The old machete wounds on the tree which overhung their stopping point on the Aguarico river indicated that Benecio was not the only one who knew this route to the Napo river. Walking at an Indian's normal gait the hike could be made in two days , but for the loaded down assault team it would be considerably longer. Finally it was agreed to hide one zodiac in the forest and to proceed with its motor as a backup and everyone except Benecio, carrying rebel army issue backpacks, as well as the 15 hp motors by the two strongest boys Emelio and Washington, and all of them using their free hand on the carrying handles of the rubber boat. Benecio led the way with a machete able to follow the faint trail and after they were underway for several hours he calculated that it would take them at least 5 days to travel the 8 miles to their cut off point on the panyayacu river and even then and although they would be in water, with fallen branches and partially submerged tree trunks and no other traffic to clear the way for them, there was little promise that this stretch would go any faster.
As they inched their way through the forest loosing grip of a gun here, a motor there,never quite finding a comfortable and efficient way to carry the boat and all of their gear, Benecio became tranquil not only resigned to their tedious journey but in tune with the discipline it would take to complete it. The jungle had taught him to be infinitely patient whether it be waiting for a rare bird to expose itself to him from behind some tree limbs where it was sunning for him to admire its beauty or in the hunt, sitting two or three nights behind a blind for a capybara or a tapir to come to a salt lick for a clean shot at his prey. The jungle had humbled him many times, enough to know that you had to accept it on its own terms and to struggle against it was a foolish waste of energy- no matter what was waiting for you at the other end of the trail. So he settled down into the herky-jerky rhythm the commandos had established, tripping and cursing as they sweated profusely under the weight of the deceptively heavy rubber boat and around four Benecio slipped Paco's Revolver fromits holster and before he had time to protest shot a white-tailed deer with a single round. The Deer, a fawn actually knew no fear of man so deep were they in the forest and had frozen on the trail right in front of them , eyeing them curiously when Benecio fired off the shot. The boy Emelio ,under his direction,venting his angry streak it seemed, stripped out the loins and hind legs of the creature and they built a fire and had a portion of the venison for dinner, cooked under Benicio's direction and the rest marinated and smoked with the troop taking turns stoking the fire and turning the spitted meat .
They erected a tent for Paco and Benecio and exhausted,the young men collapsed into the boat pulling a mosquito net up over them.Sleeping three at a time while one watched the meat , occasionally snorting a little coke. A petromax, the chinese made kerosene lamps, which took a bit of talent to get functioning properly hung over a tree limb at sufficient distance not to attract insects to their campsight lit the entire area with diffused light.
Inside the tent Paco Moreno and the extermely pained Benecio sipped Sinchicara from the bottle.
"A man is always surprised when old age sneaks up on him," said Moreno sadly.
Shit, said Benecio, "you are as old as you feel and I feel like I am forty.I know what promise awaits me what Miracles I will have at my fingertips."
"And I have nothing," said Moreno, slipping into the voice of the bipolar in his depressive state "I have worked my whole life for a cause, I have supported many people, even my wife no longer believes in me, she says I have wasted my life, thirty years I am fighting with El Mono...and I am only a colonel...I am a failed revolutionary.Just as the revolution will fail. I have devoted my life to failure."
"But now you are going to be rich ,"said Benecio, "It is the best revenge. Look if I cared what my wife or any one else thought of me do you think I would be the evil pendejo that I am."
"What are you trying to say,"said Moreno, lost in the fog of his misfiring brain.
"I mean in this life if you don't take it someone else will, so you better take all you can while you can because no one is going to give it to you. And even let's say you have a good idea like Gringo Chili, maybe you can make it work for twenty years but what's going to happem ? Some fulano across the street has stolen your idea only he calls it Americano Chili and maybe he puts in Karoke so there you find yourself everyday trying to think of what you can do to keep up with the new guy because everybody likes something new even if you are giving them something better and maybe he put in a karoke and a dance floor and you see you don't have room for a karoke and a dance floor. so you have your faithful clients and then even they go over and try out the new guy because he's serving Mexican Beer Corona for 1 dollar from 4 to 6 and how did you know the Gringos would give up their Budweiser for mexican beer they drink from the bottle after they stick a wedge of lime down the opening.. So you try to buy the Mexican beer and you say to the distributor that you will pay 1 dollar a beer after he tells you he doesn't have enough! One dollar a beer for the the coronas just to have them to compete and he says that the the the owner of the Americano Chili is his brother in law and he just can't sell you. So what do you do .? You try new things, but in the meantime the other place looks so brand new and you're spending all this money on new things when really you take a walk outside your place and you say caracho! I need a new roof. Americano Chili has such a better roof than my place and then you stop... and you send somebody over to get a bowl of Americano Chili and you know in your heart of hearts after you taste and your wife tastes it that it is not only not as good as Gringo Chili but it is not even average, ok, Chili and at that moment you learn the ordering rule of the world that you can put your heart and soul into something, care more about it, have the best recipe for anything in life but when people turn on you and they will always turn on you and it is not because of the quality of your chili it is because they want the thing they will never find. The new thing. The el dorado of chili. And by the time - if they ever realize it- that the new place does not have the el dorado of chili- it is too late because they have forgotten about your Gringo Chili. They don't give a shit because they have become accustomed to Americano Chili and have forgotten the glory of Gringo Chili and you realize that it was never about the chili that made them come to you or to the new place but a dream of chili and even though you were fufilling that dream...even though you had the motherfucking world prizewinning recipe for chili... the vision of the dream has changed .It will always change, because once they have found it it doies not exist any more.So they willl stay at Americano chili until I don't know, New York Chili opens with chinese beer and striptease dancers and they will say yes. This is it. Now we have truly found the El Dorado of Chili.
So I have learned to become the evil pendejo you see here. I have learned that giving from your heart is for fools and if you ever get the chance to take .Take.Listen Paco, all revolutions fail because it is all about the struggle and never about the success. And all searches for el dorado fail because even when the searchers find them, the moment they find themm they cease to exist. But foir the handful of people in this world who have found wealth that comes from the ground and that they can put it in their hands and say this is mine, those are the people who have found the real el dorado and Paco I am sharing it with you I have found it and I am sharing it with you!"Benecio had reached a fever pitch and he saw the vision of the world he had painted with his words reflected back to him in the glistening of Paco's eyes where he now shined a flash light.
Paco cyclyed out of his depressive state into mania as his bipolar condition with this external revving and perhaps the aide of sinchicara was want to do .In one of his classic mood swings of an instant, he let out the clutch so to speak of his mania and hugged hugged Benecicio with great affection who grimaced with pain.
"Yes! Yes! Yes! he shouted, " I see now. They will take it from you for no good reason. I served the revolution for thirty years and I command 100 men. Ha !
So they like the new younger brands of beer coming up so quickly now through the ranks, ha !. I could not get respect not matter what I did. Ha! No more giving from my heart for fools to steal my ideas. Benecio I see now. The only way is to take and to take all I can !
"TO take your share,"Benecio corrected him.
"Yes of course, "said Paco,"to take my share and never give anything to anyone again because in the end everybody is a taker and it has taken me this long with my trusted childhood friend to guide me to this point and by the way Benecio, I am no longer an old man."
"Good,' said Benecio and laid on his bedroll.
"Yes you sleep said Paco, "When I am in this state I do not sleep for days sometimes. But don't worry about me. I will do my part."
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
#28 The Aguarico
The two zodiacs had traveled for about three hours down the swift flowing Aguarico where rocks were the enemy rather than logjams. They had made good progress, perhaps forty miles. Benecio was in extreme pain from the bumpy ride which jostled his collarbone-the doctor had told him to wait another two weeks before removing the sling,but his gut instinct had told him that now was the time to move forward with the mission. They pulled into a bend in the river out of its flow and debarked, only to received a burst of mahinegun fire.
"Ah," said Paco Moreno," It is only Cocqueros. The pendejos think we are DEA."
He nodded to his troops which to Benecio looked younger everytime he took a good look at them and three of the four fired off their Machineguns while the fourth as if by training went to Paco's side who with Benecio had taken cover behind the buttress of a tree. They stopped firing.
"Listen to me , Cocqueros,"he shouted," I am with the revolutionary Army and I don't want to have to come over there and kick your asses. I have an army coming down this river behind me and they will smight you where you sit if I tell them to so just go back to whatever it is you were doing and maybe bring us a taste of your product because we are weary soldiers and have a long way to go."
There was silence, save screaming piha's and cicadas, but before long a shirtless and shoeless man wearing only tattered shorts, broke through the thick river edge growth , head bent, carrying a banana leaf with a mound of white powder on it. He presented it humbly to Paco.
"Very nice," said Paco receiving the cocaine and giving the man a loaf of sliced white bread in a plastic sack and two cans of sardines,"Now shoot any DEA hijo de puta that you want coming down this river but leave me and my men alone. Will I find and other gentleman with machine guns further down this river ?"
"I don't think so."His voice was as soft and humble as any subsistence farmer who earned his pay from the sweat of his brow.
"Very well," return to your work and never forget what we are fighting for.
After the man had left, Benecio Drank heavily from a bottle of Sinchicara which he hoped would relieve his pain and he handed one of the two bottles of Johnny Walker Blue he had brought for Paco to him as a surprise .
"Benecio ! Your name rhymes with vicio. And I want to introduce you to a vice that you may have tried in some other place in some adulterated way before but this is like our famous Colombian Juan Valdez, the Coffee Man on a Donkey that the yanqui's adore. This is the freshest cleanest coke you can get and I guarantee it will get rid of the pain of your clavicle and it will give us the energy to go on and on and you can explain for us one more time the route of our mission because we are all compadres and my boys have privately asked me some questions and I really have not been able to answer them properly. First we need a hundred dollar bill. Nevermind I have one."
Benecio watched Paco reach into his pocket and was sure it was one of the 100 dollar bills he had given Paco as part of his ten thousand dollar advance.
"And you roll it up like this,"he said , making a cylinder and then you-"
He snorted deeply into the pile of cocaine which benicio figure must be several ounces and not familiar with the street value of the drug calculated its value at several hundred dollars.
Benecio snorted next and around they went untill all the compadres had had enough and Benecio felt elated and painless and elaborated in the good company of his compadres the full details of his plan.
"The napo river is impassable because of the...the...the logjams but we must get to a lake very near there where we will find- and I have paid you gentleman enough to believe in me an El Dorado beyond your wildest fantasies. Now this river we are on runs paralell to the Napo and at a certain point that I know of, another 40 miles or so from here where we reach the closest point to a river called the panayacu which is only 8 miles overland we must carry the boats and don't you worry I will help with the carrying.
Once in the panyayacu if we follow it to its source we would arrive at the Napo but at a point below where we want to be and in the logjams and so that would not do us any good. But I know this country like the back of my hand and I know that if we take the panyayacu for two days and then carry the boats for one day maybe two we will arrive at a lake called Chaluacocha. Now in this area I have discovered the existence of an ancient civilization and this civilization was very sophisticated and they built canals rather than walk or use the Napo. So I know the canal system that will get us into Garzacocha,"
"And what will we find in Garzacocha , asked Emilio, 17 or 18 years old with a strong mestizo complexion and a severe case of acne, particularly on his chin.
Benecio passed around a handful of emeralds for the young men to look at and their lack of reaction, he was sure, must have been similar to his own assessment of the coke. They had no notion of their value.
"How much are they worth ?" asked Alfonso, the fairskinned member of the group.
Paco Moreno answered. "Emeralds are not like diamonds . There are no clear rules for telling their value. But if you get enough of them you can make a living right Benecio?" He took a swig of Johnny Walker Blue.
"You're right, Paco, Diamonds are generally better in terms of assigning value, but if you boys want I'll make you a deal that if we pull off this mission successfully I will guarantee you that you will double your money. No matter how much I make from it. What do you say?"
"And what stands between us and the emeralds ?" asked Washington. He was tall and slender and wore an angry streak.
"Yes ," said Enrique, "who appeared to have the most indian blood of the lot," who do we have to fight?"
"Three women and two men with two shotguns."
The boys started to laugh and Paco and Benecio joined in. The rest stop became a camp site as the boys snorted themselves senseless until the wee hours and Benecio and Paco ate and Drank the boys' rations of food and drank rum and passed out themselves around midnight.
It was 2pm of the following day before this band of mercenaries was ready to set off on the next leg of their journey.Paco vowed discipline from this day forth as he nursed his hangover with sips of Johnny Walker Blue and the whole band looked like refugees from some unspeakable attack as they seemed to moan their way down river.
"Ah," said Paco Moreno," It is only Cocqueros. The pendejos think we are DEA."
He nodded to his troops which to Benecio looked younger everytime he took a good look at them and three of the four fired off their Machineguns while the fourth as if by training went to Paco's side who with Benecio had taken cover behind the buttress of a tree. They stopped firing.
"Listen to me , Cocqueros,"he shouted," I am with the revolutionary Army and I don't want to have to come over there and kick your asses. I have an army coming down this river behind me and they will smight you where you sit if I tell them to so just go back to whatever it is you were doing and maybe bring us a taste of your product because we are weary soldiers and have a long way to go."
There was silence, save screaming piha's and cicadas, but before long a shirtless and shoeless man wearing only tattered shorts, broke through the thick river edge growth , head bent, carrying a banana leaf with a mound of white powder on it. He presented it humbly to Paco.
"Very nice," said Paco receiving the cocaine and giving the man a loaf of sliced white bread in a plastic sack and two cans of sardines,"Now shoot any DEA hijo de puta that you want coming down this river but leave me and my men alone. Will I find and other gentleman with machine guns further down this river ?"
"I don't think so."His voice was as soft and humble as any subsistence farmer who earned his pay from the sweat of his brow.
"Very well," return to your work and never forget what we are fighting for.
After the man had left, Benecio Drank heavily from a bottle of Sinchicara which he hoped would relieve his pain and he handed one of the two bottles of Johnny Walker Blue he had brought for Paco to him as a surprise .
"Benecio ! Your name rhymes with vicio. And I want to introduce you to a vice that you may have tried in some other place in some adulterated way before but this is like our famous Colombian Juan Valdez, the Coffee Man on a Donkey that the yanqui's adore. This is the freshest cleanest coke you can get and I guarantee it will get rid of the pain of your clavicle and it will give us the energy to go on and on and you can explain for us one more time the route of our mission because we are all compadres and my boys have privately asked me some questions and I really have not been able to answer them properly. First we need a hundred dollar bill. Nevermind I have one."
Benecio watched Paco reach into his pocket and was sure it was one of the 100 dollar bills he had given Paco as part of his ten thousand dollar advance.
"And you roll it up like this,"he said , making a cylinder and then you-"
He snorted deeply into the pile of cocaine which benicio figure must be several ounces and not familiar with the street value of the drug calculated its value at several hundred dollars.
Benecio snorted next and around they went untill all the compadres had had enough and Benecio felt elated and painless and elaborated in the good company of his compadres the full details of his plan.
"The napo river is impassable because of the...the...the logjams but we must get to a lake very near there where we will find- and I have paid you gentleman enough to believe in me an El Dorado beyond your wildest fantasies. Now this river we are on runs paralell to the Napo and at a certain point that I know of, another 40 miles or so from here where we reach the closest point to a river called the panayacu which is only 8 miles overland we must carry the boats and don't you worry I will help with the carrying.
