She stared, forgetting the mystery of the temple. The ringleader himself, here. Ducking low, she watched through the fronds of dead foliage as the talk went on down there, Tommy and Luz now explaining some sort of situation to the other Indians, Kirby explaining, even Innocent St. Michael explaining. People started to point at Valerie.
Well, not at Valerie, but certainly uphill. Toward the village, it must be, because the whole group, still talking and explaining, set out en masse, moving in this direction.
What should she do? Crouched on her hilltop, watching the Indians and the villains climb the slope, she wondered what would be best. Hide in one of the huts, or stay away from the village until after Galway and St. Michael had gone?
They were getting closer, their voices rising toward her. Clear on the afternoon air came the sound of Kirby Galway’s voice. Unmistak' ably she heard him pronounce one word:
“Sheena.”
Betrayed! By whom? It didn’t matter. But now Valerie understood why Galway and St. Michael were here; they had come to finish the job their minions had started, there could be no doubt about that. Like the startled deer she was, Valerie rose and ran.
Downhill, fleet as the wind. Hoping Rosita wasn’t her betrayer, hoping none of the Indians she had come to like and admire in the last nine days had done this terrible thing, Valerie scrambled down the back side of the nomtemple. Nervously missing her footing here and there, she hurried on, fright bringing bile to her throat.
The huts were ahead. There was no help now, not even from the villagers, who were somehow or other in Kirby Galway’s thrall. Every man’s hand, it seemed, was turned against Valerie Greene, yes, and every woman’s too, and probably most of the children.
The village was deserted. There was no place to hide, no sense trying to stay. The prospect of wandering in the wilderness once more was daunting, but not as daunting as the inexorable approach of Kirby Galway and Innocent St. Michael. She had to run for it; that’s all she could do.
Rosita had been making tortillas outside her hut, now cooling on a flat stone. Grabbing them up—who knew when she’d find food again—Valerie tucked them inside her repaired blouse, leaped the little stream, and plunged into the woods.
12 IT HAPPENED ONE AFTERNOON
Innocent sat on a flat stone, catching his breath. All about him, the Indians were in fevered motion, running in and out of huts, splashing through the stream, yelling at one another, slapping their children, kicking their dogs. Kirby Galway paced back and forth like a pirate captain on his bridge, shouting orders, barking commands, pointing this way and that, and being mostly ignored. The two men and one woman in the village who spoke English stood in the middle of it all arguing at the tops of their voices, though not in English, so it didn’t help.
Long before the finish, Innocent knew how it would end. The question was, when it happened would he believe it?
On the other hand, what was there at all to believe about this day? Himself, to begin with, he found utterly incredible. He had committed—or had attempted to commit—physical violence. He, Innocent St. Michael, a man who had always prided himself on his subtlety, a man who let his brains do his fighting and let his money hire what physical labor had to be done. He had committed—or had attempted to commit—a major felony, and not for personal profit. He had committed—or had attempted to commit—a crime of passion! Him! Innocent St. Michael! Passion!
Attempted; attempted; attempted; hadn’t even done the job right. Ten times he had fired at Kirby Galway and ten times he had missed. Well, nine and a half. One little scratch on the shoulder that Kirby carried on about as though he’d been crippled for life, before finally calming down and swearing all over again that he had absolutely, positively not killed Valerie Greene.
There were reasons at least to believe that last part, which Kirby had elucidated for him in several repetitive shouted sentences. First, if he had murdered Valerie Greene and Innocent had found him out, there was absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t now go ahead and murder Innocent as well. Second, even if he’d had time to plot a murder with Innocent’s driver, the fellow was still Innocent's driver and Kirby would have been crazy to trust him with such a dangerous request. And third, Kirby now believed that Valerie Greene wasn’t dead after all but was living in an Indian village under the name Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
So hither they had come, hope and skepticism fighting in Innocent’s breast, to be surrounded by bright'eyed curious villagers, to be assured that yes, Sheena was living with them, she was right over the hill there—Kirby’s hill, Innocent had noted, wondering if it meant anything—and on to the village they had come, for the onset of pandemonium. Once the running and shouting and general disarray started Innocent had merely sat down on a flat stone outside one of the huts to catch his breath, knowing how it would end and wondering if he would believe it when it happened.
