Roosevelt's Beast: A Novel (24 page)

“That’s all right,” said the Colonel. “I wasn’t so very hungry.”

“Aqui,”
said Luz, bearing two ceramic bowls.

In one sat the peccary’s foot, still hooved. In the other, the severed head, seared into a carbon mask.

“To express his thanks,” Luz announced, “the chief wishes you to have these.”

“O chefe!
” answered the old man. “Be sure to send him our thanks for these delicacies. We are delighted to partake.”

He wasn’t being diplomatic. He grabbed the peccary’s foot and waved it at the chief, then tucked right in.

“Mmm … just like a slab of Virginia ham. Try some, Kermit.… You haven’t even touched the head.…”

But Kermit couldn’t get past the Cinta Larga themselves, with their greasy hands and smacking lips and their faces shining in the firelight. Now and again, Kermit would find the chief’s eye resting on him, and for the sake of politics he would raise the boar’s head to his mouth and make a show of eating. At last, one of the village boys crawled over and, with a grin of complicity, seized the head for his own.

As the bowls were cleared and the peccary’s carcass rendered, a shaman strode forth in a headdress of hawk’s feathers. Someone else began pounding on a hollowed-out log, and someone else cooed into a bamboo panpipe. A woman took up a deep wailing chant. From the darkness now came men in outsized animal masks, fashioned from tree bast: A squirming snake. A springing jaguar. A yellow-eyed owl fluttering from post to post.

“These are the demons,” said Luz, leaning in to Kermit’s left ear. “They are angry at our village, and they have sent the Beast to harm us.”

“Dear me,” said the Colonel. “This must be some sort of Amazonian mystery play. I see a lizard, a toad. And that’s the most fearsome by-God butterfly I’ve ever encountered!”

Now growling onto the stage came an actor in the largest mask of all, covering face and torso, incorporating elements of the howler, yes, as well as bits from all the other masks: owl talons, snake coils, jaguar teeth. Screeching and slavering, he rent the air with his claws, then ran straight for the audience, pausing at the very brink of hurling himself at them.

“A fine Beast!” declared the Colonel. “If a bit larger than the original.”

Two more masked actors swept onto the scene and arrayed themselves on either side of the creature, ready to do battle. The smaller of the hunters had a floury face, a pair of lion’s eyes ringed in ellipses, and a single row of teeth, as large as pickets.

“Well, who’s
that
supposed to be?” the Colonel asked.

“É seu pai,”
whispered Luz.

“What did she say? Somebody’s papa?”

“Just some obscure local deity, Father.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what. Whoever it is, he’s giving that Beastie a good hard thumping. And that furry thing next to him, who’s that?”

Me,
thought Kermit.

A mane of light brown hair. A long scraggly beard. An air of gloom to even the most violent acts. Yes, they had captured him quite well.

The two hunters began to pound the Beast on its snout. Then they grabbed it by its arms and spun it in a wide circle, the drum keeping time the whole way. Dizzy, outmatched, the Beast fainted. The hunters, seizing their advantage, pretended to stomp it into submission. As the Beast released its last cries, a round of cheers went up from the crowd, none louder than the Colonel’s.

“Well done! Hooray!”

There were no curtain calls. The actors simply stripped off their masks and tossed them, one by one, into the great fire.

“They are sending the spirits home,” Luz explained. “If you keep them too long, they grow even angrier with you.”

Kermit felt a slight chill as he watched his own mask melting in a hot blue flame. The last part to disappear was his eyes. Eyes that had been, for as long as he could recall, an obscure torment. He could remember mornings at Groton, standing before the long walnut-framed glass on his dorm-room door and scrutinizing, with a feeling of mounting dread, his own demeanor: milky, stunted, unthreatening. It seemed to him now that his whole life had been an attempt to escape that face of his.

And so he had, he thought, watching his simulacrum vanish in the flames.

