HOUSE OF JAGUAR

by Mike Bond

  He reached for a styrofoam cup. The coffee in it was cold, the color of used diesel oil. He emptied it into another dirty cup and poured a hot one. His hands would not stop trembling. He held the warm cup in his frigid fingers; reflected fluorescent light shivered on it.

  Five forty-two. Eighteen more minutes and he could have a cigarette. Make it last till six-thirty. Then one more driving home. Yes, it was working – he was cutting down.

  DAWN PURPLED the treetops, erasing the stars. Macaws stirred, began to crow; parrots and toucans screeched and battered wingtips in the branches. Spider monkeys jeered and threw down palm nuts; the cacophony of howlers followed Murphy through the jungle, making it easy for the soldiers to track him.

  His stockinged foot slipped on a mossy log and he fell trying to protect the arm but it smashed against a bough and he cried out.

  The soldiers had heard, were coming. Vines blocked his way, creepers and thorns, branches and saplings and trunks, madrones so tightly grown he had to scramble up and over them, his feet breaking through, the ching-ching of machetes and the yells of soldiers growing louder. Ahead were scrub and saplings, then a clump of thick brush that as he got closer he saw were treetops at ground height, trees growing up out of a sinkhole, a black pool glistening at the bottom. He slipped down into the sinkhole, rocks, dirt, and leaves tumbling with him, slid feet first into the water, took a breath, and ducked under.

  The pool’s rock sides were slick, he couldn’t get a hold, pushed himself lower, hungry for air. How many seconds? Twenty, maybe. Clouds of sediment rose slowly, began to settle. No, maybe thirty.

  On the surface above him the leaves rocked slowly, stilled. Water stung his arm. Maybe sixty seconds now. You can do this. Dirt dribbled into the pool, shadows crossed it. The surface shivered as a hand cupped into it; a khaki knee rippled one edge. Eighty seconds maybe. The soldiers’ voices echoed, pebbles dimpled the surface and hit his face as they sank.

  Not even two minutes. When you were little you did this. Sitting in school, holding your breath at your desk, the clock hand creeping. He sucked in water, coughed it out.

  You have to go up and they’ll take you and that’s better than this, can’t hold out any longer − go up there they’ll reach down and help you.

  Another soldier drank, his oval face protruding down. Murphy tried to remember how long it had been then could not remember what he was trying to remember, the light dimmed as he sank heavily into a dark chasm. Then from the distance a beam of light drew nearer. It was true, he realized, at the end you can see pure light.

  He rose up this brightening tunnel toward the light, no pain, no fear, and burst gasping and choking into another underground pool with a vaulted stone ceiling, sucking in pure sweet air, sweet lovely forgiving air.

  A slit in the cavern ceiling cast down a column of clerestory light. Through it he heard the soldiers grunting as they climbed from the pit. He dragged himself half out of the water on an edge of stone and lay with his broken arm above water.

  The light steepened; through the crevice came warm air perfumed with jungle, loud with monkeys and birds, the buzz of bees and cicadas.

  He woke, confused, reached for the lamp on his bedside table, scraped his broken arm on the rock and screamed, the echo bouncing round him. Before him hung a phosphorescent green face with black eye sockets and purple lips, but when he tried to knock it away his hand went right through it.

  His breath whispered off the dripping limestone walls. He sat up, head banging the roof. Just a cenote, this. A sacred Mayan spring.

  The light shifted, dust motes tumbling in its sloping shaft. There was no sound of soldiers. The agony in the arm was unimaginable. You should have stayed in San Francisco, he told himself. You should have been happy with what you had.

  The water dripping from the shaggy limestone ceiling into the pool was like countless tiny bells. If you pray for everything to be all right, he decided, then maybe it will be. It’s just like you to pray only when things get bad.

  He took a deep breath and dove back down the tunnel to the chasm, then back up to the surface of the sinkhole; he waited in the water but there was truly no sound of soldiers. He stood in warm sun, shivering; a lizard watched him from behind a trunk, darting its scaly head from side to side. His broken arm was swollen and vermilion like the lizard’s throat, his hand a mottled claw. He picked out slivers of bone and washed the wound with water from the cenote.

