We Eat Our Own (20 page)

It is done now.

She is in the same filthy clothes as before, and he can hear
them shifting as she breathes harder, starts to cry. I beat him, she says.

You taught him a lesson. I've done the same—

I beat half his teeth out. I beat him unconscious.

Juan Carlos takes a step forward.

I almost killed him, too, she says. Did you know that? I almost killed two men in one night. Do you know why?

Someone passes in the yard with a lantern, and the light surges through the tent wall and over Marina's body. Juan Carlos winces, glimpsing how much the shape of her has changed, and he's ashamed of his reaction. He makes himself lie down on the cot next to hers.

It was revenge, he says too firmly, compensating. The Patient killed one of ours. It was for El Matón. Why else?

She turns onto her back and tilts her head toward his voice.

Juan Carlos doesn't let himself blink, looking at the woman he loves, at the face that isn't her face. The red knobs of skin, everywhere. The seams where her eyes should be. The grotesque swell of her lips. The heat radiating.

It was because he said he was sorry, she pronounces.

He makes himself look at her, mutilated. He makes himself look at her, the monster who shot his best friend in the gut and left him to die on a kitchen floor. La Araña, the girl he loves.

It was brave of you, Juan Carlos says, reaching for her hand. I love you for it. You did it for all of us.

• • •

If Marina could open her eyes, she would look at Juan Carlos the way she looked at the Patient that night. He had the garrote slack between his hands, two wooden handles and a piano wire like a thread of light in the bottom of the hole. Her
head is full of the same violence now as it was then: silent and pummeling and sick, her muscles surging with acid but her breath even and true.

She hit the Patient hard enough to make her knuckle skin split.

She was nineteen years and seven months old, and death was not a light she could stop from coming through the window.

As she hit him, she thought of bodies in government cars, Andres' long eyelashes skimming the kitchen floor in the forty-­two minutes it took him to die. She thought of what a dying body was: all those colors. Not just red but yellow, diluted fluids, acids and froth. She beat the Patient to make sense of it. She beat the Patient because she knew, that night, that death was not an injustice. Her alias was La Araña but it was not her name. She did not kill Andres, because death was not something you accomplish. Death is a place full of bush and trees with no road out, and that is where she lives now.

She thinks of telling Juan Carlos what her stupid plan had been—to kidnap one of the Europeans whom she saw out there in the jungle, to ransom them to get upriver, that she would have killed again if she had to—but she is too sore and tired to open her mouth.

When Juan Carlos speaks again, his voice is dim, a murmur beneath acres of water.

Listen to me. You didn't kill the Patient.

Marina turns back onto her side.

You beat him pretty bad, I'll give you that, but he was ransomed three days later. He's still alive. You know that. You remember.

She tries to swallow.

You still feel guilty. It's natural. But you can't let it get in the way of our work here.

And here is when Juan Carlos' voice changes, brightens and hardens at once. He says all the things he has said before, by rote, because there is nothing else to say to stop the noise.

That what they are doing is about the future of the nation.

That every killing is a sacrifice so there will be no killing someday, soon.

That the cartel will kill them if they do not do their part, and Turbay's police will kill them if they run.

That they will stay here as long as they are needed, until they die, even, because that is what compañeros do.

He talks and talks until he thinks she is asleep. He talks until he falls asleep himself, half drunk from the rum he swallowed to calm down, deep enough that she knows he won't wake up. He does not wake when she sits up, when her skin screams and her mouth opens and she slaps her hand across her own burning mouth to stop the noise.

He does not wake when Marina stands and gropes the edges of the room for her gun.

When she leaves the room and goes outside.

When she staggers out into the yard and up the hill toward the bush and to the place where, in ten minutes, they will find her ruined body.

When the rifle falls from her hand and tumbles off into the dark undergrowth, so no one can tell she fired the shot into her brain herself, that it didn't come from someone hiding in the trees.

When she does these things, Juan Carlos, still, will sleep.

