The Border Lords (24 page)

After dinner Hood found Eduardo in the lobby, cleaning up Pepino’s cage. The monkey clung to the boy’s back and stared at Hood.

“Can you show me Father Joe’s library tomorrow?”

“There is no school tomorrow, Detective. Yes. My studies will be done by four.”

“I’ll pay you as a guide.”

“I guide for free but thank you.”

“Can we see his wild things, too?”

“We can see them after the library. We need the dark for those.”

Hood sat on his observation deck and drank bottled water mixed with bourbon from his duty-free bottle. He saw the great black hump of Arenal against the lighter black of the sky, watched the red crawl of the lava. Insects clung to the screen behind him and the frogs built a wall of sound in the jungle beyond. He turned and looked through the room at the bed where Sean Ozburn had snored and at the foot of that bed where Father Joe had sat and spoken quietly to Sean and then at the screened window through which Seliah had watched and mistaken this strange behavior for prayer. The moths and beetles fluttered on the screen, and the ceiling fan sectioned the room with moving shadows as Seliah had remembered.
And I said, “Well, that’s all fine and dandy, Joe, and pardon my French, but what the fuck were you doing with his
toes
?”

 

 

The late afternoon
was cool and the volcano was shrouded in clouds and silent. Eduardo led the way down the road with Pepino on his back.

“Father Joe was a good man,” said Eduardo. “He knew everything about nature. I’ve lived here my whole life and he was only visiting but he knew more. He could name all of the different types of scales on the head of any snake. He knew all the Latin names of the animals of Costa Rica. He was a true expert on birds. He said his favorite Costa Rican animal was the sloth, because it is one of the seven deadly sins and the one he enjoyed the most. This was a joke because he was a priest. He was always joking about things. It’s true that he caused trouble in the dining room. He liked to stir up people and see what they did.”

“Your father didn’t like him much. Was it only Father Joe’s dining room behavior?”

“No, that’s not the only reason. My father
says
it’s the reason, but it has more to do with superstition than science.”

“Explain that, Eduardo.”

“Detective, superstition is belief without proof. Science is belief with proof. Older people like you and my father come from the age of superstition. But the young know better. We believe in science and technology. For example, my father hates his computer even though he learned to use it. Father Joe was very young in his heart. He showed me many shortcuts on the computer. He knew it very well. And other things. For example, he told me that the theory of evolution and natural selection is absolutely true. He said creation is also true. He said that what God created was the place where life could begin and evolve. It was a place with a few basic elements but that is enough. So, creation and evolution actually go together.”

“Okay, then what superstition does your father have about Father Leftwich?”

“He thinks he’s evil.”

“Why?”

“He doesn’t have a reason. That’s why it is superstition.”

Hood thought about this. Pepino looked back at him, bright-eyed, head bobbing.

Eduardo set off down a trail that ran east from the road. The jungle was high and dense around them but the trail was good. It was cooler here in the shade and the vegetation was so varied and diverse that Hood quickly exhausted his knowledge of the splendid living things around him.

“If you ask my father, he will have reasons,” said Eduardo. “For example, my father thinks he has a sense about people. He calls it intuition. Which sounds very much like superstition, doesn’t it? His intuition is that Father Joe is not a real priest at all. Another intuition is that Father Joe has committed crimes. What kind of crimes? My father can’t say what kind. Then there’s Itixa. Itixa is in charge of all of the resort housekeeping. She is full of superstitious Mayan blood. She whispers and gossips without stopping. She claims to see the dead and talk to them. She believes in werewolves, and in
asema
, which are vampires. When she believes there is an
asema
nearby, she makes the cook add extra garlic to all meals. The
asema
hates garlic, she believes. She drinks a bitter herb tea so that her blood will not taste good to a vampire. She told my father some things about Father Joe but my father didn’t tell them to me. He only told me to stay away from the priest. And when I asked Itixa what she said to my father, she would not tell me. She said some things are not for a child to see and know. She is all superstition and no science. She drinks more beer than a whole football team. She is afraid to touch a cell phone because she felt one vibrate once and believes they are alive.”

