by John Grisham
Only one signature was left. Nate informed them that it would take him a few days to get it.
If they only knew, he thought as he left the courthouse.
________
FRIDAY AFTERNOON, Nate and the Rector left St. Michaels in the lawyer’s leased car. The Rector drove so he could get used to it. Nate napped in the passenger’s seat. As they crossed the Bay Bridge, Nate woke up and read the final settlement agreement to Phil, who wanted all the details.
The Phelan Group Gulfstream IV was waiting at the Baltimore-Washington airport. It was sleek and shiny, big enough to haul twenty people anywhere in the world. Phil wanted a better look, so they asked the pilots for a tour. No problem. Whatever Mr. O’Riley wanted. The cabin was all leather and wood, with sofas, recliners, a conference table, several television screens. Nate would’ve been happy to travel like a normal person, but Josh had insisted.
He watched Phil drive away, then reboarded the plane. In nine hours he would be in Corumbá.
The trust agreement was deliberately thin, in as few words as possible, and with words as short and as plain as the drafters of such impossible instruments could invent. Josh had made them rewrite it numerous times. If Rachel had the slightest inclination to sign it, then it was imperative she be able to grasp its meaning. Nate would be there to do the explaining, but he knew she had little patience with such matters.
The assets she received under her father’s last will and testament would be placed in a trust, named the Rachel Trust, for lack of anything more creative. The principal would remain intact for ten years, with only the interest and earnings available for charitable giving. After ten years, 5 percent of the principal per year, in addition to the interest and earnings, could be spent at the discretion of the trustees. The annual disbursements were to be used for a variety of charitable purposes, with emphasis on the mission work of World Tribes. But the language was so loose that the trustees could use the money for almost any benevolent cause. The original trustee was Neva Collier, at World Tribes, and she had the authority to appoint up to a dozen other trustees to help with the work. The trustees would govern themselves and report to Rachel, if she wanted.
If Rachel so desired, she would never see or touch the money. The trust would be set up with the assistance of attorneys chosen by World Tribes.
It was such a simple solution.
It would take only a signature, one quick Rachel Lane or whatever her last name was. One signature on the trust, one on the settlement agreement, and the Phelan estate could be closed in due course with no more fireworks. Nate could move on, face his troubles, take his medicine, and begin rebuilding his life. He was anxious to get started.
If she refused to sign the trust and the settlement, then Nate needed her signature on a document of renunciation. She could decline the gift, but she had to notify the court.
A renunciation would render Troy’s testament worthless. It would be valid, but not operable. The assets would have no place to go, so the effect would be the same as if he’d died with no will. The law would divide the estate into six shares, one for each of his heirs.
How would she react? He wanted to think she would be delighted to see him, but he wasn’t convinced of that. He remembered her waving to his boat as he left, just before the dengue hit. She was standing among her people, waving him away, saying good-bye forever. She did not want to be bothered with the things of the world.
FIFTY-ONE
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VALDIR WAS waiting at the Corumbá airport when the Gulfstream taxied to the small terminal. It was 1 A.M.; the airport was deserted, only a handful of small planes were at the far end of the tarmac. Nate glanced at them, and wondered if Milton’s had ever returned from the Pantanal.
They greeted each other like old friends. Valdir was impressed with how healthy Nate looked. When they last saw each other, Nate was reeling from dengue fever and looked like a skeleton.
They drove away in Valdir’s Fiat, windows down, the warm muggy air blowing in Nate’s face. The pilots would follow in a taxi. The dusty streets were empty. No one moved about. Downtown, they stopped in front of the Palace Hotel. Valdir handed him a key. “Room two-twelve,” he said. “I’ll see you at six.”
Nate slept four hours, and was waiting on the sidewalk when the morning sun peeked between the buildings. The sky was clear, and that was one of the first things he took note of. The rainy season had ended a month earlier. Cooler weather was approaching, though in Corumbá the daytime high seldom dipped below seventy-five degrees.
In his heavy satchel he had the paperwork, a camera, a new SatFone, a new cell phone, a pager, a quart of the strongest insect repellent known to modern chemistry, a small gift for Rachel, and two changes of clothes. All limbs were covered; thick khakis over the legs, long sleeves over the arms. He might get uncomfortable and sweat a little, but no insect would penetrate his armor.
At 6 A.M. sharp Valdir arrived, and they sped away to the airport. The town was slowly coming to life.
Valdir had rented the helicopter from a company in Campo Grande for a thousand dollars an hour. It could hold four passengers, came with two pilots, and had a range of three hundred miles.
Valdir and the pilots had studied Jevy’s maps of the Xeco River and the tributaries that filled it. With the floods down, the Pantanal was much easier to navigate, both on water and from the air. Rivers were in their banks. Lakes were back within their shores. Fazendas were above water and could be found on aerial maps.
