Tears of the River

by Gordon L. Rottman

  They took up the rope and on the count of tres, pulled with everything they had.

  The boat moved!

  Tía and Lomara shouted. They hauled on the rope again, and again. The bow was high enough on the trunk now that it wouldn’t slip back. She untied the securing strap. Gripping the rope, they heaved again. To Karen’s horror, water poured over the stern transom. If too much ran in, the weight would pull the boat off the trunk, maybe even pull it under.

  “Pull!” she screamed in near panic.

  They pulled as fast and as hard as they could. And the boat was angled upward on the trunk, its stern safely above the water. They both plopped down on the trunk gasping as Tía and Lomara yelled happily. Karen had to tell them to stay where they were and not try and come to them down the trunk.

  It was a simple matter to work the boat over the other side, although some water rushed in over the bow when they pushed it in. She reeled in the rope and it didn’t take long to bail out the water, reload the gear, and the stalwart crew to took their places.

  Karen thought how it was going to take brains to get them out of this, more than just some nifty trail skills. She hoped this was the only speed bump. Realistically, they had a long way to go and there were bound to be more bumps.

  “That was pretty good,” muttered Jay.

  “Don’t knock yourself out praising my brilliance,” she said. She managed it with a smile.

  Jay smiled back.

  I can do this. I can get us out of here. She was sure of it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Karen was too exhausted to pull on the oars more than what was necessary to maintain course. Fat blisters were popping up. Tía rattled on about Karen’s great accomplishment. Karen understood little of it and didn’t much care. She was so tired.

  She had two concerns: stopping while the sun was high enough to start a fire and finding a dry safe place to layover for the night. Both shores were flooded well inland. She was hungry too, they all were. So much for a light breakfast holding them through the day as they leisurely glided down the river. They needed a fire to roast a chicken and to replenish their water supply.

  Karen’s doubts grew about the trip, not that there was much choice. And the first day on the river wasn’t over. When they found a place to camp, there would be much to do before they could rest.

  She found herself wishing Cheyenne were here with all the redhead’s wild exuberance. The Venturing advisors had to keep a tight rein on her. She didn’t know the meaning of “quit,” and she knew her stuff. Karen recalled a miserable canoe trip when the rain never ceased. Cheyenne trooped on ignoring the incessant rain, always chipper with a smile. Simply to talk to her now would be a perk.

  Dry ground appeared to be scarce, as was any opening in the trees to allow the sun and the magnifying glass to interact and create fire.

  She passed around the bag of trail mix. Thinking of the coming chicken dinner started her thinking about what they would do for food once the chickens were gone. We’ve got to be able to catch fish. I’ll give it some thought, later. She was too tired to think, even after reminding herself she had to keep thinking ahead, constantly.

  Suddenly they were in the open. An expanse of water stretched out beyond them broken by the scattered tops of bushes, an area devoid of trees. Ahead the jungle arose again, perhaps a quarter of a mile away. The low sun glared down on them brightly. It helped dry her clothes.

  “We can make a fire now,” Tía said.

  Karen looked at her with what must have been a silly expression.

  “En el tazón,”—In the bowl. Tía said, nodding at the hubcap.

  Karen grasped the idea a little slowly. They already had wood and kindling. Karen crisscrossed four large sticks log cabin-style in the boat’s bottom and set the hubcap atop them. Preparing the kindling and crumbled dry leaves, she showed Lomara how to focus the magnifying glass. It soon became apparent the drifting boat made it impossible for her to keep the tiny light beam precisely focused on the same spot. They had to stop.

  Karen rowed to a large bush top they could tie onto. She first checked it out for ants. There were a couple of fist-sized swarming red balls of fire ants drifting in the water. They would cluster into a ball rolling in the water to keep themselves alive until they drifted ashore somewhere. She had read of entire colonies forming grapefruit-size balls. It was common during flooding Gulf Coast tropical storms. Fish avoided them and it was not something you wanted to bump into when wading—you were dry ground to them.

  Lomara got the kindling going, but because of the dampness it was not burning too well. Karen took a potato chip from the sack and held it to the tiny flame struggling in the crumbled leaf fragments. After a few moments it ignited, burning like a match.

