A cornflower blue Cessna aircraft flew toward the rafts, scarcely larger than a thread in the immense sky, and as it got closer it began to descend. A hundred feet, two hundred feet, its engine sputtering.
“You figure it’s in some kind of trouble?” Auerbach asked anxiously.
Leonard stared at the weathered plane. “I don’t know.”
“What should we do?”
He did not answer but continued to watch the seemingly out of control aircraft. It continued to descend, heading right toward them, and he wondered if they should jump out of the raft. Soon it was so close he could smell its fumes. Then, abruptly, it peeled away and climbed back into the clouds, its wings shuddering.
“The son of a bitch,” Auerbach growled, raising his middle finger at the receding plane.
Leonard grinned. “I guess bush pilots are as full of beans in the Amazon as they are in Alaska.”
“If he’d got much lower, he’d have gone right into us.”
“But he didn’t so I guess he got his thrill for the day.”
“Stupid son of a bitch.”
“What you needed was a bow and arrow,” Chando observed as the bush plane disappeared behind a cloud.
“Come again?”
The guide then told him of an incident he heard when he was a young boy of a cargo plane flying over some village deep in the jungle. The people who lived there thought it was an enormous bird and, frightened, began to shoot arrows at it and one of the arrows brought the plane down and everyone aboard was killed.
“You can’t be serious?”
“That’s what I heard, sir.”
Leonard winked at Natalie whose bare shoulders gleamed in the seething sunlight. “You don’t sound as if you believe him, Abe?”
“Do you?”
He shrugged, holding the oar with only one hand in the mild current. “Lots of strange things happen out here in the jungle. I suppose it’s possible.”
Auerbach remained skeptical. “It sounds pretty farfetched to me, chief.”
“It does that. No question about it.”
Chando looked up at the sky as if waiting for the plane to return, wondering to himself if he had the strength to bring it down with an arrow. He doubted it but he could not deny that he would like to try.
*
Twenty minutes later, the rafts pulled into the first village mentioned in Vincent’s postcards, and at first no one seemed to be there although smoke spilled out of some of the thatched huts. Then a couple of men appeared in mirrored sunglasses, then a couple more, and as if in formation they marched down to the bank with machetes swinging from their belt loops. Chando, who knew one of the men, quickly introduced him to the Americans, and in a matter of moments everyone was smiling and embracing one another like relatives who had not been in contact for quite a while. Then several women sauntered down to the bank, smiling tentatively, their solemn faces streaked with red dye. They carried wooden platters of fruit from cacao trees and offered them to the Americans.
“I suppose we should give them something,” Burgoyne muttered somewhat reluctantly to Immel.
His friend nodded as he bit into a wedge of the raw pulp. “If we don’t, they might decide to cook us for dinner.”
“Here, make yourself useful,” he said, handing Immel some balloons, “and blow a couple of these up.”
“And then what?”
“We’ll pass them out to the kids.”
He laughed. “You figure that’ll ingratiate us enough with their parents so they won’t eat us?”
“It can’t hurt.”
Immel, holding in his cheeks, blew up a long green balloon and looped a piece of string around the end while Burgoyne blew up a yellow one, though not half as quickly. Natalie, noticing them, offered to help and blew up another green one then twisted it into the shape of a scrawny dog.
“My God, an artist,” Immel chuckled.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” she replied, picking up another balloon to inflate. “But I have three young nieces so I’ve been going to a lot of children’s birthday parties the past couple of years.”
Soon children in the village had gathered around them, their eyes wide as their mouths as they watched the flimsy pieces of rubber fill up with air. They uttered not a word, just watched, and each child after receiving a balloon ran off as if afraid the Americans would want it back.
They seemed as jubilant as her nieces were the first time she had made balloon animals for them, Natalie thought, watching the nearly naked children bounce the balloons on their fingers and heads.
“That ought to keep the little bastards entertained for a while,” Burgoyne snorted as he zipped shut his duffel bag.
“You have anything for their parents?” Natalie asked.
“I might.”
“What?”
“Not just yet,” he said, heaving the cumbersome bag into the raft. “Right now I want to see if anyone in the village remembers Vincent when he was here.”
“Too bad you don’t have some more pictures of your brother,” Natalie remarked, “then I could help you out.”
He nodded. “Thanks. I wish now I had a wallet full of them. I should’ve had some prints made. I guess I wasn’t really thinking.”
“He knows his brother was here from the postcards,” Natalie said to Immel as they watched Burgoyne approach an elderly man with the wrinkled photograph, “so I don’t understand what he expects to discover here. Because Vincent disappeared a long ways from this village from what I understand.”
“I think he just wants to be sure he’s on the right trail.”
She sighed, adjusting the bridge of her sunglasses. “I really don’t see the point of showing the photograph to people who are miles and miles away from where Vincent disappeared.”
“He’s obsessed. He’s going to show it wherever we are.”
“I suppose.”
