Chapter 9
In the first platinum light of dawn they cast off on a rain-shrouded river. It was a rain of monotonous violence that created a liquid world all around them. Rain lashed the river. The windshield ran torrents.
Jeb dropped down to the float, tossed the sea anchor into the current.
Wind-hurled lines of rain slanted beneath the wings. Each gust tightened the line to the floating drag. The plane dipped and swayed with an uneasy shuddering motion.
The four humans sat in dampened, submissive torpor while the muddy current pulled them between vaporous grey lines of hills.
There was a new emotional atmosphere in the plane: a subdued tolerance, a softening that fitted their growing physical weakness.
Gettler appeared withdrawn after his outburst in the night. He rubbed at his beard, sighed and shook his head repeatedly.
“This is the seventh day,” said David. “A week.”
Jeb returned to the pontoon.
“Where’s the fish line?” he asked.
“Here’s what’s left of it,” said David. He passed it out the door.
“There’s enough,” said Jeb. He rubbed a shred of rag in the snake blood on the cabin floor, tied the cloth to the hook, tossed it into the water. Within seconds a piranha gobbled the hook. Jeb flipped it onto the pontoon, held it beneath his foot while he killed it with the machete. He tossed the fish into the cabin, caught another … and another.
“I’ll clean them,” said David. “I know how.”
He leaned over the seat, reached for one of the fish.
“Careful!” shouted Jeb.
But David’s hand had already touched a fish’s nose. The jaws snapped convulsively. The boy jerked his hand back, and the end of his little finger dangled from a bloody stump just below the second joint.
“But it was dead,” said David. He spoke in a tone of shocked disbelief.
“David!” screamed Monti. She reached for the boy as he sat back in the rear, holding up the welling red end of his finger.
“It was dead,” repeated David.
Gettler already was bringing the first aid kit from behind the seat. He opened the kit in his lap, brought a clasp knife from his pocket, cut off the dangling fingertip, painted the end with disinfectant, bandaged it.
David kept repeating: “But it was dead.”
“You never put your hand anywhere near the teeth of one of those things until the head’s cut off,” said Jeb. “We warned you.”
“Even when the head’s off, you’re careful,” said Gettler. He tied off the bandage.
“The whole end of his finger,” whispered Monti.
“Be thankful it wasn’t his entire hand,” said Gettler. “How’s it feel, son?”
“It throbs.”
“Keep that bandage out of the river,” said Gettler. He stared at the white wrapping, and a dull moroseness crept over his features. Slowly, he sank back in the seat, turned to gaze at the passing shore.
Monti closed the first aid kit, put it on the floor.
“Does it hurt badly, dear?”
“It’s a little worse than it was.” He bit at his lower lip.
“There’re a few codeine tablets in the kit,” said Jeb. “Give him one if the pain becomes too rough, but it’d be better to save them for tonight.”
One bite! thought Gettler. That’s how the jungle kills. The flies and the ants come for what’s left. The worms. And there’s not even a ripple, nothing to say you were here. Or the piranha take you—and your bones dissolve in the ooze. He shivered at the passionate encounter with his own fear. The whirling pinwheels returned behind his eyes. He could see them even with his eyes open.
Grey-green banks rose higher around the plane. The current picked up speed, and the channel narrowed.
Jeb wrestled with the cane pole.
“Hey!” he called. “Give me a hand!”
Gettler snapped around, startled.
The plane had surged to the left around a narrow island. Vines snagged on the wings in the constricted channel. The plane whirled and lurched, pulled in lunges and starts by the floating drag anchor. The canoe bumped and scraped against the pontoon.
Gettler scrambled down to the right hand float, took up his pole, once he bent to check the lashings on the dugout.
“We’re in another side channel!” shouted Jeb.
The plane broke through another writhing growth of vines.
“If it gets any narrower we’ll have to abandon the plane,” said Gettler. “We’d never get back up against this current.”
Jeb’s lips thinned into a grim line.
The plane’s wings bowled headlong into flooded cane stands that lined both banks. Whiplashing fronds cut at the two men. Cane bent, crackling and scraping as the current tore the plane through.
“Christ! I hope that patched float holds!” prayed Jeb.
They broke into the clear, swirling across an eddy at the juncture of another channel. The plane rounded a bend, and the river widened between overhanging walls of dark jungle that dropped to thin reaches of drowned saw grass. Rain hissed in the water, pounded against the metal of the plane. The falling drops were so thick they seemed suspended in the air, performing crazy jigs.
Another river bend dropped away behind them … and another. The damp heat mounted, and as it increased the rain slowly eased off to a heavy mist that hung from the sky like a grey gauze curtain. Abruptly, the rain stopped. The river reflected the clouds as on a polished surface. Then vapor curls began forming above the current.
The plane parted the mist, rounded another river bend.
A dark line appeared downstream surging toward them. The wind returned, bringing new sheets of rain that raked across them with fierce, biting slashes.
Jeb peered at the left shore dimly visible in the downpour. He turned to Monti.
“Know where we are?”
She roused herself from a sagging torpor.
“Where?”
“This is where we came down to refuel on our way in.”
She stared past him at the mottled grey shore.
“The beach’s under water,” said Jeb. He pointed. “It was right along there. See that candelo tree?”
“Yes.” She nodded numbly.
And Jeb thought: It only took us an hour and a half to fly upstream from here. We’ve been more than a week coming back. He turned, looked into the rain-veiled reaches downstream, thought about the twisting, turning river ahead.
The current took them around another bend to the left. An eddy swung the plane out toward the darkening right shore.
Abruptly, David pointed to the right. “What’s that?”
Jeb glanced around, snapped: “Tapir! Gettler, shoot that before …” He broke off in the act of lifting the cane pole to push them toward the animal.
The tapir stood on a completely flooded island, brown water lapping at its stomach. The animal’s actions arrested Jeb’s voice.
A lurch backward, and the tapir stared myopically upstream. It snuffled, wriggled.
Water erupted in savage violence around the animal. Flashing silver forms of piranha leaped completely clear of the river to slash at the tapir’s sides.
The animal squealed once, sank into a rolling turbulence of red water.
Jeb felt a sudden premonition as deeply ominous as the one he’d experienced on the morning that started this flight. A heavy certainty sank into him that death was sure to strike them. He glanced from David to Monti to Gettler to Monti, stared down at his own hands on the cane pole.
Which one of us? Maybe all of us.
His stomach felt leaden.
A slowly curving river bend hid the jungle tragedy.
Gettler suddenly slammed his hand against the strut, raged: “It stinks! Everything stinks!”
“Take it easy,” murmured Monti.
“Arrrrrgh!” snarled Gettler.
“Were those piranha?” whispered David.
“Yes,” said Jeb.
David swallowed.
Monti looked down at the three fish on the cabin floor.
Jeb followed the direction of her eyes. “I’ll clean them if you feel like cooking them.”
“I’m …” She shuddered.
“Eat or be eaten!” snarled Gettler.
“I’m hungry,” said David.
“There’s the spirit,” said Gettler, and lower: “Eat or be eaten.”
Another river bend passed beneath them.
Jeb gestured downstream where the current split around a grey-green mound, fuzzy-edged in the hissing rain.
“Island.”
The two men labored with their cane poles, guiding the plane into a grassy stretch at the upper end of the island. An inevitable cloud of insects poured out of the disturbed grass, swarmed around exposed flesh.
Jeb ignored them, stared down the island.
The full length of it was open: no more than twenty-five yards long. It was covered with low scrub that bent before the driving rain.
“Something moved in that scrub,” said Gettler.
“That’s what I thought,” said Jeb.
“Looked like a little monkey,” said Gettler. He took the rifle from the cabin floor, moved forward along the float, leaped into the grass, sloshed through it to the higher ground.
Jeb took out the three fish, cleaned them. He looked in at David.
“See how you’re supposed to handle these? By the tail.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’s the hand?”
“It’s … okay.”
Monti unfolded the little heat tab stove, began cooking the fish.
The small game revolver cracked twice from the lower end of the island. The three at the plane jerked around, stared at Gettler. His bulky figure was bent over something in the bushes.
“What is it?” asked Monti.
“Can’t see,” said Jeb.
Gettler straightened, lifted a small, red monkey. He brought it back to the plane, flopped it onto the end of Jeb’s pontoon.
“It’s damn near skin and bones from starvation,” said Gettler. “It was stranded out here by the flood.”
“Uggh!” said Monti. “You don’t expect us to …”
“How hungry are you?” demanded Gettler.
“I’ll eat fish,” she said.
“Hah!”
“Cut the monkey meat off in strips,” said Jeb. “We can cook it with the fish.”
Monti turned away.
