Vernon insisted on spending the night with him in the tent. The next morning, as the sun was just catching the treetops, Vernon roused them all with a call for help. Tom was the first to arrive. The Teacher was sitting up in his sleeping bag, highly agitated. His face was pale and dry, and his eyes glittered like chips of blue porcelain, darting about wildly, focusing on nothing. His hands were grasping at the air.
All at once he spoke. “Vernon!” he cried, groping about with his hands. “Oh my God, where are you, Vernon? Where am I?”
With a shock Tom realized he must have gone blind.
Vernon grasped his hand and knelt. “I’m here, Teacher. We’re in the tent. We’re taking you back to America. You’re going to be fine.”
“What a goddamn fool I was!” the Teacher shouted, his mouth twisting with the effort to speak, causing spittle to fly.
“Teacher, please. Please don’t excite yourself. We’re going home, back to Big Sur, back to the Ashram ...”
“I had everything!” the Teacher roared. “I had money. I had teenage girls to fuck. I had a house by the sea. I was surrounded by people who revered me. I had everything!” The veins were popping out on his forehead. Drool ran down and dangled from his chin. His whole frame trembled so violently that Tom fancied he could hear his bones rattling. The blind eyes roved madly in his head, like whirling pinballs.
“We’re going to get you to a hospital, Teacher. Don’t talk, everything’s going to be all right, all right ...”
“So what did I do? Ha! It wasn’t enough! Like a fool I wanted more! I wanted a hundred million dollars more! And look what happened to me!” He roared out these last words and, having uttered them, fell back heavily, his body making the sound of a dead fish hitting the floor. He lay there, his eyes staring wide open, but the glitter was gone.
He was dead.
Vernon stared in horror, unable to speak. Tom put his hand on his brother’s shoulder and found him shaking. It had been an ugly death.
Don Alfonso was badly shaken as well. “We must leave,” he said.
“A bad spirit came and took that man away, and he did not want to go.
“Prepare one of the boats to return,” Tom said to Don Alfonso. “Pingo can take Vernon back to Brus while we go on—if you don’t have any objections.”
Don Alfonso nodded. “It is better this way. The swamp is no place for your brother.” He began shouting orders to Chori and Pingo, who rushed about, equally terrified, only too happy to be leaving.
“I can’t understand it,” Vernon said. “He was such a good man. How could he die like that?”
Vernon was always being taken in by swindlers, Tom thought—financial, emotional, and spiritual. But now wasn’t the time to point it out. He said, “Sometimes we think we know someone, and we don’t.”
“I spent three years with him. I knew him. It must have been the fever. He was delirious, out of his mind. He didn’t know what he was saying.”
“Let’s bury him and move on.”
Vernon went to work on digging a grave, and Tom and Sally joined in. They cleared out a small spot behind the camp, chopping through roots with Chori’s axe and digging down into the soil underneath. In twenty minutes a shallow grave had been hollowed out of the hard-clay soil. They dragged the Teacher’s body to the hole, laid him in, packed a layer of clay on top of him, then filled the grave with smooth boulders from the riverbank. Don Alfonso, Chori, and Pingo were already in the boats, fretting, waiting to go.
“Are you all right?” Tom asked, putting his arm around his brother.
“I’ve made a decision,” Vernon said. “I’m not going back. I’m going on with you.”
“Vernon, it’s all arranged.”
“What have I got to go back to? I’m dead broke, and I don’t even have a car. I certainly can’t go back to the Ashram.”
“You’ll figure out something.”
“I’ve already figured out something. I’m coming with you.”
“You’re in no condition to come with us. You almost died back there.”
“This is something I have to do,” said Vernon. “I’m all right now.”
Tom hesitated, wondering if Vernon really was all right.
“Please, Tom.”
There was such a depth of pleading in Vernon’s voice that Tom was surprised—and, despite himself, a little glad. He grasped Vernon’s shoulder. “All right. We’ll do this together, just as Father wanted.”
Don Alfonso clapped his hands. “Enough talking? We go now?”