  Tía and Lomara oohed and aahed over this little miracle, which it wasn’t. Anything like that burned: corn chips, corn flakes, Pringles, Fritos. They were made of oil-saturated vegetable fiber and would burn for two or three minutes, making them useful for starting fires. Alcohol prep pads could be used for the same thing. Tear a corner off the envelope and light the soaked pad.

  Lomara fed in twigs and small broken sticks, enough to keep it going as Karen rowed painfully toward the far trees. There was little current here. At first it was difficult to tell where the submerged river channel ran into the forest. As they neared the forest’s verge, the gap within the trees became apparent. She hoped to find dry clumps of leaves and dead wood hung up in bushes. The bird noises picked up as they floated into the tree-lined channel, and so did the current.

  They collected dried clumps of leaves and a few sticks hanging in bushes. Parts of the leaves were damp and while keeping the fire going, made a huge cloud of smoke. Karen had to pull some of it off and let it dry beside the flames.

  Pushing on, they saw islets emerging among the trees; too small to camp on.

  “There looks to be a large enough island off to port,” she said to Jay.

  “What’s port?”

  Karen mentally groaned. “Left. Starboard is right. Port and left both have four letters. The pointy end of the boat is the bow and the flat end the stern. If you forget that I’ll make you walk the plank.”

  “Arrrgh! So we’re river pirates?”

  “You mean arrr. Arrrgh, is the sound you make when you sit on a boathook.”

  “You’re no fun.”

  “Are you having fun yet? ‘Cause I sure as stink on a skunk ain’t having fun.”

  She worked the boat through the widely spaced trees to check out the island. They grounded a dozen feet from shore. Telling everyone to stay in the boat, she waded ashore in the inches deep water, machete in-hand, wary of snakes. No telling what else might be marooned there.

  There was light brush and the trees were widely spaced, but the overhead canopy was thick. On the south end, the direction they were traveling, the trees were smaller and closer spaced. Checking out the grove, Karen declared it was a good place to hang hammocks. The oval island was maybe forty feet across and almost a hundred feet long, a tennis court would fit on it.

  She saw a couple of rats, making her glad their little crew wasn’t that hungry…yet. Then she found a snake. It slithered into the thick leaves covering the sodden ground. There would be more. They’d have to be careful. Nicaragua had a lot of different kinds of poisonous snakes. They were always there, mostly unseen.

  Returning to the boat Karen pronounced, “Es seguro.”—It is safe. Tía beamed and Lomara shouted. It was dry ground and they were as happy to see it as shipwrecked sailors spying a tropical island.

  Tía reported they needed to collect more firewood. Karen quickly worked the boat around to the south end where the close-spaced trees were. After helping Tía ashore, Karen and Jay lifted the fire bowl with two sticks and carried it to the campsite.

  Karen asked Jay, not told—she was learning—to scrape a fire pit with a stick. Karen went back and carried Lomara to dry ground. The next chore was to help Tía do her business. Then s
he transferred everything out of the boat and securely tied it off. At the campsite the girl was stoking the new fire while Jay collected wood.

  There was so much to do. Since Jay was busy, she filled the empty bottles at the water’s edge. Some shouts and then laughs broke out at the camp. That pleased Karen.

  Karen was thinking the chickens needed grazing as she stepped around a bush near the fire and froze in mid-step. Coiled near the oblivious chickens in their bag was a five-foot brown and tan boa constrictor.

  “Holy cow!” she shouted dropping the water bottles and leaping forward with the machete hacking at the snake’s head. Everyone was screaming as she yelled, “Get back!” forgetting to use Spanish. The screaming transformed into laughter with Tía calmly saying, “Espera, está muerta, Karena,” she said with a suppressed laugh.

  “It’s dead? ¿Esta muerta?” Karen asked.

  “Jadon la mató con el palo.”—Jay killed it with the pole.

  “Oh.” She felt just a tiny bit silly with everyone still laughing.

  “Tu habrías ganado la batalla.”—You would have won the battle. Tía laughed.