Gettler bent over the monkey, brought out his knife. Presently, he straightened, handed Jeb a double handful of stringy red meat.
“I’ve seen more meat on a cat,” said Gettler. “Korean cat.” He turned to Monti. “You and David share the fish. We’ll eat this …”
“We’ll split our fair share of the fish,” she said. “Just don’t make me try to eat that.” She pushed the stove and tin pan toward him. “Here. You cook it.”
They ate without civilized reserves, swallowing half-chewed gulps of food.
We get more like animals every day, thought Monti.
Gettler stood in the rain off the end of Jeb’s float, stared morosely upstream, then down. Water dripped from his flopping hat, ran in rivulets off his shoulders. He leaned the rifle against a bush, took the hat off, shook it and replaced it.
“Monti, there’s a little tea in the kit,” said Jeb. “Why don’t you brew some?”
Gettler turned. “Tea?” His red-rimmed eyes glared at Jeb. “Why’nt you say you had tea?”
“There isn’t much of it,” said Jeb. “I’ve held back, waiting for a time like this when we really need it.”
“Why do we need it now?
“For a lift. For morale.”
“And you decide about it.”
Jeb looked at him. “What’s eating you?”
Gettler trembled with rage, focusing his attention on the tea with a feeling that he had just discovered in it all the truth he needed to know about Jeb Logan.
“So you save the tea?” snarled Gettler.
“It’s not that important,” said Jeb.
“You don’t like me, eh?” asked Gettler.
Good grieving god! Is he going to blow his stack over a stupid mess of tea? wondered Jeb.
“You don’t trust me?” pressed Gettler.
“Oh, dry up!”
Gettler suddenly raged at him: “You’ve been hoping I’d die! Leave more for the rest of you!”
“It’s only tea!” cried Monti.
“The ladies’ man decides,” snarled Gettler.
“Oh, go to hell!” said Jeb.
“Stop it!” shouted Monti. “This is ridiculous!”
Gettler ignored her, splashed out alongside the pontoon, glared at Jeb. “But I didn’t die!”
Jeb stared down into Gettler’s eyes. They radiated violence, unveiled savagery.
No sympathy for Gettler complicated Jeb’s thinking in that moment. He thought only: So this is how a murderous madman looks.
Gettler suddenly lashed out, knocked Jeb backward under the fuselage, hurled himself across the float with hands clutching for Jeb’s neck.
Monti screamed.
Jeb rolled in the shallow, reed-clotted water, struggled to evade Gettler’s groping fingers. The man’s completely uninhibited strength momentarily paralyzed Jeb with fear.
“Kill you!” snarled Gettler.
His hands found Jeb’s throat, squeezed. Gettler closed his eyes, called up a memory image of Oberst Freuchoff. Strength coursed through his fingers. They pulsed with a life of their own.
Jeb lashed out frantically with his left hand, banged Gettler’s head against the dugout. The terrible choking eased momentarily. Jeb drew in a quick gasping breath, tried to break away. The water and restricted space beneath the plane hampered him. His head was thrust under the muddy flow. Gettler’s fingers constricted. Again, Jeb battered Gettler’s head against the dugout, heaved himself up, choking.
Dimly, he was aware of Monti screaming.
One of Jeb’s flailing hands found a strut. He pulled himself backward across the dugout, dragging Gettler with him like a terrible leech. Jeb dug a finger into Gettler’s left eye, kicked him in the groin. The throat grip loosened, broke. Jeb hurled himself backward with Gettler leaping after him, questing hands outthrust.
Then they were out in front of the plane, rolling in the sodden grass, thrashing, slugging, kicking.
If I can only get one of the guns! thought Jeb.
But there was no revolver in Gettler’s belt.
The rifle!
Again, Gettler found Jeb’s throat.
And from the corner of his eye, Jeb saw Monti out of the plane and scrambling after the rifle that still leaned against a bush.
Spots danced before Jeb’s eyes. He felt strength draining from him. They rolled over, and he loosened the choking hands for a short breath that was throttled off.
Gettler felt none of Jeb’s blows. An ecstasy filled him. So long to wait, Oberst!
Monti swung the rifle butt, caught Gettler alongside the head. He lost his grip on Jeb’s throat. Jeb drank in a burning breath, tried to roll away, felt something hard under his side.
The revolver?
Before he could roll away, Gettler dived after him, brought out the hard lump from beneath them: The revolver! Jeb grabbed for Gettler’s wrist, bent the hand away.
“Thought you’d get away!” snarled Gettler.
They rolled over and over in the soggy grass, struggling for the gun. Gettler grunted, mouthed curses in German. Suddenly, the gun went off, blasted past Jeb’s ear, momentarily deafening him. He saw Monti’s feet behind Gettler, glimpsed the rifle in her hands. She pushed the muzzle past Jeb, jammed it against Gettler’s chest.
“Stop it!” she screamed.
Gettler still fought to bring the revolver against Jeb.
“I’ll kill you!” screamed Monti. “I mean it!”
Gettler hesitated, turned his head slowly to look up at her. His eyes were bloodshot, feral. Strength flowed out of him, and his eyes took on a veiled, retreating look.
Jeb maintained his grip on Gettler’s gun hand.
“Drop that gun!” ordered Monti.
“You wouldn’t pull that trigger,” said Gettler.
Desperation tightened Monti’s voice. “I will! If I have to, I will!”
Jeb shook Gettler’s hand. “Drop that gun!”
“Do as he says,” said Monti. She prodded Gettler with the rifle.
Gettler opened his hand. The revolver slipped out of his fingers into the grass.
Jeb grabbed it, drew back, patted Gettler’s pockets for the twenty-two, found it and stuffed it into his own belt. He got to his feet, covered Gettler with the big revolver, said, “Move away from him, Monti.”
She obeyed, holding the rifle at the ready.
Gettler heaved himself to his feet, backed away.
Monti said: “What’s that bulging in his pockets, Jeb?”
Gettler bent forward, hands claw like, clutching at the air. His head moved from side to side like a snake’s.
Jeb tensed, said: “Emeralds. Raw emeralds.”
“How’d you know?” demanded Gettler, then: “Rog told you. Just like him. He told you.”
“Emeralds?” asked Monti.
“There’s why your husband died,” said Jeb.
“Wanted to cover up the mine,” snarled Gettler. “Forget about it! That’s what he wanted!”
“Is that why you killed him?” asked Jeb.
Gettler shook his head sharply, closed his eyes. A smile spread across his lips. “I didn’t kill him.”
Jeb glanced over his shoulder, saw David’s white face peering through the plane’s windshield. “Bring us the adhesive tape from the first aid kit,” called Jeb.
David jumped, then moved to obey.
“What’re you going to do?” demanded Gettler.
“Tie you up,” said Jeb.
Gettler stumbled backward. “Why? What’ve I done?”
Jeb stared at him, startled. “What’ve you …”
“I won’t let you tie me,” said Gettler. His eyes regained their wild light. “You’ll put the blood on my hands.” And he whimpered: “You’ll whip me.”
“Would you rather we left you here for the Indians?” asked Jeb.
David came up with the tape, handed it to Jeb.
“Did he really kill my dad?”
“No!” shouted Gettler. He looked pleadingly at David. “Don’t believe them! Lies! Lies!”
“How’re we going to tie him?” asked Monti.
Again Gettler crouched. His head swayed from side to side.
And he suddenly reminded Jeb of the coyote that had been trapped in the fence corner of his uncle’s ranch—the trapped, cowardly coyote that had slashed two slavering hounds to ribbons. And Jeb thought: Now, we’re the hounds!
But Gettler began to cry, destroying the illusion.
Jeb had never before seen a grown man cry. It filled him with a deep embarrassment.
“Turn around!” barked Jeb.
Gettler obeyed.
“Put your hands behind you!”
Slowly, the hands came back.
Jeb jammed the revolver into his waistband, motioned to Monti. “Come up beside me, Monti. If he makes a sudden move … well …” He glanced at the rifle in her hands.
“I understand,” she said.
David turned away, stumbled back to the plane.
Jeb saw that the boy was crying.
Monti said: “Hurry up. Get it over with.”
Jeb crossed Gettler’s wrists, bound them around and around with the tape. He emptied Gettler’s pockets: clasp knife, eleven cartridges for the rifle, bandanna, fingernail clipper, a bar of soap wrapped in a rag, a small unmarked bottle of pills, pocket compass … and two more emeralds in leaf wrappings.
Monti gasped when Jeb unwrapped the stones. “They’re so … big.”
“Clean!” sobbed Gettler. “No more dirt! Good smells! Sweet smells. Soft things!” He whirled, glared at Jeb.
