The Safari

Sheldon white had planned his safari for two years. He had taken a refresher course in Spanish. He had worked out at the gym to get in shape. He arranged for emergencies in his law practice to be handled by his partner. He supplied his wife, Paula, and himself with money belts, neck pouches, elastic support bandages above the elbow to hide their papers. They took shots, including human diploid vaccine, for prevention against disease from bites of rabid bats. They had chloroquine for malaria prophylaxis, Lomotil for diarrhea, Sterotabs for sterilizing water, two antibiotics: tetracycline and streptotriad. They took along Deet insect repellent and Cetrimide BP for infected bites. Toilet paper. A complete first-aid kit. Five pounds of chocolate energy bars. Sheldon would make sure their guide stocked enough butane fuel for the stove, kettles and cooking utensils for three people and sufficient canned food for the expedition.

When friends and family had said to him before he left New York, "Shelly, you've thought of everything," he denied it proudly.

"That's just what I don't want to do. I've made a general plan, but I've deliberately left room for the unexpected."

They flew to Quito, where Paula experienced altitude sickness, then hired a chauffeured car and headed for Oriente, a remote area of vast rain forests. When they reached their destination, a dirty river town called Misahualli, their driver José unloaded their bags in front of a cement-block building with hotel in faded blue printed over its doorless entrance. He offered to arrange for a guide and supplies.

"No," said Sheldon, "that's my job."

"Be careful," warned José. "Many of these people are thieves and worse."

"What do you mean, worse?"

José shrugged. "Anything you can imagine."

From his travel agent, who knew Ecuador, Sheldon had heard of these Misahualli guides; they were an independent lot, a complicated mix of pride and envy and deceit. But the travel agent also said that Ecuadorians like to exaggerate.

"Thanks for the warning," Sheldon said. "I'll hire my own guide."

With another shrug, José got into the car and headed back to Quito.

That night, Sheldon and Paula slept in cots in a cement cubicle with some hooks for their clothes, one tiny window above eye level and a rackety overhead fan. They had a short but spirited parley. Paula felt that they should have kept José overnight and let him negotiate for a guide in the morning.

Sheldon argued that they mustn't depend on other people. This was their safari; they had to arrange it themselves. They had to be in charge. Otherwise, it wasn't a real adventure.

"Do you know why I'm here?" he asked suddenly.

"I think so. To prove you can do this."

"You think you know why, but no one knows why someone else does something. Anyway, I appreciate your going along with it."

"I'm here because I love you, Shelly."

This simple declaration rendered him speechless. Reaching over to her cot, Sheldon groped for her hand and when he found it, he held her fingers the way he might have held a butterfly.

•

After a breakfast of weak coffee and soggy tamales, they walked out into blinding sunlight to face a dusty street lined by shanties with roofs of corrugated tin. Men in T-shirts, torn cotton pants, old tennis shoes and billed caps stood in the shade, as drowsy as cows, squinting morosely at anything that moved through the hot little square.

Many of the huts advertised guides in Spanish and English and the crude signs made extravagant claims of their boat trips and jungle excursions. Sheldon studied each one and met with his own stare those of men seated deep within the shadowy interiors.

The Whites tramped past a weedy lot filled with automotive parts and a gutted truck, then a cantina from which the Andrews Sisters' Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy was blaring out of a tinny radio. Then came a shack with the following sign nailed next to the door:

Ramon Torres, Profecional and Experienced, Jungle Guide, Speaking English

"This looks terrible," Paula said with a grimace.

"It looks kind of good to me."

Sheldon tried to peer inside through a hole in the screen. He knocked twice, then again, and was almost ready to turn and leave when a voice called out, "Come een, meester! 'Ello, my frin'!"

Opening the door, which he discovered was held only by the top hinge, Sheldon walked into the shack. It was nearly empty: a hammock, two chairs, a dog lying in a corner, a garish poster of an old man with white whiskers in a black suit and stiff collar.

Ramon Torres was lying in the hammock, wearing a Batman T-shirt, smoking a cigarette.

Sheldon began smiling. He prided himself on being a first-class negotiator. An hour later, seated opposite each other in the two chairs (Paula stood), the two men came to an agreement on the duration of the expedition, the nature and number of supplies.

"I give you a down payment on supplies," Sheldon said. "I pay in full after checking your itemized list."

"No. Not that way." Ramon objected in Spanish, because they communicated better in that language.

"It's the only way I go."

"I figure the cost and you pay me," Ramon insisted. "If it comes to less, I give you back the difference."

"My way is the only way I go."

Reluctantly, the guide nodded.

"Now, about your fee."

"You already know my fee."

With a laugh, Sheldon said, "I know a joke when I hear one. Let's talk seriously." He made Ramon an offer, then spread both hands wide. "Take it or leave it."

