Roosevelt's Beast: A Novel (15 page)

“Weapons?” echoed Luz.

“How else shall we hunt?”

“I am not certain. What weapons do you mean?”

“Why, our rifles, of course. Surely your men took them when they—when they so kindly invited us here.”

“Espingarda.
I am sorry, Senhor, do you … can you…”

Kermit curled his hands around an invisible barrel, raised it to his eye. A simple bit of mime that, in this case, required no translation, for the Cinta Larga shook their heads and flared out their fingers and hopped from foot to foot, as though the earth had turned to brimstone.

“They seem disinclined,” murmured the Colonel.

“Luz, you must explain to them. We cannot put ourselves in the Beast’s way without some protection. Some way of killing the thing.”

“We have weapons here.”

“Spears, yes, and sticks. Bows and arrows. Useless to us.”

Unusable,
he added to himself, eyeing the massive peach-palm-wood longbows that lay stacked against a woodpile. It would take him half a week just to bend one.

“If we give you these rifles,” said Luz, “you will use them to hurt us.”

“No. We won’t. You have our word on it. As gentlemen.”

She tucked her lower lip under her teeth. “I am very sorry, Senhor Kermit. I do not think we can give these to you.”

“Then there can be no agreement. You will have to kill your own beast.”

Her eyes tightened. Then, with a strange, half-shambling gait, she made her way back to the chief. She murmured in his ear, stood back, and waited. And Kermit waited, too, for the public declaration he felt sure was coming. A yes, a no. A shout, a clap.

But the chief’s reply was strictly private. He grabbed Luz by the arm, hissed a few words in her ear, and shoved her away. Stumbling in the mud, she set down a hand to regain her footing. Then, gathering herself, she crossed back to the two captives.

“You may have your rifles, Senhor Kermit. But if you use them on any of our people, things will go bad.”

“What do you mean,
bad
? With whom?”

“With me,” she answered flatly. “And…” Her head leaned a fraction of an inch toward Thiago. “I will be plain with you. If you should kill any of our people, they will kill us.”

No words came to him, not at first.

“Luz,” he said. “I am sorry for you. Your people have taken an evil course. But tell me, please. Why do they suppose we should
care
what happens to you?”

She tucked her eyes to one side.

“It is not that, Senhor Kermit. It is that
they
do not care.” And then she reached through his beard all the way to his chin and cupped it lightly. “We must care for ourselves.”

11

The deal was struck.

In token of their new standing, the white men were granted the use of a hut: small and bare and recently swept, no more than twelve paces from the stream. Whether the hut was already vacant or someone had been evicted to make room, Kermit didn’t ask. He did, however, offer a silent prayer of thanks as he and Father crawled out of the dazzling light of the plaza and threw themselves into a pair of hammocks that creaked and rocked beneath their weight.

Food, too, was offered without asking. A manioc pie, in roasted banana leaves, sending up a smoky musk that was more pleasing than the actual taste. “Touch of salt would do wonders,” said the Colonel. But it went down quickly enough and another soon followed, and a young girl ran to the stream to fetch water, and the water was cool and tannic and laid down a prickly balm in their throats.

From his hammock, Kermit gazed through the doorway at the noon blaze. The shadows bled across the land like ink. Even the Cinta Larga had sought shade. A stack of turtle shells lay baking in the sun, and at the perimeter of the clearing, a jabiru stork perched on one leg, its beak resting grievingly on its breast.

This last sight was so strangely captivating that Kermit didn’t at first hear the spindly rustle from the other side of the hut. Twisting around in his hammock, he found, framed in the doorway, the villager who had reached out to them that morning: the old man with cadaver hands. He was even eerier now: his eyes clouded over, his corduroy neck wobbling, his mouth hanging open in folds of ruin.

“Good God,” said the Colonel.

The man gasped and dropped to his knees and began to crawl toward them.

“Coo,”
he whispered.

“What’s that?” the Colonel said. “What’s he saying?”

“Coo … roo … peera.”

And having spoken the name, the man spent the next minute coughing it back up. In fragments of no particular order.

