The Puma Years: A Memoir

by Laura Coleman

  “Have you noticed how quiet it is?” Tom asks, swinging his machete. He jumps up and down, his boots making a heavy, resounding clunk on the tarmac. I feel it too. The adrenaline. There are strange animals on the move, mostly small ones—tejones, capybaras, rats, birds, monkeys, snakes—but some large too. I found giant anteater tracks by Wayra’s lagoon. Katarina saw puma prints circling the aviary. Bryan swears he saw the end of a black jag crossing the road.

  Sammie frowns. “When did the bus last come?”

  “I can’t remember,” I say miserably. “Never.”

  “Did the meat come today?”

  Harry picks up a rock and throws it angrily against the side of a tree. It makes a hard thunk, pings back and narrowly misses Sammie.

  “Hey!”

  “Fuck!” Harry yells. “Sorry.” An angry blue vein on his forehead pops out and starts to throb. I watch it, fascinated, as he picks up another rock and tosses it from hand to hand. “The meat didn’t come. Agustino’s taken the bike to see what’s happening.”

  It’s a few hours later that Agustino returns, carrying a bag of dead chickens and a radio. He sits down wearily in the comedor, putting his head in his hands.

  “Hay bloqueos.”

  I’ve been in Bolivia long enough to know what bloqueos means, long enough to feel sick at the word. Harry kicks the door-frame, the sound bouncing off the walls, and Mila glares at him sharply.

  “¿Bloqueos?” one of the newer volunteers asks. She sounds particularly nervous. I think she only left London a week ago.

  “Road blockades,” Sammie mutters. “It’s how people protest here. They set it up, have a party, burn tyres, get drunk, but it’s effective. It can go on for weeks. Entonces, ¿qué pasó, Agustino?”

  “Es por el precio del gas.”

  The people out there who can’t afford gas, who don’t have proper homes or heating. I can’t even see them in my mind right now. I run my hands through my hair. All I see is that fire, and I don’t know what the people in this country are thinking or feeling. If there are fires here, are there fires in other places, ripping other people’s homes apart too?

  I’m suddenly wildly angry. At this place, at the farmers who slash and burn, at the blockades, at Bolivia’s government that turns a blind eye, at corrupt governments around the world turning their own blind eyes, my own government—my own useless, capitalist, war-causing, resource-consuming government. I’ve had the luxury of a sheltered life, to have been complacent about politics, apart from through the remote-seeming conversations around the dinner table that I was never interested in following. But suddenly, my brain is swimming. How could I have not listened to those conversations? I should have been listening!

  “What about food?” Katarina’s voice cuts through and my head snaps up. We’re already down to the bare bones, fruit and veg beginning to rot.

  “And gas,” Paddy says slowly.

  I look at him. If we have no gas, we can’t pump our water. We’ll have no water. Never mind the people out there. We’ll have no water.

  Agustino holds up his hands. “We’ll buy food from the village, OK? Meat for the cats. Gas too. It’s more expensive but . . .” He grimaces. “We can pick fruit and leaves. And water . . . we’ll ration. No showers.”

  There’s a long silence.

  “Uh, are you serious?” One of the younger girls, Hannah, fresh out of university, pales. I’ve watched with fascination as she diligently layers makeup on her face every morning, but she works hard, and even those of us who can comfortably go for a week without a shower are only just getting through the long days with the dream of cold water at the end of it. This news hits everyone hard. Doña Lucia, who has to walk for two hours now each day rather than get a lift, by the second day is feeding us just dry rice with bottom-shelf dusty cans of tuna. It makes us all ill. On top of this we’re drinking as little water as possible. Some days it tops forty degrees and we’re doing construction from sunup to sundown. Nobody complains, because in the end Agustino hasn’t been able to buy gasoline. We have two tanks left, enough to run the water generator for perhaps a week. We fill all spare containers with Wayra’s lagoon water and leave them covered by the fumador. I am terrified now, more than angry and tired. Bone-scared, as the smoke grows thicker and the cries of the animals louder.

  “Está viniendo,” Mila says ominously one day as we stand together in the early morning—the madrugada—clutching our coffee cups and a bag of coca, watching the sun trying to cut through the thickness. It’s coming.