He is exhausted from all this talking.

He cannot explain it to her again.

RICHARD

Ovidio

H
ere is something you don't know:

How many things are out there in the jungle.

It's 4 a.m. You've been walking for an hour in the trees alone, something you thought that you would never do here, something you regret as you soon as you feel the screech of the fox bats rake over your eardrums. The path is too dim for you to see well, so you keep your eyes glued to the ground, strain to sense changes in texture through the soles of your boots. Mosquitoes cling to the sweat in the hollow of your neck and you can't stop swiping at them there, even though you know they're everywhere else on you, too. You know that the jungle is full of things that can swarm and leap and glide out from nowhere; that you are not safe here; that you should not have refused the bus from the river mouth to the hotel with the rest of the crew, shouting after them that you needed a walk to clear your head and you'd be back by dawn; that you should not have ignored the producer's scowl and demand that you get on right fucking now, don't be stupid, Richard; that you should be in your bed.

But after what you saw on set today, you're not sure you're safe there, either.

Here is something you don't know:

That at this exact instant, across the river, a guerilla soldier named Marina has pressed the mouth of a rifle into the space between her eye socket and ear and fired.

Here is something you don't know:

Six feet from where you stand right now, a red flower that smells like carrion begins to open, and the flies alert.

Here is something you don't know:

The hotel is only a hundred yards away as the crow flies, but the path will wind so much before you reach it that you will be sure until the moment you hear the muted growl of a generator that you are lost.

You don't know what the fuck you're doing.

You stop. You breathe. A clutch of squirrel monkeys you can't see leaps into the canopy and a thousand leaves scatter like an explosion. You close your eyes to shut it all out. You make yourself remember what happened on set today.

• • •

You arrived this afternoon ready to shoot your first big monologue, and Ugo handed you a double-barrel shotgun.

Revision, he said, spitting into the dirt.

You'd been taken to a new set fifty yards into the forest, the river barely a glint through the trees when you looked back. Irena had told you about the tree of hives, but you hadn't seen it for yourself. It was about ten feet taller than you'd pictured, the nests rougher and sharper looking, hanging heavier off the branches than could possibly be safe. The set dressers had strewn a few clay pots around, dug out a campfire pit and tried to make it look like a village. A clutch of Indian extras milled around, tugging uncomfortably at their loincloths.

You looked down at the gun. A set of initials you didn't recognize were carved into the grip.

Why do I need this? you mumbled. I thought the script said we were burning a village down.

But Ugo was already walking away.

Sweat sprang up on your forehead and the backs of your hands. Excuse me. What do you mean, there's been a revision?

Ugo turned back toward you. There was something in his face: maybe exhaustion, hardened over into something else. The sun found a gap between the branches and flared into your eyes, but thinking of it now, you're sure that wasn't it: that wasn't why he aimed that look at the shirt button at the center of your chest, why he wouldn't look you in the eye.

When he talked, it was too careful, like he was thinking about every micro movement of his tongue. You still say the monologue, yes. We still burn the village. But first—he tilted his head toward the beach—you shoot the dog.

You looked out toward the fire pit. The dog was tiny and black, snarfling happily for insects in the ash. A bored assistant stood over it with a long stick, in case it decided to run off.

Why?

Just do it.

But why?

Because Richard wants a shot of something dying, Ugo said, like it was evident. Because you are Richard. Cristo. Do I really need to give you reasons?

You heard your mouth saying it: No. Sir.

He didn't smile. Good. Shoot the dog, then say the lines. Then you burn the village.

The dog turned in your direction. You could see its shining round eyes, the white of its chin as it snouted at an anthill. For
some reason, you found yourself looking around for Irena, but she was nowhere.

You mumbled, But I don't think—

You can.

No, no, it's just—I don't know how to use the gun.

The Indians were beginning to look at you, curious. The makeup artists, Paolo and Agata, were smearing mud onto two women's knees, and they glanced up, too.