Which at last it did. The village had grown quieter, and here was Kirby standing spraddledegged before him, the very icon of frustrated generalship. “She’s gone,” he said.
Innocent looked up at him; he had mostly regained his breath by now. “The question is,” he said, “do I believe it?”
Kirby looked exasperated to the point of violence. “And just when, goddam it,” he said, “was I supposed to have set up this one?”
“Your gun'toting pal Manny,” Innocent suggested. “He has a radio there at that house. He got on it as soon as we took off, he called here—”
“There’s no radio here,” Kirby said, and waved his arms extravagantly. “Search the goddam place yourself, Innocent. We never put a radio in because we didn’t want to attract attention.”
A fact—if it was a fact—that Innocent stowed away in his brain for later consideration. “There are other radios in this world,” he said. “Perhaps only half a mile from here, some friend of yours. Manny called him, told him to pass on the story he’d heard you tell me, about the white woman living in an Indian village, and the villagers calling her Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and— Kirby, many people would not believe that story.”
“They’d all be wrong,” Kirby said.
“Let me ask you something,” Innocent said. “You were here the day before yesterday, they told you about Sheena living with them in their village, and you didn't go look at her.”
“I didn’t believe it,” Kirby said.
“So why should I?”
“Because I saw a white woman after, when I flew over. I told you that, Innocent. I wasn’t sure then, but now you tell me Valerie Greene disappeared, and the degenerate you gave her to has skipped the country, and—”
“All right, Kirby, all right.” Innocent felt very tired, rather sad, oddly ineffectual. “But all at once she’s gone. She was here, but not now. Why?”
“She don’t trust you,” the English-speaking Indian—Rosita—said, suddenly with them, pointing a sharp-boned finger at Kirby. “She told me all about how you cheated Wintrop Cartwright.”
Kirby blinked. “Who?”
“The man she was gonna marry,” Rosita said.
Innocent lifted his head at that, and looked at this sharp-featured skinny girl. “She was going to marry someone?”
“Wintrop Cartwright.” Rosita smiled at Innocent, apparently finding something pleasing there. “He’s a rich man like her papa, but old. That’s why she run away. She’s a pilot, you know.”
Innocent shook his head. “This is ridiculous,” he told Kirby. “If the woman does exist, she’s the wrong woman.”
“Wait a minute,” Kirby said, and turned to Rosita. “Listen,” he said, “you people just called her Sheena as a nickname, right?”
“It was Tommy’s idea,” she said. “He’s the reader.”
“So what was her real name?”
Rosita thought a second: “Valerie.”
Innocent looked at her, trying to see inside that narrow head. Kirby said, “What was her last name?”
“How do I know? I just called her Sheena. She liked it.”
/>
“But her real name,” Kirby insisted, “was Valerie.”
“And she told me all about you,” Rosita said. “How you don’t really have no crazy wife in an asylum anywheres, you’re just taking advantage of me.”
Innocent frowned deeply at this new development. “A crazy wife? What crazy wife?”
“Never mind,” Kirby said hastily. “The point is, Innocent, her name is Valerie, and she took off either because she’s afraid of you or she’s afraid of me. Any case, she saw us coming.”
“She has no reason to be afraid of me,” Innocent said.
Rosita said, “Maybe she thought you were here to take her back to her papa, make her marry Wintrop.”
Kirby said, “Wait a second, light is beginning to dawn. Valerie was on the run—probably from that driver of yours, Innocent—and she was afraid to tell the truth, didn’t know who she could trust, so she told these clowns the old runaway heiress plot, and they bought it.” “That’s just what she is!” Rosita said, happy to confirm the truth. “She didn’t want to marry that Wintrop, so she got in her plane and flew away, but then she got in a storm and crashed in the Maya Mountains over there and walked and walked and walked for days and then we found her. And she made us swear we wouldn’t tell, and then she told us the truth.”
