Manatee Rescue

by Nicola Davies

  The water was rising fast, and the current was beginning to pick up, tugging at her legs. The rain still lashed down, blurring the water and the forest into a smudge of gray. Seconds passed like hours, minutes like weeks, and still there was nothing.

  Then — pppff — Airuwe’s nose popped through the surface right in front of Manuela! His solid, round body hung in the water next to hers. He was too big now for her to hook an arm over his back, so she held tightly to a flipper with one hand and put the teat into his mouth with the other.

  The current was threatening to push them over. Using the bottle to tempt him, Manuela shuffled backward into shallower water, where she could get some anchorage to prevent them both from being swept away. But she had forgotten that the pool was just behind her, and she went in over her head. When she kicked back up to the surface, she found that she was still holding the bottle and that Airuwe was still hanging on to his dinner! She swam on her back, kicking hard with her feet and trying to pull them both closer to shore, but the current swirled them farther out, closer to where the river rushed as fast as a galloping horse.

  Something banged against Manuela’s shoulder: a branch! She let go of the bottle and grasped the branch tightly, pulling herself and Airuwe toward it. Other branches caught at her legs and slapped her face, but they held Manuela and the manatee like rice in a sieve as the floodwater sluiced past.

  As long as Manuela could hold on to Airuwe with one arm and the drowned tree with the other, they would not be lost. But they were not out of danger. The new floodwater was so very cold, and baby manatees could die in cold water. Manuela shouted a few times but soon gave up. Calling for help was useless — Raffy would never hear her above the storm. She would just have to hope that her granny would notice that she had gone and come to look for her.

  Manuela stretched her arm as far around Airuwe as it would go. At least he didn’t wriggle. In fact, he seemed to want the comfort of her presence. She shut her eyes and felt the rain beat on her head.

  “Frog! Frog!”

  Silvio’s voice was calling her!

  Manuela opened her eyes and there he was, leaning out of his boat and tying a rope around her. Raffy was at the stern, handling the outboard. Silvio’s thin face was full of worry and streaming with water.

  “What are you doing here?” Manuela gasped.

  “Rescuing you, what do you think?” he said.

  It was almost dark. Manuela realized that she must have been here for hours. Her arm was still around Airuwe.

  “We’ll tow you to shore,” Silvio said. “Hold on to Airuwe.”

  Back in shallow water, Manuela’s legs were almost too chilled and weak to hold her up, but she kept her arms around the manatee.

  “We’ll get him in the lavadero,” said Silvio. “Then we can drag him away from the water until the flood’s gone down.”

  “We must warm him up,” added Raffy. “He’s too cold.”

  “And so are you, Frog,” said Silvio. “Let go of the manatee and go inside.”

  Manuela shook her head.

  Silvio and Raffy exchanged a look.

  “OK,” Silvio said. “Let’s get this done.”

  Manuela wouldn’t leave Airuwe until he was safely in the tank. Then Raffy ordered Silvio to take her inside.

  “Papa,” Manuela whispered as he scooped her into his arms, “did you mean it when you said that you didn’t want me?”

  “No, Frog,” Silvio said softly. “Of course I didn’t.”

  Morning was like a different world. The rush of rainwater had subsided. The pool was once more surrounded by dry land. The sun shone. By the time Manuela woke up, Airuwe was back home in his pool and the lavadero hung on its hook at the far end of the veranda.

  Some things hadn’t survived the flood. All that was left of Libia’s school were the soggy remains of the pink dolphin, wrapped around the tree trunk.

  “Libia will be upset,” Manuela told her father. “The models weren’t very good, but they got people talking.”

  “I could make some models if you like,” Silvio offered. “I was a good woodcarver when I was a kid. Luis, too.”

  Manuela looked at her father, her eyebrows knotted. “Aren’t you angry with me anymore?”

  Silvio smiled. “A bit. I didn’t expect my little Frog to grow up so suddenly and fight me!”

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” Manuela said.