The last thing to be piled atop the fire was the genuine article: the dead howler itself, still hog-tied, carried out on a litter of sticks and waxy leaves. The onset of rigor mortis had stiffened it into a kind of sculpture—like a piece of wood beaten on by the sea, all twists and joints. The villagers gave it the greatest possible berth as it passed—made no sound, lobbed no spit in its direction. The whole ceremony had the solemnity and precision of a flag-folding, as the litter bearers positioned themselves alongside the pyre and swung the creature once … twice … then flung it clear. A second later, the flames had swaddled it whole. There was a curious stuttering, a low hiss, a puff or two of sepia smoke. From the depths of the fire, the aroma of roasting meat billowed forth, replaced in short order by a bitter, tarry scent that was the perfect translation for the compacting ball of bitterness in the fire’s heart.

And so the creature burned. Quickly, efficiently—comprehensively—as if it were in the greatest of hurries, as if the only thing still holding it on earth was the awestruck gaze of every last Cinta Larga. The fire popped and keened and coughed, but the silence on every side of it held fast, and when the last remnant of monkey, the last black blot of tissue, was consumed, the Colonel’s gravelly tenor could be heard clear to the other side of the village (though he barely spoke above a whisper).

“Well,” he said. “
That’s
all over with.”

*   *   *

B
UT THE POSTMORTEM CELEBRATION
was just getting under way. The chief rose from his throne and gave three soft claps. In perfect synchronicity, three village men glided into formation and began to stamp out a rhythm with bamboo pounders. Drum and pipe took up the chase, and the villagers caught the pulse and passed it through their feet. Three women entered the formation, and the steps grew more intricate, the chants deepened, the pipe shrilled higher, the drummer pounded harder.… Kermit didn’t even grasp the din that had risen up around him until he saw the Colonel flapping his mouth.

“What did you say, Father?”

“I said somebody must have told them about our ancestors!”

“Sorry?”

“They have brought us a little Dutch courage!” The old man held up a wooden jar. “If I’m not mistaken, it’s fermented!”

Kermit didn’t have the heart to tell him what the fermenting agent was. He’d seen the native women spitting into that same jar.

“Try some!” the old man said.

Kermit lowered his face to the jar opening. The smell was surprisingly agreeable: clean and crisp, the barest hint of carbonation. He took a sip. Then another.

“Not bad,” he allowed.

“Careful! You’re spilling.”

But he kept drinking, all the way to the bottom, until the last bit of froth was dripping from his chin.

“Christ…”

He staggered to his feet, expecting every eye to be on him. But no one noticed, not even the Colonel. And this was worse, somehow, to be standing like this, the froth dripping from his chin.

“I’ll be … I’ll be back shortly.…”

How long it had been since he’d gotten good and potted! Just a few swallows, and he might as well have been back at the Porcellian Club, tipping an old chest of drawers out of the casement window. Weaving and listing, he made his way back to the hut, but the prospect of configuring his body through that low entranceway was too much, so he dropped to the ground and rested his head against the hut pole. The lights dimmed around him. He slept.

Then woke again—how many minutes, hours, later? There was no way of knowing. He could only say it was night—still night—and someone was coming toward him, shuffling through the mud and dust.

Bokra. The crazy old man with marbled eyes. Carrying something that was impossible for Kermit to identify until, with a silent and definitive click, the thing snapped into focus.

It was the harpy eagle, lying utterly still in the old man’s arms, its half-plucked wings wrapped like husks around its breast, its eyes blazing and sightless. No blood, no sign of violence. Tears swarmed like rain from Bokra’s white eyes as, with jittery grunts, he extended the dead bird toward Kermit.

“No … I can’t … I’m sorry.…”

Then Bokra was gone, and it was raining again. Or it might have been the old man still weeping. Kermit slept, and woke to a new world.

18

He was wet all over.

To his own amazement, he was standing in the muddy playa on the rim of the village swimming hole. The moon had carved a crater from the black water, and in the reflected light, he could make out a humped figure on the far bank. Its head was bowed in an attitude of piety, and from its throat came the strangest of sounds. Like a handful of lead shot rolling down a chute.

With a coo of surprise, Kermit looked down to find, squeezed in his hand, a torch—already swinging toward the sound. There, in the crosshatch of moon and firelight, a giant anteater sat drinking, its serpent tongue flickering in and out of the stream. Stung by the light, the anteater paused, reared up to its full four feet—stood there for minutes on end, its nostrils twitching in a perfect fury, the rest of it utterly still, right down to the bristles, which were flexed and ready. Then it inched its head back and a shudder rippled up its spine, so that for a second or two it was writhing like an oak in a wind.

