The Amazons

Paco Learns From Benecio #29

2009-03-10T07:02:00.000-07:00

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."

#28 The Aguarico

2009-03-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

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.

#27 The Telephone Call

2009-03-06T09:10:00.000-08:00

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.

# 26 zodiacs

2009-03-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

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 !"

#25 Signing

2009-03-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

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.

#23 Fernando

2009-03-05T07:03:00.000-08:00

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 ?

#22 Paco

2009-02-04T09:04:00.000-08:00

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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# 20 Gustavo

2009-01-09T07:56:00.000-08:00

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.
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#19 After Shocks

2009-01-08T09:59:00.000-08:00

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."

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#18 Chupacabra

2009-01-05T14:51:00.000-08:00

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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#17 Terra Preta

2009-01-03T10:06:00.000-08:00

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."
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#15 The Trap Is Set

2009-01-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

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."

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#14 The Sword In THe Stone

2008-12-31T12:46:00.000-08:00

Although his tenacity could not have been more obvious Gustavo's stupor repeatedly inhibited his efforts to sit upright and he swayed heavily back just catch his head with his arms as it smacked back down into the table.Nina was drooling a bit as she took "just a quick nap" which was her third such endeavor in the past half hour. But Nate had managed to get himself a beer and sipped it quickly trying not to show his consternation as Dory held the six-sided, jagged -ended emerald in her hands, marveling at its beauty and size. Dolores hovered over her nosily. Dory began to sniff the stone.

"Cedar oil," said Nate in a deep strained voice as if having a bowel movement, "it's an accepted practice in the industry for smoothing out minor flaws and it adds a little brilliance. The smell is long gone by the time it gets to the consumer and they usually cut the stones first but in this case-'
'In this case what?"
"In this case I can't tell you . What I can tell you is that emeralds are a variety of the mineral beryl colored green by a trace of chromium and sometimes vanadium. There is a camp that believes it is organic matter of some sort that causes the color. Emeralds are brittle and their resistance to breakage is generally poor. The word "emerald"comes from the latin smaragdus-
It is almost the same word in Dutch, smaragados" shouted Nina from her nap.
"Thank you for that Nina, "said Nate like a Professor, anxious to continue his monologue,"at any rate most Emeralds tend to have numerous inclusions and surface breaking fissures and can not be graded as scientifically as diamonds. Thus the emerald is graded by eyeballing it and if it has no visible inclusions and if the person eyeballing it has 20-20 vision it is considered flawless. But stones that lack surface breaking fissures are extremely rare and therefore almost all emeralds, the most valuable beryls are oiled to enhance their apparent clarity. Eye clean stones of a vivid primary green hue like the one you are holding with no more than 15% of any secondary hue either blue or yellow command the highest prices. And most emeralds are oiled as part of the post lapidary process, but that one was found like that so it has become Dolores' amulet- especially when Benecio is not here."

Dory rotated the stone in her hands even more fascinated after Nate's discourse and then looked closely at the stone as if she could not believe her eyes.She blinked to try to clear them. Then again. Then pulled the green beryl as close to her eyes as she could and still have them focus. She began to read slowly what was apparently etched in tiny letters on one facet of the stone:" Inter...Natos...Mulierum...non...sur-rexit...mayor"
She looked at Nate."un-hunh,"she said.
'C'mon you told me you knew latin ! Out with it!"
"From the woman...not a greater man has come...Something like that. I have never translated Latin to English."
"Not bad at all. Exactly in English it says:Among them borne of woman there hath not arisen a greater man." The Conquistador Cortez put it on one of his most famous emeralds that he brought back from the New World. Some say he was referring to John the Baptist, and some say that this sacrilege or vanity brought him and Spain bad luck and trouble for a long time to come."
"So what do you think about it?"
"I don't think about it. I didn't put it there."
"Ah, so this is the vanity of your partner."
"Yes the vanity of my partner who if he finds out that you know of this stone's existence- which he will upon his return in a week or so- he will gut you both and feed you to the caiman crocodiles right here in the lake without a second's thought. The man has been humping through these jungles for 40 years and if we try to run, Gustavo and Fernando will track us like wild pigs. Might we be able to overpower Gustavo now and be ready for Benecio with the shotgun I've got in my room? We could do that if I did not want to be fabulously rich. This ...spot we have found is potentially richer than the Chivor Mine in Columbia. Emeralds have never been found in Ecuador to give you a quick history lesson but Pizarro brought back gobs of them from Peru saying that Pre- Inca high priests used them in their ceremonies and had one the size of an osterich egg that was called the ' mother stone' and that the mother stone liked to have all of her daughters near her and so when it was time to pray all the supplicates brought in the smaller "daughter stones" to make the mother and the greedy priests happy and ultimately made Pizarro very happy who added the 'mother' and her daughters' to all the gold he sacked from Atahualpa in his monument to greed only matched today by corporate oil rapists .And guess what? Emeralds have never been found in Peru ! Nor in Mexico where Cortes brought back his great emerald. No mines ,no nothing...But I'll come clean now I didn't get here, I mean to this area by chance I have research that has led me here . Hell, I knew before Beni-- But enough History... Now lets talk about life and death.

So what are your options ? We can try to hide the truth from Gustavo who you can see is still half out of his mind. We can try to convince Gustavo who, although Benecio is his Padrino,his godfather, can't stand the bastard. Will he betray the bastard who worked his father into the ground never giving him an even split on the oil camps they built together? We can try to convince me who knows Benecio fairly well to let me lie your way out of here but you know I don't really trust the bastard either. He has taught me everything I know about the forest which doesn't count for a rat's ass when measured against maybe 50 or a hundred million dollars or more and I see that quotation on the stone as well... something ominous ...something tells me he may not be happy with half since all I did was come up with twenty thousand dollars in his hour of need for something that is worth millions.So he might just gut me regardless of the good times we've had in the forest setting up for this thing,getting Columbian buyers who will keep their mouths shut and have the worldwide resources to get the emeralds popping up all over the globe so nobody can trace them back to a single buyer(By the way I've made some arrangements of my own in that department with a fellow in Jaipur, India, the Emerald capital of India not usually for this quality of stone, but I've sent him samples and he is anxious to get in the game-this is something that Benecio knows nothing about, Don't you think I know he walked out of here with a nice sized leather pouch of emeralds ? And besides everything I don't like the way he treats Dolores and there are some nasty undertones going on there. He encourages her to go topless and tells me he doesn't want her to lose her nativa roots. I think there's nasty dirty old man mojo going on there.. Hell then the next thing I know he wants me to marry Dolores because I can communicate with her- and probably keep all the money in the family so to speak if I did- and one night nipping sinchicara he said he would make us each crowns of ' stones of the finest water' - thats a slighly old school term for stones of the finest color and crystal that we would wear along with neclaces of placer gold with no nugget less than 3 ounces. Not a bad welcome to the family don't you think ?

Anyway , it may be a drunkards dream as the poet once said but what else is there. You can try to run on your own and either Gustavo will track you in about a half an hour or you'll be dead in three days. This jungle which is so wide open and vast has become your prison. It could be mine as well...
Nina started sobbing and Dory hugged her trembling herself.
"Well this whole thing is my fault. I'm no saint but I was a fool to bring you down here and I see only one solution. Tomorrow , I will talk to Gustavo as the first step and since you already know too much, Nina, lets hope he thinks just a little bit with his dick.His attraction to you...and Gustavo may not mind doublecrossing Benecio if I put the package together properly for him. ...And since you already know too much and Dory has such a keen sense of curiosity,,,do they have that expression in Dutch: Curiosity Killed the Cat...Well you get what I mean...Oh Yeah, I remember a Dutch expression...let me see ...how did that go ? ah: Those that don't honor the little don't deserve the big. On the face of it a VERY quaint expression but look I got it all figured out see I'm honoring the little in fact I bow down to Dolores' little stone I kiss it every chance I get.Because It represents one motherfucking lode of the big that even Cortez and Pizzaro couldn't imagine. You get me. Kleine Beetje?Tomorrow I will show you everything (if Gustavo doesn't kill me first)."
"No don't tell us anymore,"cried Nina thoroughly alert now and terrified.
"I would like to see," said Dory,flatly."I am like that cat of yours."
Nate rolled his eyes.
"Okay, Dory I suggest you give the stone back to Dolores and I will direct her to keep quiet about the stone. If Gustavo mentions it to you, act Dumb."He made a face like Dolores might make.

"Now lets have some breakfast, if you ladies don't mind," and he plucked the stone away from Dory before she even had a chance to give it to Dolores and with Dolores following close behind him and squealing they headed out the back door of the cabin.

They ate breakfast virtually in silence ,with Dolores, now fitted again with her red bra top and joining them at the table. The girls had fried some kind of fish they found looking surprisngly fresh in the propane powered refrigerator, and Dolores had showed them how to smash plaintain slices into patacones for frying and with this she made a quick tour of the garden and snipped an assortment of vegetables which were so young and tender they needed perhaps three minutes in the steamer and then were dabbed with some sort of butter like substance just barely.The rice and the patacones Nina saw were in honor of the riverborn member of the group who did not take even one scoop of the succulent vegetables.

Then the girls retired to their room for a siesta which suprised Gustavo who only shrugged at Nate who shrugged back and he rolled into his bunk in the kitchen.

Nate sat on the edge of his bed straining to hear Viva the Macaw chatting it up with a pair of macaws crossing the lake.His hearing was beginning to fail him brought on by a vicious case of measles he had contracted six weeks earlier. It was useless to try to clear his ears anymore, the phlegm had subsided and anyway he had no doubt that Viva was telling them every detail of the drammatic recent events down to the last detail.

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# 13 The Green Monster

2008-12-26T10:47:00.000-08:00

The empty Sinchicara bottle lay on its side on the table.Benecio's brew contained among its secret ingredients some relatively mild halucinogens compared to what was available in the rainforeast such as ayahuasca and mixed in to 100% alchol concoction he would normally portion it out in nips for mild "sidetrips" as Nate liked to call them.

Now the the chuchuhuasa bark that had been inside the bottle crumbled out of the lip of the overturned empty bottle, a sign that all the Sinchicara's energies had been released into the minds of the imbibers who were sitting and writhing gently to the music HCJV, the Christian Evangelist Radio station with the fifth largest signal in the world. They had had considerable more than a nip of the drugs whose first effect was conviviality and drunkeness.

"I could see the notes,"slobbered Dory as she whistled along to some light classical music.

Watch my hand ", said Nate ,and fingers spread broadly, he passed his beautiful hand which held so much meaning, she knew, slowly in front of her face and she saw the after images of a hand as if she were seeing a thousand hands.

Nina had her head cradled in her arms on the table and said like a little girl: "No one can see what I am seeing."

And Dory put her face in her arms like Nina and said:"oh yes I can, You are looking at your parents and they are smiling and waving at you as you get on the tram to go off to kinder."

And Nina raised her head and looked in horror at Dory who had also raised her head smiling.

"And what was I wearing"

"A red sweater."

And then the two began to talk earnestly in dutch and finally burst with laughter.

Suddenly Gustavo rose from his chair and though he had no comb he made the motions of combing his hair.He took off his shirt and a great Harpy eagle with enormous talons- Was it a tatoo?-flapped its wings and hovered above the table only to return to his chest again and again, finally roosting there but with an angry eyeball peered on the assemblage as Gustavo lowered his voice several octaves and in guttural Spanish began to orate with great gestures like a shaman:

"A Great Beast Lives in this forest and that is why Nate and I and Benecio and My Brother are here. We are here to capture the the great beast with the hard green eyes. It is three meters tall and has 6 heads and is capable of changing its body shape into every kind of deformity you can think of .It eats everything that moves in this forest without distinguishing and farts beautiful music than can be heard at great distance, It has an infinite supply of horned women that are attracted to him, beautiful women accept for their horns and it can speak every language. Once a man has seen it he will do anything to capture it for he has seen it walk around a tree where birds are roosting, (and this is just one example of his many powers) walk around and around until they are hypnotised and all the birds fall to the ground so little effort must he use to hunt and he eats them with his green teeth and green tongues and all of his six green heads and though you may think he is an enemy he is everybodies friend. Everybody wants to be near him and to be seen with him at the best parties because he always has something valuable to say.

Gustavo stopped, suddenly dazed, as if coming out of a trance and confused, slumped back into his chair. Then hit his head hard on the table as he tried to bow his head into his folded arms and missed.

At last they all assumed this position with their faces on the table in stupor and only static came from the radio. Many hours later the sharp click of the off button, or the absence of static,or maybe just the diminished level of halucinogens in their brains brought them all up virtually in unison . A loud sound began to emanate from the the direction of the door.It was Dolores,standing spread eagled between two chairs towering above them, her youthful breasts defying gravity and between those breasts a jagged crystal of enormous proportions of what could only be emerald.She was chanting now ,a loud wordless admonition. There was a plea included and a gloating provocation all at once.

"What is it Dolores?" asked Dory, and to Nate :"What does she have around her neck is that real?"

Nate and Gustavo Both made reflexive moves to get her and they both fell down, still far from equilibrium.

Now Dolores held up her musuem size emerald that had been strung with the sinew of some animal and made a gesture with it to each of the girls.

"You mean it's here," Dory asked , "Dolores?" but got only more shrieks in return.

"You mean it's here, a mine or something,"She asked Nate.

But Nate , who had managed to climb back into his chair only bowed his head and groaned as if he had the hangover of his lifetime.

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#12 Sinchicara

2008-12-19T09:38:00.000-08:00

They returned to the cabin in the last traces of a golden afternoon and prepared to bathe in the lake before dinner. Benecio was nowhere to be seen and Dolores was cooking by herself in the kitchen. Fernando was missing also, not in his familiar free time spot on the canoe bench whittling ever more elaborate walking sticks for the girls which he traded for clumps of Drum tobacco and rolling paper that Dory and Nina showed him once how to roll and he became expert. At the dock, Dory noticed that the boat was gone. Nate seemed unencumbered by all of these disappearances and he bathed and joked as usual.

The highlight of this day had been seeing, very close-up, a family of pygmy marmosets. Weighing not even half a pound, they were the smallest of all monkeys,very sedentary- finding their food in the trees where they settled and most astonishing of all, the extremely accurate replications of human faces;more so than any other primate.At First it seemed as if they smiled and welcomed their brother and sister visitors to the forest, then from the expressions on their faces, it became painfully apparent to the aliens that the marmosets had grown quickly bored and slinked off to sleep: a more productive activity than paying heed to the cooing and chirping humans on the forest floor just 5 feet below them.

As Dolores cleared the table Nate disappeared into the kitchen as well and produced a square decanter with a brownish liquid inside and 4 glasses. Gustavo, who had eaten dinner with them,
started laughing and cried out :"Sinchicara"
"That's right ladies and gentleman," began Nate like a carnival barker , "Sinchicara! Made of 5 medicinal plants (one of which is chuchuhuasa because I see the bark floating in there- and four others so secret only a man named Benecio the Magnificent knows for sure- and even then only on a good day. But! It will cure snakebite Nina. It will grow hair, Gustavo . It will cure sadness madness and sometimes badness. And all ya got to do is drink a few rounds to be delivered."
He poured out what amounted to double shots to each of them and they chugged them.
Nina gasped. Dory did not but her face flushed instantly.Neither Gustavo nor Nate had any outward reaction.

Nate poured another round of doubles."This also has quite acute painkilling abilities , I forgot to mention, and in large doses ,well,let's just say it gives you insight."
"Yes,"said Dory, already a little sloppy, "because it is 100 percent alcohol."
"Shut your mouth, woman,"Barkered Nate, "only one dealer at this table."
"Ja,"she said, "I can think of a lot of times when you did not want me to keep my mouth shut."
"Yes, he said in fond remberance lingering in the reflection, "anyway bottoms up !"
They all threw down another round and this time no one reacted outwardly. He filled the glasses this time and Dolores appeared from the kitchen and thrust forth an empty glass. Nate waved her off and she thrust it again. He tried to grab the glass from her but her reflexes were now better than his .Finally he shrugged and gave her half a shot. She squealed with delight. Nina squealed in return unaware that she had done so.

