Never leaving the cover of the jungle, I crept along the boundary of the village, past the now-empty barn and the manioc fields, the plants shirring against one another in a light evening breeze from the river. I concentrated on silence in every step, searching out any variation in the darkness to light my way: glowing mosses, lichens dotted with bioluminescence, giant buzzing insects with blinking tails; beyond these, the flicker of the torches from the longhouse and Anaconda Bar guided me forward. Occasionally I stopped—unwilling to take one more step until I felt him breathe against me.
Sparks shot up into the night. Over the blare of the radio, more whoops, a shriek. Barking male laughter up the hill, full of cruelty. A sulfur smell.
The thumping sound of two people running full speed across the hard earth of the settlement.
“Get her get her get her!” Another round of laughter, gunshots.
Marietta tore across an arc of land toward the longhouse, pursued by a poacher in ragged shorts; he caught her easily and dragged her to the ground. She screamed as he pawed at her, twisted in his grip, got up and ran again; he let her get away like a cat might play with a mouse before finally ending the game at its leisure. He got up, dusted himself off, and followed her.
I peered out from under the longhouse. Torches blazed from all four corners of the Anaconda Bar. Poachers—I stopped counting at twenty—danced with reluctant Ayacheran women, throwing them around or grappling them tight into an unwanted embrace. Fat Carlos, in a sweat-stained undershirt and filthy khaki pants, a purple kerchief tied across his missing eye under his frayed sisal hat, sat at the bar holding court, clutching a woman I was too far away to recognize. A small figure lay trussed and gagged on the ground, motionless.
I had mere seconds to do what I had to do. Breathing hard against cramps that would have felled me at any other time, I pulled the dead paca by its back legs from my shoulder bag, laid the rigid body on the ground in front of me. In the darkness my fingers found his little sternum and rib cage. I slipped my knife into his fur and flesh and drew it to his pelvic bone, gutting him. I parted the skin and scooped out the still-warm entrails with my hand, cutting around with the other to free them. Making sure no one was watching, I darted out to the bald earth of the village between the bar and the longhouse, lay the hot pile on the ground, and disappeared back into the forest.
Second by second, I drew closer to the Anaconda Bar behind my shroud of jungle. The trussed, gagged body was Beya; she lay motionless on her side in a circle of jumping torchlight. Carlos held Anna on his lap, his hands traveling where they wished, tossing her back and forth like a doll. I spotted Doña Antonia, Paco, the other women and children, a few elderly men including Anna’s father, and all the hunters except for Franz. Huddled half in, half out of the light, most of Ayachero was patrolled by a couple dozen poachers who corralled them into a tight circle, barking at them nonstop like they were hopped-up on something, occasionally shooting near their feet or into the black clouds above.
I huddled in the shadows just feet from the rope ladder to the jaguar platform.
“You’re a gorgeous little thing,” Fat Carlos said, holding Anna tight. “Maybe I’ll take you with me, would you like that? Wouldn’t you like to be rich and fat, traipsing down the streets of gay Pareee, farting through silk?”
She turned her face away from him, but kept her body limp. A shout came from up the hill. The man who had been groping Marietta thundered down the slope to the bar.
“The Tatinga are here!” he said, his face tight with dread.
Carlos shifted Anna to his other knee, knocking back a glass of brandy as he did so. “What the fuck are you saying?”
“There’s a pile of guts on the ground!” the man said, breathless.
“So we cleaned a few jungle turkeys, so what?”
“We threw those guts in the river. These are fresh! These weren’t here a few minutes ago, boss, I swear to God.”
Fat Carlos pushed Anna off his lap. She stumbled away, a sharp cry escaping her throat. I wondered where her infant was, where Claudia was, then pushed the thought away. “This better be worth my time.”
“I swear—”
“Show me.”
Cursing, Carlos began to stroll across the shadowy hill, led by the clearly rattled poacher as well as a couple of his men; the rest of his gang kept watch over the terrified villagers.
I crept onto the first rung of the rope ladder, which creaked as it swayed, the sound muffled by the jangling radio. Pain bit through the flesh of my shoulders and back, my illness still alive in me apparently, but shooting cramps in my pelvis made each step a little journey through hell. My breath ragged in my lungs, I pictured myself on the top of the platform, telling myself I would not stop. I pushed myself up a few more rungs, praying for the strength to climb the twenty-five feet that remained.