Once in the panyayacu if we follow it to its source we would arrive at the Napo but at a point below where we want to be and in the logjams and so that would not do us any good. But I know this country like the back of my hand and I know that if we take the panyayacu for two days and then carry the boats for one day maybe two we will arrive at a lake called Chaluacocha. Now in this area I have discovered the existence of an ancient civilization and this civilization was very sophisticated and they built canals rather than walk or use the Napo. So I know the canal system that will get us into Garzacocha,"
"And what will we find in Garzacocha , asked Emilio, 17 or 18 years old with a strong mestizo complexion and a severe case of acne, particularly on his chin.
Benecio passed around a handful of emeralds for the young men to look at and their lack of reaction, he was sure, must have been similar to his own assessment of the coke. They had no notion of their value.
"How much are they worth ?" asked Alfonso, the fairskinned member of the group.
Paco Moreno answered. "Emeralds are not like diamonds . There are no clear rules for telling their value. But if you get enough of them you can make a living right Benecio?" He took a swig of Johnny Walker Blue.
"You're right, Paco, Diamonds are generally better in terms of assigning value, but if you boys want I'll make you a deal that if we pull off this mission successfully I will guarantee you that you will double your money. No matter how much I make from it. What do you say?"
"And what stands between us and the emeralds ?" asked Washington. He was tall and slender and wore an angry streak.
"Yes ," said Enrique, "who appeared to have the most indian blood of the lot," who do we have to fight?"
"Three women and two men with two shotguns."
The boys started to laugh and Paco and Benecio joined in. The rest stop became a camp site as the boys snorted themselves senseless until the wee hours and Benecio and Paco ate and Drank the boys' rations of food and drank rum and passed out themselves around midnight.
It was 2pm of the following day before this band of mercenaries was ready to set off on the next leg of their journey.Paco vowed discipline from this day forth as he nursed his hangover with sips of Johnny Walker Blue and the whole band looked like refugees from some unspeakable attack as they seemed to moan their way down river.
Friday, March 6, 2009
#27 The Telephone Call
Fernando sat in one of the phone booths of the petroleum company's telephone network which had just begun to work again. He dialed the number.
If Benecio answered then he would hang up, but it was Alexandra's questioning voice and Fernando asked to speak to Benecio.
"Who is this? she asked. The voice sounded familiar to her."This is Alexandra. Benecio is gone for a month."
"This is...this is....Fernando, Dona Alexandra. How are you, how are things going with you."
"Fernando, where is my daughter Dolores? You were with my husband when he was with the gringo. What has happened to my daughter?"
"She is safe Dona Alexandra down river. She can not get out yet because of the logjams and when everything...when everything is done I will bring her back to you myself. Do not worry about her."
"But my husband said-
"And where did your husband go ?"
"I think he is doing something with that Paco Moreno of the Colombian Rebels. I think he is maybe doing something with the coca. He got drunk last night and told me I would be proud of him because he would be coming home from his Conquest very very rich. Cocaine is the only thing it could be."
"And when did he leave?"
"Just today.I asked him who he was going with and he said Cortes and Pizzaro. Do you know any Cortes and Pizzaro and he said he was going to take the riches from the Sun God for himself. Then he passed out. I think he has gone mad. Maybe he is taking this cocaine."
"I don't know what to tell you Dona Alexandra...it sounds terrible. I guess I mean, I don't know. I mean, I mean...Hello?"
And with that Fernando hung up the phone cursing,railing at his lack of timing, missing yet again his chance to kill Benecio, and now making his life even more complex. Well his brother would have been proud of him because he had a backup plan. Maybe he, too could get the tatoo of a harpy eagle on his chest after all this was over.
He headed towards the boat yard which fronted the river a few hundred yards down from the dock where he was now prepared to begin the most complicated thought processes of his life: A negotiation had taken place for the three emeralds and then a plan to rescue his brother and the others who he presumed were still alive before Benecio arrived- or with the ammunition and extra rifle he had bought lay seige and at least get Benecio which might or might not be enough to prove he had done his all. He could not think past that point it gave him a headache.He had tried to think what his brother would do. He could think no more.
He stood quite close to the crane which lowered the heavy steel boat into the water and closely supervised the loading of his wooden boat inside the steel boat deciding that it fit best from bow to stern matching the steel boat although it did not fit perfectly inside the boat but hung over the edges-neither boat being quite symmetric and the wooden one ,in sum ,just a little too large to fit perfectly inside. It had seemed like it would when he had measured the two boats but he knew he had miscalculated something and now that his plan was unfolding he neither punished nor rewarded himself for small individual missteps but proceeded forward with only the goal fixating his brain.
He loaded in his weapons and fuel, the gringos motor, and tested the other two he had purchased as part of his package deal and the load of spare parts and propellors, and tools and one extra transmission, the bottom half of an outboard motor that would be most likely to break before the top half from repeated concussions. He had watched his brother change transmissions before.
Putting a40 hp Johnson motor on the back of the steel boat he gave it all the gas it would take but headed slowly for the confluence of the two rivers, the weight and draft of the steel boat keeping it from clipping down the river at the pace he was acustom to.He drove back and forth across the wave line and when he saw an opening he gunned the motor ,raised the shaft out of the water as the boat flew on the wave ,and he thudded onto the longjam for several moments completely out of the water. The steel boat was undamaged and he removed the motor. The boat settled in among the logs and he was heading down river at a slow but steady clip.
The sun beat ferociously. It was then that he realized he had forgotten to bring food or water. He scoured the sky for potential rain clouds, but none were visible. The hunger he could deal with for days if he had to and if no rain came he would drink the river water even though he knew it would give him bichos, bugs , in his stomach, but how many times had he had bugs in his stomach. When he got near land he would try to find some una de gato, the bark of which his family had used since he could remember when there was no rainwater to drink after a long dry spell and Gustavo had been too lazy to boil the water from the small stream which ran by their house, when their mother had gone to Francisco de Orellana to shop or visit amigas and play Cuarenta, that Ecuadorian card game played with such fervor throughout the country. They were children then and Gustavo was in charge of taking care of his younger brother.Fernando knew it was wrong to drink the water without boiling it, but he drank it anyway because Gustavo told him to. And their mother Rosita would get mad when she found out, but never hit Gustavo for the lazy or misguided things he did but would counsel him like an adult. Repeat explanations for repeated wrong behavior in the hope that in this way, with her husband Carlitos always off with Benecio building oil company encampments deep in the jungle and sometimes, without adequate explanation, coming home completely empty handed despite working for a month in that hard remote labor- with the hope that Gustavo would become- she saw the makings of it in his character at an early age- would become a man who would know how to do wrong when need be to get was rightly his when it was his due. Gustavo, she hoped would not be like her weak willed husband- though she loved him- and Fernando was one of God's creatures who if she trained Gustavo right- she hoped- would allow Fernando to ride along on his back. For Fernando she knew, what never make it, even in the simple world of river life without Gustavo's help.
She was pleased that it had worked out that way.That Gustavo went out into the world, such as it was in the backwaters of the Amazon and made a name for himself and by the time Fernando finished his six years of institutional schooling at the mission in Francisco de Orellana, Gustavo was there waiting to take him in as a partner. Together they would go through life. Even she hoped , when the time came, setting up homes near each other.
She had seen how Fernando had grown under Gustavo's guidance and Rosita who was now in the capital at the house of her sister across the street from the Church of the Basilica wondered how her two sons were doing now. Fernando had called her and in his simpleminded way tried to tell her that everything was all right. That he was taking care of Gustavo. She had asked him what that meant and he told her that Gustavo had been trapped down river by the logjams but he was sure he was all right and then he faltered and in his confusion he told her the only thing that he thought would give her peace of mind . He told her he was working with Benecio to get Gustavo and the Gringo out and Benecio would verify his story if she would just call him and she said she would and he hung up with her.
He knew she would not be able to talk to Benecio because he was gone down the Aguarico with Paco Moreno. But what would Alexandra the sad wife of Benecio say to her? And would she ever forgive him for lying?Maybe she would come to Francisco de Orellana with her husband to try to find him after her talk with Alexandra. He could not think about that now. He was in a steel boat in the middle of a logjam floating slowly downriver. The sun burned mercilessly and his recollections of recent events more than any physical or external heat caused him to work up a great thirst. He cupped his hand into the brine in which he floated and drank several gulps. The water had an oilish taste to it, and grit, and the flavor of a thousand dying forests too. It did note slate his thirst.
After three hours, he was still in a logjam in the center of the river, passing the land he had known all his wife. His parents homestead. He calculated that he was traveling at the speed of between one and two miles an hour.
If Benecio answered then he would hang up, but it was Alexandra's questioning voice and Fernando asked to speak to Benecio.
"Who is this? she asked. The voice sounded familiar to her."This is Alexandra. Benecio is gone for a month."
"This is...this is....Fernando, Dona Alexandra. How are you, how are things going with you."
"Fernando, where is my daughter Dolores? You were with my husband when he was with the gringo. What has happened to my daughter?"
"She is safe Dona Alexandra down river. She can not get out yet because of the logjams and when everything...when everything is done I will bring her back to you myself. Do not worry about her."
"But my husband said-
"And where did your husband go ?"
"I think he is doing something with that Paco Moreno of the Colombian Rebels. I think he is maybe doing something with the coca. He got drunk last night and told me I would be proud of him because he would be coming home from his Conquest very very rich. Cocaine is the only thing it could be."
"And when did he leave?"
"Just today.I asked him who he was going with and he said Cortes and Pizzaro. Do you know any Cortes and Pizzaro and he said he was going to take the riches from the Sun God for himself. Then he passed out. I think he has gone mad. Maybe he is taking this cocaine."
"I don't know what to tell you Dona Alexandra...it sounds terrible. I guess I mean, I don't know. I mean, I mean...Hello?"
And with that Fernando hung up the phone cursing,railing at his lack of timing, missing yet again his chance to kill Benecio, and now making his life even more complex. Well his brother would have been proud of him because he had a backup plan. Maybe he, too could get the tatoo of a harpy eagle on his chest after all this was over.
He headed towards the boat yard which fronted the river a few hundred yards down from the dock where he was now prepared to begin the most complicated thought processes of his life: A negotiation had taken place for the three emeralds and then a plan to rescue his brother and the others who he presumed were still alive before Benecio arrived- or with the ammunition and extra rifle he had bought lay seige and at least get Benecio which might or might not be enough to prove he had done his all. He could not think past that point it gave him a headache.He had tried to think what his brother would do. He could think no more.
He stood quite close to the crane which lowered the heavy steel boat into the water and closely supervised the loading of his wooden boat inside the steel boat deciding that it fit best from bow to stern matching the steel boat although it did not fit perfectly inside the boat but hung over the edges-neither boat being quite symmetric and the wooden one ,in sum ,just a little too large to fit perfectly inside. It had seemed like it would when he had measured the two boats but he knew he had miscalculated something and now that his plan was unfolding he neither punished nor rewarded himself for small individual missteps but proceeded forward with only the goal fixating his brain.
He loaded in his weapons and fuel, the gringos motor, and tested the other two he had purchased as part of his package deal and the load of spare parts and propellors, and tools and one extra transmission, the bottom half of an outboard motor that would be most likely to break before the top half from repeated concussions. He had watched his brother change transmissions before.
Putting a40 hp Johnson motor on the back of the steel boat he gave it all the gas it would take but headed slowly for the confluence of the two rivers, the weight and draft of the steel boat keeping it from clipping down the river at the pace he was acustom to.He drove back and forth across the wave line and when he saw an opening he gunned the motor ,raised the shaft out of the water as the boat flew on the wave ,and he thudded onto the longjam for several moments completely out of the water. The steel boat was undamaged and he removed the motor. The boat settled in among the logs and he was heading down river at a slow but steady clip.
The sun beat ferociously. It was then that he realized he had forgotten to bring food or water. He scoured the sky for potential rain clouds, but none were visible. The hunger he could deal with for days if he had to and if no rain came he would drink the river water even though he knew it would give him bichos, bugs , in his stomach, but how many times had he had bugs in his stomach. When he got near land he would try to find some una de gato, the bark of which his family had used since he could remember when there was no rainwater to drink after a long dry spell and Gustavo had been too lazy to boil the water from the small stream which ran by their house, when their mother had gone to Francisco de Orellana to shop or visit amigas and play Cuarenta, that Ecuadorian card game played with such fervor throughout the country. They were children then and Gustavo was in charge of taking care of his younger brother.Fernando knew it was wrong to drink the water without boiling it, but he drank it anyway because Gustavo told him to. And their mother Rosita would get mad when she found out, but never hit Gustavo for the lazy or misguided things he did but would counsel him like an adult. Repeat explanations for repeated wrong behavior in the hope that in this way, with her husband Carlitos always off with Benecio building oil company encampments deep in the jungle and sometimes, without adequate explanation, coming home completely empty handed despite working for a month in that hard remote labor- with the hope that Gustavo would become- she saw the makings of it in his character at an early age- would become a man who would know how to do wrong when need be to get was rightly his when it was his due. Gustavo, she hoped would not be like her weak willed husband- though she loved him- and Fernando was one of God's creatures who if she trained Gustavo right- she hoped- would allow Fernando to ride along on his back. For Fernando she knew, what never make it, even in the simple world of river life without Gustavo's help.
She was pleased that it had worked out that way.That Gustavo went out into the world, such as it was in the backwaters of the Amazon and made a name for himself and by the time Fernando finished his six years of institutional schooling at the mission in Francisco de Orellana, Gustavo was there waiting to take him in as a partner. Together they would go through life. Even she hoped , when the time came, setting up homes near each other.
She had seen how Fernando had grown under Gustavo's guidance and Rosita who was now in the capital at the house of her sister across the street from the Church of the Basilica wondered how her two sons were doing now. Fernando had called her and in his simpleminded way tried to tell her that everything was all right. That he was taking care of Gustavo. She had asked him what that meant and he told her that Gustavo had been trapped down river by the logjams but he was sure he was all right and then he faltered and in his confusion he told her the only thing that he thought would give her peace of mind . He told her he was working with Benecio to get Gustavo and the Gringo out and Benecio would verify his story if she would just call him and she said she would and he hung up with her.
He knew she would not be able to talk to Benecio because he was gone down the Aguarico with Paco Moreno. But what would Alexandra the sad wife of Benecio say to her? And would she ever forgive him for lying?Maybe she would come to Francisco de Orellana with her husband to try to find him after her talk with Alexandra. He could not think about that now. He was in a steel boat in the middle of a logjam floating slowly downriver. The sun burned mercilessly and his recollections of recent events more than any physical or external heat caused him to work up a great thirst. He cupped his hand into the brine in which he floated and drank several gulps. The water had an oilish taste to it, and grit, and the flavor of a thousand dying forests too. It did note slate his thirst.
After three hours, he was still in a logjam in the center of the river, passing the land he had known all his wife. His parents homestead. He calculated that he was traveling at the speed of between one and two miles an hour.
# 26 zodiacs
Benecio winced- and not from the sight of the roaring Aguarico from the recent rains and not from the pain in his collarbone the removal of the sling had caused and not from the youth of the paramilitary dressed mercenaries Paco had enlisted who now stood by the two rubber zodiacs with their ak-47's on their chests in the ready offensive position as if displaying the menacing for unseen movie cameras - but from the late ruling by Paco that they should each be paid Ten Thousand Dollars in advance, compadre, and with the rocky river raging the way it was. It would give everyone a chance to go home and leave the money with their families.
"It is the only fair thing, compadre, you think they know how valuable a green rock might be ? But give them ten thousand dollars and wait two days for the river to calm and they will come back ready to kill for you, like conquistadors !"
