by Joan Boswell
“Oh, but I’ve promised to give the women a yoga lesson on the top deck.” Serenity’s voice cut through the announcement, and Nora watched helplessly as four women followed Serenity out of the dining room, not one willing to catch her eye. The men scraped their chairs back and skulked off through the door into the lounge. Gunther led the pack, tossing a box of poker chips from hand to hand. Only the stout woman with the faded Tranquility T-shirt remained behind. Nora thought perhaps she had an ally until the woman frowned at her and said, “Either this tour improves, or I’ll be demanding my money back.” She flounced out of the room, leaving Nora behind with the dirty dishes.
She sighed and climbed up to the forward deck, where she leaned on the rail and stared into the dark water. Her life was a mess. This trip was a mess. And it was all so unfair.
This was the only work she’d ever wanted to do. The only work she was suited for. She’d grown up in the Brazilian rainforest with parents who were ornithologists. Her only friends had been native children from the villages along the riverbanks. Her formal schooling was patchy, but her command of Portuguese and her knowledge of jungle flora and fauna was second to none.
She’d landed a tour leaders job at Tranquility Tours, but they’d fired her after her first excursion. She was a gifted naturalist, they said, but lacked people skills. She tried other tour companies, but none of them had worked out. Then, when she heard that Tranquility Tours was on the market, she sold the Victorian mansion she’d inherited from her grandfather and put in an offer. It turned out she wasn’t the only one who wanted the company, and the sale had developed into a bidding war between Nora’s lawyer and the lawyer for a numbered company. It took all her resources from the house and the sale of her parents’ Brazilian artifacts for Nora to come out on top. And now it was all going so dreadfully wrong. She could feel tears burning her eyes.
She clutched the worn mahogany railing and resolved to try harder. The tour members seemed to like Eddie and Sosa. Perhaps if she enlisted the boys to handle the bird checklist this afternoon, that would engage the more competitive members. And surely even Serenity would be lulled into silence during the evening tours in the launches. If they could pick out a sloth or two in the spotlights, perhaps even Gunther would stop scowling. Things might yet turn out all right.
But then Nora’s stomach clenched as she remembered that both Gunther and Serenity had paid extra for the Tranquility Tours special feature—to spend Thursday night in a tent in the jungle. The thought of managing those two enemies filled Nora with terror. Could she cancel, she wondered? No. They were already furious with her. That would just add fuel to the fire. She would simply have to go through with it and hope against hope they wouldn’t do anything rash.
After dinner on Thursday evening, Sosa helped them down from the riverboat and into the launch, and Eddie steered it across to the near shore. Serenity and Gunther sat at opposite ends of the boat, ignoring one another, and Nora sat in the middle, whispering Dr. Bernstein’s mantra. Her glasses slid down her nose, and without thinking, she pushed them back in place. The launch bumped up against the bank, and they climbed out, following Eddie’s spotlight to the campsite. After only a few metres, he stopped abruptly and threw his arm out to hold them back.
The snake lay along the lowest branch of a young cacao tree, unmoving except for the forked tongue flicking in and out. Its eyes glowed amber in the spotlight. Nora leaned closer to get a better look at the pattern on its back, brown chevrons edged in white.
“Get back,” Sosa hissed without taking his eyes off the viper. “A bite from a fer-de-lance kills in minutes.”
She stepped back a foot or two but continued to watch. Snakes have poor eyesight, but this one would have known they were there. Its tongue would smell the presence of humans, taste it in the heavy heat of the Amazonian jungle. It appeared alert but unperturbed in the face of four hovering humans. Nora peered over her shoulder at Gunther and Serenity who had fled behind the buttresses of a huge kapok tree. Given how much they hated one another, it puzzled her they would choose to stay together.
“Kill it,” Serenity screeched from her hiding spot.
“Yes,” shouted the German, “use your knife.”
“We kill nothing,” Eddie, the senior guide, said in his ponderous and heavily accented Portuguese. “We leave everything as is. It is our rule.”
“But I’ll never be able to sleep if you don’t.” Serenity’s voice trembled on the verge of tears.
