by Louis Bayard
“Ha!” A fine cloud of spittle flew from the Colonel’s teeth. “Perhaps you haven’t read the Old Testament of late. Quite a lot of creators getting snappish with their creations.”
Kermit stared out the hut opening, where a pile of peeled bark lay baking in the sun. He could feel the heat squeezing his eyelids down.
“There is one other thing,” he said.
“Yes?”
“They say Curupira’s feet are backward.”
“And where does that get him, I wonder?”
“It keeps hunters from tracking him.”
“I see.” The Colonel brought his hands together. “A demon that sends its enemies running in the opposite direction. Now, that’s what I call cunning. I shall have to forward the idea to the secretary of war. All the same,” he added, “I would wager this Curupira brute has never met hunters like us.”
But what sort of hunters were they?
In Africa, over the course of one year, they had killed five hundred twelve beasts between them, including seventeen lions and eleven elephants. They had taken pride in their nicknames: Bwana Makubwa and Bwana Mardadi. Great Master and Dandy Master.
Mankind was incontestably better off for their labors. Hadn’t they donated many of their trophies to science? Hadn’t they helped to make the Museum of Natural History an African wonderland? But there was no use pretending that altruism woke them up every morning or set them dreaming every night. Their days had been festivals of blood and sinew and muscle. They had wolfed down elephant-trunk soup; they had toasted slices of elephant heart over a fire. They had watched Nandi tribesmen circle a lion and drive spear after spear into its flanks, fling themselves on its prone form, and hack it to pieces. One way or another, they had lived in the marrow of things, and they had been utterly free. As happy as they had ever been.
“Senhor Kermit,” said Luz. “The chief is ready to see us.”
* * *
THE GREAT MAN STOOD in the full painted glare of the sun, his arms folded, his head sagging. Between his legs, like something he had just extruded, lay the white men’s rifles. The message was clear. If they wanted their thunder sticks, they would have to kneel before him.
This they never would do. On that point Kermit was resolved. Indeed, he was already calculating how long the impasse would last when he heard the Colonel’s wheezing chuckle.
“Very well, Your Majesty.”
With a groan, the old man stooped and handed Kermit his Winchester, then stooped once more and grabbed his Springfield.
“Ah, yes,” he said, using the gun to prop himself up again. “The old medicine. Wasn’t sure I’d ever see it again. I think I’m feeling better already. Oh, but give it an eyeball, would you?”
Kermit peered down the barrel, locked and unlocked the rear bolt, and then, without thinking, began to raise the Winchester to his eye. From nowhere, it seemed, a covey of Cinta Larga warriors converged on him, their hands on their longbows.
“Luz,” he said. “Tell them I am not firing.”
“They do not like it when you point.”
“I understand, but please explain to them we cannot shoot. We have nothing to shoot with. We will need our cartridges.”
A crease sketched itself across Luz’s brow. “Cartuchos?”
“It’s what holds the … the bullet and the gunpowder, and the point is, without cartridges, the guns won’t work. We won’t be able to hunt.”
Luz looked at him, looked back at the chief.
“There was a bag,” Kermit insisted. “When we were brought here—we had a bag with cartridges.”
Even as his impatience mounted, a wisp of hope sailed up. The cartridges were still in that clearing, only a hundred yards from camp. They would have to go back for them.
Then—from some great abstract height, it seemed—a canvas bag landed with a plop at Kermit’s feet. Inside it were a dozen smokeless powder cartridges with soft-point bullets.
“Well, now,” said the Colonel. “That’s five for each of us, and a pair left over. We shall have to aim true, eh?”
The chief watched them for some time longer, as though he was trying to satisfy himself of something. Then, unfolding his arms, he murmured a few words and stalked away.
