“Fine with us,” Paul replied. “We’ll have time to talk some more about your work.”
Ramirez chuckled. “I feel like a troglodyte. I still practice my science of botany the old way, cutting plants, preserving and comparing them, and writing reports nobody reads.” He beamed. “Our little river creatures have never had better friends than you.” Gamay said. “Perhaps our work will show where the dolphins’ habitat is under environmental threat. Then something can be done about it.”
He shook his head sadly. “In Latin America, government tends to move slowly unless there is someone’s pocket to be filled. Worthwhile projects sink into the morass.” “Sounds like home. Our bottomless swamp is named Washington, D.C.”
They were laughing at their shared joke when the house keeper herded a native into the study. He was short and muscular, wore a loincloth, and had large copper loops in his ears. His jet-black hair was cut in bangs, and his eyebrows had been shaved off. He spoke in respectful tones to the doctor, but his ex cited speech and darting eyes made it clear something had set him off. He kept pointing toward the river. Dr. Ramirez grabbed a broad-brimmed Panama hat from a hook.
“There is apparently a dead man in a canoe,” he said. “My apologies, but as the only government representative of any kind within a hundred miles, I must investigate.”
“May we come?” Gamay said.
“Of course. I am hardly a Sherlock Holmes and would welcome other trained scientific eyes. You may find this of inter est. This gentleman says the dead man is a ghost-spirit.” Noting the puzzled reaction of his guests, he said, “I’ll explain later.”
They hustled from the house and walked quickly past the huts to the edge of the river. The men of the village were gathered silently near the water. Children were trying to peek through their legs. The women stayed back. The gathering parted as Dr. Ramirez approached. Tied up to the dock was an ornately carved dugout canoe. The dugout was painted white except for the bow, which was blue, and a blue stripe that extended from the front to the back.
The body of a young Indian man lay on his back inside the canoe. Like the village Indians, he had black hair cut in bangs and he wore only a loincloth. The resemblance ended there. The village men tattooed their bodies or dabbed crimson paint on their high cheekbones to protect them from evil spirits who supposedly cannot see the color red. The dead man’s nose and chin were painted in a pale blue that extended down his arms. The rest of his body was a stark white. When Dr. Ramirez leaned into the canoe his shadow startled the green-bottle flies clustered on the dead man’s chest, and they buzzed off to reveal a gaping circular hole.
Paul sucked his breath in. “That looks like a gunshot wound.”
“I think you’re right,” Dr. Ramirez said, a serious look in his deep-set eyes. “It doesn’t resemble any spear or arrow wound I’ve ever seen.”
He turned to the villagers and after a few minutes of conversation translated for the Trouts.
“They say they were out fishing when the canoe came floating on the river. They recognized it from the color as a ghost spirit boat and were afraid. It appeared to be empty so they came alongside. They saw the dead man in the canoe and thought they would simply let the boat go on its way. Then they thought better of it, because his spirit might come back to haunt them for not giving him a decent burial. So they brought him here and made him my problem.”
“Why would they be afraid of this … ghost-spirit?” Gamay asked.
The doctor tweaked the end of his bushy gray mustache. “The Chulo, which is the local name for the tribe this gentleman belongs to, are said to live beyond the Great Falls. The natives say they are ghosts who were born of the mists. People who have gone into their territory have never come out.” He gestured to ward the canoe. “As you can see, this gentleman is flesh and
blood like the rest of us.” He reached into the canoe and pulled out a bag made of flayed animal skin that was lying next to the corpse. The village natives backed away as if he were brandishing a sack full of black plague. He spoke in Spanish to one of the Indians, who became more animated the longer they talked.
