Chapter 11
The first rainy light of morning found the plane sawing gently at the end of its anchor line. The metal had dulled to a grey that blended into the dove-grey mist of falling water. There was only a place where the river surface wasn’t cratered by raindrops.
Jeb slipped out his door and down to the pontoon. Both pontoons floated low, sloshing out hollow echoes with their burden of water.
Monti looked out at him.
“What’s wrong?”
“We took a lot of water during the night.”
He found the dipper Gettler had made, bent to bailing out the pontoons, and he scanned the shore while he worked. It was a pastel shore, mysterious behind the downpour—all colors pearl-washed by the rain.
Monti clambered down to the right hand float, stood beneath the wing behind him.
“Jeb, what if we miss them?”
“They’ll signal. We can’t miss them.”
“If it’d only stop raining! We can’t see anything!”
“We’ll hear them.”
“What if it was a trick, Jeb? What if he isn’t looking for David? What if he’s gone on without us?”
Jeb shook his head.
“I’d bet everything I own—including my life—that he’d look for David until he found him.”
“But what if the Indians get to them first?”
“Let’s fight our battles one at a time, Monti.”
She buried her head in her hands. “I feel like I’m being punished.”
He capped the float, stood up, put a hand on her shoulder. “Monti, if you’re …”
She shook off his hand. “Don’t touch me! I have to think with my head … like a man.”
Again he reached out for her to comfort her.
“No!” she said. “When you touch me I think with my body. That’s why I’m being punished.”
“That’s nonsense, Monti!”
“No it isn’t!”
Jeb started to reply, stopped as a strange sound wavered across the river.
“Hallooooooo!”
Monti and Jeb whirled, stared toward the peninsula.
“It’s Gettler!” said Monti. “There! I see him! In front of that tree!”
“Yes!”
“Where’s David? I don’t see David!”
Jeb untied the canoe, grabbed up the cane pole.
“Let me go with you!” cried Monti.
“No! Stay with the plane! Be ready with the rifle.”
He pushed off, headed for shore.
“Hallooooooo!” called Gettler.
Jeb’s cane pole bit into river bottom, sent the canoe surging toward shore. Abruptly, he saw movement in the tree high above Gettler: an arm waving something bright—the machete!
David!
The canoe slipped through a line of reeds, grounded, and Jeb saw the handle of the twenty-two jutting from Gettler’s pocket. But Gettler was intent on helping David scramble out of the tree.
Jeb pulled the magnum revolver from his belt, waited.
Gettler turned, held David in front of him.
“Logan!” he called.
Jeb cursed under his breath. Gettler was shielded by the boy.
“I’m going to give you the revolver in my pocket,” said Gettler. “This is to show you that I don’t have to!”
He let go of David.
It’s a trick! thought Jeb.
He waited tensely for David to move aside, and almost pulled the trigger when the rifle roared from the plane behind him.
His first thought was that Monti saw the impasse on shore and was shooting at Gettler. But a spear suddenly sailed over the brush from the flooded backwater to their right, buried itself in the mud beside David.
“Canoe!” screamed Monti.
And again the rifle roared.
Gettler charged forward, swept up David, dumped him into the dugout, shoved off and leaped into the other end—all in one blinding motion.
“Shoot, you jackass!” he roared. And he grabbed the cane pole, sent them skimming toward the plane.
Jeb snapped out of his shock, fired at the bushes.
Again the rifle roared.
They cleared the end of the peninsula, saw a canoe drawn up above the falls on the other side.
Jeb shot into the undergrowth ahead of it.
Another spear sailed out of the greenery, fell short of the fleeing dugout.
David crouched low, still clutching the machete.
Something flicked into the water beside him.
Gettler grunted, shot the canoe under the right wing of the plane, caught the float.
“Out!” he roared.
Jeb helped David onto the float.
“Inside with you!”
He saw Monti on the opposite side. She raised the rifle, fired at the shore.
Jeb clambered onto the float, brought in the grapnel line. But the grapnel refused to come free of the bottom. He ducked back along the float, took the machete from David in the cabin, returned and slashed the grapnel line.
Immediately, the current turned the plane to the right, swept it away from the falls.
Jeb returned the machete to the cabin floor, looked down at Gettler, who still sat in the canoe, holding the float. Gettler was bent forward. As Jeb watched, his hand started to slip from the float. Jeb crouched, grabbed the canoe.
“Gettler!”
No response.
Then Jeb saw the tuft of kapok on Gettler’s right sleeve, the dark spot within the kapok.
Dart!
He threw a loop of the fish line around the canoe, cinched it, dragged Gettler half onto the float.
“Monti! Help me!” he called.
She came through the front of the cabin, took one of Gettler’s arms.
“What’s wrong?”
“Curare dart!”
David grabbed Gettler’s other arm.
Between them, they hoisted him into the cabin and across the seat back.
“What can we do?” whispered Monti.
“David! Give me the first aid kit!” barked Jeb. “Monti, keep an eye out for another attack.”
David brought the green metal box from the rear compartment, thrust it into Jeb’s hand.
“Take your pocket knife and cut away the jacket there,” said Jeb. He nodded toward the fluff of kapok.