Eddie reached for a burlap bag at his feet and handed Nora the spotlight. “Hold this.”
The big light was heavier than she expected, but she managed to rest it on her shoulder with the beam trained on the viper. Snakes, even such a deadly one as the fer-de-lance, held little fear for Nora. It was the humans who terrified her.
Eddie picked up two sturdy branches from the leaf litter at their feet, and with a stick in each hand, lifted the sides of the burlap bag and held it a couple of inches under the snake. He nodded at Sosa, and the young Indian used the tip of his machete to flick the fer-de-lance off its perch and into the bag. Eddie swung the bag up, dropped the sticks and caught the strings with both hands. He pulled the bag closed and dropped it to the ground and with his boot nudged a large stone over the opening to hold it secure.
“There. It will stay trapped until morning, and when Miss Nora and Miss Serenity and Mr. Gunther are back on the boat, we will release it into the jungle again.” Eddie pulled the red bandanna from his neck and wiped his forehead, a few drops of perspiration the only indication of his stress.
Nora nodded and called across to the others. “Okay. It’s safe.” She hoisted the spotlight back to Eddie and picked up her backpack. “We should get into our tents. It’ll be too dark to see anything in a few minutes.” She flashed her penlight on the nearest tent. “Gunther, you sleep here. Serenity, you and I are in the one over there,” she pointed the light at a second tent.
She waited for the usual arguments, but Serenity and Gunther picked their way silently across the clearing, their flashlights aimed a foot or so in front of each footfall, their arms held tight against their sides. Eddie had warned them about bullet ants lurking on the cecropia trees, and neither one wanted to risk encountering an insect that could give a ferocious sting from either end of it’s body.
Nora tried to lead Serenity to the tent, but she held back. “What about the guides? Where will they be?” She looked at Eddie and Sosa.
“I will go back to the boat to take care of the others.” Eddie said. “Sosa will sleep in the hammock—just here.” He pointed the big spotlight at a piece of cloth tied between the trunks of two trees. “He will have his machete with him and will watch over you. You will be safe.”
“I’m not so sure,” she balked, digging her feet into the jungle soil. “Maybe we should go back to the boat.”
“Look, Serenity.” Nora took a deep breath and tried to control her frustration. “You and Gunther requested the jungle night. You insisted. Tranquility Tours doesn’t normally offer this, and we’ve gone to a lot of trouble to accommodate you.”
“Gunther!” she spat. “Don’t even mention that horrible man’s name.” She wrenched her arm away and bent down to crawl into the tent.
Nora heard Gunther hiss the word “bitch” in their direction but managed to push Serenity inside the tent before she hurled another insult at him.
Serenity wrenched her boots off and threw them into the corner of the tent. “I could kill that man,” she said. “I’ll never be able to sleep with him in the next tent and that snake out there. And what are those hideous noises?”
“That’s the jungle you were so anxious to experience.” Nora said. The shrieks and whistles were straight out of a Tarzan movie, but she found them familiar and comforting as she settled into her sleeping bag.
Serenity rummaged inside her backpack. “I need a tablet to help me sleep. Do you want one?” She pulled out a plastic container and dropped two tiny pills into her palm. Nora
shook her head but the woman insisted. “Oh, come on. It’ll do you good to relax for a change.”
Nora took the pill and popped it into her mouth, but as soon as Serenity turned away, she let it fall onto her pillow, where she palmed it. She wondered briefly what the woman was up to but soon fell asleep to the sweet sounds of the jungle.
Nora’s eyes flew open in the velvet blackness, and she wondered what had wakened her. Then she heard the sound again—the snuffling of a peccary exploring the perimeter of the tent. She rolled over to go back to sleep, but something was wrong. It was eerily still inside the tent.
She sat up and shone her penlight at the other sleeping bag. Empty! Nora felt the familiar flutters of panic like a small bird trapped inside her chest. Perhaps Serenity had gone outside to relieve herself, she thought, but after a few minutes realized that couldn’t be it. No one as afraid of the jungle as Serenity was would linger outside the safety of the tent for so long.
