Roosevelt's Beast

by Louis Bayard

  * * *

  MORE THAN ONCE, HE wished for one of the camaradas’ machetes. After the first flush of struggle, though, he and the path began to work toward the same end, and before he had gone even thirty feet, the forest was pulling away and he was standing in a corridor of air.

  He took two steps forward. His foot slid into a cloud of dust, and the earth itself rushed up to meet him. For a second he hung there, all coordinates erased.

  He was standing on a tiny bluff overlooking the Rio da Dúvida.

  Even from this height, he recognized the river’s tortuous shape, the rapids throwing up their whitecaps. Just one more step and he would have been enjoying a splendid bath indeed.

  He scanned the vista from end to end, looking for a dugout or a tent and finding only … the sun, scuttling in and out of a cloud … the water, as black and opaque as ever … the vast green monotony of the forest … the silence, lying like deafness on everything. It was as if he’d never left.

  He scanned the river up and down, looking for some trace of the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition, but there was nothing. No way of taking latitude. His only compass was the sinking sun, which was fast taking all the light with it.

  If he stayed much longer, he might never find his way back. Still, the prospect of being stranded here was preferable to returning—preferable, yes, to seeing that infernal pit and Bokra’s butchered corpse and the chief’s wizened scowl and the hollow, staring eyes of those Cinta Larga mothers, burning with hunger.

  But Father was back there, too.

  “God,” mumbled Kermit. “If you’re there. If you wouldn’t mind … some clue…”

  It came not half a minute later. His eye caught the downed trunk of a palm tree lying a third of the way across the river, its leafless branches rising up like …

  Like the fingers on a hand.

  He remembered this tree. He’d floated past it just two days before. To his addled, whimsical mind, it had looked like a hand waving good-bye.

  And soon after—very soon after—Rondon called the boats to shore. And that was where they were now!

  Assuming they hadn’t broken camp, assuming they hadn’t given up on their missing comrades, the men of the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition were no more than a mile or two downriver. Why, the water could carry him there in a matter of minutes.

  But how to get to it?

  The drop was a good hundred feet down a sheer cliff face. There wasn’t a path or rock trail to soften the descent; there was only gravity. Father would have taken one look at the situation and declared: My kingdom for a damned rope!

  Then, realizing where he was, Kermit started to laugh. Because if there was one thing the Brazilian Amazon was pestilential with, it was rope.

  Vine after vine, looping around every tree, vying for every last atom of sun and water. A vast trampoline of natural rope, capable of flinging a man to the nearest asteroid.

  Yes, indeed. Kermit had only to peer over the ledge of the cliff to find a cataract of vines already draped along the rock face, each at a dozen feet in length and an inch in diameter. All he had to do now was connect them somehow, and he would have the most secure possible rope a jungle could devise.

  And so he set to work.

  The main challenge, he soon discovered, was creating the individual segments. He had to sever the vines from their attachment points, but, lacking any knife, he had to drag each vine like a saw across the nearest trunk. Even then it took him many minutes to break all the way through. His skin began to crack and bleed, but he consoled himself with visions of the Colonel and Thiago shouting with joy as they climbed to freedom.

  In short order, he had yoked together four links and tied them to a vine-anchor. He was reaching for the fifth vine when, from the jungle interior, he heard a soft thrashing. He crouched on the rock, waited. Someone—something—was coming his way.

  Kermit reached for his Winchester, stretched himself across the ground. The sound grew nearer, more real—like actual limbs contending against actual vegetation. He tapped his finger lightly against the trigger. He waited.

  Indeed, so intensely was he following the sound from the interior that he quite ignored that other sound in the underbrush just to his right, never apprehended the point at which that sound acquired shape, then motion—a lightning-like trajectory that caught him squarely in the chest.

  He gasped, rolled away. Now, too late, he saw it, half concealed in the mud, long and slender and sidewinding. A spade-shaped head and a pair of horizontal fangs and a pair of sooty eyes, regarding him with a curatorial interest. It seemed almost to be tracking his symptoms, one by one: the fire in the veins, the tingle in the skin, the thinning of the pulse.

