungry or thirsty. I’m slowed by weakness and fever, but my guide is merciful.
We travel without incident, building trust, until we reach our destination.
Three weeks later.
VENGEANCE
15
It takes three days for my fever to pass, but when it does, I feel better than I have since the plane crashed. Ashan takes care of me, keeping me hydrated and well fed. Where I see an inedible jungle full of poisons that would cripple or kill, she sees a bounty of food.
In the days since, I’ve become Ashan’s student, learning everything I can about the jungle, about survival, and about her language. With nothing else to do but walk and learn, I’ve come a long way in a short amount of time. I’ve spent far more total hours immersed in her language than I ever did during several years of a foreign language class.
Ashan was quiet at first, until she figured out I was trying to learn. She’s been talkative since, teaching me words for just about everything we come across. Some of what she says is hard to decipher, but context often helps make sense of it. When we’re not on the move, I draw images in the earth, which entertains her and allows her to teach me words for things we haven’t come across. Weapons. Animals. Tribes.
All the while, we’re on edge, waiting for the hunters to catch us. She tells me they’re coming. She’s insistent, describing them as jaguars. Tells me they have killed Dalandala, but isn’t able to communicate who that is. When I pry for more, she closes down, haunted by something our lingering language barrier prevents me from understanding.
On several occasions she has mentioned Mapinguari while talking about the hunters. She describes it as both human and beast. Not like the other hunters. It’s more like a monster. A boogeyman. Like a spirit of vengeance. While my language is still limited, I think she’s described it as having two mouths, one eye, about my height, and hairier than me. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist.
Real or not, she fears the man-thing more than the hunters she believes are still pursuing us. I have a hard time believing those men have spent the past three weeks tracking us, but maybe vengeance is part of the culture? Feuds in the civilized world, between entire nations, are common. Why not in the jungle?
People are people, whether they live in the wilds of a tropical rainforest or in the penthouse of a Manhattan skyscraper. The vices that drag down mankind are universal. The realization feels almost racist, like I’m supposed to view all tribal people as noble and somehow in touch with a primitive lifestyle that’s more spiritual than the modern world.
But they’re no better.
No worse, either.
With little to do in the jungle aside from forage, hunt, and travel, I suppose vengeance could be entertaining for these men. It’s also possible they’re tightknit enough that the young man’s death has sent them into a frenzy. But three weeks is a long time. Their emotions should have settled. And they must have families. A village. Other responsibilities.
I nearly bump into, and trip over, Ashan when she suddenly crouches. Before I can ask why, she turns around and raises a finger to her lips, a gesture she learned from me. I’ve taught her a few words in the past weeks—machete, gun, satchel, paper—but she’s also picked up some of my mannerisms, and me some of hers.
I squat down beside her, listening. I hear the jungle’s background noise, but…
There it is.
In the distance. Monkeys are calling a warning. Predators are about. People. And not us.
I smile at the realization that, in a strange kind of way, I’m also learning to speak monkey. The smile fades when I realize what it means. The hunters haven’t chased us. They’ve predicted our destination and beat us to it, probably because I was ill. Had they known, they might have just chased us and caught up weeks ago.
A series of hand signals from Ashan instruct me to stay low, stay quiet, and follow her. Before setting out, she readies a bow, keeping an arrow nocked, but not drawn back. I’ve been practicing with one of the bows taken from the hunters, but my aim is atrocious. I’m improving, but I’m nowhere near ready to shoot a moving target.
And I don’t want to.
Most nights, I’m haunted by images of the boy slain by the dart, and the older man killed by my gun. Some mornings, I wake expecting to find their sunken, rotting eyes staring back at me. While trying to sleep, visions of their decomposing corpses would fill my thoughts. By now, with the heat, humidity, scavengers, and insects, they’re likely just bones.
The terrain moves upward in a steady, but not steep grade. Ashan leads the way, each step silent. I make a little noise, but nothing loud enough to notice from a distance. I know I’m doing well when she doesn’t turn around and scold me with a glare.
A wall of young vegetation—leafy plants, saplings, and ferns—blocks the path ahead. Between the trees and above the wall, I see swatches of bright blue.
A clearing, I think, almost salivating for a clear view of the sky.
Ashan lowers the bow as she creeps up to the wall.
Speaking simply in her language, she whispers. “Quiet. Hunters. Look.” Then she points to the wall and starts easing leaves away.
I do the same, a few feet away, inching leaves back. For all I know, the hunters are ten feet beyond the wall and will notice me. When I move the last leaf blocking my view, my fear of immediate violence fades.
Ten men rummage through the remains of a village. The red paint framing their eyes and drawn in patterns over their bodies, coupled with the whisker-sticks protruding from their noses, identify them as members of the angry father’s and dead son’s tribe. They carry little—bows and arrows—and wear even less. There’s a cord around their waists holding a minimal thong-like garment that covers their manhood. The clothing isn’t designed to protect, just to keep things from being knocked about while moving.
