Roosevelt's Beast

by Louis Bayard

  Through every quadrant of jungle now, the pursuers were coming hard on. Kermit crouched at the precipice, uttered a wordless prayer, then flung himself over.

  He felt the earth flying away, his bare chest scraping against the rock. Flailing, gasping, he pushed out still wider, the vine scalding his hands as he slid down. Blood bubbled from his palms, but in the next instant his feet found a cranny. Emboldened, he flung himself out again, spilling out another freshet of blood, thicker than the last, spidering down his forearms.

  From below, he could hear the old man calling his name, but his eyes were fixed on that tiny promontory just above. The little shelf of rock where, any second, the Cinta Larga would be converging.

  How would they first show themselves? A hand? A head?

  But what appeared finally wasn’t human at all but an arrow, of supernal sleekness, tipping downward like a dowsing rod in search of water, locking him in its sights.

  By now Kermit was no longer rappelling, he was sliding down the rock, and the vine was whipsawing in and out of his grip, and his hands were boiling with blood, but all he could see was that pitiless shaft, silently tracking him, preparing to fire.

  “Stop,” he hissed. “Stay off.”

  In the same breath, though, he knew there was only one retort. The steel barrel he’d jammed into his belt loops before descending.

  Father’s rifle.

  If he could just fire off a shot—a single warning shot—he might buy the time he needed to get to the water. But how to manage it?

  Wincing, he gripped the vine more tightly, swiveled his legs in every direction, seeking a ledge, an outcropping—anything—but all he got were more contusions … until, with a joggle of surprise, he found himself standing on a lip barely wide enough to support his weight.

  He gazed up the side of the cliff. The arrow was still in plain view, still aiming straight down at him. Using the vine as a brace, Kermit planted his feet, drew out the rifle, centered the arrow in his sights. No need to hit it, he reminded himself. Just make some noise.

  And yet his finger hesitated in the act of pulling the trigger, and it seemed to him that the arrow, too, was hesitating, trembling with cross-purpose. Time shrank down to a small, still point, infinite in its possibilities, so that afterward it was impossible to say who fired first, because everything played out in the same endlessly unfolding instant: the arrow singing down and the bullet screaming up and his own body flinging itself outward.

  And a face … a face, pushing out from the promontory’s edge and then disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

  Thiago’s face.

  Untethered from rock and vine, Kermit dropped straight and true, his body curled as softly as a sleeper’s, and his eyes … his eyes open the whole way down … taking in everything. The arrow, sticking from the ledge he had just occupied. Directly above it, the miasma of smoke from his rifle blast, blanketing the rock like the most porous of cotton.

  And there … through the smoke … a single arm. Small, still. Draped over the cliff’s edge.

  * * *

  HE FELL INTO DARKNESS. The old familiar.

  Then a new darkness—cool, tannic, beaded—bearing him along.

  And for an escort, look! Fire-hardened bamboo arrows, nearly six feet long, piercing the membrane just above his head and brushing his skin and raking his hair. Longing for him, but brought up short again and again by the strange dark medium that carried everything along.

  Water. He was swimming in water.

  With a convulsive movement, his head broke toward the sky. The air came shrieking into his lungs and pinned him to the river’s surface. Roused to a nearly erotic thirst, the arrows redoubled their whistling and crooning. With a martyr’s patience, he waited for that first blow … and listened, with something very close to disappointment, as the sound faltered and sickened and died away.

  Sorry … so sorry …

  He gulped down more air, squinted into the morning dazzle. On either side, the jungle was a sheer shadowless front of green. Ahead of him, a large rock was bobbing in the water.

  How curious. The rock was Father.

  Kermit opened his mouth to call out, but no words came. It didn’t matter. All things considered, this was quite a pleasant way to pass the morning, riding the river’s shoulders toward some unknown destination. It felt almost like home.

  If he felt his legs straining to keep him above water, if he felt the air dribbling from his lungs, if he felt the last of his reserves burning down to a tiny pyre … well, that felt like home, too.

  Voices were raining down.

