by Tim Weed
Once I’ve fought the fish into the boat I cradle it gently in the clear water of the holding tank. It’s a big one, probably forty-two or forty-three inches from nose to tail. It rests under the water with its gills flaring, luminous, tranquil, like a platinum missile with five black stripes running along its muscular fuselage.
“I hope you’re not thinking of letting that go,” the client says from the platform.
“Actually, I am.”
“Look. I’ve been fishing all afternoon, and I haven’t had a nibble. Seems like it would be nice to bring something back to show for my trouble. Would you mind if I kept it?”
I let out my breath and stare down at the striper. “If you would reel in your line just a bit faster, like I told you, I can pretty much guarantee you’d bring in a bluefish.”
“Who’s paying for this trip, anyway? I forget. You or me?”
I look up. Some time in the last hour he’s put on a long-billed fishing cap, like the one Hemingway used to wear, and his eyes are hidden behind the aviators. But the corners of his mouth are compressed in a sour little smile that reminds me of my second grade teacher, Mrs. Bergeron.
“You’re paying,” I say calmly. “But I’m pretty sure you didn’t catch this fish.”
“No, that’s correct,” he conceded. “But you did. And your time is costing me a lot of money, isn’t it?”
The fish awaits its destiny, fins and tail fluttering patiently to and fro as I grip it lightly in the cold sea-water. The customer’s always right. That’s the first thing you learn when you try to make a living in the service business.
I lift the noble creature out of its native medium and set it dripping on the deck. It senses the end and panics, flopping vigorously and throwing itself around until I manage to wrestle it under control and press my knee onto the cool scales of its side to keep it down. I pick up the truncheon, hesitate for a second, then bring it down hard on the golden skull. Its body quivers along its entire length. The broad, slightly forked tail comes up and slaps the deck three times. Clenching my teeth, I whack the beautiful fish twice more to be sure it’s dead. Then I pick it up and drop it in the holding tank. Blood fumes from its gills, staining the brine a shameful pink.
I wipe my hands with a rag and walk back to the pilot’s chair. I’ve killed hundreds of fish, maybe thousands, but habit doesn’t necessarily make it easier. And I don’t like to kill stripers. Especially when it’s against my better judgment, and for the purposes of impressing the golf buddies of a man like Jay Clawson.
Just then something strikes me hard on the forehead. Through a blinding red haze of pain it dawns on me that I’ve been hit by the client’s bomber. He’s on the platform with his back to me, calmly reeling in his line.
“Be more careful, chief,” I say, rubbing my forehead. There’s already a good-sized egg rising where the lead-core plug hit.
He doesn’t hear me, or pretends not to. When the bomber is a foot from the end of the rod he whips it back and flings it out. This time it sails true and lands just short of the rip. I try again, raising my voice over the roar and slap of the ocean so there can be no question about whether or not he hears me. “Hey, Clawson. You hit me with your plug on that last cast. Watch what the hell you’re doing, okay?”
He stops mid-reel. His shoulders rise and fall, a long sigh. Then he puts the rod down on the platform and turns to face me.
“Pick up that rod and finish reeling it in,” I say. “Don’t leave it there unless you want to replace it when it falls off.”
He glances down at the rod and then back at me. “I’m docking half your fee.”
“You’re what?”
“On your website you claim to be an experienced guide. I haven’t caught a single fish, and you’ve made no effort to help me. It’s ridiculous. Now you’re resorting to verbal abuse. I’ll pay you half the stated fee, and if you have a problem with that, you can call my lawyer.”
I let out my breath. Just then the line catches and my four hundred dollar spinning rig rolls off the platform and disappears into the sea with a gentle splash. The rest of the world recedes. It’s just the two of us on my rocking boat, with the island a low, green haze in the distance across the dancing shimmer of water. I can hear the roar of the rip but it seems far away, nearly drowned out by the ringing in my ears.
Like me, the Coast Guard officers and sheriff’s deputies live out here year-round. They know very well that terrible and unexpected things can happen at sea. The ocean is a hungry and capricious mistress; there’s no use spending too much time or effort questioning her appetites. And of course, no one will ever suspect foul play. Because what motive could there possibly be?