“Okay,” said Jeb. “Into the plane.” He herded Gettler along the float, helped him into the rear seat beside David.
The boy turned away, stared out the side window.
“You’ll have to keep an eye on him for us, David,” said Jeb.
David nodded without turning around.
Jeb sorted the cartridges, stowed the other items from Gettler’s pockets in the survival kit on the floor of the luggage compartment.
Monti climbed into her side of the cabin. She looked at David’s bandaged hand. “How’s your hand feel, dear?”
David glanced at her, looked away. “It’s okay.”
Jeb brought the grapnel from the island, hung it on the strut, took up the cane pole, pushed the plane into the current.
Hysterical laughter suddenly erupted from Gettler. “Smart guy, Logan!” he gasped. “Now, you have to do all the work!” The laughter rolled from him.
“Oh, shut up!” snapped Monti.
“I could help,” said David.
“Not with that hand,” said Monti.
“It’s all right. Really.”
“No.”
The plane drifted through the rain—between dense, somber greyness of jungle walls. It was a ghost world of dull, leaden colors. Sounds took on the same quality. Gettler chuckled to himself intermittently. There was a coffin creaking to the plane’s metal. Mosquitoes droned, and Jeb’s cane pole scraped against the float, splashed with a muted dullness.
A bird called abruptly from the left shore with a sound like a stick drawn along a board fence. There came the deep booming of jungle doves farther back, and the rain stopped abruptly as though someone had shut it off.
Color returned to the riverbanks, a dark, shiny green. The leaves ran in torrents.
A storm of gaudy orange flowers swept out from the trees to the right, enveloped the plane, crawling everywhere.
Overhead, the clouds began to lift, piling up before sudden gusts of wind that shook plane and forest. Thin streaks of blue appeared, widened. The sun came through, and it was like turning on a furnace. The air above the river vibrated with the heat. Both shorelines wavered as though seen through defective glass.
Jeb rubbed at his throat where Gettler had choked him. The skin burned. A reaction of relief set in, and he felt his knees trembling. He stared out at a sudden spangling of lower ornaments in the tumult of green jungle.
The plane felt as though it were gliding down a long incline, making a transient passage toward a goal that was more instinctive than definite.
My God! We got the guns! Jeb thought.
The plane drifted around a sweeping bend, and a native village appeared downstream along the right bank: dark brown huts of sticks and mud clustered on a flat stretch of high ground.
“Monti, give me the rifle,” said Jeb.
She passed it to him.
“Close the door on your side,” he said.
She shut the door like a thunderclap in the tense air. The plane drifted closer.
Nothing stirred in the village.
The plane drifted closer.
“No canoes,” said Monti.
Jeb glanced at the far shore behind him. Too far away for a dart attack. He looked back to the village, glanced in at Gettler.
Some of the wildness faded from Gettler’s eyes. He studied the village.
“What tribe, Gettler?” asked Jeb.
The reply came in a conversational calm: “Could be Zaparo. But some of those cone roofs in back look like Jivaro make. It’s either Jivaro with some huts copied from the Zaparo, or the other way around.”
“That’s what I figured,” said Jeb.
“Where are they?” whispered Monti.
“Hiding in the jungle back there,” said Jeb.
“Better release me,” said Gettler. “You’ll need help if they attack.”
“We’ll struggle along as we are,” said Jeb.
Gettler sank back, turned his head slowly to keep his gaze on the village as the plane drifted past.
A light breeze carried the vegetable-carrion stink of the place across their path.
Another bend hid the village from sight.
“If they were Zaparo, then the curse is working,” said Jeb. “We’ll get no help.”
Gettler began muttering, and his words grew distinguishable only after a moment. “… and such as are skillful of lamentation to wailing. And in all the vineyards shall be wailing: for I will pass through thee, sayeth the Lord.”
“What’s he saying?” asked Monti.
“The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light,” said Gettler.
“Sounds like something out of the Bible,” said Jeb.
“The Bible? Him?”
“Shall not the day of the Lord be darkness, and not light?” muttered Gettler. “Even very dark, and no brightness in it?”
David leaned forward close to Monti. “What’s he saying, Mother?”
“I don’t know, dear.”
“He sounds scary.”
“But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream,” said Gettler.
And again his voice sank into an unintelligible mutter.
David sank back, pulled away into his own corner.
Gettler suddenly roared: “Everything’s rotting!”
He glared up at a green splotch of mildew on the fabric of the cabin ceiling, began to breathe rapidly in shallow, rocking gasps.
Jeb and Monti turned.
“Mother!” hissed David. He stared at Gettler.
“You’re going to let them take my head!” cried Gettler.
“Stop that!” barked Jeb.
“I know what you’re planning!” snarled Gettler. He began straining at the tape binding his wrists. The veins stood out like ropes along his neck.
“What’ll I do?” demanded David.
Gettler stopped, turned, looked down at David. A nerve twitched in the man’s forehead. He frowned, swayed. Abruptly, he spoke to David in a coarse, husking voice: “Don’t let me get away! Don’t …” He slumped back, and his head lolled to one side.
David turned toward his mother. Monti looked at Jeb.
“In the Dark Ages they talked about a human being possessed,” whispered Jeb. “I never understood it before.”
“He’s breathing so funny,” whispered Monti.
Tears formed at the corners of Gettler’s eyes, rolled down into his beard.
Jeb and Monti turned away.
Monti rubbed at her forehead.
Jeb cursed under his breath, slipped the rifle onto the floor beneath Monti’s feet, returned to the cane pole.
The day wore on in a crescendo of heat that draped over them like a wet rag. Darkness came as an abrupt feeling of purity. The sun’s afterglow fired the tips of the peaks in the west. A first quarter moon bathed the river in cold light. Flitting bats laced the sky overhead. Fireflies danced and jigged at the jungle’s edge. The frog roar mounted from the shallows, and there came splashing sounds in the river all around.
Jeb wearily studied the moon path downstream, felt the burning fire of the blisters on his hands. He could see the dark shadow of Monti in the front seat, David leaning close to her.
“How’s your hand, David?” asked Jeb.
The boy straightened, looked out at Jeb. “It’s all right, sir.”
“If it hurts badly you should tell us,” said Jeb.
“I can stand it.”
Something in David’s tone spoke of suffering.
“It hurts pretty badly, doesn’t it?” asked Jeb.
“Sure, but …”
“Give him one of the codeine pills, Monti,” said Jeb. “Better use the flash to make sure you get the right ones.”
Monti groped on the floor for the flashlight. Presently its beam poked out a cone of brilliance in the cabin.
“Dear, you should tell us when it hurts,” she said.
“But, Mother, I’m …”
“It’s all right. We understand. Here. Take this. Do you want the water?”
“Yes.”
The bucket gurgled as she passed it back.
Jeb turned away. And now, in the cloak of darkness, he found a moment to wonder how they should guard Gettler during the night. The madman loomed as a constant menace hidden in the black shadows at the rear of the cabin.
Christ! If he broke out of those tapes in the night …
Jeb shook his head.
A dark blotch of drowned bushes loomed out of the night. Jeb heard the current hissing and swirling over them. He glanced up at the moon, saw a black massing of clouds in the east: another storm.
The flooded island was passing now on the left.
Jeb readied the grapnel, took up the cane pole, worked the plane closer, tossed the iron into the dark shadows. It dragged with a sound of breaking limbs and scraping, then caught. The plane swung around downstream, rasped across the drowned bushes. Insects came up like a living vapor at the disturbance. Jeb scrambled into the cabin, closed the door. Monti was singing softly, her voice like a reverie sound.
“Dee-eep river … my home is o-ver Jordan …”
She broke off, looked at Jeb.
“What’re we going to do for food?”
“We’ll have to find something tomorrow for sure,” he said.
Jeb found the flashlight, turned its beam into the rear of the cabin. Gettler stared blankly straight ahead.
“David, check the tape on his hands,” said Jeb.
The boy looked back with a doped unconcern, turned, peered down behind Gettler, spoke slowly: “’S all right.”
Jeb snapped off the light, settled back into his own seat.
Sounds of the river at night enveloped them: a dipping limb that murmured to itself in the current, the faint rasping of bushes against the float, a whiffling and snuffling from the left shore as an animal drank, the incessant ear-ringing of insects, the croaking of frogs.
Monti’s voice came into this background like water filling up a low place: “It’s a terrible thing to say,” she murmured. “I know it is. But for a while today I was almost happy. Sitting here, watching the river, wondering what the next bend would reveal. Watching you out there on the float. Even the heat didn’t bother me. I just felt curious about everything.”
“Maybe that’s the secret of happiness,” said Jeb. “Curiosity.”
“So the next bend in the river shows you a Jivaro war party waiting,” muttered Gettler. And his voice carried that half-hidden laughing-at-you tone of clarity.