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#11 Love And Decisions

2008-12-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

Nina had tripped on an armadillo hole and Gustavo, knowing his fate,still grabbed the tachuelo or thumbtack tree- the closest support to him- and saved Nina from falling. He knew he would take a wound, had calculated its importance versus his novias' fall ,and chose pain. He was treating the deep hole with sangre de drago the red sap or resin, with so many documented curative powers ,that he had harvested himself from the tree he found on the way back from their excursion making several cuts into the bark with his machete and catching the sap in a leaf with a prominent drip tip.Nina , upon seeing the wound, became upset. Gustavo with a little bit of machismo but a lifetime of experience with the drug,shrugged it off with a laugh and Nate explained its many curative powers, antiseptic powers, internal powers against ulcers and other ailments and began a discourse that lasted all the way back to the cabin about the many healing herbs and oils of the rainforest. It was a virtual pharmacy, he said, all you had to know was what to look for and where to look.

Benecio announced that he was going to leave the next day and said he was going to cook his famous jungle dinner for lovers, sarcastically letting everyone know that he was aware of what was going on in and out of the cabin.

Each night Nate and Dory, attempted to emulate with their mouths what they brought back brimming in their hearts and souls from their excursions into the trembling forest. Fecund tongues propagated pleasure in original and exciting ways like some newly discovered carnal beasts so deep in the Amazon,dripping with sexual juices , pleasure their only motive for existence. These creatures became real in their pristine love jungles, orgasm after orgasm, producing enigmatic ecstasies.

Gustavo would slip into the room Nina supposedly shared with Dory from his place in the bottom rung of a bunk bed off the kitchen- always to return before daybreak, sometimes encountering Dory in the dining room as she too made her way back to her room which repeatedly startled both of them.They both tried to suffocate their laughter with a hand over the mouth which made them laugh even louder.

The last night Nate stayed up drinking with Benicio . First at the dinner table and then outside on the parted canoe that served as a bench.

Dory carefully opened her door so that she could hear the conversation on the porch which was quite drunken. She knew she had missed a lot that had gone on in the dining room.There had been yelling and it sounded as if the two men had pushed each other in a kind of angry duel which neither had much heart in and now they were drinking out of jars, aguardiente, pure sugar cane alcohol and both were slurring there words.
Nate made a passionate plea: "Benecio, my friend, my brother, my partner in crime, I don't think you have the emotional experience to understand what I am going through. I am in Love god dammit."
"Love , "said Benecio, and he spit over the railing as if for emphasis."Nate, I am an old man.
"Hombre viejo," he drunkenly signed the same words," and old men do not have the luxury of three week fuckings with holandes putas... and with the money, hombre, you will be able to buy your share of french, german, American whatever you want. The oil people will be back here one day maybe you know dat. Or someone will find this place and then we are jodido man. You want to be rich or do you want to fuck ?"
"I want to be rich," said Nate softly.
Dory who had her head up against the door lost her balance made it creak.
The men heard it.
They started talking to each other in sign language.
"Hokay " ," said Benecio, for the benefit of of anyone who might be listening, "and then you say your goodbyes.And Gustavito can take them back to town."
"It looks that way," said Nate.
"I'll be gone with Fernando before sunrise,"said Benecio,"And I am leaving the bitch with you."
"I don't mind looking after Dolores," said Nate protectively.
"You know why I named her Dolores," said Benecio, because she is an Dolor, a pain."
"I don't think your wife would agree with that."
"What does that puta know?"
"I think it's time to go to bed Benecio,"
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#10 The Blue Butterfly

2008-12-09T12:04:00.000-08:00

An enormous Morpho butterfly,a week later, dubbed by an unknown but profound Naturalist, "the bluest thing on earth,"loped by them in long swoops with its six inch wing span.Its iridescent azure wings, as if drawn from a secret palette,made it a rapturous blue anomaly in the green and brown forest tableau in which they stood. Gustavo caught it with ease and put it on Dory's shoulder. Nate took a picture. The girls wanted another picture of themselves and they hugged while Gustavo somehow anesthetizing the butterfly put it in Nina's hands as Dory and Nina hugged and Andrew took the picture with Nina's point- and -shoot camera. Finally, Nina pulled Gustavo, who was combing his hair next to her and he put his arm around her waist familiarly and Nate took a picture of the two with the butterfly on Gustavo's shirt pocket. Everyone laughed as Gustavo blew on the butterfly first softly, then hard until it finally loped away,leaving blue exclamation points as it traveled leisurely through the green and brown. They had spent many days in the forest now and were beginning to accept on its own terms, the terms that Nate had wanted them to undersatnd and with this comprehension real knowledge and understanding of just how vast this ecosystem was beginning to sink in.

Gustavo and Nina were now lovers of six days. The jungle, dealt with on its own terms, accepted rather than struggled against,romance. The danger with the viper that Nina had encountered was the rare exception that proved the Amazon rule :be ready for anything but especially passion. Though she may have felt that she owed him her life so she gave him her body in trade- that would have been an obvious explanation.But it was more than likely that the excitement and fascination came as each were fantasy figures from the culture of the other. The blonde gringa from the olive-skinned boy's TV Porn videotapes the chongos showed to warm men up for their painted ladies had certainly aroused his curiosity,and the liberated blonde European who nourished herself each night with her cultural fantasy for this land that included a handsome olive-skinned boy.It was a part of any good travel adventure:you fuck the culture to really get to know it. And with the desirable mystical airs of the jungle - and of course he had saved her life: sex was heightened by its racial distinctions.They came each night, in unison, a single-colored ecstasy.
They accepted it on its own terms.

Gustavo took Nina's hand to cross the bridge he had whipped up in a matter of minutes to cross the stream. The machete was an extension of his arm and seemed to be constantly in use; cutting vines that held water that was deliciously pure, notching off brush from the trail which was not well-defined, to mark it so that they could find their way back,cutting palm leaves from one kind of tree that were good for this and from another that looked identical to the girls but was chambira the only palm good for a whole littany of weaving tecniques that according to their expert, for which no other would serve. He cut the tagua nut, vegetable ivory, that had fallen from another palm near by and he made the girls notice that all the palms were different. That maybe in an hours walk you would find three trees that were the same. That the forest did not have groves of trees almost never.

The stream bed and then the ground under foot became rocky with small stones as they passed midday and they could hear off to the left a growing sound as they approached, that seemed recognizable to Dory.She tilted her head like a musician.
"There's a waterfall near here ?'
No," said Nate, just the wind through the trees,"I couldn't tell you anyway my ears are all blocked up with phlegm."
"Una cascada," Nina asked Gustavo.
"No," he replied, "el viento.
But as they reached a point in the trail where the sound for Dory was nearly unmistakable she noticed that some trees had been cut obstructing all who would attempt to venture in that direction. She could make out a set of deep wheel marks, like those you might find on a small wagon, through the brush in the rocky mud.

Gustavo chopped a wedge from a balsa wood tree and Nate did the explanation which after letting them feel the lightness of the wood and explaining how it would float so well if they ever neeeded a quick raft he tried to explain to them about toy wooden airplanes which apparently they were not familiar with. Until they had a long discussion in Dutch.
"Ja,"they finally said in unison, "Naturlich".

Suddenly Gustavo sniffed the air like a dog and motioned for everyone to crouch down in place silently. Nothing happened. Then they heard squealing and a thundering of hoofs on the ground and soon passing by not 5 feet from where they hid was a herd of peccary, wild boar, their teeth chattering and looking ferocious in such a large group.Their stench was now upon the humans and the girls held their noses.Then they were gone.

The dust and stench of the pecarry caused them to cough for several minutes after they had passed and as if to clean things off, the hot afternoon brought on a rainstorm, so common in the tropics when the heated earth's temperature floats up to the cooler temperature in the water-laden clouds above and because of the lower density of the cool materials overhead they fell as rain. The earth, in this convection effect, for now, would remain at a suitable temperature for all that lived and breathed in these forests.

Back in the cabin HCJV was playing loudly on the radio but there was no one to be seen . It was a sermon in Quechua, the indian language and Nate smiled understanding the name Paul and Romans.",Gustavo, " he called, get over here," and he talked over the Quechua in Spanish and then sermonized himself as if exulting in God's holy light, "For as through the disobedience of the one human, many were made sinners, thus also through the obedience of the one many were constituted righteous..uh...uh..in order that just as sin reigned in death, so also the grace reigned through rightgeousness unto everylasting life through Jesus Christ Our Lord. A-men."

He grabbed a beer from the the refrigerator and came back jubilant sucking it down."I have been saved and once your saved your always saved,Amen.I've got no worries because God is on my side. I mean there are christians and superchristians and I am a pentacostal superchristian born and bred and I know that his divine grace is acting on me today and everyday. Hallelujah. Sorry. You guys want beers."

"Yes please," said Dory, I thought you were Jewish.
"Why is that?"
"You know because you are fixed down there?"
"Another dick joke ?"
"No it's just-"
"Circumcision runs in my family and the modern thinking is or was you get it or don't according to what they did to your father- anything wrong with it?"
"No it is .. beautiful and I think gives me more pleasure"
You mean a clipped pencil dick gives you more pleasure how could that be?"and he laughed broadly and took her into his arms affectionately.
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# 9 The First Excursion

2008-12-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

Dory and Nate had seen the whole thing. And Gustavo, of course,who had so casually lopped off the snake's head with a flick of his machete( somehow reminding Nate of a martial artist chef chopping a carrot into his magical stockpot void) wore a schoolboy grin as he combed his Elvis Presley hair. But there had been more to it than that: the rearing up of the pit viper's upper half into a powerful s-shaped striking position on the low-hanging tree-limb, the dance of its tongue and whap! A split second before attacking Nina at the ear, Gustavo had dispatched it. The Fer-De-Lance was the most dangerous snake in the Amazon not because it was the most venomous,the bushmaster held that title, but because it was venomous enough to kill more people than any other snake. With its diet of small rodents and birds its favorite habitat was in river-dwellers hovels where rats and mice were always plentiful.It crossed paths often with riberenos and always to their detriment.

So to find the ground-dwelling snake in old growth forest on a tree-limb after sun-up would portend ominous spirits to those who believed in such things.

Fernando had the head in his hand and he was taking it to show Nina, who had heard all about her near death in excited detail from Nate.First the swelling and oozing from the puncture wound, then bleeding from the nose and gums, nausea, vomiting,bleeding from the stomach, finally acute renal failure and hemorrhagic shock.
"We do have anti-venom,' he said, seeing how white Nina had become, "But it's a serum made from horses and some people get sicker from the anti-venom than they do from the bite.People survive the damn thing all the time," he added, "because the snake bites them without enough venom. Say it just blew its wad on a couple of rats. It has to wait to get more venom into its system."

Nate shot off a series of pictures as Nina vomited her breakfast which Benecio said was one his specialties but had set poorly in her stomach to begin with. The idea of scrambled turtle eggs mixed with canned hominy, called mote in Spanish and bits of a smoky meat that he dubbed "jungle bacon" ,was unpleasant to her ,and its gamey flavor was too strong for breakfast food.

But she had eaten it heartily in light of Benecio's new attitude of friendly hospitality. The native girl was there. A dark exotic creature who would be snapped up in an instant by the world's courtier for the runways of Paris or New York, but who seemed totally uninformed of her natural devestating allure ,was perhaps 18 .She wore a bright red bra and cut off blue jeans. She served the food and Nate made some kind of banter in sign language, smiling at her with devilish affection.She snorted as though it was a vulgar joke then laughed oddly in the way a deaf mute would and pranced back into the kitchen. Dory and Nina simultaneously jerked their shocked heads toward Nate .
"Benecio took her in," he said, scraping his plate.
"And how is it you know sign language already . You have been coming to this place... these people I don't know what but..."Dory was beside herself for lack of information.
"Always with the questions," he said marveling, "are you going to be a prosecutor when you grow up?"
"What is a prostetutor? You mean a lady of the night ?"
"No an attorney, a barrister an advocate?"
"You are avoiding my question," she said shaking her finger and bearing down on him with her eyes.
"Ok...I won't... Both of my parents were deaf mutes as were their parents before them.Maybe you can imagine everbodies' dismay when I showed up able to play for the other team.But they did not hold it against me. They were loving, simple, gifted people who made rugs and bird houses for the deaf and dumb craft shop in Albany , New York, and we got by on that and hand-me-downs.

I learned how to talk with my hands before I learned how to talk with my mouth and when I was with them I was always in their silent world that's why I was attracted to the camera. I could take pictures and take them in a certain way that would give special meaning to them ,little gifts for the folks by the way I took them. That's how I developed my style of photography. That's what made my photographs unique. I was appealing to the deaf mute experience,interpreting the world for them, explaining inconsistencies that I know they felt about life ,by the way I framed my shots and the subject matter I chose and the "normal world"thought I was a genius never knowing that I did not have a clue that my "interpretations" would be considered "Art".But that's history. My folks are dead.My photos I don't give a shit about. Every frame I expose now belongs in the cemetary with my parents. Sure fooled the New York Gallery Crowd didn't I?
Yeah. I was a sensation with my show and then the book "Hand to Mouth" which was a study of the beauty of signing hands and my "interpretations" on opposite pages , people were falling all over me and comparing my work to breaking new ground in the same way Diane Arbus did.Then my agent arranged to take the show on the road 14 cities or something insane like that and I started to believe what everyone was writing about me and was finally able to support myself and my parents. Then...Then...It became time to see what I would do next and I quickly came to realize I had used up my 15 minutes of fame.Because guess what ?I did not have anything left to say . So I still get royalties from prints that I did in editions of 89. And I've got about five posters that provide a steady revenue stream and I'm down here taking nature photographs, trying to apply "my interpretation" to the rainforest. Maybe it will click and maybe it won't but I've got a backup plan that I am absolutely not going to bore you with now.

Anyway, it wasn't long before I stopped hearing from my agent and I soon learned that in the speaking world silence is a form of speech.So I used the last of my wad that I had squirreled away to somehow get revenge or find peace or as I said to you once:everbodies got to be someplace so lets say I used my last little wad to hook up with Benecio and have me a place to be. And I swore I would work to come up with an angle, to find "my interpretation " again...but its just not working out, I'm pursuing other avenues now, maybe someday..."
"But,"tried Dory.
"I'm not a photographer anymore,"he said with an air , "I'm a shutterbug."
A great welling of phlegm rose up from his lungs and he got up from the table and quickly left the cabin through the back door. He could be heard hacking for several minutes. He returned to the table his face pale but picked up the conversation without missing a beat.
"Now, as to the sign language," he blew past her making a magicians flourish with his hands," as to the sign language with Dolores, Benecio and his wife have raised her since she was abandonded at age 4, gladly donated to him by some Basque Separatist Priests from Spain who are Missionising up river. But that's another story, far too complex for me.
So he learned,"he said,poorly, but he learned," now hand signing each word with great exageration and slow motion:"the...hand...lingo..."He stopped signing and looked at his bony hands front and back, laughing, "and needless to say I screw up with Spanish all the time," now he started again racing his hands with the words that came out staccato,"pero. no. es. muy. dificil. para. mi. a hablar. con. la Dolores. que. es. una. de las mujeres. mas.bonita. en el mundo."

Dolores who had apprently stuck her head out of the kitchen squealed like a pig and ducked back inside before any of them could see her and Benecio leaning in perfect Juan Wayne fashion against the door post let out a laugh too.
"Me Alegro mucho,"said Dory and took one of his magical hands in hers.
"Yo tambien,"said Nina.
"Great," he replied,happy and resplendent," now we can go on that hike or start our own Bleeding Hearts Society.I think I've bled enough here now for two societys. let's get the fuck out of here."

The hike began with a paddle , Gustavo and Fernando fore and aft, around the lake to catch the birds who came to the forests edge to warm themselves with the first rays of sunshine after the 12 hour cooling off that was the forest night on the equator. Toucans called to each other from high limbs on opposite banks, seeming to enjoy the echo their shrill song caused, The Paradise Tanager appeared again,The green heron,a small bird, for which the lake was named could be seen at various spots around the water's edge thrusting its bill into the water seeming to have success with its fishing , Cotingas, Trogons,and various more average birds to the girls' untrained eye such as social flycatchers and and the black greater ani's were all pointed out by Gustavo, giving the indian name for each one. A Squadorn of Macaws flew over head already full of rumors and lies which they freely touted to everything that breathed in this forest.
"I know where they are headed,"said Nate, "but we won't get there today. I have tickets for tomorrow's show."
The girls, now acclimated to his brand of humor, only smiled.Appreciative of this inviting, magnificent rainforest and of Nate,who they knew was giving them a gift they could never repay.
They docked the boat and found the hoatzins right near the dock in a large stand of marshy foliage.