I radio for a cutter and a helicopter, but none of us can find Clawson. We search until the tide slackens, and after that there’s really no point. If he ever does come to the surface, it’s likely to be pretty far from where he went under. By the time I point the boat back to the marina, it’s nearly dusk. The rip has subsided to a gentle riffle, like a country trout stream in the middle of the green Atlantic.
MOUTH OF THE TROPICS
PUERTO AYACUCHO is a port more than a thousand miles from any ocean. Stranded like flotsam on the muddy banks of the Orinoco, it is the Venezuelan embarkation point for the network of rivers that are the only highways through the vast jungles of the northern Amazon basin. It is a frontier town, and it has the raw, lawless edge you would expect of such a place, but its violence lies mainly under the surface, stifled by the fevers and the heat, waiting to bubble up and attach itself to you in unexpected and permanent ways. The town is hot as the surrounding rainforest never is; the heat rises up from the pavement and presses down from the unshaded sun. After rain it can be oppressively humid, even early in the morning, as it was on the morning after Meech arrived. He’d showered at the hotel but already he could feel his linen shirt clinging to his back and armpits as he strode through barrios of corrugated tin shacks to the market center. The air was dank with the smell of raw sewage—a familiar smell, though he knew it would take him a few days to get accustomed to it. With each step his sandals sucked the asphalt and he couldn’t avoid splashing through puddles of stagnant water, imagining as he did so microscopic waterborne larvae burrowing unnoticed into the flesh of his feet, only to emerge, months later, as thick, hairy flies.
At the entrance to the open-air market a group of mestizo teenagers wearing heavy metal T-shirts watched him with lazy menace from the stoop of an open storefront. Meech strode past them into the crowd, feeling the uncomfortable contact of sweaty flesh on his chest and back. A large black woman shoved past balancing a melon saddled in cloth on her head. He followed in her wake as she barged through the murmuring crowd until he spotted the vendor he was looking for, a tall old man standing beside a cart of fried arepas. Meech veered and held his ground against the shifting press of humanity, leaning his thighs against the cart as he waved to get the man’s attention. The smell of frying masa dough brought back pleasant memories, and he reflected that, as job-related travel went, he had it pretty good.
He held up three fingers. The old man put three steaming arepas in a brown paper bag and Meech mouthed the word for coffee. The man smiled in a friendly, gap-toothed way, filled a styrofoam cup, and handed it across the cart. Meech raised the cup in a silent toast to his old friend, the arepa man. Both hands occupied, he used his chest and shoulders to open a channel through the shifting mob of tanktops and guayaberas until the crowd began to thin out, and he was back at the entrance to the market. He stood on the curb under the stares of the idle teenagers, chewing the arepas and gulping the sweet coffee.
Dr. Juan Sánchez pulled up in a beige Land Cruiser with the university insignia painted on the door. He leaned over to roll down the passenger-side window, trademark aviator sunglasses perched on his forehead, raven hair tied back in a ponytail. Meech felt the cold rush of air conditioning as he chased the final arepa with the last of the coffee and climbed into the Cruiser. Sánchez put the
truck in gear and steered them through the crowded streets to the outskirts of town. The Cruiser was clean and hermetic, like a space capsule or a diving bell; Meech sighed and leaned back against the cool leather seat. It was the first time he’d been able to relax since he’d boarded the plane at Logan Airport twenty-four hours ago. He needed something big from this trip, a result he could build the rest of his career on. The department chair had been making that clear enough recently in his mild, oblique way; one more research trip to South America with no original findings and Meech doubted another grant would be forthcoming. It was entirely possible that the rest of his tenure would be spent teaching undergraduate biology, or perhaps, if he was lucky, cataloging pollution-related mutations among the amphibians of the Charles River watershed.