Fat Carlos stopped dead just where I had dropped the pile of paca innards.
“It’s the Tatinga,” the poacher said, hand on his gun, bronze face shining with sweat. “It’s a warning, boss. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Tatinga, my ass,” Carlos said, turning in a slow circle as he addressed the gaping jungle. “Dutchie! You stupid little traitorous bastard!” He fired a shot into the treetops. “I’ll fuck you up, do you hear me?”
The jungle answered with the sonorous buzz of night insects.
“I know you’re out there, you little prick, so just come on out and show yourself. Nobody buys your asinine tricks.”
The high-pitched scream of a night bird rent the air. Afterward, silence.
Carlos shook his head and looked down, jowls shuddering, then raised his head in resolve. “You,” he said, jabbing his finger toward the three men who stood over the pile of guts. “Check the longhouse, tear apart this whole shithole town. Find him.”
One man took off for the longhouse while the other two—though they seemed to be following orders—were clearly spooked by the poacher’s fear, and scattered helter-skelter in the village, a whiff of mutiny in the air. I was two-thirds up the ladder when Carlos turned back toward the Anaconda Bar. I simply couldn’t climb any faster, I was so depleted.
As if enduring a change of heart, Carlos suddenly turned and yelled back. “I skim off a little ear. What’s the big deal? Just trying to scare some balls in you.” He blinked his one good eye into the velvet blackness. “Twenty years I’ve been keeping your skinny ass fed, keeping you in pussy, cutting snakebites outta you, dragging you down this godforsaken river—and you betray me like this?”
The jungle snapped and whined, a round of locusts joined the symphony.
“I’m giving you a chance here.” He huffed as if the one-way conversation was exhausting him, placed his hands on his knees, and squinted at the shadows under the longhouse where I’d hidden just minutes ago. “Not a lot of men would do that. It’s time to stop playing games, wouldn’t you say? Just show your face and all is forgiven, okay, man? Just show your fucking loser face.”
He yanked his hat tighter on his head, adjusting the purple eye patch as he peered with his one good eye at the yawning dark, at a million different things that could kill him. Arms folded over his belly, he stood a full minute, mumbling elaborate curses, listing all the many favors he’d granted Dutchie over the years, finally declaring in conclusion that as of this moment he wasn’t worth the shit on his heel. I scrambled higher and higher. The fat man turned back toward the bar, shoulders drooping in defeat.
“Well fuck you then, you little pissant,” he said, his voice empty of bravado.
With a stifled gasp, I reached the platform. I dragged myself up on it, bellying forward on my elbows, inch by inch, to the edge that overlooked the bar.
Carlos paused at the dancing light and shadow thrown by the torch next to Beya’s still form. He crouched down next to her, said something inaudible, then got to his feet again.
“It wasn’t you, was it, you nasty old witch?” He gave her a swift kick in the gut. She didn’t move. “You’re not trying to fool old Carlos, are you?” He gave her one more vicious kick and strolled toward the bar.
Never taking my eyes from the scene beneath me, I reached for Beya’s string bag. With badly shaking fingers, I wriggled the first dart out of the quiver and placed it—in total darkness—as I had been taught, alongside the soft kapok fluff inside the gun. Beneath me, the big poacher’s hat bobbed as he took a long drink, settled himself down again among half a dozen of the men who had gathered for their meal—it looked as if they were eating in shifts in order to keep guard on the villagers. Carlos accepted a plate of food from one of the men, laughing at something I couldn’t hear. His shoulder was in my sights, and on this windless night, was perhaps beefy enough that I could hit it, even from thirty feet away.
The men spoke in low tones, clearly sobered by the incident. They gathered around plates of roasted plantains. A large slab of tapir cooked on a wide metal grill over a fire.
I looked for the stillness inside myself, for hope and confidence, for the opposite of everything that I had ever felt. I let out all the air from my lungs till I thought I would pass out, drew in a long, silent breath, and blew.
Nothing.
His big shoulder shone with sweat by the firelight, flexed as he kept on eating, chatting with the men.