Monti cleared her throat.
“Thanks, Gettler,” said Jeb. “We needed that warning real bad.”
“There’s always something new around the next bend in the river,” said Gettler. “And finally: the ocean.” His voice took on a sudden pleading note: “Logan, cut these tapes off my wrists. They’re too tight. They’ll cause an …”
“I checked them. So did David,” said Jeb. “They’re not too tight.”
“And thank you,” murmured Gettler.
In the silence that followed, they heard David’s deep, drugged breathing. Presently, there came the sound of snoring from Gettler.
And Jeb realized with a feeling of shock that Gettler probably was sleeping in utter exhaustion—his first deep sleep since they’d picked him up at the rancho.
The moon dipped lower across the jungle. Full darkness enveloped them: a thick and oily darkness with clouds blotting out the stars.
A wind arose, mounting swiftly. It shook the plane and the forest around them, humming everywhere like a terrible organ. From both banks came the rushing, slapping sound of leaves colliding in the wind.
And Gettler dreamed. In the dream, he was two people: a student and a professor in a phantom lecture hall. All around them grouped other students without faces.
“When your hands are tied, that defines your limits,” lectured the dream professor. “Happiness comes only through a defining of limits. But it may happen that you do not want happiness that way … and that you may be happier … paradoxically—without the happiness-limitation.”
The dream-student Gettler nodded, and drifted away into a moment of non-identity that opened into himself as the dream-professor.
“But nothing harmful must happen to the boy,” he lectured. “The boy David-Peter-Peter-David is in terrible danger, and you must protect him.”
Gettler turned in his sleep, muttered, resumed his snoring.
The bump-bump-bump of the canoe tied beneath the fuselage arose in the night and faded like a drum sending a jungle message.
Jeb studied the black curtain of night, unable to sleep. He heard David’s drugged breathing, Gettler’s snores, the restless shifting of Monti. A dancing green line of fireflies bewitched the darkness, and were blotted out by a gust of wind-driven rain that pounded against the windshield.
An ominous flowing of premonition saturated Jeb. He felt the pressure of certainty that one or more of them was marked to die. It was like finding himself high above the earth in a plane without power: no place to go but down, and nothing but sharp peaks below.
Monti leaned toward him, whispered: “You awake?”
Suddenly, he needed a completeness that only she could provide. The sensation exploded in him, sent his arms out, and swept her against him. Their lips crushed together in a torturing kiss—a smothering of fire and agony.
She moaned as his hand groped beneath her shirt.
Something about the danger around them intensified the hunger of their bodies, drove them both to frenzies of passion that neither had ever before experienced.
Monti’s hands fluttered against him, responding to every demand. She opened their shirts, pressed herself against him: warm skin to warm skin. There came a soft, uninhibited yielding to her every motion: a warm, sensuous twisting that anticipated him.
She put her lips close to his ear, panted: “Be … very … quiet … ohhhhhhh …”
Their movements became like the river current: the soft and natural swaying that preceded the chasm and the rapids where the water pounded and flung itself in white violence.
And when the moment was spent, they still clung to each other, tasting remembered sweetness.
At dawn, the rain eased away to a fog-like drizzle.
Jeb slipped down to the left float, retrieved the grapnel, pushed the plane off into the current.
The pocked water around them carried an endless procession of flotsam: islands of sedge, logs, branches, leaves, bits of flower-garlanded greenery.
He looked in at Monti, recalling the night.
She glanced at him, turned away.
A hot flush crept over her skin, and she thought: For Christ’s sake! I’m embarrassed! Why’n hell do I suddenly develop a conscience?
Gettler climbed to consciousness from a deep, drenched sleep, found himself feeling clear-headed and refreshed. But his shoulders were cramped from the awkward position, and his wrists burned beneath the tape. He yawned.
David’s first awakening sensation came as a throbbing at his temples—followed by a sharp twinge of pain in the stump of his finger, and a rasping dryness in his throat.
“Water,” he husked.
Monti turned.
“Does your head hurt, dear?”
“’M so thirsty.”
She helped him with the water bucket.
“Is that better?”
“Yes. Where are we?”
“Going from nowhere to somewhere,” said Gettler.
Monti stabbed a sharp glance at him, settled back in the front seat.
A tearing emptiness of hunger clutched her stomach. The pang receded, left her feeling weak and desperate. Her mind focused in sudden rage on Gettler, and she whirled. “You dirty, murdering sonofabitch!” she rasped. “I’m sorry I didn’t kill you!”
As though at this signal to violence, there came a crash of thunder upriver, and the rain returned to its blinding, drenching equatorial downpour.
Monti slumped back, leaned against her door.
The outburst had shocked Jeb to sudden attention, but Gettler acted as though he had not heard.
Only David continued to stare at Monti, turning her words over and over in his mind.
Murdering? She means he killed my dad. Did he?
The boy turned his attention to Gettler, but the man had closed his eyes, and was sleeping softly like a baby.
The incessant drum roll of rain on the wings and cabin top filled the four humans with a timeless feeling. All around hung the grey vaporous curtain. Dim shapes of trees and hills took form through it, and dissolved as the plane floated past. Everything beyond the wingtips looked out of focus—as though created just that moment and left unfinished.
A spit of muddy land grew out of the rain.
Jeb suddenly crouched, peering at it. The brown shore was lined with rows of alligators drawn up in waiting ranks.
The Jivaro know we’re back here somewhere, thought Jeb. A shot wouldn’t tell them something they don’t already know.
He wet his lips with his tongue, dug the pole into the river, sent the plane toward the bank below the alligators.
“What’re you doing?” whispered Monti.
“Going to get us some food.”
Jeb took the rifle from the cabin floor, gave Monti the little twenty-two, lifted the grapnel from the strut and hurled it ashore as the plane grounded.
Upstream, one of the alligators pushed itself off into the river.
Hunger was like an electric current surging through Jeb. He brought the rifle to his shoulder, steeled himself against trembling, sighted on an eye of the nearest alligator, squeezed the trigger. The gun roared, bucked against Jeb’s shoulder.
But there was a blood-spattered threshing monster on the shore, twisting and flopping, hurling mud all around it.
The remaining alligators scrambled into the river.
“Hah!” shouted Gettler. “We eat!”
“What is it?” asked David.
“Alligator,” said Gettler.
Jeb exchanged the rifle for the machete, slipped off the float into the mud, slogged through clinging ooze toward the alligator. It had quieted to an occasional twitch, and lay half on its side, head in the water.
The machete dragged heavily against Jeb’s hand. It seemed to have doubled its weight since the last time he’d held it. He stopped beside the dead alligator, lifted the blade, swung down: and again … and again, until the tail lay severed.
Jeb picked up the tail, turned to retrace his steps. Rain poured down the muddy bank, filling his footprints, running away to the river in brown rivulets. He looked around, hesitating, feeling a sudden menace that made him tremble.
Something moved in the greyness of the veiled jungle wall at the base of the narrow spit.
His first thought: Indian!
Jeb dropped the alligator tail, put his hand to the magnum revolver wedged in his belt.
The rain-bent saw grass above him rippled, and Jeb stared at two glaring eyes in a cat face: jaguar!
His mind came around in a kind of shocked protest, and he told himself: But jaguar hunt only at night!
The animal flowed out of the grass and onto the muddy shore, crouched.
Jeb dragged up the revolver, snapped off a shot at the lowered head. The gun blasted and kicked in his hand as the big cat leaped. Jeb threw himself sideways, firing again as he moved.
The jaguar splashed into the river, jerked from side to side, twitched, shuddered, became quiet with its head under water. Something rippled the current beyond the dead animal. The cat suddenly slipped away, disappeared in an abrupt swirl of water.
Jeb’s breathing quieted. He retrieved the alligator tail and slogged back to the plane. He flopped the tail out onto the float, scrambled hurriedly up beside it, slid the machete under the seat.
“That’s the first time I ever saw a jaguar hunt a man in the open in broad daylight,” said Gettler. “Too bad it was so slow.”
“Thanks,” said Jeb.
“It was probably old, sick and starving,” said Gettler.
Monti leaned out, looked down at the alligator tail.
“Is that good to eat?”
“Sure.” Jeb turned toward David. “Get out the pellet stove.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jeb cooked the meat, cut it into four shares, handed three in the cabin to Monti.
“You going to cut these tapes off me?” asked Gettler.
“David can feed you,” said Jeb.
He squatted on the float, began gnawing his share of the meat. It tasted faintly of mud.
A transparent butterfly staggered through the rain, pasted its stranded filigree against the plane’s cowling in front of Jeb. A gusting of the downpour washed it off into the river.
