Red Jungle (41 page)

“That’s right,” Russell said.

“And what about the sack of money in the jeep? What’s that about?” Carlos had paid him for the Jaguar in cash and he’d brought the money with him. “I was going to leave with that, but then I saw the light up here. The girl at
Tres Rios,
she’d said something about digging out here, and I thought fuck it. I had to know what was up here. For all I knew, you two had found the fucking lost Dutchman mine,” Pete said.

“What girl?” Russell asked. He thought of throwing the lamp at him but he decided against it.

“The girl the kraut here tried to send to her maker a couple of days ago. See, I’ve been staying in the village next to
Tres Rios
since I met you. I started thinking about it. Why would anyone buy a coffee plantation nowadays? It didn’t make any sense. I started wondering what was going on. So I went back to the village and put my ear to the ground.

“That girl had to walk all the way out of here with buckshot in her ass, but she lived. I heard about it yesterday. Then today, I heard Selva had been kidnapped by a lot of exguerrillas when he landed at
Tres Rios
. You’re a busy motherfucker, kid, I’ll say that. I’m just guessing now, but I guess that’s the general’s money in the jeep. But it don’t matter to me whose it is now,” the old man said.

“You’re awfully quiet, Price. You must be trying to figure out how to kill me. I’m seventy years old, son, and there’s a lot of men that’s tried, and I’m still here. You best figure out another plan.”

“All right,” Russell said. “Help me get the Jaguar out to the asphalt and you can keep the money in the jeep.”

“How about you help me get the Jaguar out of here, and I don’t kill you. That’s what’s on the menu today. Take it or leave it.” The old man raised his pistol.

“I’ll take it,” Russell said.

“Good. I thought you might. You won’t mind if I don’t shake your hand,” Pete said. “I think that might not be such a good idea. Now, drag that dead motherfucker out of here, because he stinks.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Two jaguars had been watching Russell from the edge of the clearing. Sometimes they would move, but he knew they were jaguars and he knew there were two. Coffee Pete had left him chained to a ceiba tree. Pete hadn’t killed him, he said, because he liked him. He told Russell that the army might find him, or someone might happen along before he starved to death. The old man said he thought Russell had a fifty-fifty chance of living. He’d promised to let someone at
Tres Rios
know where Russell was, and then he’d driven off in Mahler’s jeep, dragging the Red Jaguar behind him, covered with a canvas. Russell thought that was two days ago.

The jaguars entered the clearing on the evening of the second day. Russell yelled something to try to scare them, and one of them had jumped in the air like an electric current had passed through it. It landed on the run and both animals tore into the jungle again, but he knew they would be back. It was only a matter of time.

His arms tied behind him, he looked up into the sky and saw the blue tint of afternoon. The huge limbs of the ceiba tree waved above him. He wanted to climb the tree, see the river, and see Beatrice again, but he knew he would probably never do any of those things, now. In sudden fury he struggled against the chain. Finally, exhausted, he stopped.

He dropped his head and searched the clearing for the jaguars. They’ll come back at full dark, he thought. They’ll come then, and I might not see them until. . . . He stopped thinking about that, because it terrified him. He closed his eyes.

No one ever believes they’re lost until it’s too late, he thought. No one finds that one important map that will make their life clear, the map that would show you where you really stand in the world.

He had been a fool. He knew that now, but it was too late to change anything. He’d tried to find one thing, just one thing, to make it all better. That’s all he’d done. Something to make him forget that life was the joke it was. Everyone searches for that one thing that will fix it all. A love affair, a coffee plantation. Something else that becomes a reason for living. Maybe you find it, and maybe you suffer as a result. He certainly had.

He opened his eyes and looked at the temple entrance on the cleared hillock above him. It was getting darker. The muddy track left by the dragging of the Red Jaguar was disappearing in the gray-green twilight.

He’d been lost in so many ways for so long that he was glad that he recognized the road before him now. He supposed that being alive, really alive, was allowing yourself to become completely lost. That was the irony. He would have liked to tell Beatrice that all his fear of being lost was gone now. He would have liked to have told her that. He wished she was there with him. They were two of a kind, she and he, he realized. He wondered if she’d gone to Barrios. He’d asked Coffee Pete to let him use his phone so he could tell her not to wait for him but to go on to Honduras—but Coffee Pete didn’t have a cell phone, and he’d destroyed Russell’s. He wondered what would happen to Beatrice and the children.

He looked again and saw that one of the jaguars had gone up the steps to the temple. It turned and looked at him, then sprinted up the stairs and disappeared inside.

He checked on the sky through the canopy of the ceiba tree. He could still see bits of red-stained clouds, but it would be dark soon. It hurt his shoulders to look up, but he wanted to. He wanted to see the sky for the last time. He would never see her again, nor would he be able to tell Beatrice what he had finally discovered about life: when you are most lost is precisely when you are the most alive. He understood that now. He hadn’t expected that, but it was true. He nodded off and dreamed.