  Silvio shook his head. “No, you did what you thought was right. And you made me think, not just about this little baby, but about all manatees. What if there were no more manatees? No more pirarucus?1 No more pacus? Already there are few, but what if there were none, no more?” Silvio blew out a long breath and shook his head. “That would be a terrible, terrible thing.”

  “Does this mean that you won’t let Gomez take Airuwe?” Manuela asked quietly.

  “You know, Frog”— Silvio smiled —“I’ve never much liked Clink-Clink. Come on. I’m going to find some wood and carve a fish.”

  Everyone from San Larenzo came to Meet-the-Manatee Day. They came because they were curious about the Castellos — the family of eccentrics who had lived among them for two generations: Nurse Raffy and her animal patients; Silvio and his dead Brazilian beauty; Manuela and Libia, the two ungirlish little girls who had pulled a fast one on old Clink-Clink. Seeing the baby manatee was just an excuse.

  But when they arrived at Riverbend, manatees were hard to avoid. There were homemade manatee posters and pictures everywhere in the house and on the veranda. There were even plates of manatee-shaped cookies with little signs saying: EAT ME, NOT A REAL MANATEE! Along the path leading from the back of Raffy’s house, there hung wooden carvings of fish and turtles, giving a manatee’s-eye view of the river. There was even a puppet show, put on by Angelina’s middle-size daughters, with a pink dolphin in a hat, a sassy sloth, and a lost manatee cria.

  The San Larenzons loved it. They couldn’t remember when they’d had a better time. And to their surprise, the best thing of all was the manatee himself. Most people had eaten manatee, and many had killed them or seen their dead bodies lying in the bottom of canoes. But to see one alive and close up, to watch it swim and turn its white-patched chest to the sky, to look into its strange little eyes and see them looking back, was new. They sat beside the pool smiling, exclaiming, quietly entranced. They simply loved Airuwe!

  Only one thing spoiled the day, and that was Jose Gomez and his two thuggish sons. They turned up toward the end of the afternoon and laughed nastily at everything. Some people, who owed Gomez money or who thought he was an important man to impress, laughed with him, but most people turned away. They were growing tired of Clink-Clink and his bullying swagger.

  Manuela was in the water with Airuwe, while Libia, who loved to perform, sat beside the pool and answered the many questions people asked about Airuwe and his adventures. Tintico pranced around, part of the show.

  When Gomez arrived, Libia’s great-great-uncle Misael was talking to the girls. “I’ll bring you some food for your cria,” he told them. “It looks like he’s big enough to begin to eat his greens and leave the milk behind, and I know the plants that Airuwe likes.”

  Gomez disrespectfully pushed straight past the old gentleman to speak to the girls. Airuwe slipped under the surface, the white flash of his scar showing clearly through the water.

  “So you’re making money from my manatee, eh?” said Gomez.

  “We’re not making any money, Mr. Gomez,” said Manuela.

  “Yeah, sure.” He smirked. “Well, just remember that he’s mine. And I will have my property, one way or another.”

  Silvio stepped up behind him. “He’s not yours, Jose,” he said mildly. “I gave back your money.”

  “You did me out of a profitable deal, Silvio,” Gomez replied, “and I won’t forget it.” He threw a manatee cookie into the pool. “I’ll be eating the real thing, thanks,” he said, “and so will everyone else. Just you wait and see!” Then he stalked away with his sons, their
noisy engine roaring behind them.

  “Don’t take any notice,” Silvio said to the girls. “He’s all talk.”

  But Manuela wished that Gomez hadn’t seen the scar that marked Airuwe’s back.

  1 pirarucus: large Amazonian fish, up to 6 feet (2 meters) long

  After Meet-the-Manatee Day, Raffy put a big check mark beside number three on the action plan. They had definitely made people like manatees more, and not to eat. The space beside number four stayed blank, however. No one had promised not to hunt manatees, even if they liked them.

  Libia’s great-great-uncle brought a selection of floating plants for Airuwe, just as he had said he would. He called it farinha di manati and said it included water hyacinth, water lettuce, and tender new grasses. He told them that he had seen manatees eating all these plants and more. But, he added sadly, he hardly saw manatees at all now.