You have to.

It's a movie. Can't you just get the effects crew to—

Just pull the trigger. Ugo pantomimed it. Do it quick. Not too gentle. And don't mess it up. We only have one dog.

He'd already turned away from you before you got the nerve up to say, finally, I won't.

Ugo looked back toward you, then down at the shotgun. You were holding it in front of you with both hands like it was a lunch tray. He sucked his teeth and grabbed it from you with one fist, a gesture twice too fast for how tired he looked, the words snapped off too quickly.

Fine then. Teo.

The skin across your face stung with a sudden heat.

The veins in the side of Ugo's neck stood out like axial cables. He barked an Italian word you didn't understand, and Teo—the actor who held Fabi in the headlock your first day on set, who must be playing Richard's cameraman—ambled over and took the gun from him. Ugo looked back to you for a quick instant, dead-eyed and chewing at something in the pocket of his cheek.

Positions, he said.

Here is something that you can't believe happened only sixteen hours ago, the sun stuck overhead at high noon like an indecipherable stain on a ceiling:

You stared into the lens of a Super 8 camera and tried to remember what was supposed to happen next. You knew the scene started with a monologue. You had to make your voice work, and aim it straight to camera: in the jungle, every day is about survival of the fittest.

But then you heard the gunshot in your periphery. It punctured your memory like a balloon, and just like that, the words drained out. The camera panned in your direction, an alien beast turning to you with an open mouth. You looked, despite yourself, at Teo, the rifle still balanced on his shoulder and his eyes leveled to the sights. The dog leaned onto its side, its neck arching back so you could see both its eyes were open. Then it arched down the other way, stared at something deep beneath the mud.

The sky over you was white with the grit of dirt in it.

You heard your own voice enunciating the monologue, mangling it—The daily violence. Um. The strong overcoming the weak. Yes. Violence! For Veronica! Gayle!

The wound in the dog's side didn't bleed like you would have expected. The blood only pooled, a shallow thumbprint of dark liquid sunk into the curve of its belly.

And then Irena was suddenly next to you, prodding her prop sound recorder into your face, egging you on. Then revulsion and relief collided in you, so powerful it should have disabled you, but you heard yourself yell the final cue anyway—Joe!— your voice scattering like a bat across the air. Teo switched the gun for a torch and jogged up fast. He dragged the torch up the seam of the lowest nest, painting a narrow thread of flame all the way to the top.

Here is something, hours later, that you still can't believe:

There were people in the nests.

You blinked. It couldn't be.

But you could see them through the gathering smoke: a dozen of them, yipping in a frantic language as the flames reached. They were naked with cropped black hair; the Indians, yes, the extras, you had seen these people before. You hadn't noticed the producers herding them up ladders and into the nests before the shot began, and at that moment, you could see them only in thatches: naked bodies and dark, swinging hair, swelling rib cages and white teeth.

No.

The ones in the lowest nests dove, landing with hard, wet sounds on the mud. The ones in the highest nests clung and stared.

No. No. Your mouth was shouting it.

The ladders had been taken away.

A muscle in your temple throbbed.

There were cameras everywhere, and they were all filming.

The branches shook and bobbed. A man in the sky was clambering out of his nest, trying to get higher, away.

The director shouted, Va', va', va'! He laughed. Yes!

No, you have a mark to hit, you need to move—

Then, somehow, the soft clatter of the camera reel was louder than everything else: the fire, the screams, the gun firing again and again and again into the trees.

Then you all saw the man on fire, sprinting toward the river.

Then, like an act of God, all the rain rushed in at once.

Here is something you didn't really register until now:

When Ugo ran after the burning man, he grabbed a camera. He kept rolling as he ran.

Between the smoke and the roar of the rain and everyone running, the realization didn't strike your brain for hours. The cameramen ducked under tarps with their equipment. The PAs doused whatever the rain didn't, leaned ladders back against
the trees, and waved the terrified extras down. Irena sponged rain and sweat off her forehead, laughing—that was amazing! You were dumbfounded, shaking, asking yourself: What did I just see? Was I the only one?