The dart landed a good five feet behind him, quite close to the forest wall; it looked like a stiff blade of black grass in the dirt, not remarkable at all unless you were looking for it. I crawled across the platform to the other side, just five feet from where I shot the first dart, before loading the second one. Drew my long, slow inhale.
The moment I let it go, Carlos reached out to accept a tapir shank offered to him; the dart landed exactly where his shoulder had been, sticking out of the ground just where the leg of the bar was stuck into the dirt. Fuck.
Sweat dripped into my hands as I held my head, trying to hold back a flood of dread. My pelvis pounded, screaming at me to stop, rest. Could not. Would not. Three more darts.
Anything, everything could go wrong.
Hands slippery and trembling, I quickly loaded the third dart. Blew it out of the gun without taking the time to completely fill my lungs. God knows where that one landed. A completely useless panic shot. Heads down into their meals, the men spoke in tones too low for me to hear, snorting at their own jokes and wiping greasy fingers on their many-pocketed pants.
Chastising myself, I slowly, methodically began to load the fourth dart, breathing little prayers into the hollow tube. The baby stirred on my back. Just the smallest, smallest movement. It might have even been a little hiccup. My hands froze in place, one finger on the soft kapok, the other making sure the business end of the dart faced downward and away. With terrible slowness, I set the blowgun down on the thin, uneven planks. I closed my eyes and took shallow breaths, my body tense as wood, a lightning rod, listening, blanking out pain so I could feel for any movement or sound.
For long seconds he stayed where he was; I exhaled—it had been a burp, or some dream. Good boy, Omar, I thought, good boy. The moment I reached for the blowgun, his little knee jammed into my spine. I felt him struggling to turn, tiny fingers grappling for purchase against my back. Thankful for the radio, I pushed myself from my stomach to hands and knees to a seated position, got my legs under me, and—every movement considered—slipped the strap of the string bag off one shoulder as Omar squirmed.
I lifted him off my back and tucked him in my lap. His little blanket fell open. With one hand I stroked his head and chest, he felt slightly feverish, his skin like silk. I felt my way down from his shoulder to the crook of his left elbow, to the place that still held the indentation from my first injection. He panted into my fingers, his lips mouthing my flesh as he sought to suckle, limbs moving slowly as if he were treading water.
Holding him still, I felt my way past the kapok fluff and withdrew the dart. I dabbed the very tip of the poison dart in the still open wound, all the time telling myself it could not have been more than one drop seeping into him, likely much less. His head dropped back in the crook of my elbow and his little arms and legs fell open and back. Stifling a cry that had leapt up into my throat, I rocked him in my arms, shining to him, “I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY.” I wrapped his slack body in the blanket, tucked him carefully back in the bag, and looped the straps back over my shoulders.
I took out the fifth and final dart, loaded it, got back down on my stomach and leaned over the edge. Numerous bare male shoulders gleamed up at me from below.
Giving up on Fat Carlos, I aimed at the poacher directly beneath me, took the deepest breath of my life, and blew, imagining Omar’s steadying hand on my shoulder.
He leapt to his feet, food flipped over, screaming as he wrenched the dart out of the meat of his shoulder. “Something hit me! Fuck!” He hurled the dart to the ground, took a few stumbling steps, then swung his gun toward the platform.
Quickly, I pushed myself to my knees and stood, the plywood groaning under my feet. Struggling for balance, arms out, I backed up to the tree and—in total blackness—turned and wrapped my arms around the smooth bark. There was just enough space for my feet on the tiny lip of wood that—doughnut-like—encircled the far side of the tree. A few drops of blood dripped down my inner thigh; I squeezed my sweating eyelids shut as I pictured what the odor might attract, as I imagined my baby dangling helplessly in the string bag on my back among the coiling vines and creepers. An insect walked across my forearm; I let it. Another clicked and snapped near my ear. I didn’t move.
Fat Carlos jumped to his feet, threw down his food and barked, “Turn off the fucking radio!”
The far end of the platform—the precise spot where I’d been lying seconds ago—disintegrated as bullets blasted up through the thin wood into the branches above. Methodically, shot after shot obliterated bits of the scaffold, shards of wood flying out to all sides, the air sawdust. In seconds there was nothing left to the structure except for the narrow, back-facing rim I stood on and the ladder attached to one of the stronger tree branches.