Ramirez abruptly ended the conversation and turned to the Trouts. “They are afraid of him,” he said, and indeed, the village men were drifting back to their families. “If you would be so kind, we will haul the boat onto shore. I persuaded them to dig a hole, but not in their own cemetery. Over there, on the other side of the river, where nobody goes anyhow. The shaman has assured them that he can place enough totems on the grave to keep the dead man from wandering.” He smiled. “Having the body so near will give the shaman more power. When something goes wrong with his spells he can always say the dead man’s spirit has returned. We will send the boat off by itself down the river, and the spirit will be allowed to follow it.”
Paul eyed the canoe’s fine workmanship. “Seems a shame to waste such a beautiful example of boat building. Anything to keep the peace.” He grabbed one end of the canoe. With the three people pulling and pushing, they soon had it up on the shore away from the river. Ramirez covered the body with a woven blanket from the canoe. Then he retrieved the sack, which was about the size of a golf bag and tied with thongs at the open end.
“Perhaps this will tell us more about our ghost,” he said, leading the way back to the house. They went into the study and placed the bag on a long library table. He untied the thongs, opened the bag gingerly, and peered inside. “We must be careful. Some of the tribes use poisoned arrows or blowgun darts.” He lifted the bottom of the sack, and several smaller bags slid out onto the desk. He opened one and extracted a shiny metal disk that he handed to Gamay. “I understand you studied archaeology before you became a biologist. Perhaps you know what this is.”
Gamay furrowed her brow as she examined the flat, round object. “A mirror? It appears that vanity is not confined to women.”
Paul took the mirror from her hand and turned it over to ex amine the markings on the back. A smile crossed his face. “I had one of these when I was a kid. It’s a signal mirror. Look, these are dots and dashes. This isn’t like any Morse code I know, but it’s not bad. See these little stick figures? A basic code. Guy running one way means come, facing the other direction is go, I’d guess. Here’s someone lying down.”
“Stay where you are,” Gamay ventured.
“My guess, too. These two fellows with spears might mean join me to fight. Little guy and the animal could stand for hunt.” He chuckled. ‘ Almost as good as a cell phone.”
“Better,” Gamay said. “It doesn’t use batteries or cost you per minute.”
Paul asked Ramirez if he could open another bag, and the Spaniard gladly assented.
“Fishing kit,” Trout said. “Metal hooks, fiber line. Hey,” he said, examining a crude pair of metal pincers. “Bet this is a pair of pliers for pulling hooks out.”
“I’ve got you beat,” Gamay said, emptying another bag and pulling out a connected pair of small wooden circles with dark transparent surfaces filling their openings. She attached the apparatus to her ears with fiber hoops. “Sunglasses.”
Not to be outdone, Ramirez also had been poking through bags. He held a gourd about six inches long, unplugged the wooden top, and sniffed. “Medicine perhaps? It smells like alcohol.”
Hanging from the bottom was a miniature bowl and a wooden handle with a flat piece of stone and an irregular wheel on a rotating axis. Paul stared thoughtfully at the gourd, then took it from the other man. He filled the dish with the liquid, brought the wooden device near, and flicked the wheel. It scraped across the stone and emitted sparks. The liquid ignited with a poof.
“Voila,” he said with obvious satisfaction. “The very first Bic cigarette lighter. Handy for starting a campfire, too.”
More interesting discoveries followed. One bag held herbs Ramirez identified as medicinal plants including some he had never seen. In another was a slim, flat piece of metal, pointed at both ends. When they placed it on a glass of water it swung around until one end pointed toward the magnetic north. They found a bamboo cylinder. When held to the eye the glass lenses imbedded inside offered about an eight-power telescopic magnification. There was a knife that folded into a slim wooden case. Their last find was a short bow made from overlapping strips of metal like a car spring and curved to provide maximum pull for an arrow. The bowstring was of thin metal cable. It was hardly the primitive design one would expect to find in the rain forest. Ramirez ran his hand over the polished metal.
“Amazing,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. The bows the villagers use are simple dowels pulled back and tied with a crude bowstring.”
“How did he learn how to make these things?” Paul said, scratching his head.