"I won't take it."

"Fine. How many guides are there on this street? Ten? Twenty?"

"Not like me," Ramon declared. "With me, you get what you pay for."

"I don't see people beating a path to your door," Sheldon said coldly. "Take it or leave it."

"I take it," the guide mumbled grimly. He had accepted half of the sum asked for. He signed a paper to that effect. Finally, Ramon promised not to feed his clients monkey and cayman meat to save on food expenses and pocket the difference. According to Sheldon's travel agent, it was the sort of thing these Misahualli guides did.

At last, Sheldon demanded that the guide stay completely sober on the trip. Someone in Quito had told him the Ecuadorians love to drink.

Ramon began smiling. "Don't worry, man," he said, "I don't drink. I am honest. I need your passports."

Sheldon glanced at Paula. "I don't understand," he said to Ramon.

"Before leaving Misahualli, I register you with the capitan. The authorities must know who is in the jungle," Ramon explained. "Otherwise, you could go in there and never come out and nobody would know. Give me the passports and I'll take care of it. Give me a little gift for the capitan, too. So there won't be a delay."

Sheldon gave him their passports and some money. "Is that enough?"

"No."

Frowning, he handed over a couple more bills.

They agreed to meet late in the day, after Ramon had arranged for the supplies. As they drank Cokes in a cantina, Paula said to her husband, "I wonder why you chose Ramon."

"His shack was the poorest of the bunch. I told myself, Here is a man I can deal with."

"Maybe you should have asked someone about him."

Sheldon laughed disdainfully. "Do you think these people would tell me the truth? I took him because he has a need. It's that simple."

"I don't know if you should have bargained so hard, Shelly."

"Why not? I won."

"That's the point. You could have let him do a little better."

"Why in hell should I do that? I make my living not letting people do better."

"I think he's sore you beat him down that way." She added, after a pause, "In front of me."

"Well, I made one concession. He gets paid in full once we reach the jungle. I let him have that one, because why not?"

Paula shook her head. "When you told him, 'I don't see people beating a path to your door,' the man visibly flinched. You hurt him."

"I was stating my case, so what's wrong in that? I'm not paying more than I have to."

"Then you made him promise not to feed us monkey and alligator. You insulted him, Shelly."

"I let him know who's in charge, that's all."

Paula was silenced, but later, after they had gone back to check up on Ramon's progress in outfitting the expedition, she said to her husband, "I saw the look he gave you, Shelly. I didn't like it."

But Sheldon was too busy checking the supply list to respond.

•

Shortly after dawn, they met Ramon Torres in front of a motorized canoe at the riverbank. Sheldon wore a felt safari hat, a khaki shirt with epaulets and billowy cotton pants with the bottoms stuffed inside hiking boots. Paula was dressed the same way, except that her hat had a veil of mosquito netting.

Ramon, a short and muscular man, had on his Batman T-shirt, torn fatigues, a baseball cap and sandals. He sucked on a blackened corncob pipe while thoughtfully appraising his clients. When they reached him, he gave the passports back to Sheldon.

"You've loaded everything," Sheldon said, pointing to the supplies already stowed in the aft of the dugout. "I thought I said I wanted to be present when you did the loading."

Ramon smiled. "We can take everything out and you can inspect it, and (continued on page 100)The Safari (continued from page 94) then we can put everything back in again, but that takes time and it means we'll be on the river after sunset, and that can be dangerous because of floating logs. Last year, a canoe hit one after dark and everyone drowned."

Paula touched Sheldon's arm. "Honey, let's get going."

He sighed and helped her into the narrow boat.

The guide's little victory was soon forgotten when they found themselves chugging along the broad, muddy Napo River with nipa and banana palms lining the shore.

"It's like the movies," Paula, who sat behind her husband, whispered.

Indeed, it was, and Sheldon experienced moments of pure joy as the canoe moved along side sand bars where bleached logs lay half submerged like dinosaur bones. He marveled at the currents of the river, a bewildering skein of contradictory forces. So much water rippling along at different speeds, displaying a glittering richness of surface texture, gave the Napo a dangerous, puzzling, vibrant look.

He was so busy looking that he scarcely heard the guide, who was explaining why women and children were lining the riverbank. They were panning for gold. Quijos Indians of Chibcha stock had once fought the Spanish with great courage, he claimed. Now they sent their womenfolk out with sieves and bowls to work long hours in the sand, hoping to sift out a few specks of gold.

Ignoring the implication of cultural shame, Sheldon glanced over his shoulder at Paula, whose long brown hair was blowing back in the river breeze. "Having a good time?" he asked with a smile.

"Wonderful!"

•

The hotel sat on a bluff and commanded a good view of the river upstream. The canoe arrived there after sunset without meeting, Sheldon noted, a single floating log. He and Paula huddled under plastic raingear, shivering beneath a moon whose light cut a metallic path across the windswept Napo.

