EIGHT

We made love right away in the little hut, just dropped right down on that filthy mattress and fell into each other; his hands and mouth loving me as if after some tortured absence, like he was sealing me to this new place, wedding me to it. Even as I felt myself swell and open as we kissed, my thoughts raced: There is nothing safe about this place. But for those few moments I tamped down my terror and confusion, ignored the raucous chorus of frogs outside, the memory of the plane disappearing into low-hanging clouds. I abandoned myself to pleasure, felt him chemically change me into someone else, someone who would do anything to be near him, someone who would follow him into any jungle on earth. Afterward, staring up at the square of pulsating green outside the window—my own heavenly jail—I wondered, What have I done?

Hours later, we lay in spectral darkness as nocturnal cicadas sawed away at time, like metal scraping across stone, endlessly. Omar wrapped himself around me, his hand cupping my breast, listening to the blood rush through the chambers of my heart. I faced away from him, night blind. All I could see in my mind’s eye was him holding the knife to the pilot’s throat.

“Have you ever killed anyone, Omar?”

He rearranged himself, took his hand off me. I shuddered with its absence. “Where did that come from?”

“The pilot, you almost—”

“I wasn’t going to hurt him.”

“It sure looked that way.”

He sat up, pulled the stub of a cigarette from his shorts and lit it, its sizzling glow the only light in the hut. Then he slipped on his glasses, though there was nothing to see.

“He was going to take us back to Cocha. That or crash the plane.”

“But you were going to—”

“He’s fine, Lily. He’s already back in the city, drinking his paycheck.”

I sat up, put on my clothes. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

“I’ve said all you need to know.”

“Need to know?” I hooked my backpack over my shoulders, slipped on my sneakers, and got to my feet. “That’s just bullshit. You owe me the truth, Ohms.”

“Where are you going?”

Good question. I glanced at the blackness outside our window. Couldn’t take off this time, couldn’t hop a bus, flag a cab, run away, nothing. My breathing came ragged in my throat. He took me by the hand and I let him gently pull me down next to him.

“Why did we land on the water? Why is there no airstrip?”

“The people let it grow over. It doesn’t take long. It’s a good idea.”

“But wouldn’t it have been safer to land—”

“If we have a real airstrip, the loggers would come, the narcos, the men of opportunity, remember them? Poachers would be everywhere, big machines, too. Now they have to come by river, which takes gas, but by plane it’s too dangerous, since there’s no estiron. You know what that is?”

I shook my head.

“It’s slang for a stretch of straight water—with no turns—long enough for a plane to land on safely. Ayachero’s on a series of bends. That’s why the pilot was shitting himself, that’s why I had to pay him so much. Taking off is another story. You don’t need much river to do that.”

“So even those men of opportunity think it’s too dangerous to fly here.”

He shrugged. “They come by boat, or through the jungle.”

“But we did it.”

“I did what I had to do. We did what we had to do. There was no time to fly to San Solidad. It has a small airport, but Ayachero’s five days by boat from there. The funeral is tomorrow. The jaguar is out there, with the taste of human flesh in its mouth.”

In the hanging green darkness, something shrieked at the top of its lungs, followed by a mewling, disintegrating sound.

I got up and stood close to the window. “Omar, what the hell—”

“That’s a mono de noche, a night monkey,” he whispered. “He has huge pink eyes, but can’t see color.”

Another scream, heartbreaking. I took a step back; my heel kicked the mattress.

“Something got him,” he whispered. “Something’s eating him now.”

A menacing growl, a deep-throated thud-thud-thud.

“A crested owl, a buho, has his claws in his throat.”

I looked down at him, this Tarzan in glasses. “How do you know?”

He laughed. “Because I know.”

Something barked like a dog, but not a dog . . .

“What’s that?”

“Bamboo rat. Very ugly. Nose like a tumor. They’re in the cane, in the manioc fields.”

The sounds continued, rustling, cackling volleys back and forth; snorting grunts, low trills, moans, hoots, then a rhythmic cawing that momentarily silenced everything—before the deranged symphony started up again. This was the jungle at night, a major freak show.

“It’s like a kill party,” he said. “Everything hunting everything, stalking each other. Or like a fucking party, you know? Everything looking for its lover or something to eat. It’s like a story, too. If you listen long enough, you know who’s talking.”

I reached out into the darkness and found his shoulder, then eased down next to him.

“All the animals are looking for food and trying not to be the food. But on a full moon, a bright moon, it’s so quiet and you think, Where is everything? The whole jungle shuts down because night creatures are made to see in the dark. A bright night is like day for them. We’ll walk in the jungle under a full moon together, I’ll show you.”

As I imagined a full moon shining down with its blue glow, showing everything as it was, I hugged myself and rocked a bit, a habit an old group-home friend had once said made me look crazy. I forced myself to stop. “I’m scared to death of this place.”

He laughed softly. “It’s just life, Lily. You can’t be afraid of life.”

“Sure I can.”

He pulled me to him. “Something you need to know. Whatever you’re most afraid of in the jungle comes to you, you understand? Spiders, snakes, tapir, jaguars, monkeys, poison ants. They sense that you’re afraid, so they come to scare you away, because you don’t belong in a place where you’re afraid. But if you don’t have that fear, then the jungle becomes a caretaker. It teaches you. It cares for you.”

“I’m having trouble with this jungle-is-magic stuff.”

“Fine, but you’re not in Cochabamba anymore. You’re not in America, land of Ronald McDonald.”

I pictured that horrific clown, the shit-food mascot of millions, and part of me was strangely ecstatic to be where I was.

“The jungle is something to learn,” Omar said. “The death of your birth mother, the death of your foster mother, your life in those homes, those were lessons. And lessons never stop. You can learn to be here, Lily.”