Another thought struck her and filled her with an even greater fear. Serenity had looked mad with fury when she talked about the German last night. What if she had gone to his tent to hurt him, kill him even? She’d certainly threatened it often enough.
Nora pulled on her boots and glasses and reached down to undo the tent, but the flap was already hanging open. She slipped out and stood listening, trying to distinguish individual sounds in the cacophony of the jungle night. She heard Sosa snoring and shone her thin light on his inert form in the hammock. Then she heard something else that sounded almost like stifled laughter.
She crept toward the German’s tent and heard voices. That was good. At least they hadn’t killed one another. She moved nearer. In the dappled moonlight she saw that the zip was half open, and she could hear their voices clearly.
“Well, you’ll never get an academy award for that performance.” It was Gunther’s voice, but it was all wrong. What had happened to the German accent?
“Oh, I don’t know,” Serenity giggled. “She bought it, didn’t she?” There was some rustling of fabric. “Mm. Do that again.”
“What if she wakes up? Won’t she notice you’re gone?” This wasn’t the voice of a German at all. Norah shook her head, wondering if she was in the midst of some nightmare.
Serenity snorted. “I gave her a sleeping pill. We won’t hear from her until morning.”
Well, of all the nerve. Nora reached for the tent flap.
“I think we’ve got her where we want her,” Serenity said. “If we put the offer in again the minute we get home, she’ll jump at the chance to get rid of the company.”
“But we’ll offer less this time, eh?” Nora sat back on her heels. Gunter’s accent was Canadian, plain and simple. “She’ll be grateful to have us take it off her hands.”
“Mmmm. That feels good,” Serenity groaned. “I’ve missed you.”
“How about this?” The German grunted, and Serenity sighed.
Nora felt the panic in her chest harden into hot coals of rage.
She turned, shielded her penlight with her palm and made her way over to where Eddie had left the burlap bag. She didn’t even bother trying to be quiet. The sounds from the tent would cover any noise her footsteps made in the soft jungle soil.
She kicked the rock away, dragged the bag to the tent opening and undid the ties. When the snake had slithered out of the bag and into the tent, she carried the empty bag back to where Eddie had left it, tied it up again and pushed the rock over the opening before going back to her own tent. Under her pillow she found the pill that Serenity had given her. She popped it into her mouth and settled down to sleep until morning.
A riverboat trip along Brazil’s Rio Negro inspired Sue Pike’s story. Sue is a founding member of the Ladies’ Killing Circle and won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story in 1997. In 2007, she launched Deadlock Press to publish fiction set on the Rideau Canal. Locked Up, tales of mystery and mischance along Canada’s Rideau Canal Waterway, is a celebration of the 175th anniversary of the opening of the canal and its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Thinking Inside the Box
Kris Wood
I’ll have me jars of the good stuff along with me. Saint Peter’ll let me into Heaven, sure. I’ll have me own good brew with me in me box.”
The Old Man’s quavering, senile bletherings would have been just an irritation to Liam if they had been alone. But they were not alone, and not content with trotting out his own daft plan for a safe eternity, the old fool had spewed the carefully guarded family secret to this new priest, of all people. Liam’s fist clenched as he fought the urge to silence his father’s maunderings with a clout. He slid a glance at Father Grayson, who stood rigid with disapproval at the bedside.
“Sacrilege!” the cleric hissed, “Blasphemy! I won’t hear another word. This is a house of sin!”
Liam thudded down the steep wooden stairs behind the black back of the priest.
Even from behind, Liam could see the man’s fury. Liam fought to keep his own anger in check. For one brief moment on the top stair, he considered the possibility of giving the cleric a shove. Surely crashing into the sharp dog-leg at the foot of the treacherous slope would break even a neck as stiff as the priest’s? Liam rejected the idea almost as soon as it surfaced. Way too iffy.
How could his father have been so foolish? Liam knew that his father wandered in his mind some, but to blab! After all the rants Liam and the others had endured over the years from the old man, rants reinforced with slaps—repeating the treatment that he had received from his own father. A legacy of strict secrecy passed on with the unlawful skill of making moonshine. They could talk about the fishing. They could talk about the wood-lot, but the real family business, the one that put money into the special account in the Charlottetown bank, far from prying local eyes, must never be discussed.
