Don't Look Back (14 page)

Neto threw his hands wide. “I do
not know.
” Seeing his exasperated expression, Eve actually believed him. He continued, “There are all sorts of people—”

Will leaned into him. “What have you
heard
about him?”

“He makes the
indígenos
nervous. Nothing more. I am not an expert in—”

“How long’s he been here?”

“Since before we built our camp,” Neto said. “He has as much right to these hills as we do.”

“Not if he’s hurting people,” Will said. “If Jay’s there … I’m
going.
”

“That might not be the brightest idea,” Claire said.

“We were in Little League together,” Will said. “We taught each other how to ride a bike. How many machetes do we have?” Each sentence sailing out flat as a hammered penny.

Sue said,
“What?”

Lulu tapped the handle protruding from her pack. “One left. And we need it. To search.”

“Then I’ll take a knife.” Will started for the cantina, the others drawn along as if by gravitational pull.

“You can’t just storm around like a crazy person,” Neto said. He reached for Will’s arm, but Will yanked away.

He turned, put his finger in Neto’s face. “Actually, I
can.
Didn’t you say there’s no signal for days? Didn’t you say that if someone gets killed, their family investigates? Jay is my family. His mother practically raised me. We know there’s a crazy fuck out there, and my best friend is missing, and I am going to go talk to the man, and if you put that hand on me again, I will break it.”

“Enough,”
Eve said.

The men paused. Everyone took a few breaths, eyes darting from face to face, assessing.

“We’ve all read
Lord of the Flies,
seen those movies. We’re not gonna do that here, now. There’s too much at stake.” Eve stepped up on the picnic table and sat deliberately, putting her feet on the bench. “Let’s figure this out smart and steady.”

After a brief pause, Sue and Harry lowered themselves onto the facing bench at the adjoining table. No one else moved.

“So what?” Lulu said. “You’re in charge now?”

“No,” Eve said. “We don’t need ‘in charge.’” She kept her gaze on Will. “We need to figure out how to find Jay.”

Will swallowed once. Then pulled himself up beside Eve. The others followed suit. They blinked at one another. The bloody kerchief dangled loosely from Will’s hands. His jaw shifted back and forth.

“Let’s look at this,” Eve said. “Jay’s probably injured. He’s either lost out in the jungle somewhere, taken by that man, or—” She caught herself. “Let’s assume it’s one of those two. Either way we need more resources. We need to get the authorities involved. Internet and Skype are out. So who’s within driving distance?”

“That is wasting time,” Neto said. “Lulu and I need to be searching for him with the Jeep. We can go in a spiral from the cascade, park to hike the different cliffs and ridges.”

“And while you’re doing that, we can be looking at other options.”

Behind them the workers scurried in the kitchen, preparing lunch, pretending not to notice anything amiss.

“The pueblo,” Eve said, prompting Neto.

“Santa Marta Atlixca?” Neto gave a nasty little laugh. “There is no one there for
this.
They farm coffee and sell
alebrijes
 … you know, trinkets? to tourists half the year. Right now they are busy closing up for the rains.”

“Maybe there’s a phone there. We could call—”

“They are under the same sky. At the same elevation. With the same signal interference.”

“So you’re telling us,” Claire said, “that there is no figure of authority within driving distance?”

The silence drew out. A mosquito whined by, and Harry waved it off, a damp crescent marking his shirt under the arm.

Lulu blinked several times, clearly uncomfortable. “There are
local
authorities.” Neto shot her a glare, but she weathered it, keeping her gaze on Eve. “They will have channels to pass on the news.”

“An
American
missing?
Here?
” Neto said. “This
will
be news, Lulu.
Big
news. And if it turns out he twisted his ankle—”

“The guy played two quarters of high-school football with a broken rib,” Will said. “He didn’t twist a fucking
ankle
.”

Eve nodded for Lulu to continue. “Local authorities?”

“Indígenos.”
Agitated, she tugged at her mane of blond hair. “They have different authorities. And different ways to contact the cities for help.”

“How do we reach them?”

“
We
don’t. We don’t speak their language.”