What looks like building frames for a dozen large thatch huts, stand charred and useless. Ashes cover the ground where the primitive structures once stood. The clearing is two hundred feet across. Each structure would have been enough to house an entire family. How many people lived here? Fifty? More?
Ashan glares, the sides of her nose twitching up. I reach out and put a hand on her arm. She flinches, eyes flaring with anger. When she looks into my eyes, she calms.
“Who?” I ask.
“Hunters.”
I shake my head.
“No. Who…live here?”
Her frown deepens. The red paint on her forehead was washed off two weeks ago. Her hair has grown out on the sides. She looks less and less like a warrior, but the look on her face leaves no doubt; she will kill these m
en if given the chance.
“Family,” she says.
Oh my God...
This was her village. Her people. Her family.
I don’t need to ask when. This destruction is many weeks old. Maybe months old.
Ashan’s story fleshes out. She wasn’t just found wandering the jungle. She was far from home, in enemy territory, armed with a blowgun and seeking vengeance of her own.
For this.
For the destruction of her home and the killing of her family.
Were the hunters to spot us now, they’d see two pairs of glaring eyes. But the shade cast by the high sun keeps us hidden in shadows.
The ten men break into three groups, searching the ruins, probably for signs of our arrival. Bored with the chore, two of the younger men start kicking what looks like a ball. In that moment, they no longer look like dangerous hunters, painted red like demons. They’re kids, playing with a ball, laughing in the sun, enjoying life.
Then I see the ball for what it is—a skull.
It could be Ashan’s mother, or sister, or husband for all I know.
This is why she didn’t hesitate to kill the young man. These men haven’t just wronged her, they’ve committed genocide.
I’ve seen enough. After letting the leaves slip back into place, I whisper. “Sorry.” I speak the word in English. I don’t know her word for sorry, or even if there is one. But she’s heard me say it enough, after every mistake I’ve made, that she understands its meaning.
She slides away from the wall, her face a torrent of emotion.
Part of her wants to rush right out and execute the men. She might take a few of them by surprise, but she’d eventually be slain. And what good is vengeance if it’s incomplete?
She processes for several silent minutes, while we listen to the men make a sport of her peoples’ remains.
A deep breath sighs from her lips like the ocean retreating over stones. Then she’s clear. Focused. And pissed.
“Greg. Ashan. Kill.”
“Kill hunters?”
She nods. “All.”
My stomach sours.
“No kill.” I try to think of a way to explain mercy, to communicate the sanctity of human life. But I can’t. Not just because I lack the words, but because I have empathy. Without trying to, I’ve put myself in her position. If these men had killed Gwen and Juni, along with a vast number of my extended family, would I just let them leave? Could I live with myself if I knew monsters like that were left to murder, rape, and pillage?
“I kill alone,” she growls and starts moving away.
She’s going to leave me, I realize. After the past few weeks of nursing me back to health and keeping me alive when I’d have certainly died, I’ve betrayed her.
And I’m wrong to do it.
My modern-world morality makes no sense out here. There are no laws. No courts. No police. Right and wrong are determined by people willing to take matters into their own hands. I can’t imagine a world in which genocide is justified, or in which men like this will someday be redeemed.
“Wait,” I say. “I will help kill.”
She stops, glaring at me, sizing me up.
“When?” I ask.
She starts moving away again, eyes still on me. “Tonight.”
16
As the sun sets I come to the slow realization that I’ve made a horrible mistake. A lapse in judgement has brought me to the cusp of being a murderer. I’m already a killer. I’ve taken life, but that was, without a doubt, self-defense. Even in the civilized world, shooting that man was justified. But this…slaughtering a group of men in their sleep…that can’t be right.
Or is it?
Had these men not come here to kill us, I wouldn’t be in this position. Had they not attempted to rape Ashan, their lives wouldn’t be at risk. But the cycle of violence started before her capture. It began here, in this village, where an untold number of people were slain, putting Ashan on a path of vengeance that led to her capture.
I’ve been sucked into a vortex of pre-existing violence that might have been spiraling for generations. Since I can swim—metaphorically—I have no choice but to go with the flow, or drown. Without Ashan, I’d be dead by now.
She’s earned my help.
Had I killed the father and son when I first encountered them, we’d be safe. My lack of action put us in danger. I’m not going to make that mistake again. We can end this, here and now.
In the last lingering light of day, I slip the pistol from my pocket. It feels lighter in my hands now. I have enough bullets to kill each and every hunter. Just point and shoot until no one is moving. The darkness will help shield my psyche. The knowledge that I have killed several men will gnaw on my soul. The darkness will at least spare me from seeing the gore created by my actions. The less nightmare fuel, the better.