  The bullet had come from the front side and had snapped the bone, leaving a small hole in his biceps and a larger tear with bone chips at the back. He was able still to move his fingers, and with great pain to raise the arm. He climbed from the sinkhole, found sticks and tried to splint the arm but it hurt too much.

  He focused his mind on the flight chart of the Petén as it had looked in the Aztec’s instrument lights. The road where he’d landed ran up the middle, north-south. He must be twenty klicks already west of the road. If he swung northwest he’d hit the Río Machaquilá, could follow it to the Río de la Pasión. Maybe another fifty kilometers. On the Río he’d find a dugout, anything; then only another hundred klicks downriver to Mexico. If he were very smart and very careful he might make it.

  The last pines died out in an impenetrable lowland of hardwoods and thickets. Lizards and small green vipers were everywhere; scorpions scuttled, blue tails raised, over dead leaves. A weasel scrambled from a half-eaten rat; a boa swung at him from a vine-clogged limb, then turned away. Bees buzzed in an irritated cloud from a conical hive in the crotch of a dead tree aflame with white orchids.

  AGAIN A TELEPHONE woke Lyman. He sat up in bed, thick-tongued. “Nancy!” he called. It kept ringing and he realized Nancy wasn’t there. He ran down the hall to the living room and grabbed the phone.

  “Howie?” Curt Merck’s voice was nearly solicitous.

  Lyman sat down, the leather chair cold against his thighs, trying to see the clock over the television. “What’s wrong?”

  “They blew it, Howie. Gallagher’s dead.”

  “This line, Curt −”

  “It’s secure enough for this.”

  “I’m coming in.” Lyman hung up, sat with the phone between his knees. There was dog hair on the carpet; he saw Kit Gallagher throwing a tennis ball in a long arc, the ball bouncing over the lawn, the black Labrador bringing it back coated in slobber that Kit wipes on the grass before throwing the ball again. Who’s gonna take the dog? Kit brushing dandruff from his tie, his rigid motions when he eats, jaws snapping like a trap.

  Lyman went into the kitchen. Sun splashed the yellow flowered wallpaper, the ceramic trivet of a Dutch girl in a bonnet, the Mr. Coffee with the Warm light still on, the dishes in the sink where Nancy had put them before taking the kids to school, the wall clock − a Minnie Mouse seen from the rear, her tail showing the hour, her red-gloved hand the minutes. Twenty after nine. Blood flowing round inside your body then it stops. So many times you go out to meet death, and finally, one time, it’s there.

  He poured a coffee and picked up the Post from the breakfast bar, a corner of the first pages sticky with egg yolk. Words words words. If the assholes only knew. Does anybody? He returned to the bedroom, found a pack of Marlboros, lit one and stood in a patch of sunlight, sucking in the smoke.

  4

  A TRAIL. Before him through the jungle. No wider than his hand. He looked up with thanks to the towering trees, followed the path till he met a long column of red ants carrying leaf chunks in their jaws, and realized it was they and others like them that had made the trail. The ants were stopping to touch jaws with others returning along the same way. He wanted to fall down, give up, but checked the sun and turned west again.

  Soon the sun was overhead and he could not tell the way. He lay beside a tree. A blue motmot hooted from a branch and he wondered if it would eat his eyes. Long-tailed ebony sanatés flapped their papery wings, rustling and clacking in the palm crowns. Mosquitoes hovered with elegant patience. A
huge fly bit his ankle; he waved at it and it buzzed round his head. Noon heat layered down in thick malodorous blankets, choking the narrow spaces between the trees.

  He dragged himself in what seemed a westerly direction, drank at a puddle thick with mosquitoes, noticed the tracks around it, dug a stick from the mud and hid behind a fern clump. A vireo pecked at the water; he swung the stick and missed.

  A small iguana crouched beside the puddle, its red dorsal fan raised, its throat pulsing. In his good hand Murphy raised the stick. It caught on a liana; the iguana glanced at him.

  Like a whip the snake struck. The iguana leaped, rolling over and over but the bushmaster held, fangs deep in the iguana’s neck, using its long thick body for leverage, till the iguana quivered and lay still. When the bushmaster had stuffed the iguana halfway down its wide unhinged mouth, Murphy jumped out and clubbed its head again and again until it stopped writhing. The long curved pit-adder fangs hung open, one showing a tiny venom hole.