Sánchez was his best hope to escape that fate. They’d met six years earlier at a biodiversity conference in San Diego. A University of Caracas ethnobotanist specializing in Amazonia, he maintained a large and useful network of contacts among the indigenous villages. He and Meech had traveled together on several previous research trips, and they were frequently in touch by e-mail.
It didn’t take long for them to reach the edge of the rainforest, where the road sliced into the looming wall of vegetation like a machete-wound. Meech could hear the cicadas even with the windows up. The whole forest throbbed with the sound. Even the road seemed to vibrate under the wheels of the Land Cruiser.
He turned to the Venezuelan. “So where’re we going?”
“I think we should try Esmeralda.”
“That’s a Ye’kwana village, right?”
Sánchez nodded. “It’s about six hours upriver, near the junction with the Rio Negro.”
“They haven’t captured a specimen by any chance, have they?”
The Venezuelan grinned. “You know they don’t think of it that way, Meech. And no, they haven’t caught any. Bright-red creatures are considered bad medicine. The Indians keep their distance.”
“But they’ve reported seeing the rana roja recently?”
“Reports. Nothing substantiated.”
Meech nodded, drumming his fingertips on the dashboard. The rana roja was the reason for his trip. He’d never seen one, but there was a history of sightings along the upper Orinoco and its tributaries. Most of the reports were ambiguous, secondhand, shrouded in layers of myth and superstition, but what had captured his interest—and what had proved decisive in getting the travel grant—was that the hearsay was consistent: a bright-red tree frog with a pattern of black, diamond-shaped markings on its back. Such dorsal markings were definitive and unique. If the rana roja existed, in other words, it was a nondescript species—unknown to science. Meech intended to collect the first specimen.
He awoke to something wet and unpleasantly sticky lapping his face. “Off!” he growled, waving his arm to brush away whatever it was. Then he opened his eyes and experienced a moment of panicky disorientation. It took him a moment to get his bearings. He’d been asleep in the prow of Sanchez’s hardwood dugout, motoring up the Orinoco River toward Esmeralda. He put his hand to his cheek and picked off one of the mango peels Sánchez had been tossing to wake him up. The Venezuelan was at the rudder, grinning and pointing with his free hand at something upriver. The engine was running at a low purr.
Meech turned in the prow and saw the smooth ocher trunk of an overhanging indio desnudo tree. He turned back to Sánchez with a shrug and the Venezuelan nodded and put his finger to his mouth. Meech looked again and this time he saw the constrictor, a yellow-gray snake with geometric dorsal saddles coiled in the shade on the trunk like a stack of tires. At the top of the stack, a cinnamon tuft of fur was just visible, and as they approached Meech made out the scalp and forehead of a red howler monkey, Alouatta seniculus, black eyes peering in dull disbelief over the rim of the coil. The dugout passed beneath the tree and the scientists gazed back at the spectacle until a bend in the river obscured it.
Sánchez sighed happily. He had the proud, eager-to-please temperament of a good host.
“Maybe it’s a positive omen,” Meech said.
“I wouldn’t have guessed you’d be one to believe in omens.”
“I don’t. I was being facetious.” Meech yawned and started to let one of his hands trail in the lukewarm water, then thought better of it and rested it on the edge of the dugout. “So do you think this frog is the real thing, amigo? Think we can capture one in Esmeralda?”
“I don’t know, we’ll have to see. I have no doubt that it could exist. There’s one thing I haven’t told you, though. My Ye’kwana contacts say it has a stinger.” Sánchez tossed the rest of the mango overboard.
“You mean it has poisonous glands in its skin?”
“No, they say stinger—like a wasp or a scorpion.”
“And you believe them?”
“Why not? The Ye’kwana have no reason to lie to me.”
Meech chuckled. “Amphibians don’t have stingers, Juan. It’s physiologically impossible. Certain tree frogs have glands in their skin that excrete poison. Even so, to get enough venom to cause more than a mild rash in humans, you have to boil the skin. But you know all this.”
“Maybe it’s not physiological. Maybe it’s a spiritual stinger, or a supernatural one. But if the Ye’kwana say it’s real, then believe me—one way or another, it’s real.”