There were only two other hotel guests, a pair of young Italian women who had been backpacking across South America. A dinner table was set in the dimly lit main building. The menu was explained by the owner, a skinny man who smelled of chicha, a potent drink distilled from the yucca plant (Ramon explained this to Sheldon and challenged him to try some). They could order chicken or roast cuy.

"That's guinea pig," Sheldon told his wife.

Paula made a face. "I had guinea pigs for pets. I couldn't put their meat in my mouth." She took the chicken.

"I'll have cuy," Sheldon said. "And a glass of chicha." Later, he praised the guinea pig and called the chicha a "weak brandy."

After dinner, the owner and a couple of Indians who had been sitting quietly at another table began to sing. They played a guitar, a bamboo flute and two forks struck together. Apparently, this was a nightly get-together. They had a bottle of chicha and were passing it around. Sheldon noted with satisfaction that Ramon refused it. The Whites went outside for a look at the moonlit river. When they returned, the radio station from Quito was playing a rumba, and one of the Italian girls was dancing with Ramon. Then she sat down and the other danced with him.

Sheldon and Paula, with music at their back, left the main building for their cabin. They undressed without a word, hearing the distant sound of folk songs. Getting into bed, hovering above her, Sheldon muttered tensely, "I feel wild."

"So do I."

Taking her brutally, he was surprised by Paula's eager response. Her lovemaking was usually gentle, pleasant, never blatantly wanton as it was tonight. She thrilled him into imagining that he had picked up a strange exotic woman who asked nothing of him but randy sex.

Afterward, as they lay side by side, they heard laughter and loud music in the distance.

"He'll sleep with one of the Italians," Paula said.

"Ramon? Which one?"

"The taller one."

"How do you know?"

"She was nervous. The other was just enjoying herself."

"It's the trip," Sheldon declared. "It's doing something to us. You were never like that before."

"Neither were you. The trip's making us feel... something."

"We're free. We're like Ramon," he murmured against her cheek and felt himself wanting her again.

Next morning, while she slept, he took a shower and dressed, hearing roosters crowing and some kind of animal rooting around in the brush. He decided to take a little walk. Just as he left his cabin, the door of the next one opened and the taller Italian girl came out. Their eyes met, she frowned and strode rapidly down the walkway of wooden slats. In her haste, she had left the door ajar, and as Sheldon passed by the cabin, he saw Ramon sitting naked on the bed. Sheldon smiled fraternally. What the hell; they were both men who had been with women last night. But Ramon did not return the smile. He stared so coldly that Sheldon looked away and continued down the walk.

By midmorning, the dugout was loaded, a boatman hired from the hotel started up the engine and the Whites and their guide chugged up the Napo.

By midafternoon, the boatman headed the canoe to shore. Sheldon and Ramon hauled the gear out, the boatman waved, and soon the three on the riverbank were watching the long, slim boat glide across the water, heading away, and then they were alone.

Surveying the backpacks lined up like bodies along the shore, Ramon said, "Now we begin."

Sheldon gave a little chuckle of anticipation.

Paula stared thoughtfully at the receding boat.

•

And so it did begin. They struck out across the jungle in an easterly direction that would eventually--perhaps in three weeks--take them to the town of Nuevo Rocafuerte. There they could arrange for a plane to fly them back to Quito.

The first few days were slow going. No amount of exercise could have prepared them for the hardships they faced within minutes of entering the rain forest: mud, stinging leaves, a moving veil of flies, suffocating heat, the tangled root systems of intricate trees. Ramon would go forward through the bush, halt and wait for his clients, his shirt dry, only a little mud clinging to his boots. He would tell them about the jungle while they stood panting on a barely distinguishable trail, trying to anchor themselves within a sea of rank vegetation and whirling insects. Ramon's serene mastery of this boggy world annoyed Sheldon, whose sweaty shirt was plastered to his back.

Ramon pointed out cream-colored beehives clinging to tree trunks; they were the hives of the warlike abispa that attack anything going near their home. He bent down and with a stick agitated a huge ant, called the conga, whose (continued on page 160)The Safari (continued from page 100) bite, even with medication, throbs excruciatingly for an entire day. There were caterpillars that dropped from trees and made the skin itch for hours. He showed them plants to avoid, such as the ruin, whose innocent-looking stalks can slice through flesh like a razor. As bad was the hortigha, a broad-leaved spiny plant that causes a debilitating rash.

But he also described the medicinal wonders of tropical plants, such as yuquilla for snakebite and ayahuasaca for almost anything.

"So the jungle," said Paula, her face pasty and wet, "is a living pharmacy."