“The truth,” Kirby said. “The runaway heiress story.”
“Too many stories going around,” Innocent said.
Rosita looked off westward, toward the blue'shouldered Maya Mountains. “We’ll find her pretty soon, I think,” she said. Innocent sat up straighten “You do? Why’s that?”
“Stand up a second,” she told him.
Innocent frowned at Kirby, who shrugged. So Innocent shrugged, and stood up, and Rosita looked at the flat stone where he’d been sitting and said, “Yeah, they’re gone.”
Innocent looked at the flat stone, at Kirby, and at Rosita. He said, “May I sit down?”
“Sure.”
“What’s gone?” Kirby said.
“Sheena’s got this throat problem or lungs or something,” Rosita explained, “so she can’t smoke, so if we turn on sometimes she can’t join in, you know?”
“And?” said Kirby, while Innocent reflected that for Kirby a crazy wife would be redundant.
Rosita said, “So I promised I’d make her some pot tortillas, but I never got around to it till today. They’re pretty strong, you know.”
“You made pot tortillas today?” Kirby asked.
“Yeah, and put them on that rock and now they’re gone. Sheena must of took them.” Rosita looked westward again, toward where the shadows lengthened on the steep faces of the mountains. “She won’t get very far,” she said.
13 SOME ASPECTS OF
PHARMACOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE
“Vaaaalllberie! Oh, VaaaalllUerie!” “Sing,” Valerie sang, under her breath, beneath her breath, down among the mushrooms of her mind. “Sing to me, and sing to me, and then I’ll run away. Oop!”
Down again. Another scratch on the same knee. Not treating this model well at all, take it into the shop they’ll say, Jeepers, lady, where you been driving this model? Mountaintops and bellyflops, a poor white convertible upside down with its whitewalls spinning, uphob stery all muddy, scratches on the fenders, this is a dent, lady. “VaaaalllLerie! It’s Ro^eee'ta! It’s o\-kaaaayyyyln “Vrrooommm,” Valerie said, giggling at the idea of having the idea of being a car, and from somewhere above and behind her left shoulder she watched herself go up the jungly slope on all fours. Mud, dirt, roots, dangling branches. Little buggies scuttling out of the way of her Donald Duck hands. Wflap! Wflap! Big webbed hands out of the sky. Still light in the sky, dark blue light, sun gone away to the other side of the mountain, waiting over there for Valerie. Vaaaalllberie, I’m waiting. Here I come, here I come, here I come.
Ridge. Downslope. Climb a tree trunk to verticality, vertiginous verticality, the ground darker than the sky, her feet way far down there in the pool of darkness, puddles of night all around her feet. The calling voices were fainter, but could still be heard, the beacon behind her that gave her direction. Keep the voices between her shoulder^ blades, hurry the opposite way.
Splop. Splash'splop. Stream; water. Chuckles down from the right, scurries on off to the left, white rabbits down the hideyhole. Follow? No, go the other way. Where’d those rabbits come from? Hide with Mister Rabbit at home.
Splush, splush, splush. Water cold and nice on the cuts, running around her shins, ribbons in a wind tunnel. Stop a minute, kneel in the water, get her hands and arms all clean, throw water on her heated face. Sssss, steam from her heated face—just kidding. Stones on the bottom of the stream, though, that's no joke. Up again, up up up up up. On.
SiwiMence. Oh, siwiMence. How long has it been? Very very dark. No stream, no light. Reach out and touch a telephone pole. Step. Reach out; step.
Are there stars out tonight? Oh, gosh, oh^oh, don’t look up, it’s awfully dizzy up there!
Hungry all the time for some reason. Must be all this exercise. Pig out. Only three tortillas left between her blouse and her flesh, beneath her breasts. Munch and munch. A little dry and tough, but tasty. Satisfying.
A path. Yes? Yes. A narrow path angling downward, slightly to the left. Pitch black, can’t see your face in front of your head. Walk down the path, swing the arms, the last two tortillas stuck to her skin.