As Nate loaded his satchel into the helicopter, he tried not to think of his last flight over the Pantanal. Odds were in his favor. No way he would crash on successive flights.
Valdir preferred to stay behind, close to a phone. He did not enjoy flying, especially in a helicopter, especially over the Pantanal. The sky was calm and cloudless when they lifted off. Nate wore a seat belt, shoulder harness, and helmet. They followed the Paraguay out of Corumbá. Fishermen waved at them. Small boys knee-deep in river water stopped and stared upward. They flew over a chalana loaded with bananas, headed north, in their direction. Then another rickety chalana headed south.
Nate adjusted to the racket and vibration of the aircraft. He listened with his earphones as the pilots chatted back and forth in Portuguese. He remembered the Santa Loura, and his hangover the last time he’d left Corumbá headed north.
They climbed to two thousand feet and leveled off. Thirty minutes into the flight, Nate saw Fernando’s trading post at the edge of the river.
He was amazed at the difference in the Pantanal from one season to the next. It was still an endless variety of swamps, lagoons, and rivers spinning wildly in all directions, but it was much greener now that the floods had receded.
They stayed above the Paraguay. The skies remained clear and blue under Nate’s watchful eyes. He recalled the crash in Milton’s plane on Christmas Eve. The storm had boiled over the mountains in an instant.
Dropping to a thousand feet as they circled, the pilots began pointing as if they’d found their target. Nate heard the word Xeco, and saw a tributary enter the Paraguay. He, of course, remembered nothing about the Xeco River. During his first encounter with it, he’d been curled under a tent at the bottom of the boat, wanting to die. They turned west and left the main river, twisting with the Xeco, heading for the mountains of Bolivia. The pilots became more occupied with things below. They were searching for a blue and yellow chalana.
On the ground, Jevy heard the distant thumping of the chopper. He quickly lit an orange flare and sent it flying. Welly did the same. The flares burned bright and left a trail of blue and silver smoke. Within minutes, the chopper came into view. It circled slowly.
Jevy and Welly had used machetes to cut a clearing in a patch of dense shrub, fifty yards from the edge of the river. The ground had been under water just a month earlier. The chopper rocked and swayed and slowly lowered itself to the ground.
After the blades stopped, Nate jumped out and hugged his old pals.
He hadn’t seen them in more than two months, and the fact that he was even there was a surprise to all three.
Time was precious. Nate feared storms, darkness, floods, and mosquitoes, and he wanted to move as quickly as possible. They walked to the chalana at the river. Next to it was a long, clean johnboat, which appeared to be waiting for its maiden voyage. Attached to it was a brand-new outboard, all compliments of the Phelan estate. Nate and Jevy quickly loaded themselves into it, said good-bye to Welly and the pilots, and sped off.
The settlements were two hours away, Jevy explained, yelling over the motor. He and Welly had arrived yesterday afternoon with the chalana. The river had become too small even for it, so they had docked it near land flat enough to handle the helicopter. Then they had ventured on with the johnboat, eventually going near the first settlement. He had recognized the approach, but turned around before the Indians heard them.
Two hours, maybe three. Nate hoped it wouldn’t be five. He would not, under any circumstances, sleep on the ground, or in a tent, or a hammock. No skin would be exposed to the dangers of the jungle. The horrors of dengue were too fresh.
If they were unable to find Rachel, then he would return to Corumbá in the chopper, have a nice dinner with Valdir, sleep in a bed, then try again tomorrow. The estate could buy the damned helicopter if necessary.
But Jevy seemed confident, which was not unusual. They slashed through the water, the bow bouncing as the powerful motor sped them along. How nice to have an outboard that whined in one long, efficient, uninterrupted roar. They were invincible.
Nate was mesmerized once again with the Pantanal; the alligators thrashing in the shallow waters as they flew by, the birds dipping low over the river, the magnificent isolation of the place. They were in too deep to see fazendas. They were searching for people who’d been there for centuries.
Twenty-four hours earlier he’d been sitting on the porch of the cottage, under a quilt, sipping coffee, watching the boats drift into the bay, waiting for Father Phil to call and say he was headed for the basement. It took an hour in the boat to fully adjust to where he was.
The river did not look familiar. The last time they had found the Ipicas they were very lost, and scared, wet, hungry, and relying on the guidance of a young fisherman. The waters were up, the landmarks hidden from them.
Nate watched the sky as if he expected bombs to fall. The first sign of a dark cloud, and he would bolt.
Then a bend in the river looked vaguely familiar, maybe they were close. Would she greet him with a smile, and a hug, and want to sit in the shade and chat in English? Any chance she’d missed him, or even thought about him? Had she received the letters? It was mid-March, her packages were supposed to be there. Did she have her new boat by now, and all the new medicines?