  “Senhor Coronel! Senhor Coronel!”

  On the bank to his left, people had gathered. They were watching him with great interest.

  “Senhor Kermit!”

  Wrong man, he thought, with a suppressed giggle. The jungle was slipping past with mysterious swiftness, and the water ahead was beginning to wrinkle and roil, and from a distant veil of mist a dull roar went up. Why, he thought, it was just like the day he and Simplício went over the falls. Nothing to be done, was there? You let the water take you wheresoever it listeth. And if for some reason a branch should come along …

  * * *

  IN THE END, THE branch came for him.

  Not a branch, after all, but a hand, hooking around his shoulder. His eyes swam back into focus, and he saw that the hand belonged to the Colonel—Hello, Father!—and that the old man was at the tail end of a human chain extending all the way to shore, and that this chain comprised the tiny adamantine figure of Colonel Rondon and the bent-sycamore profile of good old Cherrie, and there were Lieutenant Lyra and Dr. Cajazeira and João and Juan and all the rest of the camaradas, all braided together, reaching for him, coaxing him out of the water, and stretching him across the white warm sands.

  He lay there for some time, coughing up water. His ears were ablaze with sound. Rondon’s woodpecker cadences:

  “Il ne faut pas entrer dans la jungle sans escorte.”

  His own father’s mollifying reply:

  “Ah oui, je m’excuse. Je l’ai oublié.”

  And the sound of his own words, still unspoken, clogging in his brain. It wasn’t until he was sitting up, spewing out the last draft of the Rio da Dúvida, that the words found a way out.

  “We must … leave … now.…”

  Then, because nobody seemed to be listening, he started to bellow. As loud as he could, in every language he knew.

  “If you value the lives of this expedition, you will leave at once!”

  26

  Say this much for Rondon. The gear was packed, and the canoes were ready to go. It was as if he had been planning for just such an eventuality. They had only to climb in and be off.

  Yet, to a mind as beset as Kermit’s, how slowly that process unfurled. Never before had the camaradas moved with such deliberation. Never before had the canoes been quite so balky or the paddles so clumsy, the breezes so contrary. Five minutes passed—ten, fifteen—and still they were lolling in the black water, as stymied as rabbits in a cage. And the whole while, the same injunction played itself out in Kermit’s brain.

  Don’t look back.… Don’t look back.…

  For he knew they would be there. He knew, too, that if he kept his eyes trained forward, in the direction of the current, he needn’t hear the whistling of their arrows, he needn’t see Thiago’s arm hanging off the cliff’s edge, he needn’t see the look in Luz’s eyes as she crumbled before him.…

  At last Rondon gave the command, and the men let out a ragged cheer as the river took hold and the canoes gathered speed. Only Kermit was silent.

  * * *

  AFTER ALL THESE WEEKS of deprivation, God was finally smiling on them. How else to explain why they made three kilometers before noon and another four that afternoon? The rain held off, and the sun hid itself behind every passing cloud, and whatever rapids they met were child’s play to what they had come across in the days and weeks before. One could almost imagine a chant rising from
each paddle in turn. Out … of the jungle … out … of the jungle …

  They brought in the boats with half an hour of daylight left. Kermit dragged his canoe to shore, then wandered down the shoreline for fifty or sixty yards, ostensibly looking for game, but really looking at nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Roosevelt!” Cherrie had followed him from a discreet distance. “I’ve brought you one of my shirts if you’d like to…”

  Kermit’s gaze tilted downward. What a shock to see his own torso! No longer soaked in blood, it was true, but bare as a beggar’s. Bruised and abraded and seared with a full day’s worth of Amazonian sun. Only now was the pain breaking through.

  “Thank you,” he murmured. “That’s very kind of you.”

  “You don’t mind my saying, you look done in.”

  “A bit, yes.”

  “We had quite despaired of you both.”

  “I don’t doubt.”

  “You’ll need another rifle, I expect.”

  Kermit stared down at his hands. “Yes. That would be just the thing.”

  “Dear God, what happened out there, Roosevelt?”