  Night watches begin. We’re assigned shifts, four hours each. I’m paired with Jane and we go out in silence at midnight . . . wet bandanas over our faces, panic in the tight grip of our sweaty hands. Ash lies across the ground and we cannot see the moon.

  Five days after the blockades start, Agustino is finally able to get gas from a friend and we’re able to shower again. Thirty seconds each. I let the freezing-cold water run over my face. My arms are shaking so hard, I can barely hold the soap. Faustino sits in the rafters above the shower, curled up in the darkness, and howls.

  The trees are creaking. I am barely awake, cuddled in my bed next to Coco. He’s staring up at me questioningly, his little fingers wrapped around my wrist. Harry and I haven’t shared a bed since the fires started. I’m too afraid and he’s too angry, his face closed and tight, as spiky as he was when I first met him. He snaps at everything I say and I do the same in return. We toss and turn by ourselves. Tonight I’ve been watching him lie awake in his bed an arm’s length away from mine. The branches bump against one another, sharp fingernails scratching the roof. We’ve almost finished the trail, but it’s impossible to know where the fire will hit. That it will hit, none of us doubt. Every night, patrols walk the highway. Four hours, there and back. We see wildlife fleeing the mountains, hundreds of little eyes reflecting in our torch beams.

  I’m listening to the wind when Harry turns over in his bed.

  “It’s changed,” he whispers. We gaze at each other, his eyes dark in the light of the one candle that is still flickering. Then we both sit up. Coco grunts as he falls off my chest, but someone is banging on doors and then I’m tumbling out of bed. When I open the door, the smoke is so thick I almost choke.

  “It’s moving off the mountain!” I hear. “We have to go!”

  It’s five in the morning. We stumble dazed onto the patio, collecting tools, wrapping bandanas around our mouths, soaking blankets, throwing them over our shoulders because we only own one broken wheelbarrow and we have to take it in turns to push it. Agustino and López, Tom and Mila speed off on the bikes. I look at my spade, my single jug of water, my blanket that is so heavy I don’t even think I can carry it. My feet are so swollen they barely fit in my boots. I have blisters on blisters on blisters. We’re living on coca leaves and cigarettes. I’m not even sure if I can walk. But suddenly we are out of the trees and moving across open grassland. The mountain is in front of us, a crackling mess of red, the wind blowing in our faces. We push blindly through the undergrowth. On the side of the mountain it’s hot, hotter than I could ever have imagined. We lose our minds a little then. At first we spread out one by one, trying to cut a break along the bottom. It should be getting light, but the sun just meets a burnt-brown sky. Nobody knows what to do and the fire is everywhere. So we forget everything Robert has told us. We scramble up the sides of the mountain and lose ourselves. I am on my own, snuffing out coals. Dousing. Shouting. I stamp on burning logs and calm steaming dirt. But I need more water, more tools, more blankets, more help. I know Agustino has asked people to come. But there are fires everywhere. We’re not the only ones who need help.

  The danger line—where the fire advances, where it starts to meet the dry grass of the curichal—gets closer. My blanket is burnt to scraps and everywhere there’s the crackle, pop and fizz of flames. Animals howl. I’m in hell, I think, as a huge, bleeding and blackened tapir hurdles out of the inferno. She is so panicked that when she sees me, she just tur
ns around and runs right back in. I’m not sure anymore what I’m fighting for, to put the fire out? I don’t think it’s possible. It’s going to keep burning forever. When it starts to get dark, I think it’s just the smoke and confusion. Where are the people who started these fires? I don’t know how I realise hours must have passed. I can barely see my hand in front of my face. It’s only then that I leave the blaze and race blindly through the ashes. Tears are running down my face. The first person I find is Jane. Flames from the thousands of tree fires are leaping above her head.

  “This is crazy!” I grip her arm.

  We hop as the soles of our boots melt.

  “Where is everybody?”

  “I don’t know. Do you have a torch?”

  She shakes her head, perhaps for the first time noticing that it’s night-time again. I let out a loud cooee. Holding on to Jane, I drag her through the falling cinders until we find Sammie and Harry.

  “We need to get out of here!” I shout.

  They both look at me as if they don’t know me.

  “Come on!”

  “We can’t leave this!”

  “Look around! We have to go!”