Or would she run? Would she huddle with the chief and ask him to protect her, to get rid of the American for the last time? Would Nate even get the chance to see her?
He would be firm, much tougher than last time. It wasn’t his fault Troy had made such a ridiculous will, nor could he help the fact that she was his illegitimate daughter. She couldn’t change things either, and it was not asking too much for a little cooperation. Either agree to the trust, or sign the renunciation. He would not leave without her signature.
She could turn her back on the world, but she would always be the daughter of Troy Phelan. That in itself required some small measure of cooperation. Nate practiced his arguments out loud. Jevy couldn’t hear him.
He would tell her about her siblings. He would paint a dreadful picture of what would happen if they received the entire fortune. He would list the worthwhile causes she could advance if she simply signed the trust. He practiced and practiced.
The trees on both sides grew thicker and leaned over the river where they touched. Nate recognized the tunnel. “Up there,” Jevy said, pointing ahead to the right, to the spot where they had first seen the children swimming in the river. He throttled down, and they eased by the first settlement without seeing a single Indian. When the huts were out of sight, the river forked and the streams became smaller.
It was familiar territory. They zigzagged deeper into the woods, the river looping almost in circles, the mountains occasionally visible through clearings. At the second settlement, they stopped near the large tree where they’d slept the first night, back in January. They stepped ashore in the same spot where Rachel had stood when she’d waved good-bye, just as the dengue was calling. The bench was there, its cane poles lashed tightly together.
Nate was watching the village while Jevy was tying off the boat. A young Indian ran along the trail toward them. Their outboard had been heard.
He spoke no Portuguese, but through grunts and hand signals conveyed the message that they were to stay there, by the river, until further orders. If he recognized them, he didn’t show it. He appeared scared.
And so they took their places on the bench and waited. It was almost 11 A.M. There was a lot to talk about. Jevy’d been busy on the rivers, running chalanas with goods and supplies into the Pantanal. He occasionally captained a tourist boat, where the money was better.
They talked about Nate’s last visit, how they’d raced in from the Pantanal with Fernando’s borrowed motor, the horrors of the hospital, their efforts to find Rachel in Corumbá.
“I tell you,” Jevy said, “I have listened much on the river, and the lady did not come. She was not in the hospital. You were dreaming, my friend.”
Nate wasn’t about to argue. He wasn’t sure himself.
The man who owned the Santa Loura had been slandering Jevy around town. It sank on his watch, but everyone knew the storm did it. The man was a fool anyway.
As Nate expected, the conversation soon swung around to Jevy’s future in the States. Jevy had applied for a visa, but needed a sponsor and a job. Nate bobbed and weaved, and slid enough punches to keep his friend confused. He couldn’t muster the courage to tell him that he too would soon be looking for work.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
Jevy had a cousin in Colorado who was also looking for a job.
A mosquito circled Nate’s hand. His first impulse was to crush it with a violent slap, but instead he watched to gauge the effectiveness of his super-repellent. When it tired of surveying its target, it made a sudden nosedive toward the back of his right hand. But two inches away, it suddenly stopped, pulled away, and vanished. Nate smiled. His ears, neck, and face were lathered with the oil.
The second attack of dengue usually causes hemorrhaging. It’s much worse than the first, and often fatal. Nate O’Riley would not be a victim.
They faced the village as they talked, and Nate watched every move. He expected to see Rachel stride elegantly between the huts and along the path to greet them. By now, she knew the white man was back.
But did she know it was Nate? What if the Ipica had not recognized them, and Rachel was terrified that someone else had found her?
Then they saw the chief slowly walking toward them. He carried a long ceremonial spear and was followed by an Ipica Nate recognized. They stopped at the edge of the trail, a good fifty feet from the bench. They were not smiling; in fact, the chief looked particularly unpleasant. In Portuguese, he asked, “What do you want?”
“Tell him we want to see the missionary,” Nate said, and Jevy translated it.
“Why?” came the reply.
Jevy explained that the American had traveled a great distance to be there, and that it was very important to see the woman. The chief again asked, “Why?”
Because they have things to discuss, big things that neither Jevy nor the chief would understand. It was very important or else the American wouldn’t be there.
Nate remembered the chief as a loud character with a quick smile, a big laugh, and a trigger temper. Now his face had little expression. From fifty feet his eyes looked hard. He had once insisted they sit by his fire and share his breakfast. Now he stood as far away as possible. Someth
ing was wrong. Something had changed.
He told them to wait, then left again, slowly making his way back to the village. Half an hour passed. By now Rachel knew who they were, the chief would have told her. And she was not coming to meet them.
