by John Grisham
“I’m fluent. I speak Spanish, Ipica, and Machiguenga.”
“What is that?”
“The Machiguenga are natives in the mountains of Peru. I was there for six years. I had just become comfortable with the language when they evacuated me.”
“Why?”
“Guerrillas.”
As if snakes and alligators and diseases and floods weren’t enough.
“They kidnapped two missionaries in a village not far from me. But God saved them. They were released unharmed four years later.”
“Any guerrillas around here?”
“No. This is Brazil. The people are very peaceful. There are some drug runners, but nobody comes this deep into the Pantanal.”
“Which brings up an interesting point. How far away is the Paraguay River?”
“This time of the year, eight hours.”
“Brazilian hours?”
She smiled at this. “You’ve learned that time is slower here. Eight to ten hours, American time.”
“By canoe?”
“That’s how we travel. I used to have a boat with a motor. But it was old, and it eventually wore out.”
“How long does it take if you have a boat with a motor?”
“Five hours, more or less. It’s the flood season, and it’s easy to get lost.”
“So I’ve learned.”
“The rivers run together. You’ll need to take one of the fishermen with you when you leave. There’s no way you’ll find the Paraguay without a guide.”
“And you go once a year?”
“Yes, but I go in the dry season, in August. It’s cooler then, not as many mosquitoes.”
“You go alone?”
“No. I get Lako, my Indian friend, to travel with me to the Paraguay. It takes about six hours by canoe when the rivers are down. I’ll wait for a boat, then catch a ride to Corumbá. I’ll stay for a few days, do my business, then catch a boat back.”
Nate thought of how few boats he’d seen on the Paraguay. “Just any boat?”
“Usually a cattle boat. The captains are good about taking passengers.”
She travels by canoe because her old boat wore out. She bums rides on cattle boats to visit Corumbá, her only contact with civilization. How would the money change her? Nate asked himself. The question seemed impossible to answer.
He would tell her tomorrow, when the day was fresh, when he was rested and fed and they had hours to deal with the issues. Figures appeared at the edge of the settlement—men walking in their direction.
“Here they are,” she said. “We eat just before dark, then we go to sleep.”
“I guess there’s nothing to do afterward.”
“Nothing we can discuss,” she said quickly, and it was funny.
Jevy appeared with a group of Indians, one of whom handed Rachel a small square basket. She passed it to Nate, who removed a small loaf of hard bread.
“This is manioc,” she said. “It’s our main food.”
And evidently their only food, at least for that meal. Nate was into his second loaf when they were joined by Indians from the first village. They brought the tent, mosquito net, blankets, and bottled water from the boat.
“We’re staying here tonight,” Nate said to Jevy.
“Says who?”
“It’s the best spot,” Rachel said. “I would offer you a place in the village, but the leader must first approve a visit by white men.”
“That would be me,” Nate said.
“Yes.”
“And not him?” He nodded at Jevy.
“He went for food, not to sleep. The rules are complicated.”
This struck Nate as funny—primitive natives yet to discover clothing but following a complicated system of rules.
“I would like to leave by noon tomorrow,” Nate said to her.
“That too will be up to the leader.”
“You mean we can’t leave when we want?”
“You will leave when he says you can leave. Don’t worry.”
“Are you and the chief close?”
“We get along.”
She sent the Indians back to the village. The sun had disappeared over the mountains. The shadows from the forest were engulfing them.
For a few minutes, Rachel watched as Jevy and Nate struggled with the tent. It looked quite small rolled up in its case, and expanded just a little as they hooked the poles together. Nate wasn’t sure it would hold Jevy, let alone the both of them. Fully erected, it was waist-high, pitched sharply from the sides, and painfully small for two grown men.
“I’m going,” she announced. “You will be fine here.”
“Promise?” Nate said, with sincerity.
“I can have a couple of boys stand watch if you like.”
“We’ll be fine,” Jevy said.
“What time do you folks wake up around here?” Nate asked.
“An hour before sunrise.”
“I’m sure we’ll be awake,” Nate said, glancing at the tent. “Can we meet early? We have a lot to discuss.”
“Yes. I’ll send some food out at daybreak. Then we’ll chat.”
“That would be nice.”
“Say your prayers, Mr. O’Riley.”
“I will.”
She stepped into the darkness and was gone. For a moment, Nate could see her silhouette winding along the trail, then nothing. The village was lost in the blackness of the night.
________
THEY SAT on the bench for hours, waiting for the air to cool, dreading the moment when they would be forced to pack themselves into the tent and sleep back to back, both smelly and sweaty. There was no choice. The tent, flimsy as it was, would protect them from mosquitoes and other insects. It would also keep out things that crawled.
They talked about the village. Jevy told Indian stories, all of which ended in the death of someone. He finally asked, “Did you tell her about the money?”
“No. I’ll do that tomorrow.”
“You’ve seen her now. What will she think about the money?”
“I have no idea. She’s happy here. It seems cruel to upset her life.”
“Then give me the money. It won’t upset my life.”