Tom nodded, and Don Alfonso gave the order to push off.
“Now that we have two boats,” Sally said, “I’ll do my share of the poling.”
“Puah! Poling is a man’s job.”
“Don Alfonso, you are a sexist pig.”
Don Alfonso crinkled his brow. “Sexist pig? What kind of animal is this? Have I been insulted?”
“You certainly have,” said Sally.
Don Alfonso gave his boat a good pole, and it glided forward. He grinned. “Then I am happy. To be insulted by a beautiful woman is always an honor.”
28
Marcus Aurelius Hauser examined his white shirtfront, and, finding a small beetle making its laborious way up it, he plucked it off, crushed it between spatulate thumb and forefinger with a satisfying chitinous crackle, and tossed it away. He turned his attention back to Philip Broadbent. All that archness, that fey effeteness, was gone. Philip squatted on the ground, shackled hand and foot, filthy, bug bitten, unshaven. It was disgraceful how some people just could not maintain their personal hygiene in the jungle.
He glanced over to where the guide, Orlando Ocotal, was being held by three of his soldiers. Ocotal had caused him considerable trouble. He had almost made good his escape, which Hauser had only prevented by the most dogged pursuit. A whole day had been wasted. Ocotal’s fatal flaw had been in assuming a gringo, a yanqui, would not be able to track him in the swamp. He evidently hadn’t heard of a place called Vietnam.
So much the better. Now it was out in the open. They were almost through the swamp anyway, and Ocotal had outlived his usefulness. The lesson he would teach Ocotal would be a good one for Philip, too.
Hauser inhaled the fecund jungle air. “Do you remember, Philip, when we were packing the boats? You wanted to know what we were going to do with these manacles and chains?”
Philip did not answer.
Hauser remembered how he had explained that the manacles were an important psychological tool to manage the soldiers, a sort of portable brig. Of course, he would never actually use them. “Now you know,” Hauser said. “They were for you.”
“Why don’t you just kill me and get it over with?”
“All in good time. One doesn’t kill the last in the family line lightly.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Delighted you asked. Shortly I’ll be taking care of your two brothers, who are behind us in the swamp. When the last of the Broadbent line has been made extinct, I will take what is mine.”
“You’re a psychopath.”
“I am a rational human addressing a great wrong that was once done to me, thank you.”
“What wrong is this?”
“Your father and I were partners. He deprived me of my share of the loot from his first big discovery.”
“That was forty years ago.”
“Which only compounds the crime. While I struggled for forty years to make a living, your father bathed in luxury.”
Philip struggled, rattling his chains.
“How wonderful is the turn of the wheel. Forty years ago your father cheated me out of a fortune. I went on to a lovely place called Vietnam while he went on to riches. Now I stand to gain it all back and more. The irony of it is delicious. And to think, Philip, you brought me this on a silver platter.”
Philip said nothing.
Hauser inhaled again. He loved the heat and he loved the air. He never felt so healthy and alive as in the jungle. All that wa
s missing was the faint perfume of napalm. He turned to one of the soldiers. “Now we will do Ocotal. Come, Philip, you won’t want to miss this.”
The two dugouts were already packed, and the soldiers shoved Ocotal and Philip into one. The soldiers fired up the engines, and they headed into the maze of pools and side channels at the far end of the lake. Hauser stood in the bow keeping an eye out.
“That way.”
The boats motored on until they came to a stagnant pool, cut off from the main channel by the lowering water. The piranhas, Hauser knew, had been concentrated in the pool by the subsiding water. Long ago they had eaten all the available food and were now eating each other. Woe to any animal that blundered into one of those stagnant pools.
“Cut the engine. Drop anchor.”
The engines sputtered off, and the ensuing silence was broken only by the two soft splashes of the rock anchors.
Hauser turned and looked at Ocotal. This was going to be interesting.
“Stand him up.”