Clumsiest of all birds six could be seen in what immediately appeared to be nature's answer to the Vaudeville act, fluttering their nearly useless wings and seeming to be acting in consort to produce some comedic routine that had no beginning and no end. The Hoatzin was the only bird that survived completely on vegetation , had a stomach that worked like a cow's and usually fell when it tried to fly. Its stench was ghastly and with its blue eye patch on naked flesh and its blood shot red eye, the bird, about the size of a turkey with a wobbily, Mohawk crest as a final touch to its costume, was a sight to behold. The birds closest ancestor was said to be prehistoric and clearly it looked like something from the age of dinosaurs with no defensible purpose for its existence.

Shortly after visiting this hilarious contribution to life's grand folly from the Amazon Animal Kingdom which on top of everything had the nerve to draw attention to itself with an often repeated nasal squawk, Gustavo saved the day with his razor sharp machete. Nina had by now regained her composure although she looked all around her as if fer-de-lance snakes came in herds and the troop set off with Gustavo in the lead, laughing as Nina took hold of his shirt tale.

They were headed toward Mandicocha , another lake about a mile behind the cabin and as they climbed back up the hill from the dock, the girls saw the full extent of Benecio's garden which was so abundant with vegetables, vegetables that did not belong in the tropics, in various stages of growth. Everything looked bright and shiny and healthy unlike the natural forest where plants were dying all the time as part of the normal course of life. They saw Dolores in the distance, trimming the growing tips off broccoli and putting them into a basket. The girls tried to get her attention by shouting and waving but she did not look up.
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#8 The Dinner (And Dessert)

2008-12-07T06:33:00.000-08:00

Benicio was cooking in the kitchen and Nate went into one of the rooms and closed the door behind him.The native girl they had seen on the dock was nowhere to be found and Gustavo and Fernando ate quietly in the kitchen exchanging grunts with Benecio. The girls rested uneasily in their appointed room.

A few minutes later a door slammed, and Nate could be heard loudly out of the back screen door: "Motherfucker!"
The girls slipped into the dining room to see what had caused Nate's anger.
"For one week, Benny," the girls heard Nate plead,"Maybe two" ,to this surprisingly vain man with slicked hair and a highly labor intensive perfection of a pencil moustache. His hair was colored but the lines in his face and perhaps the extremely thick lensed glasses made him out to be in his late sixties however he projected a dangerous virility usually associated with younger men.
"Estas Jodido!" Came Benecio's bellowing bullfrog of a voice.

He could even be a sociopath for all the girls knew and feared.
"Voor Niets gaat de zon op," whispered Nina,"There is no free lunch".
Dory shushed her and they held each other's hands.

"That's for me to decide,"replied Nate with as much aggression as he could muster . Clearly no match for Benecio.
"Are we not...compadres anymore," said Benecio, in a completely changed tone:that of the wounded soldier about to die. And before Nate could answer he continued: "Did I not tell you what the great Conquistadors called each other? They called each other compadres because they were together because they wanted to be -not because they had to be. Because they believed in the same things...en la gloria.. and nothing could tear them apart. Es un dicho de respeto mutuo! Compadre !"
"And nothing is tearing us apart, Benny."
"Mierda, "he said, "Shit".
"I am leaving and when I am coming back if they are not gone we will not be compadres any more,"he said lethally, "Entiendes."
"Are you threatening me?' asked Nate.
"I never threaten,"he scowled.

The men stood on a walkway leading up a hill in back of the cabin , in a garden where all kinds of common household flowers bloomed, much like you might find in Holland.The girls watched through a screened window in the cabin. Benecio's back was to them but they saw him lunge forward, pushing Nate's chest, causing him to stumble backwards all the while firing off a barrage of words they could only measure by their intensity.They saw him snarl fully in a fit of fury- his dentures tearing the flesh out of Nate's feeble verbal defense like a raging rottweiler-all of which ended with Nate three paces back and nearly falling to the ground.
"All right, All Right, you made your point," said Nate.
Dory thought she heard fear in his voice.

They came back inside. Benecio was smiling like an amiable host.Nate seemed fearful and embarassed but quickly lost the mood and rubbed his hands together in expectation.

"Did I tell you that Benecio owns a restaurant ? All the American oil workers in Agua Dulce, a town about three hours away from Francisco de Orellana along the pipeline, pass up the free food at the canteen to get his world famous ,Gringo Chili.

The girls nodded silently as they had quickly gone to seats at the dining room table and watched this man who exuded malevolence with every breath turn on the transistor radio that rested on a window ledge against the screen in the room.The radio received only one channel HCJV, a Christian Evangelist Station, broadcasting from the Capital, that had the fifth strongest AM signal in the world and so would reach even into the depths of the Amazon. They were playing some light classical, Strauss, which Dory detested.

Benecio returned from the kitchen in short order and professionally served them a bounteous dinner , family style,like the girls could never have imagined.

"Eet ! Eet!" he implored "Very special food. Sir -fried."

"So tomorrow," Nate said, in the same good spirit he had had before their arrival, we'll start our first excurison at sunrise." He smiled again, thoroughly enjoying his meal unaware of any problems in the universe.. The meal was venison of some sort with a flavor like beef but the meat was much leaner and the fibers were short and tender. Vegetables so fresh they must have been picked right before cooking: eggplant, baby carrots ,sugar pea pods, cauliflower, were in bowls down the center of the table. They were perfectly cooked and the girls, at first timid ultimately could not control their desire for this luxury and helped themselves to more and more vegetables. "These are precisely cooked," ventured Nina scooping more baby carrots on to her plate, "and so delicious.Did you cook this meal,she continued bravely trying to make some connection with the man, "Senor Benecio?"

"Yeees," he said , producing the smile of a dentured Cheshire cat.His thick glasses were blotched with fingerprints contrasting sharply with his immaculately trimmed moustache. Dory immediately brought to mind a Latin emulation of John Wayne in the way he moved, and spoke deeply and from the back of his throat. (Juan Wayne she secretly dubbed him.)Only a bottle of rum and a glass sat at his woven thatch place mat.The heavy man must have eaten earlier.He smoked a cigarette and made it clear that he did not want to be involved in any discussion.

"Yes Benicio's a hell of a cook all right ," began Nate .
"And he grows these things here ? " asked Dory.Nate nodded. "Well what about what you told us about this land being of such poor soil quality and the insects that would come to eat these varieties of vegetables. These are not tropical vegetables."
"Remember what I told you about Terra Preta. They think it might be in twenty percent of the Amazon and at least some of it anyway is here."
"Si,"said Benecio,Juan Wayne, the Cheshire with dentures,now more clearly showing the effects of the rum,"la verdad."

After dinner Nina and Dory volunteered to do the dishes in a spotless kitchen few men could ever maintain and Benecio, out cold, head down on his place mat,jarred from sleep by the clatter of kitchen cleaning , lumbered off to a room and closed the door. Nina went into the room that had been designated for the girls with its twin beds and Dory and Nate went out to the veranda and sat on a long bench which Nate explained had once been a canoe that had rotted along one edge beyond repair. It was tradition , he told her, to make canoes that had served the owners well into benches so that one could sit on it at night and relive the great hunts the canoe had led them to. A sympathetic breeze was coming off the lake and made the smoke from the cigarette she had rolled dissipate in all directions. The sough from the nearby palms seemed to fan away the unexplained tensions their arrival had brought. "So what's going on here, Nate? Tell me."
"Just a slight misunderstanding."
"Tell me."
"Well ol' Benecio and I, he's Colombian actually, but he's been in Ecuador forever building jungle camps for oil exploration companies -he built this cabin-and handling the catering- the Jungle is floating in oil you know, just a matter of time till they got a Walmart down here, anyway I met him at the hotel Auca and he told me about this place and there was some urgency to buy it before the Socialist President,Otumbato, gave the Quechuas title to all this land so he brought me down here and showed me how beautiful it was and I fronted him the money to buy it.We own five thousand hectares."
"But why was he so angry ?"
"Because he sees this place as our own private paradise and he thinks that as soon as you start to bring other people here- it loses its magic power. That it will no longer be paradise."
"But so angry- I thought he was going to kill you."
"Yeah he did overreact. I'm learning more things I don't like about the guy everyday."
"I think he has some big plan for this place," said Dory, "that does not include you.Maybe there is oil here."
"No. he doesn't have the cash for an oil operation and besides you have to make a treaty with the government before you can drill for oil."
"He wants something, here," she said.
"Well , he has mentioned some problems back home. No specifics. But I figure everybody is running from a little bit of something. But he loves the forest and I'm sorry you won't have the opportunity to walk through it with him for there is very little he does not know something about and he has imparted that knowledge onto me.
"You are naive or a liar."
"Probably both."
"So you have no plans for this land?"asked Dory.
He took a gulp of rum and then another. "I don't think I have to do anything with it, do I ? Everybody's got to be somewhere and I"m here."
"No," said Dory thoughtfully,an owl hooted nearby. "I don't guess you have to do anything with the land ..."
"This would be a great hideout if I was running from the law," he said with a smile.
"But you're not!"she said and punched him in the shoulder for playing with her.
"No I am not.," he laughed,"And although I'm not sure I don't think Benecio is either.I am running from all the things I did too young in life and all the things I am now too old to do."
"But you are so young"
"Lady, I'm at least ten years older than you maybe more and if you can't read the road map on my face you must be looking at me through rose-colored glasses.I'm a Conquistador just like Francisco de Orellana and I may not find El Dorado but I know I've hit some kind of mother lode." He bent towards her and kissed her. He thrust his tongue and she responded. Their mouths began to glow, capricious and profuse. He took her by the hand past the dimly burning kerosene lantern on the dining room table into what was his room. They helped each other undress unfettered by arousal.
"What is this motherlode?" she asked, knowing with a touch she could bring the level of passion back up.
"It's a source of infinite wealth,"he said panting,"and that's what I have here. You'll begin to see it tomorrow."
She finished undressing him and took him in her mouth.He nearly came pushing her back into temporary confusion. She tasted sweet to him and he thrust his tongue inside her as far as it would go, She let out the tiniest of groans. Finally she mounted him and began to thrust. Fiercely, she gyrated, moving her body from side to side and capturing small pleasures for herself on the road to their crowning glory. She stopped once, breathing heavily. "Too much smoking," said Nate and he thrust upward a half a dozen times reviving her machinations. Still harder she thrust and Nate finally came. She lay on top of him spent, their bodies covered in sweat. He was not quite sure if she had come but he knew he had given her a good ride. His cock disgorged and slipped out of her. She rolled over beside him. "You are so small," said Dory, dreamily.
"What!"he propped to one elbow facing her.
"No sorry. What I meant to say is you are just the right size. With my boyfriend Rene it was always so painful because he was so big but you- I could never have had such good sex with Rene."
"So there IS a future for us pencildicks ?"he asked, still feeling slighted.
"That was the best sex I've ever had,"said Dory.
"And I'm the second guy you ever made love to?"he asked, hopefully.
"No." "Just. The smallest."

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#7 The Lake

2008-12-05T18:00:00.000-08:00

A pair of Scarlet Macaws passed 25 feet overhead as Gustavo cavitated the motor over submerged tree trunks and executed 180% turns with Fernando's help in the bow stabbing a pole at riverbanks and logs to keep the boat on its course.The two young men displayed remarkable skills as they tortured the boat around the twisting tentacle of turns which was the entrance to the Garzayacu (Garza, Quechua for Heron and Yacu from the same language meaning stream ).

It was just about midday and the girls wisely wore bandannas on their heads, Nate, a baseball hat and all of them spf 45. Nina Jumped up and pointed at the birds , but was speechless as they quickly passed from view. The stream was much narrower now and Fernando had armed himself in the bow with a machete, an axe and a chainsaw, prepared to do battle with whatever had fallen into the channel since the last time they had been up this way.

They now motored slowly through what was a more or less straight but narrow channel with Fernando pointing down in the water every time he saw a dangerous submerged log and Gustavo veering the motor to one side according to his brother's hand signals. They had every instinct of a an indigenous to this jungle but they were mestizos of untraceable bloodlines whose family had moved to the forest in the 1950's from a town near the coast to squat on land as luck would have it down river 20 miles from the oil town of Francisco De Orellana and after a generation the ambitious family had learned to become practically self-sufficient.They harvested lumber and shot every animal preserving pelts for the traders who would give them canned goods like peaches in heavy syrup for an ocelot skin.

Then the animals disappeared like bad magic, they thought, and their now ancient fruit trees that Marta their mother had planted when they first came to the area brought them an occasional delicacy and of course the manioc garden would keep them going indefinitely, so resilient and gifted was this tuber as a provider.The chonta dura gave off its fruit only once a year now around Christmastime and one of the boys always managed to get home to harvest it for their parents now that the trees had grown to tall for their aging father to climb and Marta would bottle the leftover fruity sometimes making it last the whole year until the next harvest. They all fished and their father continued to carve out lumber with a chainsaw,the family's most valuable possession, each year going deeper into the jungle for suitable trees. Growing up in the forest with Quechuas for friends they learned many of the jungle's secrets and how to survive there. And they were ambitious.Both boys had worked for La Compania, as the French seismic surveying company that all the oil exploration companies contracted out, was called locally. It was where Gustavo had learned to be a motorista.

"There they are again," shouted Nina,"Why didn't you take a picture of the big blue parrots,"Nina asked Nate, "they were beautiful".
"Macaws" he said, trying to withhold any trace of boredom from his voice, "I actually already have a picture of them. They mate for life you know. Live up to 45 years. I was the official photographer at their 15th wedding anniversary, all the macaws they knew were there. It was quite a celebration."He looked up stream."Now there's something to see!"He stood up bringing Dory to his feet with him.
"Lobos del rio!" shouted Gustavo from his station at the motor, pointing.
"Con Cria !" shouted Fernando.
Nate pulled out a camera that seemed newer than the one with the taped body Dory had seen at the Auca hotel and put a very long lens on it.
"What is it?"
"They are one of the best things you can see in the rainforest,"said Nate."You are very lucky!" Gustavo had slowed the canoe to just about an idle and then shut it off. Ahead of them were 5 giant otters frolicking in the water. Nate drew a bead on a female carrying an infant in its mouth. They looked to be just cavorting but in fact they were fishing together and as their nearly 6 foot length of the adults came into perspective when the boat slid silently ever closer to them, they were elegant and stunning creatures to behold; their gleaming coats glistening in the dappled sun.
"These are the jaguars of the waterworld,"whispered,Nate,"they eat fish mostly and love to play but I saw this same pack devour an anaconda.You see the one carrying a baby in her mouth?"

As he pointed the giant otters took note of the humans and seemed to frolic their way into the oblivion around the next bend in the stream using their webbed feet and paddle-like tales to propel them easily from harm's way.

As the Garzayacu narrowed, Nate grew more expansive about the rainforest, impressing the girls with his near encyclopedic knowledge of the jungle.They saw a white tailed deer and Nate pointed out the scar of a close call with a large cat on its back. He told them stories about how a million Army Ants could terrorize a million things that lived in the forest's leaf litter, picking it clean in a matter of hours. They saw a Paradise Tanager with its light green head ,sky blue belly, and black back,considered by many to be among the most beautiful of Amazon Birds, but for the most part, he explained ,wildlife were not active during a sunny day because there was too much contrast in between dark and light making it dangerously difficult to judge the distance of potential predators lurking in deep shade or blinded of their onslaught in bright sun. The boat scraped the bottom of the stream bed.
"All right," said Nate, "end of the line".