"It is the only fair thing, compadre, you think they know how valuable a green rock might be ? But give them ten thousand dollars and wait two days for the river to calm and they will come back ready to kill for you, like conquistadors !"
Thursday, March 5, 2009
#25 Signing
Gustavo had whittled a display case for The Garza Emerald out of chonta palm a black wood which when polished gave off a nice sheen, but did little to highlight the Emerald.In any case it became the official holder of the stone, custom fit and nailed to the wall and at least once a day Gustavo would remove the emerald find Nina and rub her stomach where their baby was growing in an obvious gesture of luck.
Gustavo and Nina, in fact all of them became thrilled about Nina's pregnancy. Their paradise, was once again in tact with all its majesty and lack of threat-as long as they stayed away from the river,. They could discern no changes to their forest and its inhabitants from the cataclysm outside.
The radio had begun to work again and they had just heard now of the dynamiting of the logjams several days previous. As a precaution they started sorting the stones and half filling 110 pound rice and potato bags with the deepest embedded beryls and leather pouches with the free stones that Nate measured with a special tool quickly and loosely measuring the approximate caratage and eyed them for inclusions, and color and signs of the trapiche, that perfect six spoked wheel of carbon depoists which made them so rare. Then he put them in leather pouches with a code on the outside written with a sharpy and finally tied off each pouch.The number references were like "AA-17" or "B-3" and he then put these numbers in a in a small notebook, one that could fit in the back pocket of his jeans.
Dory noticed that Nate, probably unaware of his actions, had recently started to to take a preference to signinging with Dolores over vocal conversation and he chose to spend more and more time communicating with her over the rest of the group.
So with Nate in the mine most of the day drilling with Gustavo, Nina and Dory who had already begun to study sign language with Dolores ,studied now in earnest.Dolores had learned quite a bit of English it turned out through Nate and so they learned to speak the very special brand of signing she and Nate spoke. Nate knew nothing of these lessons, but Dolores was pleased to be able, after a very short time ,to communicate with two new people and one night at dinner she inadvertantly signed to Dory.
Who did not acknowledge her and became visibly embarassed.
Nate caught the moment. "Whats that all about ?"
Dory put down her fork and looked deeply at nate then she signed confidently, speaking each word clearly: "I love you...Te amo... and I can now enter your mundo by todas las maneras I need to and nada will keep us apart."
Nate stared at her for a minute and no one could read what was in his face.Then he exploded:"Well isn't that dandy ,"he said angrily and got up from the table, "Now the freak show is complete. "
He threw his napkin down on the table and stomped out the door crashing heavily to a seat on the split canoe bench. Viva the macaw squacked her disapproval.
That night in bed he apologized tenderly to Dory."It's the curse of the conquistador come back to get me.They brought measles which they gave to the indians, the indians gave it to the mestizos, all these childhood diseases that in the states you get in childhood ....anyway its come full circle and the ghosts of Indians who breathed the contaminated air of Orellana have now blown that air back to me."
"OK. I see this as a complex question," she said softly."Do you believe you are a conquistador ?"
"Not exactly,but I am stealing the birthright of the Ecuadorian people."
"Like the oil, the trees, all that goes to the Ecuadorian people."
"No not a penny. it is all stolen by the people in power."
"So your emeralds would go to the people in power."
"I guess so.
" Now :Do you believe in ghosts?"
"Metaphorically."
"So why did they let you get so rich these spirits of the ancient indians who your Francisco de Orellana did so wrong?"
"I'm not rich yet. It's many big steps from here to the bank. And there are many wrong steps I could take."
"You are missing the point she said grabbing his face with her hands but I will be there if you want me because I love you with or without all of this."
"Maybe I don't want all of this... just you me and Dolores.Nah I want the dough -strike that last remark!" he said laughing.
" She has taught me so much about you and now that I can communicate with her. What a talented mind she has-"
She should write a book."
"Don't laugh we are teaching her how to write and yes, a book ,but not like this Helen Keller. She has such delightful fantasies and stories about the world... But what about us ?"
"What I can't hear you?"
She punched him.
"You hear me just fine. I notice when there are no other noises, no distractions you can hear almost everything."
"So you are on to me."
"Of course I am on to you."
"About us...I am in love with you. And I can't imagine a world without you but I am afraid that our struggle has not even begun yet and I wonder not if our relationship will survive that struggle but if I will survive that struggle because I will not let you be in harm's way."
"I already am."
"That was a mistake."
"I already am."
"All right already.We'll go down together if we go down."
"I will keep you up."
"Who ARE you ?"
"Believe in me."
The next day Gustavo and Nate paddled out across the lake and followed their same path to look at the river and while there was 5 feet of oily water in the river now there were as many logs as some metropolis bumper to bumper nightmare traffic jam.
Gustavo and Nina, in fact all of them became thrilled about Nina's pregnancy. Their paradise, was once again in tact with all its majesty and lack of threat-as long as they stayed away from the river,. They could discern no changes to their forest and its inhabitants from the cataclysm outside.
The radio had begun to work again and they had just heard now of the dynamiting of the logjams several days previous. As a precaution they started sorting the stones and half filling 110 pound rice and potato bags with the deepest embedded beryls and leather pouches with the free stones that Nate measured with a special tool quickly and loosely measuring the approximate caratage and eyed them for inclusions, and color and signs of the trapiche, that perfect six spoked wheel of carbon depoists which made them so rare. Then he put them in leather pouches with a code on the outside written with a sharpy and finally tied off each pouch.The number references were like "AA-17" or "B-3" and he then put these numbers in a in a small notebook, one that could fit in the back pocket of his jeans.
Dory noticed that Nate, probably unaware of his actions, had recently started to to take a preference to signinging with Dolores over vocal conversation and he chose to spend more and more time communicating with her over the rest of the group.
So with Nate in the mine most of the day drilling with Gustavo, Nina and Dory who had already begun to study sign language with Dolores ,studied now in earnest.Dolores had learned quite a bit of English it turned out through Nate and so they learned to speak the very special brand of signing she and Nate spoke. Nate knew nothing of these lessons, but Dolores was pleased to be able, after a very short time ,to communicate with two new people and one night at dinner she inadvertantly signed to Dory.
Who did not acknowledge her and became visibly embarassed.
Nate caught the moment. "Whats that all about ?"
Dory put down her fork and looked deeply at nate then she signed confidently, speaking each word clearly: "I love you...Te amo... and I can now enter your mundo by todas las maneras I need to and nada will keep us apart."
Nate stared at her for a minute and no one could read what was in his face.Then he exploded:"Well isn't that dandy ,"he said angrily and got up from the table, "Now the freak show is complete. "
He threw his napkin down on the table and stomped out the door crashing heavily to a seat on the split canoe bench. Viva the macaw squacked her disapproval.
That night in bed he apologized tenderly to Dory."It's the curse of the conquistador come back to get me.They brought measles which they gave to the indians, the indians gave it to the mestizos, all these childhood diseases that in the states you get in childhood ....anyway its come full circle and the ghosts of Indians who breathed the contaminated air of Orellana have now blown that air back to me."
"OK. I see this as a complex question," she said softly."Do you believe you are a conquistador ?"
"Not exactly,but I am stealing the birthright of the Ecuadorian people."
"Like the oil, the trees, all that goes to the Ecuadorian people."
"No not a penny. it is all stolen by the people in power."
"So your emeralds would go to the people in power."
"I guess so.
" Now :Do you believe in ghosts?"
"Metaphorically."
"So why did they let you get so rich these spirits of the ancient indians who your Francisco de Orellana did so wrong?"
"I'm not rich yet. It's many big steps from here to the bank. And there are many wrong steps I could take."
"You are missing the point she said grabbing his face with her hands but I will be there if you want me because I love you with or without all of this."
"Maybe I don't want all of this... just you me and Dolores.Nah I want the dough -strike that last remark!" he said laughing.
" She has taught me so much about you and now that I can communicate with her. What a talented mind she has-"
She should write a book."
"Don't laugh we are teaching her how to write and yes, a book ,but not like this Helen Keller. She has such delightful fantasies and stories about the world... But what about us ?"
"What I can't hear you?"
She punched him.
"You hear me just fine. I notice when there are no other noises, no distractions you can hear almost everything."
"So you are on to me."
"Of course I am on to you."
"About us...I am in love with you. And I can't imagine a world without you but I am afraid that our struggle has not even begun yet and I wonder not if our relationship will survive that struggle but if I will survive that struggle because I will not let you be in harm's way."
"I already am."
"That was a mistake."
"I already am."
"All right already.We'll go down together if we go down."
"I will keep you up."
"Who ARE you ?"
"Believe in me."
The next day Gustavo and Nate paddled out across the lake and followed their same path to look at the river and while there was 5 feet of oily water in the river now there were as many logs as some metropolis bumper to bumper nightmare traffic jam.
#23 Fernando
Fernado hid in the forest behind his parents home behind a hunter's blind at a salt lick where animal's used to come for their ration of salt and minerals- and then be shot by Fernando's father. It was deep in the forest.
He sat at his camp site rolling around in his hand three beautiful Cabochon emeralds that Gustavo had stolen when no one was looking and had given Fernando strict orders not to show them to anybody. Gustavo took the emeralds, petty thievery considering the bounty at stake,to avenge his father's name, to somehow recuperate the pound of flesh Benecio had cut from his easy going padre over the years with his razor sharp machete of abuse. His intention had been to give the stones as a gift to his father after they were finished mining and he knew he could trust Fernando more than himself not to flash them to a pretty woman or wager them in a card game.
From these stones Fernando suddenly knew he had to somehow create a plan that would trump what he had heard at Gringo Chili,but what that plan could be was beyond the comprehension of his already hard-pressed mind. He could not alone, trail behind Benecio and what sounded like a small army and yet, he could not wait too long in fear that Benecio would arrive first.Could he go back to Lago Agrio and just kill Benecio or had Benecio laid a trap for him already. Perhaps come to Francisco de Orellana. The only cheering news he had heard was on HCJV radio that authorities were thinking about blowing up the massive logjams on the Quijos and Coca rivers which would free the water to go down the Napo River but he knew even without the news report that it might be many weeks or months before the Napo was navigable because of submerged logs which would would break propellors,transmissions, and especially bash in the bows of wood boats like his.
Still seated, he clutched the stones tighly and began to rock forward and backward in anguish.Feeling the full weight of his responsibility made him cry out.What would Gustavo do ?
He sat at his camp site rolling around in his hand three beautiful Cabochon emeralds that Gustavo had stolen when no one was looking and had given Fernando strict orders not to show them to anybody. Gustavo took the emeralds, petty thievery considering the bounty at stake,to avenge his father's name, to somehow recuperate the pound of flesh Benecio had cut from his easy going padre over the years with his razor sharp machete of abuse. His intention had been to give the stones as a gift to his father after they were finished mining and he knew he could trust Fernando more than himself not to flash them to a pretty woman or wager them in a card game.
From these stones Fernando suddenly knew he had to somehow create a plan that would trump what he had heard at Gringo Chili,but what that plan could be was beyond the comprehension of his already hard-pressed mind. He could not alone, trail behind Benecio and what sounded like a small army and yet, he could not wait too long in fear that Benecio would arrive first.Could he go back to Lago Agrio and just kill Benecio or had Benecio laid a trap for him already. Perhaps come to Francisco de Orellana. The only cheering news he had heard was on HCJV radio that authorities were thinking about blowing up the massive logjams on the Quijos and Coca rivers which would free the water to go down the Napo River but he knew even without the news report that it might be many weeks or months before the Napo was navigable because of submerged logs which would would break propellors,transmissions, and especially bash in the bows of wood boats like his.
Still seated, he clutched the stones tighly and began to rock forward and backward in anguish.Feeling the full weight of his responsibility made him cry out.What would Gustavo do ?
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
#22 Paco
Business at Gringo Chili had never been better with so many hungry gringos in town working on the Trans Ecuadorian pipeline that had crumpled and broken, like so many aluminum beer cans strung end to end, from the force of the earthquake and the landslide that went with it.Benecio was amassing a war chest, like the Conquistadors of old to fund his voyage, by the back route to his El Dorado.
And while he had absconded with a small fortune in emeralds already, he did not want to make known their presence yet, drawing every kind of mongrel dog this border town was heir to, sniffing his butt.Except for one cabochon which he had wrapped in newspaper and then wrapped in a Gringo Chili T-Shirt and had sent through a known sympathizer of the Colombian rebel forces to Colonel Paco Moreno.
Days passed.
Then one afternoon around three as Benecio was reading the newspaper he saw a man walking through the central plaza in full camouflage regalia with a strapped pistol at his side.Horns honked and Paco Moreno waved and laughed.
It was strictly forbidden in Ecuador for anyone not in the Ecuadorian armed forces to wear a uniform of any kind but this man seemed not to care.
Benecio knew he was headed his way and looked up and down the wide avenue making sure no one would see him come in to Gringo Chili. It was hopeless. Siesta time had ended and people and cars seemed to all be heading in his direction.
Benecio grunted a curse.
Paco walked in.
"Compadre!" Benecio,shouted.
"Compadre!" replied Paco, taking off his camouflage uniform hat to reveal a completely bald head. The two men hugged gingerly for Benecio still wore his sling and grimaced, unseen by Paco, at the embrace.
Paco sat at the bar and Bencio pulled out a Budweiser for him.
"Don't give me that Gringo Piss !'
"I have just the thing for you, Paco, compadre."
He reached up high on his bar and pulled out a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Lable which he sold to the gringos at $15 a shot. It cost him over $100 a bottle and while there wasn't an overwhelming demand for it, he'd sell a bottle's worth every ten days and what was more important Paco knew what he was getting.
"Rocas? Agua?" he asked him.
Benecio brought down two drinking water glasses .Filled them with ice and then filled them with Johnny Walker Blue Label. He left the bottle near the two glasses. They drank a toast. And another.
"So how goes the thing,"Benecio asked him
"In the words of Ernesto Che Guevara,Benecio, You don't wait for the apple to be ripe to shake it from the tree. We will win...But we are floating in money from marching powder, half our time is spent with the dealings of coca. Sure it gives us money to fight...But it is changing the character of our people...our revolution.
Benecio filled up Pacos glass and smiled like a Cheshire cat as the alcohol seemed to make his compadre sentimental.
"So how many men do you have under your command Paco?'
"Benecio, you know that is a military secret."
"Sorry, I was just trying to make conversation Paco you seem so...tired."
"I don't care if they shoot me as long as there is someone to pick up my gun."
"Drink some more Paco."
"When are you going to give me the good stuff ?"
"Ay, compadre!"
"So where is the girl?"
"Dolores ? She is where the emeralds are."
"She is in Colombia?"
"Maybe."
"All emeralds come from Colombia."
"Not true. There are Emeralds from Africa, Brazil, even from the United States."
"You have sent her to the Yanquis?" With their patrullas who are helping the government pigs wipe out our coca ? He fell silent.Took a long drink. Benecio freshened his ice."You know all are kids are sniffing this white powder now. All our soldiers... I am sick of it. A whole generation will be lost not to bad government but to this poison!"He filled his glass.Paco took a long pull. "How much do you think it is worth ?"
Benecio smiled. He had him. "I know how much it is worth."
"How much?"
"About two thousand dollars.And you can keep it. That is the price I am willing to pay to have you come away from your very important business to talk to me about some other very important business.
"And what can you tell me about this important business of yours."