  Stay awake, Kermit ordered himself. But the world was swooning around him, and the feeling was stealing so quickly from his limbs that there was no way to bring it back. He saw, he felt, blackness. Then a new blaze of pain. His eyes trembled open.

  Luz.

  Luz was leaning over him. Looking as ravenous as any beast that had ever lived as she fastened her teeth onto his tender skin.

  “Stop,” he whispered. “No…”

  But his mind was moving in the opposite direction. Go ahead. Help yourself.

  The darkness pooled around him. He fell in without a splash.

  22

  “I don’t blame you.…”

  A voice, no more, but it had the exact effect of light.

  “I don’t blame you for wanting a good old-fashioned snooze.”

  Kermit pressed a thumb to his eyelid, peeled it open. A blurry moon of a face swam toward him. With great difficulty, Kermit picked out an ear, a nose, a confusion of teeth. With even greater difficulty, he connected these parts to the voice.

  Father.

  Father was there. Father was saying …

  “It’s not often a fellow gets nipped by a viper.”

  Nipped …

  “Or a Bothrops atrox, if you prefer. Maybe Latin’s a bit too much to ask right now. Let’s just call it a fer-de-lance and be done with it, eh? Of course, I didn’t see it for myself. Did it have a pointed head?”

  “I don’t…”

  Kermit closed his eyes, tried to retrieve that last moment of consciousness. It was like crawling out on a ledge that kept shrinking beneath your weight.

  Ledge. He was on a ledge. There was a river. He was lying flat on the ground, ready to shoot.…

  Now the image of that snake flashed forth, and like its living embodiment, sent a wave of pain rolling in. So intense that it took him several seconds to identify the source: a scorched region just below his collarbone, raw and welted, recoiling at his touch.

  “Oh, I know you can’t see it,” said the old man. “Take it from me, it’s a beaut. Two of the prettiest little fang marks you’d ever want to see. And not a spot of blood to mar the view.”

  Kermit dropped his head back. He understood now that he was lying in his hammock. It was nighttime. He was … here. With Father in their hut. Among the Cinta Larga.

  “How did I…”

  “How did you live? Well, you have Miss Luz to thank for that. She’s the one who found you. Got rid of that snake, for starters. Coiled it round some stick or other and threw it somewhere in the approximate direction of hell. Then she sucked a good part of the venom right out of you. And then—oh, what did she put on you? Some stone or other? Do you see what problems arise when I don’t have you to interpret for me?”

  Kermit’s fingers inched down toward his chest. Something hard and thickened lay there. A plaster, smelling of fern and grass and mud.

  “Whatever she did,” said the old man, “it must have worked wonders, because you were still breathing when they found you. Which is more than I can say for most viper victims. One minute they’re bleeding from the eyes, the next they’re heading straight for that undiscovered country. You’re a lucky young man, Kermit Roosevelt.”

  Lucky. Yes.

  “One way or another,” said the Colonel, “you seem bound and
determined to get me in trouble with your mother. You get roughed up by bats, snakes—what’s next, I wonder? No, I don’t even want to wonder. Oh, but I almost forgot. In addition to thanking Miss Luz, you must give Belle an extra kiss the next time you see her.”

  The old man held up a square of oilskin. The perfect waterproof container for …

  Letters. Belle’s letters.

  “What in—”

  “It’s the thing that got between you and your viper,” said the old man. “Kept it from plunging its fangs any deeper. Otherwise, it really would have been lights out for you. Oh, don’t worry, none of your precious missives was punctured. Nor did I read a single line. I’m not some gossipy old spinster, you know.” Frowning, the old man weighed the packet in his hand, like a bag of rummy coins. “You’ll want it back, I expect.”

  “Please.”

  “Well, we don’t want it resting on the wound. Why don’t I tuck it behind your neck? That works, doesn’t it? I’ll just tie the drawstrings … et voilà! Your little talisman, returned to its rightful home.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Late. Late enough to sleep, if you get my drift.”