The channel had narrowed to just a few feet of width on either side of the boat now and Nate the girls, Gustavo and Fernando, were pushing and pulling the boat with great effort. Nate began sweating profusely and as Screaming Pihas screamed nearby,the gray bird doing its best to shatter an eardrum of anything that would stay close enough for its song, whee-WHEE-WHEE-oh, so emblematic of the Amazon Rainforest (and whose song can be found in every jungle movie ever made), the boat thunked against a sunken log. Everyone freed themselves of their holds on the boat and shook out the duress from their hands. They sat on the streambank as Fernando went to work with the chainsaw while Gustavo stood on top of the log to keep it from spinning. Nate passed around bottles of water but said nothing.

Once through the log they slid the boat with blistered hands ready to complain, but pushed harder instead. Then Nate smiled as the water began to get deeper and he jumped into the boat helping Dory and Nina to get in .It was a straight path of water as if it had been dug, like a canal. Fernando used a pole to push them forward and Gustavo used a paddle and soon they were in a deep channel of many palms and lianas and birds of all types calling which opened up to a large body of water which startled Dory and Nina.

"Garzacocha,"said Nate, It means, Heron Lake in Quechua, for ...."and he looked around the shore of the lake,"well I don't see one at the moment but its a little green heron that is common here."

Now Fernando had a paddle out and slowly in the hot sun they made their way across the lake whose far side they could not see.Gustavo paddled as well.

"Why doesn't he use the motor,"asked Dory.
Nate did not answer her. Instead he pointed to a toucan on a naked tree branch and they watched it give its one-note call. Now no one spoke and all sorts of strange and powerful emotions were summoned by the seeming infinite variety of beauty in foliage species and their shapes and juxtapositions and fruits and flowering bromeliads. A whelming up began which Nate knew well and he could see it in the girl's faces, the blush of those long lost emotions of childhood marvel and wonder returning, returning to a time before they had learned that the world was profane. Of the time when everything was new and interesting and exciting and there was panic too because there was so much and one didn't want to miss any of it.

He took Dory's hand and she squeezed it the way anyone entering Paradise would.He drew her near to him and kissed her deeply transmitting confidence,conveying to her as he devoured her lips that this was his world and she was welcome to it.

The boat rounded a bend in the lake and a hill came into view.It was more than a hill, it was a giant mound that someone who knew the jungle better than these tourists would be curious about because of its almost artificial appearance , great height and somehow purposeful shape and distinction.But it was covered with very tall trees and a neatly built but unpainted cabin on stilts was visible in a small clearing. The cabin had a wooden staircase which lead to a dock where a teenage Indian girl appeared to be fishing, barechested, with a dropline.

Startled by the sight of the boat she ran up the stars to the cabin. A heavyset,slickhaired man wearing glasses and perhaps a pencil moustache appeared carrying a shotgun.
"Benicio!" shouted Nate and the word echoed on the lake.
The man returned to the cabin and then reappeared without the shotgun.
The three of them got out of the boat onto the dock and Nate spun Dory and Nina around to see something he was sure they had never seen. In the distance where a light rain must have been falling behind the setting sun two distinct rainbows appeared and you could see where each one started and ended, perfect half-circles.After a minute they disappeared.
"I am without feeling,"said Nina.
"No,"said Dory,"I don't think you said that right. She means we are like in a dream so all are feelings have become one feeling."
"I gotcha,"said Nate, "It's the old Paradise overload thing. Still get it myself. What you are trying to say is you are so full of feelings that you are numb."
"Yes,"said Nina Dreamily, "I am full of feelings."
"Full,"said Dory and she reached out and took Nate's hand and squeezed it.

They mounted the cabin steps and were greeted by the cackle of a beautiful Scarlet Macaw who seemed to have a railing all its own, equipped with a food tray , to walk up and down on.
"She's...It is a she?"Asked Nina.
Nate nodded.
"She's beautiful,"she shouted and the bird squawked.
Watch it, said Nate, "that's Viva,and she takes orders from no man. You see that beak she has. say one wrong thing even if by accident and if you are close enough she'll break off your finger without mercy."
"Why does she not fly away?"
"Her wings have been clipped."
"Oh that's terrible,"
"What do you mean, all's she's got to do is eat all day and order people around."
"Oh ,she so beautiful."
"Yeah I fell for her too, but watch this ,"and from inside the screened in window ledge Nate recovered a shiny object which became a pocket watch.
"Look into my eyes , Viva" he told the bird who at first tried to bite the watch, I know that you love me.Look at this object of our desire."
And slowly the bird became entranced by the watch moving its head back and forth back and forth, Finally it shut its eyes and keeled over falling from the railing.
"Is it dead?"
"It's hypnotized."
"That's so cruel."
"Watch."
Nate picked up the bird and even before he could put it back on the railing it tried to peck. It ruffled its feathers and squawked, mildly out of sorts.
"That's our watch bird,"said Nate.
They entered the cabin and neither the girl who they had seen fishing or the man Nate had called Benecio seemed to be there.

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#4 gezellig

2008-12-04T09:06:00.000-08:00

"Here's some good old American food,"said Nate, using the tallest head ,which was his own, as a tent post to prop up the plastic sheet that covered them from the rain, as he carefully unscrewed first the peanut butter jar and then the jelly.

Even with Fernando bailing out the water in the back beside his brother who had taken off his sunglasses and whose hair-coif he still tried to mend through wind and driving rain as he drove the outboard with the tiller between his legs, still a good inch of water passed over their rubber boots unnoticed by the three about to have lunch. Nate gave a carefully made sandwich to each of the girls and they both eyed the concoctions suspiciously. He took a bite of his own and smacked his lips.
"It's perfection on bread,The mango jelly is my own invention. Gives the recipe an international flair.C'mon, try it! I was raised on these !"
Dory took a bite,chewed it carefully and managed a smile: "Lekker". she said."Lekker", chimed in Nina.

"Now I know it's not pickled herring ,"boasted Nate, "the way you cheeseheads are accustomed too, but here we are, all gezellig and all-"

The girls let out a howl. "How do you know this word," asked Dory. This is like the most Dutch word there is.There is not even a proper way to translate it. It goes to the heart of our culture."

"I always thought it meant cozy , said Nate.

"Yes, said Nina," it is ...cozy, but a lot more than that. It is when you are with a group of family and friends and everything...everything is perfect....cozy? yes but so much more."
"I know. Iknow. I know. It's an ambience. A Warmth. A state of being three steps closer to Nirvana than cozy.Gezllig was one of the first words I learn when I arrived in Amsterdam. Yes, it was a Dutch Girl, my first true love, I planned to stay for the rest of my life .I was young and stupid and hopelessly romantic.Still am. Stupid anyway. But I ended up using the word like my Dutch friends countless times to describe moments such as: a group of friends sitting around a table laughing, clearly enjoying each others company or lounging with my girlfriend in her dingy on a warm summer's day reading together.Although you two specimens don't seem to be good eamples of the breed--
"What!"
"Your countryman do seem to have master the way of gezellig as something like a religious ritual that ultimately reflects kindness,openness and a kind of enlightenment that the rest of the world would do well to learn from.

And gezellig is the only word I can use to describe how you celebrate your birthdays. You guys know :you walk into the house and you not only greet the birthday person with a congratulations, but you also congratulate their family members, and even their friends. You then proceed to greet each person in the room with either three kisses on the cheeks or a good firm handshake if you don't know them or if they are men in my case.. And its those three kiss jobs when you greet doubling up on one cheek!" He demonstrated kissing the air "Moowa! Moowa! Moowa! Then you have to kiss the dog !" The girls laughed wildly.
"And The birthday person will have set out hors d'oeuvres and a torte and you spend this wonderful evening sitting in a circle, munching on appetizers and the torte having tea and sometimes booze and getting to know new people and enjoying one another's company.

"Well aren't we gezellig", asked Nate smiling broadly and he gave them both fraternal kisses on the cheek."Moowa! Moowa! Moowa!"

"Yes,now we are ,"said Dory still laughing and pretending to wipe sloppy kisses off her cheeks.

"You see that peanut butter and jelly will do it every time- even better than Coca Cola teaching the world to sing. And certainly much better than your pickled herring or french fries with mayonnaise- disgusting."

And how is it again that you know so much about Holland? asked Dory.

"You show no mercy do you ,my darling Amazon Queen? ? I misspent a year of my youth in Amsterdam awhile back. I thought I was in love."

"Oh yes," said Nina," in love with Paradiso and Fantasia."

"Oh you know those places?" asked Nate.

"If I want to smoke hash," said Nina, "I buy it from a friend and smoke it in my house with my boyfriend or even my family. Just because it is legal we Dutch do not make, do not make...

"A public spectacle?" chimed in Nate .

"Yes, a public Spectacle."

"So you take it home and have a few toots and make everything gezellig with your friends and family.

I don't smoke hash , said Nina, well...when... except sometimes when I am not studying and for sex."

"I knew we'd find something in common , Nina,," said Nate, suppressing a gigantic detonation of laughter.

"I do not think you study," said Nina,tossing her blond head with a superior air.Then realizing the size of the foot she had put in her mouth began to laugh hysterically which was instantly contagious and the three of them giggled on the wooden bench for several minutes.

"No I don't study,Nina,said Nate with a quiet serious air, "And I only do it, just like you, when I am not studying and when I am having sex."
"I understood this joke of mine the first time," she protested but again they began to cry with laughter ;Nina with her fair white skinned face turning so red she now looked like she belonged to a different race of mankind.

The rain let up around four that afternoon and they found a very large sandbank to sleep on. No chance of the river rising and sweeping them away. They were on the equator so nightfall would come at exactly 6pm leaving them 2 hours to set up camp. Nate pulled tents from under the tarpaulin as if he had an unlimited supply, chucking them to Gustavo who set them on the beach, He removed a propane cylinder and a thermos and slowly forsake the boat with a a deep groan as he alighted .He began to plod then prance around the sandbank island stretching out stiffness like a high jumper readying himself to break the world's record. The girls too each set off in different directions exercising but with less exaggeration.Nate could be heard coughing and they saw him stop several times and grab his nose as if trying to clear his ears.

Gustavo and Fernando choreographed the camping scene to perfection. Tents went up. Something was cooking on a small stove connected by a long tube to the big propane tank.A campfire had been built and while the three bathed in their swimming suits in a small pool of slowly flowing river water where the sandbank met the bank of the river, the girls were vigorously scrubbing their bodies, odd pieces of clothing , and the handkerchiefs they wore as bandannas ,all with the same locally made coconut soap that Nate recognized by its scent and between scrubs he watched Dory bring the round bar to her nose and inhale its scent with smiling pleasure.By the time they had dressed in their tents the flavor of seared meat and onions filled the air.A large aluminum pot sizzled on the camp stove. Near the driftwood campfire the girls laid out their washed clothes on branches that they found. Sparks in great showers shot up from the gasoline produced campfire and the night was dark with only momentary spots of weak moonlight filtering down when the cloud cover thinned briefly now and then.

Nate sat down in the sand near the campfire where the girls were sitting. Fernando brought them each a plate of food : some delicious meat that none of them could recognize in a stew like concoction with rice ,which was quite tasty, and a large Pilsener beer ,in its enormous bottle, to drink.He handed each one a piece of sliced white bread from its bag as if he was dealing cards.

"Well ,"said Nate , mocking great satisfaction, "nothing like the Amazon, right girls ?"

He only let their silence last a few seconds.

"We're still on the main highway you see. Nothing but road signs out here. But tomorrow I promise you, we break camp at sunrise and by midday we'll be heading into town."

"I don't want to go to a town ," said Nina.

"Just a figure of speech Nina. What I meant to say is that by midday tomorrow you will begin to see the things you came here to see after we get off the main river and turn onto a smaller tributary of this river."

"Oh.That is good. Please to excuse me I am going to sleep".

"So far we have to travel," said Dory, tiredly, as she watched Nina enter their tent.

"It is not down on any map , " replied Nate," true places never are...Herman Melville. He wrote--"

"I know your Melville"snapped Dory,"And right next to that quotation put this American: "I met a lot of people when I traveled, I even encountered myself. Thats your James Baldwin."
"They teach him?"
"I'm studying for my Masters in Modern American literature."
"You mean you don't have some deep-seeded hatred for Americans like most Europeans?"
"You mean because of your imperialist military industrial complex, your lack of regard for the suffering of third world peoples, your weapons of mass destruction?"
"Yeah...something like that."
"Nina and I have traveled a lot in our young lives. We threw out our preconceived notions about countries and now only view the people we meet, each one as a nation. And we are not tourists we are travelers. We are not sight seekers but... how can I explain this we put on the people and places we meet like they are costumes and we see how they fit. We take journeys within the journey which is our lives and the biggest journey for me, it was much shorter for Nina but now we are together on the most important journey that we will take for the rest of our lives and that is the trip where you know you must reach out to people not to governments or ideologies but to each person and find the little spark of enlightenment that is within almost every person. It is the journey to meet people halfway because therein you find the important things a traveler needs to know."

"Yeah,"said Nate, looking deeply into her eyes with an admiring smile," I believe you might be right about that..But how much of that spark of enlightenment did you find in Francisco De Orellana?"
"I found you didn't I ?"
"Well,"he blushed,"thanks for the compliment."
"It's not a compliment-"
"Thanks for the insult then-"
"It's not an insult. This discussion began about how I feel towards North Americans. You now belong to that group of people from the United States that I have met each an individual nation but when viewed collectively help me begin to understand along with my readings a nation who's size and diversity can not be compared with Hollands. So I could never say that the United states is Gezellig, but I can say I have met many more Americans who are enlightened on various levels, travelers on the same journey as me, than the so - called ugly American.The biggest difference for me is that Americans seem to have no beginning and no end. It is hard to explain but they just seem to move through the landscape of our planet with less tying them down than even a gypsy.Many know or care so little about their ancestors and even their family because when they reach a ceratin age teh cast themselves up to the winds and reinvent themselves. I am sure what I am saying is a gross generalization, but that is what comes to my mind. One day I will visit the country and I know how racially diverse it is and culturally and religiously mixed and I know I will never capture what it is to be an American. Am I wrong to think that Americans do not know what it is to be an American ?"

"On the level you are talking every American knows that if they stand behind certain political and religious icons which must be the same in most countries they are in harmony with the rest of the country. So if the majority are proud of of our flag and like to watch football on television every sunday and get the family together for thanksgiving then they know they are part of the one giant american tribe. But virtually every American because of his race, religion, country of origen, socioeconomic background, feels disenfranchised on some level and it is the politician who recognizes and exploits each niche of disenfranchisement who ultimately wins the elections. Like everywhere else it is rarely about the best man. In poor countries like Ecuador, the man who can unite the poor and the poor indians behind him will win the election always. That's why this country never goes forward, but using your meet-them-half-way theory I have met some of the nicest people ever here. But how do you factor corruption into your equation. Nearly everyone is corrupt. It is a system and a cycle that has existed here since colonial times.

And once you learn how it works as I finally did. I have learned to use it to great advantage. So I'm answering my own question. I'm meeting them halfway. I don't really approve of paying for bribes but since that's how the system works I bribe everyone and everyone is bribable so I am meeting them halfway."

"You can't get things done any other way ?"

"That's what I thought too !"
"What a pity. It tells so much about a society."
"And what does it tell about an individual ?"
Dory faltered."You... would know better than I but if you found something wonderful in this person and the system still corrupted them to take bribes then I guess you would somehow have to reconcile the system within your own system of values and-
"Pay the money?"
"Pay the money and not let it interfere in the beauty you have found within them..." Dory shook her head like she had bugs in her ears and Nate found a bottle of Rum and passed it to her.
"Listen, he told her, "don't let this shake your beautiful ideals.I like what you said and I think we're pretty close to being on the same path but I always look for chance, the unexpected in my photography and in my meetings with other people and in what you would call my journey and the minute things become predictable I try to shake them up because for me life is all about the unexpected. It's the place where I want to be and I've found that most of the time I must act in unexpected ways or else nothing unexpected happens. That's my mantra."
"Tha's why you decided in the end to bring me and Nina'".
"Probably. Ive been acting like this; side-stepping serendipity so long, for my own pleasure,that I don't really examine that closely why I act the way I do anymore."
"That's crazy,"she said and gulped the rum from the bottle.
"God loves a moving target!'