  “Good going, Jay.” You didn’t run away screaming, she said to herself.

  He looked as proud as a dragon-slayer having defeated the biggest fire-breather ever.

  “That’s a lot of meat,” she said with satisfaction, grinning at Jay. More than they could eat in two meals. A chicken would live for another day.

  “You mean meat like in eating it?” Jay said with an uneasy expression.

  “It tastes just like chicken.”

  “What about its poison?”

  “Boas aren’t poisonous. If it was, you’d just cut the head off a few inches behind the head.”

  Karen had eaten snake, but she’d never prepared one for cooking. Shouldn’t be too hard, it’s only an intestine surrounded by muscle with a head on one end, she thought.

  She constructed two tripods and a longer spit setting them up over the fire. Lopping off the snake’s head with the machete, she peeled the skin off with the pliers and then cut off the tail above the anus. She slit its belly open its entire length and stripped out the gut. She slipped the dense meat onto the spit. Couldn’t be easier. “It’s the other white meant,” she couldn’t help but quip.

  One would have thought Jay was watching a Hannibal Lecter movie.

  Hung over the fire, all they had to do was rotate it occasionally. It was so heavy the spit sagged. Karen managed to talk Jay into chunking the remains into the water. No need to attract ants or other scavengers.

  It took more convincing to get Jay to clean out the chicken bag as Lomara grazed them. Karen cautioned her to be on the lookout for other snakes. Jay turned in a single egg.

  As the snake roasted, Karen checked Tía’s arms. No sign of infection as far as she could tell. Tía was still in much pain. Karen cleaned her cuts and gave her another painkiller horse pill for the night. Jay’s gash looked better. She cleaned and re-bandaged it.

  “Thanks,” he mumbled.

  “Not a prob.”

  He looked at the ground. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  She waited for him to say something else, but it didn’t come.

  “Yeah, well, I can think of a couple of other places I’d rather be—a dentist’s chair, assistant principal’s office, prison maybe.”

  He chuckled quietly. “I don’t know how you can make jokes.”

  “No, serious, a nice clear prison cell with three meals a day, showers, flush toilet, would be great.”

  “I mean, you know all this stuff. If you weren’t here we’d be in real trouble.”

  She looked at him across the fire. “Yeah, I know a lot of stuff. It’s what I do. I don’t know if I know enough to get us out of this. I don’t know what’ll come, but I can try.”

  He stared at her wide-eyed now.

  “I need your help, Jay. Just…”

  “But I don’t know any of this stuff.”

  “You don’t have to. Just keep your eyes open and listen. We’ll only get out of this if we all work together and it’s hard enough with her,” she nodded toward Tía, “because she thinks I don’t know anything.” She didn’t call her Tía because she didn’t want her to know she was talking about her.

  “Okay.” He looked baffled by it all. “I’ll try and help. Guess I haven’t been too helpful.”

  “Yeah, not too much. But you did good with us getting over the tree and killing dinner here,” she hurriedly added. A leader was supposed to encourage the crew, she remembered.

  “Okay, I’ll try, like totally.” He seemed a little embarrassed.

  She nodded, feeling like this wasn’t real, her saying all this. “Well, like keep an eye on the snake so it doesn’t burn, please. We need to keep turning it.”

  She began running water through the filter. Karen reminded herself to keep the un-boiled water bottles separate from the boiled or someone might drink from the wrong bottle. The snake continued to roast with Tía telling Jay when to turn it.

  The next job was to whack off limbs and cut down some brush between trees to clear sites for hammocks. Karen’s arm felt like lead.

  With the fire mostly coals now, they laid on green sticks followed by the refilled water bottles to boil.

  Karen had hoped to have Jay hang the hammocks, but did it herself as he was busy with turning the snake and water bottles.

  Tía had eaten snake on occasion. Karen understood enough of what she was saying to learn boa constrictor made a good meal and was much sought after, but seldom found.

  Tía pronounced the snake ready after tasting a bit Jay had gingerly cut off. Lomara came up with some large leaves while Karen set one of the tripods to the side rotating the spit from over the fire with it. She cut off thick slices and lay them on leaf-plates.

