by Jeff Strand
Theresa, an eleven-year-old wise beyond her years, had wondered if maybe Percival and his crew were going to hold Roger and I for ransom, but his YouTube channel chronicled his adventures around the globe, and I assumed that if people had died or went missing on his watch, it would show up in a Google search. We’d added a clause to our agreement that Roger and I could bail at any time, no questions asked, and keep our upfront fee. Percival had agreed to it on the condition that he would be permitted to do a video depicting us as shameful cowards, and we said sure, no problem.
Percival met us at the airport when we arrived in the early evening. After a ceviche dinner that I was able to eat in its entirety without interruption, one that was delicious enough to make me rethink my whole aversion to the “raw fish” genre of food, he took us to our hotel. “Sleep well,” he said. “We’ll depart early in the morning.”
“What time?” I asked.
“Eight o’clock sharp.”
That didn’t seem early at all. That seemed gloriously decadent. “It’s only nine o’clock now,” I noted.
“Correct.”
“Oh my God.” So much sleep. So very much sleep.
Roger and I bid each other goodnight then went to our separate rooms. Though my room was not a luxury suite, it had a comfortable looking bed. I just stared at it for a while. I didn’t want to climb into it right away—like a night with a lover, I wanted to savor the anticipation.
I had never seen such a fluffy looking pillow.
Look at that blanket. Soft. Inviting. A feast for the senses.
I pulled the blanket down and ran my fingers over the sheet. Smooth. Silky. Freshly laundered.
I needed to stop. If I kept this up I’d fall asleep too soon. I didn’t want to rob myself of the full experience.
Typically I did not sleep in the nude, but this was not a typical night.
I undressed completely and slid beneath the sheets. The pillow fit my head perfectly, as if it had been made just for me, only me, nobody else but me. Angels made this pillow out of magical clouds spun from cotton candy, but not sticky cotton candy, silky smooth cotton candy.
Sleep. I was going to get a full night of sleep.
I laughed softly to myself. Tee hee hee!
I closed my eyes and dreamt of the color of happiness.
I woke up at 7:29 AM, one minute before the alarm. What was this strange feeling that had come over me?
Was I feeling...refreshed?
I took a shower and got dressed in my explorer gear: hiking boots, full-length khaki pants, a light green shirt, and a fashionable sun hat. I wondered if Percival would have a pith helmet for me.
I stepped out of my room at the same time Roger stepped out of his. He’d shaved the beard and cut his hair. I assumed he’d cut it himself, since it had a very distinct “cut my own hair without really knowing what I’m doing” look, but I wasn’t about to criticize it. “Hey, looking good!” I said.
“Thanks. Did you notice we have really thin walls?”
“No. Was I snoring?”
“You were saying creepy things to your pillow.”
“How creepy?”
“You said it’s the only one who understands you.”
“Ah. I didn’t really mean that, obviously.”
“You gave it pet names. Erotic ones.”
“We should get going,” I said. “We don’t want to keep Percival waiting.”
“Oh, I agree with that, but there’s no reason we can’t talk while we walk. I have so much more to discuss with you.”
Roger shared several disturbing details with me as we made our way to the hotel lobby. I was thankful that inanimate objects could not file sexual harassment suits.
Percival gave us a wide grin as we approached him. A very large and handsome man stood next to him.
“Good morning!” Percival said. “I trust you two slept well?”
I nodded. “Very well, thank you.”
“This is Ignacio. He is our guide and translator.”
“Nice to meet you, Ignacio.”
Ignacio frowned at me. “Please to repeat. I no understand.”
“Uhhh...nice to meet you.” I mimed a hand-shaking gesture.
Ignacio looked over at Percival, as if deeply confused.
Percival chuckled. “He’s kidding. Our Ignacio is quite the prankster. He’ll be saying lots of things like that, so prepare yourself.”
Ignacio smiled. “I will. Lots and lots of them.”
“So, Ignacio, how many languages do you speak?” Roger asked.
“Are you trying to get me to do a C-3PO reference?”
“No. It was a real question.”
“Two.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s sufficient, I guess.”
“And I know this region like the back of my hand.” Ignacio glanced down at the back of his hand. “Where the hell did that vein come from?”
“He’s making another joke,” Percival explained.
“I got that,” said Roger. “I haven’t decided yet which one was funnier.”
“I’m a big fan of the American humor that’s intended more to annoy than amuse,” said Ignacio.
“Anyway, here you go,” said Percival, handing me his room key. “My bags are in 203.”
“I’m sorry…?”
“I’m obviously not paying you to look pretty. You’ll be responsible for the manual labor during this expedition. Roger, go fetch me a coffee. Two packets of sugar, one squirt of creamer.”
Neither Roger nor I moved. We weren’t sure if he was kidding or not.
“Unlike our jokey friend Ignacio here, I only say true things,” said Percival. “Coffee and bags, please. Chop chop.”
It was the first time somebody had ever used the phrase “chop chop” in my presence before. I didn’t much like it. But I figured that for nineteen thousand dollars and the promise of eight hundred thousand more, I could handle carrying some bags. I went up to his room, expecting to find dozens of heavy suitcases, but there was only a backpack and a tan duffel bag that he could’ve easily carried downstairs himself.