  “We can’t.” Kermit gritted his teeth. “Things to do…”

  “If you’re referring to Bokra’s body, that’s been taken care of. Don’t look so shocked, I’m not completely decrepit, you know. I threw him right in—both parts. Each one light as a wren. We all had a grand time filling in the pit, the chief appeared to be most satisfied, and his various cabinet secretaries did me the great favor of spitting on our work. We’ve fulfilled our contract, my boy—to the letter. And tomorrow I expect a formidable royal escort back to camp.”

  With a soft wheeze, the old man lowered himself toward Kermit.

  “So you see,” he said, “there’s nothing you need worry about.”

  “No. The Beast. It’s—”

  His father put a hand on his shoulder. “Easy, my boy. Easy! There’s still a bit of poison floating around in you. Save your strength for tomorrow. And if you need an image to sleep on, think of the look on Rondon’s face when he sees our two sorry carcasses staggering out of the jungle. That will be worth all the trouble.”

  The old man leaned closer, smoothed the hair from Kermit’s brow.

  “The sun will rise in just a few hours, you know. Let’s be ready for it, shall we? Sleep.”

  With that, he brushed Kermit’s eyelids down. He couldn’t do anything, though, about Kermit’s brain, which churned away at full speed, plotting the next course of action. The only remaining course now was to wait—wait—until Father, the last remaining obstacle, was asleep.

  It didn’t take long, as it turned out. A matter of mere minutes before that ocean swell of snoring rose up from the other side of the hut. Kermit’s eyes sprang open. He counted to five. Then, with a grim resolve, he swung his legs out of the hammock—too quickly, for they dissolved beneath him and left him in an inglorious heap on the ground. Silently cursing, he cast his eyes toward the other hammock. The Colonel still slumbered.

  Kermit peppered his legs from ankle to hip with light slaps, until he could feel a modicum of blood flowing. Then, using one of the hut poles as an anchor, he hoisted himself to his feet—stood there swaying like a stalk of corn. His eyes, circling the hut’s interior, locked on his own rifle propped against the wall. Just the walking stick he was looking for.

  Kermit made three long steps toward the doorway. But as he ducked his head through the opening, his body once again spilled out from under him, and he was reduced to crawling. Never mind, he thought. It may not have been the most dignified position, but he had his rifle, he had some rudiments of his wits. He had a purpose.

  He would kill the Beast. He would kill it once and for all. Because there was no one else who could.

  With that in mind, it was no great hardship to crawl across the village clearing, peering around woodpiles and trash heaps for … he didn’t yet know. But he would know it when he found it.

  He crawled past the chief’s hut, crawled over the freshly disturbed soil that covered the Colonel’s pit. He crawled down trails of moon and starlight. At length, by a stack of fish cages, he found a campfire, darting and crackling in the dark. A small figure was hunched over it.

  Thiago, his knees drawn to his chin.

  Kermit held back, but the boy turned and found him. A smile scrawled across his face.

  “Boa noite,” said Thiago.

  Grimacing, Kermit seated himself by the fire, rubbed his numb hands. “Você não pode dormir?” he asked. You can’t sleep?

  Thiago shrugged, gave the fire a pair of pokes. Then, with a crook of his mouth, he pointed to the plaster on Kermit’s chest.

  “Posso … posso tocar?” he asked. May I touch?

  Kermit nodded. The boy’s fingers landed as lightly as the legs of a fly.

  “Uma cobra?” asked Thiago.

  “Sim.”

  “Doi?” asked Thiago. Does it hurt?

  “Um pouco.”

  With some hesitation, Thiago pointed at his own chest. “Um pouco,” he said.

  Kermit’s brain was too foggy to catch the meaning at first. Then it hit him: The boy has lost his father.

  “Seu pai,” he said. “Lamento.”

  The boy shrugged again, stared into the fire.

  “Minha mãe é viva,” he said. My mother lives.

  If he’d been any good at consolation, Kermit would have said … well, what, exactly? Your mother is a fine woman. No boy could ask for better. But he found himself incapable now of saying anything on the subject of Luz. He knew only that he owed her a debt. The greatest of debts.