  Manuela put the plants in Airuwe’s pool and hoped that he’d know what to do. At first, Airuwe took as much notice of the plants as he had of Libia’s models, but every time Manuela gave him a bottle, she brought the plants close to his mouth and “nibbled” at them with her fingers. In a week, he began to nibble, too; in a month, he was eating a few handfuls every day and drinking a little less milk. Manuela could see that the day would come when bucketloads of plants would replace bottle feeding. Then Airuwe would be ready for number five, whether there was a check mark next to four or not.

  Uncle Misael got some of his old fisherman friends to help. Airuwe was so used to the bottle by now that Misael and his cronies could even feed him. They started spending some afternoons at Airuwe’s pool, taking turns with a bottle or watching the manatee eat the food they had collected for him.

  Libia’s Manatee School got bigger and bigger as carvings of all kinds began to turn up at Riverbend. The people of San Larenzo were competing with one another to see who could make the most lifelike models of fish, turtles, caimans, and even huge pink dolphins.

  Silvio, Luis, and Abel built a thatched roof from which the models could hang. Now, when people came to see Airuwe, they could walk among the models just as manatees swam among real fish in the river. Raffy began to get used to the fact that visitors arriving by boat at her jetty were as likely to want to see a manatee as a nurse!

  The school boat began to run again. Now that Airuwe’s care was shared among several people in the village (Raffy, of course, drew up a schedule), Manuela and Libia had no excuse not to go back to school with everyone else. But students and teachers wanted to know all about Airuwe; for the first time the girls were popular with other children. A visit was arranged for the whole class. Children from other villages, where fishing was not as important as in San Larenzo, loved the Manatee School, and the teachers said that they would bring children to see it every year, even if Airuwe was back in the river.

  Manuela still went out on the river with Silvio, but she never missed school to do it anymore. There was a reason to work at her studies now: she wanted to find out more about manatees and the other animals that lived in the river. She began to think about other action plans, for turtles maybe, or pirarucus, and asked Silvio for help. Her father nodded and said that many creatures had been hunted too much and that there were fewer now than when he had been a boy.

  Libia decided that she was going to write puppet plays about animals for children, and she spent all her spare time sewing puppets with her sisters. She made a special Airuwe puppet for Manuela, with a line of white wool stitched down its back to resemble his scar.

  As Airuwe grew bigger, so did his circle of friends. All Manuela’s family visited to help clean out his pool or bring food. Fishermen came by with new carvings or just to see how Airuwe was doing. Raffy made her jetty bigger so more boats could tie up safely and even admitted that before Airuwe came, she’d sometimes been a bit lonely.

  People told Manuela and Libia about creatures they had seen: dolphins, big fish, even birds, as well as manatees. Libia began to keep a record of what everyone saw out on the river, because she said that it might help them to find the best place when the time came for Airuwe to go back to the river. Now, on the school boat in the morning and the afternoon, all the children had their eyes peeled for animals and birds, and a small check mark appeared beside “Find out where manatees like to live” on the action plan.

  There was still no check mark beside number four, but sometimes changes happen too slowly to be checked off anyone’s list.

  Manuela visited Airuwe whenever she could. Sometimes, Libia and Tintico came, too. The manatee still seemed to know Manuela and would come to the side of the pool and push out his bristly snout when she dangled her feet over the edge.

  One afternoon, Manuela was rubbing Airuwe’s back with her hand when Raffy came down to the pool and sat beside her. “So,” she said in her usual direct way, “isn’t it time that you kept your promise and got to number five on the action plan?”

  “But we haven’t checked off number four yet!” Manuela protested.

  “That’s true,” said Raffy. “But Airuwe has so many friends now that I think it’s safe for him to go back.”

  Manuela knew that her granny was right. It wasn’t fair to keep Airuwe in this little pool when he could be free to wander the river. She nodded.