"Better than tell you, I can show you,said Benecio with great confidance now and he reached into the cooler, behind the bottles and pulled out a fist sized leather pouch. He placed on the bar between, still fastened tight by its cord looked up and down the street both for witnesses and for dramatic effect. Satisfied that no one was lurking, he opened the pouch and made the one hundred or so emeralds splash a little on the bar and throw off what light there was. They were all bigger than the one he had given Paco and although still rough their clarity and color would impress even the most casual and amateur viewer of gems.
Benecio spoke in evenly measured words spelling out as much of his proposition as he dared to at this point:"Besides yourself , Paco,do you have 4 strong men of confidence Paco, like the Conquistadors, who could call each other compadre and who would be willing to do a little freelance work- two weeks- to earn enough money for the rest of their lives ? I assure you, there is very little risk in this proposition only faith and trust and the belief that some great things are still left to be done in this world."
The men continued to drink and the efffects of the alcohol were beginning to set in.
"take a break from your revolution or if you feel you must give the profits which will be great to your great Jefe Morales as a token of your faith in his work."
At this moment Benecio noticed that Fernando, the quiet one, had somehow entered the bar without his notice and was listening in a dark corner to his conversation.He had no idea how long he had been there.
He sloppily tried to cover up the emeralds-
Paco raised his head from the bartop-
Benecio with dificulty pulled a sawed off shotgun with his untrained left hand from behind the bar-
Fernando Ran,
Benecio fired and shattered the glass of his restaurant door-
Fernando Kept running-
Paco turned his head in the opposite direction to the action.
"Kill him," cried Benecio.
"Kill who?"Asked Paco
Didn't you see it, "That fulano tried to kill me!"
"I was resting!' yelled Paco, "He tried to kill me ?"
"Yes ,"said Benecio, 'He was a government assasin, and I fired back at him and I saved your life."He looked nervously in the direction in which Fernando had fled.
"You saved my Life, compadre? Then I am in your debt."
"Then you will do what we discussed and not forget," said Benecio firmly.
"We will get the esmeraldas,"said Paco, Just tell me when."
"Right now I will drive you in my truck- it is parked by the back door -to your people and I will contact you again when I am ready by the same method. Do you have people in Dureno right now?"
"That's a military secret."
"Well where do you want me to drop you ?"
"Near Dureno."
"Okay Compadre"
"Compadre"
"March," said Benecio.
And with those words the Rebel Colonel seemed to instantly sober up and made his way through the back door to the truck as Alexandra carefully peaked around a corner of the bar window summoning up the courage to come down from their upstairs apartment and look in. She heard Benecios truck ignite and saw it speed through the dust towards the road. She recognized Paco Moreno and presumed he had shot out the window, the son of a whore !
Inside the bar she called Antonio the glass man who said he had too much work to do already. She doubled his asking price and he said he would come right over.
On the counter she found a beautiful emerald, and knowing how meticulous and selfish her husband was with things of monetary value she vowed to never admit having seen it when he asked and to have it cut and made into a fine piece of jewelry for Dolores who she was sure she would see again one day soon. The Gringo Nate was such a nice man. He would never run off with Dolores. He would bring her home and married or not she would have this beautiful jewel waiting for her. The stone was too big for a ring but it would make a very beautiful pendant .
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And while he had absconded with a small fortune in emeralds already, he did not want to make known their presence yet, drawing every kind of mongrel dog this border town was heir to, sniffing his butt.Except for one cabochon which he had wrapped in newspaper and then wrapped in a Gringo Chili T-Shirt and had sent through a known sympathizer of the Colombian rebel forces to Colonel Paco Moreno.
Days passed.
Then one afternoon around three as Benecio was reading the newspaper he saw a man walking through the central plaza in full camouflage regalia with a strapped pistol at his side.Horns honked and Paco Moreno waved and laughed.
It was strictly forbidden in Ecuador for anyone not in the Ecuadorian armed forces to wear a uniform of any kind but this man seemed not to care.
Benecio knew he was headed his way and looked up and down the wide avenue making sure no one would see him come in to Gringo Chili. It was hopeless. Siesta time had ended and people and cars seemed to all be heading in his direction.
Benecio grunted a curse.
Paco walked in.
"Compadre!" Benecio,shouted.
"Compadre!" replied Paco, taking off his camouflage uniform hat to reveal a completely bald head. The two men hugged gingerly for Benecio still wore his sling and grimaced, unseen by Paco, at the embrace.
Paco sat at the bar and Bencio pulled out a Budweiser for him.
"Don't give me that Gringo Piss !'
"I have just the thing for you, Paco, compadre."
He reached up high on his bar and pulled out a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue Lable which he sold to the gringos at $15 a shot. It cost him over $100 a bottle and while there wasn't an overwhelming demand for it, he'd sell a bottle's worth every ten days and what was more important Paco knew what he was getting.
"Rocas? Agua?" he asked him.
Benecio brought down two drinking water glasses .Filled them with ice and then filled them with Johnny Walker Blue Label. He left the bottle near the two glasses. They drank a toast. And another.
"So how goes the thing,"Benecio asked him
"In the words of Ernesto Che Guevara,Benecio, You don't wait for the apple to be ripe to shake it from the tree. We will win...But we are floating in money from marching powder, half our time is spent with the dealings of coca. Sure it gives us money to fight...But it is changing the character of our people...our revolution.
Benecio filled up Pacos glass and smiled like a Cheshire cat as the alcohol seemed to make his compadre sentimental.
"So how many men do you have under your command Paco?'
"Benecio, you know that is a military secret."
"Sorry, I was just trying to make conversation Paco you seem so...tired."
"I don't care if they shoot me as long as there is someone to pick up my gun."
"Drink some more Paco."
"When are you going to give me the good stuff ?"
"Ay, compadre!"
"So where is the girl?"
"Dolores ? She is where the emeralds are."
"She is in Colombia?"
"Maybe."
"All emeralds come from Colombia."
"Not true. There are Emeralds from Africa, Brazil, even from the United States."
"You have sent her to the Yanquis?" With their patrullas who are helping the government pigs wipe out our coca ? He fell silent.Took a long drink. Benecio freshened his ice."You know all are kids are sniffing this white powder now. All our soldiers... I am sick of it. A whole generation will be lost not to bad government but to this poison!"He filled his glass.Paco took a long pull. "How much do you think it is worth ?"
Benecio smiled. He had him. "I know how much it is worth."
"How much?"
"About two thousand dollars.And you can keep it. That is the price I am willing to pay to have you come away from your very important business to talk to me about some other very important business.
"And what can you tell me about this important business of yours."
"Better than tell you, I can show you,said Benecio with great confidance now and he reached into the cooler, behind the bottles and pulled out a fist sized leather pouch. He placed on the bar between, still fastened tight by its cord looked up and down the street both for witnesses and for dramatic effect. Satisfied that no one was lurking, he opened the pouch and made the one hundred or so emeralds splash a little on the bar and throw off what light there was. They were all bigger than the one he had given Paco and although still rough their clarity and color would impress even the most casual and amateur viewer of gems.
Benecio spoke in evenly measured words spelling out as much of his proposition as he dared to at this point:"Besides yourself , Paco,do you have 4 strong men of confidence Paco, like the Conquistadors, who could call each other compadre and who would be willing to do a little freelance work- two weeks- to earn enough money for the rest of their lives ? I assure you, there is very little risk in this proposition only faith and trust and the belief that some great things are still left to be done in this world."
The men continued to drink and the efffects of the alcohol were beginning to set in.
"take a break from your revolution or if you feel you must give the profits which will be great to your great Jefe Morales as a token of your faith in his work."
At this moment Benecio noticed that Fernando, the quiet one, had somehow entered the bar without his notice and was listening in a dark corner to his conversation.He had no idea how long he had been there.
He sloppily tried to cover up the emeralds-
Paco raised his head from the bartop-
Benecio with dificulty pulled a sawed off shotgun with his untrained left hand from behind the bar-
Fernando Ran,
Benecio fired and shattered the glass of his restaurant door-
Fernando Kept running-
Paco turned his head in the opposite direction to the action.
"Kill him," cried Benecio.
"Kill who?"Asked Paco
Didn't you see it, "That fulano tried to kill me!"
"I was resting!' yelled Paco, "He tried to kill me ?"
"Yes ,"said Benecio, 'He was a government assasin, and I fired back at him and I saved your life."He looked nervously in the direction in which Fernando had fled.
"You saved my Life, compadre? Then I am in your debt."
"Then you will do what we discussed and not forget," said Benecio firmly.
"We will get the esmeraldas,"said Paco, Just tell me when."
"Right now I will drive you in my truck- it is parked by the back door -to your people and I will contact you again when I am ready by the same method. Do you have people in Dureno right now?"
"That's a military secret."
"Well where do you want me to drop you ?"
"Near Dureno."
"Okay Compadre"
"Compadre"
"March," said Benecio.
And with those words the Rebel Colonel seemed to instantly sober up and made his way through the back door to the truck as Alexandra carefully peaked around a corner of the bar window summoning up the courage to come down from their upstairs apartment and look in. She heard Benecios truck ignite and saw it speed through the dust towards the road. She recognized Paco Moreno and presumed he had shot out the window, the son of a whore !
Inside the bar she called Antonio the glass man who said he had too much work to do already. She doubled his asking price and he said he would come right over.
On the counter she found a beautiful emerald, and knowing how meticulous and selfish her husband was with things of monetary value she vowed to never admit having seen it when he asked and to have it cut and made into a fine piece of jewelry for Dolores who she was sure she would see again one day soon. The Gringo Nate was such a nice man. He would never run off with Dolores. He would bring her home and married or not she would have this beautiful jewel waiting for her. The stone was too big for a ring but it would make a very beautiful pendant .
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Friday, January 9, 2009
# 20 Gustavo
The cabin swayed and trees cracked throughout the night. Nina and Dory slept together in one bed and Nate and Dolores in Nate's room also slept embraced. Dolores' choke hold on his throat awakened him from his drunken stupor just before dawn. The after shocks continued but at greater intervals and with less intensity.
They ate breakfast quickly, Dolores packed a Lunch and Nate had the instinct to take a photograph of the bedraggled foursome including himself with the camera on a timer. Years later the picture was one of the few records of this time and it showed a motley, veteran team whose full purpose was not yet realized or clear.
They set off to see about pulling the last canoe, the last fluvial transportation of any kind, out of the canal which led to the hyacinth lake.
Nate cut thick sections of bamboo with his machete, sliding them as the canoe progressed across the land again and again underneath it to produce a rolling effect.With Nate and Dory pulling from the rope used to moor the canoe and Nina and Dolores pushing, they established a fairly steady rhythm with the girls in the rear retrieving the passed bamboo "wheels" and placing them again in the forward path of the canoe.
They launched it into the lake. Nate paddled in the rear and Dolores paddled in front. The scene on the lake was idyllic. No unnatural signs of damage could be seen in the forest all around them and the birds, monkeys, even a sloth ever so slowly, seemed to be acting as if nothing unusual had happened.
They grounded the canoe , not more than 5 minutes down the stream,next to Gustavo's canoe.
"It's much shorter on foot," said Nate, and they took a path which must have been Gustavo's. The path ran right along the stream in places and they came up behind traditional hunters blinds that Gustavo had woven here and there along the path at well chosen points , where the motorized canoe would be making a particularly serpentine turn- to make an assault on Benecio.
They walked on and Nate continually checked the stream which had a downriver facing entrance from the Napo River and therefore a less likely chance of damage unless the Napo had flooded tremendously (Garzacocha, the lake was spring fed and rainfall caused most of its rising and falling but once or twice a year waters from the Napo, especially when it overflowed its banks entered the lake for a day or two and then would drain.) which all indications so far were that it had not.
They found him, a body face down in the damp Amazonian soil, a large tree limb resting on his back.
Nina screamed.
Which produced a loud grown from Gustavo.
Together they removed the the heavy tree branch and in three languages simultaneously asked him if he thought it was all right to turn him over. He hesitated in an effort to assimilate the information. Then turned himself over.
"Chupcababra." said Gustavo after drinking some water from the canteen Nate found in his disheveled campsite.
"Yeah," said Nate "Chupacabra, a million of them. Hell hath no fury like the chupacabra."
There was dried blood on Gustavos scalp and forehead and Nate surmised that he might have a slight concussion. He explained to him about the earthquake and that Benicio was no longer a threat and without overwhelming the man gave him the huge emerald to hold which made Gustavo's eyes bulge more than any chupacabra could, Nate was sure of that.Overwhelmed, he had the need to lie down flat again.
They left him with Nina and headed towards the Napo River another 20 minutes on foot. What they saw when Nate's machete quickly laid clear an opening in the brush was incomprehensible. Everything was coated with glopping crude oil from bank to bank and the river itself was so jammed with logs that one could walk across it if it were not so slippery with the black goo. The river flowed no more than the stream of their emerald mine.
Nate, Dory and Dolores sat down on the bank to ponder this natural holocaust smothered with petroleum as if to seal in and obscure all record of past life and grief, watching small crabs, the only living thing that they could discern, go in and out of little holes in the sides of the riverbanks as if it were the last shopping day before Christmas.Soon a noise that to Nate sounded like a distant crash of bowling pins, came again much closer and then finally was upon them with water in waves equal to great ocean waves which held in them the crashing of logs against logs and other debris. Human debris. Cows. Horses. Buildings.
Ultimately it slowed like an outgoing tide and left the trickling stream of water and oil amid the logs once more. Their were several Dorado bagre the giant catfish of the Napo river sobbing with difficulty through their gills in a shallow pool of water just beneath them. Nate jumped down quickly and threw the fish, each weighing fifty pounds or more up on the bank, and taking no more than a quick glance up river hurried back up the 8 feet or so he needed to clamber to reach safety again.
"If you've never had a ceviche of bagre, he told Dory, its to die for..."
"I was expecting some analysis..."
"What the fuck do I know. I don't think anybody knows. But I can guess that there is half a forest blocking the flow of the waters that normally run into this one and every now and then there is a break in the logjam and what we just saw happens. I figure when there is more water than trees, that's when this river will start flowing again and that's when we'll start to think about getting out of here."
"And when will that be?"
"Hopefully before we run out of beer. But then again, I bet Gustavo knows how to build a still."
He cut a tree limb with his machete and strung the three bagre through it.They barely flopped in protest. He lead the way with one end of the limb and Dory and Dolores held the rear with great effort.
They arrived back to find Nina kneeling close to Gustavo who now sat with his feet outstretched and she was combing his hair. It was a a fairly good likeness of Gustavo's own "doo" and he felt the waves she had created with his comb and smiled his approval.
They kissed and she helped him to his feet.They kissed again.
Dory could not bare to watch this show of affection and turned her attention to a woodpecker, its red crest exaggerating each head thrust ,work on an ailing palm tree in the distance.They were still kissing when she turned back and recognized the tenderness in Gustavo and the genuine happiness in her friend she knew so well.She was happy for her friend, she decided then and there, come what may.
"Entonces," said Gustavo, holding perhaps one of the most valuable emeralds in the world,but the idea of it just beginning to register, " somos ricos."
"We are not just rich," yelled Nate, and the forest shook. Another aftershock. He lowered his voice: "We are endowed."
Nate and Gustavo each took an end of the pole with the bagre and Nate described the river to Gustavo who said he would take a look the next day. Not even his lifetime in the rainforest, Nate knew, would prepare him for what he would see.But one thing was for sure if the road hadn't swamped Benecio, this river of of logs and tar would keep him out for a long time to come .