“Don’t speak their language?” Harry said.

“Okay,” Eve said. “So they speak dialect. Where do we go to find whoever’s in charge?”

“We don’t even
know
who is in charge,” Neto said. “We don’t deal with our business affairs in
that
direction.” He waved upslope at the looming Sierra Madres. “We handle our business
this
way.” A gesture down toward the coast and Huatulco.

“
That
way is five hours minimum,” Claire said.

“I want to leave,” Sue said. “I want to go home. Right now.”

“Fantástico,”
Neto said.

“Without Jay?” Will zeroed in on the older woman. “That’s it, huh? Just pack up and leave him here?”

“You guys can stay and look,” Sue said. “But this is … this is all too much. We can take the Jeep—”

Claire said, “The Jeep that Neto and Lulu need to search for Jay?”

“Sure,” Neto said. “Why not? Have our Jeep.”

Sue looked at Harry for support. “Then … then the van…”

“The van is the only thing big enough to get us and our stuff out of here,” Claire said. “You take that, we’re stuck.”

“I don’t feel safe here anymore,” Sue said.

“I don’t either,” Eve said. “Believe me, I want to pack up and leave
now.
But I don’t want to leave Jay.”

Claire said, “So these local authorities…”

“We don’t know who they are,” Harry said. “We don’t speak the language. How do you propose to even
find
them?”

Eve looked past him into the open tent of the kitchen, where Fortunato diced bell peppers on a cutting board with a folding steak knife. One by one the others turned to follow her gaze.

Fortunato paused and looked up nervously.

*   *   *

“You want find
alcalde.
” Fortunato’s cheeks were smooth with youth, no hint of stubble, rouged from the humidity and the sudden attention of the group. In his hands he twirled the folded knife. He kept his dark eyes on the ground before the picnic tables, his forehead gnarled with effort, as if every word were a kidney stone he had to pass. He was speaking in a pidgin blend of Zapotec, English, and Spanish and doing a fair job of it. “
Alcalde
is—how say?—boss?
patrón?
With the duties. But not a real job. It is title. It is volunteer. One year in three, must volunteer. He is can be farmer or shopkeeper.”

Beside Eve, Will had stopped talking and, it seemed, listening. One knee bounced compulsively.

“Who is the
alcalde
?” Eve asked.

Fortunato maintained the same quiet tone. “
No sé.
It change, like I say.
Pero
nearest
alcalde
is in Santo Domingo Tocolochutla. It is one and one half hours hike. Foot only. Very dense. That way. Up. Top of this mountain. There should be satellite signal to catch for to make report to Policía Federal in Oaxaca City.”

Claire spoke in a tone that seemed to be her version of gentle. “What do you know about the
hombre malo
?”

Fortunato cleared his throat, looked at his feet, then off into the middle distance.
“Nada.”

Will rose, plucked the knife out of Fortunato’s hands. The teenage boy took a step back, startled.

“I sat,” Will said. “I listened. But given what could be happening to Jay
right now,
I’m not waiting anymore.”

Eve said, “Will—”

“I don’t expect anyone to go with me. You’d only slow me down anyway.”

Neto said, “It’s far.”

“I know my way. Hit the river, follow it down to the zip line.” Will put a sneaker on the bench, tightened the laces. “If I run it, I can check the house in the same time it’ll take someone to get to the
alcalde.
”

“If you get hurt by this guy,” Eve said, “you’re no help to Jay. Or to us.”

“I’m not asking, Eve.” Will tucked the knife into his pocket and jogged off down the bamboo walkway.

They watched until the fronds folded around him, until the sound of his steps faded, until it was as though he had never been there at all. Sue’s keening broke the silence. Harry put his arm around her, and she curled into him.

“You’ll go,” Neto told Fortunato. “Find the
alcalde.
”

“With you or Señora Lulu.”

“You’re giving orders now? No. I tell you what to do and you do it. At least if you expect to work here again. I can throw a rock and hit ten peons who would
love
to have a job that pays what I pay you.”

Fortunato seemed confused at Neto’s anger. “You need for someone for who they pay
atención.
For to provide the details and make the report to Policía Federal. Last
alcalde,
he had less Spanish than me.”