David wet his lips with his tongue, stared wide-eyed at the protruding tip of the dart.
“Hurry up!” barked Jeb. He snapped open the first aid kit, fumbled in it for the hypodermic.
David swallowed, brought out his pocket knife, clenched his lips together, began cutting away the jacket.
Suddenly, Gettler whispered: “I’m all right.”
Jeb hesitated, looked at Gettler.
The man’s eyes were open.
“The race … from shore … wore me out,” husked Gettler. “Weak.”
Jeb turned back to the hypodermic, brought an ampoule from the first aid kit.
“What can we do?” asked Monti. “It’s poison.” She stared at Gettler’s bare arm.
Part of the dart bent downward.
“It’s broken off,” said David.
“That’s the way the bastards make ’em,” whispered Gettler. “Poison part breaks off inside.” He lifted his arm, stared at it.
Jeb lifted the hypodermic.
“What’s that?” asked Gettler.
“Prostygmine,” said Jeb. “No time for niceties like sterilized needles.” He swabbed a dab of alcohol on Gettler’s arm above the dart, sank in the hypodermic needle, depressed the plunger, removed the needle.
“Give me the knife, David,” said Jeb.
David handed it to him.
Jeb poured alcohol on the blade, turned back to Gettler’s arm, slashed once across the embedded tip of the dart.
Gettler winced, bit his lip. Blood poured down his arm.
Jeb flipped the dart tip with the point of the knife, pressed his mouth against the wound, sucking out the poison. He spat over the side, repeated the operation. And again.
Gettler’s head lolled.
“Salt tablets in the kit there,” said Jeb. “For the heat. They’re marked. Dump out all but a couple of cups of water from the water bag, drop in a dozen of those tablets.
David grabbed up the kit, obeyed.
“What’s prostyg … whatever you said?” asked Monti.
“Specific for curare,” said Jeb. He took the water bag from David, turned Gettler’s head, dribbled water between his lips.
Gettler gagged, coughed.
“This’s why you have prostygmine in your jungle kit,” said Jeb.
He dribbled more water between Gettler’s lips.
“Swallow it!” he ordered.
Gettler gulped, swallowed. Slowly, he drained the water bag.
“Why the salt water?” asked Monti.
“That’s how the Indians treat themselves for curare poison,” said Jeb. “It works.
“What’s it do … the poison?” asked David.
“It makes the muscles relax,” said Jeb. “You suffocate … or your heart stops.”
Gettler suddenly turned, arched his back, sagged in the seat. His breathing became labored, uneven. His head sagged forward.
“What if he stops breathing?” whispered Monti.
“Artificial respiration,” said Jeb. “David, mix some more salt water.”
David dipped a water bag over the side, began pouring salt tablets and purifier into it.
“Any sign of the Jivaro?” asked Jeb.
Monti jerked upright, glanced around. “No.”
“Mr. Logan!” hissed David. “I almost forgot!”
“What?”
“When I was in the tree back there. I saw a big black cliff downstream. It had a hole in it. I thought maybe it was another canyon, but the rain got worse. I couldn’t tell for sure.”
Jeb turned, looked downstream, back at David, down to Gettler.
The man’s breathing had become slower, shallower, each time he exhaled seemed more like a final collapse.
“Here’s the salt water,” said David. He passed the bag forward.
Jeb tipped Gettler’s head back, dribbled water between his lips. Once, Gettler’s eyes flickered open, closed. He swallowed with a convulsive gulp.
Gettler heard the conversation around him as though it happened behind a thick curtain of unimportance. His mind drifted through a series of velvet explosions. He shuddered, opened his eyes, closed them. Fire coursed through his veins, then ice. Again he opened his eyes, moved his lips.
Jeb bent closer.
“Oscar Wilde was wrong,” whispered Gettler.
“Don’t try to talk,” said Jeb.
“Thousand lives,” husked Gettler, “worth thousand deaths!” He smiled, closed his eyes.
Jeb forced more salt water down his throat.
Gettler turned his head aside. “Gotta tell y’ something,” he whispered. “Memory catches everything … like a fisher–man’s net.”
“Drink this water!” ordered Jeb.
Gettler shook his head.
“’Simportant! ’Sbeautiful! Everything’s got to change.” He forced his head off the seat back. “Can’t stop changing! And anything’s possible! Anything!” His mouth opened, closed. “It’s holy!” He let his head drop back against the seat.
“Sure,” said Jeb. “Now stop trying to talk. Take some more water.”
Again he forced salt water between Gettler’s lips. And again Gettler turned away.
“Gotta ’splain,” he whispered. “Something’s holding us on the river. ’S time! River’s time. Words holding us!”
“Can’t you make him stop raving?” asked Monti.
“Circle,” whispered Gettler. “All creation. Mustn’t stop circle. “Sdeath! Motion’s holy.” His voice dropped. “Creation … fire … circle.”
“What’s he saying?” asked Monti.
“He’s delirious,” said Jeb.
“It’s my fault,” said David. “If I hadn’t tried to be smart … but I was so hungry, and I saw those tracks. Then the storm came, and I was afraid …” He began to cry “… the Indians …”
“Did you see Indians?” demanded Monti.