“Sentimental old fool, isn’t he?” said the Colonel. “Never mind, we’ve quite enough to do as it is. Before we go, Kermit, I should probably tell you which way my thoughts have been inclining. It seems to me we must dispense with the fantasy that we will simply stumble over this Beast in the course of our wanderings. That would be a deeply unlikely prospect even if we knew what species it was and could isolate it in its native clime. Making it even unlikelier—well, as these savages have already told us, it follows the perfectly sensible practice of attacking by night. Oh, I suppose, if we were extremely fortunate, we might catch it slumbering, but that’s the stuff of boys’ adventure, wouldn’t you agree? What I propose, therefore, is to examine the other crime scenes.”
“Other?”
“Well, we have two human corpses, do we not? Left exactly where they were killed. Some time has passed, but if we examine the grounds thoroughly enough, we may just find that this Beastie of ours has left behind, well, some clue or other to its identity. Something we can use to prepare ourselves for when it next comes.”
“Assuming it does come.”
“Oh, it will,” said the old man, with a grave tilt of his head. “Mark my words, it will. Nothing in the least retiring about it. It’s tasted blood, and it wants more. Now, I seem to recall that the most recent human victim was … one of their own braves, is that so? Dragged a short distance from the village. No better place to start our inquiries, as I’m sure you’ll agree, so the only thing left to say is chop, chop! Wish we’d gotten an earlier start; the day’s already half gone.…”
Kermit looked slowly around. He was ashamed to admit it, but he had expected more of a send-off from the village. The day was infernally hot, though, and the Cinta Larga were busy doing what they always did: surviving. Hunting and fishing, yes, and gathering firewood and peeling and grating and pounding the poison out of their manioc root and carving new arrows and feeding their babies. There was no one left to wrap a nut garland around Kermit’s neck or kiss him on the cheek or shed the smallest tear.
The Colonel, for his part, could barely be restrained. “What in heaven’s name are we waiting for? Much to do, much to do. Are you ready, Senhorita Luz? Oh, hold on a bit, here’s the rest of our party.”
With the mincing steps of a court page, Thiago came toward them, carrying only a walking stick and a sharpened end of bamboo. His face was a mask of solemn purpose, until he got within five feet. Then, with a squeal of joy, he turned his stick into a rifle and swiveled it from side to side, spraying invisible rounds.
“Ga-boom! Ga-boom!”
“Ha!” shouted the Colonel. “An artilleryman, is it? Just you wait, young squire, you’ll get your turn soon enough. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, oh, disarming for a second, I must ask a great kindness of you, young Thiago. Are you marking me? You must agree to stick to me like a burr. Like a burr, I say. Otherwise, I shall become hopelessly lost before another minute is out. What do you say?”
Thiago had enough presence of mind to grasp that something was being asked of him. After a brief consideration, he nodded yes.
“Well, that’s splendid. Now, if you’d be so good as to walk to my right. Just like that, yes. It’s the only spot I have any peripheral vision at all. But you needn’t worry: I may lack vision and speed, but I compensate. Oh, I’m the doggedest old cuss you ever saw.”
Some things, it seemed, really were universal. The look of wonder, for example, that crossed Thiago’s face as the Colonel’s words showered down on him. It was the expression the old man tended to produce wherever he went in the world.
“And do remind me to tell you about the first time I went hunting buffaloes. Why, it was raining hard enough to drown a rat. You couldn’t tell what was buffalo and what was water
. It was touch-and-go, I don’t mind telling you, but, to my great good fortune, I had a fine associate name of Cadmus Swallow.…”
So they walked, the old man and the boy, until they reached the forest wall. The boy used his bamboo knife to hack out a crevice in the vines and then push himself through. The old man followed.
“All will be well,” said Luz. “I believe this.”
And she, too, disappeared into the jungle.
Kermit stared after her. Then he looked back.
Someone was watching them go, after all. It was Bokra, the old man with the marbled eyes, holding in his arms the half-plucked harpy eagle. Freed from its cage, the bird showed no inclination to take flight but simply nestled against its protector’s shrunken chest, cooing and purring. The old man stroked its balding skin with his cadaverous fingers and, just as Kermit was about to turn away, began unexpectedly to cackle.