They followed the pecking order. Nate crawled into the tent first. He’d spent the previous night watching the sky from the bottom of the boat, so the fatigue hit fast.
When he was snoring, Jevy slowly unzipped the tent door, and nudged here and there until he had a spot. His pal was unconscious.
TWENTY-EIGHT
_____________
AFTER NINE hours of sleep, the Ipicas arose before dawn to begin their day. The women built small cooking fires outside their huts, then left with the children for the river, to collect water and to bathe. As a rule, they waited until first light to walk the dirt trails. It was prudent to see what lay before them.
In Portuguese, the snake was known as an urutu. The Indians called it a bima. It was common around the waterways of southern Brazil, and often fatal. The girl’s name was Ayesh, age seven, helped into the world by the white missionary. Ayesh was walking in front of her mother instead of behind, as was the custom, and she felt the bima squirm under her bare foot.
It struck her below the ankle as she screamed. By the time her father got to her, she was in shock and her right foot had doubled in size. A boy of fifteen, the fastest runner in the tribe, was dispatched to get Rachel.
There were four small Ipica settlements along two rivers that met in a fork very near the spot where Jevy and Nate had stopped. The distance from the fork to the last Ipica hut was no more than five miles. The settlements were distinct and self-contained little tribes, but they were all Ipicas, with the same language, heritage, and customs. They socialized and intermarried.
Ayesh lived in the third settlement from the fork. Rachel was in the second, the largest. The runner found her as she was reading scriptures in the small hut where she’d lived for eleven years. She quickly checked her supplies and filled her sma
ll medical bag.
There were four poisonous snakes in their part of the Pantanal, and at various times Rachel had had the antivenin for each. But not this time. The runner told her the snake was a bima. Its antivenin was manufactured by a Brazilian company, but she had been unable to find it during her last trip to Corumbá. The pharmacies there had less than half the medicines she needed.
She laced her leather boots and left with her bag. Lako and two other boys from her village joined her as she jogged away, through the tall weeds and into the woods.
According to Rachel’s statistics, there were eighty-six adult females, eighty-one adult males, and seventy-two children in the four settlements, a total of 239 Ipicas. When she began working with the Ipicas eleven years earlier, there had been 280. Malaria took the weak ones every few years. An outbreak of cholera killed twenty in one village in 1991. If Rachel hadn’t insisted on a quarantine, most of the Ipicas would’ve been wiped out.
With the diligence of an anthropologist, she kept records of births, deaths, weddings, family trees, illnesses, and treatments. Most of the time she knew who was having an extramarital affair, and with whom. She knew every name in every village. She had baptized Ayesh’s parents in the river where they bathed.
Ayesh was small and thin, and she would probably die because there was no medicine. The antivenin was readily available in the States and in the larger cities of Brazil, and not terribly expensive. Her small budget from World Tribes would cover it. Three injections in six hours and death could be prevented. Without it, the child would become violently ill with nausea, then a fever would hit, followed by a coma, then death.
It had been three years since the Ipicas had seen a death by snakebite. And for the first time in two years, Rachel had no antivenin.
Ayesh’s parents were Christians, new saints struggling with a new religion. About a third of the Ipicas had been converted. Because of the work of Rachel and her predecessors, half of them could read and write.
She prayed as she trotted behind the boys. She was lean and tough. She walked several miles a day and ate little. The Indians admired her stamina.
________
JEVY WAS washing himself in the river when Nate unzipped the mosquito fly and extricated himself from the tent. He still carried bruises from the plane crash. Sleeping in the boat and on the ground did little to ease the soreness. He stretched his back and legs, aching all over, feeling every one of his forty-eight years. He could see Jevy, waist-deep in water that looked much clearer than the rest of the Pantanal.
I’m lost, Nate whispered to himself. I’m hungry. I have no toilet paper. He gingerly touched his toes as he summed up his sad inventory.
It was an adventure, dammit! It was time for all lawyers to charge into the new year with resolutions to bill more hours, win bigger verdicts, cut more overhead, take home more money. He’d made those vows for years, and now they seemed silly.
With a little luck, he’d sleep in his hammock tonight, swinging in the breeze, sipping coffee. To the best of his recollection, Nate had never before longed for black beans and rice.
Jevy returned as a patrol of Indians arrived from the village. The chief wanted to see them. “He wants to have bread,” Jevy said as they walked away.
“Bread’s fine. Ask if they have bacon and eggs.”
“They eat a lot of monkey.”
He didn’t appear to be kidding. At the edge of the village, a group of children stood waiting for a look at the strangers. Nate offered them all a frozen smile. He’d never felt so white in his life, and he wanted to be liked. Some naked mothers gawked from the first hut. When he and Jevy entered the wide common area, everyone stopped and stared.
Small fires were burning out; breakfast was over. The smoke hung like fog over the roofs, and made the humid air even stickier. It was a few minutes after seven, and already very hot.