Then the old man himself went blurting out his crazy plan of salvation, along with the family’s private business to the priest. And not a priest like old Father Cullum who’d likely have laughed at their dad’s foolishness, then sat down at the kitchen table while you poured him a shot. Liam stifled bitter laughter. No, it had to be this priest—this newcomer, a narrow, humourless creature; as down on drink as a Presbyterian.
Liam stretched out his hand to grab the man’s sleeve, sure that once the idiot left the house he’d go straight to the RCMP. Liam felt himself sicken at the thought of getting nabbed now. He made less than a couple of dozen jars a year these days. Just a bit for their last few faithful customers, most of them as far on their way out as Dad. It wasn’t as if he even had the knack for brewing the good stuff. The old man could hardly choke down a glass of Liam’s making. Only the determination to keep the last two quarts he had made himself in the days when he could still get down to the hidey-hole under the chicken house, for his planned free pass to Heaven, forced him to drink the inferior stuff produced by Liam. That, and a life-long reluctance to give the government a cent more in taxes than he must.
Liam didn’t care. He had no liking for homebrew. Give him a glass of beer any day. White lightning had scarred his childhood, and he’d devoted too much of his adult life to obeying his father’s bellowed orders in the boat, in the woods and in the still hole to want to continue with any of it after the old man went. He wasn’t good at quick thinking, but he needed to think now. Something to say that would stop the priest; deflect him from reporting the facts behind the old man’s ramblings to the cops.
As he rounded the foot of the stairs, he heard the back door open. Thank the Lord! Florrie was home from Montague.
“Why, Father Grayson! What a lovely surprise!” she said, ignoring the priest’s preoccupied scowl. “You’ll have come to see poor Dad. Isn’t that just like you, as busy as you are? Kindness itself, driving all the way out here on such a miserable, cold afternoon.”
Florrie’s soft voice stopped the angry priest in mid-stride. “Now there’s no way I’m letting you leave this house without a nice hot cup of tea to
warm you, and a big piece of my lemon loaf. I know how you enjoy it. You said so many nice things at your welcome party. I was some flattered; Liam can tell you.”
As Florrie spoke, she whisked off her coat, tied on an apron, pulled the kettle forward on the stove and began setting out china on a tray. The priest hesitated.
“I know it isn’t really the thing keeping you here in the kitchen, Father dear, but it’s the coziest spot in the house on a day like today. Just sit yourself down there by the stove in poor Dad’s old rocker,” she eased the reluctant man into the waiting chair, “and I’ll have the tea brewed in a wink.”
All at once the room became a welcome place, full of warmth and harmony, fragrant, comforting—impossible to leave. The tension began to ebb.
“Shake up the stove, Liam.” Florrie turned to her brother, her eyes full of questions. A ticked-off priest in the house needed explaining, and Florrie could be counted on to ferret out the answer to any mystery. Two lifetimes of kinship, of conspiring against parental tyranny and hiding the family secret from a nosy neighbourhood had tuned the powers of silent communication between brother and sister to concert pitch.
Liam indicated that their father had created a problem by a slight upward glance and down-turned mouth. He managed to tilt his hand and raise an elbow to denote that booze was involved as he thrust sticks of maple into the roaring stove.
Florrie’s eyes widened as she gathered there was something seriously amiss, something concerning their father and the new priest’s hatred of liquor. She didn’t know the half of it, Liam thought as he pulled a kitchen chair into the space beside the big old rocker.
Florrie poured the tea. “Poor Dad,” she sighed. “I’m afraid he’s really failing. For sure he won’t be sitting in his chair again.” She glanced at Liam as she offered the cake plate to the priest. He nodded approval of the direction her conversation was heading. “I notice the difference in him every day I get in from the store. Fading fast he is, and his mind! Well, Liam can tell you even better than me. Liam looks after him all day while I’m at work. I feel bad about leaving him, but there’s nothing to be done. The way his mind is wandering, it would almost be a mercy for the Good Lord to take him. He was always so sharp. It’s pitiful to see him so brought down. When I think what an active man he was.”