Presently, Jeb arose, brought the anchor aboard, pushed off. The plane joined the other flotsam on the rain-cratered current.
The day stretched out like an extension of the flowing river. Jeb’s muscles grew numb with the exertion of keeping the plane out of the side currents. His throat felt thick and swollen where Gettler had bruised it.
And Jeb’s thoughts returned to Monti, but with a sense of detachment: Am I in love with her? Oh, Hell! Love doesn’t happen like this! It’s just physical. Natural.
He glanced in at Monti. She was napping, curled back in her corner with her cheek against the seat back. The red hair wisped in disorderly strands from beneath the silver scarf. Deep blue shadows traced the sunken curves beneath her eyelids. Freckles stood out darkly against the translucent paleness of her skin.
Jesus! She’s beautiful! he thought.
And he wanted to go into the cabin, cradle her head against him, reassure her.
Am I in love?
In the afternoon the rain slackened, almost stopped. A washed clarity in the air opened up the distances, brought everything into sharp focus. The clouds lifted, but did not break. Birds and animals came out of hiding. A droll-faced monkey chattered at them from an overhanging tree. Jungle hummingbirds darted among the garlanded branches. Pale lemon-green parakeets flocked over the water.
A giant leaf paced them for a time, bearing a long orange-shelled snail on its surface like a Magellan of the jungle world.
The cloud-shrouded sun touched the western peaks, and the forest around the plane began to draw in its night shadows: first the dark greens went to grey, then to black; lighter flowers dimmed.
A velvet smoothness overcame the river, and it was night.
Jeb took out the flashlight, probed ahead: nothing. The dimming yellowness of the light told of weakened batteries. He turned it off.
The plane suddenly grated on an obstruction, lurched, throwing Jeb against the strut. He snapped the light back on, sent its beam around them to reveal a rippling of shallows—shallows.
They scraped and bumped downstream.
“What’s happening?” demanded Monti.
“Shallows.”
Jeb turned off the light, found the grapnel and hurled it into the darkness. He felt it grip as the plane swept off into deeper water. They began the familiar sawing back and forth, back and forth in the current. Jeb scrambled through the cabin, dropped down to the opposite float, felt the patch. It was still in place. He took off the cap, groped inside the float: about two inches of water.
“Is it all right?” asked Monti.
“I think so.”
He crouched on the float, feeling inside it. The water didn’t seem to be rising.
“David, dig down behind you and give me the pump,” said Jeb.
“Yes, sir.”
“I hope it sinks,” said Gettler.
Jeb ignored him, checked the lashings on the dugout.
“Here’s the pump,” said David.
There came a sudden scrambling in the cabin’s darkness. David cried out, and Gettler began to laugh. Something banged against the float beneath Jeb, splashed in the river.
“You pushed me!” said David.
Monti found the flashlight, shone it into the rear.
Gettler stared back at the light, smiling.
“He made me drop the pump,” said David.
Jeb felt weariness without anger. He replaced the cap on the float, leaned into the cabin.
“Did he hurt you, David?”
“No, sir. He just pushed my hand.”
“Are we going to sink?” asked Monti.
“No.”
Jeb took the flashlight, directed it into Gettler’s eyes. The man blinked, but his face held its steady, almost vacant smile.
“Why’d you do that?” asked Jeb.
Gettler chuckled, sank back, closed his eyes.
The pinwheels whirled in his brain.
Jeb handed the light to David. “Check the tape on his hands.”
David took the light, peered behind Gettler. “Everything looks the same.”
Jeb climbed inside past Monti, took back the light, turned it off.
“Where are we?” asked Monti.
“Some shallows somewhere.”
“You’re tired,” said Monti.
“Yes.”
“I can stand watch,” said David.
“Okay.”
“Maybe we can recover that pump in the morning,” said Monti.
“It doesn’t make any difference,” said Jeb.
And he felt that this was the only truth remaining in the world.
“Nothing makes any difference,” he said.
“It’s too much for you—handling the plane all alone,” said Monti.
“I could help,” said David.
Jeb shook his head. “No.”
“How’s your hand, David?” asked Monti.
“It hurts a little, but it’s better.”
“You should check the bandages,” whispered Jeb.
“It’s all right,” said David.
“I’ll do it first thing in the morning,” she said.
Jeb leaned his head against the seat back. It felt so smooth, so restful. He slept, and dreams filled his mind. Creeping green mold spread everywhere around him, crept up his legs, reached for his mouth and nose. The smell of it filled his nostrils. He twisted, moaned.
A small warm hand touched his forehead, and a voice whispered: “It’s all right. Go to sleep.”
Jeb’s dreaming mind swept back through dead years to his mother’s voice; he relaxed.
“Go to sleep dear. Everything’ll be all right in the morning.”
His breathing smoothed, deepened.
Monti withdrew her hand from his forehead.
How like Roger he is, she thought. An abrupt feeling of self-revulsion filled her. Stop kidding yourself, Monti! He isn’t Roger! Her mouth shaped into a sneer. What in Christ’s name am I doing here? She put her hands over her eyes. What am I going to do?
Jeb turned in his sleep, leaned against her.
And Monti’s thought went out to him as though to something forbidden that drew her mind against her will.
Well, what the hell! (And she recognized her father’s expression in her thoughts.) So I’m attracted to a man. That’s what men and women are for.
Jeb awoke in the pre-dawn blackness. An acid etching of hunger knotted his stomach. He thought that he could feel the disintegration of the plane around them as he felt the hungry wasting of his own body. Uncounted little working-away noises trembled through the plane as it swung back and forth in the current. The soft thump-kalump of the canoe against the float came like a counterpoint to his own heartbeats. Intertwined odors trailed through the darkness: the biting smell of rust, mildew, perspiration and rotting fruit, oil smoke and carrion.
And over it all hung the fetid musk of the jungle: a compound of mud and plants, perfumes and stenches—with endless harmonics between, underneath and over.
Jeb cleared his throat.
Monti stirred.
“You awake?” whispered Jeb.
“Yes.” She coughed. “I made David go to sleep.”
“All quiet?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll be daylight pretty soon.”
“I know. Everything gets so quiet just before dawn.”
“It’s stopped raining.”
“It hasn’t rained all night.”
Jeb slapped at an insect crawling on his arm. He became conscious that insects were everywhere in the cabin: buzzing, clicking, fluttering, crawling …
“God, the bugs are fierce!” he said.
“I had my door open for awhile,” she said.
Dawn exploded over the river as though a switch had been thrown. They saw that the clouds were breaking in the east: shreds of sky—a washed grey-blue—widened to reveal the sun.
The waking sounds of birds clamored in the forest with whistles, screeches, coughings, jib-jib-jibs—and a distant roar that could have been a long-tailed monkey pretending it was a jaguar.
Gettler mumbled, straightened.
Jeb turned.
“You want me to help you down to the float?”
“Go to hell!” growled Gettler. He glared at Jeb.
David opened his eyes, blinked, said: “This is the ninth day.”
Jeb turned to Monti. “Better change the bandage while I’m casting off.”
She nodded.
He opened his door, swung down to the float, worked the grapnel off the bottom with the aid of a cane pole. Immediately the plane turned sideways, matched its pace to the brown current.
An iridescent opaline beetle arrowed from the left bank, came under the wing, rested momentarily on the strut, and plunged off toward the opposite shore.
Jeb looked into the cabin.
“How’s his hand?”
“It looked awfully red. I put some more of that ointment on it.”
“It doesn’t hurt as much as it did,” said David.
“My hands are falling off,” snarled Gettler. “Not that I suppose you care.”
“Turn around and let me see them,” said Jeb.
Gettler sneered.
“I can turn you around,” said Jeb.
Slowly, Gettler twisted in the seat, exposed his taped wrists.
Jeb tugged at the bindings.
“Your hands look okay.”
Gettler settled back in the seat.
A current pulled the plane toward the right hand shore. Jeb labored with the cane pole until they again floated in the center of the stream.
“Will my door lock?” asked Monti.
Jeb trailed his cane pole in the water, glanced in at her. “That latch there beside the handle. Pull it back. Why?”
“We could turn him loose out there on the right side, and lock my door.”
“Why?”
“He could help you.”
Jeb looked at Gettler, pursed his lips, glanced through the cabin at the other strut. The spear that had pierced the wing tank was still wedged there.
“Give me that spear on this side,” said Jeb.
Monti leaned out, recovered the spear, handed it to him. Jeb wedged it against the strut on his side.
“How about it, Gettler?” he asked.
“How about what?”
“If we parole you on the other side will you help?”
“Why should I?”
“Let me,” said David. “My finger’s all right.”