Animated with fury, Carlos strutted around to Beya. He bent down, picked her up by the shoulders, and shook her viciously; she hung loose as a rag doll. “You called them, didn’t you?” he spat in her ear. “If I didn’t need you, I’d kill you now, so slowly you’d beg for me to hurry the fuck up.”
The men, losing their nerve, fired off their guns haphazardly into the jungle, their unseen enemy more terrible by the second.
Carlos dropped Beya and slammed the butt of his gun down on the bar. “Everybody calm down. Calm the fuck down. Somebody’s up there, but they’re not Tatinga. We’d all be dead by now.”
The man who’d been hit by my dart staggered off, fell to his knees and vomited repeatedly, pushed himself to his feet, then lurched into the shadows and threw up again.
“You.” He gestured at one of the men. “Get up there. Now.”
One arm still hugging the tree, I loosened Beya’s string pouch and withdrew the tube of ants. Directly beneath me, the man who’d been given the order leapt onto the ladder, climbing two, three rungs at a time. Bit by bit, I eased myself down to a squatting position, a fantastically painful maneuver.
I lay the tube just where the ladder met the edge of the platform, only a foot from me, and flipped off the rubber cap. It fell silently into a mat of leaves below.
Dozens of ants exploded out of it, most of them crawling down the ladder, but three or four made their way onto my sandal and up my leg. I straightened, flicking them off with my free hand, dancing on them, crushing them, as the man flew up the ladder like a monkey.
In seconds he began to howl. At twenty feet up the ladder, he launched himself off it, falling to the hard ground, where he cried out, rolling to one side as he favored what might have been a broken arm.
“Men!” Fat Carlos’s voice boomed. “Pick up the witch and get on the boat. We’re leaving.”
Chatter, whoops, scattered nervous laughter as the poachers mustered themselves, the one hit by the dart clasping his arm and staggering along with them. Balancing on my narrow foothold, still hugging the tree, I waited for my heart to stop slamming its way out of my chest. Bit by bit I squatted, squinting at the first few rungs of the ladder, searching out any black ants that remained on the white sisal rope.
Seeing none, I started my descent, stopping at three or four rungs down. My view was the entire village lit by scattered fires and torchlight, even as far as the beach and the roiling black river. For the first time that night I saw Franz. Crouching on the dock, he uncoiled the last ropes that tethered the poachers’ barge, vanishing for a moment as he dropped down into the shallows, head bobbing as he pushed the monstrosity into the current. In seconds, the river took it. How had he escaped the poachers? Had he hidden himself before I arrived on the scene?
In seconds, my elation—as well as pride in what Franz had done, however he’d done it!—turned to horror. A gruff panting sound from near the longhouse. A flash of yellow and black, a liquid movement. I forced back a scream as my hands whitened on the rope. The men hadn’t seen it yet, but an enormous jaguar was circling the pile of innards in the middle of the village. Ears back, her gold-and-onyx patterned coat rippled as she walked, all power and grace, her mouth open as she huffed every living thing in miles, including me, a dangling sack of flesh on a rope. Briefly she lay next to the pile of guts, tail languidly switching back and forth, sending up little puffs of earth at every slap.
The man who’d been hit by my dart was in the lead, walking in the direction of the beach, but faced back toward his friends, making fun of himself, laughing as he mimicked his own puking. Mouth stretched open wide, far exceeding the width of the man’s head, the jaguar left the ground as if gravity did not concern her. Her yellow fangs gleamed as she flew toward the man’s bare neck. He must have died instantly, he made no noise. His limbs flopped back and forth as the animal shook him like a toy, not pausing before dragging him toward the jungle.
All the men raised their weapons at once—even the man who carried Beya let her roll out of his arms as he snatched at his gun and trained it at the quickly disappearing beast.
But none of the men got to have their shot. One by one, their bodies stiffened and froze, guns tumbled out of their hands. They fell forward onto their knees as one, two, and in some cases half a dozen yard-long blowdarts porcupined their chests, as an army of Tatinga men stepped out of the forest from the dark perimeter of the village.
Fat Carlos turned in a slow beat, watching the last man fall, before raising up his hand as if beseeching the stars and sharp sickle moon to stop the swift dart from flying through his trembling throat.