Night of the Jaguar (42 page)

No one seemed to have moved; Cooksey seemed not to have finished, seemed to have been talking to the night. “…in any case, we could be seeing a new order of things, a nexus of some kind. We see this in evolution occasionally, a time or a place where speciation seems to move at an accelerated pace—we have no idea why. Now we may have a situation where a certain kind of unconscious evil is directly punished, a partial solution to the question of why bad things happen to good people and not the reverse. Someone gives an order and at the other end of a long chain of actors we have murder, destruction, rapine, the world ground to paste to change the registers in certain bank accounts. What would it be like if the hand that gave the order was then bitten off? Would
that
change things, or are we so ungodly stupid that not even
that
would work. Or what if, as now, a child sacrifice were required? Would
that
get our fucking attention?”

Cooksey’s voice had risen for this last phrase, but no one seemed to notice. Everyone was looking at Jaguar.

J
aguar emerged soundlessly from the darkness and now stood full on the paved patio that surrounded the pool. He was a lot bigger than Paz had imagined, nearly the size of an African lion, but leaner and longer, much larger than a real jaguar. It shone as if illuminated from within, like a jack-o’-lantern, its black rosettes seeming to vibrate against their golden ground. Cooksey was now speechless, frozen, his mouth still open holding the shape of his last words. Paz wanted to yell at Lola to take the child and run, but his voice was somehow missing. He felt his hands withdraw an arrow from the quiver and nock it on the bowstring. The arrows were long and fletched with bright green parrot feathers, and tipped with points of milky stone, very sharp.

Jaguar glided across the pool patio to where Lola and Amelia lay. The child’s head was bent across her mother’s knees. Lola had been untangling Amelia’s wet hair with her fingers. Paz could see his daughter look into the topaz lanterns of the god’s eyes. She had a soft smile on her face. Lola was looking at the beast with what seemed to Paz to be casual polite interest, as if the girl were about to introduce a new and suitable playmate. Everyone else seemed to be fixed solidly in place, like the background figures in a classical painting, an effect augmented by their draped towels, their languid postures.

Paz decided that he had been wrong and that this was, in fact, a particularly vivid dream, and really, just like the ones he’d had so often in the recent past. There was his girl and there was the jaguar and it would take her as a sacrifice and everything would be better for everyone, the world would be made whole again by it, and he felt an odd stirring of pride that his daughter should be so honored. And here he contemplated the being of the girl herself, the lines of inheritance combined in her, the generations of Jews back to Jerusalem, and Africans back to Ife, and Spaniards back to wherever, Rome, Greece, the Gothic lands, Arabia, all the ancestors, studying in synagogues, serving the gods of Yoruba, serving the masters in the cane fields, conquering the infidels, worshipping Allah, all to produce the particularity of this gleaming child…

But now these portentous musings were interrupted by a swift movement near the pool. Jenny Simpson had dashed out of her place in the frieze and was hanging on Jaguar’s neck, tugging at the golden head, shouting “No, no. Stop it, leave her alone,” which Paz thought was absurd, she was treating him like a naughty puppy, and he felt vaguely annoyed at her for disturbing the stately aesthetics of the scene. Jaguar shuddered like a dog, flinging the young woman aside, casting her down on the paving with an audible thud. Paz heard a sound, a deep growl so low he thought it might be imaginary, like one of the false sounds one hears upon just falling into sleep.

Ararah. Arararararh.

As if it were a signal, Paz felt something move inside his head at the sound, felt his limbs moving to the urging of the Other within, felt the tension of the bow in his hands, the feather against his cheek, felt the twang of the release in his shoulder and his spine.

Jaguar opened his jaws above the child just before the arrow struck him behind his foreleg.

Paz tried to keep his eyes open, but an agency deep in his midbrain forced them shut to avoid registering events that evolution did not permit his brain to process. He recorded a wind and an unidentifiable noise, though, and when he could see again, he saw chaos on the pool deck. A small brown man with a bowl haircut was lying in a pool of blood, coughing blood, with Paz’s long arrow stuck in his side. Zwick
was kneeling by his side, rallying long-dormant medical instincts. He took a moment to yell, “Jesus, Paz, why the hell did you do that!”

Lola meanwhile was attending Jenny, who had seized dramatically just as the arrow struck. She frothed at the mouth, her naked body bent into a paraboloid, with only the crown of her head and her heels touching the ground. Paz found himself with an armful of Amelia, who was shrieking and shaking as if she had absolutely rolled in sand spurs. The others were standing around the stricken pair, trying to make themselves useful. Paz carried his girl away to the patio, where he sat down in a chair and held the small body to him, kissing her damp hair and murmuring reassurances. The cries eventually subsided to whooping gasps and then one last sigh, and she said, sobbing still, “I was scared, Daddy.”

