State of Wonder

back of the group and reached over for it. His hair was long and the color of sunlight, his beard ginger and gray. He looked to be thinner by half and yet he was there, still himself. Anders Eckman, just as his wife had speculated in the insanity of her grief, had only been missing. When Marina called his name he flinched as if someone had fired a gun.

“Who is it?” he called out.

“Marina,” she said.

He stood there for a long time, the globe of the orange caught between his hands, his shirt filthy and torn, his pants torn. “Marina?”

“I’ve brought a gift,” she said in English and then said it again in Lakashi.

There was a low murmuring on the shore and Anders seemed to be listening to it. “What is it?” Anders said.

“Rapps. I’ve got some peanut butter and some oranges and a very large basket of Rapps.”

One of the men raised an arrow towards the boat and Anders walked over and stood in front of him until he lowered it again. He was saying something now, and then he pressed his thumbs into the orange and pulled it in half, taking out a piece for himself and holding it up to them before putting it in his mouth. Then he divided up the fruit into sections and handed it out to the men who were standing around him. “Do not under any circumstances give them the Rapps,” he said calmly.

“It’s what I’ve got,” she said.

“You’ve got peanut butter. If these people find out about the Rapps they’ll gut every last Lakashi by sundown and clean them out. How did you find me?” he called to her. One by one they cautiously laid the slices on their tongues and as they bit down they turned to Anders in their startled pleasure.

“I’ll tell you some other time,” she said. It was all she could do not to jump over the side of the boat, to swim to him.

Anders pointed back at the boat, and after further conference he called to Marina. “The orange is good. They want to know what you want in return.”

She wondered if he was serious, if he really didn’t know. “You,” she said and then added to that the second sentence she knew, Let us have the white man. She wondered if a syllable of it made sense to them. She could feel Easter’s breath through the fabric of her dress. His mouth was pressed against her back. She was an idiot to have brought him. She knew enough to leave Thomas and Benoit behind and then took Easter with her without a thought, like he was nothing more than her talisman, her good luck. No mother would have brought her child into this even if he was the one who understood the river and the boat.

On the shore Anders was pointing to his chest, he was pointing to the boat. A single heron skated down the river. After a long discussion he called again to Marina. “They want you to bring in the boat.”

Once again Marina waited for her fear but somehow it held back. “Should I?”

“Do it,” Anders said. “They have you anyway. Just give them a little bit, a jar of peanut butter to start.”

Marina nodded and reached for the throttle, and when she did Easter came around from behind her. He put his hands back on the wheel. She put one hand on his head and pointed for him to go into shore and he nodded.

“Is that Easter?” Anders said. “I don’t have my glasses anymore.”

“I made a mistake,” she said.

It was only fifteen feet and they came in slowly. The men waded out and the women kept to the shore behind them. Anders was very close now and she could see the hollow of his cheeks beneath his beard and she could see his eyes. When the Hummocca came to the boat Marina could see the shape of their heads was in fact slightly different from the Lakashi just as Dr. Swenson had said. They were not as tall as the Lakashi and Anders towered over them. She handed the one who looked like he was in charge the jar of peanut butter and for a moment he struggled with what to do with it, his hands squeezing the jar. He looked up at Marina, maybe he had meant for her to help him or maybe he meant to kill her, but what he saw there on the boat was Easter. The man with the yellow forehead stood there waist deep in the water, his chest against the pontoon, and the look on his face was the same look that had been on her own face a moment before when she first saw Anders, a cross of joy and disbelief, a look that was willing to accept that which was not possible. He turned and called to a woman on the shore who put the child she was holding on the ground and walked out into the water. Once she had seen Easter from a distance, she tried to move faster and the water held her back. She called to him, stretching out her arms, the trembling in her body sending out a ring of small waves into the water. And then she was there, pulling herself onto the boat and Easter shrank back behind Marina, his hands around her waist as tight as a snake.

Anders was out in the water, and then his hands were on the boat. He was calling out to the Hummocca with two sharp syllables. The woman scrambled up on the deck, her short legs muddied and wet. She knelt behind Easter, her wet arms covering his arms, encircling Marina’s waist. She wailed a single word again and again while Easter stayed perfectly still, holding fiercely to Marina. The woman behind him was rocking. The man with the peanut butter jar was saying something to Anders that was not said in rage.

“They want Easter,” Anders said. He was holding onto the side of the boat now, his hands on the deck. He was nodding at the other men in the water who were talking faster and faster now, one hand holding up an arrow, the other making circles in the air. Anders looked at Marina. For the first time she could see his eyes very plainly. “Give them Easter and we can go.”

“No,” she said. That could not be possible. She had brought gifts. She had come for Anders. She put her hands over the woman’s hands, over Easter’s hands. Their arms made a structure that held her up. She shook her head. “We’ll give them the Rapps.”

“This isn’t a choice. They can keep all of us and the boat. Do it now while they’re confused. We have no bargaining power at all here.” Anders helped himself slowly onto the boat and, bending before Marina, he unlocked the layers of hands. Only then did Easter see him clearly and understand why they had come here at all. He reached for Anders’ neck and made the sound he made in his sleep, a high trenchant cry that stood in place for the words Not dead. You are not dead. The Hummocca looked up from the water and were amazed to see their boy knew this white man and that clearly he loved him so well.

“Not this,” Marina said. “If we stay with him we’ll all be together.”

“Go get the oranges and the peanut butter,” he said, one hand on the back of Easter’s head, his face in Easter’s neck. Anders kissed the boy, his hair and ear and eye. They would have less than a minute together. The woman was standing now, her hands on Easter’s back.

Marina got the fruit and the peanut butter and handed it over the edge, filling up every hand that was raised to her. Then Anders held Easter out by the waist. The boy’s feet were bare and he was wearing dirty yellow shorts and a blue T-shirt that read “JazzFest 2003.” Marina made a note of all of it, as if there was someone she could describe him to later on, an agency that went to look for missing children. Anders handed Easter to the up-reached hands of the man in the water and the woman slipped over the side of the boat to stand with him. The look on the boy’s face as his eyes went from Marina and Anders and back to her again was one of terrified misunderstanding. It was something worse than she had seen when the snake had him because the snake he had understood. He stretched out his hands to her and Marina closed her eyes. She left him there. She let him go.

The boat was turned around now and Anders was driving. In a minute they were full speed down the narrow turns of the river and Marina kept her eyes closed, one hand fixed to the pole that held the ragged cover over the center of the boat. She had accounted for her own death, and certainly she had accounted for Anders’, but she had not been ready for this.

“They would have taken him,” Anders said. “If they killed us, if they didn’t kill us, Easter would have stayed with them.”

He took a turn too fast and the basket of Rapps bounced twice and then sailed off the back of the boat and spread out over the water, an offering of little blue corks. Marina just caught the edge of the nightgown before it flew away and she tied it in a knot around her waist. She wished she had eaten a handful of the mushrooms herself. She would have been glad to have lost her mind. She would have been grateful to see God. There were so many things to say to Anders that she said none of them. She wanted to know what had happened to him all this time, and how he had gotten there, if he was still sick, but Easter stood in front of every question. She had not lost him or killed him. She had taken him into the jungle and given him away and there was nothing that anyone could say in the face of that. Once they were far enough away Marina drove the boat and Anders lay at the front of the deck with his eyes closed and his hands folded across his chest. When she looked at him sleeping she remembered that