“No suppose about it. That’s a fact. I know Rick and once he sets his mind to do something there’s no changing it.”
*
Leonard and some of the other Americans stood around a blazing campfire over which three ancient women roasted nuts. The fragrant smell reminded him of a confection shop in a neighborhood where he and his sister lived for three years before their father moved the family to Idaho. Some afternoons, even when he didn’t have any money to buy anything, he would still ride his bicycle down to the shop and stand outside the kitchen door and slowly inhale the strong sweet smells of all the candies and nuts that were sold there. Often he only intended to stay a couple of minutes then looked at his watch and discovered he had been there sometimes as long as twenty minutes.
“You look like you’re thinking about something,” Ida remarked after joining her brother at the fire.
He grinned. “I am and you’d never guess what.”
“Something about the river?”
He shook his head. “Dwight’s.”
Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “You mean that candy store we used to go to as kids?”
He nodded, brushing some smoke out of his eyes.
“Why for heaven’s sake?”
“These roasting nuts just made me think about it … about all those pieces of walnut fudge I use to get there.”
“You’re right, darling. I never would have imagined you were thinking about Dwight’s in the Amazon. I bet I haven’t thought about that place in twenty-five years.”
“Sometimes I wish we’d never left that neighborhood,” he said softly. “I think I probably enjoyed it there more than any of the other places we lived.”
“But if we didn’t move to Idaho, you might never have become a guide.”
He grinned again. “Maybe I might’ve bought my own confection shop.”
“Then you’d probably never have seen anything like this,” she said, glancing at a scrawny little man walking behind the fire with a copper-colored boa constrictor wrapped around his left arm.
“You’re definitely right about that.”
She then noticed Burgoyne heading toward the fire, the wrinkled photograph of his brother back in his wallet. “Or not anyone like Rick.”
Before he could reply Stenholm caught Burgoyne’s eye. “Anyone recall your brother being here?” he inquired as Burgoyne paused to sample one of the roasted nuts.
“A couple of people thought they remembered him but I’m not sure if they really did or were just trying to be polite.”
“I’m surprised.”
“I’m not,” he snorted, removing a piece of shell from his tongue. “To these people we all look the same. Just as they do to us I suppose.”
“So are you through here?” Ida asked.
He shook his head. “Not yet. I’d still like to look around to see if there’s anything worth taking home.”
“You just like your brother, are you?” Griffin remarked after crunching into a nut.
Burgoyne half turned around, glaring at the photographer. “What’re you talking about? You didn’t know Vincent?”
“No, I didn’t,” he said, surprised by the hostility in his voice. “But I know from you the primary reason he came to the Amazon was to collect things he found here and bring them back to the States.”
“You have a problem with that?”
“Not at all.”
“Neither do I,” he said, turning and walking back toward the huts.
“He’s a hard guy to figure out,” Griffin remarked as he watched Burgoyne stoop down to examine some beads worn by a sullen woman smoking a long-stemmed pipe.
“He’s under a lot of stress, I suspect,” Ida offered as an explanation for his abruptness. “Now that he’s actually starting to visit the places his brother visited.”
Griffin was not persuaded by her explanation. “He claims he’s here to find out what happened to his brother, flashing that photograph at everyone he sees, when all he really wants to do is collect things like him.”
“Maybe Vincent was the one good friend he never had and he feels obligated to continue to do what he was doing,” Leonard suggested. “Maybe he’s always followed him.”
“Maybe so, but I sure as hell don’t think he’s come here to find out what happened to him. I think he had a pretty good idea what happened well before he ever set foot here.”
“So you figure he’ll want to stay here until he gets enough loot to make the trip worthwhile?” Stenholm remarked.
“That’d be my guess.”
“We could be out of here sooner than we thought.”
“Or later.”
*
Immel paused beside a tall, cone-shaped drum leaning against the back of a hut. It was carved from a thick black wood and was surprisingly smooth. Tentatively he pressed a palm against its taut skin then tapped two fingers, slowly, producing a dull hollow sound.
“You think it’s some kind of war drum?” Burgoyne asked.
“I don’t know what else it’d be for. I doubt if there are many rumba dancers around here.”
“You think it’s authentic?”
He removed his palm. “It doesn’t appear that old. So I figure it is something made to sell to gullible tourists.”
“You do?”
“That’s my hunch, Rick.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“I guess that’s the point, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Still, I bet somebody back home would pay a pretty penny for it. Whoever made it did a damn fine job, if you ask me.”
“You can find a customer for just about anything.”
“It’s too damn big to put in the raft now but, maybe on the way back, if I don’t find anything better, I might buy it.”
“I bet you’ll come across something a lot better than this, Rick.”
“I hope so.”
Idly they walked around the hut, past a plump woman nursing a baby, and saw Chando standing in front of a towering tree with a few members of their party gathered around him. Burgoyne was curious what he was saying and hurried over with Immel half a step behind him. In another moment, they saw the intricate wooden scaffold built all the way to the top of the tree.