He and Beatrice had been on the beach together one sunset at the height of their affair. It was a painful memory, because it was so good—painful, because he was afraid. Death hadn’t been there then. The mother of pearl-colored, deserted, shack-strewn beach at sunset, that’s what they had. The memory was so clear, so beautiful—of her naked, standing alone on the beach, him coming out of the surf, looking at her, knowing she was his, the rush of knowing. The taste of the salt on his lips. The way her voice came to him over the surf, with the Englishness that he loved so much, the lilting of it. He couldn’t describe exactly what was in Beatrice’s voice—just youth, perhaps—but everything about her was in it. It was so full of that sparkling intelligence, so full.

He didn’t feel tied to the tree anymore. He’d left the tree behind him and was free, walking out of the surf. Bits of dark driftwood glided past him. He looked at Beatrice standing there, waiting for him. Nothing was better than seeing her like that, and being in love with her. Nothing. Death? So what?

I don’t care.
I killed for her,
he thought. That was Beatrice’s effect on him. That was the nature of his passion for her. But passions have their price, and now he would pay the full amount. So be it.

I only fear never having met her.

He let the half-dream end and forced himself to open his eyes.

A purple darkness had taken over the jungle sky. The camp had turned a soft blue color, and Russell could see just the outline of it. Night was finally collapsing the camp. He thought he saw something to his right, and screamed; he turned his head, but it was just a bird that had landed near him. He started to shake with fear. He tried to stop but couldn’t until he let something go, something he’d carried with him all those years since his mother’s death.

It was all over now, he told himself, finally controlling his shaking—but it had been worth it. All of it.

He closed his eyes again. He imagined Beatrice and the children waiting for him. They were in a restaurant, a very clean one with white walls and air-conditioning. He was parking the jeep, and they were waving to him from inside.
I would do it again,
he thought, no longer frightened. He would do it again, knowing that in the end it would come to this.

He heard the jaguar inside the temple growl, its growl amplified by the temple walls. He tried hard to make out the temple’s entrance, but couldn’t anymore.

They’ll come now, he thought.

Olga Monte de Oro stepped off the bus at Colomba. It was market day and the streets were busy, the rain clouds pearly smooth and gigantic. Indians in traditional garb filled the narrow street as she passed. They called to each other in their language. There was a timeless, sad mute quality to the town’s narrow streets; the tiny shops painted in shabby blues. On the square, Olga passed market stalls, hung with worn tarpaulins, their fruits and vegetables piled high.

Olga stopped and bought tortillas from a woman her age with bad legs, who was making them out on the square for a penny apiece, the woman’s kind face horribly wrinkled. Beatrice Selva had given her a hundred dollar bill when she put her on the bus. The bill was too big to use here. Olga found a few pennies in her pocket and paid for the tortillas. She had the old woman wrap them in a banana leaf.

“Where are you headed, sister?” the old woman asked her in their language.

“Plantation
Las Flores,
” Olga told her. “I’ve been away. But I’m going home now.”

“God bless you,” the woman said. “And keep you safe. The world out there is no place for us.”

“And may God be with you,” Olga said to the woman. She went on along the street, past the little shops with their corrugated metal roofs and open fronts. A young plantation owner’s wife was shopping with her maid. Olga stopped to stare at the young girl, the only white person on the street.

“Doña
Isabella, I’m sorry. I went to buy tortillas,” Olga said. The young woman looked at her.

“Excuse me?” the girl said in Spanish.

“I’m ready to go home now,” Olga said. “We need vegetables. I know where we should go. I know. Where the best ones are,
Doña
Isabella. And those sweet breads the child likes so much. I’m so glad I found you, my lady,” Olga said. She grabbed the young woman’s hand and held it.

That afternoon in Colomba, no one would have noticed anything unusual—just the brightly painted chicken buses passing and Indians hurrying to catch them on their way back to the mountains.

“I’m so glad that you’re all right,
señora
. I’ve been so worried,” Olga said. “I looked for you. I did.”

The young woman and her maid gave Olga a ride to
Las Flores
in their jeep. The young girl was kind. She knew nothing about war or death yet. They watched Olga walk up the narrow road and through the gate to the plantation.

•••

Russell Cruz-Price opened his eyes and saw the eyes of the jaguar in the night. There were two of them, a female and a male, and they weren’t afraid of him anymore.

Then he heard voices and saw a light, carried by a party of Indians coming from the river in single file. He was sure it was a dream, until he saw one of the jaguars turn and sprint away into the jungle. The other one, the female, looked at him a moment longer, a straight, level gaze. Something seemed to pass between them, that perfect understanding beyond language that all living things share. Then she, too, was gone.

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