  I push Sammie downwards. Praying that everyone else has the sense to do the same, I stumble over burnt brush and thorns, stepping over carcasses of dead animals. The earth is blistering and the mountain is creaking. Stupid, I curse again and again, stupid, stupid. When we come out onto the edge of the grass, there is a group of people waiting. They count our heads. We’re the last. When we turn, we see that the whole mountain is alight and we watch as where we’ve just been goes back up in flames.

  That night, fire ripples across the curichal, killing everything in its path, and by the next morning it’s in the parque. I’m checking Wayra when I hear three cooees. I meet a group of ash-covered figures, bandanas around their faces and machetes over their shoulders. I don’t even recognise most of them. The sun has been blotted out, wind whips my hair and I can already see some red flickers down the road. With shaking hands I find a wet scrap of T-shirt to put over my mouth and a blunt machete that lies forgotten on the ground. When I reach the point where the firebreak intersects with the road, I just stare. It’s burning. All of it. Agustino and Harry are hacking at the trees.

  “It’s hit the break on this side!” Harry yells. “It hasn’t crossed but it wants to. This wind!” His eyes are wild, the vein on his forehead stark. “Go and help the others. If it stays low, we’re OK, but look at this!”

  I just gaze up into the crackling palms.

  “I don’t know what’s happening in there. Go!”

  He pushes me, and I go.

  Trees, flowers, palms, vines, fungus, insects, animals, everything that was alive on the wrong side of the trail is dying. I stumble blindly through the smoke. Occasionally I see shadows, volunteers—some no older than eighteen—battling as the blaze tries to cross. I join them, spraying water, muffling embers with my clothes. But then another call comes from further along and I run on. All hope of putting out the fire is gone. The jungle on the far side of the trail is gone. But our side is salvageable. It has to be. We will save it because if we don’t, our friends will die. Sama will die. Like that tapir, he will die.

  I can’t hear, the noise is so loud. I’m almost crawling in search of a cooee I think I’ve heard. And then, with an almost careless flick of my head, I see it. A flame. I nearly pass it by. I stare for a moment, dumb. Then I yell. I shout as I bash off the trail into the jungle. Our side of the jungle. I retch. I’m not made for this, this isn’t me. A patch of patuju about seven feet in diameter is burning and I honestly don’t know what to do. It’s crossed. I have no water, no blanket. All I have is a spade someone else dropped and my bandana. If this is burning, who knows what other fires there are, deep in the trees. I have nothing left. I’m so close to Wayra’s trails here, I know it. I recognise landmarks. That huge fallen strangler tree, that bush of blossoms that smell—even now—like mint, that patch of electric-blue seeds that pepper the ground. I drop my spade and crash backwards onto the firebreak. Mila and Sammie are by a fallen tree not too far away.

  “¡Fuego!” I grab their arms. “Fire!”

  Sammie stares at me as if I’ve lost my senses. Silently she puts a machete into my hand and pushes me towards a burning log. I shake my head in frustration.

  “No! No. ¡Fuego! It’s crossed the firebreak!”

  Eventually I make them understand and then we’re running. We reach my twinkling flame, but by this time it’s grown exponentially. Mila and Sammie don’t even think, they just start to cut. When my brain computes that they’re making a new firebreak, just for this one fire, I’m finally able to help. I beat away with my spade. I pull the heat inwards, again and again, trying to contain it. There are vines that seem to go all the way under the earth and together, Sammie and I use my spade to slice them off at the steaming roots. I can’t bear it. I grab Mila’s arm.

  “Wayra . . . ¡estamos muy cerca!”

  Her eyes are rimmed red and she’s wheezing.

  “Sí, Laura. Estamos seguro ahora.”

  “Pero, ¿qué hacemos si hay otros fuegos? Más cerca de su jaula . . .” My Spanish collapses. “That we haven’t seen?”

  I have to check Wayra’s cage. That is all I can think. I have to. I have to be with her. We hear another group of shouts and our heads snap up. It’s over, I think. We’re losing. We’ve lost. Mila looks back at me, body sagging.

  “OK. Cuida a tu gato.”

  I’m already gone. My home crumbles around me. Burnt and black and red and alive and dead. I’m running, wiping ash and dirt out of my eyes, when I collide into Hannah moving in the opposite direction. I grab her wrist and point behind me.