• • •

You said it out loud: Irena, I think someone's hurt.

The man on fire was named Paolo: he was one half of the makeup and effects crew, the man you saw carrying the pile of meat that was supposed to be your corpse out of the bush. A spitfire had caught the front of his shirt. Ugo had told him to fan the flames toward camera, and they'd fanned back toward him.

The rain put the man out, but there wasn't a medic, afterward, to treat the burns. Baldo fumbled in the first aid kit. Paolo's wife, Agata, sprinted from the bush where she'd been prepping an extra for the next scene, stood over him and tried everything she could. The rain stopped, and the river water was too dirty to cool him down. The bandages in the kit were too narrow, so she found some plastering strips she used for mold-making and laid them across his chest, his neck, his chin. The crew gathered on the beach and watched.

Here is something else that you didn't notice:

Ugo recorded the sound Paolo made, as the cloth met his flesh. He recorded the boat, pulling away with the burned man and his wife and the producer on it, and planned to dim the shot in postproduction, to say that it was Richard and Gayle and Joe.

Everyone thought that you'd all go back to town, but Ugo was too keyed up. He'd sweated through his shirt. His face was stern but ecstatic, his hat stuffed into his back pocket so you could see the gleam on his hairline. He jogged through the ashes of the nests, yelling for his cameramen to follow, to
film a specific heap of embers, to get a close shot of a burned straw doll. He directed them in mixed Italian and English to move quicker, yelled that they were losing the light, this was the only fucking scene they've shot so far that's been worth anything.

Then he switched to English and called you over. He told you to sift through the mud with your bare hands, the gun slung across your back by a strap for effect.

What am I looking for, you asked, too quiet, still shaken.

For anything, Ugo said. Crouch lower. Look meaner.

You raked through the wet ash. You did it, until your fingertips hurt, the soft tissues inside your nose stinging with heat and the sharp smell of carbon.

You stalked over the burned ruins and squinted, looking.

When Ugo told you to accost an Indian, you did that, too: you faked spying him in the distance, a short man languishing under a rubber tree with fake burns pasted across his feet and shins and knees. You stood over him like you were told and you leered like you were told, though you had no idea what you were supposed to be telling the man to do or why.

I want something from you, you said in the sternest voice you could manage.

I don't know what I want from you, you said, and pointed at the hollow of bone at the center of his chest like you were making a demand.

No one could hear you, of course. Your voice will be a distant gurgle on the final cut; the camera's filming from twenty yards off. You had no idea where you were supposed to be going when the Indian pointed you deeper into the trees and told you, in a language you didn't understand, to walk.

You did dozens of takes, again and again, until the light was changing too fast between shots and everyone but Ugo was
exhausted. You did it until it was too dark for the light meters, and then Ugo made the set dressers build a fire, shot another three hours of you and Irena and Teo stomping around in the dark, until one of the cameramen finally murmured, It's a waste of film stock.

At midnight, a
PA
doused the last embers with a bucket of river water. The set dressers tried their best to tear down, put aluminum flashlights in their mouths so they could use both hands to haul. You tried to help, but as you hoisted a light stand over a tree trunk, you heard it: someone in the crowd was laughing and laughing. You squinted, and it stunned you to realize that it was Ugo.

He was on the beach with Fabi, nattering in Italian. He slapped the producer across the chest with the back of his hand and wrested his flask away from him, swallowed hard. He held the drink up to a moon hung a mile too low in the sky. One eye was squinting, all teeth grinning. Then he pointed his viewfinder at something down the beach and jogged after it.

What the fuck is he laughing about? Why the
fuck
is he laughing?

You didn't realize you've said it out loud until Teo answered you. You didn't even realize Teo was
there
until you heard his voice and turned to see him kneeling in the grass, tying up the broken strap on a camera bag.