The village architect had done a fine job. Each dwelling was perfectly square with a thatched roof angled steeply, almost to the ground. Some were larger than others, but the design never varied. They circled the settlement in an oval-shaped ring, all facing a large flat area—the town square. In the center were four large structures—two circular and two rectangular—and all had the same thick straw roofs.
The chief was waiting for them. Not surprisingly, his home was the largest hut in the village. And he was the largest Indian of the lot. He was young, and lacked the heavy wrinkles across the forehead and the thick belly the older men carried with pride. He stood and gave Nate a look that would have horrified John Wayne. An older warrior did the interpreting, and within minutes Nate and Jevy were asked to sit near the fire, where the chief’s naked wife was preparing breakfast.
When she bent over, her breasts swung about, and poor Nate couldn’t help but stare, if only for a long second. There was nothing particularly sexy about the naked woman or her breasts. It was just the fact that she could be so naked and so unconcerned about it.
Where was his camera? The boys around the office would never believe it without proof.
She handed Nate a wooden plate covered with a serving of what appeared to be boiled potatoes. He glanced at Jevy, who gave a quick nod as if he knew everything about Indian cuisine. She served the chief last, and when he began eating with his fingers, so did Nate. It was a cross between a turnip and a redskin potato, with very little taste.
Jevy talked while he ate, and the chief enjoyed the conversation. After a few sentences, Jevy would translate things into English and pass them along.
The village never flooded. They had been there for more than twenty years. The soil was good. They preferred not to move, but sometimes the soil forced them to. His father had been a chief too. The chief, according to the chief, was the wisest, smartest, and fairest of them all, and he could not engage in extramarital affairs. Most of the other men did, but not the chief.
Nate suspected there was little else to do but fool around.
The chief had never seen the Paraguay River. He preferred hunting over fishing, thus spent more time in the woods than on the rivers. He’d learned basic Portuguese from his father and from the white missionaries.
Nate ate, listened, and watched the village for any sign of Rachel.
She wasn’t there, the chief explained. She was in the next village tending to a child who’d been bitten by a snake. He wasn’t sure when she would return.
Just wonderful, thought Nate.
“He wants us to stay here tonight, in the village,” Jevy said. The wife was refilling their plates.
“Didn’t know we were staying,” Nate said.
“He says we are.”
“Tell him I’ll think about it.”
“You tell him.”
Nate cursed himself for not bringing the SatFone. Josh was surely pacing the floor of his office right now, worried sick. They had not talked in almost a week.
Jevy said something slightly humorous that upon translation became downright funny. The chief roared with laughter, and soon everyone else was laughing too. Including Nate, who laughed at himself for laughing with the Indians.
They declined an invitation to go hunting. A patrol of young men led them back to the first village, to their boat. Jevy wanted to clean the spark plugs again and fiddle with the carburetor. Nate had nothing else to do.
________
LAWYER VALDIR took the early call from Mr. Stafford. The pleasantries took only seconds.
“I haven’t heard from Nate O’Riley in days,” Stafford said.
“But he has one of those phones,” Valdir said, on the defensive, as if it was his duty to protect Mr. O’Riley.
“Yes, he does. That’s what worries me. He can call anytime, from anywhere.”
“Can he use the phone in bad weather?”
“No. I suppose not.”
“We’ve had many storms down here. It is, after all, the rainy season.”
“You haven’t heard from your boy?”
“No. They are together. The gui
de is very good. The boat is very good. I’m sure they are well.”
“Then why hasn’t he called?”
“I can’t answer. But the skies have not been clear. Perhaps he cannot use his phone.”
They agreed that Valdir would call at once if something was heard from the boat. Valdir walked to his open window and looked at the busy streets of Corumbá. The Paraguay River was just down the hill. Stories were legion of people who entered the Pantanal and never came back. It was part of the lore, and the lure.
Jevy’s father had piloted the rivers for thirty years, and his body was never recovered.
________
WELLY FOUND the law office an hour later. He had not met Mr. Valdir, but he knew from Jevy that the lawyer was paying for the expedition.
“It’s very important,” he told the secretary. “It is urgent.”
Valdir heard the ruckus and appeared from his office. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“My name is Welly. Jevy hired me as a deckhand on the Santa Loura.”
“The Santa Loura!”
“Yes.”
“Where is Jevy?”
“He’s still in the Pantanal.”
“Where is the boat?”
“It sank.”
Valdir realized the boy was tired and frightened. “Sit down,” he said, and the secretary ran to get water. “Tell me everything.”
Welly clutched the arms of his chair, and spoke rapidly. “They left in the johnboat to find the Indians, Jevy and Mr. O’Riley.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. A few days ago. I was to stay with the Santa Loura. A storm hit, the biggest storm ever. It blew the boat free in the middle of the night, then rolled it over. I was thrown into the water and picked up later by a cattle boat.”
“When did you arrive here?”
“Only a half hour ago.”
The secretary brought a glass of water. Welly thanked her and asked for coffee. Valdir leaned on her desk and watched the poor kid. He was dirty and smelled like cow manure.
“So the boat is gone?” Valdir said.
“Yes. I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do. I have never seen such a storm.”