“Not until the river.”
“Storm saved him,” said Jeb. “Indians take cover in a storm.”
Again he dribbled water between Gettler’s lips.
“He seems to be breathing easier,” said Monti.
“I think so,” said Jeb.
He turned to bandaging Gettler’s arm, thought: Why didn’t I let him die? Sonofabitch!
“How’s your hand, David?” asked Monti.
“Oh, it’s all right.”
“That bandage looks muddy.”
“I fell.”
“Let me change the bandage, David,” said Jeb.
David put the bandaged hand behind him. “It’s all right.”
“Let’s see it!” snapped Jeb.
Slowly, David brought his hand around.
Jeb took it, gently cut away the dressing.
David looked away.
“Christ!” said Jeb.
“What is it?” whispered Monti.
“It’s infected.”
“Badly?”
“Any infection’s bad out here!”
Jeb dug in the medical kit, brought out the terramycin. “Take these. I’ll pack it with this sulfa ointment.”
Monti watched Jeb work—short, angry movements.
And Jeb thought: I didn’t let Gettler die because he saved David … and probably saved me … and … No. I did what I had to do for him.
It came to Jeb abruptly that this simple idea explained Gettler: He did what he had to do.
Jeb tied off David’s bandage.
“There’s what I saw,” said David. He looked out the right hand window.
Jeb and Monti turned.
The rain mist had thinned. Through it they saw a great black face of lava rock about a mile away. It towered above the jungle growth like the side of a monster ship. To the left it appeared split, and the air showed a thicker hazing of mist there.
“It looks farther away,” said David.
“River’s curving all over the landscape through here,” said Jeb. “Monti, open your door.”
She obeyed.
A faint roaring came to their ears.
“More rapids?” asked Monti.
“Could be the wind,” said Jeb.
A gust of wind pushed a black line up the river toward them, pulled a rain veil across the lava cliff. The downpour whipped around the plane, thudded against the cabin top. As quickly as it had come, the wind passed and the smooth current slipped them onward through a somnolent hiss of falling rain.
Gettler stirred, groaned, opened his eyes.
Monti looked across him at Jeb, who was sitting half out of the cabin to make room for Gettler.
“How do you feel, Gettler?” asked Jeb.
“Thankful,” whispered Gettler.
“Thankful?”
“For your jungle kit. German in your ancestry. Has to be. Too thorough.”
“Do you feel up to crawling into the back?” asked Jeb.
Gettler nodded.
They helped him over the seat. He slumped back beside David, glanced at David’s bandage.
“Invalids in the rear, eh, son?”
“I’m sorry I caused so much trouble,” said David.
“Not you,” said Gettler. “The jungle.” He looked out his window. “Indians live in the jungle, and the jungle lives in them—passed through them. Nothing resists. Take a white man, though: it’s like our skin wouldn’t let the jungle in. One of us has to break. Drain that swamp! Kill those bugs! Clear away that forest!”
“Give it back to the Indians,” said Monti. “Every man to his own jungle.”
She tipped her head against the seat back. “It’s so hot … so damp. If it wasn’t so goddamn damp! I smell mildew all over me.”
Jeb slipped down to the float, kicked away a floating island of sedge that had lodged there, ignored the cloud of insects that arose at the disturbance. He saw that the rain was slackening. It shimmered away to a glistening mist, and even that faded.
The river took on a flat and oily look: a stretch of shimmering glass dotted with tufts of sedge like a tabletop display laid out on a mirror with a label: “South American jungle river—Amazon headwaters.” It became an enchanted river: slow, hypnotic. The plane was a toy plane shrunken by jungle sorcery—lost in a magic immensity of flooding current.
“White men weren’t meant to live in this country,” muttered Jeb.
He felt that they drifted in a moist pocket of air that had been drained of all vitality. The smell of the jungle pressed in upon him: a dank piling up of life and death on the forest floor, rotting and festering. The odor hung across their track—a physical substance of smell that they encountered in waves.
A soft breeze puffed across the plane from the right hand shore, brought a new odor. Jeb sniffed at it.
Gettler stirred upright in the rear seat, hissed: “Cassava root! I smell fresh cassava root!”
“What is it?” asked Monti.
Jeb stared across the plane’s cowling.
“Village,” he said.
“Where?”
“Back in the jungle across there.”
“I don’t see anything,” said Monti.
A stagnant silence settled over the plane.
Presently, Monti said: “The air’s so hot. I feel like it was pulling all the oxygen out of my lungs.”
Jeb looked downstream at a line of shock-headed palms along the far shore. As he looked, a flock of golden-beaked toucans lifted out of the trees in a frenzied cloud, filled the air with their dog-pack yelping.
“Something disturbed them!” hissed Gettler.
“What?” asked Monti.
“Maybe an animal,” said Jeb. He glanced in at Monti. Her cheeks were indrawn, pale hollows. He rubbed at his beard, felt the sharp line of cheekbone beneath.
“Possession isn’t nine points of the law here,” said Gettler. “It’s all the law there is.”