Ramon gave her a smile of approval. Then he reached into the brush and yanked out a large furry pod. Breaking it open, he smeared some of its red juice on his forefinger, reached out and traced it carefully on Paula's lower lip, then her upper. Too surprised to move, she stood there and let him apply the jungle lipstick. "Well?" she asked Sheldon with a smile. "Does achiote suit me?"

He laughed and admitted it was a better shade than the lipsticks she bought at Bloomingdale's. But as they continued along the trail, Sheldon studied their guide, who had taken such a liberty with his wife. Ramon seemed unaware that his bold application of lipstick had been an act both intimate and impudent. He had just discovered a dragon's-blood tree and with his machete was cutting into its slim trunk. He drew out a blood-red exudate that he claimed would cure ulcers, sore throats and pimples.

He explained which plants could be eaten.

"How can you tell," Paula asked, "if something's poisonous?"

"Look for signs that animals and birds have eaten a plant. What they can eat, you can eat."

"I think getting along in the jungle," said Paula, "is complicated."

Putting his hands judgmentally on his hips, Ramon said, "This is true. But outsiders think la selva is only trees and insects and anyone who lives here must be stupid."

"I don't think that," Sheldon put in.

Ignoring him, Ramon continued. "Everywhere you look, there is meaning." He walked up to a tree with whitish bark. "This is the testigo. See those slashes? They're messages left by Indians." Reaching out, he took Paula's arm and led her off the path to another tree. "Look at that."

Sheldon joined them and they stared at a tiny arrow, about as long as a finger and with a small bolt of cotton at the end, sticking into the bark. "That's a message, too. It's an Auca arrow. It means stay away."

"I read about the Auca," Sheldon said. "Primitive nomads. They used to be dangerous."

Ramon laughed.

"Are they dangerous?" Paula asked.

Turning to her, Ramon explained that the Auca still resist outsiders. Near their temporary villages, they cut bamboo at a slant about six inches from the ground. These stakes keep intruders away. Reaching out again, Ramon touched Paula's arm reassuringly. "Don't worry, though. This arrow must have been left here long ago. The Auca are far back over there these days." He pointed vaguely eastward.

That night, around the campfire, in front of their two tents, they ate rice and corned beel that Ramon had cooked with casual skill in an aluminum pot.

"Let me tell you about the Auca," Ramon said abruptly, turning to Paula. "Last year, a missionary went out to live with them. He was warned, but that meant nothing to him, so people said, 'Well, let him go look if he wants. He'll never find the Auca.' But the Auca found him." Ramon waited for a response.

"What happened?" Sheldon asked curiously.

Ramon turned toward him. "For one thing, they dug his fingernails out with a knife."

"His fingernails?"

"All of them. Then they took his teeth. Every one. Carefully."

"How?"

"I don't know. But all his teeth were gone."

"Sheldon," said Paula.

"Then what?" Sheldon asked, ignoring her. He felt himself in the grip of something too horrible to resist.

"They tied him to a tree," Ramon said. "Hands and feet. To a ceibo macho."

"You mean, they took his nails and teeth before tying him down?"

Ramon shrugged. "Before, after, I don't know when they tied him. He was found spread-eagled against the tree, his arms pulled back around it."

"Go on."

"Sheldon," said Paula, "I don't want to hear any more."

"Go on," Sheldon demanded.

Ramon pointed to his abdomen just below his diaphragm. "Cut here down to here." He indicated a spot a few inches below the navel. "They inserted a stick bent like a fishhook and"--he made a soft pulling motion like hauling a rope-- "hooked and drew the coils out."

Sheldon gave a low whistle.

"About a meter," explained Ramon, "so the guts hung down to his feet."

Paula got up and crawled inside their tent; when she was gone, Sheldon turned to Ramon again. "Go on."

"Then the Auca killed him."

"You mean, he wasn't already dead?"

"That's one thing I'm sure of. The Auca know how to make it last. They can keep a man or animal at the edge as long as they wish. It's the way they are. How a thing dies is important to them."

"Go on."

"Finally, they cracked his head open with an ax and let his spirit out."

"Why did they take his fingernails and teeth?"

Ramon shook his head. "I don't know." He seemed abruptly embarrassed by the account he had given.

Sheldon breathed deeply, as if he had just run a race. "We won't see any of the Auca, will we?"

Ramon laughed. "No, my friend. That's impossible. Unless the Auca want us to see them. But that is impossible."

"Why?"

"The Auca don't want people to see them. They're shy like the jaguar."

"The missionary saw them."

"That was different. He must have come along just at the right time."

"What does that mean?"

Once again, Ramon shrugged. "Who knows when the right time is for the Auca? They're not predictable. When they want to celebrate something or need to please their god or try to change their luck. Then they might let someone see them before they kill him."