Gettler shook his head, spoke in a suddenly odd tone of sanity: “You can’t make the boy do a man’s work! It’ll kill him!”
“Maybe I should help,” said Monti.
Jeb shook his head.
“The boy didn’t do anything to deserve being tortured!” said Gettler. “I saw his hand. There’s no reason to torture him.” Glittering wildness returned to Gettler’s eyes.
“We’re not torturing him,” said Jeb.
“I’ll help,” muttered Gettler. “I give you my promise.”
Jeb took a pocketknife in his right hand, the revolver in his left, said: “Okay. Turn around.”
Gettler obeyed.
Jeb cut the tape between his wrists.
“Out the other side!” snapped Jeb.
Gettler rubbed his wrists.
“Now!” said Jeb.
Gettler clambered across David, dropped down to the float.
Monti slammed her door, locked it.
Gettler took up a cane pole, dipped it in the current.
Jeb turned, looked downstream.
Maybe that was a mistake, he thought. Gettler might watch his chance to jump ashore and run away. Jeb shrugged. Well, what if he did? It’d sure make things easier.
Clouds piled against the face of the hills in the west. The day grew brighter, and the heat mounted.
Solitude closed in upon them. There came over the river a feeling of timeless immensity: something endless and moving like a place of eternity caught between forest walls.
The jungle cast a spell over the plane.
The four humans surrendered themselves to the smooth gliding of sun and river. They drifted and drowsed along a breadth of warm light between two darknesses.
A roaring sound of rapids pressed in upon Jeb’s awareness. He suddenly straightened to attention. Downstream, the river narrowed like the converging lines of a railroad track, and seemed to end in a feathery green lifting of hills. Jeb read the current, recognized that the river must curve left.
The roaring sound grew louder.
Jeb climbed into the cabin, pumped the primer.
“What about him?” asked Monti. She nodded toward Gettler standing on the float.
“There’s time,” said Jeb.
He pulled the starter button. The motor kicked over twice without response. Again he tried the starter. It emitted a lifeless, grinding noise.
“Isn’t it going to start?” asked Monti.
“Doesn’t sound like it’s getting any spark,” muttered Jeb.
Now, they could feel the cooler airborne dampness that told of violent white water. The sound plunged up the river to them, filling the space between the jungle walls.
Again Jeb pumped the primer, pulled the starter without result.
Gettler shouted, pointed to the right.
“What’s he pointing at?” asked Monti.
Jeb studied the shore, hesitated.
“It’s a spear,” said David. “Hanging from that tree.”
“I see it,” said Monti. “What is it?”
“Ghost spear!” yelled Gettler.
Monti whirled toward Jeb. “What’s he saying?”
“It’s nothing,” said Jeb.
And again he tried the starter.
“David,” said Jeb.
“Yes, sir.” The boy leaned forward.
“Give Gettler your pocket knife. Tell him to cut the canoe loose, and have it ready.”
David, slid across the seat, opened the door.
Jeb tried the starter.
“I had a jalopy in college that sounded like that when it wouldn’t start,” said Monti.
The roar of water now dominated the air over the river. Jeb felt the damp coolness of the wind-blown spray.
“Come on, baby—start!” he pleaded.
And again he tried the starter.
“Could it be flooded?” asked Monti.
Jeb fought down a desire to shout: “Shut up!”
He worked the starter, and it ground more slowly with the weakening of the battery.
Gettler leaned in the open door. “You’re not going to start it.” He held the canoe beneath the fuselage with his foot. “We’d better get in the canoe.”
“You know what that spear meant!” snapped Jeb.
Gettler looked downstream.
The plane drifted toward hills that climbed steeply on both sides. Their green faded away to softness like a covering of sage-colored moss.
“What about that spear?” asked Monti.
“What was that white stuff on it?” demanded David.
“Kapok,” said Jeb.
“What’s it mean?” shouted Monti.
“They’ve made an offering to their river god, asking him to take us,” said Gettler.
Jeb’s hands moved with desperate jerkiness as he again tried the starter.
The motor ground with a hopeless slowness.
Gettler crouched on the pontoon, holding the canoe.
Something spanged into the fuselage beside the door.
“Dart!” screamed Gettler.
There came a splashing, scraping sound from beneath the plane.
In that moment, they swept around the bend. The current quickened. Directly ahead—less than one hundred yards away—the water curled over between glistening black lava walls. Deeper and deeper creases furrowed the current as it swept over into the gorge.
A deafening, hammering roar broke over the plane.
The lava flow was split cleanly by the river as though a giant axe had hewed it.
“Gettler!” screamed Monti. “He’s gone in the canoe!”
“Hang on!” shouted Jeb.
He scrambled out the door, grabbed up his cane pole. Out of the corners of his eyes he glimpsed the canoe behind them, Gettler crouched in the center, paddling with a pole.
But there was no time to worry about Gettler.
A surging coil of demented water lifted the plane, seemed to hold it poised, then hurled it forward into a terrifying savagery.
Jeb grabbed for the strut, hugged against it.
The left hand pontoon submerged, swept his feet out from under him. Jeb fought his way back onto the pontoon. The plane whirled completely around. Something jerked it forward. Jeb saw that the grapnel sea anchor had fallen overboard. He dared not let go of the strut to recover it, and could only stare at the taut line disappearing into the river ahead.
The canyon walls soared upward into amber spray mist seemingly just beyond the wingtips. Currents slithered along the smooth walls, and whirled back into the central torrent. A mountainous boiling of water loomed ahead as the maelstrom surged over a hidden rock.
Jeb freed one hand from the strut, pointed his cane pole ahead, felt it grate on rock. The pole, bent, snapped. He hurled away the useless stump, clutched the strut.
There was no time for fear. He experienced only a sinking sensation of awe as the pontoon beneath him lifted on the current and cleared the rock. The plane plunged down the other side, and a wave washed completely over them.
Screeching metal could be heard even above the chasm’s roar.
The plane tipped backward, bobbed forward, straightened.
And they were out of it! Drifting to the right across a wide dark pool that still boiled with the concealed violence of the rapids.
Jeb took a deep, shaking breath.
“I never thought we’d make it,” he whispered. “My God!”
“Look!” screamed Monti.
Jeb straightened.
Monti was leaning out the door, pointing upstream.
Jeb turned.
A dark matchstick hurtled toward them down the gorge with an ant figure moving violently in it.
Gettler!
The matchstick grew larger, resolved into a canoe. And now they could see the cane pole in his hands. Troughs and flumes of insane water tore at the canoe: rushing currents that blundered everywhere.
The canoe shot between two rocks as though squirted. It reared like a horse above the final boiling surge of current, and slapped down in the lower pool.
“He made it!” shouted David.
Gettler poled toward the drifting plane.
The roar of white water grew dimmer. Jeb became aware of straining and groaning sounds in the metal of the plane. Both pontoons gurgled with water inside them. They floated low. The strut shackles had been strained where they joined the float beneath Jeb. There was at least three inches of play at the juncture.
“Hallooooo!” called Gettler.
David looked at Jeb. “The water went right over us!”
Jeb glanced back at the rapids. He could still see one wall of the lava escarpment and the tailrace of white water. He saw no logical answer to how they had survived that violence yet the fact that they had survived it gave him no reassurance. He felt that they were being saved only for a more terrible trial.
Gettler poled the canoe under the wing beside Jeb, grabbed the pontoon.
“Is she going to float?” he asked.
Jeb stared at him.
“You didn’t have to come back here,” he said. “You abandoned us. Why didn’t you …”
“I couldn’t help that up there,” said Gettler. “The plane got away from me when I ducked into the canoe to escape the darts.”
“Then why’d you come back?”
“You have the guns,” said Gettler.
Jeb sighed, then: “Find us some cane poles.” He slipped the machete from the floor of the cabin, tossed it into the canoe, put a hand on the revolver at his waist.
Gettler smiled. “Sure, captain.” He looked around. “Where?”
Jeb looked around. Thorn bushes, a flooded reach of saw grass, assorted islands of sedge with their vaporous clouds of insects, here and there alligator snouts parting the current in wait for anything the rapids disgorged. Beyond the thorn bushes and saw grass, forests of hardwood climbed upward.
“Now you see why you’re not supposed to be able to navigate this river in the wet season,” said Gettler.
“We survived those rapids,” protested Jeb.
“The river god wasn’t ready for us yet.”
“And where were the Jivaro?” asked Jeb. “That was a perfect place for an ambush!”
“You saw the spear,” said Gettler. “They prayed to the demon of the rapids, then sat back to let the demon take us.”
A widening curve of river hid the rapids. The river downstream spread across lowlands like a stagnant lake.
“Animals starve here in this season,” said Gettler. “Only the bugs stay active.”