The soldiers pulled Ocotal to his feet. Hauser took a step forward and gazed on his face. The Indian, dressed in a Western shirt and shorts, was straight and cool. His eyes showed neither fear nor hatred. This Tawahka Indian, Hauser thought, had proven to be one of those unfortunate people motivated by superannuated notions of honor and loyalty. Hauser disliked such people. They were unreliable and inflexible. Max had also proven to be a person like that.
“Well, Don Orlando,” Hauser said, giving the honorific an ironic emphasis. “Have you anything to say for yourself?”
The Indian gazed at him unblinkingly.
Hauser removed his pocketknife. “Hold him tight.”
The soldiers grasped him. His hands were tied behind his back, and his feet were loosely tied together.
Hauser opened the little knife and sharpened the blade on a whetstone with a quick zing, zing. He tested it against his thumb and smiled. Then he reached out and scored a long cut across Ocotal’s chest, cutting through the fabric of his shirt to his skin below. It wasn’t a deep cut, but the blood began to run, turning the khaki black.
The Indian did not even flinch.
He made a second shallow cut on the shoulders, and two more cuts on the arms and back. Still the Indian showed nothing. Hauser was impressed. He hadn’t seen such stamina since his days questioning captured Viet Cong.
“Give the blood a little time to flow,” he said.
They waited. The shirt darkened with blood. A bird screamed somewhere in the depths of the trees.
“Throw him in.”
The three solders gave him a shove, and he went over the side. After the splash there was a moment of calm, and then the water began to swirl, slowly at first, and then with more agitation, until the pool seethed. There were flashes of silver in the brown water like fluttering coins, until a red cloud billowed up, turning the water opaque. Tatters of khaki cloth and strings of flesh rose to the surface and bobbed on the chop.
The boiling went on for a good five minutes before it finally began to subside. Hauser was pleased. He turned to see Philip’s reaction and was gratified by it.
Very gratified indeed.
29
For three days Tom and his group continued traveling through the heart of the swamp along an interconnecting web of channels, camping on mud-islands scarcely higher than the waterline, cooking beans and rice with wet wood over smoking fires because Chori could find no fresh game. Despite the endless rain the water had been going down, exposing waterlogged tree trunks that had to be chopped through before they could proceed. They carried along with them a permanent, malevolent humming cloud of blackflies.
“I’ll think I’ll take that pipe now,” said Sally. “I’d rather die of cancer than endure this.”
With a smile of triumph Don Alfonso removed it from his pocket. “You will see—smoking will lead to a long and happy life. I myself have smoked for over a hundred years.”
There was a deep booming sound from the jungle, like a man with a cough, only louder and slower.
“What was that?”
“A jaguar. And a hungry one.”
“It’s amazing what you know about the forest,” Sally said.
“Yes.” Don Alfonso sighed. “But today no one wants to learn any more about the forest. My grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all they care about is soccer and those fat white shoes that rot your feet, the ones with the bird on the sides made in those factories in San Pedro Sula.” He pointed at Tom’s shoes with his lips.
“Nikes?”
“Yes. Up near San Pedro Sula there are entire villages of boys whose feet rotted and dropped off from wearing those. Now they have to walk around on wooden stumps.”
“That’s not true.”
Don Alfonso shook his head, clucking disapprovingly. The boat moved on through curtains of vines, which Pingo slashed away at. Tom could see a patch of sunlight up ahead, a beam falling from above, and as they moved forward he saw that a giant tree had recently fallen, leaving a hole in the canopy. The trunk lay across the channel, blocking their path. It was the biggest tree they’d encountered yet.
Don Alfonso muttered a curse. Chori picked up his Pulaski and hopped out of the bow and onto the log. Gripping the slippery surface with his bare feet, he began to chop, the chips flying. In half an hour he had notched the log deep enough to slide the boats through.
They all climbed out and began to push. Beyond the log the water suddenly got deep. Tom waded through it, up to his waist, trying not to think of the toothpick fish, the piranhas, and all the diseases lurking in that soupy water.