  “Yes, it’s time.”

  The whole family wanted to help return Airuwe to the river.

  Libia consulted the records in the journal and chose a place where manatees had been seen. Luis offered his big boat to take them there. Gonzaga, Jorge, Abel, and, of course, Silvio said that they would lift Airuwe into the boat, and Angelina said she had an airbed to protect him from bumps on the journey. They set the day and agreed to meet at Riverbend early in the morning before it grew too hot.

  Manuela and Libia stayed with Raffy the night before, on the floor of Raffy’s room. Manuela lay awake in the first light, staring at the fading stars through the window.

  “You’re awake, aren’t you?” Libia whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “Should we go and say good-bye before everyone gets here?”

  The sky was pearl gray, and the sandbanks on either side of the low river showed like pale arms in the early light. Birds called and the last bats flitted in the shadows.

  They hadn’t visited Airuwe at this time since he had been a little calf, needing to be fed milk every few hours. Now he was a big grown-up, much larger than the two girls put together. His smooth, dark shape lay under the water, partly covered by a wreath of his favorite foods.

  The girls knelt at the edge of the pool, with Tintico between them, and Manuela tapped the water with her fingers.

  Pppff.

  The familiar bristly nose broke the surface, then Airuwe’s whole head came to rest on the side of the pool between the girls, nose to nose with Tintico. His small eyes looked out at the world of dry land. For a moment everything held quite still, and then the sound of approaching motorboats broke the quietness.

  It wasn’t just one boat, or even two. Almost the whole village of San Larenzo had turned out to help their friend the manatee. Only Gomez’s boat was missing.

  Manuela wished that Airuwe could understand what was happening to him. The trip in the boat would be frightening, and when they let him go, he might feel very alone. But she knew that he would soon feel at home in the river, where he should have been all this time.

  They passed a tarpaulin under Airuwe’s body to act like a sling, then drained the pond. He was bigger than anyone had imagined, so it was a good thing that all the strongest men in the village were there to help. They lifted him out of the pool as gently as they could, then over the sandbank and into the boat. Airuwe rested on the airbed and was wrapped in wet sheets to keep him cool and comfortable. Then they set off, a fiesta of boats full of smiling, singing people, with one bewildered manatee at its heart.

  Manuela sat beside him all the way. “It’s going to be all right,” she told Airuwe. “You’re going home.”

  For weeks a
fter Airuwe was gone, Manuela said, “Stay safe, Airuwe. Stay safe!” every night when she lay down to sleep. But as weeks turned to months, more and more people told her or Libia or Silvio or Raffy that they had seen a manatee with a mark like lightning on its back. Little by little Manuela stopped worrying and began to feel that Airuwe was safely back in his true home.

  More than a year later, Manuela was on a sandbank with Silvio and a group of kids from Silvio’s new Ecology Club. They were searching for turtle nests to move to a safe hatching place where they couldn’t be dug up for food by anyone passing by on the river.

  It was fun running around on the sand looking for the telltale signs of turtle tracks. The smallest boy in the group, whom they all called Ant because of his size, was the best at it. He and Libia waved to Manuela from the far end of the bank, calling out that they had found a nest.

  But there was something distracting Manuela’s attention: a boat, big and fast. It was Gomez’s boat, not coming upriver as usual, but down from the lakes, where manatees spent the dry season. It wobbled in the heat haze, but Manuela could see Gomez’s eldest son at the helm and Gomez in the bow. He was shouting at the top of his voice, “Manatee! Manatee!”

  No one ran down to the boat. No one helped carry the huge body onto the bank, so Gomez and his sons butchered the animal on the river and brought the meat up in batches.

  The three men stood next to the bloody pile on the stranded jetty as Manuela, Libia, and the other children walked past carrying the turtle eggs.

  “Told you I’d get my property in the end,” Gomez taunted. “That nice white scar was a great target.”

  Manuela stared at the bloody chunks of the manatee’s body, searching for a telltale streak of white on black skin. But there was nothing, just meat and blood.