They began to paddle back across the lake with Nate and Dolores doing the work and at the waters edge nearly everywhere they looked was the green heron, the Garza, that Garzacococha, the lake, was named after and the moment was not lost on Gustavo who fondled their giant emerald. "We should call it the Garza Emerald,"he said.
"Couldn't think of a better name,"replied Nate, transfixed on the the multide of herons.
"The Garza Emerald," said Nina softly,"yes".
"I like it," said Dory.
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
They ate breakfast quickly, Dolores packed a Lunch and Nate had the instinct to take a photograph of the bedraggled foursome including himself with the camera on a timer. Years later the picture was one of the few records of this time and it showed a motley, veteran team whose full purpose was not yet realized or clear.
They set off to see about pulling the last canoe, the last fluvial transportation of any kind, out of the canal which led to the hyacinth lake.
Nate cut thick sections of bamboo with his machete, sliding them as the canoe progressed across the land again and again underneath it to produce a rolling effect.With Nate and Dory pulling from the rope used to moor the canoe and Nina and Dolores pushing, they established a fairly steady rhythm with the girls in the rear retrieving the passed bamboo "wheels" and placing them again in the forward path of the canoe.
They launched it into the lake. Nate paddled in the rear and Dolores paddled in front. The scene on the lake was idyllic. No unnatural signs of damage could be seen in the forest all around them and the birds, monkeys, even a sloth ever so slowly, seemed to be acting as if nothing unusual had happened.
They grounded the canoe , not more than 5 minutes down the stream,next to Gustavo's canoe.
"It's much shorter on foot," said Nate, and they took a path which must have been Gustavo's. The path ran right along the stream in places and they came up behind traditional hunters blinds that Gustavo had woven here and there along the path at well chosen points , where the motorized canoe would be making a particularly serpentine turn- to make an assault on Benecio.
They walked on and Nate continually checked the stream which had a downriver facing entrance from the Napo River and therefore a less likely chance of damage unless the Napo had flooded tremendously (Garzacocha, the lake was spring fed and rainfall caused most of its rising and falling but once or twice a year waters from the Napo, especially when it overflowed its banks entered the lake for a day or two and then would drain.) which all indications so far were that it had not.
They found him, a body face down in the damp Amazonian soil, a large tree limb resting on his back.
Nina screamed.
Which produced a loud grown from Gustavo.
Together they removed the the heavy tree branch and in three languages simultaneously asked him if he thought it was all right to turn him over. He hesitated in an effort to assimilate the information. Then turned himself over.
"Chupcababra." said Gustavo after drinking some water from the canteen Nate found in his disheveled campsite.
"Yeah," said Nate "Chupacabra, a million of them. Hell hath no fury like the chupacabra."
There was dried blood on Gustavos scalp and forehead and Nate surmised that he might have a slight concussion. He explained to him about the earthquake and that Benicio was no longer a threat and without overwhelming the man gave him the huge emerald to hold which made Gustavo's eyes bulge more than any chupacabra could, Nate was sure of that.Overwhelmed, he had the need to lie down flat again.
They left him with Nina and headed towards the Napo River another 20 minutes on foot. What they saw when Nate's machete quickly laid clear an opening in the brush was incomprehensible. Everything was coated with glopping crude oil from bank to bank and the river itself was so jammed with logs that one could walk across it if it were not so slippery with the black goo. The river flowed no more than the stream of their emerald mine.
Nate, Dory and Dolores sat down on the bank to ponder this natural holocaust smothered with petroleum as if to seal in and obscure all record of past life and grief, watching small crabs, the only living thing that they could discern, go in and out of little holes in the sides of the riverbanks as if it were the last shopping day before Christmas.Soon a noise that to Nate sounded like a distant crash of bowling pins, came again much closer and then finally was upon them with water in waves equal to great ocean waves which held in them the crashing of logs against logs and other debris. Human debris. Cows. Horses. Buildings.
Ultimately it slowed like an outgoing tide and left the trickling stream of water and oil amid the logs once more. Their were several Dorado bagre the giant catfish of the Napo river sobbing with difficulty through their gills in a shallow pool of water just beneath them. Nate jumped down quickly and threw the fish, each weighing fifty pounds or more up on the bank, and taking no more than a quick glance up river hurried back up the 8 feet or so he needed to clamber to reach safety again.
"If you've never had a ceviche of bagre, he told Dory, its to die for..."
"I was expecting some analysis..."
"What the fuck do I know. I don't think anybody knows. But I can guess that there is half a forest blocking the flow of the waters that normally run into this one and every now and then there is a break in the logjam and what we just saw happens. I figure when there is more water than trees, that's when this river will start flowing again and that's when we'll start to think about getting out of here."
"And when will that be?"
"Hopefully before we run out of beer. But then again, I bet Gustavo knows how to build a still."
He cut a tree limb with his machete and strung the three bagre through it.They barely flopped in protest. He lead the way with one end of the limb and Dory and Dolores held the rear with great effort.
They arrived back to find Nina kneeling close to Gustavo who now sat with his feet outstretched and she was combing his hair. It was a a fairly good likeness of Gustavo's own "doo" and he felt the waves she had created with his comb and smiled his approval.
They kissed and she helped him to his feet.They kissed again.
Dory could not bare to watch this show of affection and turned her attention to a woodpecker, its red crest exaggerating each head thrust ,work on an ailing palm tree in the distance.They were still kissing when she turned back and recognized the tenderness in Gustavo and the genuine happiness in her friend she knew so well.She was happy for her friend, she decided then and there, come what may.
"Entonces," said Gustavo, holding perhaps one of the most valuable emeralds in the world,but the idea of it just beginning to register, " somos ricos."
"We are not just rich," yelled Nate, and the forest shook. Another aftershock. He lowered his voice: "We are endowed."
Nate and Gustavo each took an end of the pole with the bagre and Nate described the river to Gustavo who said he would take a look the next day. Not even his lifetime in the rainforest, Nate knew, would prepare him for what he would see.But one thing was for sure if the road hadn't swamped Benecio, this river of of logs and tar would keep him out for a long time to come .
They began to paddle back across the lake with Nate and Dolores doing the work and at the waters edge nearly everywhere they looked was the green heron, the Garza, that Garzacococha, the lake, was named after and the moment was not lost on Gustavo who fondled their giant emerald. "We should call it the Garza Emerald,"he said.
"Couldn't think of a better name,"replied Nate, transfixed on the the multide of herons.
"The Garza Emerald," said Nina softly,"yes".
"I like it," said Dory.
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Thursday, January 8, 2009
#19 After Shocks
At something less than half a pound, Nate was not sure if it was bigger than the Patricia Emerald or the Gachala, both from Colombia, but it was in that league.
He had called the girls up to the mine shaft to hold more flashlights on the spot. He became the mining equivalent of an oral surgeon careful to make his final yank on his patient's unnecessary wisdom tooth both precise and bloodless; a professional extraction that would take all of the green mineral, partially embedded in ore, out in one piece.At first he used several different sizes of chisels at a great distance from the prize to break it away from the surrounding ore. Then made a parallel hole to determine the depth of the beryl with a water infused drill. He spent a long time looking into that hole and picking at pieces of stone that the drill left loose but did not flush out.
He drilled another hole and another until holes radiated around the beryl locked since eternity with the ore that had molded its fate to perhaps one of the most valuable gems ever discovered.
Finally, he inserted what looked like a common crowbar behind the mass and popped it out catching it at the edge of the hole and dropping the crowbar, taking it gingerly with both hands.
They sat by the bank of the stream, the four of them, creating adorations for the stone as washing it brought forth its true magnitude and left no one jaded.
"This is the baby Jesus of gems,"he told them softly, and made a cradle for it in his hands.
He chronicled the Gachala and the Princess for them and about how much larger emeralds- one weighing several tons had been found but not of gem quality.Then he noticed the trapiche, the sugar cane spokes beginning to fire their way to the surface and he pointed them out to Dolores and he only laughed.
Of course, the girls understood and Dory surprised herself saying:"and who gets the money for this one?"
"This one is priceless."
"Everything has a price."
"Yes ,"he said, with tired ecstasy, "everything has a price. Believe me when I tell you that there is more money here than any of us could spend in our lifetimes."
"And how do you know how much money I can spend in my lifetime?"
"You can start a foundation and have money for many worthwhile causes for the rest of your lives. In fact there is so much here... I don't have any details but after I make sure Dolores is comfortable,and after we all buy everything we could ever dream of then we could set up my a foundation if we want too. And while we'll all live like a fat cats- won't it be infinitely more interesting to give this money away than buying more things than we need."
"And you just thought this up?"
"It's the heat of the moment," he said tearing up and beginning to cry openly,"Maybe it will pass. Sure I'll have the best of everything but if we let this stuff out so that we don't flood the world market we may have... we may have...
a billion dollars here. Now what am I going to do with a billion dollars ? Or more for christ sake? " He was crying openly now and Dolores was signing calmly and he signed back to her and she began to rub his back so overtaken was he with this flood of emotions that he brought the four of them down with him and they all began to cry at the outlandish fate they had been presented with. Fate and responsibility and the turn their lives must now take when a cracking sound pervaded the jungle and threw them all onto their backs.
Trees snapped everywhere. Another c-rack! And great giants of trees wobbled in every direction.
"I think," shouted Nate, I think it is an earthquake! Head for the cabin for the clearing. The land continued to roll with each successive aftershock and they made whoozy, drunken strides with equilibrium lost as if on a wild carnival ride finally arriving at the center of the garden and the CAMPARI table . None of the plants were damaged and as the after shocks continued trees swayed and branches fell. The forest was the last place anyone wanted to be.
"I'm going to try to get the radio," said Nate and staggered like a drunk man against the aftershocks that seemed to be occurring at one or two minute intervals.
He returned with the radio on to HCJV, they are talking about Apartment buildings falling down in the capital and telling people to go to Parque Carolina which held a million people when the Pope visited. The announcer is hysterical. Now he is saying that the Epicenter was Reventador, that their were two earthquakes of of 6.9 and one of 6.1 and that it caused the Volcano to blow. The Napo region - us - is not reporting and it is feared that all is lost."
He signed all this to Dolores who calmed down rather than panicked.
"What about Gustavo ?" asked Nina.
"These announcers are hysterical. I have plenty of batteries but I'm going to turn this thing off for awhile to conserve our sanity. How could they be getting these reports so fast. Maybe by divine intervention?"
What about Gustavo," she repeated.
"We'll have to wait and see.I believe that he made it. He's out there scared shitless somewhere and if he doesn't show up by sundown. I...We will go look for him. Tomorrow morning. We''ll do a portage with the canal canoe. No problem.
Let's move down to the dock.
"Here's what you got to think about now," he said after everyone sat. "There will be shortages of food and water everywhere else in Ecuador and thanks to our Black Dirt that will never be an issue for us. The cabin is safe because it is built on pillars that only shifted about six inched and broke a couple of plates. So we will have a roof over our heads for as long as we need it. I'm pretty sure I stored in enough beer and rum.Sorry much for the trivial but I like a few creature comforts. We have fish in our lake and as near as I can tell because of the circuitous and lengthy route our yacu takes to get up here whatever is going on in the outside world will not affect us- at least not for a long time.(I'm guessing here.) But the biggest deal of all, if it's true what the guy said that the Salado- Lago agrio section of the Trans-Ecuadorian highway, about 75 miles was totally wiped out in a mud slide from Reventador which means that Benecio will be stuck in his Gringo Chili - his restaurant serving American road workers- for the next three months or so. I don't know that for sure but that's exactly where he lives.
Now I'm thinking that this information could be accurate because there are oil pumping stations all along that road and right now my guess is that they are spewing amazon crude like fire hoses befouling land , man and beast with black ooze, but they have sophisticated communications and would be the only ones who would have instant information like that. So Ding Dong The witch is Dead ! The Wicked Witch is Dead ! I'll bet my fortune we don't have to worry about Benecio anymore.We really don't have to worry about anything anymore. Look, I've even socked in a pretty elaborate first aide kit should we need it.
Dory muttered something in Dutch.
"What was that?" he asked
"If you know how to deliver babies," said Nina softly.
"I'm not sure what to make of that remark."
"Make nothing," said Nina, "Make nothing."
Ok, so I, m throwing an earthquake party, C'mon Dory make lemonade out of your lemons. Nothing to be done.So we can sit out until sunset and I'll get the folding chairs and the radio and a bottle of rum and groove to the aftershocks and wait for Gustavo.
Nate was smiling broadly when he returned to the dock carrying folding chairs and glasses and a bottle of Jose Cuervo deciding it to be a better choice than the rum for such an ocassion and some limes in his pants pockets, a shaker of salt in his shirt pocket, a knife between his teeth and of course the radio which he had retrieved from the garden table. He sat out each chair playing the fool as a maitre d' and with a slight stumble kicked the radio into the water along with the third chair. He jumped in after it and after several dives brought it up tannic water draining from every orifice in the device.
Disgusted with himself, he gave the radio a good shake and still more water came out. Then he tried to turn it on. A blurt of calming music came out-
Then all was quiet.
"Always Strauss," said Dory,"In times of trouble they feed Strauss to the masses to calm them down."
"Fucking hell,"said Nate.
"Fucking hell is right , "said Dory, "Now we are just as well in the silent world of Dolores. And just as well in prison...And we are some of the richest people on earth.We could just as well only know sign language for what we will hear of the world...maybe the radio will dry out. And what would we do with the information anyway ?Ah,gotfadamma! Cmon Nate, put your chair next to mine."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
He had called the girls up to the mine shaft to hold more flashlights on the spot. He became the mining equivalent of an oral surgeon careful to make his final yank on his patient's unnecessary wisdom tooth both precise and bloodless; a professional extraction that would take all of the green mineral, partially embedded in ore, out in one piece.At first he used several different sizes of chisels at a great distance from the prize to break it away from the surrounding ore. Then made a parallel hole to determine the depth of the beryl with a water infused drill. He spent a long time looking into that hole and picking at pieces of stone that the drill left loose but did not flush out.
He drilled another hole and another until holes radiated around the beryl locked since eternity with the ore that had molded its fate to perhaps one of the most valuable gems ever discovered.
Finally, he inserted what looked like a common crowbar behind the mass and popped it out catching it at the edge of the hole and dropping the crowbar, taking it gingerly with both hands.
They sat by the bank of the stream, the four of them, creating adorations for the stone as washing it brought forth its true magnitude and left no one jaded.
"This is the baby Jesus of gems,"he told them softly, and made a cradle for it in his hands.
He chronicled the Gachala and the Princess for them and about how much larger emeralds- one weighing several tons had been found but not of gem quality.Then he noticed the trapiche, the sugar cane spokes beginning to fire their way to the surface and he pointed them out to Dolores and he only laughed.
Of course, the girls understood and Dory surprised herself saying:"and who gets the money for this one?"
"This one is priceless."
"Everything has a price."
"Yes ,"he said, with tired ecstasy, "everything has a price. Believe me when I tell you that there is more money here than any of us could spend in our lifetimes."
"And how do you know how much money I can spend in my lifetime?"
"You can start a foundation and have money for many worthwhile causes for the rest of your lives. In fact there is so much here... I don't have any details but after I make sure Dolores is comfortable,and after we all buy everything we could ever dream of then we could set up my a foundation if we want too. And while we'll all live like a fat cats- won't it be infinitely more interesting to give this money away than buying more things than we need."
"And you just thought this up?"