They sat a while longer in silence. Then Sheldon got up and went inside his tent. He and Paula said nothing until they heard Ramon get up with a sigh and go around the fire to his own tent.

"That was a horrible story," Paula whispered. "Why must you listen to something so horrible?"

"I couldn't help it."

"Darling, let's not talk about it anymore," Paula said, snuggling close, kissing him, reaching for him.

•

Ramon seemed to know everyone who lived in the jungle. He squatted in the shade of houses built on stilts and talked quietly in Quechua with banana-plantation men, coffee growers, Indian laborers with eyes red-rimmed from drinking chicha. Once, during a visit, he went up the ladder into a dark hut and emerged with a blowgun. It was eight feet long, made of two parts of wood wrapped in liana. Ramon's cheeks expanded when he blew into its bone mouthpiece and sent one of those little Auca arrows into a papaya 20 feet away.

"Did you notice his change of shirts?" Paula asked her husband later. "In Misahualli, he wore the Batman shirt."

"Right."

"Then, when we first got to the jungle, he had on that Galápagos Islands shirt."

Sheldon thought about it, then he nodded.

"Now he's got on a plain gray one."

"What are you getting at?"

Paula stared thoughtfully at the guide. "The deeper Ramon gets into the jungle, the more himself he becomes."

Sheldon scoffed at the idea. But he did envy Ramon his ease in such a hostile environment. And Ramon was a born teacher. He taught Sheldon to crumble up termite nests at the four corners of a tent at night because their material repelled snakes and insects. Sheldon learned from him how to identify breadfruit, wild cotton and a species of mimosa that can induce immediate sleep in an insomniac. Sheldon was learning to hold his own out here. He felt the day would come when he didn't need a guide in the rain forest.

•

They went deeper into the massed greenery until they no longer came upon huts or little settlements. Often, when they halted for the day, Sheldon took solitary walks and imagined himself alone out here, a jungle expert. Returning to camp one afternoon from such a walk, he found a pot boiling on the butane stove but no one in sight. He called out and Paula answered from their tent. There was a water bottle near the fire, so Sheldon picked it up and unscrewed the lid to have a drink. Just as he got a whiff of cheap yucca alcohol, he saw Ramon emerge from the other tent. Raising the bottle high, Sheldon said angrily, "What's this?"

Ramon, smiling, approached. "That's medicine. Good in the jungle."

Sheldon inhaled deeply over the open bottle, grimacing. "This is chichal"

Ramon continued to smile. "Out here, it is medicine."

"You're drinking!" Sheldon yelled.

Paula emerged from their tent.

"You said you didn't drink! You lied!"

"Please, senor, do not accuse me of lying, " Ramon said. Reaching out, he took the bottle from Sheldon's hand and returned to his own tent with it.

"Say nothing," Paula told her husband, gripping his arm.

"But he said----"

"Say nothing!" his wife commanded so sharply that Sheldon pulled his arm away, went into the tent and brooded.

Later, as they ate lentils and rice, while howling monkeys kicked up a racket in trees beyond the firelight, Ramon told them chilling stories about snakes. There were the fer-de-lance, terciopelo, urutu, cascabel, jararaca--all lethal. The bushmaster grew to 11 feet, had fangs like railroad spikes, and its poison prevented the blood from clotting. "I've seen a bitten man's gums bleed and he had blood in his urine and there were purple patches on his skin." Ramon reached down for frequent pulls at his bottle of chicha. "Don't you worry," he told Paula with a grin. "Snakes usually keep to themselves."

"Usually?" she said.

The raw metallic stench of cheap alcohol hovered above the campfire. It was still lingering about the campsite the next morning.

Sheldon couldn't remember if they had been in the jungle 15 or 16 days. He didn't want to admit that to his wife and surely not to Ramon.

Every night now, their guide drank chicha at the campfire.

One evening, as they strolled out of earshot of camp, Sheldon told his wife, "We're letting him bully us."

"We mustn't get him angry."

"Are you serious?"

"He's got the advantage out here, Shelly. Don't you see?"

Of course he did. Clasping her hand, Sheldon promised to do nothing that would get them in trouble. "I've never loved you more than I do now," he said.

Back in camp, Ramon had their dinner ready. There was a bottle of chicha beside him, and with a smile, he greeted them cheerily. "Hello, big man from the city of New York! Hello, pretty lady."

Sheldon sat down and cleared his throat for emphasis before speaking. He told Ramon of his respect for a man who knew the jungle so well. On the other hand, he was paying for this safari and must insist that Ramon keep his part of the bargain. That is, not drink.

Ramon immediately poured the chicha into the fire; it hissed like a snake and sent up a pungent smoke into the humid night. "I told you," Ramon said. "You get what you pay for."

"Thank you."

Ramon guffawed. "You think you know the jungle?"