“Of course you were. It was very scary. I was scared, too.”

“It was going to eat me up, for real!”

“Yes, it was.”

“Part of me wanted to get eated up and part of me was so scared.”

“Yes, that was your bad dream, wasn’t it? But now it’s over. It can’t hurt you anymore.”

“And it turned into Moie,” she said. “I saw it! Everything in the air was all
ghizzhy
.” She waved her fingers and twisted them around themselves to illustrate just how
ghizzhy.
“And Moie got shot with a arrow.”

“That’s right,” said Paz.

“But he won’t die because he’s good, like Frodo. He got
wounded,
didn’t he?”

“Yes. I hope he’ll be all right.”

“And Jenny was being weird and shaking. That was really scary, too. Why was she doing that?”

“She has a sickness that makes her do that. But don’t worry, your mom will take good care of her.”

They sat for a while, Paz’s mind a perfect blank. Then Amelia said, “Could we look at the parrot? And I want a Coke.”

They looked at the parrot. A Coke was found. After some period of innocent fun, which Paz was content to let last for a week, they found a lounger and lay down upon it. All his bones ached. Then Dr. Wise arrived to check on her family. After determining that her
daughter was fine, she stood over her husband and said, “You want to tell me what the hell that was all about? Why did you shoot that poor little man?”

“Because what I saw was a very large jaguar just about to bite our daughter’s head off. What did you see?”

“What did I…? Jimmy, I saw what was
there
. We were all sitting around, relaxed after swimming, and this guy strolls out from the dark and Jenny goes over and talks to him like she knew him and the next thing I know, I heard the bow and the guy was lying down with an arrow through him.”

“How is he, by the way?”

“Oh, he’ll probably survive—you seem to have missed the heart. He’s got a sucking chest wound. We clipped the arrow, but they’ll have to extract it in an OR. The ambulance is on the way. Christ, how the hell are we going to explain what happened?”

“Asshole fooling with bow and arrow accidentally shoots friendly visitor from foreign land,” said Paz. “The Miami cops deal with shit like that all the time. I’ll plead guilty, suspended sentence. How’s the redhead?”

“She’s out of seizure and in her bed in the house. I had some Soma in my bag and fed her a couple of caps, and some Xanax. She’ll be down for hours.”

“Good,” said Paz, “and so once again pharmaceuticals solve the problem. You know, Amelia saw the jaguar, too.”

She didn’t quite roll her eyes. “Jimmy, she’s a
child
. What I don’t like is that you had a hallucination so strong that you nearly killed a human being. Can you understand that? It means you’re not
safe.
”

“Sit down, Lola,” said Paz gently, and she found herself complying. She placed herself at the foot end of the lounger, not touching him. There was something in his eyes, a kind of presence, that she did not recall seeing there before.

He said, “I’ve been racking my brains on this. Why did he want Amelia? Why was she the sacrifice? And why did he think a sacrifice was necessary? And what was the meaning of what he did and what I did?”

“Shooting the Indian?”

“No, I mean my whole involvement in this, becoming made to the
orishas,
the whole string of events and coincidences that put me in a particular place at a particular time. And, once again, it wasn’t an Indian. It was Jaguar. It was a god or a demigod—a spirit inside an impossible animal. And I see from the look on your face that you’ve completely forgotten the dreams, how you were weeping like a baby because you couldn’t sleep, because Jaguar was in your head telling you stories about how
right
it was to give your daughter to him, and your whole shelf of drugs couldn’t help you, but a little bag of magic made by an old Cuban lady fixed you up just fine.”

She felt sweat pop out on her forehead and the hair stood stiff on the backs of her arms and on her neck.

“Yeah,” he said, searching her eyes, “
now
you remember. If you want, I’ll take you into the bushes around the pool and you can see the tracks of a huge cat, fresh tracks, and you’ll have to cook up a reasonable explanation for
that,
too.”

She said, “So what’s
your
explanation? Assuming I buy the story.”