Hood stayed close behind Eduardo as the boy hustled along the trail. Through the occasional breaks in the tight vegetation, he could see Arenal looming in the clouds ahead of them.

The trail opened to a clearing dotted with grazing cattle and small, neat homes ringing the perimeter. The homes were painted yellow and blue and green and pink, and smoke rose from the chimneys of some of them. Hood saw corrals and a large American-style barn, and there were chickens and pigs in pens and horses and cattle roaming free. The northern field was thick with brown corn-stalks dying back after harvest, and the southern field with coffee.

“This way,” said Eduardo.

Near the cornfield they came upon four men framing the outside walls upon a concrete foundation. They were big-boned Caucasian men, strong and diligent. They waved or nodded at Eduardo and Pepino, who now sat ramrod straight on Eduardo’s shoulder. Hood guessed the new library at twelve hundred square feet.

“The libraries are important,” said Eduardo. “Many towns and villages have no high school. And many poor students don’t have the time or the travel money to make a two-hour trip to a faraway high school every day, and then another two-hour trip home. The village libraries are the only place where these children can find things to read. You have to read your book right there in the library. You can’t take them home with you. Or there wouldn’t be enough books. Father Joe brought books in his minivan. Boxes and boxes of them in Spanish and English. They are children’s books on science and history and nature. Many pictures. I helped him carry some of the boxes into the barn. When the library is finished they will have hundreds of books that he brought. I told him he should have brought computers, too, and he said he would try to do that the next time he comes here.”

“Where did he go?”

“He didn’t tell me. He just wasn’t here one day. I was sad. He was the one who gave me advice on what to feed Pepino, and how warm to keep him, and he told me that squirrel monkeys love their fathers very much and I would become Pepino’s father if I was gentle and slow with him. He taught me that a diet heavy in bananas would make him die. I asked him if Pepino’s species could evolve into human beings someday and Father Joe said no, because monkeys and humans have common ancestors but many years ago monkeys evolved one way and humans another way.”

Hood heard melancholy in the boy’s voice. Pepino looked up at him and pursed his lips.

“So, that will be our library someday,” Eduardo said quietly.

“Will you use it?”

“No. My family has enough money to send me to high school. Because of ecotourism. I’m an all-A student. I want to be a film director or astronomer.”

Hood walked over to the workers and asked the Quakers if they knew Father Joe Leftwich and where he had gone. The younger ones looked to the oldest one and he set down his hammer and measured out his words. Yes and no, he said. Father Leftwich had been here and worked very hard with them; he had brought good books from Ireland, where he lived; then he had simply not appeared for work one day and that was that. He was gone.
Such are the blessings of the Lord
, he said,
offered and withdrawn according to a plan we cannot know
.

Hood nodded and returned to Eduardo, who was looking up at the volcano. Some of the higher clouds had cleared and now the great black cone rose majestically into a blue sky from a downy base. Smoke rose steadily.

“Ready for the wild things, Detective?”

They continued past the village and around the corn.
The trail narrowed and climbed and Hood saw that the creeping vines were prolific here, winding up the trunks of the larger trees. They stopped and waited while a deadly fer-de-lance crossed the trail.

Pepino stood with his hair on end and screeched down at the serpent.

“
Terciopelo
,” said Eduardo. “The velvet snake. Very deadly and aggressive. It’s good that he can’t hear Pepino but all snakes are deaf. Father Joe told me that snakes evolved not into lizards but from them. He thought it odd that a more recently evolved creature would not have legs or ears.”

Hood watched the big spangled viper inch its way into the jungle. It looked deadly. He had read that there were nineteen species of venomous snakes in Costa Rica. The fer-de-lance killed more people than any of the others. They could get eight feet long. This one looked to be five feet. The moment its tail disappeared into the foliage Pepino stopped screeching and sat down again.

“Is that the wild thing that Father Joe was studying?”

“No. But soon.”