  No one washed their hands, as usual, except Jay. These people…no I can’t think like that, Karen grumbled to herself.

  Karen broke off a piece of the hot, pure white meat and popped it in her mouth. Could use a little salt, she thought. “Excelente,” she sincerely complemented Tía while feeding some to her. Lomara began plucking the meat off the countless ribs and happily popping it into her mouth.

  Jay was watching Karen. She cut off a chunk and bit into it. “Deee-licious!”

  Tía glanced at her with a question on her face.

  “¡Delicioso!”

  “No es nada.” Tía was too modest.

  Jay finally took a bite, chewing it forever before swallowing. “Not too bad.”

  Saying they ate their fill was an understatement. They pigged out and no one apologized for belching. Of course Jay managed the loudest burp. Such a guy.

  Karen and a more cooperative Jay levered the boat’s port side out of the water and jammed a log under it to raise the bottom. She found where the water seeped in. Drying it inside and out with a spare T-shirt, in the morning she’d duct-tape it on both sides.

  In the jungle, full daylight turns to pitch dark in less than a half-hour. They sat around the fire with Tía telling stories from her childhood and her life in the city. Karen could only understand some of it. Lomara cuddled up beside Karen on the spare, laid-out hammock. Jay stared into the fire. The stories told of her papa and mama looking for jobs and finding them when they were about to give up. She told how nuns had taught her to sew with a machine and she got her first seamstress job at twelve. The stories gave Karen an idea how hard life was when jobs were scarce and how difficult it was to make ends meet.

  They all tried to eat more before turning in. Karen wrapped up what was left in the plastic bread bag and hung it in a tree. Frogs croaked, chirped, and creaked replacing the day’s bird sounds.

  Lying in her hammock, she felt like she was still moving with the river’s current, could see in her mind’s eye the swirls and ripples in its brown water.

  She looked at the sky and wondered if her mom and dad were looking up too, and where they were looking from.

  Her mom and
dad. “Absentee parents” came to mind. They were always so busy with work, meetings, conferences, seminars, and golf. Even Wednesdays and Saturdays, their days “off,” they were going someplace, usually business related. “Off,” if they weren’t “on-call” to be summoned to the hospital day or night. Even golf was business related. On Sundays they’d all do brunch—she sure could have gone for that now—and sometimes they’d take in a movie or just hang out. “Family quality time” they called it. It seemed mighty empty to her. On too many Sundays they weren’t even there for the “quality time.” They were attending out of town conferences or seminars…and managed to get in rounds of golf.

  Sometimes she felt loved and neglected. They did a lot for her, but not a lot with her. With them absent so often, she was left to her own resources. She studied, or tried to, read, watched her TV shows, read more, chatted online and texted her best friends, and looked forward to Venturing meetings. A twang of guilt hit her, because she too was out of town one weekend a month with the scouts. But the scouts would be there that weekend. Her parents might not be.

  She sometimes felt her mom and dad were too preoccupied to guide her, to get her going in the right direction. She sure didn’t know in what direction she needed to go. Maybe she needed a little more parental leadership.

  Her parents’ lifestyle led to further questions about a medical career. What if she did become a doctor and married and had kids? Did she want to live such an on-the-go lifestyle with everything over-focused on work and leave her kids behind so often?

  Now, however, she only hoped she still had parents to give her only scant attention, by looking for her.

  »»•««

  Karen was stranded on a small planet, a really tiny one, only a mile in diameter. There was a massive black planet overhead, so near. It dominated and blotted out space. Her miniature planet was chest deep in red, white, and green ping pong balls, but they were big, like grapefruits. She waded through chest-deep balls in darkness. She was wearing an itchy black wool suit from head-to-toe with a tight hood. It was scratchy, confining and hot and she was sweaty. Over her left shoulder was a thick heavy rope bigger than her arm. It was bristly with stiff rope fibers prickling into her shoulder, neck, and hands. She trudged around the planet, pushing her way through the packed balls and dragging the rope. The unseen surface was oily slippery. The rope wrapped around the planet and all she did was tromp round and round, pushing and pushing through the balls, endlessly.