Jeb closed his eyes, felt the weariness draining him, sleep like a narcotic mist waiting at the edge of awareness. He experienced a nightmare sense of dreaming through their entire journey to this point. His eyes snapped open. He put a hand against the warm metal of the cowling, wiped at a smudge of oil smoke stain.
“It’s so hot,” said Monti. She pulled the back of her hand across her forehead.
The river downstream suddenly glistened with uncounted sparklings.
Jeb looked up: great cracks of blue were spreading through the clouds. The sun came out. It hit the plane with a sense of physical pressure, reflected off the water into every corner beneath the wings. Jeb turned away, saw the silver wheel of a spider web stretched between fuselage and float. It brought to his mind the vivid remembrance of the spider on the ceiling of his bedroom in Milagro (How long ago? he asked himself) and this recalled his nightmare premonition.
Death and a river … a river and death.
A feeling of helplessness came over him, a giving up to the belief that he was caught like a fly in a web, held by a force too strong to resist.
And he recalled with a dull uncaring that he had neglected to take the twenty-two revolver from Gettler’s pocket.
It doesn’t matter, he thought. Nothing matters.
“Mr. Logan,” said David.
Jeb shook his head slowly.
“Mr. Logan!”
It took a conscious act of determination for Jeb to turn his head toward David in the cabin. The boy was leaning forward, unbandaged hand pressed against Monti’s forehead. Monti was curled in her corner, eyes closed, head thrown back against the seat.
“She feels awfully warm,” said David. “She’s been moaning.”
The idea refused to register in Jeb’s mind, but he nodded as though he understood. Realization swam upward through his consciousness like a fish rising from the depths.
“Fever?”
“I think so, sir.”
“See if she’ll take … one of the pills we gave you.”
“Yes, sir.”
Downstream, a curving ripple of current swept away from the left shore. Jeb saw it, looked beyond it, became aware that the river curved, too. It swept to the right in a wide arc.
The plane glided into the ripple track, bobbed and danced, turned. Dull sloshing sounds came from the floats. A faint roaring came to Jeb’s ears—like the echo in a seashell.
Jeb started to turn in the direction of the sound, but David suddenly leaned out the door, pointed upstream.
“Mr. Logan! Look!”
Jeb looked.
A line of canoes stretched across the upstream reaches of the river, coppery bodies giving off an oil sheen in the hot sunlight.
“They’re chasing us!” said David.
The roaring sound grew louder.
Both Jeb and David turned, looked downstream.
“That’s what I saw!” cried David.
About a mile downstream, sheer black walls of lava rock squeezed the river into a rumbling agony of white water. Waves cresting over unseen rocks sent up a crazy splendor of violence that climbed in a milk-and-amber mist above the chasm.
And Jeb thought quite calmly: Yes. That’s probably what he saw. The river track curved away from it, then back.
He became aware of movement along both shores between the plane and the raging water. The movement aroused a feeling of curiosity.
More canoes, by God!
“They’ve got something stretched across the river!” shouted David.
Gettler sat upright beside the boy. “Whh …”
And Jeb saw what David had seen.
“It’s a rope or a net,” he said.
He felt a detached admiration for the Indians. “They’re persistent devils,” he said.
“Do something!” cried David.
A screaming shout arose from the canoes downstream, was answered by the Indians following.
The dreamlike detachment suddenly snapped off of Jeb like a sheet whipped from a statue.
“What am I doing?” he asked.
He whirled around, shot a glance upstream.
The pursuing canoes had closed the gap between them and the plane.
“It’s a trap!” screamed Gettler.
Jeb leaped into the cabin, primed the motor.
Beside him, Monti opened her eyes, shook her head.
“Strangest dream,” she whispered.
A booming roar came from the right bank. Something slammed into the tail of the plane.
Jeb pulled the starter.
A slow grinding sound arose from the motor.
“Battery’s dead!” shouted Jeb. He whirled. “David, see this knob? Pull it the minute the motor catches. I’m going out to crank it.”
Jeb clambered across Monti, who stared blankly around. He dropped down to the float, saw the dugout tied beneath the fuselage, grabbed the machete off the cabin floor, cut the fish line fastenings. The machete clattered against metal as he tossed it back into the cabin.
A many-throated scream filled the air behind them. He ignored it, worked his way forward, leaned out, grasped the propeller, jerked it down.
No response.
Again.
The motor roared to life, and Jeb almost fell off the float getting out of the way of the propeller. A pall of black smoke floated upstream as the plane gathered way. A screeching sound of friction had been added to the other rackets from the motor.
Jeb scrambled back into the cabin, kicked the right rudder. They swept around toward the canoes upstream. The canoes parted, and he saw that they too carried a net across the river. He allowed the plane to sweep around toward the savage torrent in the canyon.
A raging defiance filled Jeb.
The dugout that he had cut loose loomed ahead. He swerved to dodge it, roared toward the downstream trap rope and the chasm.
This is the only direction to go! he thought.
The battered plane skidded across a cross-eddy, skimmed toward the rope. Now, the river spread out in a glossy black pool. And beyond the rope, the water creased into steeper and steeper furrows before flashing outward and down into the gorge.