“Curupira!” he called. “Curupira!”
12
As soon as Kermit entered the forest, the light vanished like a breath. But the mosquitoes—what else had they to do but follow? For some two hundred lengths, Kermit waved them away in the mechanical, hopeless fashion of a jungle traveler—until he realized he was swatting only air.
He stopped, inspected his surroundings. No breeze had risen up. The air was every bit as hot. The trees still rose in their vast smooth columns, blotting out any thought of sun. But the mosquitoes were gone. And so were the gnats and flies and bees. Every flying torment had abandoned its post—and headed straight to a darkened heap some twelve feet off.
There rose to his nostrils now a rich, hot, sweet scent. The unmistakable scent of decaying flesh.
“Dear God,” Kermit whispered to Luz. “They couldn’t forsake tribal custom for once? Bury the poor fellow?”
Luz shook her head. “You must not touch a man who is taken by evil spirits. The same thing could happen to you.”
“It’s barbarous,” the Colonel muttered. “Leaving a man to rot like that. Listen, now, Kermit, we mustn’t let the boy see.”
But Thiago had been at the head of their party from the start, and he was looking down at that body without a tremor or recoil, surveying its flaps of rotting skin … its shreds of bone and tissue … that head … tilted back and wrenched open, as if to roar away the insects that circled it in a frenzy of ardor.
The Beast, though, hadn’t left much for the bugs to feast on. Muscle, heart, liver—all were gone. The man had been peeled open and scooped out like a tin of sardines. The only organs that remained were his eyes, and, under the ministrations of heat and bacteria, even these had melted into black craters, staring out of a mustard-colored mask.
“Somebody was hungry,” said the Colonel, half-grimacing at his own callousness. “Quite a dismal crime scene, I’m afraid. No light to speak of, many hours of decay. I doubt even the finest Manhattan coroner could tell us exactly how the fellow died.”
“So many causes of death to choose from,” added Kermit.
“It would help just to know if he was insensible from the start. Or did he fight the whole way? Was there some—some coup de grâce the Beast administered?”
“And where did all the blood go?”
For all its decomposition, it was the cleanest corpse Kermit had ever seen. Not an ooze or seep anywhere.
“Well,” said the old man, “we know the answer to that one. Our Beastie’s a drinker. Damn me, though, it kills in a way I’ve never seen before. Beyond malevolence, more like…”
“Comprehensiveness.”
“Yes. Just so. The thing doesn’t want simply to kill. It wants the whole of its prey.”
From high above them, a brood of cicadas broke into a grinding whir, as shocking as a steam whistle. Turning, Kermit found Luz, ten paces off, her hands moving at angles. Only hours later would he realize she was genuflecting.
“Can you tell us about the victim?” he called.
“What do you wish to know?”
“How old was he?”
“He was young. A man, but young.”
“Eighteen? Nineteen?”
“Young.”
“You say he was one of the men keeping watch that night.”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone see him attacked?”
“No.”
“Did he cry out?”
She thought. “There was one shout. Very short.”
“And then silence?”
“Yes.”
“And he was dragged here?”
“Yes.”
“By what path?”
She pointed to the ground. “This one. The one we came by.”
Kermit’s eyes widened. So the path they’d been traveling had been specially carved for them by the Beast itself. But as he looked back, the only signs of violence he could see were bent-back shrubs … tiny disruptions in the carpet of humus.…
“Did they find anything near the body?” he asked.
“Such as what, Senhor?”
“Markings. A piece of hide.”
“I cannot say. I wasn’t there.”
He had to fight the impulse to shake her.
“The men who found him,” he persisted. “Did they say anything about what they found?”
“I heard them say something. To the other women.”
“Yes?”
“They said the Beast must have come from above.”
“Why?”
“There was nothing leading away from the body.”
“No tracks?”
“None.”
Against his will, Kermit’s eyes swung to the vertical, followed the bole of the nearest tree some one hundred feet, all the way to its crown, where the tree threw out its side branches and gathered into a dense matting of vine and leaf.