“Peer … coo … roo…”

Then he stopped. Puzzlement flashed through his eyes as he began to slide away from them—with shocking haste, for a hand had fastened around his ankle and was hauling him into the sunlight, and where the old man had once been, Luz now stood. Just enough of her face was in the light for Kermit to see its lacquer of triumph.

“I am sorry,” she said. “He disturbs you.”

“But he wasn’t troubling us.”

“You must not listen to Bokra, Senhor Kermit. He is not one of us. Bad things are in his heart.”

She nodded once and left.

“Egad,” muttered the Colonel. “That’s no way to treat your elders. Dragging them out like old polecats. Odd business, though. The fellow went to some lengths to speak to us. I only wish we knew what he was driving at. How did it go again? Coo-roo—”

“Curupira,” said Kermit.

The old man gave him a wry look. “It strikes a chord, I see.”

“It’s a name, that’s all. From native lore.”

“Mythical?”

“Well,” said Kermit, “I suppose one might call him a demon.”

“And what exactly does he do?”

“Guards the forest.”

“From what?”

“From us.” Kermit’s mouth cracked into a half smile. “From men.”

“All men?”

“Those who hunt for food, it’s said, are given free run of the place. But those who hunt for pleasure—well, he won’t stand for that. It squanders his bounty. So he lays traps for them.”

“Traps?”

“He baffles them. Sends them down the wrong paths. Addles their brains so thoroughly, they…” Kermit shrugged lightly. “They never come back.”

“Sounds more like an imp than a demon.”

“I only repeat what I hear.”

“So the local legends say nothing about him carving open creatures? Draining them of all their innards?”

“It does seem strange that he should turn on his own creation. That would run counter to his purpose, wouldn’t it?”

“Ha!” A fine cloud of spittle flew from the Colonel’s teeth. “Perhaps you haven’t read the Old Testament of late. Quite a lot of creators getting snappish with their creations.”

Kermit stared out the hut opening, where a pile of peeled bark lay baking in the sun. He could feel the heat squeezing his eyelids down.

“There is one other thing,” he said.

“Yes?”

“They say Curupira’s feet are backward.”

“And where does that get him, I wonder?”

“It keeps hunters from tracking him.”

“I see.” The Colonel brought his hands together. “A demon that sends its enemies running in the opposite direction. Now, that’s what I call cunning. I shall have to forward the idea to the secretary of war. All the same,” he added, “I would wager this Curupira brute has never met hunters like us.”

But what sort of hunters were they?

In Africa, over the course of one year, they had killed five hundred twelve beasts between them, including seventeen lions and eleven elephants. They had taken pride in their nicknames: Bwana Makubwa and Bwana Mardadi. Great Master and Dandy Master.

Mankind was incontestably better off for their labors. Hadn’t they donated many of their trophies to science? Hadn’t they helped to make the Museum of Natural History an African wonderland? But there was no use pretending that altruism woke them up every morning or set them dreaming every night. Their days had been festivals of blood and sinew and muscle. They had wolfed down elephant-trunk soup; they had toasted slices of elephant heart over a fire. They had watched Nandi tribesmen circle a lion and drive spear after spear into its flanks, fling themselves on its prone form, and hack it to pieces. One way or another, they had lived in the marrow of things, and they had been utterly free. As happy as they had ever been.

“Senhor Kermit,” said Luz. “The chief is ready to see us.”

*   *   *

T
HE GREAT MAN STOOD
in the full painted glare of the sun, his arms folded, his head sagging. Between his legs, like something he had just extruded, lay the white men’s rifles. The message was clear. If they wanted their thunder sticks, they would have to kneel before him.

This they never would do. On that point Kermit was resolved. Indeed, he was already calculating how long the impasse would last when he heard the Colonel’s wheezing chuckle.

“Very well, Your Majesty.”

With a groan, the old man stooped and handed Kermit his Winchester, then stooped once more and grabbed his Springfield.

“Ah, yes,” he said, using the gun to prop himself up again. “The old medicine. Wasn’t sure I’d ever see it again. I think I’m feeling better already. Oh, but give it an eyeball, would you?”

Kermit peered down the barrel, locked and unlocked the rear bolt, and then, without thinking, began to raise the Winchester to his eye. From nowhere, it seemed, a covey of Cinta Larga warriors converged on him, their hands on their longbows.