  Murphy dug a stone from the mud and sawed off the snake’s head, ripped its body lengthwise, tugged out its guts, held it between his knees to tear a chunk of body muscle from its back and swallowed it. It came up and he forced it down again. He pinched his nose against the rank raw taste and swallowed another piece. When the snake was half eaten he drank the puddle dry and lay beside it on the soft leaves.

  Waking in darkness he sat up to check for stars but none shone through the high canopy. Breath whistled in his throat, smelling of burnt decaying flesh. His body was a vast hive of cells aching for water; water hissed on the wind and licked at his lips. He chewed the mud of the puddle; it only made his mouth drier.

  Moon shadows slowly climbed the black trunks. The darkness paled; swifts and swallows tittered, trogons stirred stuffily in the high platy leaves. An ocelot screamed. Dawn came with slits of flame between the treetops, the birds chanting wildly with the joy of surviving another night.

  His arm would burst, the red infection, toxic as copper, sluggish in his veins. His tongue stuck, his jaw would not open. He crawled in circles looking for water, fainted, awoke, stood, turned his back to the rising sun, and pushed on.

  Somewhere he had lost his other shoe; his feet were swollen with thorns and bites and ripped by rocks. Flies chewed his arm, their tiny feet stuck in the black blood.

  He awoke on his back. Something feathery brushed his face, was tickling his ribs: a trail of ants crossing his chest like a red bandolier. They were feeding on his arm but he could not feel it. He sat up moaning and yelling, wiped them off with his other hand and fell back again.

  The underside of a leaf glinted like a diamond. How pretty and peaceful the sun was, the warmth, birds singing. Wind rustled at his cheek, stirred the leaf; the light danced. He pulled himself near, saw the puddle whose reflection had flashed on the leaf, and sucked it dry.

  Ahead was a long low building draped in vines − a Mayan ruin, maybe − there could be water, a path made by robbers, archaeologists. Two eye sockets gaped through creepers. A great Mayan stone scorpion: water − had to be − somewhere.

  Watching for coral snakes in the vines, he climbed one-armed up the front, looking into the sculpture’s empty eye socket, where a fat red-bellied spider hung in a web strung across the caved-in skull of a skeleton dressed in combat rags, the black nylon cross-belts still strapping it into the chopper’s seat, the collective pitch and cyclic control levers jutting up rusty between its capless knees. He backed away till he could see the Huey’s remaining rotor blade hanging bent from the shaft, the M60 mount in the port door

  He sat. It’s true, he thought. You do get punished for every evil you’ve ever done. Your Huey, back from Nam. Waiting for you.

  He jumped to his feet. A huge black jaguar stood ten feet away. Its yellow eyes watched him. He reached for a gun, a stick − there was nothing. The jaguar smiled.

  Too far to the chopper. Nothing inside. Don’t show fear. Smells the blood. Coming now. Your chopper from Nam, the black cat. Coming to claim you. Suddenly he laughed, had no fear.

  The jaguar cocked its head, flicked its long thick tail. He saw himself eaten, inside the jaguar, bloody chunks. The jaguar circled him, sliding invisibly through the trees and brush, turned back and stared, unwinking.

  He tried to go back the way he’d come but the cat slipped behind him, close again, snarling huge teeth. He backed away, the jaguar coming after him. It circled again and this time he followed it and it went on, just ahead, sometimes looking back.

  The land began to slope. The jaguar stopped at the edge of mangroves by a wide, fast stream flowing west. Murphy had a sudden rush of understanding, wanted to reach out, touch the glowing black fur, the monstrous rippling shoulders, felt love, absolutely no fear.

  The jaguar vanished in the mangroves. Murphy knelt and drank till he could drink no more, then waded downstream, the afternoon sun dancing on the current.

  He killed a small turtle sunning on a log, tore off the back and belly plates, the beak and feet, and chewed down the lukewarm tallowy flesh.

  Night fell like a curtain. He dragged a dead bough into the water and tried to float downstream, but it caught on roots and sunken trees and he waded on without it. He could not remember how many nights there had been, at times could not remember what had happened.