  “The fire crossed the break! Back there. There’s just Mila and Sammie. You have to help them.”

  She laughs desperately, already shaking off my hand.

  “Join the club! It’s crossed everywhere. They need help over there too!”

  She waves her hand towards the road. I start running again, but it isn’t long before the heat springs up and I stumble backwards, pulling my shirt over my face. Flames soar and I can’t even distinguish where the firebreak is anymore. It seems to lead off to the left. I know this part of the trail, and that’s not right . . . I turn down the new path and soon I can make out shapes of people, bent over, coughing, hacking and frantic, Agustino and Harry, Osito and López, Nicole and Tom, nothing but shadows against ten-foot walls of red. They’re cutting a new trail because the old one has gone.

  “Welcome to Death Alley!” Tom coughs. He’s ashen from head to toe, streaked with charcoal. He’s wearing shorts. I almost laugh. It’s a panic response, but I can’t stop. I have to keep going, I have to get to Wayra. I run past, almost at the road, when someone grabs my wrist.

  I fall, stumbling into Harry.

  “Where are you going?” His face is raw, parts of his beard gone.

  “I have to check she’s OK!”

  “What?”

  “I have to—”

  “You have to stay here!” he yells over the noise, holding my wrist so hard it hurts.

  “I can’t—” I stumble, gulping dry tears.

  He pushes me away. “You have to. We need you!”

  “It’s too . . .” I choke, not able to say it.

  “What? Hard? Guess what Frodo, life is hard!”

  It feels like he’s punched me in the face. He looks away with disgust.

  “You’re not going to check on her. You’re running away! What do you think you’ll be able to do anyway, just you, even if she is burning?” He picks up a forgotten spade and shoves it into my shaking hands.

  I stare at him, raising my arms to the jungle. “We’ve lost!” I splutter. “We’re done. Our paradise is gone!”

  “We’re not fucking done.” He glares at me so savagely I have to step back. “I thought from the beginning that you wouldn’t last, that you were too fucking soft and spoilt, and it looks like I
was right. Do whatever you want. Quit like you told me you always do. I don’t care.” And then he turns away, his body silhouetted against a palm tree burning high above his head. I watch as the hard muscles bunch around his shoulders, cutting, breaking, digging. I look around at the people who are my friends. They might die. I might die. Harry’s right. He’s right about everything. I’m so terrified I just want out. Suddenly I hear a horrible noise. Turning slowly, I see Osito retching on the ground. I watch helplessly as Tom drops his spade and picks the boy up. The moment Osito is off the ground he starts hitting Tom.

  “¡Bájame!”

  “¡Osito, no! I have to get you out of here.”

  Osito breaks into another coughing fit. Tom throws the boy over his shoulder, tears turning to sobs, and then I lose sight of them in the smoke. As if waking from some kind of fit, I grip the hot metal handle of Tom’s spade and start to dig.

  It goes on all that day and the next. We lose track of time, lose track of eating, sleeping. I don’t know how but at some point, the flames finally drop. No longer sailing through the canopy like a ship that’s lost its course. The wind dies a little. The threat changes. It doesn’t stop, but it’s different. It’s no longer lurid, vivid like some disaster movie, but slow, creeping, crackling. It’s no less traumatic. It’s a nightmare with no end. We sleep in shifts, sometimes collapsing on our watches as the flames sputter and spit at our feet.

  There is an end of course, perhaps three weeks after that first scent of smoke and the fire that lit the top of the mountains red. The wind turns away. The smoke drifts and the flames move, perhaps towards someone else’s land. It is only then that we’re able to breathe properly, and it’s only then that we can truly see. Our trail, the highway, divides two different worlds. Closest to the mountain, it’s a sprawling grey-black desert. The only things left are occasional trees, limbs scorched like survivors of a dark apocalypse. Vultures circle in ever-decreasing clumps, shadow creatures hunched over for the feast. But on the other side . . . I can’t believe it. It’s the jungle as I know it, thick, endless and baffling, shining from the inside out with a glow like sunlight through glass. The only clue that things aren’t right is the silence. Other than the caw of the vultures, there is very little noise at all. There aren’t any frogs or crickets. No monkeys, owls and butterflies. Everyone has gone.