“You look as if you might like to go up there,” Eason said to Burgoyne with a slight grin.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“So you can show us how strong you are.”
Puzzled, he looked at Eason then looked back at the scaffold. “Granted, it’s a lot of steps but I think anyone of us should be able to manage it. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is what you find once you get up there.”
Intently he peered up at the tree, unable to make out anything unusual among the thick branches. “And what would that be, Leo?”
Eason glanced over at their guide. “Tell him, Chando.”
“Up near the crown there’s a hornet’s nest,” Chando said, pointing a finger toward a shadowy corner on the north side of the tree. “And it’s the custom in this village for the young men to climb up to it and get stung because their elders believe it makes them strong.”
“You mean this whole structure was built so some kids can get stung by bees?” he asked incredulously.
He nodded. “That’s why, if you stay in this village long enough, you’ll notice a lot of swollen faces and hands.”
“Incredible.”
“So when are you going up?” Eason chided him.
He laughed. “Right after you, Leo.”
*
“If we stay here much longer,” Auerbach speculated as he watched Burgoyne look at some wooden bowls, “I could see Rick going up that scaffold.”
Natalie smiled, sipping the cup of lemon-flavored tea one of the women had offered her. “Whatever for?”
“To make a good impression on the people here so they’ll give him what he wants.”
“And what’s that, Abe?”
“Things to take back home with him to sell to people like me.”
“You think that’s the main reason why he’s come here?”
“I didn’t before we left but I do now. Don’t you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really know the man.”
“He’s my nephew, of course, but I don’t know him that well, either,” he admitted. “But my impression is that he’s here strictly for himself. To find out what happened to his half brother was only an excuse to come down here so he could find things to sell back in the States and earn himself a nice little profit.”
Disinterestedly she sipped her tea, wondering if Burgoyne would really climb up to the hornet’s nest in order to ingratiate himself with the villagers. She had known people in the office who had done almost as outrageous things to advance themselves with their superiors, including herself she reckoned, as she felt Auerbach’s claw of a hand press against her bare kneecap.
*
Burgoyne didn’t climb the scaffold as Auerbach speculated, never even considered doing such a crazy thing to impress the villagers, but he did get a volleyball out of his duffel bag and bounced it on his fingertips until he had attracted a small crowd of young men around him and Immel. They batted it back and forth for a couple of minutes then invited the crowd to join them. The younger men were not familiar with the game of volleyball, found it difficult to return the serves of the Americans with their hands, and began to use their feet and heads. Soon a frantic game of soccer was being played with the Americans on one side and half a dozen villagers on the other.
Leonard and Eason were loud, furiously shouting out commands as if back in the rafts, but not any louder than some of their opponents who howled with delight whenever they kicked the volleyball past an American. Back and forth the two sides raced across the sloped pitch behind the row of huts, their heads bobbing, their arms and legs churning, banging into one another like hockey players. Griffin played for a few minutes until he caught a sharp elbow in the ribs then decided it would be safer to get out his camera. And he did, rushing up and down the sidelines after the ball, snapping picture after picture. Quickly he realized he was running more now than he was when he was playing but at least no one was trying to knock him to the ground.
“I’m getting too old for this kind of thing,” Auerbach groaned as Griffin ran alongside of him and snapped his anguished face.
“You’re not alone,” Eason said breathlessly.
“I’m older than both of you bastards and I feel great,” Leonard boasted, sprinting after the volleyball.
“You’re older than God,” Stenholm cracked.
Leonard laughed.
“Why aren’t you still playing, Griff?” Eason asked.
“Too rough for me.”
“That’s what makes it fun,” he laughed, banging a shoulder into a villager half his age.
Griffin took a few more pictures of the ragged contest then noticed Natalie cheering on the sidelines and quickly snapped her photograph. Smiling like a schoolgirl with feathery pompoms in her hands, she jumped up and down, shaking her long arms, urging her crewmates to score a goal as if that were the most important thing that could happen today. She was so absorbed in the game she wasn’t aware of him so he moved closer, taking more pictures.
“What’re you doing?” she asked, surprised, when she finally noticed him.
He lowered his camera. “Do you mind?”
“No, I suppose not. But I’d ‘ve thought you’d find the soccer game a lot more interesting to take pictures of than me.”
He raised the camera back to his eyes. “I told you I wanted to take your picture. Remember?”
“Yes, I remember, Griff.”
“So just act like I’m not even here,” he told her, bending down to one knee. “Concentrate on what’s going on out there on the field.”
And she did, shaking her arms again, shouting as loudly as ever.
Through the lens he looked at her pert mouth, slender as a wire, and snapped a picture then looked at her long eyelashes and snapped another picture. He could have been back in the studio he was concentrating so hard, oblivious to the frantic game being played in front of him and to the suspicious stare he was receiving now from Auerbach who noticed he was only taking pictures of Natalie.
T.R. Healy was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and is the author of the novel Red Right Hand.
Mountain Jay Books 