"It's the heat of the moment," he said tearing up and beginning to cry openly,"Maybe it will pass. Sure I'll have the best of everything but if we let this stuff out so that we don't flood the world market we may have... we may have...
a billion dollars here. Now what am I going to do with a billion dollars ? Or more for christ sake? " He was crying openly now and Dolores was signing calmly and he signed back to her and she began to rub his back so overtaken was he with this flood of emotions that he brought the four of them down with him and they all began to cry at the outlandish fate they had been presented with. Fate and responsibility and the turn their lives must now take when a cracking sound pervaded the jungle and threw them all onto their backs.
Trees snapped everywhere. Another c-rack! And great giants of trees wobbled in every direction.
"I think," shouted Nate, I think it is an earthquake! Head for the cabin for the clearing. The land continued to roll with each successive aftershock and they made whoozy, drunken strides with equilibrium lost as if on a wild carnival ride finally arriving at the center of the garden and the CAMPARI table . None of the plants were damaged and as the after shocks continued trees swayed and branches fell. The forest was the last place anyone wanted to be.
"I'm going to try to get the radio," said Nate and staggered like a drunk man against the aftershocks that seemed to be occurring at one or two minute intervals.
He returned with the radio on to HCJV, they are talking about Apartment buildings falling down in the capital and telling people to go to Parque Carolina which held a million people when the Pope visited. The announcer is hysterical. Now he is saying that the Epicenter was Reventador, that their were two earthquakes of of 6.9 and one of 6.1 and that it caused the Volcano to blow. The Napo region - us - is not reporting and it is feared that all is lost."
He signed all this to Dolores who calmed down rather than panicked.
"What about Gustavo ?" asked Nina.
"These announcers are hysterical. I have plenty of batteries but I'm going to turn this thing off for awhile to conserve our sanity. How could they be getting these reports so fast. Maybe by divine intervention?"
What about Gustavo," she repeated.
"We'll have to wait and see.I believe that he made it. He's out there scared shitless somewhere and if he doesn't show up by sundown. I...We will go look for him. Tomorrow morning. We''ll do a portage with the canal canoe. No problem.
Let's move down to the dock.
"Here's what you got to think about now," he said after everyone sat. "There will be shortages of food and water everywhere else in Ecuador and thanks to our Black Dirt that will never be an issue for us. The cabin is safe because it is built on pillars that only shifted about six inched and broke a couple of plates. So we will have a roof over our heads for as long as we need it. I'm pretty sure I stored in enough beer and rum.Sorry much for the trivial but I like a few creature comforts. We have fish in our lake and as near as I can tell because of the circuitous and lengthy route our yacu takes to get up here whatever is going on in the outside world will not affect us- at least not for a long time.(I'm guessing here.) But the biggest deal of all, if it's true what the guy said that the Salado- Lago agrio section of the Trans-Ecuadorian highway, about 75 miles was totally wiped out in a mud slide from Reventador which means that Benecio will be stuck in his Gringo Chili - his restaurant serving American road workers- for the next three months or so. I don't know that for sure but that's exactly where he lives.
Now I'm thinking that this information could be accurate because there are oil pumping stations all along that road and right now my guess is that they are spewing amazon crude like fire hoses befouling land , man and beast with black ooze, but they have sophisticated communications and would be the only ones who would have instant information like that. So Ding Dong The witch is Dead ! The Wicked Witch is Dead ! I'll bet my fortune we don't have to worry about Benecio anymore.We really don't have to worry about anything anymore. Look, I've even socked in a pretty elaborate first aide kit should we need it.
Dory muttered something in Dutch.
"What was that?" he asked
"If you know how to deliver babies," said Nina softly.
"I'm not sure what to make of that remark."
"Make nothing," said Nina, "Make nothing."
Ok, so I, m throwing an earthquake party, C'mon Dory make lemonade out of your lemons. Nothing to be done.So we can sit out until sunset and I'll get the folding chairs and the radio and a bottle of rum and groove to the aftershocks and wait for Gustavo.
Nate was smiling broadly when he returned to the dock carrying folding chairs and glasses and a bottle of Jose Cuervo deciding it to be a better choice than the rum for such an ocassion and some limes in his pants pockets, a shaker of salt in his shirt pocket, a knife between his teeth and of course the radio which he had retrieved from the garden table. He sat out each chair playing the fool as a maitre d' and with a slight stumble kicked the radio into the water along with the third chair. He jumped in after it and after several dives brought it up tannic water draining from every orifice in the device.
Disgusted with himself, he gave the radio a good shake and still more water came out. Then he tried to turn it on. A blurt of calming music came out-
Then all was quiet.
"Always Strauss," said Dory,"In times of trouble they feed Strauss to the masses to calm them down."
"Fucking hell,"said Nate.
"Fucking hell is right , "said Dory, "Now we are just as well in the silent world of Dolores. And just as well in prison...And we are some of the richest people on earth.We could just as well only know sign language for what we will hear of the world...maybe the radio will dry out. And what would we do with the information anyway ?Ah,gotfadamma! Cmon Nate, put your chair next to mine."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Monday, January 5, 2009
#18 Chupacabra
The emerald mine was behind a waterfall, the one Dory had heard so clearly that day in the forest whose flow of water varied from gushing romance to squalid trickle depending upon the amount of rainfall it received. The girls , however, did not work in the mine, but in the stream bed below.
It took only two days for the work to become routine for them, only rarely impressed now by a stone whose beauty or size caught their attention. They worked the stream bed by first gathering with hand trowels in their five gallon buckets almost indiscriminately ore that lay in and at the edges of the shallow stream, then heaving the buckets into the sluice where Dolores, a well-trained miner without auditory distractions would pick out the stones, smiling slyly to herself when she found nuggets of ore with their bounty well-embedded. . Bucket after bucket of ore was dumped into the sluice and not so much as a millimeter chip would escape Dolores hawklike eyes. There were many cabuchons just lying about, the oval uncut beauties that Nate had shown them as being the loot Virginia Wiggins had taken for her son , just lying along the stream bed like luxurious sleeping beryl beetles ,scarab amulets glistening in the sun. So easy was the accumulation of this wealth.There had to be a consequence somewhere down the line .
Nate's jackhammer, powered by a generator, could be heard booming intermitently from inside the cave that now barely flowed water from its depths.There had not been rain in several days. But the waterfall that did cascade had enough force to bring down the rock, dust and pebbles he dislodged -and sometimes chunks of ore, as he hammered away at what he had told the girls was a vein, a particularly rich deposit.Dolores would get up from her command post behind the sluice every time there was a significant fall of rock and scrutinize it closely, sometimes picking up a bucketful and running it through the sluice where upon she would choose several samples and take them back up to the cave presumably to confer with Nate.
As if dropped from the sky, Gustavo appeared, passed the girls without speaking to them, looking very alarmed . Nate sat on a ledge outside the waterfall resting and upon seeing Gustavo jumped to his feet to try to look past him for signs of trouble then quickly climbed down from his vantage point warmly greeting Gustavo while telling Dolores and then the girls to hide. Dolores set the girls in motion with convincing shoves and they followed her to a canal. One of the canals Nate had spoken of that this large civilization had created , no doubt, and there was a canoe waiting and she motioned the girls in and began to paddle. An electric blue Morpho butterfly played above their heads as Dolores with strong unbroken paddle strokes lead them through the canal that opened onto Mandicocha lake a mile later.Mandi meant water hyacinth in Kich-Wa and this cocha was choked with it.She skillfully threaded her way through the plants, the water was shallow and she used her paddle in places as a pushing tool heading steadily toward what must have been a predetermined destination; the shady cover of a stand of bamboo on the far side Lake.
Dolores was stoic but the girls spoke rapidly in their mother tongue trying to think of all the wicked scenarios that could have transpired and what they would do, what could they do to extricate themselves from this prison without walls. Somehow they decided Dolores would know what to do for she had shown true allegiance to Nate since Benicio's departure and they each grabbed one of her arms and held on tightly.
It was during this conversation that some startling news from Nina came to light as well. She was late. She was late and she was never late and she thought she was truly in love with Gustavo. Dory chastised her at first: Why had she not been more cautious ? If she had known why had she not asked Dory for the Morning-after-pill that she knew Dory always carried ? Had Nina forgotten that her whole life was ahead of her and what would she do with a baby so young- at the same time trying to calculate how many weeks you could be and still safely terminate a pregnancy. Was it 12 ?
Margaret, Nina's mother,became an angry picture in her mind and her words ,came bellowing back to her. The same words she had used with Dory, taken aside for just an instant ,before leaving on every summer trip the girls had ever taken together and this was the fifth one:"Now you take care of my Nina." The mother knowing full well that although Dory was the more daring of the two she also had more common sense.
Dory and Nina had been friends since kinder and when at the age of 12 Nina contracted Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Dory stayed true to her friend through the infections and chemotherapy astonished by her quiet courage and Nina for her part at the suggestion of her writer father kept a journal of her ordeal that was published when she was cured and though not as poignant as The Diary of Ann Frank, was reviewed with accolades and sold some 6000 copies and was still in print and selling steadily. Nina never spoke of it among her peers and she had instructed Dory to honor her desire not to receive any kind of celebrity from her near fatal childhood illness although she did answer the letters from children and parents, a few a month, that her publisher forwarded to her offering hope and strength to all of them- and the royalty money conveniently helped her to fund her summer travels.
Dory practically lived at Nina's slightly decrepit but wonderful Prisengracht house with the five stories you had to climb to get to the living area as houses in the seventeenth century were built tall rather than wide to avoid property taxes based on width and that wonderful rope contraption which sprung the door open from the top floor when you rang the buzzer to let you in. This was Dory's real home. Not the small middle class grey cement flat where her mother lived ,surrounded by black and white embarrassingly posed photos of her in younger years at the height of her dance career.
So most evenings would find Dory at the Gans dinner table and she would try to bring a bottle of Bols gin as her price of admission but nobody expected anything from her-she was treated as family by Rogier Gans a fiercely leftist newspaper columnist for De Volkskrant who never brought his work home and Joost , Nina's older brother who also worked for De VolksKrant as a photographer and Margaret who would as often as not cook Indonesian food, a gift brought back by the Dutch from colonial times with its Rijstafels, Rice tables, nasi and bami and goreng dishes.
And the kind parents of humble means, humble by the standards of Dory's childhood when her Orchestra Conductor father was in the picture ,would make conversation in the sense that they would introduce subjects or anecdotes for the university students to address with their minds. To stimulate them. Never judgemental and never idealistically charged because as Rogier always said if you wanted to know his politics read the fishwrappings - and not in his house.Then there was Nina who she loved as a sister, who they had taught the gift of tolerance and the right of all peoples to human dignity. Dory worshipped Nina her natural communion with all mankind and though it frustrated her sometimes that she could see both sides in even the most barbaric civil or intrapersonal disputes-it was her gift, dory recognized, and came to worship at that altar as often as she could.
Besides the biology of Nina's condition Dory felt that the Amazon had cast some spell on Nina and she felt it too. Emeralds or no. Nate was a weather beaten man who had traveled down many roads and the weight of his intellect, besides his charm and passion made him something...well... something not to forget about.He had a brilliant mind, it seemed, something that always attracted her, scarce as they were.
There were some horned screamers, a bird with a loud whooping call, out of sight at the stream end of the lake, perhaps two juveniles and their parents who broke the afternoon calm at odd intervals. A ring necked kingfisher darted by, and the trees cracked and thrashed startling the girls several times with their undisclosed secrets. Parakeets, Parolets, and Military macaws all passed overhead in large numbers as if escaping something and Nina remarked as much.
The lake water nearby thrashed and bubbled. The water hyacinth, unrooted, moved noticeably on gusts of wind and the sky darkened like impending doom.
Inexplicably from behind them, Nate appeared laughing and relaxed.
The girls demanded an explanation and Nate sat beside them. He signed first to Dolores who after getting what must have been an abbreviated version of what happened breathed a deep sigh of relief and removed the arms of the two girls who had obviously been holding her so tight that she was in pain.
"Nothing to worry about,"said Nate, laughing, unless you believe in chupacabra."
"Chupa-
"Chupacabra. Goatsuckers in English. Its this legendary beast that every latino campesino knows. It has supposedly surfaced in Florida too. That kills all the animals in its path with surgical kills and the animal doesn't even have time to struggle. This story drifts periodically all over Latin America and some people claim to have seen it and others claim to have shot it and what do you know nobody has a specimen to show. There are those who say it is supernatural.Well Gustavo all alone out there waiting for Benecio who could be the chupacabra incarnate after all, got it in his head that a chupacabra was circling in on him. He was sure of it in fact."
"So this is not true?" asked Dory.
"Not true," said Nate, but I respect other peoples' beliefs.Remember I was raised an evangelist and I know the power of good old fashion faith healing and the Catholics, Hell, 6 million people a year go to Lourdes to drink the water and you know how many documented cases of miracles they have? 67. You could find 67 miracles in any group of that size multiplied by the number of years since what's her name saw the first vision there. So I respect Gustavo's belief in the chupacabra.
Anyway I have a very very righteous patch of cannabis that Terra Preta works wonders on and I have never invoked my faith healing on anybody but this poor fellow needed to be healed so I rolled up a number and I told Gustavo that the herb that he was about to smoke uses the spirits of the dead to ward off all chupacabras and that if he inhaled this herb three times he would never see or hear chupacabras again.Well he took the three hits, as did I in sympathy to his loss of critical judgment and I must say it was a miracle ! We gathered up some more provisions for old Gustavito and he went away very happy. I would say he went away silly in fact."
The girls laughed nervously and Nate joined them. He did not tell them that through all of his silliness he could not break Gustavo of the feeling of impendimg doom. Gustavo had indeed forgotten about the Chupacabra but kept repeating as he laughed: "Flores. Flores para los Muertos!"
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
It took only two days for the work to become routine for them, only rarely impressed now by a stone whose beauty or size caught their attention. They worked the stream bed by first gathering with hand trowels in their five gallon buckets almost indiscriminately ore that lay in and at the edges of the shallow stream, then heaving the buckets into the sluice where Dolores, a well-trained miner without auditory distractions would pick out the stones, smiling slyly to herself when she found nuggets of ore with their bounty well-embedded. . Bucket after bucket of ore was dumped into the sluice and not so much as a millimeter chip would escape Dolores hawklike eyes. There were many cabuchons just lying about, the oval uncut beauties that Nate had shown them as being the loot Virginia Wiggins had taken for her son , just lying along the stream bed like luxurious sleeping beryl beetles ,scarab amulets glistening in the sun. So easy was the accumulation of this wealth.There had to be a consequence somewhere down the line .
Nate's jackhammer, powered by a generator, could be heard booming intermitently from inside the cave that now barely flowed water from its depths.There had not been rain in several days. But the waterfall that did cascade had enough force to bring down the rock, dust and pebbles he dislodged -and sometimes chunks of ore, as he hammered away at what he had told the girls was a vein, a particularly rich deposit.Dolores would get up from her command post behind the sluice every time there was a significant fall of rock and scrutinize it closely, sometimes picking up a bucketful and running it through the sluice where upon she would choose several samples and take them back up to the cave presumably to confer with Nate.
