Little Tiny Teeth

navigational chart with a pencil while one of the crewmen steered.

Vargas looked up, smiling. “Yes, Professor Oliver? How can I help you?”

“Captain, I’d like very much to have a look at that lance again. Where’d you put it?”

“But it’s at the bottom of the Amazon. I threw it overboard. Do you think I would have a thing like that on my boat?” He caught himself as he began to cross himself and turned it into a scratch of his throat instead. “Some of my crew, you know,” he said in a confidential, man-to-man tone, “they’re very backward, very superstitious.” With a meaningful roll of his eyes, he cocked his head toward the steersman. “They think such a thing would bring us bad luck.” He laughed at the silliness of it.

“Ah, I understand,” said Gideon. “Well, too bad.” He smiled. “Save the next one for me, will you?”

“Ha-ha-ha,” laughed Vargas. “Yes, the next one, ha-ha.” He waited, peering around the wheelhouse corner post until Gideon was out of sight, then crossed himself.

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***

THE Amazon is the greatest river in the world, possibly only the second-longest after the Nile (geographers are still arguing about it), but certainly the widest, and by far the first in volume. From its mouth pours almost a quarter of the world’s river water; four times that of the Congo, the second greatest river, and ten times that of the Mississippi. In one day it delivers as much water as the Thames does in a year.

Yet its pace is measured, even sluggish. From its beginnings at the base of the Andes to its mouth on the Atlantic Ocean on the other side of the continent, nearly four thousand miles away, it drops an average of a quarter inch a mile, barely enough to keep it moving, so being on it is more like drifting on an enormous, quiet lake than like being on a river. This sense of drifting, of passive floating, is enhanced in the dark, when not even a suggestion of the black, lightless jungle is visible.

It was in the dark, a couple of hours after dinner, that Phil, John, and Gideon were sitting out on deck, their legs stretched out, enjoying the tranquil, exotic ambience of the vast river. They were not in the salon on the lower deck, but on the flat, open roof of the vessel. Phil had discovered a stairwell leading up to it from the cabin deck, and they had carried up chairs from the salon to enjoy the solitude and the fresh breeze. There was no awning to protect against the sun, so the area would have been hell during the day, but at night it was different. Earlier there had been a brief, hard rain—Phil said it was very nearly a daily late-afternoon occurrence—so the heat had moderated and the gentle, moist wind from the boat’s slow progress was

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like lotion on the skin. And more than two stories above the river as they were, there was an exhilarating feeling of being on the very roof of the world. Gideon had showered and changed clothes before dinner, and his fresh shirt was only barely damp with perspiration. Above, the carpet of stars was so stupendous and crowded that he had at first thought that the Milky Way was a huge cloud of smoke from the fires of another unseen logging operation.

The Adelita traveled at night with the aid of a single, powerful spotlight bolted to the front of the wheelhouse. This was flicked on for fifteen or twenty seconds every couple of minutes to sweep the milky surface of the water for a few hundred yards ahead in a slow, back-and-forth arc that brought home how very isolated they were, and in what an alien place they traveled. The stars themselves were exotic, the unfamiliar configurations of the southern hemisphere not even recognizable as constellations to a stranger’s eye.

Phil had picked up a liter bottle of aguardiente in Iquitos and had poured generous portions into the tumblers they’d brought from their rooms.

John took a first sip, rolled it critically around his mouth, and swallowed. “Whoa boy, now this is what I call, mmm . . .” He had another judicious taste, swallowed again, and blew out his cheeks. “ . . . real rotgut. How much did you pay for it, Phil?”

“Four soles, a buck thirty.”

“That’s what I thought. Jesus.”

Gideon, sipping more gingerly, winced. “This is what the real people drink, am I right, Phil?”

“Absolutely. Good, plain firewater. That’s what it means, you know? Agua, water, ardiente, fire.”

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“Gee, I wonder why that is,” John said, but his views on the potent liquor had apparently changed. He held out his glass. “I guess I could stand another.”

Phil picked up the bottle beside his chair, poured some for John and himself, and offered some to Gideon.

“No, thanks, I’m fine.” Actually, Gideon liked the sharp, rough taste, the overtones of anise, the scraping, sandpapery sensation in his gullet (maybe that’s what had done in Cisco’s voice), but Phil had poured them with a heavy hand and one was more than enough. He added a little water from the plastic bottle he had brought from his cabin and had earlier refilled in the dining room.

Cisco’s gargling voice, at this moment, was irritatingly audible to them in the nighttime quiet. Unfortunately, he and Tim had also discovered the roof a little while ago and had brought up a couple of chairs from below for themselves. They had apparently gotten over their earlier prickly exchange and were having an amiable, frequently uproarious conversation on the other side of the boat. Every now and then, the cloying smell of marijuana smoke would drift over from them.

Cisco was telling a joke. “So these two guys are sitting on the beach at night, you know, smoking weed, totally psychedelicized,” Cisco was saying, “and the first guy shines his flashlight up at the sky, okay? And the second guy says, ‘Whoa, man, that’s beautiful. I bet you could walk all the way up that beam, right up to them stars, wouldn’t that be something?’ And the other guy says—”

Tim interrupted, giggling. “The other guy says, ‘Screw you, you must think I’m really stoned. I know you, you’d switch off the god-damn flashlight when I was halfway up.’ ”

Gales of choking, coughing, knee-slapping laughter followed.