Vernon was ahead of him, holding the gunwale and pushing the dugout forward, when Tom saw a slow undulation in the dark water to their right. Simultaneously he heard Don Alfonso’s piercing cry. “Anaconda!” Tom scrambled in but Vernon was just a fraction too slow. There was a swirl of water, a sudden humplike rise, and with a scream—cut short—Vernon disappeared beneath the brown water. The snake’s glossy back slid past, exposing briefly a body as thick as a small tree trunk, before it sank and disappeared.
“Ehi! He has Vernito!”
Tom pulled his machete out of his belt and dove into the water. He kicked, swimming down as deep as he could. He couldn’t see more than a foot into the murky, brown glow. He scissors kicked toward the middle, feeling ahead with his free hand, trying to find the snake. He felt something cold, round, and slippery and slashed at it before he realized it was just a sunken log. Grasping it, he pulled himself forward, feeling around desperately for the snake or his brother. His lungs were about to burst. He shot to the surface and redove, groping ahead. Where was the snake? How long had it been? A minute? Two? How long could Vernon survive?
Desperation drove him forward, and he continued his mad search, feeling among the slimy sunken logs.
One of the logs suddenly flexed under his touch. It was a muscled tube, as hard as mahogany, but he could feel the skin moving, the waves of contracting muscles.
He shoved the machete into its soft underbelly, driving it in as deep as it would go. For a second, nothing: and then the snake exploded into a whiplike motion, which slammed him backward in the water, knocking out his air in a violent expulsion of bubbles. He clawed his way to the surface and sucked in more air. The surface was boiling as the snake thrashed. He realized he no longer had the machete. Now roiling coils of the snake flew out of the water in a glossy arc, and for a moment Vernon’s hand appeared, clutched into a fist, followed by his head. A gasp, and he was gone.
“Another machete!”
Pingo tossed him one, handle first. He grabbed it and began slashing at the coils lashing about on the water’s surface.
“The head!” Don Alfonso cried from the boat. “Go for the head!”
Where was the head in this mass of snake? Tom had a sudden idea and jabbed the snake with the tip of the machete, once, twice, prodding him into a fury—and then, rearing out of the water, came the brute’s head, ugly and small, with a plated mou
th and two slitty eyes, searching for the source of its torment. It lunged at him, mouth open, and Tom shoved the machete right into the pink cavity and straight down the monster’s gullet. The snake jerked and twisted and bit down, but Tom, clutching the handle, held on even as his arm was being bitten, giving the machete one hard twist after another. He could feel the flesh yielding inside, the sudden gush of cold reptilian blood; the head began thrashing back and forth, almost jerking his arm out of its socket. With all his remaining strength he gave the machete a final massive twist, and the blade came out behind the snake’s head. He rotated it and felt a spasmodic tremble in the jaws as the snake was decapitated from the inside. He pried open the mouth with his other hand and pulled his arm out, searching frantically for his brother amid the still-churning water.
Vernon suddenly rose to the surface of the pond, facedown. Tom grabbed him and turned him over. His face was red, his eyes closed. He looked dead. Tom dragged him through the water to the boat, and Pingo and Sally hauled him in. Tom fell in after him and passed out.
Sally was leaning over him when he came to, her blond hair like a waterfall swaying above him, cleaning the teeth marks in his arm, rubbing them with cotton soaked in alcohol. His shirt had been ripped off above the elbow, and there were deep scores on his arm. Blood was welling out.
“Vernon—?”
“He’s okay,” Sally said. “Don Alfonso’s helping him. He just swallowed some water and got a nasty bite on his thigh.”
He tried to sit up. His arm felt like it was on fire. The blackflies were swirling about him worse than ever, and he breathed them in with each breath. She pushed him back down with a gentle hand on his chest. “Don’t move.” She sucked in smoke from her pipe and blew it around him, chasing the flies away.
“Lucky for you anacondas have teensy weensy teeth.” She scrubbed.
“Ouch.” He lay back, looking up at the canopy slowly passing by. Nowhere could he see even a speck of blue sky. The leaves covered all.
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