As if dropped from the sky, Gustavo appeared, passed the girls without speaking to them, looking very alarmed . Nate sat on a ledge outside the waterfall resting and upon seeing Gustavo jumped to his feet to try to look past him for signs of trouble then quickly climbed down from his vantage point warmly greeting Gustavo while telling Dolores and then the girls to hide. Dolores set the girls in motion with convincing shoves and they followed her to a canal. One of the canals Nate had spoken of that this large civilization had created , no doubt, and there was a canoe waiting and she motioned the girls in and began to paddle. An electric blue Morpho butterfly played above their heads as Dolores with strong unbroken paddle strokes lead them through the canal that opened onto Mandicocha lake a mile later.Mandi meant water hyacinth in Kich-Wa and this cocha was choked with it.She skillfully threaded her way through the plants, the water was shallow and she used her paddle in places as a pushing tool heading steadily toward what must have been a predetermined destination; the shady cover of a stand of bamboo on the far side Lake.
Dolores was stoic but the girls spoke rapidly in their mother tongue trying to think of all the wicked scenarios that could have transpired and what they would do, what could they do to extricate themselves from this prison without walls. Somehow they decided Dolores would know what to do for she had shown true allegiance to Nate since Benicio's departure and they each grabbed one of her arms and held on tightly.
It was during this conversation that some startling news from Nina came to light as well. She was late. She was late and she was never late and she thought she was truly in love with Gustavo. Dory chastised her at first: Why had she not been more cautious ? If she had known why had she not asked Dory for the Morning-after-pill that she knew Dory always carried ? Had Nina forgotten that her whole life was ahead of her and what would she do with a baby so young- at the same time trying to calculate how many weeks you could be and still safely terminate a pregnancy. Was it 12 ?
Margaret, Nina's mother,became an angry picture in her mind and her words ,came bellowing back to her. The same words she had used with Dory, taken aside for just an instant ,before leaving on every summer trip the girls had ever taken together and this was the fifth one:"Now you take care of my Nina." The mother knowing full well that although Dory was the more daring of the two she also had more common sense.
Dory and Nina had been friends since kinder and when at the age of 12 Nina contracted Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, Dory stayed true to her friend through the infections and chemotherapy astonished by her quiet courage and Nina for her part at the suggestion of her writer father kept a journal of her ordeal that was published when she was cured and though not as poignant as The Diary of Ann Frank, was reviewed with accolades and sold some 6000 copies and was still in print and selling steadily. Nina never spoke of it among her peers and she had instructed Dory to honor her desire not to receive any kind of celebrity from her near fatal childhood illness although she did answer the letters from children and parents, a few a month, that her publisher forwarded to her offering hope and strength to all of them- and the royalty money conveniently helped her to fund her summer travels.
Dory practically lived at Nina's slightly decrepit but wonderful Prisengracht house with the five stories you had to climb to get to the living area as houses in the seventeenth century were built tall rather than wide to avoid property taxes based on width and that wonderful rope contraption which sprung the door open from the top floor when you rang the buzzer to let you in. This was Dory's real home. Not the small middle class grey cement flat where her mother lived ,surrounded by black and white embarrassingly posed photos of her in younger years at the height of her dance career.
So most evenings would find Dory at the Gans dinner table and she would try to bring a bottle of Bols gin as her price of admission but nobody expected anything from her-she was treated as family by Rogier Gans a fiercely leftist newspaper columnist for De Volkskrant who never brought his work home and Joost , Nina's older brother who also worked for De VolksKrant as a photographer and Margaret who would as often as not cook Indonesian food, a gift brought back by the Dutch from colonial times with its Rijstafels, Rice tables, nasi and bami and goreng dishes.
And the kind parents of humble means, humble by the standards of Dory's childhood when her Orchestra Conductor father was in the picture ,would make conversation in the sense that they would introduce subjects or anecdotes for the university students to address with their minds. To stimulate them. Never judgemental and never idealistically charged because as Rogier always said if you wanted to know his politics read the fishwrappings - and not in his house.Then there was Nina who she loved as a sister, who they had taught the gift of tolerance and the right of all peoples to human dignity. Dory worshipped Nina her natural communion with all mankind and though it frustrated her sometimes that she could see both sides in even the most barbaric civil or intrapersonal disputes-it was her gift, dory recognized, and came to worship at that altar as often as she could.
Besides the biology of Nina's condition Dory felt that the Amazon had cast some spell on Nina and she felt it too. Emeralds or no. Nate was a weather beaten man who had traveled down many roads and the weight of his intellect, besides his charm and passion made him something...well... something not to forget about.He had a brilliant mind, it seemed, something that always attracted her, scarce as they were.
There were some horned screamers, a bird with a loud whooping call, out of sight at the stream end of the lake, perhaps two juveniles and their parents who broke the afternoon calm at odd intervals. A ring necked kingfisher darted by, and the trees cracked and thrashed startling the girls several times with their undisclosed secrets. Parakeets, Parolets, and Military macaws all passed overhead in large numbers as if escaping something and Nina remarked as much.
The lake water nearby thrashed and bubbled. The water hyacinth, unrooted, moved noticeably on gusts of wind and the sky darkened like impending doom.
Inexplicably from behind them, Nate appeared laughing and relaxed.
The girls demanded an explanation and Nate sat beside them. He signed first to Dolores who after getting what must have been an abbreviated version of what happened breathed a deep sigh of relief and removed the arms of the two girls who had obviously been holding her so tight that she was in pain.
"Nothing to worry about,"said Nate, laughing, unless you believe in chupacabra."
"Chupa-
"Chupacabra. Goatsuckers in English. Its this legendary beast that every latino campesino knows. It has supposedly surfaced in Florida too. That kills all the animals in its path with surgical kills and the animal doesn't even have time to struggle. This story drifts periodically all over Latin America and some people claim to have seen it and others claim to have shot it and what do you know nobody has a specimen to show. There are those who say it is supernatural.Well Gustavo all alone out there waiting for Benecio who could be the chupacabra incarnate after all, got it in his head that a chupacabra was circling in on him. He was sure of it in fact."
"So this is not true?" asked Dory.
"Not true," said Nate, but I respect other peoples' beliefs.Remember I was raised an evangelist and I know the power of good old fashion faith healing and the Catholics, Hell, 6 million people a year go to Lourdes to drink the water and you know how many documented cases of miracles they have? 67. You could find 67 miracles in any group of that size multiplied by the number of years since what's her name saw the first vision there. So I respect Gustavo's belief in the chupacabra.
Anyway I have a very very righteous patch of cannabis that Terra Preta works wonders on and I have never invoked my faith healing on anybody but this poor fellow needed to be healed so I rolled up a number and I told Gustavo that the herb that he was about to smoke uses the spirits of the dead to ward off all chupacabras and that if he inhaled this herb three times he would never see or hear chupacabras again.Well he took the three hits, as did I in sympathy to his loss of critical judgment and I must say it was a miracle ! We gathered up some more provisions for old Gustavito and he went away very happy. I would say he went away silly in fact."
The girls laughed nervously and Nate joined them. He did not tell them that through all of his silliness he could not break Gustavo of the feeling of impendimg doom. Gustavo had indeed forgotten about the Chupacabra but kept repeating as he laughed: "Flores. Flores para los Muertos!"
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Saturday, January 3, 2009
#17 Terra Preta
Nate was sweating profusely and finally sought shade under the umbrella. Dolores reappeared with a pitcher of lemonade, clear glass with slices of lemon floating in it and poured cool drinks for everyone. Nate hugged her with such familial affection closing his eyes and letting his face adore her with a brotherly caress that Dory was taken anew by this complicated man.So smart but somehow so tragic. Dolores held his cool glass to his head and he signed something to her.
She signed something to Dory and Nina and its meaning seemed obvious: this was a good man.
And Dory was beginning to know this to be true for she had made love to him and he had given all of himself in a way she never knew men could love. He was so focused on the love of their love-making that it was almost too intense for her. What would happen next ? She was certainly going to stay along for the ride as the Americans said.
He drank the glass of lemonade down and Dolores filled it up again.
"You can imagine Virginia Wiggins' surprise and dismay when she returned to her digging spot here ... And saw the tomato plants flourishing everywhere. It ran counter to everything she believed: that a non tropical fruit could thrive in the Amazon. Her dismay was compounded by the fact that the civilisation that she mentions in her notes as "SR will fucking ruin me" became known as the Sacha Runa Culture. Sacha Runa is Kich-wa, the oldest living Indian language for Jungle Man. She named it and slowly she had to make concessions that would destroy her own theory. That the pottery they made was too big to be carried from place to place. That she found a whole system of roads that connected villages and cities to an (Undisclosed) capital. That there were terraced dwellings within the cities which meant hierarchical living with the priests and politicians living on the highest terrace and the worst part which was coming to light in Brazil by farmers who had penetrated the forest and then archaeologists who would just blow apart her theory was this black dirt you see all around you which is called terra preta and maybe the real El Dorado worth more than all the emeralds on earth to anyone who can divine its secret.
Scientists now believe that there is Terra Preta in 10% of the Amazon. Most of it is 6 feet deep and it is made of organic materials,charred vegetable material which is why some people call in black earth, human feces, fish bones,heavily loaded with potsherds and a dozen other naturally occurring substances. It is as fertile now as it was 1000 years ago when it was created and as you can see when you look around you the plants are resistant to disease and insects. It is the best soil ever invented and man invented it. Now here's the really spooky thing. It regenerates itself. If you dig up a pile of this earth and wait some years the hole will again fill with Terra Preta and modern science does not have a clue which of the tens of thousands of species of bacteria and fungi, which unique microorganisms allow Terra Preta to reproduce. The soil is 880% more fertile than normal soil. God knows how much more fertile it is than the red acidic soil that supports the rainforest. The rainforest is an ecosystem that works without using nutrients in the soil for the most part. The black earth is man made.It will not be washed away by rain. It will not die and if it could be synthesized imagine how it would change the planet. That is the real El Dorado waiting for some big agro consortium which will rule the world if they ever figure it out. Or maybe they don't want to figure it out because like a vaccine it would become a gift to all mankind and nobody would make any money out of it.It could be cosmic.
But anyway it was the tomato plants , the black earth and other people finding it other places in the Amazon that ultimately shot Virginia's bigfire theory out of the textbooks.
But for me there was more of a thread of possibility that I could locate her emeralds. I'd been up and down this river 20 times before I met Benicio. Sooner or later everybody shows up at the Hotel Auca . Its the center of the universe for quakers and quackers and a fair share of miners who go upriver to the Rio Payamino to mine placer gold. That's where Benecio was headed.
But he had quite a collection, he said, of Sacha Runa Pottery that he found when he built a camp for Texaco in the 60's, and a funeral urn with the bones of a stillborne baby inside, he conjectured, so exquisite was the piece in the shape of a woman whose arms plastered to her body as if in an offering and -I"ll show you one of these later- she has the most delicate design of head and body and a prominently displayed clitoris which could no way be construed as for arousal and the most amazing thing of all was when he cracked off the bottom where the bones had been sealed he had found an emerald.
He was so busy flying in lobster tail and other delicacies to the Sacha Campaign (as The Oil Company. so enlightened, called their Amazon putsch) heads and other high ranking drill people that all he could do was put it in his kit and when at 110 feet the well was determined dry and the fact that Texaco was paying even back then 50,000 dollars a day with barges brought up all the way from Brazil, they yanked him to build the next camp and he never found the place again. And oh yes he had seen the black earth.
So over his sinchicara I asked him if there was a stream or a waterfall nearby and yes he said he thought there was and we looked at maps and I plotted the progress of Virginia's digs according to her field notes and her published accounts although I found evidence that she tried to cover her tracks and it was presisely that unfinished dig across the lake that led me here because by character she was sone of those leave no stone unturned people,and I narrowed it down to 15,000 hectares from there. All the land I could afford to buy.
And the urgency to buy the land was not Benecio's it was mine.The news in the wind was that the socialist President of Ecuador ,Umbato, was about to give all the amazon lands to the indigenous, mostly Kich-was, but, Cofanes, and Shuars and Secoyas as well ,and I had one chance to zero in on my 15,000 hectares where my research from Virginia's work had convinced me I would find this place, and I bought it: ten thousand for the land and ten thousand for the bribe. And I cut Benicio in because he said he was connected to the emerald business in Columbia, because he knew everything about the rain forest and because without knowing it he had , I thought, actually been to the place where Virgina had found the stones in the stream. So he and I drank Sinchicara and took Ayahuasca which gives you an out of body experience and slowly we divined-call it horsehit- that it had to be on a lake and far from the Napo River to have gone undiscovered and first at the mouth of the stream we found the Oil Company Sign , Rusted but legible, the way we came in with remnants of the camp Benicio had built, then we found Wiggins unfinished dig site just offf the lake with the all the tomatoes and When I saw the huge mound that we are sitting on which looks so obviously man made: I TOLD BENECIO THAT THIS WAS IT ! And the rest as they say, is history.
Now as to my personal theory about this specific place, I found a narrow trench that covers the whole backside perimeter and I believe it held palisades-like a pointy fence to keep people out.They probably used pambil the same fence and posting palm people down here use now with sharp points. I figure A small number of people lived here and lived well, perhaps they were priests who controlled the wealth. There is evidence maybe of soldiers quarters on one edge to your left and we've unearthed very fine burial urns perhaps for the aristocracy of this society that would be buried on the hill down near the lake. So while it's not important it is my theory that this was the fucking Fort Knox of this civilization meant like in all societies for a small percentage of the population to get very wealthy while the rest of the population was either poor or maybe they had it a middle class. These people were as sophisticated as the Egyptians in engineering and could easily have built a pyramid if that had been a goal, but they liked wide avenues and canals to paddle tranquilly from place to place and the unit of monetary engagement was the emerald. Hell I can see emerald barons speculating on land that they know will soon be populated. And what provided the intense labor needed to produce Terra Preta- green stones ! Can You imagine? A full fledged cynical capitalist system like our own a thousand years ago in the Amazon.
"What is this Fort Knox? " asked Dory.
"That's where the Americans keep most of their Gold in an underground vault and nobody has ever been able to steal it from there!"
"So the world will one day have the real El Dorado..."She said Hopefully,"Terra Preta."
"Hell, yes ,and we've got esmeraldas up the yinyang!"
"When can we see this place?"
"Right now young lady."
And they all stood up and began to walk out of the garden by a different path than they came in by.And Nate stopped them. He seemed to Dory almost Messianic:
"So ultimately,this guy Francisco de Orellana, the Conquistador who discovered the Amazon, did find El Dorado. He told everyone in Spain about the abundant crops and the large cities and the highways and canals and he was the first and last European to see the great cities of the Amazon with the exception of Solis de Holguin in 1617 who made it to the Bolivian amazon and brought with him the same gifts that Orellana had: Measles, and influenza and small pox and these great civilizations ,over a period of perhaps two hundred years , millions of people died out in their Amazon Paradise like dry straw in a wildfire ...never to return.
But as fast as the native peoples died out so fast, so slow was the notion of El Dorado to loose its fascination on the Spaniards. What had begun as a search for gold,somehow changed-not to emeralds- but to something abstract and many years after Orellana they came from the north of the continent still searching for El Dorado.For Conquistadors like Berrio and Albujar in what is now Colombia and along the Orinoco river, it became something much more. It was the search, to borrow from another culture ,for shangri-la that they desperately wanted, the unviolated paradise which by their presence they violated and destroyed...for such worlds had existed. But we are destroying nothing and have found everything."
"But Benecio?" asked Dory.
"Benecio,"said Nate," Benecio is a violacion."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
She signed something to Dory and Nina and its meaning seemed obvious: this was a good man.
And Dory was beginning to know this to be true for she had made love to him and he had given all of himself in a way she never knew men could love. He was so focused on the love of their love-making that it was almost too intense for her. What would happen next ? She was certainly going to stay along for the ride as the Americans said.
He drank the glass of lemonade down and Dolores filled it up again.