"I know something about it because of you," Sheldon answered politely.

"Have you seen the signs?"

"What signs?"

"Then you know nothing." Ramon sat back, hands on his knees, and looked triumphantly from Sheldon to Paula. "They are there to be read and understood."

"What signs?" asked Paula.

"Don't be afraid, pretty lady I'm no animal. I am nothing to fear. There is plenty in this jungle to fear, but not me." He cackled loudly.

Then he dished out boiled yucca, onions, chilies, tinned sausages and fresh pineapple.

The Whites, feeling drowsy, turned in early and fell asleep.

And they slept deeply until a cacophony of morning sounds nudged them awake. Rubbing his eyes, his head aching, Sheldon crawled from the tent and looked around.

He let out a cry that brought Paula to the entrance, too. Ramon's tent was gone; so was the butane stove and a backpack of tinned food.

"Drugged us," Sheldon declared. He made a quick assessment of what was left: one knapsack with a hall-dozen tins of tuna and one of Spam, three cans of pinto beans, their own tent and sleeping bags, a flashlight. That was it. They had no cooking utensils, not even a machete.

"He won't get far with all that stuff," grumbled Sheldon.

"Oh, yes, he will," Paula said.

She was right, of course. Thickset, jungle-wise Ramon Torres was able to carry a load that would exhaust three Sheldon Whites. And there was no sense in trying to follow him. It was drizzling, and even if they could locate his trail, they would lose it again within 100 yards.

Huddled together in their tent, the Whites tried to analyze their situation. As they talked, Sheldon discovered in himself a new excitement, as if all along he had hoped for something this challenging to happen. He thrust his head out of the tent and studied the cloud-covered sky. "We'll get our bearings when it clears up." Having spoken confidently, Sheldon was surprised at his wife's reaction.

"I'm scared to death," she admitted.

After a long silence, she said, "Well, there's a bright side. At least we're alive."

"You don't seriously think he would kill us, do you?"

"I think he must have considered it. He's a proud, vindictive man. Shelly, did you pay him?"

"Of course I did. By contract. That morning we left the hotel." As soon as he spoke, Sheldon felt like a fool.

"I don't think he registered us with the capitan."

"Sure, he did. Why wouldn't he?" Then Sheldon answered his own question. "Well, if anything happened to us, he'd be off the hook." He avoided saying the obvious: They didn't officially exist.

"He felt you cheated him on the fee. Shelly" After a pause, she added with a sigh, "And then there was me."

"What are you talking about?"

"That night you yelled at him about the chicha? You took a walk. Before you came back, I was standing outside the tent and he sneaked up behind me and grabbed my breasts and I slapped him."

"You slapped him? What happened then?"

"He just laughed. I went inside our tent."

"And then?"

"That's all. But I could hear him still laughing."

Sheldon leaned forward, clenching his fists. "Why did you keep it from me?"

"Why do you think?"

He knew, of course. Ramon might have welcomed an excuse to deal with an outraged husband who didn't stand a chance against him.

Sheldon stared at the empty campsite. "He got back at me for being cheap and at you for holding out. I wouldn't have believed this could happen."

"It wouldn't have, except out here."

A glance at his wife told Sheldon she was assessing him. He sat up straight. "We can't go back the way we came," he declared briskly. "We have to reach the river and go upstream to Nuevo Rocafuerte."

"He mentioned signs. Shelly, did he mean the Auca?"

"He just wanted to scare us."

"Then he succeeded."

"Darling, if you've ever had faith in me, have it now."

Paula scuttled over in the hot, cramped tent and put her arms around him. "I love you, Shelly."

•

The next few days had a dreamlike quality. There were fierce thunderstorms followed by soft evenings filled with clouds transformed by final sunlight into pink castles, lavender ships, crimson birds, while fog rolled in off the blue mountains into the jungle valleys.

As they went forward through the dense rain forest, Sheldon tried to remember specific plants and what they were good for: chonta, cana agria, chambera, bigao. Which were edible? How could he really tell if animals ate them? Which were poisonous? The names got mixed up in his mind, just as his perceptions of the trail became a chaotic mixture of tree bush vine tangles of brown tendrils stems a hot caldron of green geometries a watery stew of rotting plants.

Even so, he was going forward each day--four now--with his wife, Paula, a splendid woman, someone to be proud of, courageous and tough and uncomplaining.

At high noon, they were trudging along when Paula's feet shot out from under her. This sort of accident often happened in the slippery rain forest. Each of them on occasion had laughed at Red Skelton-and-Chevy Chase pratfalls, with legs scooting out, arms flailing. This time, Paula went up, twisted around and fell on her stomach.

Giggling, Sheldon bent over his wife, who was sprawled face down on the muddy ground, and said, "Let me help."

"Wait," she gasped. "Be careful."