  So, in the absence of words, he and Thiago sat in companionable silence. From time to time, Kermit would point to a chain of stars and recite its mythological name: Ursa Major, Orion, Cassiopeia. Thiago would supply his own name, some animal it reminded him of—jaguar, tamanduá, anta—and Kermit came to see that the boy wasn’t connecting the stars at all but finding the shapes in the spaces between, and it didn’t matter; it was enough just to see that finger of his and hear that softly abraded voice.

  Even this was more speech than they could sustain after a while, so they contented themselves with listening to the forest’s sounds. It was a fact that no matter how many days Kermit spent in the jungle, he heard a new sound every evening—something he’d never heard before. Tonight it was a long melancholy whistle, descending on a diatonic scale and then modulating upward. Within a minute it was gone, and the night air was filled with other noises: the humming of bees and sand flies, the sawing of crickets, bats flitting in the trees. The goatsuckers with their peculiar call: Wac-o-row, wac-o-row.

  And, from a nearby hut, sounds of a more intimate nature. Conjoined sounds: male and female. Celebrating their deliverance from the Beast perhaps. Kermit cast a look at Thiago, but the boy didn’t seem to hear anything. For a minute or two, his head lolled on the stem of his neck and then landed noiselessly on Kermit’s knee.

  Wouldn’t it be extraordinary? thought Kermit, resting his hand on the boy’s head. To bring Thiago back to the expedition. To see him claiming pride of place in Colonel Rondon’s canoe. To see him fall back in wonder before steamships, automobiles, ice cream … gaze in terror at the Atlantic Ocean. Such was Kermit’s fancy he could even imagine leading the boy by the hand through the Madrid railway station, wrapped in a thin cotton blanket that had been filched from one of the ship’s cabins. Oh, he could just see him, staring up at that lovely yellow-haired lady with the parasol.

  Belle, Kermit would whisper. I’ve brought a little guest.

  Smiling, he reached around the back of his neck for that familiar pouch. The letters were still there. He closed his eyes, imagined her voice sailing toward him across the ocean, joining with the symphony of night sounds—

  Just like that, the symphony stopped.

  Kermit shook himself back to ale
rtness. The campfire had flared in a great parabola, as if someone were fanning it with a bellows. But, on closer inspection, it wasn’t oxygen that made the flames billow—it was the creatures of the Amazon jungle. Insect after insect, rushing to its destruction.

  Never in his days had Kermit beheld such a sight. A cavalry of moths and wasps and hornets and gnats and piums, flying straight into the fire. And, on the ground below, a swarm of ants and beetles, mites and millipedes, scorpions and spiders, filing one by one into their crematorium. With each sacrifice, the flames grew higher and the surrounding air buckled and bubbled. The heat was so intense that Kermit had to drag himself away, and even as he moved, his eye snagged on the one element that didn’t fit with the others.

  A single snowflake tumbling from the sky. Settling on the fire’s peak and resting there.

  How long he sat! Watching that absurd snowflake. Waiting for it to melt, willing it to melt. But it only hung there, uncharred, in the fire’s embrace. So transfixing a sight that he never noticed the change that had grown about him until, like a man bursting through water, he leaped to his feet.

  He caught his breath, looked down. Thiago was gone. He swung his head around. The village, too, was gone—vanished into air.

  He snatched up a branch, plunged it into the fire until it became a torch. Then he swung the torch in wild arcs, waiting for something to blaze into view—a hut, an ash heap, a bone. Nothing. It was as if the whole village had been carried away in the night. Or had never been.

  “Thiago,” he whispered. “Thiago…”

  In a spasm of terror, he grabbed his rifle. Some part of him would have loved to fire off a round—ten rounds—for the whole jungle had lost its voice. No toads, no crickets, no monkeys. Not a single mosquito chittering in his ear. And rising up on every side, the forest’s cobalt ramparts, fixed and cold.

  For some time, Kermit stood listening. With an air of expectation, as if someone had arranged to meet him there.

  From the undergrowth came a rustling. As he turned toward the sound, he could feel all his senses squeezing down to a point. Something was out there—just bleeding into his sight line.