When I got back down to the lobby, Roger had a brown stain on his shirt.
“It wasn’t a big enough squirt of creamer,” Roger explained.
“Hey, Percival, how about you not throw hot coffee on my friend?”
“It was lukewarm,” said Percival. “That’s what pushed me over the edge.”
“Don’t do anything like that again. We’ll be your servants but we’re not gonna be your little bitches. Not for—” I almost said “Not for eight hundred thousand dollars,” but I stopped myself because if I said it out loud I might decide that I would indeed be his little bitch for that amount of money.
“Very well,” said Percival. “I apologize. I’m used to hotter coffee and larger squirts of creamer and I forgot myself for a moment. Our Jeep awaits. Load it up and we’ll begin our journey.”
Ignacio drove while Percival sat up front. The Jeep’s engine was so loud and the road was so bumpy that Roger and I couldn’t really hear each other talk, so we sat there wondering if we’d made a terrible mistake. Most likely we had.
After about an hour, we pulled up to a checkpoint. I quickly counted at least ten men with machine guns, which was ten more machine gun-wielding men than I was comfortable being around. One of them approached our vehicle.
Percival glanced back at us and waved a manila envelope. “Don’t worry. We have our bribe ready.”
The man walked up to the Jeep and said something in Spanish. Percival passed the envelope to Ignacio, who passed it to the man. He opened it, flipped through the contents, then shoved the envelope into his pocket. Then the man pointed the machine gun at me and said something.
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“He wants to know if you’re American.” Ignacio said “Si,” to the man.
The man angrily waved the machine gun at me and said something else.
“What did he say?”
“
He said Americans are bullshit. He wants you to get out of the Jeep.”
I opened the door and got out. The man continued talking.
“He’s telling you to turn around and place your hands on the vehicle.”
I did as instructed.
The man bashed me in the back of the legs with his machine gun. As I cried out in pain and dropped to my knees, I realized that this particular adventure was not going to be the one that broke the curse.
Chapter Four
Later, we were back in the Jeep.
“I’d like to apologize,” said Percival. “I obviously never meant for you to spend several hours in jail. I trust it wasn’t too unpleasant?”
I glared at him with my eye that didn’t have an ice pack over it.
Fortunately, after receiving the first punch I’d been able to kick the ass of one of my cellmates and assert my dominance, which kept me from getting repeatedly beaten up during those eight very long hours. One of my other cellmates wasn’t so lucky.
They’d taken away my sun hat and never given it back, so I was much less fashionable now.
“I want to go home,” I said.
“I understand how you’re feeling,” said Percival. “And if you want to end this journey prematurely, I’ll be more than happy to turn this Jeep around and take you back to the airport.”
“Good. I want to go home.”
“That said, imagine how disappointed you’ll feel to have come all the way here only to experience little more than the walls of a jail cell. Don’t you want to share grand tales of adventure with your children?”
“No. I want you to take me back to the airport so I can go home.”
“Imagine the disappointment in your children’s eyes as you return home without the vast treasure they were expecting. You’ll still have their love and respect, presumably, but when they hug you, you’ll sense that something is missing.”
“You said it was going to be completely safe,” I reminded him. “I could’ve spent the rest of my life in a South American prison because of you.”
“Maybe you should focus a little less on your imprisonment and a little more on how I was able to pull together enough cash to bribe them to set you free. I wasn’t expecting to have to pay for your freedom. That’s a significant added expense. If you leave now, I bribed the authorities for nothing.”
“Airport.”
“I’ve seen far worse eye injuries. I once saw a man whose eye was dangling by a stalk. Now that was a man who was justified in wanting to go home. Your eye didn’t pop out even a little.”
“Why is the Jeep still going in the same direction?” I asked.
“How can I get you to reconsider?”
“Ten percent.”
“Not a chance.”
“Nine percent.”
“No.”
“Then we’re done.”
“How about this?” said Roger. “You give Andrew eight percent and me two percent. I don’t need the money. I mean, I need some money but I don’t need huge piles of it. So it’s only a two percent increase from the share you were already giving us.”
Percival thought about that. “Very well,” he said.
“Then my share better go up, too,” said Ignacio.
“You already get twenty percent.”
“Why the hell does he get twenty percent?” I asked.
“Because he’s been joining me on these expeditions for years. We have many shared experiences. We’ve sucked the poison out of each other’s snakebites.”
“Twenty-two percent or I stop this Jeep right here,” said Ignacio.
“How about twenty-two percent of kiss my ass?” Percival suggested, his accent transforming to a southern drawl. He quickly reverted to his British-esque dialect. “My percentages will not be held for ransom. If you all wish to return home, wallowing in shame and failure, I won’t try to stop you, but my army of YouTube subscribers will know just how greedy and cowardly you are, and the comments section will be scathing.”
“I’d like to keep going,” said Roger. “Of course, I’ll admit that I wasn’t the one who got beat up in jail.”
“I already said I’ll do it if Roger and I share ten percent,” I reminded Percival.