Bending closer, he looked at her face and saw to his dismay Paula's mouth working soundlessly, her skin ashen, her eyes wide and straining. "What in hell?"

"I'm hurt. I fell on something."

When gently he began lifting her at the armpits, Paula screamed, the sound issuing so loud and knifelike through the trees that a host of unseen parakeets fluttered out from the branches like confetti. Startled, Sheldon let go of her, and she screamed again. Scooting around Paula's body, examining her, he saw a pool of blood under her left hip.

"Fell on something," Paula said in a dreamy voice.

This time, he lifted her high, straight up, and could see that she had been impaled on a jointed stem of bamboo, maybe three or four inches long. When she slid free of the stake and he rolled her onto the muddy jungle floor, a gush of blood spread over her trousers. Sheldon quickly undid them. He stared a moment at the bubbling hole in her side, then stanched the flow with the shirttail of her blouse. Paula's blue eyes had the glazed look of someone in shock.

"The Auca put it there," Sheldon muttered as he worked to hold back the red tide of Paula's life.

•

Somehow, in his fear and anguish, Sheldon White managed to haul his stricken wife down to a meandering stream and bathe the wound with soaks made of their clothes. Ramon had stolen their first-aid kit, a theft for which Sheldon would have asked the death sentence. Paula lay on the bank naked from the waist down. Sheldon spent much of his time frantically waving off flies that lit on the wound or her pubic hair, great waves of wings and curious little legs, striding on, probing her flesh. While he held one of his shirts against the large puncture, Sheldon had the compelling but horrible sense of being watched. If the Auca were out there and appeared, he'd tell them they weren't to blame. They just wanted to protect their territory. He had no argument with them. It was Ramon Torres' fault. He would somehow get this across to them if they appeared. He leaned close to Paula's ear and whispered, "We're going to be all right." He repeated this encouragement a few more times before acknowledging to himself that his wife was unconscious.

Night fell; by then, he had managed to stop the flow of blood. Clumsily, he made a bandage from a pair of cotton pants found in the knapsack. The flying insects no longer had access to her flesh. He sat beside the riverbank, cradling her head in his arms, listening to her labored breathing, terrified by convulsive movements she made.

It rained, he hovered over Paula, covering as much of her as he could from pelting drops that hit the overhead palm leaves like pebbles. Once, she awakened and cried out and brought sobs of horror from Sheldon, who kept telling her he loved her loved her loved her. What happened during the rest of that night he would not remember, but he awoke shortly after dawn, his face against hers, and at the instant of waking, he knew from the cold texture of her skin that Paula was dead.

Hours later, as he staggered through a drizzle, Sheldon gripped Paula's neck pouch, which contained her wedding ring, her passport, her driver's license and a few other documents. It was all he had left of Paula Levine White; the rest of her lay beneath a cover of leaves beside a stream.

"I didn't say goodbye," he declared out loud. The sound of his own voice, muffled in the humid air, startled him. "I didn't tell her I'd get the son of a bitch!" Turning, he tried to retrace his steps, but after a time of stumbling through undergrowth, Sheldon realized he would never find her again.

He headed in what might be an easterly direction and set out at a steady pace. If only he could see the sun or the stars, he could fix his course, but the weather conspired against him. In his mind, Sheldon forgot about the jungle and imagined himself back in Quito, filing charges unsuccessfully against an Ecuadorian national, and back in the States, making enough money to return to this country, where he would bribe judges and politicians, persist maybe for years until he got the better of a corrupt legal system and finally brought Ramon Torres to justice. Or, if that failed, there were other measures He would buy a gun. He would creep up to that battered little house, swing the screen door open and shoot Ramon Torres, lying in the hammock, right between the eyes.

•

"We're going to make it."

That's what Sheldon said aloud as he trudged steadily on through the jungle. He felt stronger as the hard-earned miles fell behind him. He had mild diarrhea, perhaps from licking raindrops off broad-leaved plants (long ago, his canteen had gone dry and he had no Sterotabs with him for purifying water), or maybe the wild berries he had eaten were responsible. He had only a single tin of tuna left and meant to husband it judiciously. The sun hadn't come out, not since before Paula's death, and that had happened three or four days ago. Or was it five? If only he would come upon a little settlement or even an isolated hut in a clearing, he might discover a way of sustaining himself. He wouldn't ask for anything save the answer to one question: What could he eat in the jungle? He mustn't impose on people who likely as not would be hostile to a lost gringo like himself. But he never met anyone.

Stopping once at a pool, he stared at his image in the water and noticed large round splotches on his face. Touching them, he realized that the suppurating sores, doubtlessly caused when he scratched some insect bites, were much larger than he had supposed. Gnat-sized flies had done it to him. Ramon had said of these flies, "They will bite you and bite you and you'll never see them do it." But Sheldon no longer minded the insects. They lived on him as familiarly as he had seen them live on naked children playing in the mud of a jungle compound.