“You want us to give up?” asked Jeb.
“We take the canoe,” said Gettler. “It’s our only hope.”
Jeb glanced along the narrow length of the dugout, saw the wash of dirty water in its bottom, the brown bubbles along the cracks in the wood.
The plane creaked and gurgled.
“That thing’s sinking,” said Gettler.
“Give me your cane pole,” said Jeb.
Gettler hesitated, passed the pole to Jeb.
“Swing the canoe around to the other side and tie it up,” said Jeb.
Gettler shrugged, obeyed.
“David, get up on top and look for a place to beach,” said Jeb.
The boy clambered out, and Jeb boosted him onto the cabin top.
David shielded his eyes with his hand, stared downstream.
“Don’t let a sedge island fool you,” said Jeb. “Look for current going around both sides of an island.”
“Over there to the right,” said David. “That one.” He pointed at a dark mound.
Jeb recovered the sea anchor, hung it in the strut, began working the plane toward the island. The dark spot grew larger as they approached.
“It is an island!” said Monti.
Current whorls billowed away on both sides in a thin lacery of foam.
Less than an inch remained between the top of Jeb’s pontoon and the river surface. He dug the pole into the river bottom, sent the plane crabwise into a patch of drowned grass at the upper tip of the island.
“Now what?” demanded Gettler.
“Now you bail out the pontoons,” said Jeb.
“With what?”
“With a dipper made from fish line and an end joint of this cane pole. Get busy.”
Jeb passed him the pole beneath the fuselage.
“The patch’s leaking,” said Gettler.
“Shut up and get busy.” Jeb lowered himself into the warm water, waded across to the muddy ground ahead of the plane. “I’ll find something to wedge the patch tighter.”
He glanced up at Monti, nodded toward Gettler.
She raised the muzzle of the rifle to where Jeb could see it.
Monti watched Jeb explore the island for bits of driftwood. She heard David moving on the cabin top, Gettler working at the floats.
The still, steamy air above the river felt unbreathable, and made her lungs gasp in deep unsatisfactory gulps of vapor. The day grew hotter as the men worked.
It can’t possibly get any hotter, she thought.
But it grew hotter.
Jeb came around the left side, lifted the cowling, began working on the motor. Presently, he appeared at the cabin door, leaned in toward Monti.
“Anything in your suitcase I can use to wipe away moisture in the motor?”
“I’ll see.”
She climbed into the rear seat, groped behind it, came up with a translucent red nightgown. It smelled of mildew and there was a green streak of rot across it. She handed it to Jeb.
“Here. Use this.”
And she thought: Now there’s a macabre twist! That little bit of red fluff was supposed to save my marriage. Now … maybe it’ll save my life!
She shook her head, slid across the seat, peered out at Jeb.
“How’s it going?”
“I think the ignition shorted out. Everything’s soaked. It’s getting plenty of gas.”
She glanced up at the sky.
“Why aren’t there planes out looking for us now that the weather’s clear?”
Jeb continued to work, spoke without looking at her.
“The clear weather may be local. We don’t know what it’s like downstream.
“But couldn’t they just fly up the river?”
“Maybe … maybe not.”
“They must’ve missed us by now!”
“Don’t count on it.”
Her voice sank to just above a whisper: “I’m famous, dammit. They won’t just leave me and forget me.” She raised her voice. “We heard that one plane! There’ll be more.”
Jeb stopped, looked at her.
“That was over a week ago, Monti.”
“They’d search at the rancho first,” she said. “That’s natural.”
“If they’ve missed us, they may suspect that we found a chunk of mountain in a cloud … or crashed into the jungle.” He stared out across the flooded river. “The jungle can swallow a plane in a week—grow over it so that it’d never be found.” Again he looked at her. “Why should anyone expect us to be on a river that curves all over hell’s half acre?”
She put a hand to her eyes, shook her head.
Jeb leaned against the cowling as a trembling of weakness passed over him. He felt that he had passed beyond hunger.
“The floats are as dry as I can get them,” said Gettler.
Jeb straightened, looked down at Gettler standing in the water ahead of the plane. A look of feral cunning veiled the man’s eyes. Unconsciously, Jeb put his hand to the revolver in his belt.
“You’re going to have to crank her,” said Jeb.
“How?”
“Beach the canoe between the floats, and stand in it.” Jeb looked at the prop. “Ever do this before?”
“No.”
“You grab the prop with both hands up here, stand well back; you haul it down and step clear all in one motion.”
“When do I do this?”
“Get the canoe in position. I’ll tell you when. We’ll prime it first. You have to be careful when I yell contact.” He looked down at the canoe. “Fall back into the canoe if you have to. Let’s get moving.”
Jeb climbed into his seat, checked the controls, nodded to Gettler.
The motor coughed on the second try, then settled into its familiar banging, spitting roar. Jeb adjusted the carburetor, leaned out his door, shouted: “Tie the canoe to the float and shove us off!”
Presently, the nose of the plane swung out into the river. Gettler appeared standing on the right hand float.
“Why’re you using the motor?” asked Monti.
“To dry it out.”
“Is David all right up on top?”
“Yes. He was lying down flat when I got in.”
“If we just had enough gas,” said Monti.
“It’d save some blisters all right,” said Jeb. He glanced up at the wing tank gauge on his left, looked down to the temperature needle. “That should do it.” He turned off the ignition.
Gettler rapped on the door window beside Monti.
“We going to have to crank her every time?”
Jeb shrugged.
David slid down to the cowling, dropped to the left float, climbed into the rear seat.
“Boy, it’s hot up there!”
A wavering diagonal current took the plane around a thin neck of tree-garlanded land. Again they heard the sound of falling water. The river below them stretched more than half a mile wide with a straight line slanting across it. Vapor whorls hung above the line.
“A shallow falls,” said Jeb. “Maybe three feet.” He looked left to right. “Clear across!”
“What’ll we do?” asked Monti.
“Gettler!” called Jeb. “Crank her!”
Gettler moved forward along the float.
The motor caught on the first turn.
Jeb swung toward the left shore in a wide, curving arc. Oil smoke fumed back into the cabin.
Monti coughed.
“What’re you going to do?” she asked.
“Look at those trees,” said Jeb. “See the water beyond them? Means it’s open. No place for an ambush.”
She nodded.
Jeb cut the motor, slipped down to the float. The plane coasted in among drooping vines. He caught one, tied it to the strut.
“Plantain,” said Gettler.
Jeb looked at him. “Huh?”
“Bananas.” Gettler pointed into the narrow peninsula.
Jeb followed the direction pointed, saw a tree of thick fronds with red-skinned fruit showing through the green.
Gettler already was off the float, forcing his way through the undergrowth. He returned with three thick stems of the fruit, passed two to Jeb.
“Are those bananas?” asked David. “They’re red.”
Jeb handed Monti one of the stems of fruit.
“They ought to be cooked if you want to take the time,” he said. But he already was peeling and eating one.
The food felt leaden in his stomach, and he suffered a sudden cramping pang of nausea. It passed, and he ate a second one.
Gettler squatted on the muddy shore, staring at the nose of the dugout beneath the plane. If he closed his eyes, he knew that he would see rapids around him, feel the canoe fighting the savage water beneath him, the cane pole vibrating in his hands.
Curious, he thought. I wasn’t afraid.
And he realized that he had never once doubted his ability to shoot the white water safely. The feeling had come over him as he crouched in the dugout to escape the dart attack, and watched the plane drift away. But all the same … something had happened back there: a new kind of awareness tingling in his nerves.
He saw David come out of the cabin and onto the float beside Jeb.
“May I go pick some more of that fruit?” he asked.
Gettler absently pinched off a tick on his leg.
Jeb studied the peninsula to the left where it curved off into higher ground, looked across the flood waters on the other side at the feathery green hills, a great softness of hills bending down to the river. There was a desolate, sweltering emptiness to the landscape, all motion crushed by the pressure of heat.
And Jeb knew that the emptiness was a false image.
“I’ll be careful,” said David.
“Let him pick some of the fruit,” said Monti. “It’s open in there. Nothing could be hidden.”
A black and scarlet dragonfly buzzed across the cowling of the plane, hummed in among the trees.
Jeb shrugged. “Be careful.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And keep your finger out of the water.”
David leaped to the mud beside Gettler, skidded, caught himself on a vine. He made his way toward the fruit still showing through the green.
Jeb turned to bail out the floats.
“How’re you planning to go over those falls?” asked Gettler.
“Skim over them under power,” said Jeb.
Gettler sniffed.
“And what about the canoe?”
“We’ll let it go over by itself and recover it below.” Jeb glanced at the canoe. “Untie it and beach it for now.”