“I was only kidding about wanting twenty-two percent,” said Ignacio, though unlike the time he’d pretended that he didn’t recognize a vein on the back of his hand, I was pretty sure he hadn’t really been joking.
“Good. Then let us continue our journey,” said Percival.
A couple of hours later—way longer than Percival had said the trip would take—we arrived in a small village. Percival explained that because my imprisonment had put us so far behind schedule, we’d have to sleep here. It would be too dangerous to travel at night.
The accommodations, with the four of us sharing a barn with some interesting-smelling livestock, weren’t very comfortable, but I slept like the dead.
The next morning, it was only a short drive to our destination. “Behold!” said Percival. “The Amazon River!”
After covering ourselves in insect repellent, we beheld the Amazon River. I was still annoyed with the whole jail thing but I had to admit that this was pretty cool.
“Our boat will arrive soon,” said Percival. “Until then, let me tell you and the world of the treasure we seek.” He took out his cell phone, used his image on the screen to fix his luxurious hair, and began to record. “Hello. I’m Percival Longshore and this is Adventures With Percival Longshore. Welcome to the first installment of my latest epic adventure. This flowing body of water that you see behind me is the legendary Amazon River. It is the longest river in the entire world, if you don’t count the Nile, but most people count the Nile, so we’ll call it the second longest river in the world. That’s still very long indeed.”
He swung his phone around to point it at Roger and I.
“Do you recognize these men? It’s okay if you don’t. They’re not as famous as Beyoncé or Justin Bieber. Their names are Andrew Mayhem and Roger Tanglen. Wave to the people at home, Andrew and Roger.”
We waved. I still had the ice pack pressed against my face, but he’d be uploading these after our adventure was complete, so I didn’t have to worry about Helen seeing me and getting worried.
“Look them up. They’ve had a bad run for the past few years, but with my help, they’re going to—” He stopped and lowered the phone.
“Going to what?” I asked.
“I’m going to add that later,” he said. “It’ll be a booming, digitally enhanced voice with flashy graphics that say ‘Defeat the Curse.’ My viewers love flashy graphics. Then it’ll cut to animation as we explain the tale of the treasure.”
In the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and seventy-three, the pirate Erik Bestard stole some treasure that had been stolen from another pirate who’d stolen it from another pirate who’d stolen it from a king who’d acquired it by being a king. Nobody knew the exact contents of the treasure, but “shitloads of gold” was the best guess. Whilst pursued by other pirates, Erik Bestard and his men had sailed a smaller river off the Amazon until he found the perfect hiding spot for the riches. It involved a treacherous journey through the rainforest, and the individual shares of the treasure kept getting larger and larger as more and more of his men perished.
Upon hiding the treasure where it would never be accidentally found, and then hiding the key to the treasure separately, he killed the rest of his men and returned to his ship. He then drew a map and hid it behind a very unflattering portrait of his grandfather that hung in his quarters. Before he had the opportunity to return for his treasure, Erik Bestard stole a much larger treasure, one that made this treasure look like cheap-ass trinkets acquired at a street fair, and he was not sufficiently motivated to retrieve it. He considered devising an elaborate series of clues that would lead a future treasure hunter to the riches, but had difficulty coming up with sufficiently clever ones.
The map, which was not hidden very well, was fo
und and then passed down through a few generations by a family that thought treasure maps were stupid made-up childish bunk. It was eventually purchased in the twenty-first century of our Lord on eBay by Percival Longshore.
End of lesson.
“Ah, our boat arrives,” said Percival, as a smaller-than-expected motorboat pulled up to the rickety dock. It didn’t look like it was going to start springing leaks, but I guess I’d expected that a boat we’d sail on the Amazon River to seek a vast treasure would be the kind you could walk around on. This was basically just a speedboat.
The boat’s driver and only occupant stepped out. It was a woman of indeterminate age. She had stringy black hair that hung over her shoulders. There were at least five different scars on her face, the kind that looked like she might have a fondness for getting into knife fights. She had cataracts in her left eye. When she smiled at us, I saw but three teeth.
“Are you the ones I’m taking downriver?” she asked.
“We are,” said Percival. “I am Percival Longshore. With me are Ignacio, Andrew, and Roger. You must be Henrietta.”
Henrietta nodded. “When you’re on my boat, you do as I say. Do not question me, even if my command seems strange or uncomfortable. I make no promises to treat you with respect.” She looked at Roger. “I’m not going to pinch your ass without permission, but I will look at it all I want, and I will talk about it all I want, and if you have a problem with that, you can take a different boat. Are we clear?”
“We’re clear,” I said, since Roger seemed momentarily speechless.
“Load our supplies onto the boat,” Percival told Roger and I. “Make haste. Henrietta, may I interview you on camera before we begin our journey?”
“You can interview me about his fine ass.”
“I’m not even turned around,” said Roger.
Henrietta winked. “I’ve got quite the imagination. You don’t want to peek inside my head, I promise you.”
Percival, Henrietta, and Ignacio walked away from the boat while Roger and I loaded the suitcases and other supplies. We didn’t speak as we did it, but we gave each other frequent looks to indicate that we were both wondering what the hell we’d gotten ourselves into this time.