“I don’t have one. That’s my
point
. Look, the difference between us is that you think that at the fucking absolute innermost heart of the universe there’s an explanation, a calculation, a formula. I don’t. I think that at the fucking absolute innermost heart of the universe there’s a mystery. And we just saw, at the pool just now, and in this whole thing with Moie, an edge of it we don’t usually see, the stuff we’re not usually
allowed
to see. You’re going to rationalize it away, which is fine, it’s who you are, but I can’t do that. I have to treat it with reverence and look at it with awe. All I can say is, it was a good day. The maiden was saved, and the beast was defeated. Another time it might go the wrong way and I’ll treat that with reverence and awe, too. So are you sorry you married me now? Speaking of the inexplicable.”

“No,” she said, “I’m not. But could you be like
in charge
of all that stuff? So I don’t have to ever, ever think about it?”

He laughed. “Like taking out the garbage.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

Sirens ensued then, succeeded by paramedics. They whisked Moie off, attended by Lola. After that, the rest of the party, save Cooksey, who had elected to sit with Jenny, drifted back to the patio, where they all had a round of stiff drinks.

“Well, Paz,” said Zwick, “you really know how to throw a party.”

Paz looked around the group. “No one noticed anything strange?” he asked. “Everyone just saw me shoot a harmless Indian?”

“What else were we supposed to see?” asked Beth Morgensen.

Paz ignored her. He was looking at Scotty, who had the appearance of a man recently kicked in the groin. He wouldn’t meet Paz’s gaze. Another one who saw the impossible and wanted to forget it as soon as he could. The other adults had all been scientifically trained to observe only objectively verifiable phenomena.

“Come with me, I want to check on something.” He took a four-cell flashlight from the glove compartment of the Volvo and strode rapidly to the path where the being had emerged from the dark. The path was made of coarse oolitic sand, and it did not take long to find a huge paw mark and then another.

“What do you say to that, Doctors?” he asked.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” said Zwick. “Tell me you didn’t set this all up and shoot that guy with an arrow just to make some stupid point about mystical jaguars!”

Paz looked around the circle of faces, dim in the side glow of the flashlight, and found no support.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “I’ll take you guys home.”

When she opened her eyes, there was Cooksey, and she was glad. She was on her pallet in her old alcove in Cooksey’s quarters, dressed in one of his worn khaki shirts. Cooksey was wearing a dark tracksuit. His face was smeared with black smudges.

“I seized,” she observed.

“You did indeed. How do you feel?”

“Okay. A little sore. Something happened before I went out.”

“Yes. Jaguar showed up in his glory and pride. He was going to take that little girl, and you very heroically threw yourself in his way. The sacrifice was not made. God alone knows what it all means. Then Mr. Paz shot it with an arrow, and it turned back into our Moie.”

“Is he dead?”

“It appears not. Our party coincidentally included two doctors, or
perhaps coincidence is no longer the operative word. In any case, he survived. Do you recall any of that?”

“Sort of. It’s kind of like when you remember a dream. And it wasn’t really Jimmy. I saw…kind of tangled up in him something else, something bigger, a glowing thing, I don’t know what it was. But it was good. And…but Moie is good, too, isn’t he? And Jaguar. He killed those bad guys, and he was only trying to protect his country.” She sighed. “I don’t understand any of this, Cooksey.”

“No, and I’m not sure whether the kinds of good and bad we see in the cinema are useful concepts here. We are in deep waters, my girl, and we poor scientists are out of our depth. And I’m afraid it’s not over. Issues less cosmic but just as deadly remain for us to resolve.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I expect a visit shortly from the gang that kidnapped you and killed Kevin.”

“They’re coming here? Because of me?”

“No, because of Geli. They need her to put pressure on her grandfather, because he’s crucial to some criminal scheme of theirs.”

“But how do they know she’s here? She told me she didn’t tell anyone where she was, not even her mom.”

“Actually, they know because I called her grandfather’s house and informed the servant who answered the phone. Of course, all the servants have been suborned or threatened, and so I expect the gang leader knew within minutes. They’ve been waiting for us to be alone.”

“Jesus, Cooksey! Why the hell did you do that?”

“Because I want to kill them, my dear. All of them. That’s why you see me in my commando togs and face. I’m afraid I’m rather more like Moie than I revealed. These people are the same people involved in the forest cutting that killed my wife.”

“I thought that was a snake.”

“Yes, well, I’m sorry to have had to dissimulate there, but a certain security was necessary, and I didn’t want to burden you with the truth. In fact, the timber companies hire thugs to clear the people from the forest before they cut, and in our case it was the Hurtado organization that was responsible. Portia had hired a village to catch specimens for
her, and while she was there the place was raided by these people, or those hired by them. Everyone was killed. So, only figuratively was she killed by a snake. I’ve been working toward this evening for a number of years. I hope you’ll forgive me.”