Slowly, the rope ahead lifted from the river like a dripping snake to reveal the dark pattern of net squares below. Eager hands on each shore pulled the net higher.
And the plane swept into the net, rocked forward. A thunderous grinding and whipping sound lifted above the plane as the propeller slashed through the net ropes.
The motor stopped short.
But the net had been cut.
A savage scream arose from the Indians, rising above the devil drums of roaring water. The current swept the plane to the right, crunched it against the first obsidian buttress above the torrent. A scraping and wrenching of metal competed with the mounting roar of the chasm.
Gettler shouted something that was lost in the avalanche sound of the water. The plane bounced outward, whirled, pounded across two infolding steps of explosive current. A vast pulsing roar like the crashing of ocean waves onto rocks deafened them. The spiral cone of a whirlpool sucked at them, shot them into a new, more savage turbulence.
They heard the rasping, crunching, grating of rocks grinding in the maelstrom. A glistening ledge of black rock, its face scarred by the current, loomed directly ahead. The plane smashed against it, recoiled.
The people in the plane were shaken about like pebbles in a box. Wham! The left door slammed open and wedged against the strut. The right wing crumpled against the chasm wall, and the plane whipped around to the left.
Jeb watched the motion jolt the rifle off the cabin floor into the river. He was powerless to prevent the loss. A heavy rumbling sound from the shattered right wing added to the din. The plane’s nose lifted on a boiling, spume-hurling upsurge of water, and they slammed down into a black maelstrom beyond.
Monti held fast to the safety straps on both sides, caught in a fascination of terror by the view over the cowling. She felt herself plummeting with the plane: down! down! down! whipped around, and back through undiluted violence that crashed around her like a crazy carnival ride.
A frothing spiral of current shot them around broadside to the channel, then back until they faced downstream. Again they lifted over a millrace chute, slammed down into another roaring cavity of water.
David hugged both arms around the seat back directly ahead of him, head turned sideways. He could see out the side window: a cresting of amber spray, the flopping right wing, a pocket of damp green shade along the water-scarred cliff. Solid white water washed over the window, and the wing was gone.
Gettler lay wedged on the floor between front and back seats, his head just below the level of the left side window. From this viewless position, sound dominated his world: a deafening cymbal dissonance gone wild; magnification beyond human endurance of the highest savagery in noise. He felt the sound as a physical thing that grated through him in an unchecked rhythm like a giant’s fingernails scraping across a cosmic blackboard.
A washboard of white water dropped off beneath the plane, shot it through a staccato of jarring slap-slap-slaps that sent solid spray geysering over the cowl.
Jeb tried to see through the spray, glimpsed only a rippling blur of motion. He had seen the right wing go, felt it like something torn from his own body. His hands were numb from clutching the control wheel, and his shoulder ached. The wheel moved freely forward and back, but he could not remove his fingers from their grip on it to gain a hold on something more solid.
Can she take more of this? he asked himself.
He expected momentarily that the plane would disintegrate, dumping them into the chasm: motes in an immensity of violence.
A great brown turtle back of smooth current rolled over directly in front of them, and the spray washed down the windows to give Jeb and Monti a clear view of the prospect.
Monti closed her eyes.
The plane surged up onto the smoothness with a sliding and gentle deceptiveness. There, it hesitated, then dove down the lower side. The nose with its twisted propeller smashed squarely into a black wall of water. There came a wrenching, screeching of metal. Then the tail slammed down, lifting up a torn and gaping hole where the motor had been.
A whirlpool caught them, twisted them around until they faced upstream. The river hurled them tail foremost over another boiling mound of water. A wrenching and grating came from the tail as it ripped against the rocks. The plane whipped around with the tail as a pivot.
And Jeb watched the dark torpedo shape of an overturned canoe shoot past them … and another.
The Indians tried to follow us into here! Or they chased us too close to the chasm and were trapped!
The left wing raked the black lava wall, and the plane twisted momentarily sideways, shot with blinding abruptness into the glare of sunlight. They floated across the false calm of a broad pool that absorbed the turbulence of the rapids, and revealed this turbulence only in bubbles, thin and swift runnel lines converging and spreading.
The plane emitted a metallic gurgling, tipped to the right. The damaged left wing flopped upward.
Jeb looked out to the left, saw the pontoon floating almost a foot beneath the river. Water began to creep across the cabin floor as the plane tipped farther to the right. He swept one frantic glance around: four overturned canoes floated in the pool, but all were too far away.
“We’re tipping over!” cried Monti.
“Everybody to the left,” said Jeb.
He slipped out the left side, stood with one foot on the strut. It grated loosely. The door flopped farther open, leaned forward. He pushed it, and it tipped on the lower hinge, splashed into the river. It was like a piece of death to Jeb. He watched the glinting metal of the door sunfish back and forth into the depths until muddy water hid the reflection.
Water touched his ankle, and he saw that the left side had slipped farther down. He glanced back toward the roar of the rapids: no sign of the Jivaro. His attention went to the plane’s tail assembly: it had been torn loose, and now dangled in the water. He looked downstream. A barren point of land jutted into the river about a quarter of a mile away at the lower end of the pool. It reached out from a high wall of jungle on the left.