  What happened …

  If Kermit had ever possessed a tongue, now was the time to use it. Now was the time to speak of an orphan named Luz and an orphan named Thiago. A warrior named Anhanga and an old wretch named Bokra. A little girl who went to fetch cacao for her mother. A chief who looked like a bookmaker. A howler monkey with the saddest eyes you ever saw.

  A beast.

  The whole tale lay there, queued up on his tongue, ready for a confessor. And still he balked, for he could see what the end point would be. He would speak his piece, and Cherrie would nod and think all the thoughts that a resident of his world would think and would say nothing, nothing at all, and that silence would be the greatest rebuke of all.

  “Sorry,” said Kermit. “I can’t … I can’t quite…”

  Cherrie, with his natural tact, rushed right in.

  “Let’s have a nip of whiskey, shall we? Just the thing.”

  * * *

  SUPPER THAT EVENING WAS the usual paucity. One of the men had snagged a pair of catfish. Kermit had caught a side-necked turtle. The rest was crackers and palmito, plus a handful of Brazil nuts, painstakingly divided. They were done in less than five minutes. Nothing daunted, the Colonel reared up like the laird at a manorial feast.

  “Fills the old gullet!” he declared as he tossed down his plate and gave his belly a hard squeeze. “Couldn’t ask for better!”

  In a trance of horror, Kermit watched as the camaradas began to gather around the fire. He knew what was happening. This was, by common consent, the Colonel’s hour, the time for him to speak of old adventures. To most of the men, of course, the words were unintelligible, but the flavor of the words, that had become as hard for the camaradas to give up as their morning coffee. It didn’t matter that the Colonel had disappeared for two days under mysterious circumstances, that he had come back drenched in blood and even worse for wear. He was back now, and the words could once more flow.

  “Father,” said Kermit. “Perhaps tonight we might dispense with…”

  But the sight of all those shy smiling faces brought out all the old man’s volubility.

  “Well, don’t just stand there! Sit ye down! Now, it so happens I’ve been meaning to tell you boys about the first grizzly bear I ever shot. Has anyone ever seen a grizzly? No? Well, take it from me, you won’t want to meet one in a back alley. The claws alone, my friends! Shred you before you blink an eye, no lie.…”

  Just like that, the Colonel fell back into the old rhythms—as if everything that had happened in the jungle held no more sway over him than a dream.

  But it wasn’t a dream, Kermit wanted to say. It can’t be sloughed off. It can’t be talked away.

  “Picture it, now. He’s lying on a bed of spruces. Just waking up when we stumble across him. Well, I know as sure as I’m sitting here now, this is my God-given chance, so I take a bead right between the eyes—small, evil eyes they were—and I pull the trigger. Bam! Ball goes straight into his brain. Lord, but he jumped. Monstrous thing, too! Twelve hundred pounds if he was an ounce, I do not exaggerate.…”

  Kermit listened as long as he could. Then, without a word, he rose. He walked toward the river’s edge and watched the moon shimmering in the black water. He was still there an hour later when the Colonel came limping out.

  “There you are! I was hoping you’d be so good as to join us.”

  “Us?”

  “We won’t keep you more than a few minutes, I promise.”

  He found Cherrie and Colonel Rondon frowning by the campfire. He started to sit, then stood again, then lowered himself to a half crouch. One by one, his offenses scrolled out before him. Should he beg pardon now? Angle for clemency? Perhaps they would just leave him here in the jungle. That would be the height of mercy in the grand scheme of things.

  “Kermit,” said the old man, folding his hands behind his back. “I’ve called you here…”

  “Yes?”

  “Because my French is not up to the occasion.”

  “Your French…”

  “I mean for the purpose of speaking to Colonel Rondon. I must therefore entreat that you translate into Portuguese. Oh, no, Cherrie, don’t leave. You’ll need to hear this, too.”

  Knitting his hands behind his back, the old man squared his shoulders.

  “Gentlemen, regarding the events of the past two days—beginning, I mean, with the disappearance of Kermit and myself and concluding with our return—I would like to say that it is the fondest wish of both my son and me to put these events entirely behind us. If you take my meaning.”