The fire had all but died as they kissed three times on the cheeks and she avoided his awkward attempt at her lips. He gave her his flashlight so that she could find her way in a drunken stumble back to her tent. He rested his head back in the sand and nodded off. Gustavo awoke him after a half hour and helped him to his feet saying something about vampires. It was Vampire Bats he was referring too and while there were none in the area Gustavo like many river dwellers had a deep respect for the rainforest at night.
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#3 The River

2008-12-01T16:00:00.000-08:00

It would be mid- morning of the next day before Nate could get Gustavo and Fernando Rodriguez finally organized for the trip.First they forgot to buy the propane tanks. Then they disappeared for half a day and Nate knew they were using the boat as a taxi service for the local river dwellers to pick up some petty cash. When put in perspective with the king's ransom they would gain when he finally paid them off,it seemed ludicrous for them to steal a few hundred dollars, but Nate suspected that they had probably blown the advance he had given them in the chongos and card games; tempted like all who had folding money in their pockets in this frontier town.

He preferred not to make accusations before a big trip. The Brothers Rodriguez had the best boat around (actually an enormous parted tree , 20 feet long or more and 4 feet wide,which would make the boat technically a canoe with the sides built up with lumber and a keel installed). With Nate's 4ohp Yamaha,they could make 20 miles an hour going down river. Depending on the height of the river. The River Napo was one of the largest of the Amazon's 1100 tributaries, from swerve of shore to bend of bank, over 600 miles beginning in Ecuador, and ending up swallowed by the Amazon herself about 60 miles before Iquitos, Peru.

In a boat with a 40hp motor,about 15 to 20 minutes down the Napo from the town which bears his name ,Francisco de Orellena ,one reaches the confluence of the river Coca with the River Napo . It is at this point that Orellana, his brigantine cruising down the river fast enough to breeze his hair must have realized that the current was too strong to ever turn back with food for Gonzalo Pizarro and his starving noblemen as had been planned- if that really was Orellana's plan. Gonzalo was later to proclaim him "The greatest traitor who ever lived."

By land, not ten minutes in a bumpy car ride from the present shabby settlement which is his only namesake, Orellana had travelled after many months with Gonzalo Pizarro as his leader, directionless and brought to their knees by the unfamiliar tropical climate and terrain, to the banks of the rapidly flowing Coca River . Gonzalo Pizarro, the most ruthless of the Pizarro brothers who together sacked the Inca Empire of Athualpa of Seven tons of gold. Still these conquistadors only became more thirsty for blood and more greedy for riches.

Gonzalo was now leading the most important Conquest of the New World :the search for El Dorado.To the place where the Indian chief brushed himself with oil every morning and then covered himself with gold. In the evening he would dive into a small lake and wash off all the gold and his followers would throw gold and emeralds in after him as tribute.

It existed he was sure.To his palace in Quito a Quechua Indian was brought with a bag of emeralds and even with torture all the Quechua could say is that he had traded for them with a tribe whose language he could not speak in the Andes to the east, a view that Gonzalo could see from the roof of his royal residence. He seethed with greed and the lust for conquest .Rumors persisted. Given all the other Glorious Conquests in the New World why should he doubt it ?

Around Christmas of 1541,near starvation,Gonzalo and Orellana and their ragtag men built a boat, and Orellana volunteered to take it with 50 men and return with food. He never returned. Orellana told the King of Spain upon his return that it was the the current; too strong and the men;too weak. Gonzalo who ate his horses while waiting for Orellana, said it was treachery.

In exchange for an unknowable truth comes the existence of an unfathomable River,The Amazon.A river that is approximately 4000 miles long, in some places as wide as 120 miles,emptying 20% of all the fresh water that the oceans receive,navigable by ocean going vessels for approximately 2/3 of its length,with dozens of tributaries like the Napo , which Orellana rode down moments after leaving Pizzaro, many of them 600 miles long or longer.

As a Conquistador whose voyage of marvel and wonder must have seemed endless ,of necessity, he became a diplomat along with the warrior in him to survive.Throughout his voyage but especially with the friendly tribes and nations like the Aparians he was a clever linguist who copiously wrote down words in the Indian tongues that he learned.Almost always near starvation, he and his men could still fight when necessary as viciously as the many vicious tribes they passed during their 8 month voyage...but although shown riches and roads to riches along the way he took nothing of value from these cultures, except the cultures themselves.

So Orellana and his small band shoved off from the banks of the Coca River where it has been written by Father Carvajal who chronicled the mission, that Orellana, seeing Gonzalo's desperation after marching around in circles for months and now without slaves because he had starved 4000 of them to death, Orellana volunteered to take a ship forward and look for food.

The Conquistadors who stayed behind with Gonzalo ate their horses and then their shoes and waited for months for Orellana's return.

Finally, nearly dead, but still filled with the blind rage that has been bred out of most modern men Gonzalo stumbled into Quito. Quickly revived,he went back to Peru where he was killed in battle.

But the men on board the brigantine could not make it go backwards against the current if that indeed had been their intent, having sailed many leagues in a few days and having seen many Indians and supposing them dangerous although no arrows were fired in the first weeks of their voyage. Orellana approached the Indians who fed them bounteous meals.No fools,The Orellana Explorers, they swore an oath of allegiance to Gonzalo stipulating the impossibility of return and Father Carvajal witneessed it.On they went.

And Orellana did find El Dorado, but no one took much notice. He found the potential Salvation of Humankind if only our modern day scientists can learn its mysteries.Terra Preta is the Brazilian name for it and Father Carvajal, Orellana's chronicler made indirect reference to it in his journal noting:"the abundance of fruits and vegetables here is greater than the best growing fields of Europe. The plants grow in black earth." It is a manmade earth that regenerates itself and is hundreds of times richer than rich planting soil. Scientists have not been able to duplicate it in a laboratory.

Nate,ever the student of history, liked to compare himself to Orellana and he knew, in fact was in a business arrangement with, what he was coming to believe was a modern day Gonzalo and the similarities were beginning to become too obvious.

It bothered him greatly that he was in business with a man who probably had no qualms about taking his blood and the call to India he had made the night before was part of his plan to be as brave as he thought Orellana had been upon being confronted with evil incarnate in the form of Gonzalo Pizarro.

He banished the thought as he pointed the way for the girls to head down the gangplank of the makeshift dock which floated precariously held above water by many thick balsa wood tree trunks. The girls,wore their rather small backpacks with the Dutch flag sown in. Nate jumped in behind them and laid his arm on Dory's shoulder with a pointed finger to identify which boat was theirs.A number of boats, perhaps 8, loading or unloading supplies, had been tied off at the wooden railing .
"What is that tune you keep whistling," he asked Dory in mock exasperation.
"It's Brahm's Romanian Rhapsody, She replied,"Very happy music can't you tell ?"

"Yeah, Very happy music, of course :Brahms !"

One man , his canoe tied up next to their boat, was throwing bloody untreated cowhides onto the dock from his canoe and there was a furious swarm of flies all around them.

A British scientific delegation of six professorial looking men were blocking their way as they boarded their boat. They all wore variations on the classic Hollywood safari suit with the leader overheard to say"Oh come on Harry just choose a goodamn seat. You know for your sake I hope what they say about the Amazon is true.
"What's that Roger?"
"That the bloody place just might change your life and god knows you could use it."
"I tell you I don't know why I am so fucking paranoid,whose got the bloody gin?"
"I envy you Harry,"roared Roger,""you stupid bloody paranoid wanker .It's the paranoid's who actually really and truly think someone, everyone in fact is paying attention to them. I hate to disappoint you mate but I don't care about your paranoia. Spencer doesn't care. Allan doesn't care. And John over there would let you spit into the wind all day."
"Sorry Roger its just a passing thing. Never you mind. Don't get all bent out of shape.I've got balls really I do. I'll show you."
"Hey Spence the paranoid thinks I'm interested in seein' his bloody balls what do you think?"
"Get on the fucking boat," shouted one of those already seated.
"Fuck's sake!" screamed another.
The men finally boarded and Nate and the girls hurried onto their boat sighing in relief as they escaped the flies and stench of the putrefying cowhides.They settled into their single bench seat and Nate ,his face aggravated , ordered Gustavo with a hand-gesture to pull away from the dock.Gustavo fired the motor on the first pull and guiding by the motors control arm, they were off looping around in a wide arc to change directions from upriver to downriver.

"Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe," Nate said,pointing with his thumb back at the British canoe," That's a quote from Frank Zappa, A famous American composer."

Passing now this famous confluence of the Coca River with the Napo River the boat makes a small wave as Gustavo Rodriguez who wears his hair like Elvis Presley in his Viva Las Vegas Period and combs it this moment elaborately as he does about every half hour or so without removing his sunglasses.. His brother Fernando spoke very little and as Nate's Spanish improved he came to think that Fernando was slow because they could understand each other so well. Fernando's hair was just growing out after his stint in the military and as his brother was all smoke and mirrors and larcenous hair ,Fernando was clean cut and styless and maybe simple-minded.

Nate glanced at his pair of Amazons on either side of him, their hair caught by the breeze, eyes aglow with anticipation and recalled his readings.

Fierce warriors, the ancient Greeks considered the Amazons their most fearsome opponents, defenders of an ancient sisterhood which had to be defeated so that male dominance could triumph.It is Penthesilea who leads her Amazons in defense of matriarchal Troy. The name "Amazon" comes from a-mazos, that is, "without a breast." And so the rumor has come down to us and perhaps ,fancifully, to Orellana in a vision of ferocious women warriors who cut off their right breast, so that it does not hinder their use of the bow.The Greek Amazons fought and sometimes defeated the greatest of the Greek heroes; but ultimately retreated to Anatolia and Armenia and Bactria,to the safety of their mountains enshrouded in mist as wave after wave of patriarchal warriors invaded their lands.

But like all the strange stories Orellana and his faithful Chronicler Father did profess ,new evidence of a civilization of Amazons was found recently by Jesco von Puttkamer, a German photographer and ethnologist who was studying the Galkeras Indians, a primitive people who live in the largely unexplored rain forests of Brazil's Rondonia territory. After Von Puttkamer had befriended the tribesmen and learned their language they led him to three secret caves decorated with mysterious markings. Recognizing the possible significance of the site, he decided to call in expert help: Anthropologist Altair Sales of the Catholic University of Goias. After exploring the caves and questioning the indians about them, Sales emerged from the jungle with the astonishing conclusion:the caves were inhabited long ago by warlike women remarkably similar to those described by Orellana.

Among the strabnge matrkings om the cave walls sales discovered a recurring theme: a triangle marked by a deep cut running from one apex to the center obvious to sales as a symbol of female genitalia. It is the same symbol the Father Carvajal reprts on the barcelets worn by the women warriors he and Orellan saw, At least on e of the caves has a smaller triangle inside that Sales speculates might indicate pregnancy. Another triangle adorned with two stripes might have symbolized a tribal leader. Still others positioned interconnected suggest lesbianism. The caves were also decorated with masks that sales thinks were worn by Amazons during manhunting raids on nearby villages. To produce a suitavble hypnotic effect during mating rites the Amazons apparently played flutes, which are also carved into the cave walls. To thius day local indians forbid their women to play flutes lest they take to reviving their Amazonian ways.

In one of the caves, Sales found a rovck with a large basin-like hole gouged out of it there were also grovves running into the basin. That brought to mind one old account of the Amazons drinking the blood of their slaughtered male off-spring,the basin designed to catch the blood ogf the slaughterd offspring.

Some five minutes from the caves still more evidence a Copulatorium. A huge stone with stairs carved into its side. The top of the rock artificially smoothed and used as a platformon it side by side carvings of athe triangle and the phallus, the only male symbol found in the area. This was the ritual mating site.Amazons.

Amazons.The women between him on the boat's only bench, Nate knew by their smiles and head jerks and straining eyes that they thought that the great maw of the rainforest had opened wide for them and they were sliding right in on its tongue, the Napo River. Large white egrets pecked away at tiny fish trapped in the shallows of the sandbars they passed and mealy parrots passed overhead shouting out the day's top stories and even a great blue heron ventured up from the bank once and the girls pointed. Nate did nothing to disillusion them for even for him this river's- edge- growth, mostly uninteresting and repetitive foliage ,was paradise compared to where they had been.

After about three hours of zig-zagging the shallows between sandbars and trying to find sights of interest for himself in what had become his "Green Hell" of boredom during this butt-aching ride, Nate motioned to Gustavo and,adjusting his sunglasses for the maneuver, Gustavo slowed the boat to a stop and slid it softly into the riverbank. Fernando hopped out and tied off the bow to some gnarly roots of a tree that had broken off long ago when the river had flooded its banks leaving only this deformed reminder as testament to its existence.Nate fished some toilet paper out of one his many canvas bags that were under a tarpaulin. Nina seized it and headed up the river bank in a charge.
"Watch out for chiggers!" Nate hollered after her.
"What is this?"asked Nina, wide-eyed.
"Can you pee standing up?' "No. That's too bad. Well then stay away from the tall grass. It is a little bug that burrows under your skin and you will not soon forget it. You might try making a trough with a piece of bamboo and pissing into the bamboo and letting it roll down to-"
"Ah," Dory swatted him," you are having too much fun."
"I've also had my share of chiggers."
She looked at him tenuously.
"No lie. No Lie. I never crap in high grass anymore. If you'll excuse my English."
Nina appeared again very quickly and ran back to the Boat.
"Running won't help you ," he laughed.
"Ha," she said defiantly, "you and your niggers. You won't get my coat Nate."
"Goat," said Dory, Chiggers and Goat You wont get my Goat".
They had a heated discussion in Dutch of which Nate understood only Nigger and Goat and You...won't get..my Goat. and he had to marvel at how well the girls had almost mastered this obscure American idiom.
Nate left the boat and disappeared from view taking a piss and laughing so hard it was difficult to keep from wetting himself. He returned to the bank, machete in hand and wiped it against his trousers.
"It's ok now," he said frankly, "I've killed them all."
The girls looked at each other not sure what to think.

A cecropia tree angled its thin white- ringed trunk and smooth skin out from the bank at about a 70 degree angle, its many giant leaves spattering the ground with shade, near that were several chonta dura, the tall palm that was apparently indigenous but easy to plant and had a multitude of uses including strong alcoholic beverages from the fruit if not eaten, and the living sap could be tapped as well for the same purpose. Bed springs were fashioned from the bark once you removed the spines,and the wood in the right hands was very decorative but hard to work.Besides crafts the wood was excellent for bows and arrowheads and more ambitious utilitarian uses that the docile Quechua Indians of the region rarely aspired to.

Just beyond the chonta dura was a manioc field whose ease of growth, Nate thought, encouraged the river dwellers comatose attitude toward life.. You could fill your belly on yuca and ferment it in a day and get high on it all night. With a little protein from hunting or fishing which they truly, instinctively enjoyed as long as it was not too frequent there was protein to be had so what more did one need in life?

Nate chopped a limb from the cecropia.
"Where did you get that," asked Nina as they waited for Dory to return from fertilizing the manioc field.
"The man who we are going to visit gave it to me. It's from Colombia. See the two roosters fighting on the side of the blade?"
"You said nothing about visiting a man,"said Dory, walking up to them, carrying the toilet paper, a look of relief on her face.
"I have many secrets," he said in evil self mockery,"oh let me turn you on to my one of my two phrases of latin: alea iacta est.. The Die Has Been Cast."He laughed, "Now be quiet while I give you your first biology lesson. This tree , in a place where nothing is common, is common, so I call it a trash tree. It's name is cecropia. It grows fast as hell in light gaps when trees fall in the forest or on river banks, its got those humongous leaves so that nothing can get sunlight around it.It could live 30 years and grow to be maybe 50 or 60 feet tall. There are males and females. I don't know how to tell one from the other...Now if I start shouting ouch, ouch.. 'he kept repeating as he moved the branch from one hand to the other, "ouch..The cecropias interaction with azteca ants, ouch... you see them... I can't hold this thing much longer is a classic case of defense mutualism in the tropics. The tree provides the ants with a nest made of many chambers... see them along here ? ouch! The ants burrow into the soft tissue within the stems. Food is also provided for the ants that the tree produces at the base of its leaves. Ants patrol these areas and prevent insects from damaging the plant." He tossed the branch in the river and little red welts were appearing all over his hands and arms from the azteca ants."Those bastards were just doing their jobs. Ouch. But there you have it Defense Mutualism. You watch my back and I'll watch your back. There's a lot of that going on down here in the jungle."