Meech shrugged and leaned back against the ribbed slope of the prow. Juan Sánchez was a trained biologist with a Ph.D. from Ohio State, but his empirical rigor was often undermined by a childlike credulity that Meech found touching. His worldview was expansive, encompassing the belief that anything was possible in Amazonia—from cancer cures to lost tribes—and Meech was inclined to hold his tongue rather than shatter such lovely illusions. Among his colleagues in the competitive world of academic biology, the Venezuelan was the closest thing he had to a friend.
The motor was propelling them upstream at a good clip, and the wind on his face was cool and dense, almost liquid-feeling. He inhaled deeply, imagining the extra oxygen coming off the massed vegetation all around. The cicadas were stirring up a loud metallic chorus from the tangled lianas and poor man’s umbrellas walling the banks of the river, and he concentrated on trying to internalize the sound, as he had on previous trips, so that it would fade to a mere background hum: a cyclical soundtrack driving him forward to the completion of his task.
He drifted slowly into sleep and dreamed of the rana roja. It was a gigantic specimen, scarlet and translucent as it gripped the side of the canoe with its suctioned toe-pads and peered at him with one huge eye. It hoisted itself up and slid silently into the boat facing him, dripping mucous water into the vee of the hull, the black, diamond-shaped markings on its back heaving rhythmically as it breathed. It adopted the expression of a solicitous physician and pulled a surgeon’s mask over its wide, amphibian mouth. Meech felt strangely calm. The frog furrowed its brow and leaned over him with a large syringe.
“What’s that for, Doc?” he asked, in the dream.
As they motored past the stilted shacks marking the edge of the Esmeralda colonia, Meech climbed into the waist of the dugout to assemble his equipment: stacked tupperware containers with mesh airholes on the lids; vials of isopropyl alcohol, formaldehyde, and a special solution for preserving genomic samples; a field dissection kit; and a fishing net with a threaded handle he screwed onto a telescoping aluminum pole. He hoped the stopover would be brief. The land upriver was technically Ye’kwana territory—though he knew that most people ignored such legal designations in the wilds of Amazonia—and Sánchez had insisted they stop out of respect for the tribal elders.
The village occupied a blackwater lake fed by a side canal lined with tall Mauritius palms. A half-dozen mocha-skinned children dove into the canal—the water let off the familiar, mild, raw-sewage smell—and swam a little way out toward the dugout as it motored past, through the clustered shanties to the Asociación, a stilted shack slightly larger than the others and distinguished by
a roof of corrugated tin rather than thatch. Meech seized the bowline, leapt onto the dock, and tied the dugout to one of the stilts. A Ye’kwana with bowl-cut hair and a deeply pockmarked face shook the travelers’ hands but avoided eye contact. Sánchez introduced himself in Spanish, and the Ye’kwana led them into the shack to meet the tribal council, which had been alerted to their visit by sentries posted downriver.
Inside, eight tribal elders clad in mustard-colored loincloths sat with their backs to the walls on a horseshoe of rough-hewn benches. There was no obvious place to sit, so Meech and Sánchez remained standing in the middle of the room. The shack had no electric lighting, but sunlight filtered in through gaps in the hardwood planking, illuminating the entire convocation in bright horizontal stripes. Sánchez spoke with his head bowed in a quiet, formal Spanish that struck Meech as unnecessarily submissive—it wasn’t as if they were asking for all that much. He understood enough to get the gist of the conversation: Sánchez respectfully asking permission to continue upriver; a white-haired elder who Meech assumed was the presidente nodding serenely; Sánchez gesturing toward Meech, calling him an eminent scientist from the United States, and inquiring about any recent sightings of the rana roja; Sánchez breaking the ensuing silence with a reminder of their good intentions; an angry exchange between the three elders and the toothless presidente, conducted in Ye’kwana so that Meech had no hope of understanding it; the presidente addressing Sánchez with an emphatic chopping gesture; and, finally, more silence.
Sánchez was quiet as he steered the dugout down the canal through the shanties back to the main artery of the river. Meech was puzzled.