  No, thought Kermit in the midst of translating. They don’t take your meaning.

  “I am puzzled,” said Rondon with a scowl. “Why must we overlook what has happened?”

  “My dear Colonel, I hope that, in reflecting upon our personal history, you will credit me with being as frank with you as any man could be. In this one instance, I fear I cannot be frank. Except to say that speaking of what has happened will bring no credit to anyone. Least of all…” He paused. “Least of all me. I should further add that any publicity accruing to these events might also bring unwanted exposure…” He paused once more. “… As I said, unwanted exposure to a tribe of savages who desire no part of our civilization. No, not even your telegraph wires, Rondon.”

  Kermit hesitated to translate that last part, but the Brazilian, true to his character, neither bridled nor smiled.

  “I recognize,” the old man went on, “that my request is contingent upon our making it out of this jungle. I tender the request, anyway, because it is my firm belief we will make it out. And with that in mind, I ask you both now, as a great personal favor to me, to remain ever silent on these recent events. Never to speak of them, never to write of them.”

  He turned his gaze back from the fire.

  “The log books, I hope, may be rewritten to elide or conceal our untimely disappearance. In this and in every other regard, I implore you to consign this unfortunate episode to oblivion.” As if to underscore his point, the Colonel kicked a shard of kindling into the fire, watched it flame up. “If you could give me your word as gentlemen, I should be your eternal servant.”

  Both Cherrie and Rondon were silent for a time. Then the Brazilian looked up.

  “You are asking us to lie, Colonel?”

  “I am asking you to omit. Surely, amidst the … the infinite gradations of human venality, that particular sin ranks low.” The old man kneaded the folds of his throat. “What happened out there belongs out there. The jungle has it; let the jungle keep it. And let us get about our business with all due haste.” He looked at each one in turn. “We still have history to make, gentlemen.”

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, A fit of shivering swept over Colonel Roosevelt as he climbed into the boat. By mid-afternoon, his temperature had climbed to 103 degrees, a new high. Dr. Cajazeira
wrapped him in a poncho, injected quinine straight into his belly, but the fever held on. Too weak even to lift his head, the old man lay in his dim tent, quivering and sweating, slipping in and out of delirium.

  That night, the officers took turns watching him. Cherrie was there when the old man began reciting a line from Coleridge, over and over: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree…” But Kermit was the one keeping watch when the old man startled awake as though a visitor had entered the room.

  “You can’t have him,” he hissed. “You can’t have him.…”

  God was no longer smiling on the Roosevelt-Rondon Expedition. The rapids returned, the insects feasted, the sun beat down, the rain beat down, the food dwindled to nothing. One of the oarsmen was murdered by another camarada.

  Hour by hour, Theodore Roosevelt slipped closer to death.

  Malaria raged inside him; the poison spread from his abscessed leg. He hadn’t enough strength now to stand, let alone walk. In the canoe, all he could do was lie across a row of food tins, with a pith helmet across his face. More than once, when the expedition had to halt to let him rest, the Colonel whispered (to no one in particular):

  “Go. Leave me here.”

  Until Kermit, reeling from his own malaria, growled, “You’ll leave with us, or I’ll carry you the whole way back.”

  When they reached Saõ João, they looked so much like savages themselves that the rubber tapper who spotted them feared for his life and turned his canoe to shore. It took Rondon jumping up and waving his cap and shouting assurances in immaculate Portuguese for the tapper to paddle out again.

  The Colonel was so enfeebled by now he could barely lift the helmet from his face. A dying king, that was the rubber tapper’s first guess, babbling in a strange tongue.

  “Pleased … to…”

  * * *

  ON THE AFTERNOON OF April 27, they reached their long-awaited destination: the confluence of the Rio da Dúvida with the Aripuanã. At the sight of Rondon’s relief party, the men in the boats flung their oars and stamped their feet and gave out terrible shouts of joy. Kermit tweezed open his sweat-caked eyelids and saw an American flag, fluttering like a dream.