"So there is a settlement or village downriver or something? Why you haven't told us anything about this man before now?"asked Dory.The she added dryly:"Maybe you are trying to watch his back."

"That's rude, said Nate flatly.What do you think I am some kind of criminal ? All right now listen up , " he said as if talking to fifty people," "the way I figure this thing is that I picked up some hitchhikers who begged me to take them along without bothering to ask,"he held up his hand to stop Dory, "and I'm glad you didn't- why I was going into the Jungle.I am a photographer that is true and I have been down here for quite awhile and made some acquaintances and what business is it of yours if I stop off to see someone as long as I show you the beauty and majesty of Primary Amazon Rainforest in a place and in a way you could never have imagined in your wildest dreams. Yes I will take photographs but I will also visit whomever I choose and as of this moment I am officially declaring myself Chief Asshole of this vessel and that means that I get to give the orders...Capiche?"
The girls looked at each other and Dory piped in first:"I believe you say: Aye-Aye ,Asshole.Sir."
"You're damn right that's what you say now huddle up."
"What is this huddle up ?" asked Nina.
"It means get close to me while I put this plastic over our heads and find a bottle of rum because look out there, he said pointing with his chin, his hands already clutching the plastic.
And the girls , in shining sun,could see a quarter mile in front of them the rain in solid heavy sheets headed their way. He pulled the plastic completely over them and opened the bottle of rum, "Welcome to the Rainforest," he said and drew the first gulp.
Dory snuggled up to him as the boat took off and the rain hit loudly against the plastic,"Where did you learn so much biology?"she asked.
"I'm not a complete idiot," he said softly, "How many languages do you speak?"
"Counting Greek and Latin?"
"Yeah."
"I would say six fluently and eight passably and with a few more weeks practice in Spanish..."
"No.No.No. "he said," Spanish is the only one I may have over you , I"m the Chief Asshole and if I see you practicing your Spanish it will be Adios for you."
"Lo que tu ordenes Asshole Jefecito!"
"Did you say what I think you just said ?"He asked and held the bottle to her lips and forced her to chug. She smiled and passed the bottle across him to Nina who she caught with a contented look on her face.

VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/

Prologue & #1The Hotel Auca

2008-11-28T18:45:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER THREE...PROLOGUE

A lover's embrace, the two men slow danced to American Country music in the early hours of the morning long after the bar and Restaurant "Gringo Chili" had closed.They were alone among the stale smoke fumes, the remains of body stench commingled with spilt alcohol, and the jangle of all that limp libido a man throws off with his tequila when a whore just won't do and he's missing home and even his wife. They turned in a slow circle, swaying with the music. One man, the bigger ,latino ,of the two, began to strain as he struggled to support the weight of the other who ,shorter and until this moment wearing a cowboy hat, danced lifelessly.The cowboy hat landed brim side down in a puddle of blood as the big man brought this smaller, flyweight man with dirty blonde hair, light skin and freckles on his face,with a great bear hug lift up to his eye level and looked at him in the face through his thick glasses. The lesser man opened his eyes and gasped. The heavier, and now by the light of the juke box discernible as the much older man, twisted the knife that was in the flyweight's chest and with a great oozing of blood the man went limp.

The heavier man dropped the dead man to the floor on his back, knocking over some chairs.He withdrew the 8 inch long hunter's knife. a little more than half of which was a thick upturned blade and the rest, a handle of black buffalo horn that showed chips and scratches as he wiped the blood first with his finger and then looking slowly about the half-lit room decided on his pants, which were already red in the front, to clean his knife.. He chose the side of his pants leg where there was no blood, cleaned it in a cursory manner,his hand as well, and put the knife on the wooden food preparation counter.There he picked up a meat cleaver.. He bent over the dead man with a meat cleaver and whacked at his ribcage until he reached the man's heart which he eviscerated tugging with his hands and once free, put it along with the meat cleaver on the wooden food preparation counter.

He dragged the man out the back door of the establishment and loaded his body into a pickup truck that had been lined with plastic. He hoisted the man high above the truck bed and shoved him aboard. Quietly, he shut the tailgate.

From a barrel he threw sawdust and blood clotted wherever it landed on the filthy linoleum- and not just from this gringo - there had been two broken beer bottle fights that night. The Gringo ambulance from the oil workers dispensary had come twice and hauled off the victims. The local Police had come and gone twice two and the large man as owner of the establishment did all he could to conceal any evidence that might incriminate his niche market of American Oil workers. He told the police he thought they had been attacked by Colombians who had slipped over the border only eirht miles away in robbery attempts, but with his limited etyesight and the fact that the place was so busy he could never be sure. He sent them on their way each time with a bribe, a small present for having been so vigilant and in their reorts they would write nothinmg at all for attenpted robbery would look bad with the gringo authi=orities and just like that they might forbid their workers from coming to his estasblshment.

With a powerful hose he worked the bloody sawdust down the large grease trap near the stove that led to the sewer system. He made sure there was enough liquid not to clog the drain.He ran his knife under the hose while he held it and water splashed his thick glasses. He cursed under his breath and let the hose run on the floor while he wiped his glasses dry with his shirt. Satisfied that the bar was clean. He put another several dollars in the juke box and chose some tunes at random.Finally, he took the heart from the counter wrapped it in cellophane and put it in his stainless steel industrial freezer.

He locked up the back door to Gringo Chili and let Cristobal his Rotweiler out of his crate and through the driver's side, the dog leapt into the cabinto take his place beside the man. He turned on the cabin lights to examine the stitches in the dog's left stifle and grunted his satisfaction.

A drug dealer had given the highly bred dog up after he had challenged it to a pit bull in one of the weekly organized fights that the man tried not to miss. The dog had the strongest "prey drive"directed toward humans he had ever seen as he mangled two men for the owner's pleasure the week before. But the coke dealer, with his gold handled ebony cane that he used to thrash whoever did not please him did not understand the science of pit bullfighting and the pit bull, a ten fight veteran, scarred and freshly stitched was perfectly trained for killing other dogs. only the pit bull owners fear of retribution from the drug dealer, from the fierce ignorant heart of machismo had him pull his dog off so that both of them, the dog and the man, would live to fight another day. The dealer turned his back on his canine weapon as it bled in the ring.The big man assesed the situation carefully then recklessly measured his chances and stole away with the wounded mankiller, his clothes not unlike tonight covered with blood,he had carried the 40 pound dog close against his body the 300 yards to his truck and then used his shirt to staubch the bleeding. For good measure he bound the dogs muzzle with cord. The dog was slow to heal but the man taught him to respect his new owner even as he encuraged with cruelt his "prey drive" against all other humans.They were fast friends he chuckled. The kind that should never turn their backs on each other.

He drove through the now sleeping town of Agua Dulce and just outside the town limits with its smoothly paved macadam he veered to a dirt tract that put him in remnant growth rain forest arriving ,after 20 minutes of dust and exotic bugs in his field of view, at the boat ramp of the Aguarico River.He turned off the engine, rolled down the window and sat perfectly still.He strained his left ear for several moments. Then looked around him in all directions. He opened his car door and walked down the steep dirt incline which was the boat ramp.At the water's edge he looked upriver and down.

He backed the truck down to the water's edge and set the parking brake. He let down the tailgate but before throwing the body in the water he stripped it of its clothes and made slicing cuts into the man's flesh.He called the dog which had remaine in the cabin of the truck and it opened the door with a bark of excitement and licked the dead man's wounds. The man commaned it to stop and the dog ,limping, roamed nearby.

He threw the man's clothes on the river,stopping briefly to examine a hole in the leather heel of the flyweight's cowboy boots;frayed layers of leather that whorled downward until the moon could be seen as he held it to his eye like some bizarre telescope.Looking through the heel of the dead man's right boot he bayed and gave a little knowing laugh. He threw the boots in the river and they sunk. The clothes floated briefly in a pool where there appeared to be no current and then they seemed to be pulled under. That was the spot he was aiming for. .He gave the man's body a gentle shove. It only had to cover six feet. The man's body arrived at at a leisurely pace to the motionless pool and the elder man watched closely. Cleaned his glasses and strained in anticipation. Then it happened. Piranhas began to hit the body.The scent of blood in this dry season brought the largest school he had ever seen and the Gringo appeared in the flesh only one more time a few seconds later and he was already half gone..It was the luna menguante: day 5 or 6 in the 7 first days of the waning moon when the trees were best for cutting and in this case the cloudless sky gave off enough light to see a cut man devoured by fish so frenzied the water all around the disappearing corpse seemed to boil and for an instant levitate. How well the large man knew the forest to be able to calculate that the normally vegetarian piranha would be ready for him after this drought. He grunted in satisfaction.

From his truck he pulled a towel and a change of clothes. He bathed the other mans blood off his body without fear.He cleaned his knife carefully. The fish had plenty to occupy them. Then he threw his bloodied clothes into the water which were in turn whisked away by what his trained eye saw to be a rising current. He could smell the fresh rainwater from the rivers to the north beginning to arrive. It will rain by first light ,he was certain.

Now nearly sober, he thought back over the evening's events and allowed himself a smile.

Chapter FOUR

The fresh air carried on the lazy current of the Napo River ,like wafts of elegant perfume, was almost guaranteed to arrive at the Hotel Auca ; a gentle, exotic breeze brought from upstream .The main building of the hotel,the only hotel for a person with any sanitary standards to stay in the town of Francisco de Orellana,had walls of thinly painted white cement and windowless rooms save for small vents in the bathrooms of these prison cells , which went for eight dollars a night. The recently constructed bungalows across a large refreshingly manicured lawn that was festooned with many flowering native plants and dozens of cages that held wild animals fresh from the jungle, were thirteen dollars a night single and seventeen dollars double.These seven sepulchral, clapboard, bungalows were decorated with prefabricated interior walls that had been wood chipped from the Brazilian part of this jungle,then shipped to China where most raw forest went to be transmogrified, then shipped back to the western world again as imitation maple tongue and groove partitions for resale as, easy to install and cheap to buy, paneling. They had Hawaiian themed curtains around their good-sized screened in square holes (which suggested windows) and which allowed for clear reception of Proprietor Senor Alberto Suarez', diesel generator that until recently would shut off and on again at any odd hour of the evening because of the amount of water that was sold to him in the adulterated diesel which he bought.

The cabins had two high watt incandescent lights which generated tremendous heat and so were used at a minimum, but the real trophy and worth the price of the bungalow alone were the oscillating fans which rose five feet above the floor and blew mercifully until two or three in the morning when the generator ran out of fuel (if it was functioning correctly) . The blades sucked in that juicy river air making for a not unpleasant rest once you got used to the noise of the generator. Regular guests like Nate Truant were thrilled when they heard about the itinerant young man,who called himself a British Subject,whose accent revealed an upbringing in the deep American south.Despite a manner of speech and action to the contrary neither did Gordon Cuthbert deny rumors of an aristocratic childhood in Hong Kong. Wafer thin with a face like a pale moon and antiquated round rimmed glasses ,he was so unimposing in demeanor as to practically have the quality to non-exist .He had somehow landed in Nate's former base of operations ,as did every loose nut, at the Hotel Auca.The Oasis at the end of the road.

Nate, with brown hair that he kept in a modern style,or maybe it just fell that way when it was cut to the one inch length he preferred, was lanky without being too tall,green eyes, full lips and and on the whole striking to women except that at this moment he was gaunt and pale from a three week bout with the nmeasles.

Cuthbert, whose Spanish was flawless talked Senor Suarez into free room and board in exchange for developing a contraption of funnels and hoses that would separate the water from the diesel and, he promised, no longer foul the British- made Cumins and Perkins generator with which he was already on intimate terms and as everyone was soon to learn mechanical expertise was just another trick from his very large bag.

Nate befriended Gordon who with all of his eighty pounds of weight and five feet of stature had the gumption to tell his companion that he was a black belt in Karate.He came out of his bungalow wearing his karate Gi and a black belt and in a businesslike way Nate joined his quick-paced stride as Gordon had told him they were "off to earn a living".

A Saturday morning, market day,when the town was full of livestock and men selling twenty-five cent gadgets like a bright yellow plastic device one could plunge into an orange or grapefruit to suck out all of its juice,the men barkering from the backs of pickup trucks wearing microphone lavalieres emitting tinny amplified sound. Dish sets to be had for a dollar and a half. Nothing more than three dollars except livestock. Fruits and vegetables trucked in from the mountains or even the coast. Indians offering their finely made baskets to buyers from the capital who would pay them pennies on the dollar for finely woven chambira shigras that they would resell to the tourist shops in the capital for ten times what they paid. Baby animals from the jungle which would look like 110 pound rice sacks that moved awkwardly on the shoulders of riverdwellers who had perhaps paddled since early Friday to arrive for the market- but those deals passed quickly from the pipeline road to the alleys where men with enclosed trucks and cages were waiting.

Into this melee would strut Gordon his spot apparently chosen in advance , his tools already gathered by an unseen assistant. First he began by performing several very complex katas, the exacting sets of movements that must be memorized by every karate devotee which he punctuated with little shouts . A young boy, the assistant, appeared and began yelling to the crowd and some then more began to turn their attention to the little white man in the white costume.

When perhaps thirty people had gathered he had the assistant hold three boards together and confer with the crowd as to their authenticity. In one strike with his fist he broke through all three. The crowd moaned and he stood with his fist extended to allow them to examine his hand for damage. Next he did a similar performance with his feet and now there were a hundred people. The boy asked the crowd if anyone would like to fight him and they all laughed. After several more amazing acts of destruction the boy struggled to put two thick cinder blocks on top of each other and now, citizen,colonist, and Indian, together, were ten rows deep as Gordon broke through the cinder blocks with a chop of his hand. He paraded the hand in front of the crowd slowly, allowing them to see that there was no damage.

Three simple folding chairs were brought forward and the boy explained to the crowd what would happen next. The chairs were soon filled. Gordon hypnotised the three seated people with the classic pocket watch technique and they were under within a minute or two. Next the boy produced a tool which to Nate who was kicking himself for having not brought a camera appeared to be nothing more than a needle nosed pliers.Quickly, Gordon extracted rotten teeth from each of the three patients, awakened them with a snap of his fingers, and planted some thick gauze that he had dipped in puro, 100% sugarcane alcohol, in each of the extraction holes.

The patients bewildered but painless shook hands with the karate dentist and went on their way.After the first three patients, there was a line so long that Nate left after a couple of hours.Rotten teeth littered the dust all around the three chairs.

Nate believed that Gordon,such a young man, for he was only in his twenties, could probably go through life without permanent employment with the amount of skills that he had and though Nate wanted to confide in Gordon he knew this man had no interest in earthly riches and that his eccentricities would eventually stand in the way of anything more than a novel acquaintance. On the day Gordon left he was wearing, a slightly tattered Saville Row three piece winter wool suit and in the typical sweltering heat of a Francisco de Orellana day Gordon did not sweat a drip. He had told Nate he could control his body temperature and Nate, sweating in a pair of running shorts and a t-shirt, thongs on his feet, realized that it must be true.

"That which you seek," said Gordon in his drawling, high-pitched , sibilant voice,"may make you wealthy or it may kill you.Be careful Honorable friend, ya here."

Although Cuthbert had claimed that he was also a mind reader, Nate wondered with a shiver if he had said anything when he let Gordon hypnotise him.He just nodded his comprehension to Cuthbert.

"Only by behaving humbly,"Gordon continued,"can one be truly open for karate's teachings." In a millisecond the toe of his shoe was beside Nate's temple and stayed there. Nate froze on the spot. "Behave humbly, Suh, for what is true of Karate is often true of life. You do right now, ya here."

"I'll do my best Gordon,"replied Nate, "write to me sometime care of the hotel Auca and I'll write to you care of the Queen of England."They both smiled and embraced stiffly and Gordon, like a tumbleweed was gone.