“Luz,” he said. “Tell them I am not firing.”

“They do not like it when you point.”

“I understand, but please explain to them we cannot shoot. We have nothing to shoot
with.
We will need our cartridges.”

A crease sketched itself across Luz’s brow.
“Cartuchos?”

“It’s what holds the … the bullet and the gunpowder, and the point is, without cartridges, the guns won’t work. We won’t be able to hunt.”

Luz looked at him, looked back at the chief.

“There was a bag,” Kermit insisted. “When we were
brought
here—we had a bag with cartridges.”

Even as his impatience mounted, a wisp of hope sailed up. The cartridges were still in that clearing, only a hundred yards from camp. They would have to go back for them.

Then—from some great abstract height, it seemed—a canvas bag landed with a plop at Kermit’s feet. Inside it were a dozen smokeless powder cartridges with soft-point bullets.

“Well, now,” said the Colonel. “That’s five for each of us, and a pair left over. We shall have to aim true, eh?”

The chief watched them for some time longer, as though he was trying to satisfy himself of something. Then, unfolding his arms, he murmured a few words and stalked away.

“Sentimental old fool, isn’t he?” said the Colonel. “Never mind, we’ve quite enough to do as it is. Before we go, Kermit, I should probably tell you which way my thoughts have been inclining. It seems to me we must dispense with the fantasy that we will simply stumble
over
this Beast in the course of our wanderings. That would be a deeply unlikely prospect even if we knew what species it was and could isolate it in its native clime. Making it even unlikelier—well, as these savages have already told us, it follows the perfectly sensible practice of attacking by night. Oh, I suppose, if we were extremely fortunate, we might catch it
slumbering,
but that’s the stuff of boys’ adventure, wouldn’t you agree? What I propose, therefore, is to examine the
other
crime scenes.”

“Other?”

“Well, we have two human corpses, do we not? Left exactly where they were killed. Some time has passed, but if we examine the grounds thoroughly enough, we may just find that this Beastie of ours has left behind, well, some clue or other to its identity. Something we can use to prepare ourselves for when it next comes.”

“Assuming it does come.”

“Oh, it will,” said the old man, with a grave tilt of his head. “Mark my words, it
will.
Nothing in the least retiring about it. It’s tasted blood, and it wants more. Now, I seem to recall that the most recent human victim was … one of their own braves, is that so? Dragged a short distance from the village. No better place to start our inquiries, as I’m sure you’ll agree, so the only thing left to say is
chop, chop!
Wish we’d gotten an earlier start; the day’s already half gone.…”

Kermit looked slowly around. He was ashamed to admit it, but he had expected more of a send-off from the village. The day was infernally hot, though, and the Cinta Larga were busy doing what they always did: surviving. Hunting and fishing, yes, and gathering firewood and peeling and grating and pounding the poison out of their manioc root and carving new arrows and feeding their babies. There was no one left to wrap a nut garland around Kermit’s neck or kiss him on the cheek or shed the smallest tear.

The Colonel, for his part, could barely be restrained. “What in heaven’s name are we waiting for? Much to do,
much
to do. Are you ready, Senhorita Luz? Oh, hold on a bit, here’s the rest of our party.”

With the mincing steps of a court page, Thiago came toward them, carrying only a walking stick and a sharpened end of bamboo. His face was a mask of solemn purpose, until he got within five feet. Then, with a squeal of joy, he turned his stick into a rifle and swiveled it from side to side, spraying invisible rounds.

“Ga-boom! Ga-boom!”

“Ha!” shouted the Colonel. “An artilleryman, is it? Just you wait, young squire, you’ll get your turn soon enough. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, oh, disarming for a second, I must ask a great kindness of you, young Thiago. Are you marking me? You must agree to stick to me like a burr. Like a
burr,
I say. Otherwise, I shall become hopelessly lost before another minute is out. What do you say?”

Thiago had enough presence of mind to grasp that something was being asked of him. After a brief consideration, he nodded yes.

“Well, that’s splendid. Now, if you’d be so good as to walk to my
right.
Just like that, yes. It’s the only spot I have any peripheral vision at all. But you needn’t worry: I may lack vision and speed, but I
compensate.
Oh, I’m the doggedest old cuss you ever saw.”