at the dog, and they'd all laugh nervously, though they had no idea, of course, what he was saying. Even Mathias, who otherwise rarely seemed to laugh, joined them in this.
After awhile, the gravel road turned to dirt and became heavily rutted. The truck slowed, bouncing across the ruts, jostling them against one another. The larger bumps lifted the cinder block briefly into the air before slamming it back down against the truck bed. Each time this happened, the dog managed to drag it an inch or two closer to them. It seemed like they'd gone farther than the eleven miles the map had demanded. They drove more and more slowly as the road became worse and worse, the trees crowding in upon them, hanging over them, brushing against the side of the truck. A cloud of bugs gathered overhead, following their slow passage, biting their arms and necks, making them slap at themselves. Eric dug a can of mosquito repellent out of his backpack but then fumbled it, dropping it to the truck bed. It rolled toward the dog, clanged against the cinder block, coming to rest there. The dog sniffed at it briefly, then resumed his barking. Pablo was no longer shouting, and they'd stopped laughing. Time was stretching itself out-they'd gone too far-and Jeff was beginning to suspect that they'd made an immense mistake, that the man was taking them into the jungle to rob and kill them. He'd rape the girls; he'd shoot them or stab them or smash their skulls with a shovel. He'd feed them to his little dog; he'd bury their bones in the damp earth, and no one would ever hear of them again.
Then a turnaround appeared on the right-hand side of the road, and the truck pulled into it, stopped, idled. A path led off into the trees. They'd arrived. The four of them scrambled quickly over the tailgate, laughing again, abandoning the can of repellent, the dog still lunging at his length of chain, growling and barking his farewell.
Stacy was sitting by the window, which was shut tight against the day's growing heat. The truck's air conditioner was on high; she'd begun to shiver as the ride progressed, her sweat drying, goose bumps rising on her forearms. It hadn't seemed like an exceptionally long drive to her. She'd hardly noticed it, in fact, her mind floating elsewhere, fifteen years back and two thousand miles away. The color of the pickup truck: that was what triggered it. A legal-pad yellow. Her uncle had died in a car this color. Uncle Roger, her father's elder brother, caught in a Massachusetts spring downpour, trying to ease his way through a flooded patch of road. A creek had overflown its banks; it snatched the car, spun it downstream, flipped it over, then cast it aside on the edge of an apple orchard. That was where they'd found Uncle Roger, still with his seat belt on, hanging upside down, batlike, in his yellow car. Drowned.
Stacy and her parents and her two brothers were in Florida when they received the news. It was spring break, and her father had flown them to Disney World. They were staying in one room, all five of them together, her parents in one bed, the two boys in another, Stacy on a foldout cot between them. She was seven years old; her brothers were four and nine. She could remember her father on the phone, hushing them with his free hand, while he said, 'What…What…What…' It was a bad connection, and he'd had to shout, repeating, in a questioning tone, everything that was said to him. 'Roger…A rainstorm…Drowned…' Afterward, he'd started to cry, bent into himself, eyes clenched shut, fumbling to replace the receiver on its hook, thumping it against the night table, missing again and again, until finally Stacy's mother took it from him and hung it up herself. Stacy and her brothers were sitting on the other bed, staring in astonishment. They'd never seen their father weep, never would again. Their mother gathered them up, took them for an ice cream in the hotel restaurant, and by the time they returned, it was over. Their father was himself again, busily packing their bags. He'd already booked them seats on a plane home later that evening.
Uncle Roger had been a portly man, graying early, who'd always seemed uncomfortable around his brother's children, resorting to shadow animals and knock-knock jokes as a means of diverting their attention. He'd come to stay with them the Christmas before his death. The guest room was across from Stacy's bedroom, and she'd awakened one night to a tremendous thump. Curious, a little frightened, she'd crept to her door, peeked outside into the hall. Uncle Roger was lying there, very drunk, struggling to pull himself back to his feet. After a few attempts, he gave up. He rolled, shifted with a groan, and managed to arrange his body in something resembling a sitting position, his back against the guest room's door.
That was when he noticed Stacy. He winked at her, smiling, and she opened her door a little farther. Then she crouched there, watching him. What he said next would remain so vivid to her, so unblurred by the limitations of her seven-year-old consciousness, that she was no longer certain if it had actually happened. Its lucidity seemed more dream than memory. 'I'm going to tell you something important,' he said. 'Are you listening?' When she nodded, he wagged an admonishing finger at her. 'If you're not careful, you can reach a point where you've made choices without thinking. Without planning. You can end up not living the life you'd meant to. Maybe one you deserve, but not one you intended.' Here he wagged his finger again. 'Make sure you think,' he said. 'Make sure you plan.'
Then he fell silent. It wasn't the way one was supposed to talk to a seven-year-old, and he seemed, belatedly, to realize this. He forced a smile at her. He lifted his hands and attempted some shadow animals in the weak light coming from the stairway. He did his rabbit, his barking dog, his flying eagle. They weren't very impressive, and he seemed to realize this, too. He yawned, closed his eyes, fell almost immediately asleep. Stacy shut her door and crept back to bed.
She never told her parents about this conversation, yet she'd thought of it, off and on, throughout her childhood. She still thought of it now, as an adult, perhaps all the more so. It haunted her, because she sensed the truth in what he'd said, or what she'd dreamed he'd said, and she knew she wasn't a thinker, wasn't a planner, would never be one. It was easy enough to imagine herself trapped in some unanticipated way, through negligence or lassitude. Aging, say, and all alone, in a bathrobe spotted with stains, watching late-night TV with the sound on low while half a dozen cats slept beside her. Or in the suburbs, maybe, marooned in a big house full of echoing rooms, with sore nipples and an infant upstairs, screaming to be fed. This latter image was the one she had in her mind as she sat in the yellow pickup truck, bumping her way down the rutted dirt road, and it made her feel hollow, balloonlike, popable. She pushed it aside, an act of will. It wasn't her life, after all, not now, not yet. She was leaving for graduate school in a few weeks; anything could happen. She'd meet new people, friends she'd probably keep for the rest of her life. She spent a few moments picturing herself in Boston-at a coffee shop, maybe, with a stack of books on the table in front of her, late at night, the place almost empty, and a boy coming in, one of her classmates, his shy smile, how he'd ask if he could sit with her-when suddenly, inexplicably, she found herself thinking of Uncle Roger again, alone on that flooded road, of that magical instant when the creek first took hold of his car, lifting it, giving him that weightless feeling, not panic yet, just pure surprise, and maybe even a touch of giddy pleasure, the start of a little adventure, a funny story to tell his neighbors when he got home.
It was with this thought-in hindsight, such an appropriately ominous foreshadowing-that she glanced up through the windshield, to discover they'd arrived.
When the truck stopped, the man held the map toward Amy. She reached to take it, but he didn't let her. She pulled, and he held on: a brief tug-of-war. Stacy was fumbling with the door handle; she didn't notice what was happening. The truck rocked slightly as Jeff and the others jumped to the ground. The windows were up, the air conditioner on high, but Amy could hear them laughing. The dog was still barking. Stacy got the door open, finally, and rolled out into the heat, leaving it ajar, for Amy to follow. But the man wouldn't let go of the map.
'This place,' he said, nodding toward the path. 'Why you go?'
Amy could tell that the man's English was limited. She tried to think how she could describe the purpose of their mission in the simplest words possible. She leaned forward; the others were gathering beside the truck, slinging their packs, waiting for her. She pointed to Mathias. 'His brother?' she said. 'We have to find him.'
The driver turned, stared at Mathias for a moment, then back at her. He frowned but didn't say anything. They were both still holding the map.
'