The results, Gordon's water separator device, greatly pleased Alberto Suarez ,and Alberto,like everyone else, awestruck by this whisper of a man let him stay in a bungalow no less ,for weeks, and then even paid his bus ticket back to the capital.Nate may not have learned humility, but Gordon had taught him the art of hypnosis which he hoped to someday have a go at. He had once thought history was useless information but look where it was taking him.One must know the past,he said to himself sounding like Gordon Cuthbert, to know when opportunities for the future are presented...Who knew when hypnosis might come in handy ?

A flop house where every outsider going to or from the real Amazon made home if even just for a night, the Hotel Auca distinguished itself by its misnomer though few people knew or cared.The name Auca in the Quechua language, a direct link to ancient Incan dialects and spoken by more native people than any other indigenous language in South America, simply meant " savage" and was a disgrace to the once proud Hoarani Indians for whom the insult was meant.

A peeling black and white larger-than-life size photograph of the owner, Alberto Suarez, with some naked and nervously smiling members of the Hoarani tribe in this awkwardly staged mural form covered one wall of his Cantina, and the bar was decorated with all sorts of plumed and clawed artifacts,genuine for sure, that the Hoarani had traded him no doubt for the joy of the machete, a tool they had previously never seen.This was a small group,it seemed, the ones ensnared by the pipeline on the other side of the river and still miraculously undiscovered by tourists and curiosity seekers looking for shrunken heads (which was not a Hoarani practice but a Shuar, a tribe quite distant and long since deculturized)but their teeth, it could be seen quite clearly, had learned the pleasures of refined sugar and like their culture, it was immediately visible that this tribe that once lived in the stone age was now with the rest of modern mortals on the low road to decay. Obesity would be their next challenge.

Alberto displayed the most civilized manner and sympathetic smile of any man and yet he was deeply entrenched in the illegal animal trade, openly so, and ran a kind of zoo-morgue where he brought the finest, wildest creatures for the display of his guests before transit from harpy eagles with their six-foot wing spans, to jaguars defeated and docile towards death after a day or so, and the smaller cats and infant monkeys of all kinds whose mothers had been shot to get at these helpless creatures. All of which Nate photographed guiltily because he knew he'd never get shots of such intimacy in the wild and framed just right no one could tell the creatures were caged.

But elation for his work one day turned irrevocably to manic pity and he began to shoot the same animals over and over again in the period of a week or sometimes two, when he would layover in this place as he was nonchalantly interviewing hotel guests to find the right person to share his secret with, documenting the animal kingdom's little deaths for a photo series he wondered if he would ever mount, already entitled "Amazon Crude".Each day they grew more gaunt and he photographed. They rammed themselves into the bars and he captured it. They cried out. This he hoped would transfer to film.And Alberto Suarez with the most engaging sympathetic,civilized smile would shrug his shoulders helplessly and continue smiling. The next day or the next week, run like some macabre auto showroom, Alberto would fill the cages with new and even more exciting models for his hotel guests to test drive to their deaths..

In this setting Nate met Isadora. He was using his Nikon f2 that he had to keep light tight with gaffers tape between each roll but had a good leica 80millimeter lens on the camera. The Harpy eagle was performing its death dance and he was recording it for posterity. She walked out from behind the cage and he followed her with his camera.The 80mm was perfect for a portrait and he ran off four shots before she figured out what he was doing.Trees shaded the whole "zoo" from the blistering morning sun and the filtered light was perfect for photography. He wanted to switch to Black and white to capture her stunning posture. The way her walk commanded the space.So out of her element and yet so sure of herself.

"No thank you,"she said,politely, her English perfect except for something Nate took to be Scandinavian in her accent. She was a brunette with freshly washed and shiny shoulder length hair that had a slight natural flip to it in the back. He saw her take out the familiar Dutch Drum Tobacco and quickly roll a cigarette.He noted that her whole encounter was like a scrubbed clean Dutch door step.Done with all that pride and vigor. But she was a beauty and he was never a slacker to try to earn guilders in that department.He knew he looked like a half empty sack of potatoes from all the weight he had lost from his illness, but he had never had trouble attracting women with his classic good looks and his large green eyes he had noticed in the mirror seemed even larger while sporting the "gaunt look".

"Ik hou van ja" he said easily mustering the charm for the words.Her high strong cheek bones and the chin that did not jut but announced her presence struck him hard as he approached for a handshake. Her green eyes flecked with brown. Nina her blond haired traveling companion came into view, also a beauty, but completely out of sorts:"We've been in this too hot fucking town for almost a week now ,"she whined, "and where are the river guides that the books say we will find here to guide us? Everybody wants to steal our money".

"I know it's a bitch isn't it, "said Nate,forgetting to introduce himself and snapping at Nina.He picked up the beer that he had set on the ground while he photographed, "And even if you find someone there is about a 100% chance he won't buy enough gasoline ,or his motor will seize up or he will forget drinking water or feed you sardines in mustard sauce for a week or if you have really bad luck he'll take all you're money and rape you too.
"Yes," said Nina," we have already experienced that part with a man named Jaime who tried to take advantage of Dory and Dory played along moving in close to his smelly body until he was in no positition to strike her . Then she grabbed his shirt where it came together in the front and quickly started to twist it until the man was strangling. Then I kicked him in the balls as hard as I could."
"well what if he had a knife or a gun," said Nate trying to regain his thunder.You just tasted the first bitter sip of the poison here. Let me tell you about my former friend Ezra.

Right where you're standing stood a Quaker friend of mine not more than a month ago and he was an agronomist, did his stint with the Peace Corps, and we used to talk for hours old Ezra and I . He bought himself a plot of land down here and was going to grow palm oil trees to sell the oil to the palm plantation. All he wanted was a simple life. But he had a plan and he knew where he was going. Well the palm plantation employs 900 men. They say they like convicts as employees because they can work them harder and they'll keep there mouths shut cuz they're wanted by the law.. Well god dammit, wouldn't you know it two of these bastards, convicts, who were working on the palm plantation one day slipped on to Ezra's place and gave him and his wife machetasos, cut their heads clean off. Anita,the woman, got her head cut off while she was being raped because apparently the vagina...You don't need to hear that...
He paused and gulped his beer.

"Then there was a big confusion here, maybe it was a Quaker thing I don't know but they had it in their wills that they wanted to be buried in the same coffin . Now I don't know how they sat down as a loving couple and thought of that ahead of time ,but they did and the little mortuary here only has prefab coffins so they had to find a carpenter to make a double-sized coffin to fit them both-- and you're going to tell me you are all right on your own because you're Dutch.Because you've hitch-hiked from Amsterdam to Istanbul or some such shit! You're liberated! Ladies (and I do mean that in the most genteel American way I know) wherever in the the hell do you think you are ?"Nate's lecture ended just short of a tirade and he hacked up a mouthful of phlegm from deep in his lungs, walk out of sight around a corner of the building where he could be heard spitting and coughing, but soon returned quiet and tired.

"We can manage ," said Nina obstinately, "Between us we speak eight languages so Spanish is coming to us very easily.And we've hitchhiked all over the world, is that right Dory?"

"Sorry for your friend," said Dory.

"Oh yes,"said Nina, "What's the matter with me. I am sorry too. Life is full of tragedy but we must carry on.I mean--"

"I know what you mean, "said Nate.

"I meant no disrespect you understand. It is just the way I believe."

"No harm done," said Nate with a reassuring smile.

They spoke for a time in Dutch to each other with Nate looking at "Dory" most of the time.He tried on what sounded like her nickname .Dory... Dora, he thought,that's not a Dutch name. Dora is an out of fashion English name. But Dory, by any name, well ,he would love to take a tumble with her .Both of these women had so much pluck and moxie-- and they were beautiful. He loved them.

"Well," asked Dory exasperated, "Do you have a way we could go? People we could trust." and then in a soft,persuading voice "Maybe we could go with you. We would be no trouble? We have hear so much about the beauty of the Amazon and we think we are not very far away here where we are, yes?

"What's That?" he asked and coughed up some phlegm. He moved quickly across the yard to spit beyond the edge of the building and stayed there for a minute clearing his lungs of further phlegm and spitting it. Then he held his nose and blew trying to clear the passages to his ears. He stood there for a moment and sipped his beer thoughtfully. Then returned smiling.
"The Amazon ? Is that what we were talking about? It's beautiful all right," he replied, his voice becoming gentle and distant, "But how do you know I'm not just coming back from the jungle? Or maybe I'm not leaving here for another two weeks? Or Maybe I'm going to stay out there six months looking for El Dorado?"

Nina could not contain herself:"Because that nice man Senor Suarez, who owns the hotel, he told us you usually don't stay out more than two or three weeks and that you were a very kind and trustworthy man."

"Son of a Bitch," he said, "muchileras "!
"What does this mean?" Asked Dory afraid that Nina had said something to offend him
.
"It means," he said unable to keep a straight face,"That you had me set up from the beginning. Well I'm afraid I can't do it this time. I may be staying out for a long time. I have work to do. I'd love the distraction...But I can't do it, Sorry."he concluded, waving them off as more phlegm rose from his lungs and he walked away.

"So what are you doing here?" asked Dory, trying without subtlety to further engage Nate and pry loose a different conclusion for her and Nina's holidays.She had followed and caught him in a moment of deep contemplation, again at the side of the building.
"Shit ! Don't sneak up on me like that. What am I doing? Is that what you asked ?"I'm taking photos," said Nate with a boyish grin, "shall we step out of the sun".

"Bah! It is too hot here!"

"Your damn right it is !"

"And dusty! Doesn't it ever rain?"
"Yeah, but I guarantee you the rain is just the other side of dust."
"Excuse me ?"
"You don't wanna be here when it rains either.This is not the rainforest anymore."
"No, that is obvious."
In the shade and decrepit lawn furniture, still in sight of the zoo morgue, after Nate had brought beers for both of them and another for himself,they exchanged names formally and drank deeply.
"For money?" asked Dory, " take your photographs for money?"
"Maybe,"replied Nate giving the question deep thought, "but I like to think of myself as a tourist in my own reality."He put on a clown face:"And hey I'm having fun and I do wish you were here."
"I think you are a little bit wrong in the head." said Dory, matching his clown face with one of her own.
"Exactly," he replied.
"But you go down into the jungle to take your photographs or to be this kind of tourist or whatever it is you do? " asked Nina.
"Yeah, ' with my trusty river guides and cases of beer,and rum, and lots of food and my cameras.
"My father has a hasselblad,"said Isadora contemptuously.
"Well that must make him a better photographer than me, " said Nate ,smiling.
"No he is an orchestra conductor.He lives in the Hague with his new wife but he comes to Amsterdam to conduct the Concertgebouw Orchestra."
"He always leaves her tickets at the counter ,"said Nina, supportively.
Dory glared at her. "And my mother was a dancer", she added quietly.
"Hence the name Isadora," said Nate.Isadora nodded self-consciously.
"Igor Stravinsky was in their house when she came home as a baby from the Hospital," chimed in Nina, who now made it clear that she was endearingly proud of her friend's glamorous background.
"Well I have heard of Igor Stravinsky. Heard his music too. But I must say I prefer Jerry Garcia."
"Oh pop music."
"No he's not pop music."
"Well music of now. I like this John Elton. His words are good ."
"Yeah some of John Elton is OK ,"said Nate, and you know what ...if you want to go down river for an indefinite time with me, I"ll take you, god dammit.But the key word is indefinite.Or perhaps God. Or maybe Dammit. Anyway I''ll take you two sacks of poatoes. I have had a change of heart which is always the wrong thing for me to do...follow my first instintinct is the way...But. I'll take you down river with me- like maybe for the rest of yor lives!""

The girls were ecstatic.

"Like maybe the rest of your lives.

"They looked at each other in confusion.

No I don't mean that.They're loading my boat now and I'll sock in a some extra bottles and grub but you have to have no time limit for your trip no place you gotta be and maybe you'll become a dead head too."
Now they looked at him nervously.
Don't worry that's a good thing.It's not necessarily like a shrunken head.It''s Like becoming a Stravinskyite."
"And how much do you want for being a river guide?"Asked Dory.
No it's more like I'm your boss because we will do everything when I say and how I say so I won't charge you anything, but you'll see I"m the classiest act you'll find on this river.And you'll learn enough about the forest to be a naturalist . And I can vouch for my guides too, Gustavo and Fernando,brothers who have been with me for months and I know their family. So they are reliable too because I bought the motor and as trackers, well they grew up out there, " he said pointing his thumb over his shoulder toward the river, and they know it like you know Amsterdam. "
"So you will take us back to Francisco de Orellana?" Nina asked, "At the end."
"At the end we will be Francisco de Orellana, Conquistadors, and who knows maybe we will sail all the way down the Amazon to the sea like he did."
"Oh no I ca-"
"He is making a joke ," said Dory , "But how long will we be gone?"
"How long does it take to plunder the riches of El Dorado?"
She muttered something unpleasant in Dutch.Then:"Yes, Yes., El Dorado, Okay."
"No, really," he said quickly, "you're going to see things you've never in your life dreamed of and I'll get you back before school starts. It's just that I"m trying to make this my last big trip for awhile so I don't want to feel any time constraints you understand."
"You just make your photos and we will stay out of your way,"said Dory with a smile, "We trust you. Something in those eyes. "she said embarassing herself.

"And you can be like The Amazons,hell you've got the guts! That's how the river got its name ,you know ,Francisco de Orellana was going down the river that should have borne his name when he came across a tribe called the Tapuyas and they had six foot tall women leading the battle and the women fought so ferociously, like I bet the two of you could fight, they even cut off one of their breasts so that they could launch their arrows properly with the bow next to their body and Orellana had the misfortune to name them Amazons after the Amazons of Greek legend so when he got back to Spain all anyone remembered of his discovery or wanted to hear about his voyage that brought no gold or riches of any kind was the tale of the Amazons. So the name Orellana belongs to one shithole town where it all began and woman warriors of amazing strength and great cunning , name a river."

"Which is how it should be.," said Nina,"But Dory does not always show great cunning do you Dory." She laughed showing a mouth of bright white teeth. "Remember that man in the trailer park in Croatia on the way to Istanbul who turned out to be a smuggler and you thought he was-"
"Don't bring this up again !'
Sounds like a good story ,"said Nate, "I'll have plenty of time to get it out of you."
"Dory laughed."I will go to my grave with that story and so will you Nina, Right or I will tell the story about how on that same trip you hurt your ass so bad you couldn't sit down for two days after an incident on the rocks of the Dalmatian Coast, near Dubrovnik."
Nina put her hand over Dory's Mouth and Dory put her hand over Nina's and they both began to laugh uncontrollably.
"Obviously, said Nate, I have a great deal to learn about you two.But until you prove otherwise I qualify you both as Amazons and no you don't have to cut off one of your lovely breasts to join the tribe.In this tribe we only ask that you be brave if something scares you-
Like what?" asked Dory, suddenly alert.
I don't know...A thirty foot anaconda-"
"Oh, it has better things to do than fight with me!"
" -and you have to laugh at my jokes."

"Now that is really being brave!"
Laughter rose up over the macabre oasis at the Hotel Auca and reached the red dirt streets just beyond , where the merriment , captured and distorted by dust and contaminants came to be heard as cries of anguish.
VISIT http://www.laselvajunglelodge.com/

THE DEDICATION & INTRODUCTION

2008-11-28T14:49:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER ONE.....THE DEDICATION

I am very glad I was given the opportunity to have my children's book ,which for the English language edition I am translating the title to be My Bones only Groan Now -- Tomorrow is Another Day.

For the uninitiated ,this book written so many years ago when I was a mere child seems to offer so much hope for a terrible disease that is cancer of the blood.It develops in the bone marrow, the soft spongy center of the long bones that produces the three major blood cells:white blood cells to fight infection; red blood cells that carry oxygen and platelets that help blood clot and stop bleeding.When a child has leukemia the simplest answer is that his or her body begins to produce white blood cells that do not mature correctly and begin to crowd out the other cells in the child's body.Cancer with many side effects occurs. The Official name for this illness is Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

You can read about ALL in a medical text or glean what a precocious 6 year old has to say about the technical aspects of the illness inside these pages.The illustrations are my own as well.

But this book was written more than 20 years ago and I am happy for its continued success and the comfort I have come to learn, through the correspondence I receive, the book provides for child and parent alike.