Gettler straightened stiffly, moved to obey.
Monti leaned out the door. “Where’s David?”
Jeb glanced at the shore. No sign of the boy.
Monti pulled back, looked into the rear seat, on the floor, under the front seats.
“Jeb, he’s got the other gun: the twenty-two,” she said. There was an edge of panic to her voice.
“It’s all right,” said Jeb. He moved to the front edge of the float, called: “David!”
No answer.
And again, louder: “David!”
Monti dropped down beside him, shouted: “David!”
No answer.
Gettler beached the canoe, climbed up the muddy shore.
“David!” he called.
A hummingbird darted past him with a musical whirring of wings. No other sound except the roaring of the falls.
“He can’t have gone far,” said Jeb.
Gettler returned to the canoe for the machete, went back into the underbrush.
Monti put a hand to her cheek.
“Something’s happened to David!” Her voice bordered on hysteria.
“Stay here!” said Jeb.
He leaped to the shore, scrambled up toward the fronds that trembled to Gettler’s movements.
Gettler emerged from the bushes, machete dangling in his right hand. “His tracks lead off toward the mainland.”
“What’s he thinking of?” Jeb cupped his hands around his mouth, shouted: “David!”
“He can’t hear you above the sound of the falls,” said Gettler. “He’s following the tracks of a river pig.”
“Following the …”
“He thinks he’s going to get us some meat,” said Gettler. “I heard her say he took the gun.”
“What’s wrong?” called Monti.
Jeb returned to the bow of the canoe, explained.
Monti’s glance darted fearfully along the line of the peninsula.
“Logan,” said Gettler.
Jeb turned.
“I’m going after him,” said Gettler. “Let me have your gun.”
Jeb shook his head. “You’re staying here … without a gun.” He lifted the revolver from his belt, hefted it. “I’ll find him.”
“Stay where you are!” ordered Gettler. He lifted the machete.
Jeb brought up the gun muzzle.
And Gettler laughed, a brutal, chopping sound. “You’re not the killer type, Logan. And that’s why I’m going after the boy.”
Gettler whirled, crashed into the underbrush, through it.
Jeb started after him.
“Wait!” called Monti.
He hesitated.
“Don’t leave me,” she said.
“Sonofabitch!” muttered Jeb.
Gettler was already out of sight.
Jeb felt a sudden chill, thought: He could wait for me in there, chop me down with the machete.
Slowly, he made his way back to the plane, jumped out to the float.
Then he thought about the twenty-two, glared at Monti.
“Christ!” he whispered. “If he gets that gun away from David, he could pick us off here like sitting ducks!”
“What’ll we do?” gasped Monti.
Jeb rammed the gun under his belt, scrambled after the canoe, held it by tossing the grapnel into it. He slashed the vines tying the plane, pushed off, brought the grapnel. The canoe drifted free.
“Get inside!” ordered Jeb.
“What’re you doing?”
“Get in there!”
She climbed into the cabin, gazed at the shore.
Jeb joined her, primed the motor.
“Pray there’s enough juice in the battery.”
He pulled the starter.
The motor kicked over, coughed, belched a cloud of black smoke, settled into its uneven, banging.
Jeb let out a long breath.
“You’re stranding them!” shouted Monti. “What’re you doing?”
Jeb pointed the nose of the plane upstream, cracked the throttle a notch. They drew away from the falls.
“We’ll recover the canoe and anchor below the falls in that big pool there.”
“But they …”
“The peninsula comes right down to the edge of the falls. We can pick them up there. Gettler can’t shoot us. It’d strand him without transportation.”
He swung the plane around in a wide arc, pointed it downstream. Oil smoke pouring from the cowling screened off the view ahead momentarily, and Jeb saw that the motor already was beginning to overheat. He threw off caution, pushed the throttle all the way ahead. The plane burst through its smoke screen, and the line of falls loomed up ahead like a pencil mark drawn across the river.
“Pray!” gritted Jeb.
The controls felt sluggish, soft, and the drag of the patched float forced him to use heavy left rudder. But some of the purpose built into this metal and fabric still lived. The plane wavered up onto the step as the falls came underneath. There was a bouncing sensation, a tortured roaring from the motor. They shot outward, dropped with a sodden splash that sent spray rattling against the fuselage and up under the wings.
Jeb eased off the throttle, kicked right rudder.
“There’s the canoe!” shouted Monti.
It floated upside down beneath the falls, held there by the back surge of current.
Jeb killed the motor at the last minute, coasted up to the canoe, into the warm spray and rising mist. He slipped down to the float, caught the canoe, righted it, tied it alongside with a length of fish line.
The plane drifted slowly back from the falls into the wide pool.
He tossed out the grapnel, felt it bite into the river bottom.
The line tightened, and they swung around to face upstream.
Jeb bailed out the canoe, straightened.
Monti stared toward the peninsula above the falls. A dove-grey mist boiled up from the disturbed water to veil the shoreline. There was a dream quality to the forest wall.
“Monti,” said Jeb.
She chewed at her lower lip, continued to stare shoreward.
“I know this can’t mean much now,” he said. “But I’m sorry I let him go.”
“You didn’t let him go,” she said. “We all let him go. Even Gettler.”
A deep sense of weariness dragged at Jeb. He tipped up the visor of his cap, rubbed his forehead. The insects they had evaded in moving the plane, found the new location, settled around the two humans, buzzing and biting. It was like being struck with thousands of pins. Jeb ignored them out of a deep feeling of fatigue. Monti forced her mind away from the horror of them until she felt that she was actually outside herself, an interested onlooker.
And she thought about Gettler with a new clarity.
If David’s alive, Gettler will find him.
She held onto this thought like a thin flame of sanity.
A gentle flowing of wind pushed across the plane, turned it slightly. The wind brought a false coolness that made the after sensation of heat more unbearable. Again the wind surged across them—stronger this time. They could hear it in the struts, across the wings: a thin metallic vibration.
Jeb looked up into the wind.
A thick billowing of dark clouds filled the eastern horizon. There was a feeling of depth and weight and blackness to them. Lightning flickered soundlessly from beneath the rolling front. A long interval passed before the thunder came: a low, sodden hammer stroke.
A feeling of soundless suspense came over the river and the jungle. Even the pulsing of the falls became muted.
The current crawled beneath the plane like a writhing serpent, a muddy grey velvet oozing motion that harried the plane. Wind and current fought for domination over the creaking metal.
Again, lightning flickered over the jungle, and the growl of thunder came faster, sharper. The sound set off a band of howler monkeys on the eastern shore, and their cries echoed across the river.
Luminous grey darkness flowed across the plane, flattened all shadows. A line of rain surged over the water, whipped up violent bursts of wind. The storm broke over the plane as night fell. It was a blackness filled with the rattling of rain and shuddering wind.
A fork of lightning speared the darkness.
Jeb’s eyes carried an afterglow image of the distant forest wall and veiling rain: everything frozen in a stark blue-white glare. He climbed into the cabin.
Monti leaned against him with a quick, seeking motion.
“Oh, God, I’m scared,” she whispered. “Oh, God, I’m scared. Oh, God, I’m scared.”
He had no words to comfort her. Their world and everything it demanded of them had gone beyond words into an elemental flow of feeling and emotion.
Monti shuddered, clutched at him. Abruptly, she pushed away, dragged in a sobbing breath.
A gust of wind and rain shook the plane.
She stared out into the blackness. It was impenetrable oblivion: a foretaste of death. She jerked her mind away from this thought, fumbled in her pocket for the cigarette lighter. The wheel rasped against the flint in the darkness. A thin spray of sparks shot across the wick, ignited it. The flame was a warm spot of yellow that sent wavering shadows into every corner of the cabin.
Jeb looked at it.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
She reached out, balanced the lighter atop the instrument panel, stared at the tiny flame.
“Call it a candle in the window,” she whispered. “Could they see it?”
“You couldn’t see that light a hundred feet away through this rain.”
“Jeb, what if they come back to the shore and find us gone?”
“They’ll wait for morning.”
“But the storm …”
“It’s rough, sure. What else can we do, though?”
She buried her face in her hands. “If I could just stop my mind! Stop thinking!”
Abruptly, she dropped her hands, whirled against him. Their lips touched, then bruised together.
An uncaring recklessness came over Monti. There was nothing more important in the world than the need to drive away thoughts, to win a blank passage of forgetfulness. She pulled her lips away from Jeb, whispered: “The body knows how to forget.”
Jeb reached up, clicked the cap down on the lighter, extinguished it.
His mind took one fleeting glance into the jungle before he surrendered himself to his own need to forget. He saw the rain beating into the eternal mud, and two human figures crouching there. He felt that they were together.
Their lips met.