  He lay on a grassy bank. The ache of his arm filled his chest and shoulders, crushed his lungs; his fever made the blackness waver and buzz; thirst burned his throat no matter how much he drank. Sometimes the pain was so great he wept; at other times the arm seemed separate from him, its fate unlinked to his.

  A blue sky and hot white sun gleamed through the trees. On the opposite shore a large-bellied girl watched him gravely; in the clearing behind her a hut of creepers and palm fronds squatted among plantains and dead corn.

  He tried to wave, his voice a croak. The girl ran to the hut. A small dark woman came out and peered across the water at him, then ran along the bank to a clearing with other huts. She came back with several women; they waded to him and carried him across.

  There was the sweet smell of wood smoke, the murmur of women’s voices, the hiss and crackle of a fire. An ancient, wrinkled face loomed down. “Where am I?” he asked.

  “San Tomás.” A hoarse voice, a strange dialect. “Norteamericano,” she said to the others, turned down to him. “You’re with the Army?”

  “No − don’t tell them!”

  She smoothed a wool blanket up under his chin. He called out, tried to focus on the rain-stained thatch above his head, but the ground slid away beneath him and he dropped into darkness.

  5

  IT TOOK Lyman an hour on the Army C-34 from Guatemala City to Cobán. From the air the steep black-green half-jungled hills were peaceful and deserted, a miniature mountain landscape for electric trains. He tried to imagine them down there, the guerrillas, with their guns and fear and hunger.

  The plane kicked up red dust landing at Cobán Airbase. Red dust coated the jeep in which Vodega and two sergeants waited. Vodega shook his hand. “How was your flight?”

  Lyman sat up front, forcing Vodega to the back. “Any flight that means seeing you, Captain Vodega, is a lousy flight.”

  “It’s not my fault, Colonel, that Gallagher couldn’t protect himself.”

  “I want whoever did it.”

  “It must have been the pilot. He was the only one who got away.”

  “You let him escape.”

  “I’ve got a battalion tracking him in the jungle between the road and the Río. I got a platoon in three lanchas working up and down the Río doing a ‘detailed inventory’, as you call it in your manual, of every village. I have two Hueys on full alert twenty-four hours to intervene the first moment I hear of him. You think we let him go?”

  “You’re just like every other fuckup. Instead of taking the trouble to do things right, you fuck them up and then you take much more trouble trying to fix them afterwards.”

  “You a
re telling me you’re different, Colonel?”

  “Who is he, this pilot?”

  “The deal that was to be made was out of San Francisco. His plane is too burned, no numbers. The flight plans out of Mérida were false.”

  “Why’d you fire on him, goddammit? It all burned? The whole shipment? The money?”

  “Yes.”

  “You fuckups!”

  “When my men yell to him he’s surrounded, he jumps in the plane, tries to take off.”

  “So you got no idea who they were.”

  “Just what we know from before.”

  “I want him dead, Angelo. But listen,” Lyman forced himself round in the jeep, stared into Vodega’s boyish, acned face, “I want him before he’s dead.”

  “No one needs him going north, telling stories.”

  “You don’t have any fuckin idea who they were?”

  “We identified one man, Paco Alguenes, from Jarha, in the south.”

  “I know where Jarha is.”

  “His wife was pretty uninformed”

  “Show her some pictures...” Lyman turned to grip the windshield rim as the jeep slid through a turn.

  “She died too soon. The children knew nothing.”

  The jeep halted before the HQ, a broad yellowed building with tropical mold down its walls. Lyman got out, stood with hands on the fender, blocking Vodega. “Why were you on that op?”

  “Same reason you would have been, Colonel.”

  “Pray tell what’s that?”

  “I was responsible.”

  “And now you’re responsible that Gallagher’s dead.”

  “No. I’m responsible for wiping out another outsider. It’s your people who wanted Gallagher down here...”

  “With good reason. And now I’m here to replace him.”

  “I hope you fare better than he.”

  Was there a ghost of derision in Vodega’s glance? Lyman couldn’t decide, filed it for later. “We’ve lost a man − you know our policy on that.”