"You can imagine Virginia Wiggins' surprise and dismay when she returned to her digging spot here ... And saw the tomato plants flourishing everywhere. It ran counter to everything she believed: that a non tropical fruit could thrive in the Amazon. Her dismay was compounded by the fact that the civilisation that she mentions in her notes as "SR will fucking ruin me" became known as the Sacha Runa Culture. Sacha Runa is Kich-wa, the oldest living Indian language for Jungle Man. She named it and slowly she had to make concessions that would destroy her own theory. That the pottery they made was too big to be carried from place to place. That she found a whole system of roads that connected villages and cities to an (Undisclosed) capital. That there were terraced dwellings within the cities which meant hierarchical living with the priests and politicians living on the highest terrace and the worst part which was coming to light in Brazil by farmers who had penetrated the forest and then archaeologists who would just blow apart her theory was this black dirt you see all around you which is called terra preta and maybe the real El Dorado worth more than all the emeralds on earth to anyone who can divine its secret.
Scientists now believe that there is Terra Preta in 10% of the Amazon. Most of it is 6 feet deep and it is made of organic materials,charred vegetable material which is why some people call in black earth, human feces, fish bones,heavily loaded with potsherds and a dozen other naturally occurring substances. It is as fertile now as it was 1000 years ago when it was created and as you can see when you look around you the plants are resistant to disease and insects. It is the best soil ever invented and man invented it. Now here's the really spooky thing. It regenerates itself. If you dig up a pile of this earth and wait some years the hole will again fill with Terra Preta and modern science does not have a clue which of the tens of thousands of species of bacteria and fungi, which unique microorganisms allow Terra Preta to reproduce. The soil is 880% more fertile than normal soil. God knows how much more fertile it is than the red acidic soil that supports the rainforest. The rainforest is an ecosystem that works without using nutrients in the soil for the most part. The black earth is man made.It will not be washed away by rain. It will not die and if it could be synthesized imagine how it would change the planet. That is the real El Dorado waiting for some big agro consortium which will rule the world if they ever figure it out. Or maybe they don't want to figure it out because like a vaccine it would become a gift to all mankind and nobody would make any money out of it.It could be cosmic.
But anyway it was the tomato plants , the black earth and other people finding it other places in the Amazon that ultimately shot Virginia's bigfire theory out of the textbooks.
But for me there was more of a thread of possibility that I could locate her emeralds. I'd been up and down this river 20 times before I met Benicio. Sooner or later everybody shows up at the Hotel Auca . Its the center of the universe for quakers and quackers and a fair share of miners who go upriver to the Rio Payamino to mine placer gold. That's where Benecio was headed.
But he had quite a collection, he said, of Sacha Runa Pottery that he found when he built a camp for Texaco in the 60's, and a funeral urn with the bones of a stillborne baby inside, he conjectured, so exquisite was the piece in the shape of a woman whose arms plastered to her body as if in an offering and -I"ll show you one of these later- she has the most delicate design of head and body and a prominently displayed clitoris which could no way be construed as for arousal and the most amazing thing of all was when he cracked off the bottom where the bones had been sealed he had found an emerald.
He was so busy flying in lobster tail and other delicacies to the Sacha Campaign (as The Oil Company. so enlightened, called their Amazon putsch) heads and other high ranking drill people that all he could do was put it in his kit and when at 110 feet the well was determined dry and the fact that Texaco was paying even back then 50,000 dollars a day with barges brought up all the way from Brazil, they yanked him to build the next camp and he never found the place again. And oh yes he had seen the black earth.
So over his sinchicara I asked him if there was a stream or a waterfall nearby and yes he said he thought there was and we looked at maps and I plotted the progress of Virginia's digs according to her field notes and her published accounts although I found evidence that she tried to cover her tracks and it was presisely that unfinished dig across the lake that led me here because by character she was sone of those leave no stone unturned people,and I narrowed it down to 15,000 hectares from there. All the land I could afford to buy.
And the urgency to buy the land was not Benecio's it was mine.The news in the wind was that the socialist President of Ecuador ,Umbato, was about to give all the amazon lands to the indigenous, mostly Kich-was, but, Cofanes, and Shuars and Secoyas as well ,and I had one chance to zero in on my 15,000 hectares where my research from Virginia's work had convinced me I would find this place, and I bought it: ten thousand for the land and ten thousand for the bribe. And I cut Benicio in because he said he was connected to the emerald business in Columbia, because he knew everything about the rain forest and because without knowing it he had , I thought, actually been to the place where Virgina had found the stones in the stream. So he and I drank Sinchicara and took Ayahuasca which gives you an out of body experience and slowly we divined-call it horsehit- that it had to be on a lake and far from the Napo River to have gone undiscovered and first at the mouth of the stream we found the Oil Company Sign , Rusted but legible, the way we came in with remnants of the camp Benicio had built, then we found Wiggins unfinished dig site just offf the lake with the all the tomatoes and When I saw the huge mound that we are sitting on which looks so obviously man made: I TOLD BENECIO THAT THIS WAS IT ! And the rest as they say, is history.
Now as to my personal theory about this specific place, I found a narrow trench that covers the whole backside perimeter and I believe it held palisades-like a pointy fence to keep people out.They probably used pambil the same fence and posting palm people down here use now with sharp points. I figure A small number of people lived here and lived well, perhaps they were priests who controlled the wealth. There is evidence maybe of soldiers quarters on one edge to your left and we've unearthed very fine burial urns perhaps for the aristocracy of this society that would be buried on the hill down near the lake. So while it's not important it is my theory that this was the fucking Fort Knox of this civilization meant like in all societies for a small percentage of the population to get very wealthy while the rest of the population was either poor or maybe they had it a middle class. These people were as sophisticated as the Egyptians in engineering and could easily have built a pyramid if that had been a goal, but they liked wide avenues and canals to paddle tranquilly from place to place and the unit of monetary engagement was the emerald. Hell I can see emerald barons speculating on land that they know will soon be populated. And what provided the intense labor needed to produce Terra Preta- green stones ! Can You imagine? A full fledged cynical capitalist system like our own a thousand years ago in the Amazon.
"What is this Fort Knox? " asked Dory.
"That's where the Americans keep most of their Gold in an underground vault and nobody has ever been able to steal it from there!"
"So the world will one day have the real El Dorado..."She said Hopefully,"Terra Preta."
"Hell, yes ,and we've got esmeraldas up the yinyang!"
"When can we see this place?"
"Right now young lady."
And they all stood up and began to walk out of the garden by a different path than they came in by.And Nate stopped them. He seemed to Dory almost Messianic:
"So ultimately,this guy Francisco de Orellana, the Conquistador who discovered the Amazon, did find El Dorado. He told everyone in Spain about the abundant crops and the large cities and the highways and canals and he was the first and last European to see the great cities of the Amazon with the exception of Solis de Holguin in 1617 who made it to the Bolivian amazon and brought with him the same gifts that Orellana had: Measles, and influenza and small pox and these great civilizations ,over a period of perhaps two hundred years , millions of people died out in their Amazon Paradise like dry straw in a wildfire ...never to return.
But as fast as the native peoples died out so fast, so slow was the notion of El Dorado to loose its fascination on the Spaniards. What had begun as a search for gold,somehow changed-not to emeralds- but to something abstract and many years after Orellana they came from the north of the continent still searching for El Dorado.For Conquistadors like Berrio and Albujar in what is now Colombia and along the Orinoco river, it became something much more. It was the search, to borrow from another culture ,for shangri-la that they desperately wanted, the unviolated paradise which by their presence they violated and destroyed...for such worlds had existed. But we are destroying nothing and have found everything."
"But Benecio?" asked Dory.
"Benecio,"said Nate," Benecio is a violacion."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Thursday, January 1, 2009
#15 The Trap Is Set
The noonday sun beat down hard on the girls who sat on the dock that ran out into the lake. They had been sitting there since breakfast and had no desire to swim although Dory ran her toe in circles in the water as tiny fish chased after it and Nina, so fair skinned, had accepted Dory's lightweight jacket and now wore it over her head like a tent, adjusting it restlessly to block out the sun that would appear with each movement of her body as a burning welt instantly reddening her skin.
Just when they thought they could no longer stand it, Nate and Gustavo appeared at the door. Gustavo was carrying a shotgun and a backpack as well as one of the tents they had used before their arrival. He shuffled down to the dock and greeted the girls all in such a commotion of thought and feeling that he had to busy himself with the chore of bailing out the dugout that had been stored beneath the dock to avoid a welling up of emotion he did not want the girls to see. He loaded his gear into the the canoe and greeted the girls weakly: "Senoritas..."
"Que le vaya bien," said Dory.
Nina stuck out her hand instinctually and he grabbed it, nearly falling into the water despite his acrobatic sense of balance. He let her go and chuckled half-heartedly.
"Hasta Luego," he waved.
The girls waved back but no one smiled.
He sat down and began to paddle across the lake. In the middle of the lake he stopped to comb his hair.
They could feel the dock shake as Nate arrived. He was jubilant.
"Well," he said, "Gustavo hates Benecio even more than I thought."
"Where's he going ?" asked Dory.
"He's going to paddle down the yacu, the stream, we came in on and camp out out til Benecio comes back."
"Is he going to kill him ?" Dory asked, frightened.
"Not if he doesn't have to," said Nate, "I know ,I know that sounds crude, but the idea is to scare the living crap out of him. To take him to the settlement of the Basque Separtist Priests who he knows and dump him their without transport. Meanwhile you all. Meaning you, and you, are going to help me get whatever we can out of this mine before he figures out what to do. Whats he going to do at the settlement? Tell the priest that he has a fortune in emeralds and someone is trying to overthrow him? Who can he trust to share in this business with him? First the ugly part of overthrowing us- and if they will overthrow us why won't they over throw him- As greedy as he is he'll never find anyone to help him. I know of only one guy that he has mentioned, a stone buyer from the Chivor mine in Columbia, his compadre, who he thought he would lay off the stones on- a certain quantity a month- like a fence ,so no one would get suspicious about a flood of emeralds into the market and Chivor is privately owned ... he had some subterfuge planned which he never clearly explained to me that we could pass these stones off as chivor stones because some of them have this special wagon wheel design in the stone that only comes from chivor- not a wagon wheel... its the wheel they use to press the juice out of sugar cane to make pure rum..its called a trapiche, a trapiche emerald...here" he pulled a perfect emerald that was quite enormous out of his pocket, "you see its like a star pattern six points radiate out like spokes because of dark carbon impurities and look at the transparency and fire of this baby...It hasn't even been cut yet.
Anyway the way I figure it, If we keep our wits about us with Fernando to help us we've got a good long time before Benecio figures out what to do. Maybe even a month."
And then what will he do?" asked Dory.
"I don't know but we'll all be rich and long gone and while the old fellow will pout a little,it will be hard going,but there might be plenty left for him and whoever he chooses to trust."
"But he looks like a man who will take his...venganza."Said Dory Unable to come up with the word in English.
His revenge? He has to catch us first."
"I don't like this man."
"You have no choice now. If at some point a new direction becomes availble for you and Nina that is safer or more desirable, by all means I will encourage you to take it. I'm cutting you and Nina in for a sixteenth part"
"So you are going to make us slaves?"
"Very rich slaves. Probably higher than you can count. You and Nina get a sixteenth share as does Fernando. Gustavo gets 4/16th and I get 9/16ths and out of my 9/16ths comes 1/16 for dolores. I say it that way because I am going to manage the money for her because among other things Benecio did not teach her is any concept of money.
Youll be able to do whatever you want with the money. Give it away if that turns you on!"
"No, I have a use for it," said Dory Dreamily
"There that wasn't so difficult."
"I am not so very strong,"said Dory.
"What?"
"I said I am not so very strong."
"Iheard you the first time. Believe me a good part of this will be like picking strawberries."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
Just when they thought they could no longer stand it, Nate and Gustavo appeared at the door. Gustavo was carrying a shotgun and a backpack as well as one of the tents they had used before their arrival. He shuffled down to the dock and greeted the girls all in such a commotion of thought and feeling that he had to busy himself with the chore of bailing out the dugout that had been stored beneath the dock to avoid a welling up of emotion he did not want the girls to see. He loaded his gear into the the canoe and greeted the girls weakly: "Senoritas..."
"Que le vaya bien," said Dory.
Nina stuck out her hand instinctually and he grabbed it, nearly falling into the water despite his acrobatic sense of balance. He let her go and chuckled half-heartedly.
"Hasta Luego," he waved.
The girls waved back but no one smiled.
He sat down and began to paddle across the lake. In the middle of the lake he stopped to comb his hair.
They could feel the dock shake as Nate arrived. He was jubilant.
"Well," he said, "Gustavo hates Benecio even more than I thought."
"Where's he going ?" asked Dory.
"He's going to paddle down the yacu, the stream, we came in on and camp out out til Benecio comes back."
"Is he going to kill him ?" Dory asked, frightened.
"Not if he doesn't have to," said Nate, "I know ,I know that sounds crude, but the idea is to scare the living crap out of him. To take him to the settlement of the Basque Separtist Priests who he knows and dump him their without transport. Meanwhile you all. Meaning you, and you, are going to help me get whatever we can out of this mine before he figures out what to do. Whats he going to do at the settlement? Tell the priest that he has a fortune in emeralds and someone is trying to overthrow him? Who can he trust to share in this business with him? First the ugly part of overthrowing us- and if they will overthrow us why won't they over throw him- As greedy as he is he'll never find anyone to help him. I know of only one guy that he has mentioned, a stone buyer from the Chivor mine in Columbia, his compadre, who he thought he would lay off the stones on- a certain quantity a month- like a fence ,so no one would get suspicious about a flood of emeralds into the market and Chivor is privately owned ... he had some subterfuge planned which he never clearly explained to me that we could pass these stones off as chivor stones because some of them have this special wagon wheel design in the stone that only comes from chivor- not a wagon wheel... its the wheel they use to press the juice out of sugar cane to make pure rum..its called a trapiche, a trapiche emerald...here" he pulled a perfect emerald that was quite enormous out of his pocket, "you see its like a star pattern six points radiate out like spokes because of dark carbon impurities and look at the transparency and fire of this baby...It hasn't even been cut yet.
Anyway the way I figure it, If we keep our wits about us with Fernando to help us we've got a good long time before Benecio figures out what to do. Maybe even a month."
And then what will he do?" asked Dory.
"I don't know but we'll all be rich and long gone and while the old fellow will pout a little,it will be hard going,but there might be plenty left for him and whoever he chooses to trust."
"But he looks like a man who will take his...venganza."Said Dory Unable to come up with the word in English.
His revenge? He has to catch us first.""I don't like this man."
"You have no choice now. If at some point a new direction becomes availble for you and Nina that is safer or more desirable, by all means I will encourage you to take it. I'm cutting you and Nina in for a sixteenth part"
"So you are going to make us slaves?"
"Very rich slaves. Probably higher than you can count. You and Nina get a sixteenth share as does Fernando. Gustavo gets 4/16th and I get 9/16ths and out of my 9/16ths comes 1/16 for dolores. I say it that way because I am going to manage the money for her because among other things Benecio did not teach her is any concept of money.
Youll be able to do whatever you want with the money. Give it away if that turns you on!"
"No, I have a use for it," said Dory Dreamily
"There that wasn't so difficult."
"I am not so very strong,"said Dory.
"What?"
"I said I am not so very strong."
"Iheard you the first time. Believe me a good part of this will be like picking strawberries."
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/
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