The trail rose and the evening fell and Eduardo led him into a gorge. Its walls were red rock and gently sloping. They side-stepped down the viney flank and Hood steadied himself on the jungle branches until Eduardo told him the eyelash vipers hid in the bushes and their bites were unbearably painful though almost never fatal. They continued down to the bottom of the gorge and walked along a stream until they came to a small clearing ringed by banana and plantain and palms. Here it was nearly dark and Hood was glad he’d brought his penlight for the walk home.

Eduardo pointed up through the trees. At first Hood saw nothing but the vegetation and red rock of the gorge wall. Then he made out the ragged mouth of a cave. The opening was partially hidden by vines and the blackness of it was an invitation and a threat.

“Be careful for snakes and tarantulas,” said Eduardo. With this, he slipped through a stand of palm trees and began climbing up the gorge face. Hood followed. The rock was studded with ledges and toeholds and not difficult to climb. Hood pulled himself over the top and stood up on the wide rock shelf. Eduardo pointed to the cave mouth that hung open before them.

“Father Joe asked me where to find the bats,” said Eduardo. “We have many bats. Some boys from school showed me this place a long time ago. If we stand right here, they’ll fly past us. Father Joe and I did this several times.”

A few minutes later a small bat flitted from the cave mouth and came toward them. It flew just over their heads and Hood turned to watch it climb through the banana trees and disappear into the purple dusk.

“Bats,” he said.

“Many hundreds,” said Eduardo. “Look. More.”

Another came climbing unsteadily, then two more; then Hood heard a strange burst of flesh and fur and high-pitched squeals and the sky turned black with them. It was a river of wings and small faces and it flowed over them, and Eduardo giggled softly and Hood could smell the guano and the meaty reek of their bodies and when he glanced at Pepino, the monkey had buried its face in the back of Eduardo’s neck.

“Vampire bats,” said Eduardo. “Father Joe wanted to see vampire bats. Not fruit bats. Not pygmy or long-eared bats. Only the vampire. They were named after the vampire myths of Europe, not the reverse. There are of course no vampires here in Costa Rica, or anywhere else. That is superstition. But these bats live on the blood of animals and sometimes people. This is science.”

Hood watched the black onrush. He felt the air moved by their wings and one of them swooped low and grazed his face and Hood leaned away from it but into another that flapped past with a sharp chirp not six inches from his ear. Tiny eyes glimmered and flashed within the black, membranous flow.

Then the flow ended and a few stragglers bounced out into the air and Hood turned to watch the black bulk of them melt into the sky toward the farms and villages.

“They will feed tonight on the blood of living animals,” said Eduardo. “Mostly cattle and horses. Their saliva contains an enzyme that makes their bite impossible to feel. This is how they fool the host. They scrape the flesh and lap the blood. They do not suck the blood. If I become a director, my first film will be a documentary on the vampire bat. It will deal with both superstition and science. These animals have faces that terrify people. They even frighten me. So, am I superstitious? I don’t think so. They frighten Pepino. But how can a monkey be superstitious? Maybe it is scientific to be afraid of vampire bats. But then, how can a monkey be scientific?”

“Well, it’s scientific to let the fer-de-lance cross the path without disturbing it.”

“Yes! Proof of science. Father Joe would have liked you. He said science and superstition are different answers to the same questions.”

“Have you been inside the cave?”

“Never. Father Joe told me about the Ebola virus and other fatal viruses. Probably ones that don’t have a name yet. He said to never go inside the cave.”

“What did Father Joe do here?”

“He observed. He wrote in a small notebook. He took photographs. He captured some bats with a butterfly net and we inspected them. One evening on the way home we found Itixa on the road and it was obvious that she had followed us. She was perspiring and stuck with leaves and twigs and trying to stay ahead of us. I believe she told my father what we did. And the next day he told me not to go anywhere with Father Joe. He said that Father Joe was not trustworthy and not what he pretended to be. That night our meal had very much garlic. And all meals after that until Father Joe went away.”