“Gettler,” said Jeb. “I’m going to climb on top. Pass me the survival kit, the machete, and anything else lying around. Everybody come up there after me. She’s sinking slowly, and we may be able to make it to that point on the left down there.” He pointed.
“Get moving,” said Gettler.
Jeb clawed his way onto what remained of the cowling, braced himself there, accepted the articles passed to him, helped the others onto the cabin top, and joined them. They all looked downstream at the point: rain-flattened reeds steaming in the sun above a thin mud bank. Their attention went to the tangled green forest wall about a hundred yards back from the tip of the point.
Gettler found the machete, lay across the fuselage, began paddling with the broad blade. He could see the point past the torn stump of the right wing.
“Behind us!” hissed David.
They turned.
A line of Indians emerged onto a rocky shingle below the rapids, three canoes on their shoulders. They squatted in unison, slipped the canoes into the river.
“Give David the twenty-two,” said Jeb.
Gettler turned on his side, slipped the gun from his pocket, handed it to David.
“One shot to make them keep their distance,” said Jeb.
David sighted, squeezed the trigger. The bullet spattered water beside the lead canoe. The Indians back-paddled.
Another six inches of the left strut sank beneath the river. The cabin now was half filled with water.
Jeb took another look at the point. The plane was angling across into the back eddy that swept toward the jungle along the upper end of the barren tongue of land.
There’s where we die! he thought.
Death and a river.
A quick sensation of near panic tightened his throat muscles. His body fell into a terror reaction, shivering with primitive and abysmal emotion: a rapture of fear that locked onto his mind, and released it with only one clear thought: Living is a luxury.
The pulse of life had never tasted so sweet.
Something caught the right float, stopped it some fifteen feet from shore a third of the way down the point.
“We’re on the mud,” said Jeb.
Gettler stopped paddling.
Slowly, the left float, which was higher in the water, drifted around. The tip of the left wing slipped into the muddy shore, stopped the motion.
Jeb grabbed up the black bag of the survival kit, ran along the wing, jumped into the low reeds. He drew the magnum revolver from his belt, eyed the forest wall.
David and Monti followed.
Gettler came last, the machete dangling from his right hand.
“This is the place,” he said.
“Out to the tip of the point,” said Jeb. “A spear or dart could reach us here.” He motioned the others ahead, brought up the rear.
The canoes upstream inched closer.
“Give them another warning,” said Jeb.
“I could hit them easy,” said David.
Jeb hesitated, and an instinct warned him.
“No.” He shook his head. “Just tell them we’re ready.”
David squeezed off a shot that smacked the paddle from the hand of one of the Indians. An angry shout lifted from the canoes, but they paddled back to the edge of the shingle.
“You do that on purpose?” asked Jeb.
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Save the rest of your shots for real. Fill that clip again and get the spare ready.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Look out!” screamed Monti.
They whirled.
A spear arced from the jungle, splatted into reeds and mud opposite the plane. The handle of the spear jutted upward, a tassel of monkey fur and kapok dangling from its tip.
“There’s your answer,” said Gettler. “The spear of vengeance.” He smiled, a skull grimace of teeth in the matting of his beard.
A smoking arrow followed the spear, hissed into the river beside the half-sunken plane.
“Fire arrow!” snapped Jeb.
They crouched.
Another arrow followed the first. It hit metal, skidded into the river. A third arrow arced into the gaping front where the motor had been. Instantly, a sheet of flame leaped upward, enveloped the entire front of the plane. An acrid smoke of gasoline and oil drifted across the point.
“Duck!” shouted Jeb. “It’ll blow what’s left in the wing tank!”
A sharply booming roar erupted from the plane, and a section of wing sailed across the point spewing a trail of fire. Gobs of flaming gasoline spattered into the reeds.
“Why’d they do that?” whispered Monti.
“To destroy our magic,” said Gettler.
“What’ll they do now?” asked David.
“I don’t know,” said Gettler. He sat back in the mud, the machete held across his knees, looked from the jungle at the base of the point to the downstream reaches of the river. A bend cut off the view about a mile downstream. Terraces of massive trees stepped away from the bank there, blended into a mossy curving of hills. The water was a glaring reflector that magnified the hammering of sunlight. The point felt smaller and smaller, as though it were drawing back from the forest skyline.
Jeb glanced at Gettler. The man’s personality had undergone a transformation: the shedding of a false cloak that opened up deep strength. His eyes when he looked back at Jeb revealed anguish that had gone beyond all turmoil to a pervading calmness.
“Helluva place to die, eh, Logan?”
Monti began sobbing.
What’s the difference? thought Jeb. But he reached out, patted her shoulder.
“The uncertainty’s what’s bad,” murmured Gettler. “Enough uncertainty, and you welcome anything.”
Jeb looked at where the plane had been. A torn strip of fuselage lay stretched along the mud: nothing more.
My little piece of civilization didn’t make it, he thought. I won’t outlast it for long.
His attention went to the green wall, glistening leaves, silence.