A cloud passed in front of the sun, and Nate watched it closely. It was puffy and white, not the least bit threatening, but it scared him nonetheless. Any thunder in the distance, and he’d be ready to move. They ate some wafers and cheese while sitting in the boat.
The chief whistled for them and interrupted their snack. He was alone, coming from the village. They met halfway, and followed him for a hundred feet, then changed directions and moved behind the huts on another trail. Nate could see the common area of the village. It was deserted, not a single Ipica wandering about. No children playing. No young ladies raking the dirt around the dwellings. No women cooking and cleaning. Not a sound. The only movement was the drifting smoke of their fires.
Then he saw faces in the windows, little heads peeking through doors. They were being watched. The chief kept them away from the huts as if they were carrying diseases. He turned onto another trail, one that led through the woods for a few moments. When they emerged into a clearing, they were across from Rachel’s hut.
There was no sign of her. The chief led them past the front door, and to the side, where, under the thick shade trees, they saw the graves.
FIFTY-TWO
_____________
THE MATCHING white crosses were made of wood and had been carefully cut and polished by the Indians, then lashed together with string. They were small, less than a foot tall, and stuck into the fresh dirt at the far end of both graves. There was no writing on them, nothing to indicate who had died, or when.
It was dark under the trees. Nate put his satchel on the ground between the graves, and sat on it. The chief began talking softly and quickly.
“The woman is on the left. Lako is on the right. They died on the same day, about two weeks ago,” Jevy translated. More words from the chief, then, “Malaria has killed ten people since we left,” Jevy said.
The chief delivered a long narrative without stopping for any translating. Nate heard the words, yet heard nothing. He looked at the mound of dirt to the left, a neat pile of black soil laid in a perfect little rectangle, carefully bordered by shaved limbs four inches round. Buried there was Rachel Lane, the bravest person he’d ever known because she had absolutely no fear of death. She welcomed it. She was at peace, her soul finally with the Lord, her body forever lying among the people she loved.
And Lako was with her, his heavenly body cured of defects and afflictions.
The shock came and went. Her death was tragic, but then it wasn’t. She wasn’t a young mother and wife who left a family behind. She didn’t have a wide circle of friends who’d rush to mourn her passing. Only a handful of people in her native land would ever know she was gone. She was an oddity among the people who’d buried her.
He knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t want anyone grieving. She wouldn’t approve of tears, and Nate had none to give her. For a few moments he stared at her grave in disbelief, but reality soon set in. This was not an old friend with whom he’d shared many moments. He’d barely known her. His motives in finding her had been purely selfish. He had invaded her privacy, and she had asked him not to return.
But his heart ached anyway. He’d thought about her every day since he’d left the Pantanal. He’d dreamed of her, felt her touch, heard her voice, remembered her wisdom. She had taught him to pray, and given him hope. She was the first person in decades to see anything good in him.
He had never met anyone like Rachel Lane, and he missed her greatly.
The chief was quiet. “He says we can’t stay very long,” Jevy said.
“Why not?” Nate asked, still staring at her grave.
“The spirits are blaming us for the malaria. It arrived when we came the first time. They are not happy to see us.”
“Tell him his spirits are a bunch of clowns.”
“He has something to show you.”
Slowly, Nate stood and faced the chief. They walked through the door of her hut, bending at the knees to get through. The floor was dirt. There were two rooms. The front room had furniture too primitive to believe, a chair made of cane pole and lashings, a sofa with stumps for legs and straw for cushions. The back room was a bedroom and a kitchen. She slept in a hammock like the Indians. Under the hammock, on a small table, was a plastic box that once held medical supplies. The chief pointed to the box and began speaking.
“There are things in there for you to see,” Jevy translated.
“For me?”
“Yes. She knew she was dying. She asked the chief to guard her hut. If an American came, then show him the box.”
Nate was afraid to touch it. The chief picked it up and gave it to him. He backed out of the room and sat on the sofa. The chief and Jevy stepped outside.
His letters never made it, at least they were not in the box. There was a Brazilian identification badge, one required of every non-Indian in the country. There were three letters from World Tribes. Nate didn’t read them because at the bottom of the box he saw her will.
It was in a white, legal-sized envelope and had a Brazilian name engraved for the return address. On it, she had neatly printed the words: Last Testament of Rachel Lane Porter.
Nate stared at it in disbelief. His hands shook as he carefully opened it. Folded inside were two sheets of white letter-sized paper, stapled together. On the first sheet, in large letters across the top she had printed, again, Last Testament of Rachel Lane Porter.
It read:
I, Rachel Lane Porter, child of God, resident of His world, citizen of the United States, and being of sound mind, do hereby make this as my last testament.
1. I have no prior testaments to revoke. This is my first and last. Every word is written by my hand. This is intended to be a holographic will.
2. I have in my possession a copy of the last testament of my father, Troy