"We can do it, Paula," he declared, aware but not afraid of speaking aloud to his dead wife. He had been talking to her for a few days now. It began during a stop when he lay back against a large boulder to rest. "What do I tell them?" he asked her. "I mean, your brother I can handle. He'll understand what happened, how we couldn't help it. We couldn't, could we? But your father--what can I tell him? That's a man who won't even try to understand what the jungle is." After a pause, he added glumly, "Forgive me, darling. I was a fool." He felt better alter saying these words.

And so, by holding conversations with Paula, he was not losing his mind but gaining it. All he needed was a blue sky to give him direction.

Finally, the sun came out, though a dense webbing of ceibo and eucalyptus leaves obscured most of it. Climbing a hillock to reach a commanding view of the countryside, he saw a brilliant bowl of blue sky arching over the rain forest right down to a green horizon. It was shortly after dawn, so from the sun's position he could orient himself reasonably well for the first time in days.

While descending into the deep jungle again, he recalled another of Ramon's remarks: "Everything in the jungle comes around again like a wheel. You'll find that out."

And he did. Almost every tree and vine and leaf had a familiar look. Although the sun had given him bearings so that he could travel more generally in a straight line, Sheldon felt he had been everywhere before. Perhaps he had circled round and was retracing his steps in the pursuit of a delusion. That tree there--that specific ceibo there--he was certain of having seen before. This rising bit of ground, that trumpet vine, this cluster of orchids--all seen before. Yet it wasn't true. It couldn't be, because whichever direction he took, each object along the way was the same as those just passed. By nightfall, when he sat exhausted against the hard trunk of a chimhra (did he remember this tree?), Sheldon appreciated a new subtlety of the jungle: Wherever you went within it, it remained the same, like water, each segment identical to the next. He muttered something like that to Paula before plunging into dreamless sleep.

Sheldon awakened slowly, coming into a conscious state of controlled alarm. His entire body understood that something was wrong, something was happening. He never moved, though a moving weight made a path perhaps the width of two fingers across the calves of both legs. It was just after dawn; by lowering his chin slowly, he could see in the misty light a final few inches of snake undulating beyond his legs into the bush. What had it been? A fer-de-lance? A jararaca?

"Never mind," he told his wife. Getting to his feet, ignoring the hunger pangs that cramped his stomach, Sheldon lunged into the rain forest, pushing on toward Nuevo Rocafuerte. He kept telling her, "We're going to make it."

Toward noon, when he stopped to open the tuna and lift out two fingerfuls for his lunch, Sheldon had the strangest feeling--the jungle had grown silent, truly without sound. There had always been some kind of sound even within silence: a tapir grunting through the undergrowth, a white-noise constancy of buzzing insects, the whistling or caw of a bird overhead. Something. But suddenly, it seemed as though the jungle had inhaled and was holding its breath. Nothing moved. A silence as deep as an ocean swept in and remained there, hovering around Sheldon While until he found himself holding his own breath. It lasted perhaps a minute, then the sounds poured in again as into a bowl, and he himself breathed.

•

"We're going to make it," he heard himself saying aloud just as the undergrowth ahead opened into a small clearing, and Sheldon stepped forward to face a group of men, maybe a score of them, all naked except for a few who wore vests of jaguar skin adorned with bird beaks, feathers, bits of glittery things.

He knew instantly who they were.

Not one of the Auca was more than five feet tall. A few held thong-wrapped axes, but all had blowguns with bamboo quivers slung over their shoulders. Their faces were brightly smeared in intricate designs with the red exudate of achiole. They wore stony expressions that Sheldon couldn't interpret.

He wanted to say that Ramon Torres was responsible for his wife's death. It wasn't their fault; he didn't blame them. But having seen them, he knew they wouldn't understand a word. There was nothing to do but wait. Time passed and passed and the score of men stood in front of him, motionless.

At last, one of the Auca, who wore a feathered headdress, came forward to stand within touching range of Sheldon, who looked down at him and smiled tentatively.

Reaching out and taking one of the white hands into his own, the tribesman ran a stubby thumb across the smooth surface of each fingernail. Dropping the hand then, he took a step closer and pried open Sheldon's mouth. He drew the same callused thumb across each of the upper front teeth.

Sheldon let out such a yowl of horror that the surprised Auca took a few steps backward.

Startled birds in a neighboring tree--macaws and kites and owls--flapped rapidly into the bright sky.

Clutching their blowguns, the Auca stood there in the dappled sunlight, perhaps wondering if the white man's spirit was leaving his body before they had even begun to kill him.

"Sheldon smiled fraternally. What the hell; they had both been with women last night."