An arrow lifted out of the green, slanted into the mud ten yards in front of them.
“Can they reach us?” whispered Monti.
Gettler nodded. “Probably.”
“What’s keeping them?” she screamed.
Gettler grunted, shifted his weight forward, got to his feet.
“They’ve seen David,” he said. “Listen.”
A low chanting sound drifted from the jungle. “They’re making counter magic.”
“What about David?” asked Jeb.
Gettler laughed with a chopping abruptness, a wild sound. He bent forward, jerked the revolver from Jeb’s hand before Jeb could react.
Jeb started to rise.
“Stay put,” said Gettler. He stepped toward the jungle, lifted his voice in Quechua, roared: “Hear me, people!”
The chanting in the jungle stopped.
“What’s he saying?” whispered Monti.
“He’s asking them to listen,” said Jeb.
“I am the one you want!” shouted Gettler. “I am the only one. The others are blameless!”
Jeb translated in a low voice.
Again Gettler shouted.
Jeb spoke to Monti and David out of the side of his mouth.
“He says that David is the son of their brother, their brother Bannon … that you are their brother’s woman … that I was a mere … hired canoeist. That’s the only comparison in their tongue.”
Gettler fell silent, waited.
No sound came from the green wall.
Gettler spoke to the three behind him without turning.
“I’ve done what I can. See if you can make them parley.” He shrugged. “Well, thanks for everything.”
“Wait!” hissed Jeb.
But Getter already was striding toward the jungle with a stiff-legged, rocking gait. He held the revolver close to his side.
“They’ll kill him!” shouted David. He started to rise, dash after Gettler.
Jeb pulled the boy down.
Gettler broke into a staggering run toward the ominous green silence. Everything was held suspended in soundless waiting. Then Gettler raised the gun, began firing as he advanced: a shot … a step … a shot … a step—into the jungle—a shot … a shot.
Sudden babbling of Indian voices.
Silence.
A shadow passed across the point, and it began to rain with the on-switch tropic abruptness: driving bursts of water that drenched across the three people at the tip of the land.
Monti stared at the mossy green wilderness of scrambled vines, leaves and limbs periodically blurred behind the waves of rain.
“Don’t let them take me,” she whispered.
Jeb reached down to David’s hand, removed the twenty-two from the boy’s limp fingers, handed him the machete that Gettler had dropped.
“The extra clip,” said Jeb.
David passed it to him without looking from the jungle.
Monti put a hand to her throat, rubbed it.
“Why do they do that … to the head?” she asked.
“Religion,” said Jeb.
He had a momentary mental image of a Jivaro witch doctor working over the small fire: the hot sand, the careful needlework across dead lips. Five heads dangling from the ridgepole of a jambai house. Big jambai. Big medicine.
Unconsciously, his left hand repeated Monti’s gesture, rubbing his throat. Horror remained distant, held back by a great curiosity. He felt suddenly utterly sensitive to himself—a state of relaxed alertness where everything around him happened only with his express permission. And he thought that he could turn off his world by the simplest decision. But still the power of curiosity overwhelmed him like the flow of a river, like the flow of time. And he was lost in a swimming duality unable to make the decision that would stop existence.
The rain stopped. Sunlight returned. Steam spiraled and fumed above the point, thickened to a vapor, dispersed in a light breeze.
A black centipede crawled across a length of reed in front of Jeb. He stared at it, experienced an abrupt rapport with the tide of jungle life, a quickening of soul: the busy silence of it filled him. He lifted his attention to the forest wall, attracted by a flicker of motion.
An Indian appeared in front of the jungle, flung there by a sorcery that produced his image out of a natural camouflage in one movement. Ebony eyes glinted from beneath a straight line of bangs. Red whorls of achiote streaked his face. Scarlet macaw feathers protruded from a red string that bound the upper muscle of his left arm. He carried a spear held vertically in his right hand. A monkey skin bag dangled heavily from his left hand.
“What’s he doing?” whispered David.
“Showing us that he has the tzantza,” gritted Jeb.
David stepped in front of his mother, hefted the machete.
“Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” said Monti. She spoke in an almost conversational tone.
A whole line of Indians appeared in front of the jungle by the same magic that had revealed the first. Every face carried the red achiote streaks that spelled out their mission: a war of vengeance. They carried spears, clubs, bows, blow guns … and here and there an ancient muzzle-loader. Two of the Indians stepped ahead, converged, advanced together a cautious ten paces. The entire line moved up behind them. More Jivaro appeared from the jungle.
They pressed forward.
“No sudden movements,” whispered Jeb.
The line of Indians stopped some twenty feet away, the two leaders only about ten feet from the waiting trio.
Jeb passed his gaze along the glowering line, realized that none of the Indians were looking at him. All of the dark eyes focused on David.
The image of the father, thought Jeb.
And he suddenly understood Gettler’s words: “They’ve seen David.”
One of the Indians stepped closer to David, spoke in jungle Quechua: “Boy child, how do you have the face and hair of my brother?”
“The child does not speak with your voice,” said Jeb.
Eyes turned toward Jeb.
“This is the son of your brother,” said Jeb.