Or was it only mimicking Kermit? For he was shaking inconsolably now. And the air was crackling, and the stream was bubbling and curdling—and
cooling,
with shocking speed. Barnacles of ice glittered from the depths, and scallops of snow shouldered up, and the water flowed more and more slowly until finally it sheeted over into glass.

Kermit’s breath was congealing into smoke. At his feet lay his rifle—his Winchester, yes—coated in rime. He picked it up. He turned slowly around.

And found a new village. A village he had never seen before.

Snow had piled in banks against every hut, crowned every roof, mattressed every path and clearing. Ice mist snarled toward the sky.

Where am I?

The glare of the moonlight on the snow was so dazzling he had to spider his hands across his eyes. Through the angle of his second and third finger, he found the one creature that seemed to have escaped the spell. A small figure, weedy and dark, shuffling through the snow.

It was a boy. Bundled in a wool coat a size too small. Dragging behind him a sled. Crying softly to himself.

Kermit knew exactly why the boy was crying. He had been in a snowball fight with his older brother, and the snowballs had flown faster and harder until the older brother had clocked him with a hunk of ice—hidden under snow—and the boy had begun to cry, and his brother had told him he would never be a man like Father if he cried every time he got a clout. He had turned and run, wishing every harm on his brother—his father, too—himself most of all. And now he was trudging home on the very plain of despair.

Kermit grasped it all in the space of a second. For the boy was him.

He had gone out with Ted on a winter afternoon just like this, out to Cove Neck, and had come back in this exact fashion, every finger and toe blazing with cold, his face splotched with shame. Wanting to be swallowed whole.

It’s all right.
The words trembled on the grown man’s lips.
Come, now, little fellow.…

But the boy padded on, sniveling into his mittens. Then he stopped and dropped the rein of the sled and pulled the stocking cap from his head and opened his mouth.

To cry, or so Kermit thought. But the mouth kept widening. It stretched past the cheeks, past the ears, until there was nothing on the boy’s shoulders but a chasm, and from the depths of that emptiness there came a roar. Like nothing Kermit had heard before. Clamorous and echoing and afire with ancient rancors.

He felt his finger tighten once more around the trigger. He raised the rifle. He settled the boy in his sights.

The stock was dry and powdery against his cheek; the barrel was as warm as skin. With an agonized deliberation, his finger squeezed down. It was here, at the exact point of equilibrium, that everything was lost.

Without warning, his boots lost their purchase in the snow. His legs went out from under him, and the rest of him followed, and the boy’s roar gave way to a scream, neither human nor animal. The noise ratcheted inside his ears as he lay on his back, staring up at the stars, each star catching a small piece of the scream and sending it back.

He wasn’t cold anymore.

He turned his head to one side. There lay his torch, still blazing on the packed earth. Not a flake of snow. Feet, shoeless feet, were galloping past him. Over him.

“Senhor Kermit.”

Luz stared down at him.

“I…” His lips cracked open. “I have…”

He raised himself to his knees, looked around. The village had shrugged off its mantle of snow. The moonlight was funneling down into a single column, and the forest was as black and blank as before.

He ran his hand along the rifle. Had he fired? No. No, he hadn’t. How many cartridges did he have left? Three? Two? Who were all these people? Why were they all awake in the middle of the night?

“Luz,” he said. “Tell me what’s happening.”

“There was a cry, Senhor. The people are gathering now.”

“Gathering? Why?”

“To call out the names.”

He stared at the Cinta Larga men as they strapped on their armlets, at the women clutching their babies, the children toting crude dolls and whittled sticks. Only now did he understand. They were congregating before the chief’s hut for a village census. To see who was missing.

In a soft, uninflected voice, the chief called each name and waited with folded lips for the answering call. In solemnity and cadence, it was oddly similar to a commencement ceremony, and Kermit was amazed to find his mind dancing back to Groton (“the Christ factory,” Arch always called it). The Reverend Peabody in his alb and cotta. The plangent rhythms of those Mayflower names.