“Aerial,” guessed the old man. “Is that what they’re thinking?”
“Something like that.”
“Oh, very well, then. Search the skies all you like. You won’t find it, I tell you.”
“It makes as much sense as any—”
“Kermit, what’s the biggest bird you’ve ever seen?”
“I don’t know. Albatross?”
“And how long would you suppose its wingspan to be?”
“Ten, twelve feet.”
“And what’s the biggest thing you’ve ever seen it pick up?”
“Not sure, really. Largish fish … a squid, maybe.”
“So you’re telling me there’s a bird out there so large, so powerful, it can drag a full-grown man through underbrush and foliage—dense foliage—thirty or forty yards with minimal protest and then have its way so utterly with him that”—the old man gestured to the corpse—“this is the result?”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m just trying to make the evidence fit.”
“And what would a fine detective like your Mr. Holmes say in such a case? If the evidence doesn’t fit the theory…”
“We need a new theory.”
“Precisely.”
“For my part,” said Kermit, “I’d settle for more evidence.”
Even in the jungle’s churchy gloom, it was impossible to miss the gleam in the old man’s eye.
“You anticipate my very thought. Ask Luz if she’ll take us to the other body.”
But her eyes didn’t exactly light up at the request. “There will not be much to see, Senhor. It was only a child.”
“All the same.”
“It is farther, much farther.”
“How much farther?”
“Oh … many minutes, Senhor. Perhaps an hour.”
The words “no matter” danced on Kermit’s tongue. Then he saw how the Colonel was beginning to sag, subtly, against the trunk of a silk-cotton. How the earliest signs of vacancy—the old Cuban fever—were shining from the old man’s eyes.
“Father … if it’s all the same to you … maybe Luz and I should go on, just the two of us. You can go back to our hut and rest.”
“Rest?” The Colonel swayed into erect
ness. “Nonsense. You’re as bad as Cajazeira. I mean to conclude this business, even if it kills me.”
“But the heat, Father. And your leg. You can barely stand on it.”
“Oh, be quiet, will you? I’m feeling fitter every second! And with this Leatherstocking here”—the old man gave Thiago a tiny cuff on the cheek—“we shan’t travel any farther than is strictly needed. Lay on, I say.”
* * *
THE FOOTING WAS HARD, the way narrow, but true to the Colonel’s prediction, Thiago threaded a sure line. A trail, one might have called it, but it was impossible for a non-native to pick out the markers. A bent branch? A macaw feather? A slick of moss? Somehow the boy beat on.
Now and again, the sibilant accents of insects came whispering down. But by and large it was their tread they heard, their breath. Like a dream, thought Kermit. No, the dream: the staple of his childhood slumbers. Once again he was walking down the long, empty, amplifying halls of a house—not his house, not anyone’s—and every hall led to another, and nothing intruded, and nothing resolved.
In the dream, of course, there was never any question of stopping. Here in the jungle you could pause if you so chose, and each time you did, you would find evidence, incontrovertible, that you weren’t alone. A snail as big as your fist. Ruby dragonflies hovering over stagnant pools. A sulfur-colored butterfly, flying past like a swallow.
Once, leaning against a tree for balance, Kermit found a mantis, four inches long, holding a fly in its spindly arms as if it were a peach. He could actually see the fly passing, mouthful by mouthful, down the mantis’s glassy neck.
“Come,” he heard Luz call. “We don’t have far to go.”
Minutes later they were descending to a stream bridged by a fallen tree. The Colonel teetered to a stop.
“All apologies. Do you think we might stop a bit?”
Shameful, really, the hissing retort that rose up in Kermit now. I told you! I told you!
He saw Luz whisper something to Thiago. At once the boy snatched up a palm leaf, folded it into a bowl, and lowered it into the stream, then carried the water back to the Colonel.
“Ah,” said the old man, his mouth wincing open into a smile. “It’s … it’s a Gunga Din.…”