I encourage all parents to have their children speak about their illness into tape recorders and have their children draw pictures when they are feeling well of the things that are happening inside and outside their bodies. The idea would be that someday soon, just as the methods of treatment are changing for the disease so too I will be replaced with someone new carrying the torch of hope. For what began as a personal form of expression about what I was feeling at a particular point in my life resounded loudly for others and to be frank I am ambivalent about it. Every new letter I receive carries with it the responsibility for that child's illness and I devote a good portion of my life to ALL organizations and hospital visits but believe it or not this is the only book I have ever written and my field of study in the university has nothing to do with this great cause. You may , perhaps rightfully so,find me selfish, for I am one of the lucky ones who had a fairly easy time of it and you should know that I keep the small profit the book brings in each year.

But please let your children read my book, it has been proven to be a sure antidote to the depression they all feel, and read it yourself or read it with them. Then start a book of your own. With new methods of treatment should come new handbooks for the afflicted. If you send me your manuscripts I will edit them for you as I speak English well, but as you know it is not my native tongue.

My publisher informs me that the American edition of this book should reach its first readers at just about the time I will be taking an extensive trip through South America with the highlight I hope, to be a visit to the Amazon Rainforest.I will probably not visit any children with ALL. You may think this too to be selfish, but while no one could be more sympathetic to the children who suffer from this horrible disease, I find myself in need of an escape from my personal history."History,"as the Irish Writer James Joyce once said, "is that nightmare from which I am trying to awake." I will never awake,I'm sure, for no one ever does, but it will be fun involving myself in the histories of other people and other places -if only for awhile.

So may your children be well.May you as parents be allowed to recover too.It may be hard to believe this at this moment but peace will return to your life.

CHAPTER TWO....THE INTRODUCTION

In the country of Ecuador, on its equator, in its Amazon Basin lies the town of Francisco de Orellana ,perched above the banks of the Napo river. This tiny municipality has as its main thoroughfare a service road for an oil pipeline which extends throughout the entire length of the country of Ecuador destined for a refinery on its Pacific coast many hundreds of miles away.

The capital for a government registered province, in which daily a crush of colonos arrive (landless mestizo and mulato poor seeking a place to clear rainforest and in so doing become rightful owners of the land)who are constantly at war with the nativos (semi- nomadic Indians who claim traditional rights to virtually all of the land in the Amazon Basin), the grimy little hamlet of Francisco de Orellana is nothing more than a random cluster of rusty tin shacks with red earth byways alternately composed of dust and filth ,or muck and mire ,depending on which days or weeks have scorching sun and which have torrential rain. Both conditions oppress,intimidate,and do not relent and are not to be confused with business as usual in the meteorological life cycle of the tropics. The locals- and there is some confusion as to when someone becomes a local-but the people who have no other place to wretch but this Amazon backwater ,treat their weather tribulation as just another sign of Purgatory ,yet another unexplainable act of the Christian God in which they fervently believe ,even though they know about Science.

The vests-with-many-pockets-Gringo-scientists tell them as they pass through this tiny port on their way to make studies down river. The reason, they all say , is that they have cut down their rainforest , miles and miles of it, stretching outward all around the town as they mistakenly thought they were"civilizing" the land by the removal of all traces of jungle.Yes the African Palm oil plantation that employs some of them did cut down 20,000 acres single-handed. And of course the oil company. But every citizen ,every former colono ,who slashed and burned as much land as he could and planted the low quality coffee that only occasionally bore fruit is largely responsible. If you put all that land together it would be much much more than the Companies destroyed.The citizens shrug.How did they know ? No one told them. What could be done now ?

When it rained the locals had the custom of calling the condition "winter" and when the sun shined hard it was "summer" and now the old timers said that there was a lot more summer than winter and winter came when it always used to be summer. But so it went and they adjusted merely making small talk about the long summers or the torrential winters when there used to be summers . Sometimes their feeble crops withered and died and sometimes they were washed away when it rained so much that the river flooded its banks. Only to the surprise of those who have not known the gnawing clench of this brand of poverty, these changes had little ,if any ,impact on the daily lives of the residents the municipality of Francisco de Orellana.These people, for the most part lived so far below the poverty level that reaching abject poverty would have been a goal to strive for- if they had any goals.

The town is distinguished by its name. A not well remembered explorer began his exploration not far from here and some Ecuadorian cartographer with an historian's brushstroke perhaps , chose to dot the map to honor the man some 50 odd years ago when the town was barely a settlement , when oil riches were unknown, when a baptism of grandeur could have been meant as an encouragement. Now the name mocks more than tributes, but nonetheless it is the only point on the entire earth named for the Spanish Conquistador, Francisco de Orellana, whose plunder mentality,by comparison with his peers, was moderate. He was a man of bright intellect and this may have been singular among the Iberian illiterate, bloodthirsty, mercenaries, who came to the new world in search of riches to be won solely by slaughtering all those who stood in their way.

Curious circumstances, one day near Christmas of 1541, led Orellana to begin a journey of adventure and exploration which is perhaps unequaled in human history on earth.Orellana and his compadres fought many battles along the way against enormous Indian nations out to destroy his tiny band who gallantly defended themselves with their rapiers of Toledo steel , the several arquebuses that made a great noise but rarely shot accurately and the dozen crossbows which were effective but slow to load.

The Conquistadors' modern technology and Orellana's cunning ,coupled with his linguistic abilities, somehow just barely matched up to the giant nations of Indians who fought simply with bows and teeming arrows , blowguns with poison darts,and spears, who used the stretched hides of manatees as effective shields against the strange bearded creatures with steel hats who passed through their waters.

Orellana ,although little known for his feat, is by far the most heroic explorer of all time for, against all odds, he was able to voyage down, navigating more than 4000 miles of wild, mysterious, dangerous and ultimately glorious rainforest and by so doing discover the greatest river on our planet, the Amazon River.

The voyage would never be repeated by anyone . The vast nations, entire civilizations would be gone before the next voyager could repeat his journey. Not even Orellana himself could repeat his discovery although he died trying.Within 200 years after Orellana's voyage the many millions of people who lived in the Amazon died out. He was the only person to see and recognize the real El Dorado that did exist in this abundant rainforest and in a large measure he caused it to disappear with the smallpox or measles the tiny European band brought with them.

Europeans had some resistance to measles and other domesticated animal associated diseases like influenza but the Amazonians had no domesticated animals and somehow could live in close proximity to each other without becoming ill. They had no such experience with contagious disease and for just one of them to contract it was like dry straw on a wildfire.

Conquistador Hernan Cortes was the first: bringing a single African slave from Panama or Haiti to Mexico for his conquest who arrived on the shores of Mexico with pustules all over his body and deathly ill. The Aztecs had never seen a black man. A few came close to examine him. Thus Bio Terrorism unwittingly began and overcame the Aztecs and Mayans faster than Cortes could annihilate them with conventional weapons.Francisco Pizzaro hastened the spread of measles, that was already coming from Mexico anyway carried by indigenous traders, with the meer presence of his contaminated men rapidly killing millions of Incas in the Andes of Peru. The cultures of the New World were wiped out, tens of millions of them, by this new form of terrorism. Orellana, without knowing it, played his lethal role in the mass extermination brought on by the Spanish Conquest and although not a ruthless mercenary by the standards of the time, achieved the same results: the decimation of yet another highly advanced New World Civilization.

Orellana and his men ,perhaps just a single carrier, perhaps many, unwittingly brought a deadly virus to its final solution.Estimates range above 5 million people once populating the Amazon but research has just begun to prove this. Conventional wisdom of the past concluded that Orellana's written account of the nations that lived along the Amazon , some as large as 25 miles in length living in close quarters one to another, were pure fantasy and that the Amazon could only hold small semi nomadic groups. Now that theory has been refuted. Archaeologists finally believe as Orellana described, great nations of peoples ,lived in close proximity ,with cultures as advanced as the Egyptian Pyramid makers.They built not with stone for the most part but engineered vast canal systems and broad highways and terraced cities with a class system, High Priests and Sacred Rulers and like all Amerindian peoples they were worshippers of the sun.

They had precious stones such as emeralds, the source of which have never been discovered and ceramic pottery as fine as Orellana and his men had ever seen in Europe. Gold was used in their jewelry,yet no source for it has yet been found.

And how did they eat so well without hunting the land to extinction and feed such large populations without hunger in soil that was almost completely infertile?

Now there are new Conquistadors who have come to the same place where Fransico de Orellana began his extraordinary journey and they too are here to explore and extract. They have brought with them highly sophisticated and specialized technology. These Conquistadors are the harvesters of the great hardwood trees of the jungle and are the deep well-drilling plunderers of the earth , corporate conquerors who have discovered that a single tree might be worth many thousands dollars and that the entire rainforest is floating on a subsurface of oil worth uncountable millions of dollars.

But the technology had served the lean ,young, American well this evening.His first night back in town after three weeks confined to a sickbed,he had bribed the operator of the satellite telephone station, arranged by the Oil Company, where all the oil roughnecks could make cheap calls to Cheyenne, Wyoming or Texarkana, or Bakersfield, to stay open late so he could call Jaipur, India which was 11 and 1/2 hours ahead of local Ecuador Time. The connection was good and matters of commerce were discussed in general terms with a location in Brazil noted by Nate and an agreement to continue discussing what could promise to be a mutually beneficial business relationship. He went looking for amusement.

An avid autodidact in the history of this region, the irony of his measles attack had not escaped him and while it in no way compared to the"break bone" dengue fever he had caught last year down here ,this time his high fevers brought him hallucinations which now amused him in a mystical way...he was a young boy, a member of a great Amazonian nation, The Aparians,they were dying all around him, crying out and falling to the ground everywhere he looked and he saw the marks of measles on his mother and she began to talk to him in perfect English which was a very strange thing and she told him to run away, to save himself. His father lay on the ground. Dead. Covered with pustules.His mother fell .He laid himself on the ground beside them and watched pustule after pustule raise up on his body until he became one giant pustulant that could move and did move ramming into fellow Aparians and instantly giving them the disease causing them to howl and run off.He went after the ones that tried to run away and he caught them. Then on to the next. Faster and Faster ..Until the fever broke after which he quickly forgave his long dead parents for the marooned life they had been heir to which had caused him to miss certain vaccinations and a few other normal American rites of passage.

The night held no promise for rain and in a rainforest where all of the trees have been removed leaving only dust, the hot humid air becomes unbreathable after three weeks. Clothes too big from the weight he had lost,walking, the now lanky American felt his sweat dry quickly as it mixed and caked with the dust. They were due to spray oil on "The Colono Express" again soon to keep this dust down, he knew ,with waste crude from Sacha or Shushufindi, the Petroleum Company's supposed gift to the rusty shantytowns that stretched all along what had once been only a service road for the pipeline. So within minutes, perhaps partly due to his recent affliction ,but mostly due to atmospheric conditions ,he began to gulp for air as if he had been punched in the gut,his lungs fighting with the thieving sooty humidity of a Black Wasteland Amazon night for breathable oxygen -and he gasped twice as hard as he had fifteen minutes earlier for that whore in the clattering tin-roofed chongo. He coughed out a river of phlegm from somewhere deep inside him , a quantifiable reminder of the seriousness of the illness that had just passed.

He was still carrying a good third of a bottle of San Miguel Rum he had been forced to buy there before the three chubby,paint-laden senoritas were paraded before him by the toothless pimp who had fingernails so dirty you could plant trees in them.The place had cement walls, a sign of its profit and prestige and its own generator, clanging somewhere in the back to its own atonal meringue, juicing nothing more than blinking snakes of Christmas tree lights hung in no particular pattern while rats, he surmised, made the tin roof clatter.

His blue eyes glistened by rum the American had motioned to the pimp , aristocracy in Francisco De Orellana,who went into the back and then reappeared awkwardly imitating some royal stooge,overextending his arm in introduction to his bevy of beauties. The 8 or 10 tables -with only one occupied by three boisterous drinkers -all had garishly cheerful red and white checked plastic calico table cloths sticky with dried rum (and who knew what else) and the Gringo quickly chose the black sassy girl with the red and white underwear which matched the tables vaguely conscious that this might be an advertising ploy. The panties barely held her sizable ass in place. She probably came from Esmeraldas, he thought, on the coast where they know salsa music like nobodies business.And he wanted to take her for a dance."No leche en mi boca," she had told him, wagging her finger like a school teacher.

He headed for his riverside hotel then with a sudden realization lunged into an alley he was passing and quickly opened his pants, lavishly anointing his cock with some of the leftover rum from the bottle. He had used a rubber but AIDS was rampant in these jungle hell holes , or as he called them: "Petroleum Exploration Afterbirths",and in his dizzified brain he thought a quick baptism might ward off...whatever there was to ward off.

A dog growled then charged him.He staggered wildly out of the alley tripping on broken souls for nothing that could be used in this oxidized existence in any way went to waste. His feet tangled up in the web of what he imagined to be hopelessly knotted up nylon fishing line and something was crunching like glass or plastic- maybe disposable juice packets. The cur lunged.He smashed it in the head with the bottle as it drew flesh from his ankle.The dog limped away, low to the ground, whimpering as if terribly insulted by his aggression.He sprinkled some rum over his bloody ankle to ward off rabies, and did not wince nor examine the wound closely.He chugged the rest of the bottle in four huge gulps,then screwed the cap back on and laid it on the side of the dust and gravel road sure that someone would find a use for it before the sun was high, or the rain was hard, tomorrow.

A breeze from the river as he arrived at the Hotel Auca seemed to cleanse all manner of things: the whore house,and just down the road from the whore house ,the crude oil waste pit hastily covered with dirt , a technique that had been banned in Texas in the 1930's.And from the front door of the whore house if you were facing it : a right turn and maybe a quarter of a mile to a dead end, spent chromium 6 , used to create presssure to dislodge rocks; it bubbled up and broke its giant pustules in a liquid murk the size of football field. People were getting sick in ways they had never been sick before . Cancer. It was in their groundwater.The Gringo told anyone who would listen to move away,that the new Conquistadors would kill them just as sure as the old ones had their ancestors, but they had nothing and land was free here and for them that was an equation that somehow added up.Abominations, he came to accept ,were the travail of the hopelessly poor. It was a life lesson and he had been naive.He had acted on instinct. Instinct that was wrong for this particular jungle.Oh how he wished he had the nativos instinct of the real rainforest that he could apply to the human world. The ability to stop walking with your next step yet to be taken and your foot dangling in the air knowing that to place that foot would risk the chance to shoot the willdlife your finely tuned ears had heard. Then to lower it in silence and make every motion in the direction of the sound you had heard, silent and expedient.Knowing when to stop walking. When not to take that last step was a big part of true instinct he decided.

So he stopped talking about it. The squatters knew why they were getting sick but according to them they had nowhere else to go. So he shut up. And he saw that a lot of people were glad he shut up. And he was glad he passed through this seething, burbling, brine no more frequently than once a month.He had stopped being naive he told himself.Despite his righteous indignation it was better to keep a low profile anyway.

There were other issues in his life,however, that now intimidated him -sometimes beyond consolation . Decisions motivated by greed.Unlike the instinctual native hunter,he was slowly becoming aware that he had taken that last step that his prey might hear and get away leaving him with nothing but the empty space where it had been. The step a nativo hunter would never take .But he was the distillate North American Gringo for if you knew him for any length of time you would see that he was constantly reinterpreting and reassembling himself in the way the novel geographical expanse that was the United States seemed always to readily allow.Lit brightly from a childhood of unusual privacy and great protection he was experiencing now for really the first time the darker side of life and enjoying every minute of it.So backtracking out of the shadows, lucky that he had broken tree limbs to mark his trail for retracing, He was finding a way out. A way to save himself -and his fortune -he hoped. His instincts about humans ,he told himself ,had sharpened considerably, had just maybe become like that of the native hunter, and in his drunkeness he became feisty for a moment and thought he could handle all comers.This euphoria soon passed.

Anyway he had no problems .Not tonight. The whore and the rum had seen to that.And he was at the Hotel Auca: the only place he'd dare rest his head no matter how drunk he was.It did not take much instinct to arrive at that decision.