Ouch! Tripped right over that log, fell on a man! A man? Roll away— not with me you don’t, buster!
Flashlights came on, men’s voices, they’d been asleep or resting or what, Valerie gaped around at them, her little pinprick eyes staring in the flashlights, seeing the camouflage uniforms on the chunky little bodies, the weapons, the bush hats. Soldiers, British, Gurkhas. Gurkha patrol, is that a song? “Rescued!” Valerie said in cheerful surprise, and smiled happily, and her eyes rolled back in her head.
14 SAME AGAIN ALL AROUND
For a moment after he switched off the van’s engine, Vernon sat on in darkness, staring at the wall of the Fort George Hotel directly in front of himself and willing himself to be calm. He was going to do this, he was going to come out the other side, it was all going to be all right. All of it. All right. The chicken and rice he’d eaten for dinner at J.B.’s on the way down from Belmopan sat like an auto accident in his stomach, unmoving.
If only the village had not already been selected—the one the journalists would be visiting tomorrow. Vernon had done his best, but he’d been too late. The village had been selected, and it was not the one the Colonel had insisted the journalists must see.
What choice had he had? He was racing across a tightrope, high above the rocks with no net, already off balance, running forward as fast as he could because it was the only way not to fall. The other side, the other side, sooner or later he had to reach the other side. In the meantime, he could only keep running, keep improvising, try not to miss his step.
The wrong village. With great difficulty Vernon had arranged to be made the driver for tomorrow’s expedition. Then, using the absent Innocent St. Michael’s authority, he had also arranged to be ordered to come to Belize City tonight, ahead of time, staying at the Fort George along with the journalists, ostensibly so they could begin early tomorrow morning but actually so that Vernon would be beyond any countermanding orders. He would be the driver, and that’s all.
And he would make a mistake. An honest mistake. He would take the journalists to a different village, not the one the government had selected but very similar. A simple mistake that anyone might make. And then it would all be over, he would have reached the other side of the abyss, no more tightrope, firm ground at last.
Vernon whimpered, a little mewling sound. Behind him, the dozen empty seats of the van were filled with the ghosts of wrong turnings. He shuddered, and took the key from the ignition and his overnight bag from the floor space between the front seats, and got out onto the blacktop.
The desk clerk was both cold and obsequious; obsequious because Ve
rnon’s room was being paid for by a government department, suggesting power and authority, and cold because Vernon himself was so clearly nothing but a minor clerk. When I’m rich, Vernon thought, but this time the thought wouldn’t complete itself. Where was his rage? Sighing, he filled out the registration form, then showed his list to the desk clerk, saying, “These are journalists staying here, I must see them in the morning, you’ll—”
“I believe they are in the bar,” the desk clerk said, coldly and obsequiously.
So Vernon went to his room and unpacked, and went to the bathroom, and washed his hands and face and the back of his neck, and went to the bathroom, and took some antacid pills, and went to the bathroom, and changed his shirt, and combed his hair, and went to the bathroom, and washed his face, and turned out the light, and went down to the bar, where two of the large round black formica tables were occupied. The four silent gloomy beendrinking fellows at one table with their big red faces and big red knees jutting from both ends of their short'trousered British Army uniforms were certainly not journalists, whereas the seven oddly assorted people clustered around the other table, all talking at once, nobody listening, certainly were. Vernon went over and stood beside that group, waiting for a simultaneous pause in all seven monologues, or for someone to notice him.
Someone noticed him; a skinny sharp-nosed gray-faced man in a safari shirt and bush jacket and U.S. Army fatigue trousers and Hush Puppies, who looked up, saw Vernon, and in an East London accent said, “Right. Same again all round, then.”
“I’m not a waiter,” Vernon said.
“No? Then be off with you.” The man turned back to his chattering companions.
“I’m your driver,” Vernon said.
“The hell you say.” The man looked him up and down. “And where am I going, then?”
“Requena,” Vernon said. The settlement was called that because it was the last name of the majority of the settlers.
Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 Page 23