“Then how is he the—” Harry stopped, made a growling sound. “Mexico.”

“We are
not
going with you,” Neto said to Fortunato. “We have to search.”

“Given the importance of the situation,” Harry said, “you’re gonna rely on a kid and a farmer to get it properly conveyed?”

“We are the only ones who know this jungle,” Neto said.

“There is no way Harry and I can make a three-hour round-trip hike through rough terrain,” Sue said. “Besides, someone should wait here in case Jay wanders back.”

Slowly, Eve became aware that the attention of the group had shifted to her. She looked from face to face and felt something inside her seem to cave in.

Claire came off her perch, each leg landing with a metallic clank. She hoisted the last machete from Lulu’s pack and turned to Eve. “You said you came here to find yourself.” She chopped the machete down, whacking it into the picnic table next to Eve. It stuck in the edge at a gleaming diagonal. “Well?” Claire gestured at the blade. “Guess the fuck what.”

Chapter 21

Fortunato wore sandals and a T-shirt, the sleeves torn down past his ribs to vent air. He and Eve alternated turns with the machete, but he wielded it more effectively, spending the majority of the time in the lead. The clouds intensified, the dense canopy adding another filter of shadow, making it easy to forget that it was still afternoon. Lulu’s woven hemp backpack was webbed tightly across Eve’s shoulders. In it she carried a canteen, Theresa Hamilton’s ring, Jay’s passport, and the bloody kerchief. Her paperback of
Moby Dick
was in there, too; she’d have no time to read, of course, but it served as ballast that kept the items from shifting. She wished she had Theresa Hamilton’s camera to deliver with the other evidence, but that had stayed with Jay, and Jay was lost.

Jay was
lost.

She was still trying to get her head around it. Every time her energy flagged, she thought of him and put a charge into her step.

They picked across trails forged by deer, cattle, and coatimundis, taking switchback routes up the steeper rises. Ignoring the burn in her legs, Eve focused on the ground but kept the white fabric of Fortunato’s back in peripheral view. He was patient and considerate, holding aside branches for her, pointing out the best footholds on fallen trees and shifting boulders. The vegetation transformed gradually, more and more tree ferns popping up, spiderwebs glistening against moist, shaggy bark. Trumpet trees cast parasol sprays of fronds around which orange-breasted parakeets darted and chattered.

Winded, Eve leaned against a ten-foot-high prop root of a giant banyan tree. The banyan had encompassed and strangled an ancient mahogany, dropping down stiff aerial roots like witchy hair. A tree consuming another tree until there was nothing left but a hollow space inside—so elegant and macabre. Once those giant roots took hold, they would pull the trunk along, allowing the tree to creep in slow motion across the forest floor.

A bird the size of a hubcap fluttered erratically past Eve’s head, her stomach clenching at the realization that
no,
it was a bat. It swooped into the hollowed center of the tree as she stumbled back, one arm flailing.

A firm grip caught her at the wrist, steadying her. Fortunato.

“Vampiros,”
he said.
“They feed on cattle sometimes. They roost inside the hollow trees, and their guano, it fertilizes the roots. The relationship, it is— What is the word?”

“Symbiotic.”

“Yes. This.”

After a few preliminary attempts at English, they’d settled on Spanish as a common ground. They might as well practice; once the federal police were reached, it would likely take both of them to get the information conveyed.

“You are tired?”
he asked.

“A bit.”

“Let us sit.”
He gestured to where the prop root tapered off to bench height.

Eve moved toward it, pausing as a Supersized tarantula lumbered into view along the mossy bark. Using the flat side of the machete, Fortunato brushed it gently to the forest floor.
“They are fine. It is the black widows only that are of concern.”

“And the snakes.”
Eve gestured to where a bluish black snake had emerged from the brush. It nosed behind a rock, and the brief visible segment kept coming and coming, as if on a loop.

“No. That is a tilcuate. They are nonvenomous. They eat … pests? Rats and mice.”

“Yes. Pests.”

Finally the tail pulled into sight, flicked, and vanished.