“And woman is this child’s mother?”
Jeb swallowed in a dry throat, nodded.
Dark eyes probed at Jeb.
“The demons of the rapids did not slay you, even when we made our strongest medicine,” said the Indian.
“What are they saying?” hissed Monti.
“Quiet!” snapped Jeb. Then: “The demons do not slay those of pure heart.”
“Ari … yes.” The Indian nodded. “But how came you to shelter the maná-wakani, the demon creature with an animal soul in a human body?”
“He told us that you slew his partner, Roger Bannon,” said Jeb. “You were many. We were afraid. We fled.”
“Ari.”
Indian heads nodded all along the line.
“Yes. You ran. You were afraid.”
“Gett … ler was pitalala, the poison snake,” said the Indian. “His tongue spoke in two directions. He slew our brother, then fled our vengeance. That is the truth of it. You will tell the soldiers?”
“Soldiers?”
“They come in many canoes,” said the Indian. He held up his left hand, two fingers. “Two days.” Three fingers. “Three days. No more.”
“He says soldiers are coming in canoes,” said Jeb.
“Three days at the most.”
Monti buried her face in her hands.
“Tell the boy that his father’s soul will rest quietly,” said the Indian. “We have seen to this. He was our brother.”
“What’s he saying?” demanded David.
“He says that their quarrel was with Gettler. That it’s settled.”
“Gettler killed my dad, didn’t he?” asked David.
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t I hate him?”
Tears began streaming down David’s face. He shivered.
The Indian turned to his followers, barked an order, returned his attention to Jeb. “A storm comes. We will build you a shelter here where you cannot miss the soldiers.”
Indians began filing back across the point into the jungle.
David turned his back on them, walked around his mother to the river’s edge.
“Are we really safe?” asked Monti.
“Yes.”
“One moment they were deadly, threatening … Now …”
“It’s their religion … their code,” said Jeb. “They see the evidence in David’s face.”
“He’s the image of Roger.”
“Yes.”
A lean-to shelter of brush and bark was erected on the point facing the jungle, a fire built in front of it. Indians appeared with a pig, spitted it above the flames. The air above the point vibrated with heat devils. The last of the day’s sunlight stabbed out along the silver furrow of the river like a thrown lance.
Darkness clapped down upon the scene.
Little fires appeared at the Indian’s shelters along the forest wall. Stars glittered overhead like holes punctured in a velvet bowl. An orange moon lifted over the trees, flung its track along the river.
Jeb squatted inside the lean-to, facing the fire. The meat weighed heavily in his stomach. He could see the faint outline of David seated beside him, and Monti beyond in a dark corner.
Insects fogged the air of the shelter, keening thinly, pushing, crawling, biting. Bats laced the air overhead. There came a splashing, whiffling sound from downstream on the far bank. The chime call of river frogs lifted from the muddy shoreline, and distantly, he could hear the rapids.
Wind shook the lean-to, stirring the rain-rinsed air. Clouds blotted out the stars and moon. A dull splattering rhythm began to beat on the bark roof above them. The air took on a swift feeling of freshness. A crashing roar of almost simultaneous lightning and thunder shook the ground: a thermal flare that left them blinking in the after-darkness. The sharp bite of ozone came to their nostrils.
“That was close,” whispered Monti.
“Off in the jungle downstream,” said Jeb.
Another snake-tongue of light forked the sky downstream. Thunder rumbled behind it. In the brief glare they saw Indians standing beside their fires at the jungle’s edge: caught in frozen motion between darkness and darkness. More lightning flickered across the forest: three swift strokes, one after another, spearing the darkness. In each brief flash the river stood out like a dark sheet of rippled blue steel.
Now the rain sheeted down in savage spasms torn by bursts of wind. The tongue of land seemed to rock and twist in the gusts with the remembered motions of the plane. A steady hissing of rain on water could be heard behind the louder beat of it against the bark above their heads.
And Jeb thought about the future.
I’ve been running away, he told himself. I don’t fit down here. I’m not the expatriate type. I belong on a nice safe milk run with regular hours and regular pay. A wife at home … and kids.
He didn’t picture Monti in this role.
There came over him a great need to sink into the flowing movement of his own kind of people, into their security and protective coloration.
I’m not really a rebel, he thought.
Monti, too, thought about the future. She suddenly saw herself as a kind of latter day religious courtesan in her own temple of love, and the idea amused her.
The studio’ll make a great thing out of this, she thought. Probably do a picture about love in the jungle. Silent laughter shook her. And she considered Jeb as briefly as he had considered her.
Another passing affair.
She knew that she would miss him no more than she had missed a half a hundred others.
Suddenly, her throat tightened with unshed tears, and she pushed away an image of Roger.
I don’t need you anymore! she thought desperately. I’ll never need anyone but myself ever again!
But somewhere inside herself she knew that she lied.
Another lightning flash glimmered dimly through the rain. Distant thunder rumbled.
And with it came ghost memories of Franz Gettler.
He murmured to Jeb: “Go home.”
He murmured to Monti: “Go home.”
And he whispered in the close stillness of David’s mind: “You live in an endless circle … and you have no home.”