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!"
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