“No,” Ashan says, motioning to the gun. “Gun loud.”
She’s squatting, digging a small hollow into the earth. Her eyes are both innocent, and full of deadly portent. She’s a living duality. Yin and yang. Youthful beauty and experienced killer. Mercy and vengeance occupy equal portions of her heart.
“How?” I ask. “How kill?”
She points to herself, and then to the blowgun. Then she points to me and leans to the side, picking up one of the long, poison-tipped arrows we stole from the hunters. She breaks the rod a foot from the tip. After discarding the back end, she turns the tip around, angles her neck to the side and acts out jabbing her own throat. She then holds a hand over her mouth as she acts out dying from the poison’s effects, her gasps muffled by her hand.
“Quiet,” she says.
I had pictured a violent, loud, angry confrontation. Screams. Blood. A battlefield.
Ashan paints a different picture. We’re to be assassins. Silent. Clean.
We won’t propel the men into the afterlife, we’ll ease them into it, one at a time, holding them still as their lives fade.
I’m not sure which version frightens me more.
“Quiet,” she repeats and leans forward onto her hands, eyes locked on mine. She transforms into something predatory. I see the jaguar’s eyes reflected in hers. She moves her right arm forward, placing it on the ground, slowly putting her weight down. Low to the ground, she lifts her left leg and brings it forward. Then her left arm, and right leg. Each limb moves with fluid ease, compressing the earth slowly, never making a sound. “See? Quiet. Now you.”
I’ve marveled at the way Ashan moves through the forest, making little sound and leaving even fewer traces. Thinking I can duplicate her second-nature abilities feels akin to Michael Jordan trying to play baseball…if Michael Jordan was an unathletic doctor who needed to take vitamin D on account of how little time he spent in the sun. But I’ll oblige her. Her lessons keep me alive. And tonight, I’m going to need all the help I can get.
I mimic her pose on the ground, hands and feet. The tight pull on the bottom of my foot stings as the still-healing sores from weeks of barefoot travel stretch and tear. The pain is minor compared to what I endured during our first week of travel, so I barely acknowledge it before taking my first step.
I reach out with my hand, and slowly transfer my weight to it without making a sound. I smile at Ashan, who is amused by my childlike need for approval, but still dubious. When I move my leg forward and catch my toes on a root that snaps back to the ground, she shakes her head.
“Slow,” she says. “Quiet.”
Our language barrier keeps her from verbalizing any more than that, but she doesn’t need to. I understand. If we’re quiet, we’ll have all night. The men’s deaths will be drawn out. Unrushed, I will have time to contemplate and debate my actions.
The debate is over, I think. Right and wrong have already been defined. I’m doing what needs to be done. It’s as simple as that.
I stalk around the jungle, hands and feet, imitating the careful gait of a chameleon. It’s all about weight dispersal. Lethal delicacy.
My progress is impressive until Ashan redirects my path toward some low-lying foliage. “Through. Quiet.” She watches my progress while digging her small hole.
Slipping through the brush without making a sound is impossible. It doesn’t matter how slowly I move. Branches and leaves catch on my clothing, stretching out and snapping back into place. I try three times without success. By the time I give up, I’m ready to draw the machete and decapitate the stalks. My fury toward the plants eclipses how I feel about the hunters.
Ashan’s hand on my shoulder makes me flinch. She’s silent, even on two feet. “Nuvi,” she says. Realizing I don’t understand, she tugs on my shirt and repeats it. “Nuvi.”
“I know,” I say in English. “It’s getting caught.”
She sighs at my frustration, and steps back. “Nuvi.” She undoes the tie holding the sash around her waist. It falls away and I divert my eyes. Ashan is basically naked all the time. The sash around her waist conceals about seven inches of her abdomen, just below her belly button. But it does nothing to conceal what’s below, or the rest of her body.
I’m mostly accustomed to her perpetual nakedness, but I am, at times, distracted by it. She is…beautiful, and strong. She is hard to ignore. Seeing her without the sash, despite the skin beneath being nothing taboo to the outside world, still feels wrong. Intimate.
She hisses to get my attention. When I resist, she snaps her fingers, a trick I taught her. “Look. See.”
When I give in and look, she motions to her body. “Nuvi.”
Nuvi means naked.
She steps up to the brush, drops to her hands and knees and then moves through the brush without a sound. The leaves slide over her body with little more than a hiss. Then she’s through and back on her feet.
Ashan points at me. “You. Nuvi.”
“Oh,” I say, looking down at myself. “Oh…”
While Ashan is shameless, I have maintained my modern world sensibilities when it comes to my own nudity. If Ashan has to relieve herself, she stops, drops, and takes care of business. I still find a private place behind a tree. It took me shouting for her to realize she wasn’t welcome while I was defecating. It amused her, but she’s respected my boundaries since.
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